OT: Diy while you can - more on Peak Oil

[The Natural Philosopher]

I see: proof by assertion.

I will take that as ' I dont know shit from shanola' then.

[Halmyre]

I was going to point that out, but there's no reasoning with these idiots who think that if it can grow vegetation to feed sheep and deer, it can grow vegetation to feed humans.

[dennis]

There is more than an acre per person as a large portion of the population would not survive. The elderly and anyone dependent on modern medicine wont last long.

[The Natural Philosopher]

, [e-mail]

vegetarianism is the hallmark of a culture on the ragged edge of overpopulation and starvation.

Paradise was when we wandered around eating seafood, and fruit and occasionally dropping a rock on the head of a passing deer. All of an hours work a day, and full healthy tummies.

After that came herding. 8 hours very leisurely work. And 100,000 instead of 30,000 population. But a few diseases.

Then along came agriculture. 24x7 grinding poverty, bad teeth, rickest, scurvy, obesity..but a million people, instead of 100,000.

Add coal and oil, and its 60 million. I wont say what the workload or quality of life is though.

[Tim Lamb]

I think the restraint might be where industrial heavy metal pollutants render it unsafe for prolonged agricultural use. Soil surveys/analysis is carried out before spreading and repeated every few years. For obvious reasons most sewage is spread on farms near to the source.

Waste from industrialised food production is commonly re-used within agriculture. The EU is currently re-examining the case for feeding meat and bone meal (remember BSE) to pigs and chickens.

I don't think there is as much slack in the system as you claim. Sorry.

regards

[Tabby]

We already have a fair bit of nuke power. As oil prices head north nuke will become worth doing even in what you might call peak oil deniers.

NT

[Tabby]

Your proposed scenario is one of no power at all from nuclear plants, or all the other lseser sources. Its simple horse manure. You try to back it up with more childishness than I'm interested in.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed, cos that what the greens want and what you are proposing ..

In terms of _prime_ energy production as opposed to efficiency savings, or synthetic fuels, its nuclear or *nothing*. The rest simply don't work.

[Tim Streater]

In the scenario of one acre per person - that you brought into the discussion - there won't *be* anything else. If we continue to have enough structure that things work well enough that we have nuclear power, and yes, perhaps electric tractors, then the question of one acre/person doesn't arise - we'll be able to trade land as we do now and the farmer can work the 200 acres as he does now.

I think the point TNP is making is that if we have to downsize, then it'll be chaos. It *won't* be everyone going rustic on their one acre and all dancing round the maypole like a ruddy Bruegel painting.

Although to be fair some of his paintings are not rustic at all (see e.g. The Triumph of Death).

And by the way, the horse is not called Henry. It's called Dobbin. All horses are called Dobbin, which gives a problem at the races when you want five bob each-way on Dobbin in the 3.30.

[The Natural Philosopher]

yup.

The issue is this as I see it.

Without a massive surplus of energy over renewables, things collapse entirely. one week with no diesel would paralyse the country.

so its not juts a question of building nukes as fast as we can, its also a question of switching everything over to leccy power to make use of it.

That, or face collapse.

[Tim Lamb]

We could produce enough fuel oil from Rape to run the tractors but I don't think it would cover the lorries to move the stuff about.

The Germans managed to produce a fair bit of synthetic oil from coal not that long ago.

I doubt the consequential atmospheric pollution pleased the greens of the day:-)

regards

[Tabby]

,

who think that if it can

I guess I shuold have been more precise and said no animal farming where food crops can be grown.

[Tabby]

TheNaturalPhilosopher: NT:

No, I've never proposed that we'll have one acre per person with no other inputs.

If energy prices continue to rise I dont see a compelling reason to remove the one nuclear source that doesnt rise in cost, that will be stable for millennia, and provide a large chunk of our future power.

precisely.

Changes in social order & wealth sometimes happen peacefully, sometimes not. Now that we can agree to be more realistic and have nuclear power in the picture, the mass die-off proposed previously can be discounted.

NT

[Ronald Raygun]

Not necessarily.

But the converse is true. Increase the amount of energy required to extract the same amount of oil, and the price of that oil will rise. The bit you quoted TNP as saying, taken out of context, might well be taken to suggest what you suggest it suggests, but I don't think it's what he meant, it came out wrong.

The underlying assumption is that as the oil stock is gradually depleted, the easy to get at (cheap to extract) parts get exploited and used up first. When they've gone, the next lot takes more energy/effort/whatever to extract (per barrel of oil), and this in turn causes the oil price to rise.

In other words the cost of extraction rises, but not as a result of the energy to drive the extraction machinery costing more per unit. Rather it does so as a result of needing to use more energy per extracted drop, i.e. having to squeeze harder to get more out.

Eventually it will take more energy to extract a drop of oil than burning that drop will supply. Obviously this means that the extraction energy would have to come from a different source, and the extracted oil will be useless as a staple energy source. It might still be worth extracting for other purposes, of course, such as making supermarket carrier bags, though by then I expect it will be cheaper to make them out of paper again.

[Tabby]

Rising cost equals rising difficulty equals rising energy use.

Compare it to filtering flammable gases from the air today, we could do it but the energy use would outweigh the energy harvest.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

think that if it can

Even that is dubious. every crop has a place where it grows best.

Or where it is the only thing that WILL grow,

You may want to trade 100 scotsmen living off porridge for 20 englishmen having steak once a week, but I am buggered if I will.

Eat the porridge, or tolerate the scotsmen.

And anyway nothing will grow if you cover he place in PV panels.

cereals make you fat anyway. Starch is a last ditch food supply ;-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Cite one example.

Yesterday was all because a few students are not going to be able to have a scot free 3 years shagging and drinking, any more.

Note that 5 minutes with bricks and bats is enough to require 20-30 man weeks of work to repair.

Cloud cuckoo land

[The Natural Philosopher]

yep. Perpetual motion machines. Burn hydrogen to drive the generator, to electrolyse the sea water to make the hydrogen..

That's pretty much the way all these 'technology will save us' schemes work.

Basically there are two food chains. One starts with the sun, and is capable of running a population density of X. The other starts with fossil or nuclear fuels (in the absence of hydro or geothermal) and can support about 10X

(Its instructive to note that energy inputs above those we have in Europe per capita do Not actually improve health or life expectancy much. Or one suspects quality of life. Rather the excess is simply wasted.)

If the supply of fossil or nuclear energy is disrupted, the population must fall.

The only peaceful way to do that is if people abandon themselves to death, like they do in Africa.

That wont happen while they still have the ability to fight each other for survival over what s still left.

The royal navy wont need aircraft carriers or nuclear submarines: It will need fast cruisers capable of blowing hordes of Somali pirates out of the English Channel.

[Steve Firth]

No, but thanks for playing.

[jgharston]

The way it's written it does. He's given a generalised link and then expanded on it by giving a specific link. He can't stop both parts of the sentence to be flowing in the same direction so he should have written each clause the right way around to agree with each other.

I'm critising him for deliberate or accident sloppy writing.

A is to B as C is to D explies C->D not D->C.

There is a link between intercourse and pregnancy, in particular between live births and conception. (so, live births influence conception?)

There is a link between competance and safety, in particular between being alive and and being fully trained. (so, being alive influences being fully trained?)

Drug X reduced pregnancies in women by 20% and in men by 30%.

JGH