Monday, December 29, 2008

How Many People Can the Earth Support... Really?

This is not simply a question of how many people can be crammed onto the dry surface of the planet. For example, it is easy to calculate (as I indicate below) that if the present number of 6.7 billion of us were each allowed an area of one square metre, we would collectively occupy just 6,700 square kilometres, or an area enclosed within a square about 50 miles by 50 miles, which would fit with spare room within a county the size of Yorkshire.

This is a comically naive piece of arithmetic, but not much more so than many sums I have seen done as to how many might exist on Earth given a daily diet of, say, 2,500 Calories, in which case a figure of around 12 billion can be deduced. So, whoopee, we may well pass that WHO estimate of 9 billion by 2050 and maybe get to 12 billion by the end of the century. Beyond simple issues of how much food we might need, and water for that matter, along with fertilizers and other material resources to build shelters and clothe ourselves, are more complex but equally fundamental questions centred around quality of life and human dignity.

So, what do we mean by living and what standards of it might be considered acceptable? Would we in the West want to “fall” materially to the standards, say, of western Africa? Or, is the economic dream more wishful, to raise the living standards of the majority world to those of the West? The answer is really the proverbial elephant in the room. If the whole existing number of people on earth lived at the standard of an average American (if there is really an average anybody), it is said we would need five planets worth of resources.

It’s about 3.5 planets for a typical European (an even less average scenario), and four earths for that many Australians. Simply put, the latter prospect is not viable, and in the longer run neither is it for Americans, Europeans or Australians, let alone the whole world. Modern, chemically fertilized, mechanised farming is very successful. We can also kill-off pests with synthetic pesticides, and so crop-yields on Western farms are the best on earth, but they are unlikely to be sustainable.

So, in the absence of plenty of cheap oil and natural gas, what is the upper limit of population, or conversely, the lower limit of material quality. Well, O.K., let’s say that we are all allowed that 2,500 calories every day.

6.7 x 10^9 people x 2500 Cals/day. 1 Cal = 1000 cals, so 1 cal = 4180 J (4.18 J/cal).
So they would all eat, 6.7 x 10^9 x 2500 x 4180 x 365 = 2.56 x 10^19 J/year.

So, what might be grown in total?
We have 15 x 10^6 km^2 of arable land for crops. If we assume that 2 tonnes of edible food can be grown (from maybe 5 tonnes of crops mass) per hectare/year, and that this is in the form of simple sugars, i.e. C6H12O6, with an energy content of 2800 kJ/mol, we get:

2 x 10^6 g/year/180g/mol x 2800 x 1000 J/mol = 3.11 x 10^10 J/ha/year. And converting 1 km^2 = 100 ha, that’s grown on 15 x 10^6 x 100 ha of land, so we have:
1.5 x 10^9 ha x 3.11 x 10^10 = 4.67 x 10^19 J/year.

Now this might be seen as good news in that we can produce around 80% more food energy than is consumed by the present 6.7 billion humans, leading to the conclusion that the earth can support around 12 billion of us, so as I said, maybe we can meet the WHO targets of billion by 2050 and 12 billion by 2100.

But, we would all be living on the proverbial “bowl of rice a day” [(2500 x 4180)/(2800 x 1000) = 3.7 mol = 672 grams].

(This ignores growing any food for animals, that you could get these crop yields without artificial fertilizers and pesticides and there would of course be no crops grown for biofuels).

I have mentioned before a Hubbert type analysis that can be applied to human population growth which is already slowing down. This predicts that in 2024 there will be a maximum at 7.1 billion people (not many more than the 6.7 billion now) after which there will be a decline to 2.5 billion by 2100. I would not be at all surprised because resources to support population are limited.

Now that 2.5 billion at the end of the century may all be living equally and equitably on one planet's worth of resources, or more likely there will be even more poverty all over the world but with a smaller differential between the developing and industrialized nations, if either category are that by then. The level of poverty can only fall so far, because the lower limit of destitution is death.

I think many in the West particularly would sooner die than return to the conditions of a pre-industrialized society, even it that could be relatively well-provided for by agriculture.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The End Times.

The end times (end of days) are most often worked into a message that God is set to bring Armageddon upon a sinful humanity, who must repent their sins, but even so, only “one hundred and forty and four thousand” of them will be spared into heaven, according to what is written in the Chapter of Revelations. The meaning of the complex, confusing and fearful scenes described in that closing chapter of the Bible is open to interpretation, and biblical scholars vary in their opinion and offer different readings of it, and yet without doubt, it seems to point to a chain of events that lead to an outcome in which the Earth is utterly and forever changed. If we believe that the description of these end times are a forewarning of human destruction, then it is easy to look at the many and interconnected troubles of a sick planet with sicker humans on it, and find a map in Revelations that our actions, of greed and disrespect for each other, ourselves and the Earth are simply predicted by divine will, and we should simply carry on as we are, contemptuously consuming ever more, laying waste to all resources and carving the way to majority dissolution and death, in the cause of the will of a creator who wrote the end times of humanity into His code for our destiny.

Other religious teachers read Revelations as being an historical record to us, in which the Whore of Babylon was the Roman Empire, not an agent of Satan, although to the persecuted of the time it may have seemed as though the Romans were themselves agents of the devil. The subject is fascinating and for example the psychic, Edgar Cayce saw the Book of Revelation as symbolic of the body and consequently each emblem, emotion and condition relate to the person. So, the elders of Revelation 4:4 relate to the 12 pairs (24) of cranial nerves, and the seven churches of Asia in Revelation Ch. 1 are symbolic of the 7 chakras, i.e. spiritual centres, and that the end times, if that is what they are, reflect changes within individuals, and that the second coming of Jesus Christ, rather than being part of an almighty cataclysm, was an event for each of us, singularly, and the end times of particular attitudes, beliefs and behaviours within each and every one of us, through which we enter a state on enlightenment. Whatever may be the truth of any of these interpretations, most of the cheap and readily available resources of materials and energy will not be so for much longer.

Thus, these are the end times of casual regard, e.g. for many metals, and fuels like oil, gas, uranium and even coal, if the end days last 50 years or more, and of an enlightenment to the reality that we must use them less and use them well. The alternative may be that we are living in the lead-up to an apocalypse, of war, famine, disease and death, and those four horsemen are on their way, at least if we do not begin to care for the earth, for one another and indeed for ourselves as individuals, by curbing greed and complacency - the principal sins of disregard. We are indeed, running low on cheap resources of metals and energy and the spiritual values of family and community have been plundered in the process that has lead to that which we call progress. It is beyond refute that there is much to be applauded in the advances of the past century and more, in healing sickness, and raising countless millions out of abject poverty, but there has been little symbiosis with the natural world, which we are largely isolated from in a vulnerable and fragile bubble , which could so easily be popped by any number of resource shortages, new strains of disease, or famine.

Even money, in the new economic miracle is proving to be a phantom, spirited away like a will-o-the-wisp on a financial system “built” on credit - i.e. on nothing. It is the issue of money as a false god that consumes resources and human inner resources, that I can read most closely in Revelations, but that is just an impression. If the end times are not to become the end of days, we need to address the problem, and readapt our attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and actions to avert this outcome. This will involve both a material and spiritual transformation, taking us into an enlightened new age. I have great faith and respect for the better qualities of humans, and a belief that we can find an earth-centred haven from the current white-noise of fear and despair. I am an optimist.

“Then he showed me the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city's street. On either side of the river, stood a tree of life, which yields twelve crops of fruit, one for each month of the year. The leaves of the tree serve for the healing of the nations, and every accursed thing shall disappear.”

Related Reading.
Revelation 21, 22: "The New English Bible; New Testament. Popular Edition. Oxford University press; Cambridge University Press, 1961.

Friday, December 19, 2008

"Peak oil: postponed"? Dr Richard Pike.

This is the title of the transcript of a recent interview with Dr Richard Pike, the CEO of the Royal Society of Chemistry, by Andrew Orlowski. For many years, the RSC (not the Royal Shakespeare Company) has been a fairly dormant animal, and I did used to wonder what its purpose was exactly, even though I am a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, as I became shortly after I was awarded a research professorship in chemistry. However, its role is to sound the voice of chemistry in the United Kingdom, especially during these tough and inclement times, in regard to funding, the relative unpopularity of hard subjects such as science which students are reluctant to enrol on degree courses in, and the health of the chemical industry. Hence I applaud Dr Pike for his proactive stance on important issues where chemistry and a sound chemical training really do matter, namely those concerning the many challenges posed by our energy and environmental demands, such as peak oil and global warming.

He has previously pointed out that growing crops to make biofuels is a non-starter, at least on a petroleum-significant scale, otherwise there is a conflict between growing crops to feed cars or humans. I couldn't agree with him more and have said as much on various occasions and in appropriate postings on here; also on my regular monthly column at Dr Pike is also of the opinion (as I noted in yesterday's posting) that there is most likely far more oil in the ground to be recovered than the 1.2 trillion barrels that is generally quoted. I don't disagree, but I stress that it is the rate of recovery that is the most pressing issue, not so much how big the reserve is in total, and we will experience a demand-supply gap within the next decade, for sure, as even the CEO of Shell concurs.

Dr Pike points out that the figures given by the oil companies tend toward the conservative side, and that if a probabilistic analysis is done, based on the P50 estimate (see yesterday's posting) which refers to "proven but possible" oil reserves, rather than the P90 (90% chance of oil being recovered) , the ultimately recoverable resource (URR in Hubbert terms), or size of the oil bounty, can be "two or three times" greater. Thus, we might expect to recover a grand total of 2.4 trillion barrels not 1.2 trillion, even if the P90 figures given by some nations are suspect.

As Pike says, "P90 is a lower bound, and companies have a duty to report what the lower bound is to statutory bodies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, and BERR in the UK. And that figure is conservative. Over time, "lower bound" has come to mean "proven reserves". But it's actually the extreme left hand side of the probability curves."

Dr Pike makes some good points about peak oil doomsayers ("eschatologists", i.e. those who believe in the end times usually attributed literally to the "events" described in the biblical Chapter of Revelations), who think that "the end of the world is nigh". In fact there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what peak oil means, and this is where Pike's point is particularly salient. Many think that peak oil = end of oil, but that is not what it means, and nobody versed in the Hubbert analysis has to the best of my knowledge claimed as much.

Peak oil = end of "cheap" oil (the title of my posting here on May 13th, 2008) and we will indeed be producing oil for many decades yet, and many more in accord with Dr Pike's analysis. The Hubbert curve (or its adaptation, the Hubbert Linearization) refers to the production of a particular field. To date, this has meant readily available cheap, oil. It is not strictly within this remit to refer to a global peak since to derive such a thing means averaging over the production of many different oil fields in the countries of the world that produce oil. All fields have different capacities, and are at different stages in their production (or depletion). One consequence of this is that different countries will run out of oil quicker than others and that will shift economic power and stir-up geopolitical tensions. Russia comes to mind. The New World Order will be compelled by who has the oil, and the power that is attendant to it, while those like the UK who are short on oil will be accordingly weakened.

However, even if the world is not about to run out of oil, producing oil against a rising demand for it will raise the price, and there will be economic fallout, probably a recession and then a Long Emergency scenario according to Kunstler. Eventually there will be an effective global "peak" when overall oil supplies do decline and this will either widen the supply-demand gap or create it if it has not already come about. Pike concedes that there will be a peak eventually but no one knows when exactly; however, he considers that the analysis done so far is "ill informed" and that it will not come about immediately. It is true that we will only know the date of peak oil retrospectively, but most analyses suggest it will be with us by 2012 if not before. Even if peak oil is "postponed" the gap will not be, though it will certainly widen after the peak.

Once a supply-demand gap manifests, the price of oil will increase relentlessly, or at least so far as the market can bear. Pike notes that "you can buy your way out of capacity constraints". This is also quite correct, but it is a dicey business. I agree with him that if you invest in overcoming "surface constraints", as in the number of wells, gas/oil separators, pipelines, storage tanks or jetties, the supply of oil is improved, but the cost of a barrel of oil inevitably and accordingly increases. He says, "The rough rule of thumb that applied three or four years ago was that to get 1 million barrels a day extra, you needed to spend in the order of $10 billion, very approximately."

He notes that the money is recovered very soon, and that at $140 a barrel, the payback is 100 days. Yes, but we have seen the economic consequences of such high oil prices, coupled with a distinctly dodgy global financial system, and while the output of oil might be increased, it will cost.

In terms of renewables and chemistry, Pike states that "no economies are yet geared-up for electricity as a direct heating source, or as automotive fuel, or for hydrogen storage." This is absolutely true. He thinks that solar-energy is the answer, but there is the scale-up problem I have commented on before. In other words, even if solar/PV can be done using thin-film cells and using organic conductors (otherwise the shortage of platinum metal will scupper the whole enterprise, along with fuel-cell technology), it will still take decades to install enough to run the world on. This will indeed need to be "putting things together on a grand scale which requires leadership, because we're in a position where some of these decisions are not made by individuals or individual companies. It's going to require a lot of collaboration." Yes, and collaboration between entire nations and continents, probably, which might prove a longer job.

Pike also stresses the issue of scientific ignorance among the public, and refers to the level of questions being set to 14 year olds on science courses. He comments, that while the course material is often comprehensive, the examinations barely skim it - and are almost fail proof. Without better education, the next generation of policy makers is as likely to be as scientifically illiterate as the present one. The cycle needs to be broken"

I agree, but it is quite ironic that in this age of huge university expansion most of the ex-polytechnics (which did a fine job teaching science to technicians from industry) now they are the new-universities don't teach chemistry. In my opinion these institutions should be restored to the technical colleges they were once, and well, because in the time to come, as the energy crunch bites, we will need people who know how to do useful things, not a rising army of pharmacists, psychologists or media studies graduates, taught by "new-professors" some with no published work in the subject they are supposed to be professor of. Ironically a professor of "Chemical Education" is one lamentable example that comes to mind.

Related reading.
"Peak oil: postponed". By Andrew Orlowski.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Oil Reserves.





(1) discovered through one or more exploratory wells,

(2) recoverable using existing technology,


(4) remaining in the ground.


Proved Reserves.




Unproved Reserves.







Related Reading.


Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Water Vapour Heating Planet.

Just a quick note that I thought might be of interest to you. NASA have made the most detailed measurements yet of water vapour in the lowest ten miles of the atmosphere, using a satellite with specific sensors for this gas, which is strongly absorbent of radiated heat from the surface of the earth. It is thought that the heat-trapping ability of water vapour could increase the effect of global warming by carbon dioxide by as much as twice that it its absence.

Andrew Dessler from Texas A & M University has employed data gathered from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on the NASA Aqua satellite, measured over the period 2003 - 2008. The devise is the first with the ability to differentiate between different amounts of water as are present at different altitudes.

Through a combination of the satellite data and global average surface temperature readings, information has been garnered to determine how exactly water vapour influences and changes with temperature. It appears that a warming of the planet by 1 degree C will cause an elevation in humidity, and trap heat with an additional 2 Watts per square metre, which is in line with the predictions of climate models. Thus, the feedback effect of water vapour on global warming is both large and positive.

Related Reading.
"Water Vapour Warming,"By Olive Hefferman.

Saturday, December 06, 2008

A Recent History of Oil Prices.








Related Reading.

This is the final section to an article entitled: The Oil Question: Nature and Prognosis" which will be published in the popular science journal "Science Progress", probably before Christmas. I thought I would put it as a posting on here for any general interest and/or comments.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Climate Change Not Caused by CO2?














Related Reading.

Monday, December 01, 2008

No Quick Fix to Greenhouse CO2 levels.











Related Reading.