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Will peak wood also doom the human race?

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Re: Will peak wood also doom the human race?

Unread postby Revi » Fri 17 Apr 2015, 10:33:37

Nice! We have a mixed forest with some red oak, which is the money wood when we cut next winter. We have a 20 acre mixed sugar woods, with lots of species in it. It was neglected for at least 20 years when we got it, so we are cut some of the wood to release the maples. Here's a short movie about it. It's very entertaining:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISbkO-NKA9o
Deep in the mud and slime of things, even there, something sings.
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Re: Will peak wood also doom the human race?

Unread postby ennui2 » Sat 18 Apr 2015, 10:30:46

DesuMaiden wrote:Copious. Abundance must be a shill. Anyone believing in cornucopian nonsense


I don't think he's a shill. But he's on the other end of the spectrum from the hardcore doomers and so his presence here is absolutely necessary as a check and balance against some of the tendency by some to think only in extremes. And when I say extremes, I mean mostly in terms of dropping a string of worthlessly doomy short-term predictions, which seem to always see some TEOTWAWKI event around every corner (usually tied to a geopolitical flare-up like in the middle-east).

DesuMaiden wrote:Both of these videos are backed up by scientific sources, so they aren't just some random nonsense someone pulled out of their ass. I do believe around 2020, the world economy will collapse because of peak oil.


The fact is that this place was ROCKING about 10 years ago because sites like The Oil Drum had predicted that oil had peaked and it gained enough mindshare that there was a significant chunk of people who had taken the red pill, so to speak. I was one of them. I took the quantity of online activity as an affirmation that there was something to this. And because of how the mind works, it's necessary for doom(TM) to be within a certain timeframe for one to raise the mental red flag. 5 years is a good figure, and by the end of it, I had pretty much affixed a 5 year countdown in my head when gas hit $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008, causing me to start to really make some shifts in my life-planning, shifts that I'm glad, in retrospect, I didn't make, because had I done so I'd be far worse off today than I am.

Being a filmmaker, I can make a video that can convince people of nearly anything. That's the nature of the medium. Like Obi-Wan's use of the force, it has a strong effect on the weak-minded. I know how this works well enough that I could probably start my own L Ron Hubbard style cult around whatever fiction I'd like to construct. Film is a very dangerous tool in the wrong hands.

Think twice before forming any conclusions about the future and always question the messenger. ALWAYS. The more wacky the source, the more the source may be just in it as a way of making a living, to grab their 15-minutes of fame, or grind their axe, the more suspect I'll be of the content of their essay. People rarely apply this degree of critical thought, and are quick to just cherry pick their experts to affirm whatever vision of the world they already prefer to see. So the #1 source of bias is us as individuals. Recognize it.
"If the oil price crosses above the Etp maximum oil price curve within the next month, I will leave the forum." --SumYunGai (9/21/2016)
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Re: Will peak wood also doom the human race?

Unread postby C8 » Sat 18 Apr 2015, 12:03:24

DesuMaiden wrote:I was thinking about peak wood because humans are also overwhelming reliant on wood. Without wood, modern civilization will also collapse because there is no substitute for wood.

Think of it this way. In colder climates, like Russia and Canada, when we run out of fossil fuels, we will have to rely on burning wood for maintaining and creating heat during the freezing, cold winter times. Without sufficient fossil fuels, we will need to burn wood for heat. Most of the heat generated during the winter times in cold climate places is from coal, natural gas and nuclear power. But we will eventually run out of those fuel sources, so we will eventually have to go back to relying on wood for fuel and heat.

But this raises the question. Is there enough wood in the world to support such a huge population of people? Canada has over 36 million (nearly 40 million) people, and in the future, they will need to rely on wood for heat. I somehow doubt there will be enough trees to cut down for wood for heating in the future. I believe we might quickly run out of wood, if we are to use wood to substitute for fossil fuels in the future. If there is not enough wood for heating in the cold winter times in cold climate places, that means we will run out of wood for heating. And when that happens, people in cold climates will freeze to death during the winter time.

So this makes me wonder if it is bad idea to live in a cold climate like Canada. I live in Kitchener, Ontario, and the winter is pretty cold with below freezing temperatures and plenty of snow. I don't think it might be a good idea to live in Kitchener anymore because when we run out of wood, we will freeze to death. Without wood, you can't create enough heat to survive in the freezing cold. So maybe I should get a plane ticket, and move over to a tropical place, like Florida or Brazil to survive peak oil. That's because those places are not cold during the winter time, so running out of wood wouldn't be so bad.

Peak wood is also a major issue humanity is facing. We aren't just facing a peak fossil fuel crisis. We are facing a peak everything crisis as Richard Heinberg once said. There are just too many people on this planet using up this planet's finite resources.


Your fear is correct, by 1800 it is predicted that all the trees in England will have been cut down and no sources of fuel will exist for those people.
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Re: Will peak wood also doom the human race?

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 18 Apr 2015, 15:19:34

C8 wrote:
Your fear is correct, by 1800 it is predicted that all the trees in England will have been cut down and no sources of fuel will exist for those people.

Very funny!
But in 1800 there was the North American forests to move to and cut down along with all the coal in New Castle. Where do we go today when we run out. I've seen a lot of pretty pictures from the mars rovers but not one of them shows a tree.
Here is a question for all the resident trivia experts. Take a quantity of trees that when burned will release a ton of CO2. First how much oil or coal would you have to burn to release the same ton of CO2.? Second how much heat would you get from burning the wood and the oil both using best available technologies? So which one gives more heat per ton of CO2 emitted?
Now if you left the mature trees growing they would absorb C02 every year. So Third how many years would it take that quantity of trees to absorb and sequester one ton of CO2? So is increasing wood consumption and burning as a way to reduce coal and wood burning a good idea?
I don't know. I don't have the numbers but I expect it is not as good as some people believe. Of course there are not enough trees to replace the 78 million barrels of oil we burn each day much less the (whatever the number is) millions of tons of coal we presently consume. That is not the question. the question is do we make an environmental profit by substituting wood for fossil fuel within the limits of the available wood supply?
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