THE Earth in 2100 Thread (merged)

[madison]

My answers:

Average per capita energy use: 0, though I might imagine a few local government offices might have old solar panels that are still operational and used basically for light.

Average life expectancy: Probobly depends on where you are located in the world - whether there is war and/or biological weapon fallout/hereditary damage, how damaged your areas land is, how much freshwater you have available for use, how much forested land you have, how much you know about sustainable living that was passed down to you from your distant relatives (us, here now). Anywhere from 35 to 65, my guess.

Will there be computers? No, why would we need them in everyday life at this point? Can they water a garden, take care of the baby, teach the kids, bake the bread, harvest the crops? No. Maybe a few local government offices might have them to keep track of deaths & births and taxes and such. By this time, folks will know how to garden (and won't need books and internet) or they will be dead.

Will there be internet? Again, what use would the internet be to an agrarian society?

Will there be cars or non-animal powered transportation? Maybe trains for transporting essentials around; sail powered boats; barges maybe.

How many people will be living on Earth? We will be de-populating at this time. Most of the massive die off will have occured, but new diseases will pop up in light of the rotting human corpses and biological weapons etc. Maybe 2 billion and falling, my guess.

Will we preserve the scientific and mathematical knowledge? Only what is useful and locally available will be preserved. There will still be books, but unless they are preserved with chemcials, they will be old and yellowed by then and well on their way to rotting. Unless it gets copied to vellum, it's gone.

Will there be a USA? Maybe back east in DC and surrounding areas. I don't believe the infrastructure required will survive much, but I could be wrong, as I'm equally sure the gov't will keep remaining supplies of oil and energy for themselves.

How will people get their energy? Calories. Food intake = energy output. Human or animal powered labor, passive solar energy for heating/cooling homes, gravity water powered mills etc.

How will life then differ from today? We have the same wishes - something meaninful to work at, someone to love, something to hope for. Work will likely mean some form of farming/gardening, working on crafts and skilled labor, trade or barter will be the monetary system to a large degree, titheing to the gov't. I think we'll see the apprentice/journeyman/master system make a return, more gender specific roles but with more variety and exceptions than in the past medieval periods. I envision living with the sun, up before dawn, asleap when dark. I also think we'll live in extended family units and in vague "tribal" units, and the value of our lives will be weighed in security vs how much we own.

What will be the major religions? I have a hard time seeing the major religions disappear, though I wish they would. This also will likely depend on where you live on earth. I do envision people being more tied to the land and it's cycles, so likely a return to seeing the land as holy etc.

Will life resemble the Stone Age, Medieval period etc? Again, likely dependent on where you live. I am hoping for a new lifestyle. A democratic local self-governing village idea, where cooperation is rewarded and individualism discouraged without crushing uniqueness. Using the knowledge we have NOW about how to live i nharmony with the land combined with right livelihood and more communal living. I think we'll see guilds of bakers, shoemakers, candlemakers, gardeners (urban & rural), teachers etc. all working on their specific skill while being generalists, too. People will have kids younger (16, 17 will be considered young adults) and become grandparents sooner, and likely die sooner, too. I do like "A Letter From The Future" idea, though it is bleak.

Again, so much of "what will the future look like" will depend on where you live. If you have abundant natural resources and few people, then you'll likely do better than someone living in a concrete jungle with no way to support themselves and their families. War torn countries will have it harder than peaceful ones, and those who were less industrialized will likely retain more of the life-sustaining skills than a very industrialized nation/area.

[M_B_S]

http://paulchefurka.com/WEAP/WEAP.pdf

Thesis:

Oil export stop 2013

Peak energy 2020

Peak Homo Sapiens 2020 @ 7.5 billion

Population 2100 only 2 (TWO) billion


This is breath taking hot stuff

M_B_S

[Bas]

Nice find MBS! I'm just scanning it now, but I have a hunch this report is going to be a classic here.

[thuja]

Yes very good stuff. This mirrors my belief that it will take abut 100 years to get the population back to equilibrium. It also describes a period of unmitigated Hell in the middle decades of this century...upwards of 100 million excess deasths each year. That, compared to 10 million excess deaaths during World War II. A brutal but very likely future.

[diemos]

There was a show called sliders which had the protagonists leaping to alternate realities every episode. I remember one episode in which there were ATMs that would give anyone as much money as they wanted. The catch was that each dollar bill was an entry in a lottery and if your ticket won you were executed. How about that for a method of managing die-off.

[Cobra_Strike]

Somehow...I am not convinced it will take that long. No more then a month of serious disruption would cut off water to major population centers.

[Tanada]

http://paulchefurka.com/WEAP/WEAP.pdf

Thesis:

Oil export stop 2013

Peak energy 2020

Peak Homo Sapiens 2020 @ 7.5 billion

Population 2100 only 2 (TWO) billion


This is breath taking hot stuff

M_B_S

His conclusion that world wide we won't build more than a handfull of fission reactors in any one year is a rather creative interpretation of historical data don't you think? Both France and the USA individually were building more than that in the 70's. But the whole world together won't. Like I said, creative interpretation of historical data.

[Tyler_JC]

I agree Tanada. The argument that we won't have the industrial capacity to build more than a half dozen nuclear plants per year is utterly fallacious. Just think about how much cement is being used to produce office buildings and football stadiums.

Is anyone actually arguing that we are going to keep building new football stadiums in a world of energy shortages instead of redirecting those resources to more profitable enterprises?

Not to mention the obivous fact that energy use and population growth are not related.

The countries with the highest energy use have declining populations and the countries with the lowest energy use have exploding populations.

Energy is NOT the limiting factor with regards to population levels.

Arable land and total food production might be that limit or in certain climates it might be water.

But cutting off 50% of America's energy would not lead to a massive population decline in the United States. An economic crisis? Sure. But a mass dieoff...I don't think so...

[Windmills]

Interesting energy interpretation. I've also noticed that water has only a weak correlation with agriculture. For instance, in the US, many of the places that receive heavy rainfall are less important to agriculture than a number of other places that receive little to no rainfall. Therefore, I can conclude that water is not that important.

I think the picture is not quite as simple as you'd like to make it and that, in reality, energy is quite important to growing and sustaining a large population. The cultural population dynamics of affluent nations is just one point you might want to reconsider.

[thuja]

I agree Tanada. The argument that we won't have the industrial capacity to build more than a half dozen nuclear plants per year is utterly fallacious. Just think about how much cement is being used to produce office buildings and football stadiums.

Is anyone actually arguing that we are going to keep building new football stadiums in a world of energy shortages instead of redirecting those resources to more profitable enterprises?

Not to mention the obivous fact that energy use and population growth are not related.

The countries with the highest energy use have declining populations and the countries with the lowest energy use have exploding populations.

Energy is NOT the limiting factor with regards to population levels.

Arable land and total food production might be that limit or it certain climates it might be water.

But cutting off 50% of America's energy would not lead to a massive population decline in the United States. An economic crisis? Sure. But a mass dieoff...I don't think so...

Actually his treatise is quite moderate compared to most folks on this board who posit a radical die-off happening in a mere decade or two. His stance is it will take about 4 generations before we return to population equilibrium of about one quarter of the population today.

He also is not a throw in the towel guy. He advocates continued efforts towards reducing fertility- the best option for mankind. He is hopeful for developing seeds of a more lasting and sustainable civilization after this one burns away.

But if you say these problems can be solved by fission reactors, I would say there are so many limiting factors right now, that if you plug one hole, a dozen more will appear. You say we can build nuclear plants like the Chinese build toys. But fossil fuels are required for fertilizer, pesticides and industrial agriculture. They are at the root of the Green revolution, which will simply collapse without massive inputs of fossil fuels.

Then you have climate change, altering the landscape before our eyes with droughts, rising sea levels, storms and fires. This will only increase with time, even if we take draconian actions.

For limiting factors you can choose water, arable land, minerals, peak coal and nat. gas.

And then you can examine how nations will react to dramatic loss of resources on a global scale. Wars are raging right now over these very issues.

How can you look at all this data and then simply say...but we'll just build nuke reactors and we'll be fine?

[Tyler_JC]

Your post brings us to the following list of questions.

1. What % of the world's oil is used to create food?

2. What % of those inputs could be substituted with natural gas, coal, methane hydrates, biofuels, and other sources of carbon?

3. What would farm yields look like if we switched from oil intensive factory farms to less oil intensive farming methods?

I don't know the exact numbers but based on the reading I've done, the answers look something like this.

1. 3/4 of America's oil use is for transportation. Globally, oil use for transportation is also a strong majority. Considering that transportation can, in most cases, be electrified, a large supply cushion becomes available for agricultural uses.

2. A hydrocarbon is a hydrocarbon. Oil can become natural gas. Natural gas can become crude oil (and its derivatives). Coal can become oil. Basically, throw enough money at the problem and you'll get whatever chemical you want. The EROEI doesn't matter because we are trying to produce chemicals, not energy.

3. Talk to Ludi.

I'm not saying their won't be problems as a result of peak oil. I just don't see a shortage of fertilizer and pesticides as one of those problems.

[KingM]

I think a good target population for the earth is one billion people. It would allow for a high level of civilization, for cities, lots of protected land, and could be sustainable over the long run.

Unfortunately, the only way to reach this number is either a mass die-off or strict government control of reproduction. I don't see how we could get there in a gentle way.

[gg3]

For those of you who tried downloading the "pdf" only to discover it wasn't a real PDF (cross-platform & cross-application) but an Adobe-Only PDF (IMHO a phony PDF), you can try this:

http://paulchefurka.com/WEAP/WEAP.html

and read it on the webpage.

Anyway... Same old news. We've screwed the pooch and we're doomed.

Re. KingM: Yes, I agree, 1 billion humans. And if people aren't willing to accept legal limits on reproduction, strictly enforced, then they have chosen dieoff and in that case I won't cry as they die.

Yeast cells.

Bleh.

[IslandCrow]

I have down loaded the data the model is based on (Main page of the Paul's work) and will probably play around with them in the dark winter months....

However, initially one point is bothering me. The data shows a strong correlation between rising energy and rising population. The assumption is that this same correlation will apply on the down side. I know the model factors in a decrease in energy use per person as slide progresses, but I wonder if there would be a significant time lag before population drops. Part of this is because we in the west can absorb large drops in energy use before the population starts to drop.

My initial response is that the model gives a good indication of pressures due to dropping energy, but I think that the population will not drop as soon as energy levels drop (ie not as soon as the model predicts).

[gg3]

re. Island Crow: Interesting point. As a generalization, the wealthy nations will fare better because they have more room to cut back before they start dying off, and the poor nations will suffer dieoff sooner becaue they have less wiggle-room. Also factor in climate change and emerging diseases: both more likely to hit the poor nations harder than the wealthy.

To this I would add, the knowledge gained (science & technology) during the petroleum era may also help us ease the downside somewhat. But again, the impacts will differ according to the economic condition of each nation as it heads into the crisis.

In any case we're still in overshoot, headed for collapse. It may take longer, but we'll end up at a sustainable balance point in the end, either this century or next.

[IslandCrow]

If the economy tanks quickly and the minimal safety nets we currently have rip apart, people will rapidly get violent in some places, and hungry in even more places. Economic collapse caused population decline in Russia. Why are we immune?

How people react will be a key factor. Unfortunately I think that violent reactions will be more common than they need to be. The problem with a lot of the violence is that it is directed against the infrastructure that would be needed to smooth the decent to a lower level of energy use.

Against this is a number of years of having lived in poor countries as an adult, and observed how people manage with much much less than we are using here in the west. Because of this I have a firm conviction that in the West we could live on a much lower level of energy before having a major die off...the wild card is whether people will react violently to dropping living standards (and so make the problem even worse).

In the long term we will see populations drop...but I see this drop starting later than the model predicted

I suppose that in viewing the WEAP model, I would see that the correlation between energy use and population is a lagging model (I mean by that: energy change effects population change x years later). Because of the constant run up in energy availability and population growth over a number of years it looks as if there is an immediate (time wise) correlation. I do not have a good feel for just how long the time lag would be, but my 'gut feeling' (partly from looking at places like Zimbabwe which still has a growing population) is that the lag might be in the order of 5 - 10 years. Because of the time taken for a baby to reach reproductive rate the effect of the time lag could be even greater than the time I have just given. According to the model Russia's population should be rising now!

A long defense of my position but it really is a critic of just one smallish detail in the WEAP model - So far I think that the model gives a good indication of the overall shape of things to come. It seems to me to be a useful model.

[M_B_S]

Population Thesis

Paul Chefurka made an "interesting" U - turn

His population model is rubbish

Read his statement here:

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Rubbish.html

[BobWallace]

Let's throw in a bit more...

Birth rates worldwide dropped from 2.65 in 2000 to 2.55 in 2006.

Replacement birth rate is 2.33.

Unless 2000 and 2006 are not representative of what is happening we're moving fairly quickly toward zero population growth. And not because gas tanks are empty.

And, as we've seen in so many 'developed' countries, once people get control over their reproductive processes and urbanized they keep moving toward 'one child per couple'.

[KevO]

Scientists From Around the Globe Join ABC News in a Forum on Surviving the Century By SARAH NAMIAS, June 12, 2008:
Are we living in the last century of our civilization? Is it possible that all of our technology, knowledge and wealth cannot save us from ourselves? Could our society actually be heading towards collapse? According to many of the world's top scientists, the answer is yes, unless we take action now.

This September, in Earth 2100, a dramatic ABC News 2-hour broadcast, the greatest minds across the globe will join together in a countdown to the year 2100 to tell us what we must do to survive the next century … And what may happen if we don't.

The time to act is now, "We really have less than a decade to start getting this right. If we're still dragging our feet in 2015 I think it really becomes at that point almost impossible for the world to avert a degree of climate change that we simply will not be able to manage without intolerable cost and consequences."

In order to avoid this chilling future, we have to first imagine it. In an unprecedented Internet event, ABC is inviting people from around the world to bring the future to life

Video and more text here