[Tanada]

So at what level of population and at what level of consumption per capita could a reasonable sized stretch of bog be sustainably harvested? (And by sustainably, I mean with no diminution of the total amount of peat.)

I'm don't doubt that, with a vast enough expanse of bog and relatively tiny number of people using it very sparingly, that sustainable harvest (by my definition above) would be possible. But I don't still have a clear idea of what exact number of people and rates of extraction we would be talking about per acre of bog.

You know something dohboi? If you would actually read what I post you would already know the answer as I posted it earlier in this thread. Posted Fri 16 Oct 2015, 11:22:43

Now compare that to the traditional way of cutting peat leaving all of the surrounding area green and growing. Historical and contemporary accounts say a four man team, two cutters and two catchers, can cut a year supply of fuel in 4 days, leaving the bog undisturbed 350-360 days out of the year. Each family had a 'farm' or 'section' where they would get their fuel for hundreds of years and let nature repair the extracted area. UN estimates are Peat accumulates around 1 mm per year, so if the team starts at one side of their section by the time they cut all the way across the other side of their section will have grown back an inch for every 25 years. They extract about four feet depth in their working area but only for a week or so each year. If a family burns 10 cubic meters of peat per year and they go 125 mm deep in their excavation is 8 meters by 1 meter by 1.25 meters, about the size of the excavation in this video. These guys were going fast to show off for the camera and we don't see the stacking and drying phase but the whole process is not a months long disturbance of the bog, just a few days per year. Anyhow 1000mm*1000mm*1000mm*10 is 10,000,000,000 cubic mm of extraction. So long as the section they are working covers is 1 mm*10,000,000,000mm square in total area the peat is generated as fast as it is extracted. Division tells us that is 10,000 square meters aka 1 Hectare or 2.47 acres of land per family. Could you supply all your heating and cooking needs in perpetuity from 2.5 acres of woodlot? Anyhow here is a short video of traditional sod cutting in Ireland,
https://youtu.be/8DYpD7cCWuc

[Tanada]

What family owns 2.47 acres of peat? How will they transport the peat to their homes? Donkey cart? I am sorry Tanada, but this peat business sounds like some romantic dream. It is not possible for another extractive energy industry to save us from the coming exhaustion of the extractive energy paradigm.

Sorry Pete it isn't about saving you upper crust Californians, this is about saving my rural Irish relatives who still have a shot at weathering the population storm and living a sustainable existence.

[dohboi]

Guilty as charged of sometimes being lazy and not reading every word of every post.

I guess if the option is wood versus peat and you're surrounded by peat, it may be a workable option. Mostly, most people will just be going without and keeping warm in other ways. In any case, fewer and fewer place will need much heating as GW really gets revved up.

Cooking, though, will still require something to burn in some way, electricity from alternatives becomes very available and reliable and cheap (which I doubt) or everyone gets a solar cooker and does all their cooking on sunny days. (Do those things work in the winter in mid to high latitudes?)

[Subjectivist]

The real problem comes from our voracious industrial rates of consumption of all resources, renewable or otherwise. Heck technically speaking Oil is renewable on a multi million year time scale. In comparison a peat by renews over night but you have to make your extraction rate at or below the renewable growth rate. It is not magic or miracle, it is simple mathematics.

[dolanbaker]

Rural Ireland? Didn't the Celtic Tiger move into suburbia?

Not exactly, what actually happened is due to the fact that Ireland was one of the last countries in Europe to have most of the farmland in the hands of individual families rather than large tracts of land owned by one large farmer.
Those that didn't emigrate usually built on the family land, so it's not uncommon to see a whole row of houses owned by members of the same family.
About 20% of the Irish population live in "one-off" housing that is not in a town or village, but is built on family land or in "townlands", these are parcels of land that sit out in the countryside. I live in a townland that has 20 houses (density of 1 per hectare) and the next townland is 2km away and between them are a couple of random houses built beside the road.
Sort of like suburbia but far more spread out.

During the Celtic Tiger period, a lot of "developers" built apartments and small housing estates out in the sticks a long way from anything, most of the earlier developments sold due to a lack of decently priced houses in Dublin and other cities. Most of the developers then decided to try again and built more and more in remoter places and then the crash happened and we now have "ghost estates" all over the country.

[dolanbaker]

Clearly, tax breaks & greed are not unique to any particular country.

[dohboi]

For me, it's a two minute leisurely walk to the closest store with milk (if I still drank the stuff).

Their still building in North Dakota even though the bust has emptied out much of the area.

Insanity seems to reign pretty much everywhere.

[Subjectivist]

Back on topic I think of it more like 10 percent of the population is living in places with a low enough population density. If they can keep the hordes away until starvation thins them out those isolated enclaves will be okay. Ireland is borderline population density, but being an island is a huge advantage. Newfoundland or the Falkland Islands should weather the storm. Northern Canada, Alaska and Siberia should all do alright as well. Florida, not so well, California very risky.

[onlooker]

That is one of the favorite themes of James Howard Kunstler. How incredibly untenable the whole suburban sprawl - car culture is. In fact Pstarr that relates to your point about lofty dreams and aspirations that failed to consider limits. One such place epitomizes it for me the most. Las Vegas, the den of vice, located in the desert yet proclaiming its invincibility against said desert and any other natural limits. A neon oasis but for how much longer.

[onlooker]

"The project of the American suburbs is the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world." Amen.

[Tanada]

Ireland population has a long way to drop before it reaches post-peak sustainability. It has no timber, little remaining top soil (the sheep ate it a thousand years ago), no oil or minerals and the ocean fisheries are depleted. Northern Canada and Siberia are worse. They might be sanctuaries for the few that have access and survival skills. But who does? People live there now because of oil. No oil. No people

People lived in all those places before industrial civilization, and those who have kept the necessary skill sets will be able to do so after the collapse of industrial civilization. You seem to have a blind spot Pete, if people are living the preindustrial way you discount them as if they don't matter. Ireland supplied all its own food right up until the Potato Famine of the mid 1800's. The reason they had a famine at all was the government and absentee landlords exported thousands of tons of food to Great Britain to keep prices low for the industrial work force not caring that the Irish were on the edge of starvation or actually dying.

Was population density very low in Siberia and Alaska and Northern Canada before 1850? You Betcha, but the population was relatively stable, well fed and happy. They didn't have iPhones or cars or jet travel around the world, but they were happy anyhow.

[onlooker]

Also, presumably their are more people within those areas and near those areas then their were lets say before 1850. So if things really get dicey, many more people trying to live there than around 1850.
I think this is very pertinent to this topic. We are talking about many more people around then in pre-industrial times. We are also talking about a less abundant natural ecosystems, more denuded of trees and animals etc. This combination of more people and a less bequeathing natural bounty is what is so problematic about envisioning a controlled power down or even no substantial die-off.