[evilgenius]

Sheer numbers do have an impact upon potential for survival. I've heard Matt Ridley talk about it. With sheer numbers, and diversity, you get such a complex origin of creativity that even the 'black death' type of world ending events have to be discounted. The biggest danger to that type of counter to hazard is actually stability. When the world realizes as it matures that it should have fewer people, and takes the proper steps (not one child policy) to get there, then, the creative core would shrink relatively. Political troubles would be subsumed under such circumstances, but climate related ones might remain entirely out of hand.

[Tanada]

...

Good points by both. It also demonstrates how complex the whole system is, how many variables there are. LTG did not model the downward slope and stated that the best their model could do was find the inflection points because after that everything became so chaotic that the model lost credibility. I suspect that is true.

Tanada, one thing I’ve not heard you address is soil depletion.

Newfie, rather than retype the whole thing I am going to cut and paste my views on soil depletion from another thread. Hopefully this satisfy's you as to what I believe about the topic, if not I will take another stab at it once you respond. please read to the bottom I will have a comment after the quoted messages.
Quote One;

"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"

You have the blind spot Tanada. Skill sets don't revegetate forests or refill the mines. It takes hundreds to thousands of years to form an inch of topsoil. There is little or nothing out there to subsist on. Sorry (:

Bull Pucky. I can make an inch of topsoil out of raw silica sand by dropping it on the ground and leaving it alone for a few years, it in no way shape or form has ever taken the often claimed 'thousands of years'. The land where my fat butt is sitting right now was under a 2000 meter pile of ice 20,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago it was under a glacial lake caused by the melting of that ice. 8,000 years ago more or less that ice water had all drained away and within decades there was mossy tundra, which seceded to mixed pine forest and then mixed hardwood forest as the climate warmed to the Holocene Maximum. Topsoil is not some magical combination of special elements it is dirt full of bacteria with a little organic carbon to sustain it. That organic carbon comes from mosses and lichens and algae and critters doing #2 as they wander around eating. The first secession of plant life are the ones that don't need organic carbon to thrive, but they leave behind organic carbon for all of the other plants that do need organic carbon in the soil.

I will make you a bet right now Pete, go to the hardware store and get a bag of pure silica sand with no organic material in it. Dump it in a tight pile on any corner of your property you want so that it is thick in the middle at least several inches. Put a little fence around it to remind yourself hands off. Observe it for two years without disturbing it. Do not water it unless you are watering the soil around it at the same time. Come back in two years and tell me it is barren and nothing is growing in it.

You can try this yourself any time instead of believing the speculations of someone who never tested their assumptions. Heck write up a nice column for some eco-journal or op ed page of the LA Times after you try it. By the time the bugs and birds and small mammals have been walking over, digging through and dropping #2 all over it for 24 months it will have a nice layer of top soil and likely be covered with plant colonies of different sorts of weeds and grasses from the area where you dump it. It will only cost you about $10.00 for the bag of sand and the little fence around it. And the struggle to not do anything and just observe how nature works.

Nature thrives in the absence of interference. You could get lucky, maybe the drought will last another two solid years and everything around the pile will be dead from lack of moisture, then you can crow about how dumb I am.

Quote Two;

Wow, I am wondering Tanada if in your opinion this could theoretically be done for much of agricultural land in the US. I heard you see that the soil is pretty dead from excessive use, pesticides and fertilizers and having a denuded landscape for growing crops which is not a teeming climax ecosystem. Permaculture I imagine would also be involved. All this by the way from reading "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future"
Book by William H. Kötke

Onlooker you should read
Wormwood Forest by Mary Mycio and
Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepherd.

What is Topsoil? Topsoil is rock, both powdered and granular (sand) mixed with organic carbon and filled with bacteria and tiny animals. That is all it is and everything it is. It ranges from sticky clay to sandy loam to sandy gravel as the matrix, but the bacteria and tiny animals and fungi and mosses living in it are what make it 'topsoil'. Everywhere the roots of plants penetrate is a source of organic carbon and a pathway for the bacteria, fungi and tiny life to use. You can do the same experiment I challenged Pete to do above. If you have the least bit of an open mind you will prove to yourself for minimal cost which of us is correct.

Quote Three;

Tanada, you must think I make this stuff up because I am a doomer and I hate civilization lol Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues

Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world's top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said on Friday.

About a third of the world's soil has already been degraded, Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a forum marking World Soil Day.

I loves me fine wine I'll miss it.

I know you are a doomer Pete I have been typing back and forth with you since April 2005. The soil degradation comes from the retarded industrial farming model that monocrops and pours petrochemicals onto the soil to make the crop grow and pests die. Appeals to authority are meaningless when I have seen that the claims are false with my own eyes. Are you afraid to accept my sand challenge because it will prove the bureaucrats are as full of gas as they seem to be?

Okay so now that the soil depletion issue is cleared up is anyone willing to do the sand challenge in their personal location? If you live in a place that gets at least 350mm of rainfall a year it works great and if you get less than that you probably don't have rich organic soil suitable for farming anyhow. I would be interested in Ibon trying this in his cloud forest, I would bet the soil would be generated there faster than it is in the temperate zone where I live. It would also be nice if Newfie would try this on his property on the Big Island which has a cold temperate climate compared to Ohio. For those who want to verify the above quotes in the full context of the thread they came from just click on this LINK ...

[ralfy]

LTG may be seen in light of ecological footprint per capita vs. biocapacity. That is, the latter is limited, which means the former will have to go down one way or another. Increasing population and pollution decreases footprint further.

[Newfie]

Tanada,
I’ll bet Ohio gets more cold in the winter than Newfoundland, although our summers are far cooler.

Your poking, which is akin to stuff Ibon says, runs counter to my experience. I grew up in the Pine Barrens of NJ. Lots of sand. It does not improve as you say, quite the contrary you may get a hear or two of crop out of it and th n it’s linked out for generations. Ditto with Newfoundland, you can see where someone has walked two years ago.

I have no clue why yours and Ibons experience is so markedly different from mine. I see a very fragile Earth that does not regenerate easily. I’m sure this isn’t the case in some places. But even here in Dominica I see signs of the earth being played out, greatly r diced fertility. I’m just learning but what I’m seeing is large areas covered with lemon grass, an invasive the locals are trying To burn out. There are whole hillsides covered with the stuff to the exclusion of all else. Back in the Bush there are all kinds of small farm plots, none very productive. What got me that as wet as this place is they are irritating, at great ecfort.

Yeah, I hear your arguments, I believe you are sure of your arguments. They just don’t match what I personally observe. I don’t know how to reconcile our differences.

[Ibon]

.

I have no clue why yours and Ibons experience is so markedly different from mine. I see a very fragile Earth that does not regenerate easily. I’m sure this isn’t the case in some places. But even here in Dominica I see signs of the earth being played out, greatly r diced fertility. I’m just learning but what I’m seeing is large areas covered with lemon grass, an invasive the locals are trying To burn out. There are whole hillsides covered with the stuff to the exclusion of all else. Back in the Bush there are all kinds of small farm plots, none very productive. What got me that as wet as this place is they are irritating, at great ecfort.

Just a quick couple of points. Island habitats are inherently more fragile. For example, The Hawaiian Islands have had over 30 species of birds extinct since Europeans arrived while on the mainland US there have been only a third as many species having gone extinct. Islands are more susceptible to invasive species. Look up Brown Tree Snake on Guam.

On the other hand , here at Totumas we removed livestock from some overgrazed pastures back in 2012. 6 years later we have 30 foot trees and a myriad of pioneer species having taken over.

Newfie, when I defend natures resiliency moving forward I am mostly referring to the bounce back of habitats when given a chance. When human landscapes recede one day when our population contracts nature's ability to reclaim and recolonize former habitat will be unprecedented. In fact, within a few decades or centuries you wont even see anymore human artifacts in many of these areas. I have seen this. You know what it all depends on? Refuge habitat remaining that can recolonize former human landscapes.

Like you when I look around the planet today I see disturbed habitat almost everywhere. I have a keen eye for recognizing in most places the difference between native habitat, non native species, 2nd growth, old growth, pioneer species, artificial grasslands, etc. But on many ridge tops or in riparian habitat along rivers and streams I also see the refuge habitat in these areas just waiting their time. Given a chance these refuge habitats will be the seed stock that will rapidly reclaim former habitat. That is my main premise when defending resiliency going forward.

Remnant prairie habitat along railroad lines and old army reserve land in the midwest is just waiting for those vast monocultures of soy and corn to one day recede. Even though meters of top soil has been lost there is still meters remaining. All that refuge prairie habitat along road ways will recolonize prairies if left alone... In less than a century.

I remember my time in the Everglades. Look at Whitewater Bay in the southern part of Everglades NP. A century ago before they made canals to siphon off the flow of fresh water south of Lake Okeechobee, White Water Bay was fresh water and Bald Cypress was growing on the shore of this lake. Today it is all healthy mangrove habitat as salt water encroached. You see disturbances changing the habitat but still resilient.

These are just a few examples.

[Newfie]

I get that Ibon, things will grow back not as they were.

What I’m talking about is the soils ability to regenerate while still being used to produce crops. What I see in these manual farming areas is relatively fertile places that don’t produce much, where the folks move there lot ever year or two and let it rest for a few years in between. I see a lot of land that is easily played out for agriculture.

In Germany they seem to use more crop rotation to help regenerate. I’m no farmer and could be mistaken but I think that helps.

My understanding is that our capacity for production relies upon many things beyond fossils fuels such as adequate water (we are now using fossil water) and essentially fossil soil nutrients. These resources regenerate but at a rate much below our current usage. It is really the Peak Oil argument applied to other resources.

[Tanada]

I get that Ibon, things will grow back not as they were.

What I’m talking about is the soils ability to regenerate while still being used to produce crops. What I see in these manual farming areas is relatively fertile places that don’t produce much, where the folks move there lot ever year or two and let it rest for a few years in between. I see a lot of land that is easily played out for agriculture.

In Germany they seem to use more crop rotation to help regenerate. I’m no farmer and could be mistaken but I think that helps.

My understanding is that our capacity for production relies upon many things beyond fossils fuels such as adequate water (we are now using fossil water) and essentially fossil soil nutrients. These resources regenerate but at a rate much below our current usage. It is really the Peak Oil argument applied to other resources.

Aha there is the disconnect. I am talking about leaving the land fallow for 2 solid years and studying the resulting colonization and topsoil building. That is not to say all former ills are cured in two years or that the land is then ready for another 20 years of abuse by industrial farming methods after being fallow for two years.

The crux of this argument is we can regenerate topsoil simply by allowing the soil to lay fallow for a period of years. Two is the minimum but for reasons that should be obvious a decade would likely be much better. We can also regenerate the soil much quicker in that 2 year window if we do preparatory work first, such as planting a mixture of fast growing grass with alfalfa before then leaving the land to sit as pasture for two years. By choosing Alfalfa as the cover crop and NOT harvesting it for hay you get thick dense roots for the entire top foot of the soil and tap root structures extending down nine to twenty feet depending on the conditions. This is the cheapest easiest version of breaking up the densely packed subsoil and adding thick root structures that will rot into soil organic carbon. Two years as an unharvested alfalfa field and then using a deep furrow plow to turn over the whole mass, wait two weeks and plow again perpendicular to the first pass mixes and stabilizes all that plant matter and root structures into the top 18 inches of soil. THEN you can plant a sensible crop rotation for several years without depleting the soil organic content even with modern agribusiness methods, but if you insist on mono-cropping and refuse to allow the land to rest every few years to recover in a decade you will be right back where you were when you started.

Farmers here in Ohio are of two minds on the issue though most of them are smart enough to rotate their fields with at least 2 and sometimes three different crops. Many have long held the practice of planting rye densely in the fall after harvest, then right before spring planting while it is still green and lush they plow it under to improve the soil organic content. A large percentage but I believe something under half have now switched to the 'no till' methods recommended by some ag agents. they still plant the rye or some other cover crop in the fall, but the next spring instead of tilling it under they spray the entire area with Roundup broad band herbicide, wait until everything is dead for a week or two, and then plant down into the existing root structures. This works with most grasses like Rye as the fall cover crop but Alfalfa has such deep roots that Roundup rarely kills it with a single application, the surface plant will die but then the roots regenerate the greenery. That is why in the alfalfa method you plow twice in perpendicular fashion. The second plowing of Alfalfa is to break up the roots that have regenerated after the first pass once they have exhausted their reserves trying to reach the surface and restore the solar harvesting portion of the plant. If you try that with roundup you have to spray twice, weeks apart, and sometimes even a third time because Alfalfa is a tough plant to kill with just chemicals.

Anyhow, I suspect the vacant land in New Jersey you are referring to was named the pine BARRENS for the very reason you cite, it was hard to make a sustained farm in that area. However the vast bulk of the eastern woodlands of North America (the land between the Mississippi valley and Atlantic Coast) has never been called the Barrens of any sort. Pines do well in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey because they have very shallow root structures that only use the top foot or so of the soil and look rather like a felt mat if you wash away all the soil. Those sorts of roots get most of their nutrients and all of their moisture from rainfall and the stuff rotting on the surface that get washed into the sand by that same rain. I grew up on a farm that was basically sand, so why the sand in New Jersey in that region is not as easy to convert into fertile topsoil as it is around here I can not answer. I never saw a clay field until I was ten and instantly hated it. Sandy soil is reasonably easy to navigate and washes off easily when muddy, clay is a whole different mess that tried to eat you alive when saturated and is a PITA to get off once you escape its clutches.

As for Newfoundland, I would still be interested in the experiment provided you add the fence to keep humans from doing anything to the bag of sand test. I automatically suspect if you can still see a path someone walked a year or more ago it is because other people have walked that same path in more recent times, but it could simply be that the shorter growing season takes longer to grow back. I know they say you can still visit the tree stumps in Alaska where the Klondike gold rush migrants cut down thousands of trees to make rafts for traveling down the Yukon river and that was over a century ago at about 60 degrees north latitude.

[Newfie]

The pine trees in NJ and PNW I believe have a huge tap root that goes deep. There were stories (Ken Keesy) of folks falling into their rotted cavern and suffocating. Ive not experience that but I have STEPPED into the smaller NJ version and gown in up to my hip, painful.

But Tanada, I may need schooling on this, are you saying we can continue farming as we do now, including irrigation, for an indefinite time? I don’t thinks so but sometimes it sounds that way.

[KaiserJeep]

It is interesting to see the many impacts that man and his animals have on the landscape.

The hills above my house are one example of this, aka Santa Teresa County Park. During the period between WW1 and WW2 there was an open pit mercury mine up there in one triangular shaped valley between three hills. This left an unfortunate legacy of contaminated surface water, the Winter rains leached through the heaps of mine tailings from the disturbed ground, and mercury entered the springs and ponds. Then even more unfortunately, with no one thinking of heavy metal contamination, a farmer made those same hills into a dairy farm, and for 40+ years produced milk in the area for human consumption. Sorry, but I can't resist: one of the reasons this state has so many crazy folks is that mercury dementia has been a problem since the days of the Gold Rush. Nowadays all California dairy and produce is tested, but humans unthinkingly consumed mercury-contaminated foods for decades prior to that.

More or less directly above my house.

During this period, the feet of the grazing cattle produced parallel furrows in the soil as they munched the grasses over the years. They walked around the sides of the hills and effectively suppressed the native scub oak and other brush via their hooves and massive weight, while their manure fertilized the grasses they consumed. These furrows are still visible, it had been a good 10-15 years since the farm had existed, but when I moved here in '86 the furrows were precisely parallel and wrapped around the hills, giving the county park an appearance of contour plowing on a slope that was obviously far too steep and rocky to be plowed. These furrows slowed water runoff and the nature of the vegetation changed as a result - the semi-arid vegetation was replaced by scrub and grasses, which incidentally endangered several species of insects that depended upon those native plants, primarily smallish pastel blue butterflys. For the last 32 years I have watched the legacy of those dairy cows changing the landscape above.

Area containing the open pit mine and tailings heaps

Now those slopes are slowly becoming covered in several types of brush, the legacy of the enhanced water retention due to the furrows, and the soil is thickening and covering the broken rocks of the mine tailings. Groundcovers, lichens, and mosses exist where bare rock was once what you saw. The slowed water runoff has produced an abundance of surface water springs that produce beautiful clear, cold water that is lightly contaminated with mercury. It is not particularly toxic in small amounts, yet the legacy of mercury contamination remains, as I will explain in the next two paragraphs.

Not the park, but an illustration of the changes grazing cattle causes.

My morning exercise routine before work was a daily hike up the hill, around a loop of trails, and a return along the drainage ditch. One segment of this was over a section of trail shared by one of the horse trails in the park, which included a spring-fed galvanized horse watering trough. I noticed that a 1/4 inch black plastic tube ran downhill from there, and followed it to several well-disguised marijuana plants, growing on public land and being watered by small drippers. I started watching the area, and recognized one of my neighbors several houses away. I then knocked on his door and quietly explained that he was growing weed in soil that was heavily contaminated with mercury mine tailings, and that consuming such would be dangerous, and that he should be tested for mercury. He ended up getting treated for this for several months. Meanwhile he did not succeed in eliminating his plants in the area, hemp now grows wild there and the park employees regularly suppress the contaminated plants, and there are warning signs posted about mercury contamination.

The former dairy farmhouse is now a park building with displays of native plants and a discussion of the evolving landscape I have been describing. Meanwhile, the park has repeatedly been colonized by the homeless population, who love the grasslands, and pitch tents under the 10' high scrub oak, and gather deadwood for their campfires. These homeless people are absorbing mercury by drinking the water, eating fish from the local ponds, smoke from the campfire wood, and (I do not doubt) from smoking the wild hemp. Every time I respond to my mailbox alarm in the wee morning hours, and I see a figure stumbling down the street, opening mailboxes and casting mail into the streets, it is impossible to tell if he is simply drunk, or suffering from inhaled mercury, that dementia that became known as "Miners Madness" during the Gold Rush days.



The local predators often display symptoms of mercury dementia from eating area game.

[Ibon]

The pine trees in NJ and PNW I believe have a huge tap root that goes deep. There were stories (Ken Keesy) of folks falling into their rotted cavern and suffocating. Ive not experience that but I have STEPPED into the smaller NJ version and gown in up to my hip, painful.

But Tanada, I may need schooling on this, are you saying we can continue farming as we do now, including irrigation, for an indefinite time? I don’t thinks so but sometimes it sounds that way.

Not all bio-regions are the same. Some bounce back fast. Some take long times. Soils can replenish fast in areas with adequate annual biomass production. Other areas with limited growing seasons or arid conditions can be affected for centuries by erosion caused by humans and their livestock. There is no one answer to your question here regarding the ability of soil to regenerate for example. I allow my employee to use two areas to plant beans and corn on his days off. He has been rotating these couple of acres during the past 6 years and he allows a year for everything to go fallow and he then machetes everything down and all that biomass that grew up during the past year gets worked in the soil. This year he planted 35 pounds of kidney beans and harvested 450 pounds. WE get lots of rainfall, pioneer species grow within 25 feet in a couple of years when we reforest former pastures.

Try doing that in an arid area or way up north. I remember when we lived in Alberta years ago the suburbs around Calgary had landscaping that after 20 years of growth the conifers had only grown a couple of feet.

This is the beauty of our earth, so much diversity, so many bio-regions, so much diversity in the rates of growth etc. The complexity never fails to keep the mind entertained!

[Newfie]

That matches much more with my observations.

[KaiserJeep]

Re: Nuclear energy and Coal energy after cheap oil is gone.

Both of these energy sources depend heavily upon petroleum fuels for the machinery that digs them out of the ground. In fact the nuclear fuel cycle is very FF dependant, after mining it uses grid energy to refine uranium and then enrich the fuel via high speed centrifuges spinning uranium hexaflouride gas to seperate U235 from U238.

By my off-the-cuff estimate, nuclear energy still produces about 15% of the carbon as coal, because it uses both oil (for mining) and coal (for grid power used to refine and enrich nuclear fuel). That figure would be even higher except that fission reactors produce rather a lot of energy for each fuel cycle.

Similarly, solar panels and wind turbines use a lot of embedded energy from FF's when they are fabricated.

The most correct view of a future without cheap petroleum fuels is that we will have whatever energy sources we have before we run out of such fuels. That is why it is so critically important to transition to renewable energy before we run out of cheap oil.

YES it is possible to design electric powered mining machinery, and electric transports for ores, and electric alternatives to whatever we use fossil fuels for today. Some (but all too few) machines have been designed, most such systems remain concepts, detailed designs don't exist, nor do prototypes, much less available electric machinery substitutes. The longer we wait, the more painful the transition and the more difficult the task and the more we suffer from energy shortages.

[Subjectivist]

Re: Nuclear energy and Coal energy after cheap oil is gone.

Both of these energy sources depend heavily upon petroleum fuels for the machinery that digs them out of the ground. In fact the nuclear fuel cycle is very FF dependant, after mining it uses grid energy to refine uranium and then enrich the fuel via high speed centrifuges spinning uranium hexaflouride gas to seperate U235 from U238.

By my off-the-cuff estimate, nuclear energy still produces about 15% of the carbon as coal, because it uses both oil (for mining) and coal (for grid power used to refine and enrich nuclear fuel). That figure would be even higher except that fission reactors produce rather a lot of energy for each fuel cycle.

Similarly, solar panels and wind turbines use a lot of embedded energy from FF's when they are fabricated.

The most correct view of a future without cheap petroleum fuels is that we will have whatever energy sources we have before we run out of such fuels. That is why it is so critically important to transition to renewable energy before we run out of cheap oil.

YES it is possible to design electric powered mining machinery, and electric transports for ores, and electric alternatives to whatever we use fossil fuels for today. Some (but all too few) machines have been designed, most such systems remain concepts, detailed designs don't exist, nor do prototypes, much less available electric machinery substitutes. The longer we wait, the more painful the transition and the more difficult the task and the more we suffer from energy shortages.

A couple points here on Fission.

1)France enriches and reprocesses their nuclear fuel using electricity that is mostly nuclear with some hydroelectric thrown in to balance loads easier.

2) Most new Uranium mines are not unlike fracking, they drill into the ore formation, frack it, then inject chemicals to dissolve the Uranium into solution. After a short waiting period they pump the fluid to the surface, separate the recovered Uranium and then pump it back down to dissolve another load of metal.

3) Folks love to stress we use lots of diesel and gasoline to do mining and that is true today. But fuel is cheap and expecting anyone to switch to a more expensive method while petroleum remains cheap is unrealistic. We already know that ICE motors can burn a wide variety of substitutes if you insist on using the same engines. Heck you can electrolyze water into gas and then directly burn that gas in a gasoline engine with extremely minor mdification.

[KaiserJeep]

Sub,
1) I don't doubt this, but France also has a huge looming problem. Over 3/4ths of the existing French reactors are early second generation designs, which can no longer be built given the current safety standards. These plants remain in operation because of expensive life extension modifications, but are approaching that time when the reactor vessels themselves will have to be replaced due to crystallization and the resulting loss of strength of the steel alloys. There is a massive expense when large numbers of obsolescent reactors are scrapped and replaced with more modern, safer fourth generation designs which are modular in nature and can be replaced one module at a time. It will cost slightly more than building entirely new plants from scratch, in fact - because you scrap the old plant in it's entirety, then build a new modern design, and re-use only the fuel itself and the electrical distribution structure of the existing site.

I admire the French commitment to nuclear energy, and their record of safety. But their cost of electricity will at least double in years to come.

2) You are describing ISL (In Situ Leaching) which has recently been applied to uranium, but has a longer record with other minerals. In fact the practitioners of such techniques have always described their practices as "much safer", with little actual evidence. But as with other forms of fracking, the water table at the site is typically destroyed, and surface water percolates to a much greater depth and even if you drill a deep well, is hopelessly contaminated by the fracking fluids. This techniqque is undoubtedly cheaper, but also results in less uranium yield than a conventional mine, and with long term safety as yet undetermined.

Not trying to be a downer, but this practice should not be pursued on a large scale for uranium until we have a grasp of the overall and long term risks.

3) My whole point about FF powered machinery was that electrical versions of such mining machinery have not been designed and need to be to hasten the transition when the time comes. And BTW, just because any healthy ICE can be converted to burn hydrogen gas does not mean that it is economical to do so or that the fuel can be handled in a safe manner and stored safely in any system (pressure tank or sintered metal sponge or whatever) that fits in the space of a liquid fuel tank.

During recent 4-year testing of hydrogen combustion urban busses by the Santa Clara VTA, the price of a single bus fell from $3M to about $1M, but with such extensive design changes that the durability and maintenance expenses part of testing was invalidated. The hydrogen fuel cell versions were cheaper but still not ready for prime time, the software to monitor and manage fuel cells is not yet mature.

Undoubtedly, such technology will improve over time. I'm anything but opposed to technological change, but the gist of what I was saying is that we cannot switch to a new type of tech until the R&D is finished, and some of this stuff is pretty half-baked still.

[Tanada]

The pine trees in NJ and PNW I believe have a huge tap root that goes deep. There were stories (Ken Keesy) of folks falling into their rotted cavern and suffocating. Ive not experience that but I have STEPPED into the smaller NJ version and gown in up to my hip, painful.

But Tanada, I may need schooling on this, are you saying we can continue farming as we do now, including irrigation, for an indefinite time? I don’t thinks so but sometimes it sounds that way.

Rather than indefinite I would describe it as indeterminate. For today industrial farming methods are still working, but every desert field irrigated is a field that is slowly accumulating alkali or salts in the soil which will sooner or later make further farming in those locations less and less productive. There is a well supported theory that this is in part what caused the Hopi people to move away from their cliff dwellings and outright cities a thousand ybp give or take.

No I am well aware the industrial farming model now in use has very serious drawbacks that we have managed to stay one step ahead of with technology, but lower the tech threshold back to dryland farming (no irrigation) and take away the abundant petrochemicals and crop yields will fall by half or more. Even so the genetics of the crops is much better now than it used to be, hence my 3 Billion figure for population.

My main argument is that in most of the natural land we have been farming, not the desert southwest and not the New Jersey Pine Barrens, farming with proper management of the soil can keep that soil productive for a very long time, indefinitely long. There are fields in France that were put into production by the Roman Empire 2200 ybp that are still productive today, and fields in China that go back at least that far. But keeping land productive is about properly managing that same land to make it a reusable resource. I just get really irritated when an academic writer who never farmed a day in their life writes about soil depletion and the end of farming as if it were a consequence of good farm soil management instead of being limited to idiotic monocrop industrial agriculture or the slash and burn style used in many tropical regions.

From what you have said having spent the bulk of my life in the breadbasket of North America has given me a somewhat different opinion about how fats soil regenerates than your experience. Fair enough, different experiences and that is why I like talking about these issues intelligently. Hopefully this had allowed both of us to broaden our perspectives a bit.

[Ibon]

Something related to these past posts.... At a certain population level humans can afford the luxury of slash and burn in the tropics , poor soil management, industrial monoculture agriculture, etc etc. Everything we do today that falls under the umbrella of being "unsustainable" is actually "sustainable" at a certain population density. Just an important point to remember.

[onlooker]

Ibon, makes a good point above. Our species needs a brand new do over, I think in many ways. I think looking deeply at how we arrived at this juncture showcases a multitude of ways that we have erred. The culture of rich countries demonstrates the crass self indulgent morass that has come to define the "depraved" Western culture. The addictions, the narcissism, selfishness, greed, indolence, all these suite of vices product of the excesses of the rich countries made possible of course by the abundant energy from FF.
Then you have the poor countries missing out of the excesses and material abundance and thus not markekly deformed of character like rich world citizens. But they in turn have been set up as baby factories by sufficient food, some basic health care and lack of the normal natural constraints. So in summary, upon going through the bottleneck we shall experience both material constraints which will bring our character back to a more stable and healthy mode and we will also have the harrowing die off of numerous people which will bring our worldwide population back to a manageable level. All in all, perhaps precisely the growing pains that our species needs to get on a more sustainable track.

[Ibon]

One of the reasons our culture at large cannot discuss these topics is because of the belief that everything that will come during the contraction will hold us collectively under the tyranny of constraints.

It does not have to be that way. At a low enough managed population density a surviving population can free themselves to a degree from "THE TYRANNY OF CONSTRAINTS".

Dare one say that there may still be abundance. Managed abundance.

[KaiserJeep]

That's true. However we had best start managing that abundance soon.

A primary key to managing any limited resources of any sort is to first manage the demand side by limiting - and over the long term reducing - the population of humans.

That means two very things that are obviously going to be very hard and very unpopular:

1) Managing the birthrate to limit the existing population to replacement rates alone. That would mean that most families were limited to but two children. Some would get a thrird birthright (because of those that never reproduce) and there is a prolonged debate about how those extra birthrights are awarded. I do not see how the government could ever not be involved, and I simply hate that idea.

2) Closing the borders to immigration, and enforcing the closure rigorously. There may be 30+ million "undocumented" already in this country, that's a large and growing problem. Again, a government function, but an already existing one that they are totally screwing up.

[onlooker]

I agree with Kaiser. The consumer side of the equation will take care of itself as natural restraints are kicking in to consume like resource shortages. The population issue is more tricky. I think you have to motivate somehow people to have less children but then also provide them a means to do so. The motivation part would be economic as people would respond to this quite readily. The means to prevent pregnancy I think is going to have to me some sort of medical procedure. It should involve both men and women as it would be seen then something not sexist but necessary for society. A permanent procedure to disable the ability to contribute to the onset of a pregnancy. Again, I do not see any other way than it being a top down approach ie. Govt. But, we know that anyway Govts are going to reflexively seek more Authoritarian powers as both a way to keep law and order and in the process allow the upper class to maintain itself at this level. So, people should have no problem with this mandate if it can be presented as a reasonable solution to the problem of overpopulation and environmental degradation. And of course if people see a net economic benefit to this.