Wine and Malthusian Catastrophe
I came across this excellent piece of (long but beautifully explained) article explaining how Wine making is essentially due to a Malthusian Catastrophe of the Yeast population.
The article starts off with explaining the Malthusian Catastrophe by citing examples of how living things tend to overpopulate in the absence of population control and then die off abruptly to a much smaller population when they run out of resources.
As an example:
This is the population graph of yeast cells in a 10% sugar solution. Note that the yeast population first explodes exponentially, and is then followed by population die-off as the finite nutrients are exhausted and their own waste products pollute their environment.
This is how yeast turns grape juice into wine. The next time you say “cheers” over a glass of wine, remember that you are drinking the waste products (alcohol) of a collapsed yeast colony with poor ecological management skills!
The article doesn't talk just about Wine, of course. Another citation is on the population of Rein deer that was introduced in St.Matthew's Island.
Often, there is a cyclical relationship between the populations
of predators and their prey. This keeps the populations of
both species in check.But, what happens when there are no predators?
This issue was addressed in a paper by David Klein,
"The Introduction, Increase and Crash of Reindeer
on St. Matthew Island."
Klein reported that in 1944, 29 reindeer were brought to
St. Matthew Island. Initially there were abundant food sources, and the reindeer population increased dramatically.There were no predators to cull the population.
About 20 years after they were first introduced, the reindeer had overshot the food carrying capacity of the island, and there was a sudden, massive die-off. About 99% of the
reindeer died of starvation.
As shown in the graph here, this is an example of a general
phenomenon. All species suffer population collapse or species extinction if they overshoot and degrade the carrying capacity of their ecology.
In the process, the article moves on to talk about how humanity is in a similar trajectory and how humanity is vitally dependent on oil for it's current way of living.
Source: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3188
The article also talks about my other favourite 'fantasy' which I've always wanted to come true but I know its just pollyannaish to expect it to come true: Singularity. Sure, sure - humanity's acts of intelligence are awesome. What on earth can invent a GPS and the Internet?
A lot of my friends to whom I talk about cite incidents that have happened in the past - the 1973 oil crisis, the 1979 oil crisis, the threat to Ozone depletion, the food shortages post WWII and how humanity had overcome all these issues. One thing I'd just like to point out is that the first two oil issues were temporary unavailability of oil due to nations withholding supplies. Secondly, during all these other issues that needed technological advancement, cheap oil came to the rescue. Now, when oil becomes expensive and unaffordable and at the same time when food production becomes a difficulty due to lack of oil / petrochem and other componded issues of our population's demand, I doubt if the energy needed to 'tackle' this technologically will ever be supplied by the tiny slice of renewable energy sources options at hand.
Of course, there is the PetaWatt Laser that could finally make Fusion energy possible but then, like this article says, power supply requirements is just a tiny slice of our energy needs. The significant consumer of oil is transportation and the sad news is we just don't yet have the transportation infrastructure to use electricity for transport. Secondly, the article nicely illustrates that oil is clearly the winner in terms of being the cheapest source of energy.
Now, put together the other aspects of trouble: Unsustainable agricultural practices, Falling water tables and decreasing land productivity and of course, global warming - you should be stupid to remain optimistic for a golden-hand to come to the rescue of humanity. Change happens from within and that means, we all have to play a role in it.
The Hirsch Report concluded, we need atleast 20 years to smoothly transition into a newer way of life that revolves around non-oil sources for energy or atleast 10 years to transition with some impact on our economy. Given we have hardly taken a step towards realizing this, I guess the consequences are going to be dire.
Its unlikely that Humanity will go extinct (species rarely go extinct due to a Malthusian Catastrophe - atleast humanity won't, I'm sure, given it's awesome adaptability) but our futures and especially the futures of our next generation are no longer going to be the same.
Read the entire article
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