Interesting Times
Thinking about environment stuff lately.
Peak Oil: and you thought gas prices were already high enough
Peak Oil. Have you heard of this "Peak Oil" business? Basically, it's a function of oil-drilling that, for any given oil well, production speed and efficiency follows a bell curve. This means that at first production is slow and it gradually speeds up until it reaches either a peak or a plateau. After this, pruduction gradually slows down until it starts becoming exponentially expensive to drill there.
This bell curve is predicable enough that it can be used to create an average curve for the world's entire oil supply. Some researchers have done this and found that the world's "peak oil" will be reached sometime in the next three years. After that, it's simply a question of how quickly the average production will slow down. The general estimate is 3% decrease in production, per year.
In other words, it's not like we're ever going to "run out" of oil. It's just going to come out of the ground slower and slower, and the expense with gradually grow higher and higher until someday people stop trying to pump it. I'd never known this: I always assumed it would just stop abrubtly.
Global Dimming: keeping the spotlight off of Global Warming
Another thing: Global Dimming. Apparently there has been another factor playing on the environment. Global Dimming is the result of particulate, or "visable" polution in the atmosphere. It has the opposite effect of greenhouses gases. High particle or soot content in the air does two things which affect global temperatures: first, the haze acts a bit like a cloud and reduces the intensity of sunlight hitting the ground; second, and more insidious, it makes clouds more reflective to sunlight and less likely to form rain. Basically, lots of particles means that water molecules in the air have lots of surfaces to stick to, rather than sticking to each other. In essence you have a cloud with relatively more particles, and the particles are smaller.
The increased reflection of light back into space and decreased amount of light hitting the ground tends to cool down the atmosphere, lessening the effects of global warming. But it's not actually a good thing: it's not warmth that makes our crops grow; it's light. Enough global dimming to counteract all of global warming would require an atmosphere that was difficult to breath, and bad for crops.
The weird thing is that global dimming, unlike global warming, responds very well to restrictions on particle emmissions. Consequently, in recent years, Global Dimming has been on the decline. Great, right? Not to be alarmist, but without global dimming, global warming is essentially happening faster.
At this point it's pretty much accepted that the countries who have been least responsible for the development of these trends are the countries which are going to suffer the most from them. At the U.S., at the forefront of poluting countries, is doing the least. Instead we fighting a war that most Americans at this point, and most of the world for that matter, agree is all about oil. And the top brass tells us that if we question the war we are unpatriotic?
I don't want to preach to the choir, so I'll move on to my last point: there's a lot of things we take for granted as Americans. And a lot of those things have nasty consequences. For one thing, suburbs. Everyone having their own home, and their own bit of land, is ridiculous. The infrastucture necissary to make suburbs work is only sustainable if there is a small population, or if they are all completely self-sustaining homes. In America, we are neither; instead we need cars to make suburbia work.
Cheap Foods, Box Stores, and Unsustainable Agriculture
Another thing: cheap goods, cheap food, all goods, all foods. Generally speaking we like to be able to buy anything there is to buy, at a low price, and that goes the saem for food. This is rediculous. When you add up the mechanical harvesters, and the trucking lines, and the packaging process, and then sometimes processing as well, all of which make our food cheap, we use 10 times as much energy in getting the food from the farm to our dinner tables as there is in the food itself. On average, for every calory we eat, we use 10 calories to get it home. Remember what I said earlier about Peak Oil? What happens when those 10 calories become increasingly expensive? Buying locally reduces this, especially if you go to things like farmers markets. You probably can't get all foods, and maybe not year round, but it's better than farming it yourself, right?
This kind of stuff is a bummer isn't it. It always is. I always get bogged down when I think of it, and then sooner or later I shrug it off, because it's hopeless, so why worry. But even though I always forget, and go back to thinking everything is fine, I wonder what would happen if everyone remembered. A nation of people doing their small part might make some change. At the very least, if we are indeed facing a volatile future, I want to ready for the change. And in the meantime I'm taking nothing for granted.
Peak Oil: and you thought gas prices were already high enough
Peak Oil. Have you heard of this "Peak Oil" business? Basically, it's a function of oil-drilling that, for any given oil well, production speed and efficiency follows a bell curve. This means that at first production is slow and it gradually speeds up until it reaches either a peak or a plateau. After this, pruduction gradually slows down until it starts becoming exponentially expensive to drill there.
This bell curve is predicable enough that it can be used to create an average curve for the world's entire oil supply. Some researchers have done this and found that the world's "peak oil" will be reached sometime in the next three years. After that, it's simply a question of how quickly the average production will slow down. The general estimate is 3% decrease in production, per year.
In other words, it's not like we're ever going to "run out" of oil. It's just going to come out of the ground slower and slower, and the expense with gradually grow higher and higher until someday people stop trying to pump it. I'd never known this: I always assumed it would just stop abrubtly.
Global Dimming: keeping the spotlight off of Global Warming
Another thing: Global Dimming. Apparently there has been another factor playing on the environment. Global Dimming is the result of particulate, or "visable" polution in the atmosphere. It has the opposite effect of greenhouses gases. High particle or soot content in the air does two things which affect global temperatures: first, the haze acts a bit like a cloud and reduces the intensity of sunlight hitting the ground; second, and more insidious, it makes clouds more reflective to sunlight and less likely to form rain. Basically, lots of particles means that water molecules in the air have lots of surfaces to stick to, rather than sticking to each other. In essence you have a cloud with relatively more particles, and the particles are smaller.
The increased reflection of light back into space and decreased amount of light hitting the ground tends to cool down the atmosphere, lessening the effects of global warming. But it's not actually a good thing: it's not warmth that makes our crops grow; it's light. Enough global dimming to counteract all of global warming would require an atmosphere that was difficult to breath, and bad for crops.
The weird thing is that global dimming, unlike global warming, responds very well to restrictions on particle emmissions. Consequently, in recent years, Global Dimming has been on the decline. Great, right? Not to be alarmist, but without global dimming, global warming is essentially happening faster.
At this point it's pretty much accepted that the countries who have been least responsible for the development of these trends are the countries which are going to suffer the most from them. At the U.S., at the forefront of poluting countries, is doing the least. Instead we fighting a war that most Americans at this point, and most of the world for that matter, agree is all about oil. And the top brass tells us that if we question the war we are unpatriotic?
I don't want to preach to the choir, so I'll move on to my last point: there's a lot of things we take for granted as Americans. And a lot of those things have nasty consequences. For one thing, suburbs. Everyone having their own home, and their own bit of land, is ridiculous. The infrastucture necissary to make suburbs work is only sustainable if there is a small population, or if they are all completely self-sustaining homes. In America, we are neither; instead we need cars to make suburbia work.
Cheap Foods, Box Stores, and Unsustainable Agriculture
Another thing: cheap goods, cheap food, all goods, all foods. Generally speaking we like to be able to buy anything there is to buy, at a low price, and that goes the saem for food. This is rediculous. When you add up the mechanical harvesters, and the trucking lines, and the packaging process, and then sometimes processing as well, all of which make our food cheap, we use 10 times as much energy in getting the food from the farm to our dinner tables as there is in the food itself. On average, for every calory we eat, we use 10 calories to get it home. Remember what I said earlier about Peak Oil? What happens when those 10 calories become increasingly expensive? Buying locally reduces this, especially if you go to things like farmers markets. You probably can't get all foods, and maybe not year round, but it's better than farming it yourself, right?
This kind of stuff is a bummer isn't it. It always is. I always get bogged down when I think of it, and then sooner or later I shrug it off, because it's hopeless, so why worry. But even though I always forget, and go back to thinking everything is fine, I wonder what would happen if everyone remembered. A nation of people doing their small part might make some change. At the very least, if we are indeed facing a volatile future, I want to ready for the change. And in the meantime I'm taking nothing for granted.