The Wisdom Of Punching Yourself In The BreadBasket  

Scientific American has an impressive graphic from the BBC showing where the north american grain growing belt will be in 2050, courtesy of global warming. It seems Canada will have both energy reserves and the useful farming land one day. Assuming its still called Canada that is.

The Beeb just posted an article with the headline New crops needed to avoid famines, which is all well and good, but what really blew my mind was the last image in the piece (above), which seems to have been tacked on as an afterthought. Here's what I'd like to know: if that's what will happen to wheat, what's going to happen to other key crops, like soybeans and corn? (You know, those easily-forgotten keystones of our entire ability to feed ourselves.)

from the BBC:

"We're talking about large scale human migration and the return to large-scale famines in developing countries, something which we decided 40 or 50 years ago was unacceptable and did something about."
...
But increasing temperatures can also affect crops. Photosynthesis slows down as the thermometer rises, which also slows the plants' growth and capacity to reproduce.

Hydrogen isn't my favourite way to store energy, but I'm never able to convince myself it should be fully discounted either. Technology has an article on a new process that uses "rust based solar panels" to generate hydrogen.

Researchers in Switzerland have demonstrated more-efficient water-splitting solar cells based on a cheap, abundant, and long-lasting material: rust. The advance could lead to a cheap and energy-efficient way to generate hydrogen for fuel-cell vehicles using solar energy.

Water-splitting solar panels would have important advantages over existing technologies in terms of hydrogen production. Right now, the primary way to make hydrogen is to separate it from natural gas, a process that generates carbon dioxide and undercuts the main motivation for moving to hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles: ending dependence on fossil fuels. The current alternative is electrolysis, which uses electricity to break water into hydrogen and oxygen, with the two gases forming at opposite electrodes. Although electrolysis is costly, it can be cleaner if the source of the electricity is wind, sun, or some other carbon-free source.

But if the source of the electricity is the sun, it would be much more efficient to use solar energy to produce hydrogen by a photochemical process inside the cell itself. By improving the efficiency of such solar panels, Michael Grätzel, chemistry professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in Switzerland, and his colleagues have taken an important step toward this goal.

The researchers have shown that by including small amounts of silicon and cobalt, they can grow nanostructured thin films of iron oxide that convert sunlight into the electrons needed to form hydrogen from water. And the iron oxide films do this more efficiently than ever before with this material.

PhysOrg has an article noting that the usual methods of hydrogen generation simply aren't an efficient way of storing energy. In reality, our energy future is one based on renewable sources of energy that is converted to and transported and stored as electricty.

In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen.

“More energy is needed to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds than can ever be recovered from its use,” Bossel explains to PhysOrg.com. “Therefore, making the new chemical energy carrier form natural gas would not make sense, as it would increase the gas consumption and the emission of CO2. Instead, the dwindling fossil fuel reserves must be replaced by energy from renewable sources.”

While scientists from around the world have been piecing together the technology, Bossel has taken a broader look at how realistic the use of hydrogen for carrying energy would be. His overall energy analysis of a hydrogen economy demonstrates that high energy losses inevitably resulting from the laws of physics mean that a hydrogen economy will never make sense.

“The advantages of hydrogen praised by journalists (non-toxic, burns to water, abundance of hydrogen in the Universe, etc.) are misleading, because the production of hydrogen depends on the availability of energy and water, both of which are increasingly rare and may become political issues, as much as oil and natural gas are today,” says Bossel.

“There is a lot of money in the field now,” he continues. “I think that it was a mistake to start with a ‘Presidential Initiative’ rather with a thorough analysis like this one. Huge sums of money were committed too soon, and now even good scientists prostitute themselves to obtain research money for their students or laboratories—otherwise, they risk being fired. But the laws of physics are eternal and cannot be changed with additional research, venture capital or majority votes.”

Even though many scientists, including Bossel, predict that the technology to establish a hydrogen economy is within reach, its implementation will never make economic sense, Bossel argues.

“In the market place, hydrogen would have to compete with its own source of energy, i.e. with ("green") electricity from the grid,” he says. “For this reason, creating a new energy carrier is a no-win solution. We have to solve an energy problem not an energy carrier problem."

...

Economically, the wasteful hydrogen process translates to electricity from hydrogen and fuel cells costing at least four times as much as electricity from the grid. In fact, electricity would be much more efficiently used if it were sent directly to the appliances instead. If the original electricity could be directly supplied by wires, as much as 90% could be used in applications.

“The two key issues of a secure and sustainable energy future are harvesting energy from renewable sources and finding the highest energy efficiency from source to service,” he says. “Among these possibilities, biomethane [which is already being used to fuel cars in some areas] is an important, but only limited part of the energy equation. Electricity from renewable sources will play the dominant role.”

To Bossel, this means focusing on the establishment of an efficient “electron economy.” In an electron economy, most energy would be distributed with highest efficiency by electricity and the shortest route in an existing infrastructure could be taken. The efficiency of an electron economy is not affected by any wasteful conversions from physical to chemical and from chemical to physical energy. In contrast, a hydrogen economy is based on two such conversions (electrolysis and fuel cells or hydrogen engines).

“An electron economy can offer the shortest, most efficient and most economical way of transporting the sustainable ‘green’ energy to the consumer,” he says. “With the exception of biomass and some solar or geothermal heat, wind, water, solar, geothermal, heat from waste incineration, etc. become available as electricity. Electricity could provide power for cars, comfortable temperature in buildings, heat, light, communication, etc.

“In a sustainable energy future, electricity will become the prime energy carrier. We now have to focus our research on electricity storage, electric cars and the modernization of the existing electricity infrastructure.”

The Energy Blog notes that methane hydrates may be used as a new mechanism for transporting natural gas (these are artifically made, not the lurking menace below the seas that may do us all in if the sea temperature rises enough). Also at The Energy Blog, a post on a German biogas project that recycles wastewater to grow corn, a report that Toyota are developing a diesel hybrid and a post on a new generation of nuclear reactors that produce virtually no long-lasting nuclear waste (still theoretical and not likely to appear anytime soon).

Methane hydrate--nicknamed "burning ice"--has recently been attracting much attention. With the aim of lowering the cost of transporting natural gas from small and midsize gas fields in Southeast Asia, the Japanese government has set a policy to start commercially transporting natural gas in solid form by 2008, government sources said Wednesday. Natural gas hydrate (NGH) is an icelike material produced artificially by combining natural gas and water under high pressure at moderately cold temperatures.

As transporting natural gas in solid form is much cheaper than moving liquefied natural gas, the government expects to employ the method at numerous small gas fields located in Southeast Asia, many of which are currently unexploited.

NGH stabilizes as a solid at around minus 20 C and can be transported more easily in this form.

Liquefied natural gas needs large-scale plants to cope with the ultralow temperatures involved in liquefying natural gas, which is occurs at minus 162 C.

The government will propose the creation of an international safety standard for transporting the solidified natural gas--NGH--at a safety meeting of the International Maritime Organization, being held in Turkey until Friday.

The plan will significantly help Japan compete for energy resources with China, India and other emerging economies, which are desperately seeking to secure natural gas supplies.

Fareed Zakaria has an article in Newsweek that manages to both blame "anticapitalist" countries for declining future oil supplies while also pointing out correctly where the future of transportation lies - the electric grid. Quite a convenient pair of ideas to promulgate really...

Oil supplies will stay tight for a simple reason. There are only five countries that matter in the world of oil—Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Iraq and Venezuela. In none of these, with the possible exception of Saudi Arabia, are serious efforts and investments being made to expand the supply of oil. Russian production is growing at less than 3 percent a year. Iran is flat, Iraq is in chaos and Venezuelan production has dropped 50 percent since Hugo Chávez took office.

What all these nations need is government that would invest the oil windfalls in expanding production and supply—but that would take 10 to 15 years to bear fruit. And all these dysfunctional regimes are too busy buying off their populations with cheap subsidies. Unless these governments cease to behave as islands of corruption and dysfunction, they will slowly but surely sow the seeds of their own long-term decline. The necessary investments are huge. Goldman Sachs's Jeffrey Currie estimates it would take $3.5 trillion in the next decade to keep up with rising demand. Actual investments are going to be much lower, suggesting the price of oil will stay high in the medium term.

One consequence of high oil prices will be to focus attention on technologies of extraction. In 1859, Col. Edward Drake struck oil at 69 feet. Today, as energy analysts Peter Huber and Mark Mills note, "it is not unusual to drill for oil through 10,000 feet of water, 20,000 feet of vertical rock and another 30,000 feet of horizontal rock." And the price of the 10-mile oil is about the same as Drake's 69-foot oil. There's an even bigger shift underway, from fuel to electricity. In 1950, 20 percent of U.S. economic output came from industries powered by electricity. Today that number is 60 percent and rising fast. All the growth sectors, from technology to services, are powered by the grid, not gasoline. What will feed this grid—coal, nuclear power or new technologies—is another large subject, but one thing is certain: it will not be oil.

Petrol is increasingly confined to one pivotal sector: transportation. And even here the future is electric. Within 10 to 20 years, hybrid electric motors will replace the internal-combustion engine. Neither oil companies nor oil states will disappear. But they will go from being the lifeblood of the industrial world to just one of many sources of energy. After a century and a half, oil will be put in its proper place.

Energy Bulletin has a roundup of articles on Exxon's lysenkoist campaign against climate science. Included is this definition of lysenkoism:

Lysenkoism refers to an episode in Russian science featuring a non-scientific peasant plant-breeder named Trofim Denisovich Lysenko [1898-1976]. Lysenko was the leading proponent of Michurianism during the Lenin/Stalin years

...Michurin's views on evolution found favor with the party leadership in the Soviet Union. When the rest of the scientific world were pursuing the ideas of Mendel and developing the new science of genetics, Russia led the way in the effort to prevent the new science from being developed in the Soviet Union. Thus, while the rest of the scientific world could not conceive of understanding evolution without genetics, the Soviet Union used its political power to make sure that none of their scientists would advocate a genetic role in evolution.

It was due to Lysenko's efforts that many real scientists, those who were geneticists or who rejected Lamarckism in favor of natural selection, were sent to the gulags or simply disappeared from the USSR. Lysenko rose to dominance at a 1948 conference in Russia where he delivered a passionate address denouncing Mendelian thought as "reactionary and decadent" and declared such thinkers to be "enemies of the Soviet people" (Gardner 1957). He also announced that his speech had been approved by the Central Committee of the Communist Party. Scientists either groveled, writing public letters confessing the errors of their way and the righteousness of the wisdom of the Party, or they were dismissed. Some were sent to labor camps. Some were never heard from again.

...Under Lysenko's guidance, science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology. The results were predictable: the steady deterioration of Soviet biology. Lysenko's methods were not condemned by the Soviet scientific community until 1965, more than a decade after Stalin's death.

Could something similar happen in the U.S.? Well, some might argue that it already has.

The Age has a report on Victoria's drought. Meanwhile both Victoria and Tasmania are still on fire.

We talk of the drought, but there are really two of them. One is the long drought. It began in 1997 with a severe dry, and things never went back to normal. Victoria has had below average rainfall in nine of the past 10 years, which has also been its hottest decade on record.

The other drought is the short, sharp one. It really began when Victoria had its fourth-driest June on record. Almost every month since has been among the driest on record.

That is deepening. Up to yesterday, the Bureau of Meteorology reports, half of the state has had no rain at all this month. Except in the Mallee, the rest has had less than five millimetres. But that understates the damage. Less snow and rain fell on the mountains, so less run-off came down into the rivers. On farms, rain soaked into the thirsty soil, or was intercepted by dams. And the spread of water-hungry plantations (an approved tax dodge) helped keep water from the rivers.

The bottom line, says the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, is that in the six months to November, water flowing into the Murray was just 7 per cent of the long-term average. Barely half as much water entered the river as in the previous low in 1902.

This is so far beyond our previous experience that we have to be worried. ...

In Melbourne, the Herald Sun thundered about the need for a new dam, without specifying where or what. A dam makes sense only if we have water to spare. Where is our spare water? Try telling Gippslanders they don't need the water coming down their rivers. Try telling Goulburn irrigators they can go without.

As the Marsden Jacob report to the Federal Government showed, Melbourne is not short of dams. Give us the rain, and we can store enough water to last for three years. What we lack is rain; building another dam won't cure that.

As Malcolm Turnbull points out, the problem is that water costs a dollar a tonne. It's cheap, and awfully heavy. Transporting it is a huge cost: and the bigger the plans, the bigger the cost.

The State Government is keen on the Eastern Water Reycling Plant plan. This would recycle Melbourne's waste water, and pipe 115 billion litres of it a year 130 kilometres to the Latrobe Valley power stations, and in return take 80 billion litres from the Thomson Dam for Melbourne.

But that costs money: roughly $2.5 billion according to the feasibility study, plus another $70 million a year to operate. It would require an enormous amount of energy to clean the water and pump it vast distances, generating 22.5 million tonnes a year of greenhouse gases, and thereby lifting Victoria's emissions by 20 per cent, when the Government wants to reduce them by 60 per cent.

The plan is now undergoing a business study, benchmarked against the cost of getting the water from a desalination plant or from treated stormwater. But we need more options.

The obvious one is to treat Melbourne's waste water for reuse in Melbourne, including drinking water. I doubt that dams are the solution, but let's look at them too, along with a pipeline through the Divide.

The North Pole ice cap is predicted to have fully disappeared by 2040.

The ice sheet covering the North Pole and Arctic Ocean could recede and disappear completely in the northern summer months by 2040, researchers said today.

If greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, the Arctic's future ice cover will undergo periods of relative stability followed by abrupt retreat, said a team of scientists of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Canada's McGill University.

Only a small portion of the permanent ice pack would cling in the summer season around the northern coastline of Greenland and Canada, the researchers said in the Geophysical Research Letters magazine.

"We have already witnessed major losses in sea ice, but our research suggests that the decrease over the next few decades could be far more dramatic than anything that has happened so far," said NCAR scientist and lead author of the study Marika Holland.

The melting ice pack is expected to have a devastating effect on global warming, warned the scientists. "Open water absorbs more sunlight than does ice, meaning that the growing regions of ice-free water will accelerate the warming trend," they report said.

RealClimate has a report by the other Big Gav (no relation) on Inhofe's last stand.

Part of me felt a little nostalgic yesterday watching the last Senate hearing on climate change that will be chaired by Sen. James Inhofe. It all felt very familiar and comforting in some strange way. There was the well-spoken 'expert' flown in from Australia (no-one available a little closer to home?), the media 'expert' from the think tank (plenty of those about) and a rather out-of-place geologist. There were the same talking points (CO2 leads the warming during the ice ages! the Medieval Warm Period was warm! it's all a hoax!*) that are always brought up. These easy certainties and predictable responses are so well worn that they feel like a pair of old slippers.

Of course, my bout of nostalgia has nothing to do with whether this was a useful thing for the Senate to be doing (it wasn't), and whether it just provided distracting political theatre (yup) in lieu of serious discussion about effective policy response, but even we should sometimes admit that it is easier to debunk this kind of schoolyard rhetoric than it is to deal with the complexities that actually matter. The supposed subject of discussion was 'Climate Change in the Media' though no-one thought to question why the Senate was so concerned with the media representations (Andy Revkin makes some good points about it though here). Senators have much more effective means of getting relevant information (knowledgable staffers, National Academy of Science reports, the presidential office of Science and Technology etc.) and so this concern was concievably related to their concern with public understanding of science..... or not.

Naomi Oreskes did a good job on the context and provided useful rebuttal to a frankly ridiculous claim that contrarians were not getting any air time on the networks. One point she could have raised was that when Patrick Michaels made the same complaint to CNN - that their climate news stories weren't 'balanced' - a quick scan of their interviewee lists revealed that the scientist most frequently on CNN .... was none other than Michaels himself. A result somewhat at odds with his standing in the community or expertise, but ample evidence for the 'false balance' often decried here.

As for the scientific content, with the sole exception of Dan Schrag's statements, it was a textbook example of abuse of science. Two exchanges summed it up for me. In the first, Bob Carter insisted that CO2 always follows temperature for the ice age cycles (which are paced by the variations in the Earth's orbit and for which CO2 is a necessary feedback) and seasonal cycle (related mainly to Northern hemisphere deciduous trees) . Both statements are true as far as they go - but they don't go very far. Was Carter suggesting that the 30% increase in CO2 decreased after 1940? or that it has stopped increasing in recent years (since he appears to also believe that global warming stopped in 1998?). As an aside by his criteria it also stopped in 1973, 1983 and 1990.... only it didn't. Of course, if this wasn't what he meant to imply (because it's demonstrably false), why did he bring the whole subject up at all? Surely not simply to muddy the waters....

The second great example was Carter making an appeal to authority (using NASA and the Russian Academy of Science) for his contention that world is likely to cool in coming decades. Of course scientists at NASA are at the forefront of studies of anthropogenic climate change so a similar authority would presumably apply to them, and the Russian Academy was one of 11 that called on the G8 to take climate change seriously, but let's gloss over that inconsistency. The nuggets of science Carter was referring to are predictions for the next couple of solar cycles - a tricky business in fact, and one in which there is a substantial uncertainty. However, regardless of that uncertainty, NASA scientists have definitively not predicted that this will cause an absolute cooling - at best, it might reduce the ongoing global warming slightly (which would be good) (though see here for what they actually said). Two Russians scientists have indeed made such a 'cooling' prediction though, but curiously only in a press report rather than in any peer-reviewed paper, and clearly did not speak for the Academy in doing so, but never mind that. Of course, if Carter seriously thought that global cooling was likely, he should be keen to take up some of James Annan's or Brian Schmidt's attractive offers - but like the vast majority of 'global coolers', his money does not appear to be where his mouth is. It's all classic contrarian stuff.

With the new Senate coming in January, it seems likely that this kind of disinformational hearing will become less common and more climate policy-related hearings will occur instead. These won't provide as much fodder for us to debunk, but they might serve the much more useful function of actually helping craft appropriate policy responses.

Ah... truly the end of an age.

Mobjectivist brought back some old memories for me today by invoking the ghost of Johnny Rotten, with the best title I've seen on a post for ages - "Anger Is An Energy". Also at Mobjectivist - USA NG and USA NG - Not Good - noting that the time has come to try and squeeze blood from a turnip.

As I engage in a decent workout run, I have no trouble listening to some idiotic, content-free spew such as Matt Drudge produces. Everyone knows that the old "hate-buzz" kicks in the adrenaline and provides a virtual sparring partner for one to triumph over. Drudge proved no-match tonight as he brought in the scientifically illiterate Oklahoma Senator James (Republican) Inhofe to discuss global warming topics. So I had two sparring partners, an idiot and an illiterate. At the end, Drudge dropped this bit of pseudo-Haiku, suggesting for us to "Look at Tahoe,"

Wasn't Tahoe an iceberg
that melted, or something,
I don't know. -- Matt Drudge

We really should not listen to these people. Earlier, Inhofe credited Drudge as the lone voice in the media promoting the anti-global warming message. Go ahead Senator, hitch your wagon to another scientifically illiterate idiot. Wheee.

I could be wrong
I could be right
...
Anger is an energy - PiL

Must think good thoughts...

TreeHugger reports that the US electrical grid can fuel 180 million electric cars (though the power won't be generated using natural gas obviously).

The nation's existing electric power grid could fuel as many as 180 million electric cars, a Department of Energy study estimates. The study, being released today by the department's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, is the federal government's first look at the grid's capacity to handle the demands of so-called plug-in hybrid. According to The Wall Street Journal, the report estimates that plug-ins, made in volume, would cost between $6,000 and $10,000 more than existing vehicles – largely due to the cost of carrying larger battery packs. The study estimates that if 84 percent of the nation's 220 million vehicles relied primarily on electricity, emissions of carbon dioxide thought to be accelerating climate change would be cut by as much as 5 percent.

"Perilocity" has a post on NASA's mission de-creep - climate science is discouraged (thanks Exxon) but we have a new moon base to look forward to. Even better, the moon will provide us with the helium needed to make up for the absence of oil - honest !

NASA's mission statement until recently included: "to understand and protect the Earth"

Now it doesn't.

Two takes on this, one from physorg that notes the coincidence that James Hansen, a NASA scientist, cited that phrase repeatedly last winter when he talked about dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and one by Bruce Sterling that quotes a Planetary Society appeal to get the mission changed back, and that notes that the supposed moon base of 20 years from now is being used as an excuse to cut both earth science and expeditions to other planets, not to mention research at universities.

Short term cuts hidden under long-term vaporware, including cuts in projects that help determine the long-term viability of the home planet. Doesn't sound like good risk management to me.

I'll close with a longish section from another email from the future that arrived today, this one (Vol 9 Number 18) written by John Petersen himself rather than the usual collection of snippets from elsewhere (the original has a number of other interesting pieces as well which are worth reading).

Getting to 2012: Big Changes Ahead - John L. Petersen

Consider this recent BBC headline:

“Current global consumption levels could result in a large-scale ecosystem collapse by the middle of the century, environmental group WWF has warned.” One that followed was: “Climate change threatens supplies of water for millions of people in poorer countries, warns a new report from the Christian development agency Tearfund”.

About the same time the Washington Post said: “Birds, bees, bats and other species that pollinate North American plant life are losing population, according to a study released yesterday by the National Research Council.”

Reuters added: “Failing to fight global warming now will cost trillions of dollars by the end of the century even without counting biodiversity loss or unpredictable events like the Gulf Stream shutting down.”

Author James Howard Kunstler chimed in: “The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on.”

Then, in a landmark report compiled by Sir Nicholas Stern for the UK government, comes the admonition: The world has to act now on climate change or face devastating economic consequences. Sir Nicholas estimated that at most humanity has ten years before the shift is unrecoverable.

What’s going on here? What does this all mean? These are extraordinary statements about massive earth changes. Are they just random trends that happen to be coincidentally showing up at the same time, or perhaps they reflect some big, historic, underlying dynamic – maybe the world is about to experience a shift unlike anything ever seen before.

There are reasons to believe the latter could be the case. Many sources, both conventional and unconventional, suggest that we are living in a special time – that between now and 2012 the world will undergo an epochal shift to a new era. This rapid evolution will produce a world that operates in fundamentally different ways than it has in the past.

The indicators are there. Take a closer look at what is already happening.

Demographics:

Nearly a half of all people on the planet are under the age of 25[i]. That’s the largest youth generation in history. The overwhelming majority of these young people live in the developing world and almost a quarter are surviving on less than $1 a day[ii] Most of them know about the quality of life in the West. Many have seen and used a computer or a mobile phone.

Peaking of the Global Oil Supply:

Regardless of the increased awareness that our oil resources are finite, demand for oil is growing. In the last years it grew from 79.8 (2003) to 84.3 (2005) million bpd[iii]. Even if the Chinese economy were to slow down, the growth is still likely to continue with a pressure from India.

Supply, on the other hand, appears to have peaked. We now have nine and a half months of "rearview mirror" action to look back and see that world oil production has retreated from its all-time high of just over 85 million barrels a day (m/b/d) achieved in December 2005 (just as geologist Kenneth Deffeyes of Princeton had predicted). For 2006, production has remained in the 84 m/b/d range every month reported so far, while demand has exceeded that.[iv]

Oil curse is a term coined to reflect the desperate situation of many oil rich but otherwise underdeveloped countries. The Chinese are now involved in a comprehensive international outreach to African countries, buying up resources (not just oil) in Nigeria, Angola, Congo, Sudan. So far oil importers used mostly economic and political means to compete for oil but will inevitably resort to military strategies as soon as they realize that they have probably passed peak oil threshold.

The report “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management” prepared by SAIC for the Department of Energy concludes that humanity is facing asymmetric risks associated with the peaking of oil. Although mitigation actions initiated prematurely may result in a poor use of resources, late initiation of mitigation may result in severe consequences. Early mitigation measures are necessary to install production capacities for alternative energy in time for the peaking of oil.

Species Extinction

Despite an avowed reverence for life, human beings continue to destroy other species at an alarming rate, rivaling the great extinctions of the geologic past. In the process, we are foreclosing the possibility of discovering the secrets they contain for the development of new life-saving medicines and of invaluable models for medical research, and we are beginning to disrupt the vital functioning of ecosystems on which all life depends. We may also be losing some species so uniquely sensitive to environmental degradation that they may serve as our “canaries,” warning us of future threats to human health.[v]

The speed of species extinction has forced scientists to refer to the current era as the sixth extinction event comparable to only five other events in the known history of biosphere (That’s a few billion of years!)

A good example is a new study that shows that the oceans' fish are being depleted so fast that eating seafood might be just a memory in 40 years. The researchers say more is at stake than our diet, for they find the dwindling of fish stocks hurts the world economically and the ocean environmentally. Researchers say it is not too late to reverse the trend.[vi]

According to Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services could be partially met under some scenarios that they have considered but these involve significant changes in policies, institutions and practices, that are not currently under way

Climate Change:

Earth is already as warm as at any time in the last 10,000 years, and is within 1°C of being its hottest for a million years. Another decade of business-as-usual carbon emissions will probably make it too late to prevent the ecosystems of the north from triggering runaway climate change[vii]

Feedback loops (the self-reinforcing relationships between the change in CO2, global warming and other factors) are driving the dynamics of climate change. In fact, they are the source of exponential rates of growth. We may be entering a phase in which global warming becomes a runaway train.

Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and if the present rate of retreat continues, they may be gone by 2035. More than 2 billion people - a third of the world's population, rely on the Himalayas for their water[viii]

An increase in global temperatures can interfere with the workings of the ocean conveyor belt and bring another ice age to Europe. The earth’s ocean system is characterized by thermal inertia. This means that it adapts slowly to global cooling and warming but once it starts to warm up or cool down, the process will extend for a long period of time. For us, it means that even if all human emissions were to stop now, thermal inertia of the ocean could sustain an increase in global temperatures.

According to conclusions of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), there is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

Major Economic Disruption

During 2003-4, in a concern about possible “deflation”, the Federal Reserve ran the interest rates that they charged banks down so low (1%), that mortgage lenders began offering below-prime mortgages with little or no money down. Refinancing of existing mortgages was at an all-time high. Huge increases in mortgages resulted (more than five times the amount between 2002 and 2006 than in the preceding five-year period). Many if not most of those loans (whose real interest rate was higher than “prime” mortgages secured in historical ways) had extra-low payments in the loan’s early years with a substantial increase in payments after the “balloon” period. People were buying homes whose income would never have allowed them to own a home previous to that time . . . and those least able to pay their loans began using credit card credit to make up for the shortfall in income.

In 2005 for the first time since 1933, the savings rate in America became negative. This happened about the same time that personal credit card debt reached its highest level ever (number of U.S. credit cards grew 75% from 1990 to 2003 while the amount that was charged increased 350%). Consumer credit as a percentage of personal income has never been so high (30 % increase since 2000 alone) and household debt as a percentage of house assets is at a record.

Independent analysis shows that credit card defaults begin about 24 months after a borrower has fundamentally overextended him or herself and therefore history suggests that we should see a dramatic increase in mortgage defaults starting in 2006. In fact, the percentage of U.S. subprime loans that were made in 2006 and delinquent in payments by 60 or more days by August of the year rose 100% over similar loans made in 2005.[ix] All banks have a great percentage of their assets tied up in mortgage-based securities. If the default rate on mortgages increases significantly it could well translate into a major threat to the solvency of many banks.

The debt situation will be exacerbated by the retirement of the baby boomers and implementation of the new banking regulations under the auspices of the Basel II Accords that demand the revamping of the global banking system, for which no banks are likely to be ready.

According to Warren Buffet, the current financial system is highly unstable. Highly complex financial instruments – derivatives – are time bombs and "financial weapons of mass destruction". “Derivatives generate reported earnings that are often wildly overstated and based on estimates whose inaccuracy may not be exposed for many years". “Large amounts of risk have become concentrated in the hands of relatively few derivatives dealers . . . which can trigger serious systemic problems” Derivatives can push companies onto a "spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown".

Investor George Soros pronounced the same criticisms regarding the global financial system. He believes that unless fundamental reforms are implemented, the current system will continue on a spiral of crises[x].

Watershed Time?

Is the nexus of these forces a unique watershed time that will usher in a new era on this planet? Will the structures and institutions that we are all familiar with and depend upon struggle and even fail in the near future under the stress produced by breakdowns in multiple sectors?

Add to the litany above increasingly sophisticated terrorism, serious global shortages of drinking water, growing population pressures, and the possibility of other shocks like a global pandemic and you’ve got the line up for the potential for a major directional shift. The convergence of climate, oil and financial trends alone could produce a “perfect storm” that reorders the future of humanity on this planet.

A New Paradigm

If failure of the present system is what we’re looking at, it would certainly be followed by a new paradigm. If the old system came down, a new one would evolve that attempted to bypass the systemic frailties of the previous world. It would necessarily be a fundamentally different way of understanding reality, attended by new perspectives of science, ecology, economy, cosmology, governing, agriculture, and education, among the other basic intellectual structures which support human activity.

The new world, as in all paradigm shifts, would not make much sense from our present perspective. Never having seen group larger than a clan, a hunter-gatherer contemplating the future would have been hard-pressed to envision a world that included people living in towns and villages. Similarly, the future that may arrive with 2012 would necessarily seem strange in the context of most of our upbringing.

But as we get closer to the time of this epic shift the early outlines of a new future appear to be emerging. First of all, the new world is a highly interdependent and connected one. The complexity of our present communications systems link individual humans in ways that would have seemed impossible just two decades ago (the World Wide Web had not yet been invented only fifteen years ago!) As the ability to interact in increasingly more sophisticated ways develops, a point will be passed when humanity begins to act like an organism, rather than unrelated individuals and small groups. Ideas will transit the world like rumors in a small town. Concepts and perspectives will infect the global brain and produce behavior never before seen. We will see our future tied to others many thousands of miles away from us in ways that would have made no sense five years ago. We will rapidly become planetary citizens.

Similarly, ecological interconnectedness is also rapidly becoming obvious. For many of us, we now know that we are all related to the larger environmental system in which we live in ways that we never previously understood. The death of a third of the coral reefs in the world and ten-thousand other species a year will surely affect the system that supports human life . . . and certainly not beneficially.

All of this new knowledge will of necessity change our behavior in the future. We will see ourselves as an integral part of the whole system in which we live. We will know that we are all in the same life boat and each of our futures is a function of the future of all of us. Self-interest and security, whether characterized in personal or national terms, will very quickly encompass far more space and people than it has in the past. In the face of rapid climate change, for example, national security would approach becoming synonymous with global security.

We’ll also see ourselves connected in spiritual terms. Perhaps this is where the real paradigm shift will take place. More and more individuals are beginning to experience and internalize the fact that we are connected to each other and with animals, plants and even the earth in ways that even though inexplicable are nevertheless demonstrable. Serious new scientifically based books are now being written about how human behavior is connected to the larger cosmos and how that throughout history it has predictably reflected in how we behave. Agricultural systems are in place that claim to tap into elemental spiritual forces in order to grow crops better. Many studies now show that the intentionality of prayer significantly affects single-cellular life as well as humans . . . and it doesn’t make any difference whether either party knows the other one (or that they’re praying) or not. There is evidence now t hat somehow humans anticipate big disruptions to the system (like 9/11 and the Indonesian tsunami) and begin to have extraordinary precognitive dreams before these major events.

This spiritual awareness seems on a trajectory that will expand to include the ability to tap into the global collective unconscious and may even become somewhat predictive – marrying advanced knowledge technology with dreaming and other intuitive processes.

Growing numbers of thoughtful people are coming to the conclusion that intentionality directly shapes reality. How our thoughts translate into the reconfiguration of matter and different behavior in others is not clear, but for many, life-long experiences tell them that that is how it works. In all of this there appears to be an alternative dimension(s) for communication that facilitates this interconnectivity. Who knows, perhaps human telepathy may be emergent as we see ourselves more tightly committed to each other in the future. In any case, there are a great number of indicators, both historical and contemporary, that suggest that we are approaching a time of extraordinary change.

Although no one now alive has ever lived through a similar shift, the history of the planet, as we know it, suggests that these kinds of major upheavals have happened many times in the past – in fact, they are the fundamental evolutionary mechanism for the planet. Biological life moved abruptly from single-cellular life to multiple-cellular life after a very long period of equilibrium. Then multiple-cellular life was punctuated by a radical transformation that yielded vertebrates . . . which were followed by rapid shifts to mammals, early humans, and then homo sapiens.

Social evolutionary punctuations continued moving hunter-gathers into villages and towns, finally resulting in the printing press which enabled the industrial age. Perhaps the Internet represents the new communications infrastructure upon which the radically new paradigm will be built.

Perhaps we are about to experience another punctuation in the equilibrium of human evolution. Patterns from the past suggest that the time is right for another one. The question is, are we ready? If the change that seems to be forming on the horizon is anything like it appears it might be, then all humans will need to move into a new mode of living and thinking in order to survive the transition.

There will need to be a constant orientation of openness – having a wide aperture for sensing subtle indicators that point toward coming change and being receptive to newly emerging approaches to dealing with the rapidly changing environment. If one is not open to the suggestions and ideas of others, they will necessarily falter, as no one individual will have the capability to deal with this change by themselves. New ideas and explanations about how reality works will begin to bubble-up in many places; they must be openly considered and honestly evaluated. There must also be an openness to adapt – to rapidly change when it is required.

The survivors of this epochal shift will necessarily live closer to the earth. They will know that their food does not come from the supermarket . . . in fact, they may well know the farmer who grows it. They will be sensitive to the earth in ways that they perhaps previously reserved only for humans. The current movement toward “relocalization” – shifting one’s life and relationships closer to a sustaining support system – will probably be rather mature.

Effectively transitioning to this new world will require envisioning it into reality. We will all need to develop a basic, but coherent idea of what the new world might look like – the principles, values, structures, behavior, etc. – and begin to carry that common picture in our minds. We need to “get together” at regular times with as many others as possible to project the new images into the space from which everything comes. We should do it as though our life depends on it, as it probably does.

We are all blessed to live at this time of extraordinary transformation. Each in his or her own way has a special role to play in contributing to the ultimate shape and function of this new world. That’s probably why we are here at this time.

We should not hesitate to vigorously play our part. Time is short.

© John L. Petersen 2006

[i] http://www.unfpa.org/adolescents/facts.htm
[ii] ibid
[iii] International Energy Authority and Deutsche Bank
[iv] James Howard Kunstler, Swan Dive, Oct. 20, 2006
[v] Eric Chivian, Environment and health: 7. Species loss and ecosystem disruption — the implications for human health, Canadian Medical Association Journal, Jan. 2001
[vi] David McAlary, Washington, Voice of America News 02 November 2006
[vii] Jim Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 103, p 14288
[viii] Greenpeace International, ‘The Global Retreat of Glaciers’
[ix] Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2006; Page A1: As Home Owners Face Strains, Market Bets on Loan Defaults, New Derivatives Link Fates Of Investors and Borrowers In Vast 'Subprime' Sector, By MARK WHITEHOUSE
[x] See The Collapse of Global Capitalism by George Soros

Well, all of these perspectives (not just me) seriously suggest that we are into a very interesting and important period of time in the history of this planet and humanity. The common answer to the common question about what we should do is to think differently and act differently . . . soon.