I've just arrived at work for my last but one day before I go on sick leave to have my hip replaced. In addition deb and I have just had a massive fight at home. My head is splitting and I feel like I'm burning up, I've just been to the loo to dab my ears with water in an attempt to cool down. I must look as red as a beetroot, if the way my face feels is any indication, I know my arm arches like buggery from lying on it awkwardly in bed today, somebody shoot me...Please!
There’s just one week left in this election campaign and the last leadership debate took place this evening. As on the previous two occasions I’m at work and unable to watch it on TV. However I had the BBC website up and, between calls, read the ongoing reports as it proceeded.
Still not one of them is willing to tell the unvarnished truth above how bad the cuts, they’re going to have to impose, are going to be. Maybe, after the polls are closed and the unlucky winner is in office, he’ll let us know the truth.
Aside from the constant tiredness brought about by my poorly hip I think this is the real reason why I’m so short tempered with the kids and Deb; it’s because I think I know what’s coming and I CAN’T SEEM TO GET THROUGH TO THEM JUST HOW COMPETITIVE AND DANGEROUS THE WORLD is likely to be when the kids are grown.
The term “A Perfect Storm” seems to have been over used in the last few years, especially in disaster films, but it seems to me that it’s apropos to the coming decades:
1. The West, the USA in particular, has virtually bankrupt itself over the last 3 decades in an orgy of (increasingly Chinese financed) over consumption and it now faces a period of austerity unparalleled in modern times. What’s happening in Greece today could easily spread to and affect all of the other economies of the European Union tomorrow. The USA has had a generation of political leaders who have convinced its citizens that they can have the best of both worlds - increase consumption and reduced taxes, hence the reason that their internal infrastructure, road, rail and most importantly EDUCATION, is collapsing. The have cultivated a population of demanding ignoramuses who don’t understand why they can’t keep having more and more and who either, refuse to try or are too stupid to understand this - if ever a state could be equated to a spoilt demanding brat then the present day USA is such a state. If you don't agree; watch this
If all of the forgoing weren’t bad enough then given the additional factors listed below there’s no guarantee that the West, or the World, will ever truly emerge from this situation;
2. China, India, Brazil, Russia, to name just the four biggest, have growing economies and populations (well not Russia in the case of population) and these populations aspire to emulate the living standards of the West. The Earth can’t, in the long term, sustain the West’s consumption at its current level so how can it possibly support all these additional aspirations?
3. The World blindly uses up irreplaceable resources without giving any serious thought to how it will replace the irreplaceable. After peak oil* comes no oil – literally - and given point 2 above we’ll slide down the slope a damn site quicker than we climbed up it; The US military, at least, has already grasped this fact!
4. The population** of the world continues to rise and rise and rise with no, non-Malthusian catastrophe, end in sight. This uncontrolled growth is encouraged by the primitive religious faiths that cling to the belief that contraception is a sin against God – Yah Christianity and Islam, in particular, I’m talking about your deluded death worshipping cults;
5. The World refuses to face up to the REALITY of Man made climate change and take drastic action to avert its worse consequences. In fact, to make things even worse, there are groups who, for various and sundry reasons, seek to deny that there is even such a thing as climate change;
6. Fusion power****, the great hope of my childhood ( I was and am a Sci Fi reader), still appears to remain fifty years away and without it there’s no possible way we are going to be able to meet future energy demands, no matter how many windmills you built. Solar has a chance in some places, the US could supply all it's domestic power requirements if it deployed enough solar furnaces in its desert states, but even then you can't power a plane or car directly with it.
The only good thing that can be said about is that they provide all the elements needed to write the greatest dystopian post-apocalyptic novel ever written.
Is there any wonder why I’m so short tempered, if I could afford a fortress I’d equip it for a long term siege and lock the kids in it until the slaughter was over; because the wars over oil will be as nothing to those that will be fought over food and water. Without oil the USA won’t be the bread basket*** of the world any longer; it’ll have enough problems feeding its own population. If Europe wants to survive it’s going to have to become a self-sustaining fortress and hope that it can keep out the millions of dispossessed clamouring at its doors long enough for them to die off!!!
Well on those cheery notes perhaps it’s time to stop for tonight.
*Oil will not just "run out" because all oil production follows a bell curve. This is true whether we're talking about an individual field, a country, or on the planet as a whole. Oil is increasingly plentiful on the up slope of the bell curve, increasingly scarce and expensive on the down slope. The peak of the curve coincides with the point at which the endowment of oil has been 50 percent depleted. Once the peak is passed, oil production begins to go down while cost begins to go up.
Optimistic estimations of peak production forecast the global decline will begin by 2020 or later, and assume major investments in alternatives will occur before a crisis, without requiring major changes in the lifestyle of heavily oil-consuming nations. These models show the price of oil at first escalating and then retreating as other types of fuel and energy sources are used. Pessimistic predictions of future oil production operate on the thesis that either the peak has already occurred, that oil production is on the cusp of the peak, or that it will occur shortly. As proactive mitigation may no longer be an option, a global depression is predicted, perhaps even initiating a chain reaction of the various feedback mechanisms in the global market that might stimulate a collapse of global industrial civilization, potentially leading to large population declines within a short period. Throughout the first two quarters of 2008, there were signs that a global recession was being made worse by a series of record oil prices.
** Another significant factor on petroleum demand has been human population growth. Oil production per capita peaked in the 1970s. The United States Census Bureau predicts that the world population in 2030 will be almost double that of 1980.[29] Author Matt Savinar predicts that oil production in 2030 will have declined back to 1980 levels as worldwide demand for oil significantly out-paces production. Physicist Albert Bartlett claims that the rate of oil production per capita is falling, and that the decline has gone undiscussed because a politically incorrect form of population control may be implied by mitigation. Oil production per capita has declined from 5.26 barrels per year (0.836 m3/a) in 1980 to 4.44 barrels per year (0.706 m3/a) in 1993,[29][33] but then increased to 4.79 barrels per year (0.762 m3/a) in 2005. In 2006, the world oil production took a downturn from 84.631 to 84.597 million barrels per day (13.4553×10^6 to 13.4498×10^6 m3/d) although population has continued to increase. This has caused the oil production per capita to drop again to 4.73 barrels per year (0.752 m3/a).
One factor that has so far helped ameliorate the effect of population growth on demand is the decline of population growth rate since the 1970s, although this is offset to a degree by increasing average longevity in developed nations. In 1970, the population grew at 2.1%. By 2007, the growth rate had declined to 1.167%. However, oil production is still outpacing population growth to meet demand. World population grew by 6.2% from 6.07 billion in 2000 to 6.45 billion in 2005, whereas according to BP, global oil production during that same period increased from 74.9 to 81.1 million barrels (11.91×10^6 to 12.89×10^6 m3), or by 8.2%. Or according to EIA, from 77.762 to 84.631 million barrels (12.3632×10^6 to 13.4553×10^6 m3), or by 8.8%.
*** Because supplies of oil and gas are essential to modern agriculture techniques, a fall in global oil supplies could cause spiking food prices and unprecedented famine in the coming decades. Geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer contends that current population levels are unsustainable, and that to achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster the United States population would have to be reduced by at least one-third, and world population by two-thirds The largest consumer of fossil fuels in modern agriculture is ammonia production (for fertilizer) via the Haber process, which is essential to high-yielding intensive agriculture. The specific fossil fuel input to fertilizer production is primarily natural gas, to provide hydrogen via steam reforming. Given sufficient supplies of renewable electricity, hydrogen can be generated without fossil fuels using methods such as electrolysis. For example, the Vemork hydroelectric plant in Norway used its surplus electricity output to generate renewable ammonia from 1911 to 1971 Iceland currently generates ammonia using the electrical output from its hydroelectric and geothermal power plants, because Iceland has those resources in abundance while having no domestic hydrocarbon resources, and a high cost for importing natural gas However, in the near term, almost every large-scale source of renewable energy still requires petroleum inputs, such as to fuel construction equipment and to transport workers and materials. Iceland, for example, has abundant renewable energy resources, but still depends critically on liquid fuels from petroleum, all of which it must import. If the supply of petroleum should fall faster than people can learn how to build renewable energy infrastructure using only renewable inputs, it may not be possible to maintain the intensive agriculture necessary to support the high global population.
**** Despite optimism dating back to the 1950s about the wide-scale harnessing of fusion power, there are still significant barriers standing between current scientific understanding and technological capabilities and the practical realization of fusion as an energy source. Research, while making steady progress, has also continually thrown up new difficulties. Therefore it remains unclear whether an economically viable fusion plant is possible.[22][23] A 2006 editorial in New Scientist magazine opined that "if commercial fusion is viable, it may well be a century away." Interestingly, a pamphlet printed by General Atomics in 1970s stated that "By the year 2000, several commercial fusion reactors are expected to be on-line."
Several fusion D-T burning tokamak test devices have been built (TFTR, JET), but these were not built to produce more thermal energy than electrical energy consumed. Despite research having started in the 1950s, no commercial fusion reactor is expected before 2050. The ITER project is currently leading the effort to commercialize fusion power. A paper published in January 2009 and part of the IAEA Fusion Conference Proceedings at Geneva last October claims that small 50 MW Tokamak style reactors are feasible. On May 30, 2009, the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), primarily a weapons lab, announced the creation of a high-energy laser system, the National Ignition Facility, which can heat hydrogen atoms to temperatures only existing in nature in the cores of stars. The new laser is expected to have the ability to produce, for the first time, more energy from controlled, inertially-confined nuclear fusion than was required to initiate the reaction.
On January 28, 2010, the LLNL announced tests using all 192 laser beams, although with lower laser energies, smaller hohlraum targets, and substitutes for the fusion fuel capsules. More than one megajoule of ultraviolet energy was fired into the hohlraum, besting the previous world record by a factor of more than 30. The results gave the scientists confidence that they will be able to achieve ignition in more realistic tests scheduled to begin in the summer of 2010.
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