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The Future Of Mankind - How Energy Limits Our Survival

Gennaio 7, 2009 | Environment

The object of all religion, science, human knowledge and achievement has so far been the ’survival’ of some human groups at the expense of others. This is because humans are by nature competitive animals. The winners so far have been the American’s. Over 80% of the world’s resources are owned by just 20% of the people, with less than 5% owning the majority of those resources, and just 1% actually owning them in such a way as to control them. China now effectively owns them, because she lends America vast amounts of money to purchase their major commodities. Amongst these is the critical commodity of all western nations: oil. America only obtains about 11% of its oil from the Gulf, the other sources are Venezuela, Nigeria, USA and Canada. Nevertheless without oil, America would grind to a complete economic halt. Nothing would move. Coal and gas would be difficult to extract, so would minerals and metals. The vast plains would be unable to produce food. The world would suffer shortages on a grand scale. Most of our governments are concerned chiefly about climate change, something that we are unlikely to be able to stop even if we did cause it. They are living in the democratic short-sighted policy realm of the politician. Please the people now as that is what obtains votes. Meanwhile scientists are dreaming of going to the stars. Michio Kaku believes we have a chance to make it Mars. Later the galaxy may become our playground. Perhaps we will also one day - billions of years from now - actually be able to escape our dying universe. Stephen Hawking advocates setting up home on Mars just in case our Earth becomes contaminated or destroyed. These the greatest thinkers we currently have to listen to. But what about that thing called ‘reality’. My purpose is to bring into your minds, ‘reality’ rather than ‘great thoughts’. Our planet can sustain between 1 and 3 billion (1000,000,000, and 3000,000,000) people on it without fossil fuels. With them 7 billion is very feasible and perhaps 20 billion (if we could find enough oil, gas and coal) may also be a possbility. Who knows? Or so they say on a number of ‘green’ movies such as the one that Di Caprio and Al Gore starred in.

As the human population grows, long life and massive population increase becomes detrimental to the earth’s ecosystems - the lands ability to grow food, the air quality and the water resources - humans run the risk of extinction or war for competing resources. These are real horrible threats in an age where unstable regimes have access to nuclear materials to make dirty bombs out of, or real nuclear weapons. We must therefore change our goals, and look for political and social change. The West has become weak. It is no longer the controller of its own economic destiny. Instead, China is growing, but for how long? At what point does an authoritarian regime fail to meet the political demands of its enslaved population? At what point does freedom become a necessity for the Chinese worker? Can the west allow its own freedoms to be maintained by the enslavement of the Chinese, Africans and Latin Americans? When does the destruction of resources become a crucial factor? These questions will be answered within the next 100 or 200 years.

The Earth is full of life. There are millions of forms of it, and the demise hundreds of species just makes room for others. The fact is that our existence - the product of billions of years of slow and steady evolution and natural selection - cares very little for our individual ideas, or lives. We have no purpose to our existence as far as ‘mother nature’ understands. We are the children of time, and our lives and existences are short. Whatever thoughts you have on God, you must put them to one side. God does not interfere with life on Earth in terms of our ability to access energy. Humans do that. Go to any oil rig and look how they do it. In Nigeria they even pollute the locals doing it, so you can drive your car. Then there’s the likes of Jonathan Porritt and George Monbiot. They believe that renewable energy is the key. Al Gore wants millions of wind turbines down the back bone of Mid-West America (they would produce 7x the world’s energy supply - but you cannot store it easily - perhaps you can make some hydrogen gas via electroylsis.) These are not viable solutions, as we shall see.

We are already growing fuel instead of food. But since oil is so useful, without it, such substitute fuels will be impossible to use. There is no substitute for energy in our society, but the markets treat energy like any other resource, when it is in fact the pre-condition for all other resources. Oil is the most important form of energy. It took 500 million years to accumulate. It makes up 38% of the world total energy supply. No other energy source equals its intrinsic qualities of extractability, transportability, versatility and cost. Global oil production will peak soon. It does not really matter when. It could be as early as 2025, or in the early 22nd century. It depends on whether humans are able to economically tap oil reserves under the frozen polar landscapes. Oil recovery is limited by the energy cost of recovery. If it takes more energy to discover and extract the oil than the energy it produces, it makes no sense to use that oil for energy·no matter how high the price of energy goes. This is why hydrogen is not a serious competitor for oil as it takes 52.3 kWh of electricity to produce 1 kg of hydrogen, but hydrogen only produces 39.4 kWh/kg. In times of plenty we can afford subsidies for other substitutes for oil such as ethanol. But Ethanol like other fuels is a poor substitute for oil, because to make 1000 Litres of oil it takes 9.9 million Kcal, whereas ethanol can only produce 5.1 million Kcal. We can only afford to harvest these kinds of fuel while we have plenty of conventional oil. When conventional oil becomes too expensive, substitutes like ethanol or the planting of biomass (wood etc) will simply not be feasible.

There is no substitute for kerosene which is used to propel jet aircraft around the globe, the main way we globally distribute food. The range and quantities we now enjoy in the UK would be severely reduced, perhaps even to 1917 levels during bad harvests. Money supplies effect the level of production in an economy only when energy sources are constant or rising. When they are in decline or scarce, manipulations of the money supply by central banks can no longer stimulate economic growth. At this point, Nuclear power would be too expensive to maintain. Food supplies will fail to meet the demand. Medical supplies would be affected. Scientific development would become too expensive. Let’s also consider our renewable resources. In order to make a Ground Source Heat pump, a wind turbine, a water turbine and a solar panel it takes minerals, metals, raw materials, harvested by mining. Without oil you cannot make these. You won’t be able to grind up the raw material, and you won’t have the ability to dig your shaft anyway. Since most of these inventions have about a 25 year lifespan, we can discount them as being viable by the time oil and gas run out. Nuclear facilities, or vast hydro-electric plants, wave generators or tidal power will also be impossible to build or maintain. One has to mine for nuclear material, and it is extremely energy intensive to keep these facilities running.

We already don’t have enough copper or aluminum, or even lead (Pb) to maintain our current civilization. These are just two of a vast list of metals we will soon be unable to mine. As energy and materials start to become scarce humans will either have to get together, or fight for resources. History teaches us that humans are dysfunctional creatures: plague species. They will surely fight, and fight with nuclear devices as civilization tries to destroy its competitors ability to access resources. By 2200 a complete breakdown of all major nations will surely occur. Politically fragmented groups will by then have unparalleled access to NBWs (Nuclear-Bio Weapons). By this means humans will cull their populations to more sustainable levels. But by then it will be too late. We would have lost our chance to go to the stars. Our one means: oil to extract raw materials to build space ships would be long gone. We will be trapped on our little rocky globe.

Whilst ecosystem damage, even when NPP (Net primary product = all food and resources) is threatened, there is one threat that humans cannot stop: comets, asteroids and meteroids. We’ll call them all comets as a shorthand. Comets are not as rare as the majority of scholars have suggested. A recent study by Baillie shows that they strike the earth every few hundred years, and air bursting comets are very dangerous. It is very likely the Black Death was caused by an air bursting comet; that the fire of London and Great Plague may have been caused by an air bursting meteoroid; and that the Great Plague of Athens was meteoroid or comet based. One of the most dangerous groups of asteroids is the Taurid stream, which the Earth crosses every 2500 to 3000 years. During these periods civilizations have been destroyed. So when will these Taurids strike the Earth again? It could come at anytime, but the most likely period is the century beginning 3000AD. At this point humans will face the prospect of working out how to stop these from air bursting. But in order to be able to do this, it will take at least a 1000 years of scientific work, backed by resources to get material and systems in place to defend planet earth.

The Taurids are not alone. Over 100 new comets are discovered each year. Each of these could be a potential threat if large enough. We cannot know for certain when one will be discovered to become a major threat. Right now, in the year 2008, we actually are not in a position to get an early warning; and we don’t have the ability to stop one anyway. If the Armageddon or ELE comet is out there right now, we are dead as the dodo. Let us then recap our tale of reality. Without oil, mankind will be forced to use other sources of energy that cannot sustain our way of life. Our civilization is very prone to fail without viable energy sources. Gas and coal will only hold out until 2200. After that we are back to biomass, and this can only sustain about 1 billion people. By then we may have already created a population far in excess of this number, but probably in decline as services and civilization fails. Nuclear-Biological war of some kind will be inevitable. We will be trapped on our planet to be eventually exterminated by the next major comet strike. QED. Every human is likely to be dead in 1 million years and for most of that time they will be living in a prolonged stone age.

John M Clarkson BA(Hons) MSc Sustainable Development Scientist

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