Peak oil, energy crisis, global warming - real problems or minor obstacles?

[czokletmuss]

Internet videos rarely explain anything really good. However, they are excellent to make people interested in something. So because I would like to talk about the energy and global climate change, I'm posting this few short videos so that visualizing the problem will be easier:

And presentation from Stanford University:

Of course, the real knowledge is not to be found in a pretty animations but in a lot of tables, articles, reports and so on.

So if you are interested in reading about the issue, here for example you can find interesting sources:

http://www.postcarbon.org/

http://www.theoildrum.com/

http://peakoil.com/

Naturallly, you should start with the wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

This a very interesting topic, because without a doubt our civilisation depends on energy sources and in fact there are already problems with the supply in various countries in the world - for instance, China will consume all its coal in the next 10-15 years. Some say that peak oil is just a new version of malthusian histery, some say that "the end is nigh" - and I say there is a lot of worrying data which can't be just ignored, because "50 years ago we have computers the size of a truck, now my iPhone is 1000x better then all NASA computers during Apollo program". Progress shouldn't be treated as immutable constant - history shows that only due to the technology which enable the use of the fossil fuels we were able to get here. But what next?

Let the civil discussion begin!

Edited April 30, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Rune]

Well... it's kind of impossible to see the future, but while I see the problems around us, and understand oil is finite, we have barely tapped the available resources on Earth. See, every time we think we have reached some "peak" in the production of anything, along comes a brilliant engineer that figures out a way of producing more, cheaper.

Sure, there will be economic crisis form time to time. Millions (and billions) will die of hunger and thirst. The biosphere will degrade to some point. We will continue to be poor stewards of our planet in general. But when the boop really starts to hit the fan, we will suddenly get creative and find some way to survive. And not only survive, I doubt very much that we stop growing our population. It's just how we are. And even now we can see some of the solutions: nuclear power, farming the sea (you can make flour out of algae), renewable energies (up to some point), and increasing in the efficiency with which we use stuff (we are becoming good at that in Europe). Even the dream of fusion energy will some day come true, I believe, and then energy stops being the issue.

And if we solve the issue of energy... well, what's stopping us from increasing the usable amount of land by digging underground farms, for example? I don't like that future too much, but I'm afraid the Earth is going to have much more than 10 billion people pretty soon, and the barrier of 20 will go down soon after. Someone calculated once that the world's peak sustainable population would be in the hundreds of millions. One thing is for sure: all the Malthusian bullcrap has always been proved wrong, and soon.

So we will kill a lot of species, but I very much doubt we will kill ourselves. And of course we could do better, and we should strive for it. But I'm afraid we are very imperfect creatures, sadly.

Rune. Don't bet against technology.

[icemasterpt]

its all a government conspiracy...

global warmings and global coolings always happened since earth was formed.

Actually there has been some evidence that points that we are going towards a new glaciar age , of course it doesnt happen from 1 year to another it takes ages.

Now let's look at the big picture... who would profit a lot with the concept of Global warming? the big corporations! and peek oil? big corporations.

This world is only dependent on Oil because our society is leashed to the capitalistic holigarchy that controls the globe. There are lots of alternative energy means taht dont even require Oil, will they sponsor it? no... because then their allmighty Dollar would start to drain.

and we are not causing global warming -.-

Oil is part of our hypocrite society. We can survive without oil. Actually our society could be 1000 years advanced if its progress wasnt funded by capitalistic agendas . The elites are already looking for a new Iraq and afganistan to bully in...

We need to stop focusing on Oil extraction and feeding the capitalist trolls, and start getting together and discuss new methods.

That's part of a revolution, the change of a paradigm!

[czokletmuss]

I agree with a lot of you wrote Rune, though you shouldn't treat technology as a source of energy. Yes, if we can master the fusion, the energy won't be a problem for some time. If we were to substitute the fossil fuels with nuclear energy completely the nuclear fuel will be depleted in a 10-15 years. I admire the human spirit and innovation potential, though the scale and challenge is immensly big. Currently we can't even deal with the debt problems and social consequences (youth unemployment). Take a look at Europe. When the bankrupt states like Spain or Italy fall and the very future of EU is endangered, do you think there is a potential to make a transition from fossils-depenedat economies? Progress and technology are great in theory but we have a reality to deal with and then some of this solutions are just improbable to be used. When your country have 20% or more unemployemnt and gigantic debt how are you going to implement brilliant ideas of engineers? I'm afraid that in EU retirement pension or welfare in general will consume the energy and resources which should be focused on problems like the energy crisis.

Two more things: "tapping the resources on Earth" means that we are using all the cheap ones in the Earth's crust. They may be more but will they allow us to live on a current level with 7+ billion population? Second thing: "billions will die of hunger" - well, that's the problem. War for resources won't affect only Iraq or Iran or any other state with oil.

icemasterpt - I don't think there are any conspiracy. There were resources, we took them, we are using them - where's the conspiracy in this? We do what every spieces do, it's just our technology and minds that allow us to do this on a global scale. I'm not going to say why the causes of a global warming are anthropocentric, it took me 2 years of reading to understand that they are, so clearly small discussion on the Internet won't change your point of view. I don't also think that anticapitalistic (socialist?) solutions will help at all - every single one of them failed in the past. But let's focus on the resources, not on politics.

Edited April 28, 2013 by czokletmuss

[icemasterpt]

I agree with a lot of you wrote Rune, though you shouldn't treat technology as a source of energy. Yes, if we can master the fusion, the energy won't be a problem for some time. If we were to substitute the fossil fuels with nuclear energy completely the nuclear fuel will be depleted in a 10-15 years. I admire the human spirit and innovation potential, though the scale and challenge is immensly big. Currently we can't even deal with the debt problems and social consequences (youth unemployment). Take a look at Europe. When the bankrupt states like Spain or Italy fall and the very future of EU is endangered, do you think there is a potential to make a transition from fossils-depenedat economies? Progress and technology are great in theory but we have a reality to deal with and then some of this solutions are just improbable to be used. When your country have 20% or more unemployemnt and gigantic debt how are you going to implement brilliant ideas of engineers? I'm afraid that in EU retirement pension or welfare in general will consume the energy and resources which should be focused on problems like the energy crisis.

Two more things: "tapping the resources on Earth" means that we are using all the cheap ones in the Earth's crust. They may be more but will they allow us to live on a current level with 7+ billion population? Second thing: "billions will die of hunger" - well, that's the problem. War for resources won't affect only Iraq or Iran or any other state with oil.

icemasterpt - I don't think there are any conspiracy. There were resources, we took them, we are using them - where's the conspiracy in this? We do what every spieces do, it's just our technology and minds that allow us to do this on a global scale. I'm not going to say why the causes of a global warming are anthropocentric, it took me 2 years of reading to understand that they are, so clearly small discussion on the Internet won't change your point of view. I don't also think that anticapitalistic (socialist?) solutions will help at all - every single one of them failed in the past. But let's focus on the resources, not on politics.

which one of them have failed? communism have never been applied to the pratice. And pls, dont mention soviet union or north korea... They were fascists disguised as "communiusm" .

and im not saying conspiracy in the sense of The resources being finite or used or not. Im saying conspiracy in the sense that THERE are Lots of alternative methods to make energy without even the Idea of OIL, the corporations owners, the governments, and the Oil corporations will never let those methods to be widespread, because their Egoistic capitalis empires would fall that way. Is this not a conspiracy ? =| i think its totally a conspiracy.

U can use the Sun, u can use Tesla... Even nuclear power is an alternative (not a better one tough) to oil... There are others, like Geothermic, Wind, water...the list goes one.... as of Fuel, cars can be made electric too... and there are other better alternatives to Oil that are reciclabe.

so yeah.. resuming: There is a conspiracy in the sense that scientific progress is way beyond the oil dependency thing. we are just dependent of oil because the corporations that profit from it... you know, like rockerfellers, will never want to lose their allmighty money...

[czokletmuss]

Okay - so you propose a communistic society based on some better energy source than oil (based on some Tesla's machines?), which already exist but we don't know about them, because the corporations, might families like Rockefellers and the government (which one?) are keeping them in secret so that they can make a big profit out of it.

It sounds like a mix of conspiracy theory and pseudoscience. Please give some sources to support this (especially what's about Tesla?) or please start a new thread, because I would like this to be based on scientific evidence and data (like oil fields depletion rates or smth like this). I wouldn't like to discuss the politics only, this is not the thread about them.

Edited April 28, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Nibb31]

Funnily enough, the only place where you find deniers of climate change and peak oil is also the only democratic country where political campaigns are financed by corporations, including big oil companies.

There is absolutely ZERO doubt within the global scientific community that we are facing huge problems right now, and it's not going to get any better.

[Stochasty]

There is absolutely ZERO doubt within the global scientific community that we are facing huge problems right now, and it's not going to get any better.

I, personally, am within the global scientific community. I doubt that we are facing huge problems right now (at least, huge problems regarding the climate; the economy is another matter). Ergo, your statement is false on its face.

It is also moronic. Since when has consensus ever mattered in science?

[czokletmuss]

Oh, that's great. What's your field of expertise? Is it connected to climate or resources? If so, I would love to hear your opinion on that matter.

And BTW - the obvious correlation between climate change and resources problem is that by burning all the fossils we could've influence the climate.

[Stochasty]

Oh, that's great. What's your field of expertise? Is it connected to climate or resources? If so, I would love to hear your opinion on that matter.

My particular field of expertise is quantum field theory; so no, it's not connected to climate or resources. My opinion on climate change is of no particularly great weight; my reply was more to rebut Nibbs snide post with a snide post of my own than anything else.

I consider myself agnostic on the question of climate change; I understand the physics involved and have looked rather deeply into the evidence and the proposed mechanisms and I find myself unconvinced for several reasons - massive flaws in historical climate reconstructions, failure of the models to backcast without tuning, and the reliance of the models/predictions upon a strong positive feedback that would lead to an unstable climate system even in the absence of human meddling - but I also acknowledge that I am not an expert (nor do I have the inclination to become an expert) so I'm content to wait until such time as the experts address the issues I named or the evidence becomes clearer.

That said, I despise those who attempt to use political pressure to decide a scientific issue; Nibbs post is a prime example of that pressure.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Stochasty

[Nibb31]

My particular field of expertise is quantum field theory; so no, it's not connected to climate or resources. My opinion on climate change is of no particularly great weight;

This is the problem. It's nice to have an opinion, but when the opinion goes against countless scientific papers from experts in the field, then you might want to rethink it.

The vast majority of "scientists" that have been used to justify the global warming denial side of things are, like you, from completely unrelated fields. How would you feel if some experts in biology or economy published petitions that negating relativity or some other fundamental concepts that you have been studying for maybe 20 years?

That said, I despise those who attempt to use political pressure to decide a scientific issue; Nibbs post is a prime example of that pressure.

Unfortunately, the political pressure is on the other side, from corporations who have a huge interest in maintaining the status quo, especially in the US, where corporations have more political power than in other countries.

So while you wait for more evidence (as if there wasn't enough already), those positive feedback mechanisms are accelerating the process and it might already be too late.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/12/chasing_ice_video_watch_a_manhattan_sized_iceberg_calve_off_from_greenland.html

But actually, it doesn't even really matter whether global climate change is man-made or not. It is measureable and the effects are already devastating. At worse, there is nothing we can do about it, but if there is even a small chance that we might be able to make a positive impact, we should be taking those chances because they can only be beneficial in the long run. At any rate, denial is not going to get us anywhere.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Nibb31

[czokletmuss]

@Stochasty Thank you, this was interesting. And yes, when politics mess with the science that's always bad; I'm not a scientist nor a climatologist, but the global warming is less important IMHO than energy crisis. I'm also curious what's your opinion about this issue

[ziogatto]

On the energy side I'm very optimistic, there are many valid alternatives and not just renewables, for example this video was posted on these forums some time ago:

^It's just an introduction but there is a youtuber which made hours long montages about it answering pretty much any doubt about it that came to mind, It seems like a valid alternative and some governments are already working on this with china on the lead.

On the side of climate change and in general pollution I'm much more concerned: I'm afraid our corporations are too lazy and scared to invest in anything new while the government is too short sighted (or too corrupted) to introduce any meaningful regulations to propel us away from fossil fuels. I just hope we run out of oil before we run out of air to breathe, at that point willing or not everyone will have to adapt.

[czokletmuss]

Thanks, I've never heard about it - it would be great if thorium could be used on a large scale if it works.

One more very interesting video, this time presentation made by Professor Roland Horne in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford University.

TL;DR - global supply won't ever exceed 90mln barrels per day.

Edited April 28, 2013 by czokletmuss

[Thaniel]

As for the need for energy, it simply a question of politics, and possible investments.

There are built houses today that produce morepower than they consume themself, and route this back to the grid. In the netherlands and germany,there are whole rural cities like that. It will take decades at best, centuries at worst, but that kind of combination of tech is possible and off-the-shelf today. The parts remaining that require power, comercial and industral sector is the problem. There's corporate not-want-to-spend-anything thinking and political dont-want-to-make-unpopular-demands morons about. The energy problems of tomorrow rests not with todays possibilities, but with tomorrows lack of morale.

although, with pluss-houses, renewable energysources in general, LPG vehicles and Thorium powerplants, there is realy no need for oil and coal for use as energysources, as long as powerhungry technology is phased out along the way.

[czokletmuss]

Okay but do you realize that this means hundreds of trilions dollars of investments? We're talking about a global scale - substituting billions of oil-driven machines on the entire world, changing its infrastructure and so on. LPG doesn't solve anything because it's extracted with the oil and natural gas. Vision you presented may be sufficient for a few most rich countries. What about the rest of them? What about fertiliziers -which enabled the green revolution and gave the Earth 5 more bilions of humans - what about plastic? The lack of electricity is not the only problem to be adressed.

[karolus10]

If Oil supplies will be depleted in next 15-20 years, modern civilization's just cannot survive... if oil will be depleted tomorrow, we going back to dark ages :/.

Also Oil isn't only power source, but is essential for many branches of industry.

Fusion power can be solution for power issues, but we still don't know when this technology became viable... for sure it will be NOT soon (if ever) and can came too late .

Edited April 28, 2013 by karolus10

[magnemoe]

First peak oil is not real. Or more accurate peak oil is an political issue, an civil war in Saudi Arabia will give an oil crisis, increased demand will not. Increased demand over supply will simply raise prices over time. If price stabilize at 150$/ barrel options like coal to oil becomes economical and the bottleneck goes away, price will then stabilize and even go down some. Yes this will suck if you have an gas hog of an car, not the end of the world.

The main problem is that lots of oil are produced in very political unstable places. An nightmare scenario will give an 2-3 month downtime from an major supplier until we get an political or military solution

Global warming is an hotter issue. However since global warming started getting an hot issue back in 1990 all doomsayers claim we will get an catastrophic before 2030 if we don't do anything radical fast.

Well we are most off the way to 2030 and has not noticed any effects, last 10 years has showed no warming. Period before did have an warming..

And no it's no consensus among the global warming crowd, the doomsayers (Hansen, Greenpeace, Gore) predict effects 10 times stronger than IPCC, now my back of the envelope estimate is 10% of IPCC, real effects but almost to weak to measure over natural changes. Far better to spend all the billions on real environmental issues like inner city air quality and habitat protection.

It's almost funny how politicians jumped on the AWG bandwagon in the beginning then it enabled them to raise taxes, but later forget about the issue on the next step who would require massive investments who would require an huge fraction of the GNP, this would require tax increases and cut in welfare, things who does not get you reelected.

[Thaniel]

Okay but do you realize that this means hundreds of trilions dollars of investments? We're talking about a global scale - substituting billions of oil-driven machines on the entire world, changing its infrastructure and so on. LPG doesn't solve anything because it's extracted with the oil and natural gas. Vision you presented may be sufficient for a few most rich countries. What about the rest of them? What about fertiliziers -which enabled the green revolution and gave the Earth 5 more bilions of humans - what about plastic? The lack of electricity is not the only problem to be adressed.

Mmm, my bad, I meant LNG, not LPG. LNG can in most cases substitute LPG, and it can be produced in wast quantities by organic matter, resulting in lots of fertile soild for helping in growing food.

The investment needed is doable, it is in fact being done as we speak, just not at the rate it shuld be. So the technology to solve it is here, the will is not.

So it's not a vision per se, but a developing future. And it's not even that expensive to do either, if planned for from the start when building new. The practical technicalities here are too much to cover in a mere post, or a forum like this. A very related problem is the lack of knowledge of these possibilities aong architects and engineers, and too many local and governmental authorities think that anything new must be stopped.

As for plastic, we'll come up with alternatives, and there allready are substitutes for a lot of plastics today that is not of petroleum based origin.

As for fertilizer, cow dung, human remains, biological waste that have been thru a bio-reactor, giving off it's methane for other practical uses, are all excelent fertilizers.

Logistics, knowledge, and the RIGHT investments, at the right places, can solve this.

edit addendum: as for the investement bussiness, millons and milionsof homes and bussiness buildings can be retrofitted for extracting local sources of solar, geothermal and windpower. We see this being done in europe, and have been done for several years allready. Ofcourse, the benefits will be much better when a building is planned for it from the start, but significantly reducing the needs for power from millions of houses and comercial buildings worldwide isn't exactly peanuts when it comes to pollution.

even private houses extracting methane from their own sewer for heating is being done here and there. And this is stuff that a plumber can put together.

Edited April 28, 2013 by Thaniel

[Endeavour]

We don't know if it's real or not for sure, but why take the risk? Obviously because of the infrastructure. Oil will be used as the primary energy source until it is too expensive to continue doing so. Only then will things change. It's only a matter of time before the companies are fracking, deep sea drilling, and using tar sands, reducing the cost for a time, and only once every possible oil source is used will things change to alternative sources.

[Thaniel]

Yeah, as the price formoil goes up, other options will be used instead. So as the oilprice goes up, alternatives will take it's place. We will probably have an ongoing power"crizis" for decades while the oil is slowly being phazed out of its less productive uses, and that way prolonging it's use even further.

[Rune]

I agree with a lot of you wrote Rune, though you shouldn't treat technology as a source of energy. Yes, if we can master the fusion, the energy won't be a problem for some time. If we were to substitute the fossil fuels with nuclear energy completely the nuclear fuel will be depleted in a 10-15 years. I admire the human spirit and innovation potential, though the scale and challenge is immensly big. Currently we can't even deal with the debt problems and social consequences (youth unemployment). Take a look at Europe. When the bankrupt states like Spain or Italy fall and the very future of EU is endangered, do you think there is a potential to make a transition from fossils-depenedat economies? Progress and technology are great in theory but we have a reality to deal with and then some of this solutions are just improbable to be used. When your country have 20% or more unemployemnt and gigantic debt how are you going to implement brilliant ideas of engineers? I'm afraid that in EU retirement pension or welfare in general will consume the energy and resources which should be focused on problems like the energy crisis.

Two more things: "tapping the resources on Earth" means that we are using all the cheap ones in the Earth's crust. They may be more but will they allow us to live on a current level with 7+ billion population? Second thing: "billions will die of hunger" - well, that's the problem. War for resources won't affect only Iraq or Iran or any other state with oil.

icemasterpt - I don't think there are any conspiracy. There were resources, we took them, we are using them - where's the conspiracy in this? We do what every spieces do, it's just our technology and minds that allow us to do this on a global scale. I'm not going to say why the causes of a global warming are anthropocentric, it took me 2 years of reading to understand that they are, so clearly small discussion on the Internet won't change your point of view. I don't also think that anticapitalistic (socialist?) solutions will help at all - every single one of them failed in the past. But let's focus on the resources, not on politics.

Ok, lots of stuff to answer to there.

First, nuclear fuel. Perhaps nuclear fuel as we measure it now would run out in a few decades if we instantly switched to 100% nuclear power. But that is like saying oil would run out as soon as the first oil field runs out: most of the usable ore is still undiscovered. And that doesn't take into account alternative fuels like thorium, which is perfectly viable an much more plentiful. In the real world, if a serious transition to nuclear power was started today, it will probably take millennia to go through all the fissile material in the accessible areas of the Earth's crust. But I can't give you accurate numbers, because nobody has bothered to measure it properly. Just the quantity in the highest concentration in the areas where we currently extract it.

Then, your comments about Europe and my country in particular: do you seriously think the problem is anything but political? Our government is committing economic suicide, and it actually makes perfect sense: it matters to them exactly nothing that more than 20% of people is unemployed, as long as them and their families and friends keep getting richer and they manage to get voted into office again, even if they have to wait 4-8 years while the other guys in the opposition have a shot at doing the same thing and calling it something different. And that is exactly what they are doing, dismantling the social pact that created a healthy middle class in the 80's to increase the income difference between the very rich and everyone else. It's a blatant redistribution of resources, only to the pockets of a few from the sweat of the many.

"Austerity" and all that crap makes bankers capable of changing their monopoly money with things of real value: they are buying our hospitals, schools, pension funds, and industries cheap as dirt, and they are paying for those with the debt they artificially created. A perfect plan, if you are one of them, as long as they can keep the rest of us from getting really, really pissed off about it. As in french revolution pissed off. If only we woke up, but I'm afraid sheep are sheep (they might be pushing a bit too far though, the "plan" may blow up in their faces yet). Oh, and our "gigantic debt" is a drop of water compared to the ocean USA is swimming on, and they seem to get along fine. And I mean both as total amount and as percentage of gross domestic product, this is a 100% manufactured crisis.

And "tapping the resources on Earth" means really tapping them. Not the ones we are currently capable of reaching and have measured, and are also the most convenient and cheap to extract. Those are the ones that show up on resource charts. But if you look at the resources charts from the first oil crisis, you might ask yourself how is it that we have already used more oil than there was supposed to be in the first place. The answer is, we now look into more places to get it, and we are prepared to invest more effort to get it. Iron is not running out any time soon, as in the next few centuries. Neither is aluminium, coal, oil, uranium, thorium...

Will those support a 7+ billion population? Well, some people once doubted that they would be able to support one billion (I kid you not). So I'd say they will be able to support much more than that. Just because they will have to. At no point in all of the history of our species has the total population of Earth actually diminished over any period of time. World (and regional) wars, epidemics, shortages of food and resources... at the end of each of those, there were more people living on this planet than before them. I seriously doubt that trend will ever change. And when we are getting really, really crowded... well, there's enough stuff on the main asteroid belt to build 300,000 Earth's worth of liveable surface. Good luck filling that in the medium to near future. I would like to see the population somewhat stabilized, as is happening on developed countries, and I would like to turn Earth into an "ecological reserve", and keep the population growing elsewhere, but I hold little hope that we can change our ways in that respect.

Rune. So I'll cry silently for the billions of poor people that die in the process, don't get me wrong, but I will still celebrate the increase in total number of human minds, because some are bound to be interesting.

[magnemoe]

Well... it's kind of impossible to see the future, but while I see the problems around us, and understand oil is finite, we have barely tapped the available resources on Earth. See, every time we think we have reached some "peak" in the production of anything, along comes a brilliant engineer that figures out a way of producing more, cheaper.

Sure, there will be economic crisis form time to time. Millions (and billions) will die of hunger and thirst. The biosphere will degrade to some point. We will continue to be poor stewards of our planet in general. But when the boop really starts to hit the fan, we will suddenly get creative and find some way to survive. And not only survive, I doubt very much that we stop growing our population. It's just how we are. And even now we can see some of the solutions: nuclear power, farming the sea (you can make flour out of algae), renewable energies (up to some point), and increasing in the efficiency with which we use stuff (we are becoming good at that in Europe). Even the dream of fusion energy will some day come true, I believe, and then energy stops being the issue.

And if we solve the issue of energy... well, what's stopping us from increasing the usable amount of land by digging underground farms, for example? I don't like that future too much, but I'm afraid the Earth is going to have much more than 10 billion people pretty soon, and the barrier of 20 will go down soon after. Someone calculated once that the world's peak sustainable population would be in the hundreds of millions. One thing is for sure: all the Malthusian bullcrap has always been proved wrong, and soon.

So we will kill a lot of species, but I very much doubt we will kill ourselves. And of course we could do better, and we should strive for it. But I'm afraid we are very imperfect creatures, sadly.

Rune. Don't bet against technology.

"Don't bet against technology" true, the stone age did not end because we run out of stone, neither did the bronze age.

Energy is mostly an political issue, as in traditional nuclear power work well enough. Yes it has an political cost. This cost is larger than the cost of not doing something. Some rolling blackouts in January tend to focus peoples minds. Until then easier to just burn more coal. Again lots of interest in fusion these days, an game-changer as the steam engine was 250 years ago.

Underground farms is way to expensive cheaper to increase yield, anyway more than enough food, current rise in food prices is because Indians and Chinese are eating better and because we turn crop into bio-fuel to keep environmentalists and farmers happy. Loser is countries who lived on the dumping of spare food on the world marked, you want to produce more food than you need as farming output change from year to year. An 10.000 year old problem, doing things globally even out most of the bumps.

And you has areas who lack food because of war like Somalia, and mismanagement as North Korea.

And Malthus was not wrong, rather he would been right 200 year before his birth. At his time the industrial revolution was underway, increasing production by magnitudes. Anyway birth rates are dropping worldwide, not just in the west, Russia has an real issue with this, China will, birth rates in the Latin and Arabic countries is also way down, most places below replacement. In 50 years the main issue in an immigration debate will be how to attract useful immigrants, yes you want to keep the useless out.

[magnemoe]

Ok, lots of stuff to answer to there.

First, nuclear fuel. Perhaps nuclear fuel as we measure it now would run out in a few decades if we instantly switched to 100% nuclear power. But that is like saying oil would run out as soon as the first oil field runs out: most of the usable ore is still undiscovered. And that doesn't take into account alternative fuels like thorium, which is perfectly viable an much more plentiful. In the real world, if a serious transition to nuclear power was started today, it will probably take millennia to go through all the fissile material in the accessible areas of the Earth's crust. But I can't give you accurate numbers, because nobody has bothered to measure it properly. Just the quantity in the highest concentration in the areas where we currently extract it.

Then, your comments about Europe and my country in particular: do you seriously think the problem is anything but political? Our government is committing economic suicide, and it actually makes perfect sense: it matters to them exactly nothing that more than 20% of people is unemployed, as long as them and their families and friends keep getting richer and they manage to get voted into office again, even if they have to wait 4-8 years while the other guys in the opposition have a shot at doing the same thing and calling it something different. And that is exactly what they are doing, dismantling the social pact that created a healthy middle class in the 80's to increase the income difference between the very rich and everyone else. It's a blatant redistribution of resources, only to the pockets of a few from the sweat of the many.

"Austerity" and all that crap makes bankers capable of changing their monopoly money with things of real value: they are buying our hospitals, schools, pension funds, and industries cheap as dirt, and they are paying for those with the debt they artificially created. A perfect plan, if you are one of them, as long as they can keep the rest of us from getting really, really pissed off about it. As in french revolution pissed off. If only we woke up, but I'm afraid sheep are sheep (they might be pushing a bit too far though, the "plan" may blow up in their faces yet). Oh, and our "gigantic debt" is a drop of water compared to the ocean USA is swimming on, and they seem to get along fine. And I mean both as total amount and as percentage of gross domestic product, this is a 100% manufactured crisis.

And "tapping the resources on Earth" means really tapping them. Not the ones we are currently capable of reaching and have measured, and are also the most convenient and cheap to extract. Those are the ones that show up on resource charts. But if you look at the resources charts from the first oil crisis, you might ask yourself how is it that we have already used more oil than there was supposed to be in the first place. The answer is, we now look into more places to get it, and we are prepared to invest more effort to get it. Iron is not running out any time soon, as in the next few centuries. Neither is aluminium, coal, oil, uranium, thorium...

Will those support a 7+ billion population? Well, some people once doubted that they would be able to support one billion (I kid you not). So I'd say they will be able to support much more than that. Just because they will have to. At no point in all of the history of our species has the total population of Earth actually diminished over any period of time. World (and regional) wars, epidemics, shortages of food and resources... at the end of each of those, there were more people living on this planet than before them. I seriously doubt that trend will ever change. And when we are getting really, really crowded... well, there's enough stuff on the main asteroid belt to build 300,000 Earth's worth of liveable surface. Good luck filling that in the medium to near future. I would like to see the population somewhat stabilized, as is happening on developed countries, and I would like to turn Earth into an "ecological reserve", and keep the population growing elsewhere, but I hold little hope that we can change our ways in that respect.

Rune. So I'll cry silently for the billions of poor people that die in the process, don't get me wrong, but I will still celebrate the increase in total number of human minds, because some are bound to be interesting.

Using breeder reactors we will not run out of nuclear fuel for millions of years. Do not confuse actual reserves with mines used today. An cost increase of 10% will open lots of new mines. Yes technology makes mining cheaper but this also benefit the cheapest mines. Issue is political, if the major supplier get issues, strikes, earthquakes or simply political problems we get an problem.

Because of few suppliers and just in time deliveries we can get problems, they tend to solve themselves, see rare earth metals.

Economical crises takes time to go by. The problem in Europe is mostly two faced, you have Spain and Eire with housing bobbles like in the US, banks lend money to everybody as housing prices is going up so they get their money anyway. Stupid politicians "Bush, Clinton, Bush" enjoyed the situation as it was good times and none of them was macro economics anyway.

Greece to an degree Italy and GB has spend more money than they have. Cheap loans because of euro, let the next government pay them back.

And yes the banks, I want way more regulation on them, experience has shown that they are far more dangerous than nuclear plants.

Earth can only support short of 10 million humans. 10.000 years ago we cheat and invent farming. Yes it was more work than hunting but beat starving.

As previously posted Malthus was cheated by the industrial revolution. Change thing another way, driving an combiner is less work than hunting

And yes birth rates is way down. This is an serious issue, probably no taxes the first 5 years after having an kid in 20 years. No say no taxes on income below 100.000$ or millionairess would run trough wifes every 10 years to avoid taxes and you don't want welfare queens as they are lousy mothers.

Going elsewhere, well some guy did an quick estimate of the starship in the Avatar movie (catgirls in fur bikinis riding dragons as in awesome movie) given acceleration and estimated mass it would use more energy than earth receive from sun every day. Using the technology they would not have pollution problems, just heat the waste to 10.000 degree and separate the raw materials. They would have global warming issues (Nivens Pupeteters) as they generate so much heat it become an issue.

In short you don't go to other stars if you have problems, my guess you do it for the glory of the race, the emperor or the good Om. How long until the first Kzin fleet arives

[Dr. Muttonstache]

Not sure if this had been said yet but the U.S government seized patents on really nice alternative energy solutions because of the fear it'd screw up the economy.

It's all about money, i'm afraid. It's a big problem.