All things come to an end

In the post on Pat Tillman below Ralph of NewsFare wrote the following in the comments section:

In many respects our republic, as it has existed since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, is already dead. But such deaths of governments happen periodically in most countries, I think. Now, although the outer trappings of government may not change in any significant way, we are living in an entirely different form of government than we knew in, say, the 1960s. And for us, since the changes to date appear all to have been uniformly negative, this is a very sad time.

Nevertheless, I've personally concluded it's useless to pretend we can bring back the republic we have known. Rather, we need to focus on what form of government comes next for our country. While the death of the previous republic is an established fact, the future form of our government appears to be very much in doubt, open for ideas and actions. On that, we can hope to have an influence.

Ralph of course is right but I think it goes a lot deeper than the decline of the US Republic. Like the people that create them civilizations are born, live and die. They usually don't die of old age but of some terminal disease. Our current civilization has three such diseases and no, I'm not talking about Islamic jihads. The three are:

1. Peak Oil
2. Global Climate Change
3. Shortage of potable water

Peak Oil
I first discussed Peak Oil over three years ago in Oil, Half Way To Empty. For details you can head over to that post but to summarize Peak Oil is when half of the available oil has been taken from from the ground. When that point has been reached the availability of oil will decline. This is in a world that is dependent on oil and where demand is rising. There are no alternatives that will allow us maintain our current lifestyles or even our population levels. As a result we will continue to burn oil until it is gone. And when it's gone - well the party is over.
Climate Change
Our civilization has grown and developed during a time of unusual climate stability and predictability. For whatever reason that is changing. It really doesn't matter what the cause is. If it is indeed the result of burning fossil fuels it's too late to undo the damage and as I said above we won't anyway. The results of climate change will be severe. Much of the land where people now live will become uninhabitable. It will be drought in some areas, frequent severe storms in others. And of course there will be a rise in sea level. Mush of the worlds population lives below 100 feet above sea level. Major centers of our civilization will disappear below the seas - think NYC, Washington DC, London and the list goes on.
Shortage of potable water
This may be even more critical than oil. The shortage is driven by two things, climate change and the fact that there are just too many people.

War
Of course the decline and fall of civilization will probably occur even faster as the result of wars fought over declining resources. We are already seeing this of course - every war fought in the middle east since 1920 has really been about oil. The was in Iraq is just the latest example. And yes there will be wars fought over water. And yes there will be wars fought over real estate as once habitable lands become uninhabitable.

Oil Shale - a really bad idea for a serious problem

Oil shale is kind of like the the lunatics of the Project For A New American Century - just when you think you've beaten them back they come back with a vengeance. I have been meaning to write on this guest post over at Joe Gandelman's The Moderate Voice a few days ago by J. Thomas Andrews,
Oil Shale to the Rescue?
The only thing oil shale might rescue is the multi-national energy companies. Now Mr Andrews begins with some things I agree with:

1. Ethanol from corn or anything else in not a solution.
2. Hybrid vehicles are not a solution.
3. ANWR is not a solution.

But then he tries to sell energy from oil shale.

However, we have another source of domestic petroleum that has the potential to make a big difference: oil shale.

Oil shale is a type of rock that has a petroleum precursor called kerogen trapped inside of it. Using a variety of mechanical and chemical processes, this kergoen can be extracted and upgraded into liquid fuels like synthetic gasoline and synthetic diesel. The United States has the largest oil shale resources in the world. Most of America’s oil shale deposits are located in the undeveloped Green River Formation, which straddles Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. According to the Rand Corporation, as much as 1.1 trillion—yes, trillion— barrels of synthetic petroleum could be recovered from the Green River Formation. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, that is four times the size of Saudi Arabia’s proved reserves of conventional oil, and approximately equal to all of the proved reserves of conventional oil on earth!


Oil shale has received little attention in recent decades, but some Americans probably remember hearing about the resource during the Arab oil embargoes. In 1980, at the height of the embargoes, the U.S. Congress created the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, which was, in part, intended to develop America’s oil shale industry. When the Synthetic Fuels Corporation was created it was incredibly expensive to squeeze petroleum out of oil shale, and the plan was to invest in research and development to pioneer cheaper methods to produce shale oil. House Majority Leader, Rep. Jim Wright of Texas, thought so highly of the bill that created the Synthetic Fuels Corporation that he described it as “the most important bill we’ll act on during this decade, beginning an initiative we should have started in the 1950s.” However, by 1985, after the Arab embargoes ended and the price of oil plummeted, the incentive to invest in oil shale plummeted as well. Nearly every oil shale project in America was abandoned. With conventional oil selling at less than $25/Bbl, why would anyone want to invest in oil shale, which looked like it would never break the $80/Bbl profitability threshold?

Over the past few years though, a few things have changed. First, the price of oil has again skyrocketed. And, unlike in the 1980s, the price of oil does not look like it will come down again. This is because the peak in global production is fast approaching while demand is surging: limited supply and higher demand can only mean higher prices. Moreover, the Persian Gulf oil powers will likely continue to inflate oil prices as their stranglehold over the petroleum market tightens. As a 2005 Citigroup report noted, “…the days of $25 oil are long gone and unlikely to return any time soon.” Governments and businesses around the world are now forecasting long-term oil prices above $40, $50, and even $60 a barrel. These could all be conservative estimates.

The second major change relevant to oil shale is that several companies operating under the radar screen have developed radically cheaper oil shale production methods over the past few years. Shell is confident that a new technology it is pioneering could produce shale oil profitably if the price of crude settles above ~$25/Bbl.

There are of course several problems with oil shale production.

1. It is still a hydrocarbon and will do nothing to reduce our carbon footprint.
2. The environmental impact over several thousand square miles will be devastating.
3. The production requires water - lots of it.

I'm going to concentrate on number three today - that is enough to make it impractical.

The oil shale is located in the Green River formation which is located in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Colorado, which has most of the shale, already has a serious water problem which will only get worse over time.
Oil Shale Development Will Threaten Water Supplies

A commercial oil shale industry is projected to have a dramatic effect on Colorado’s water supplies and potentially its water quality. Water requirements for traditional mining and surface retort oil shale development are well documented, but estimates for in-situ production, which is being proposed at five sites in the Piceance Basin of Colorado, haven’t been made public. This water would have to come from a combination of Colorado’s unused share of the Colorado River– if any remains – and from existing users such as the agricultural and ranching operations.

“Drought and population growth are already affecting valuable water supplies across the West,said David Atkins, an independent hydrologist with Watershed Environmental. Adding the substantial requirements for a commercial-scale oil shale industry to this mix might bring the region to the tipping point.

”Producing oil from shale uses water on site both during and after production (to cleanse the production zone after the oil has been extracted). For example, Shell recently disclosed in a permit application for its small research and demonstration site that it will have to rinse its underground production area over 20 times, requiring up to 4 acre-feet each day for over two years and resulting in massive water disposal challenges.

[.....]

The oil shale deposits of the Green River Basin lie in one of the country’s most arid regions, one whose vulnerability to drought was laid bare in the past six years. The availability of new water to meet the needs of a commercial oil-shale industry is far from certain. Decisions made about oil shale leasing today could have ramifications for the next 400 years, the period of time that western oil shale resources are expected to provide a significant portion of our nation’s energy needs.

Oil shale is not a solution.

Global Warming: Pimps vs. Deniers

There is a Newsweek article by Sharon Begley out this week that is causing yet another dust up over the global warming question. This is an issue that I've not written extensively about here, but which I've watched closely. I've read reports from both sides and viewed numerous science specials on the subject via TLC, Discovery, Science Channel, etc. and I've reached a few conclusions.

First, to the primarily conservative global warming "deniers" out there, I have a news flash. You do not "know" (with any absolute certainty) that human activity is not the primary driving force, or even a significant contributor to climate change. Second, to the supporters (or "pimps") of the human causation camp, while I applaud the efforts of anyone who chooses to save energy, pollute the planet less and generally tries to keep the place tidy, you also do not "know" that we are the primary cause. This is a hugely complicated subject involving scientific data on trends which change over geologic time frames.

Yes, there is a large majority of our scientific community which supports the human causation camp, but our scientific communities have been very certain of other things in the past and found to fall on their faces in light of later revelations. We're talking about changes which occur over periods of thousands and millions of years. We rely on more "recent" data taken when our ability to do such measurements was far more crude than it is today and on data gleaned from deep core samples demonstrating minuscule changes in gas content or rock samples from before the dinosaurs grew large. What I'm saying is, there is room for error on both sides.

One thing which is not in question, however, is that the climate of our planet most certainly does change, and it is changing today. The planet is getting warmer. We know with a high degree of certainty that, back in the Jurassic, the temperature was far higher than it is today, and atmospheric methane and CO2 content was significantly higher. When the earliest protohumans (such as Lucy) lived, it was also a hothouse. By the time the Neanderthals were roaming about, the planet was in the midst of one of many ice ages where the temperate band of the planet barely extended as far North as present day Virginia.

There is a growing body of scientists who are positive that, twice in our planet's history, the entire world froze over into a massive snowball and life only hung on by a thread.

The climate changes. It continues to change. We may or may not be the primary driving force behind this. But now we come to my main point...

No matter what the cause - be it cars and factories, flatulence from cows, or a normal cycle of our changing biosphere - if our planet is warming up and may continue to do so, wouldn't you want to know about it??? If the ice caps are melting (they are... the long fabled Northwest passage is now open) and the global sea levels are going to continue to rise... if temperature changes will affect the amount and distribution of arable land... wouldn't you want to know about it and do what you can to prepare for it???

This situation is yet another which appears to be vastly important but we are being paralyzed by politics to the point where we will choose to do nothing about it. It's a terrifying prospect. The Right is so busy denying it and the Left is so busy trying to blame the Republicans' policies for it, nobody is noticing that low lying islands are already disappearing under the water. Manhattan could become the new Venice and a lot of very pricey real estate in Florida may someday only be viewable with scuba gear.

Shouldn't the conversation turn to studying the actual data, figuring out what's going to happen next and what we should be doing to prepare for it rather than spending all of our time deciding who's fault it is? Is this not a potentially dangerous enough situation that it might be time to set aside the politics and start building some levees?

Carbon offsets - a gimmick?

“The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation,” said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group.

The New York Times asks a very good question that needs to be asked.
Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?

In addition to the celebrities — Leo, Brad, George — politicians like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are now running, at least part of the time, carbon-neutral campaigns. A lengthening list of big businesses — international banks, London’s taxi fleet, luxury airlines — also claim “carbon neutrality.” Silverjet, a plush new trans-Atlantic carrier, bills itself as the first fully carbon-neutral airline. It puts about $28 of each round-trip ticket into a fund for global projects that, in theory, squelch as much carbon dioxide as the airline generates — about 1.2 tons per passenger, the airline says.

Also, a largely unregulated carbon-cutting business has sprung up. In this market, consultants or companies estimate a person’s or company’s output of greenhouse gases. Then, these businesses sell “offsets,” which pay for projects elsewhere that void or sop up an equal amount of emissions — say, by planting trees or, as one new company proposes, fertilizing the ocean so algae can pull the gas out of the air. Recent counts by Business Week magazine and several environmental watchdog groups tally the trade in offsets at more than $100 million a year and growing blazingly fast.

But is the carbon-neutral movement just a gimmick?

On this, environmentalists aren’t neutral, and they don’t agree. Some believe it helps build support, but others argue that these purchases don’t accomplish anything meaningful — other than giving someone a slightly better feeling (or greener reputation) after buying a 6,000-square-foot house or passing the million-mile mark in a frequent-flier program. In fact, to many environmentalists, the carbon-neutral campaign is a sign of the times — easy on the sacrifice and big on the consumerism.

I come down on the gimmick side. Little more than a way for people to feel good about NOT doing what really needs to be done if we are serious about reducing dependency of fossil fuel and reducing CO₂. For all the hype about alternative energy sources there are none that will come close to replacing our current consumption of fossil fuels. The only way to reduce CO₂ emissions is to use less energy - a lot less energy. Now few people want to make that change and in fact without major infrastructure changes we can't. The entire carbon offset gimmick is one of the things that leads me to believe that nothing is going to happen to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It will happen in 50 to 100 years - when it's all gone - but not before in spite of all the warnings. I'm sure there were one or two individuals on Easter Island who warned people about cutting down all the trees. Few listened then and few are willing to make the short term sacrifices now.

Those damn know it all scientists

With the coldest weather we have had in years about to descend on the Pacific Northwest you wouldn't think I'd be thinking about global warming but this just jumped out at me.

Losers of the week: The Weather Channel and their pro-global warming agenda

Yes, that's right the wingnuts are attacking the Weather Channel for talking about the climate. So now it's an agenda and the Weather Channel must be in favor of it.