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Is the Biodiesel Nightmare Over?

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

By David L. Brown

Congress has allowed a $1 per gallon subsidy on biodiesel fuel to expire, causing the struggling “faux fuels” enterprise to stumble to a halt. According to The Brock Report, an agri-business consultancy, “that industry has all but closed up shop.” The Brock announcement also included this:

“Pretty much every plant is idle,” said Michael Frohlich, Director of Communications for the National Biodiesel Board (NBB).

Even with the federal tax incentives, the biodiesel industry was already in deep trouble. U.S. biodiesel production was down 31% last year compared to 2008 due to a lack of profitability.

Monte Shaw, Executive Director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association says only 73 million gallons of biodiesel were produced last year from that state’s production capacity of 320 million gallons. Nationwide, last year’s capacity utilization was even worse than in Iowa at only 15%.

Bio-diesel fuel is made from soybeans, an essential foodstuff. As we have discussed repeatedly here, to divert crops from the world food markets as hundreds of millions hover on the edge of famine is a travesty.

Like its evil twin, ethanol, biodiesel is an unnatural product that has no place in the world. Not only do these faux fuels take food from hungry humans, they encourage over-planting, resource depletion, and soil erosion. By causing commodity prices to be bid up, they increase food prices worldwide, a cascade effect that hits eveyone from middle class Americans to the poorest of the poor in the Third World.

I don’t know if the Senate failed to extend the subsidy on biodiesel through wisdom or mere carelessness, but whatever the reason, the result is one that we can heartily support.

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Posted in Age of Oil, Agriculture Issues, Energy Technology | Comments Off

$100 Million Funding for Algae Biofuels Plant

Friday, December 11th, 2009

By David L. Brown

A $50 million federal grant has been awarded to Sapphire Energy of San Diego, CA, for a revolutionary bio-fuels plant to be built in New Mexico. The announcement was made by Energy Secretary Steven Chu, whose department issued the grant under the economic recovery program. At the same time Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the USDA would further back the program with loan guarantees up to $54.5 million.

The company is pioneering what it calls “green crude oil,” created from renewable algae. The “green crude” will be used to make biodiesel and jet fuel. The company has already demonstrated the concept with research facilities at Las Cruces, NM and Portales, NM. The process has been demonstrated with several airliner test flights powered by fuel made by the company, and experiments are underway to prove the ability of algae-oil to be used to make gasoline.

potential_mainThe project will demonstrate an integrated process in which algae will be grown in ponds, then processed to remove water and extract oils. In a second stage the oils will be processed to produce fuels. Algae, pictured at left, not only grows fast (think kudzu here), but naturally contains a high percentage of oils.

According to Sapphire CEO the project will create as many as 750 direct and indirect jobs in New Mexico during construction, and 30-40 full-time positions after the plant is opened. Construction is expected to begin next year.

Sapphire claims that the new energy model, which uses water, carbon dioxide and sunlight to grow the algae, will be carbon neutral and produce fuels identical to those made from fossil fuels. It does not require large inputs of water and energy, nor does it rely on agricultural crops as is the case with some other alternative fuel processes such as those used to produce ethanol from corn and biodiesel from soybeans.

New Mexico Senator Tom Udall hailed the project, saying it “will decrease our dependence on foreign oil, reduce our carbon footprint, and create jobs for hardworking New Mexicans.”

Algae offers one of the best sources for bio-fuels, since it can be grown relatively cheaply in ponds or tanks in areas with lots of sunlight, even deserts as in southern New Mexico. Corn for ethanol, on the other hand, is a farm crop requiring many inputs of land, labor, chemicals and seeds. Using farm crops to replace oil is unsustainable, uneconomical, and just plain foolish.

This is not the only such program in the works. On July 15, 2009, I reported (here) a major investment by oil giant ExxonMobil in an algae energy joint venture with Synthetic Genomics, a company founded by geneticist Craig Venter. ExxonMobil was reported to be putting $600 million into the plan. BP and other companies are also jumping on the algae bandwagon, making this one of the hottest areas in alternative fuel development.

All is not roses in the risky business of alternative energy. On May 13, 2009 it was announced that GreenFuel Technologies was closing down, a victim of the credit crunch. I posted an extensive report on this company’s algae fuel program on October 20, 2006 (here). GreenFuel was a joint venture between Harvard and MIT, and invested millions before falling victim to the economic troubles.

Posted in Age of Oil, Agriculture Issues, Bio-Engineering, Energy Technology, Fossil Fuels | Comments Off

Rains Threaten Promise of Good Harvest

Friday, October 30th, 2009

By David L. Brown

We remember with a shudder the spike in food prices last year that seemed to push the world toward famine. As the U.S. is one of the few remaining exporters of food in the world, the harvest here is pretty important. And, thanks to plenty of rain during the growing season, 2009 was looking like a great season for corn and soybeans across the farm belt.

Just three weeks ago, on October 9, the Dept. of Agriculture issued a news release predicting an excellent harvest of corn, soybeans and other crops. Here is what the USDA news release (read it here) had to say about corn and beans:

Corn production is forecast at 13.0 billion bushels, up 8 percent from last year and down only 0.2 percent from the 2007 record. Corn yield is expected to average 164.2 bushels per acre, up 10.3 bushels above last year. If realized, this yield will be the highest on record. Corn growers are expected to harvest 79.3 million acres, down 1 percent from the September forecast.

Soybean production remains on target for a record-high year and is forecast at 3.25 billion bushels, up 10 percent from 2008. Based on October 1 conditions, soybean yields are expected to average 42.4 bushels per acre, up 2.7 percent from 2008. If realized, this will be the third highest yield on record. Growers are expected to harvest 76.6 million acres of soybeans, which is the largest area on record.

10-29-09_18281Pretty good news, right? But what a difference three weeks can make. I am reminded of the old saying: “Man Plans, God Laughs.”

It seems that things are not going too well in this harvest season. Many crops were planted late due to excessive Spring rains, or replanted because of flooding. Now the harvest is running late and the rains have returned to keep farmers out of the field, or to create disasters if they do venture forth. The picture at left tells the story. It was taken yesterday in Clark County, Arkansas.

And it’s not just in Arkansas that rainy weather has struck throughout October. Following are on-the-scene reports posted today by farmers on the AgWeb.com website (here). To give you a good feel for what’s happening right now, I’m posting nearly all of today’s comments. Here’s what farmers were saying today:

Menard County, Central Illinois: I think it is time to remind everyone (or maybe you realize) that just because there is a week of dry weather in the forecast we are actually going to be harvesting for that whole week! Around here we are probably looking at 4 or 5 good drying days before we could consider getting back in the field, and we will still be making a mess.  I also expect the Sangamon River and Salt Creek to come out of there banks today and tomorrow, affecting thousands of un-harvested acres.  I would estimate that harvest progress for this area is: corn 20% complete, soybeans 40%. What a year…good luck.

Bond County, South Central Illinois: UN-FREAKIN-BELIEVABLE.

Huntington County, Northeast Indiana: We are having RAIN for the umpteenth time this month!!  We still have 125 acres of beans to cut.  And they are really good beans.  Yielding really well.  We have shelled a very small amount of corn and it was wetter than we have dried for several years.  25-30 [percent] moisture.  We hope we have a lot of nice days in November.  Stay safe and keep smiling.

Audrain County, Mo.: Lindsey Benne, Beef Today and Dairy Today Art Director: Farmers are hauling in gravel to their fields just to get in and out.

Carlos, Minn.: It has been raining off and on for 3 weeks. We got a start to the beans 3 weeks ago, some of my neighbors were out on Tuesday the only day of full sun and wind that we had. The beans were between 18-28 %. I don’t have the balls to try that yet. I thought we could go on Wednesday but at 10 am it started to drizzle and it has been raining ever since to get through the gloom we have put the carpenter belt on to do some remolding have a safe harvest say a pray for dry weather.

Opole, Minn.: Rain, rain, go away, and come back next July day!!!

Lafayette County Wis.: WET, WET, WET. I guess we are all in the same boat. We are way, way behind. Corn is developing green mold. Broker says when weather straightens out there is a big crop out there. Problem is will the sun ever shine again?  Stay safe everyone…a safe harvest is a good harvest.

Nebraska Panhandle: Guess we don’t have to worry about the irrigated corn blowing over before harvest, the snow is holding it up!

Buena Vista County, Northwest Iowa: Raining here again, close to 10 inches now in October, Still some beans out in the fields here, I just got done, Yields decent in the 50′s which is normal. Some have gave up on beans and started corn, most of it from what I’ve heard is anywhere from 20% to 40% moisture and yields from 120 to 220, with very low test weights.  Stalk Rot now a real concern & some guys are finding green snap [broken stalks] they didn’t know they had, those yields cut in half.  I believe this harvest, when it’s over, if ever will be one, we all will want to forget!

Cass County, Iowa: 1.4 in. of rain so far today and it’s still raining. I’ve only run 80 acres of beans in October. It rains or drizzles nearly every day. Yields are great with beans 50 to 62 and most corn over 200 but wet @ 23 to 25%.  It’s going to be a long fall at this pace.

So, let us make a wild guess: The excellent harvests predicted just a few weeks ago are in big trouble, especially if the rains continue. When crops remain in the field past their “use by date,” they quickly begin to deteriorate. As some of the farmers quoted above mention, mold can damage the kernels, especially in wet conditions. Stalk rot can set in, allowing wind to blow down the mature stalks, making it impossible to harvest with a combine. (In the old days, farmers would respond to that problem by turning cattle or hogs into the fields to chow on the fallen crops … but that was in the days when most farms had livestock, and most  fields had fences.)

The world supply of food is running dangerously low, and a poor harvest in the U.S. is potentially disastrous, especially in light of severe drought conditions in Australia and northern China this season. If we go into 2010 with anything less than bin-busting yields, another world food crisis is almost certain to develop. And, as I pointed out in an essay on June 2 (here), famine doesn’t result from a shortage of money (although there is a lot of that going around), but a shortage of food. Hungry people can’t eat money, and money can’t feed hungry people when there isn’t enough food to buy.

A major weather front is now moving east out of the Midwest, bringing promise of several sunny days. However, as the farmer from Menard County, Illinois pointed out above, it takes at least four or five days for ground to dry sufficiently to get machinery into the fields. If another front moves through in a week or so, we could see another cycle of mud and gloom.

I’ll keep an eye on this unfolding threat, and, oh … could something called “climate change” have anything to do with this? Surely not.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Climate Change, Famine | Comments Off

Ug99 Poised on Afghan Border

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

By David L. Brown

I have written several times over the past few years about the spreading threat of Ug99, a wheat stem rust disease first identified in Uganda in 1999. It is a serious threat not only to wheat, but also related barley and rye varieties. Spores carried by the wind have been spreading Ug99 toward the major wheat growing regions stretching from Iran through Afghanistan and the other “Stans” and eventually to India and China. All of these nations are seriously dependent upon wheat crops to support their people. This disease does more than just reduce yields—it destroys entire crops. Agronomists are struggling to find or breed resistant varieties to replace the threatened “staff of life,” the mainwheat-beautiful source of food for about a third of the world’s people from southern Europe through China. The “bounteous waves of grain” as pictured here and that provide all-important food for a third of the world’s people are under serious threat.

Now the ugly disease has reached the border of Afghanistan and is poised to enter that nation, already in a state of chaos. Afghans are dependent upon two crops, wheat and opium poppies—and you can’t live on a diet of opium, or at least not for long.

According to a recent news item in New Scientist magazine, Afghan farmers harvested a bumper crop this year, thanks to timely Spring rains. But, the article continued, “… the beleaguered country can’t rest easy. The Ug99 wheat rust, a virulent fungus that wipes out entire crops, is poised to cross the border from Iran.”

The article, which appeared in the August 8, 2009 edition, continued:

Fungal spores have been spreading on the wind from Uganda, where the disease was first discovered in 1999. They reached the wheat fields of Iran two years ago, prompting scientists to warn that millions in Asia were at risk of starvation. If the epidemic reaches Afghanistan, its effects would be catastrophic. “Nearly all farmers in Afghanistan grow wheat for food or sale,” says Mahmood Osmanzai, a scientist working for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in the country. Most of the wheat varieties grown in Afghanistan, and indeed around the world, are vulnerable to Ug99.

I’ve been reporting on this threat since my first post on the subject on August 31, 2006. For more details about the threat of this “ugly” wheat disease, read earlier posts here, here, and here.

In a world besieged by climate change, a spreading disease with the ability to destroy small grain crops is the last thing we need. Australia, formerly a leading exporter of foodstuffs, has been suffering long-standing drought conditions, and the wheat growing region of China has been similarly struck with dry conditions. Waving fields of grain are being replaced by dust storms reminiscent of the Dust Bowl Days of the U.S.

Afghanistan, with a population of around 30 million, is in serious danger of famine should the wheat crop fail. World stocks of grain and other foodstuffs are at record low levels, and aid agencies and foreign governments could be hard pressed to fill the shortage in case of  a devastated Afghan wheat crop. But that is a minor problem compared with the looming threat when (not if) Ug99 spreads through Pakistan and northern India and China, where more than two billion people are heavily dependent upon wheat as “the staff of life.” These three nations rank No. 1,2 and 6 in the world by population.

There is real fear that the Ug99 strain of wheat stem rust may find its way into North America. A spreading plague of plant disease across the wheat growing regions of the U.S. and Canada could mean disaster for a world already teetering on the brink of famine.

I’ll keep watching this important subject, which seems to attract little attention from the conventional media.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Disease and Pandemics, Famine | Comments Off

‘Green Revolution’ Pioneer Borlaug R.I.P.

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

By David L. Brown

borlaug-youngNorman Borlaug died yesterday in Dallas, Texas at 95. He was never a celebrity except among the environmentally conscious few, but to us he was a super star. Dr. Borlaug was credited with saving at least a billion and perhaps two billion lives during his lifelong efforts to improve food production through plant breeding and genetics.

Virtually single-handed he created the applied science behind the burst of food production called “The Green Revolution.” During his career he worked on wheat in Mexico and India, rice in China, and other crops in Africa, creating new hybrid varieties to produce significantly more food from the same acres. His work won the Nobel Prize in 1970.

No one  can fault Dr. Borlaug, and yet…

Well, not to be a Grinch, but the Green Revolution is like a lot of things — it has its dark side. Yes, millions and even billions of lives were “saved” from famine through its effects. But the world now has more than 6.6 billion people, more than three times as many as when Dr. Borlaug began his work in the 1940s. And the trouble is that the “Green Revolution” was never a solution to the food requirements of a growing population — it was merely a band-aid, a jury-rigged response that has allowed the world population to continue to climb until today our food production system is once again straining to keep up.

Over the last half century or so, thanks in large part to efforts such as those of Dr. Borlaug, modern industrial agriculture has done a wonderful job of keeping up with population growth. But that highly productive system is based on cheap and plentiful resources, and those very resources are beginning to become less plentiful and more costly. We saw what happened last year when oil prices soared to well over $100 per barrel. Food prices followed, doubling in some cases.

Food and oil are joined at the hip. Without cheap and abundant oil, there will be no cheap and abundant food. According to many reliable sources, we have reached the peak of oil production, and thus, we have reached the peak of food  production. There may be a few years of ups and downs before this fact settles in, but there seems little doubt that the world has exceeded its capacity to feed its people, and the problem will continue to become worse.

There are many ways in which oil plays such a key role in industrial agriculture. Not only does it power the machines, but it is also the means of mining, extracting, pumping, manufacturing, and transporting materials and equipment to the farm, then carrying food to markets around the world. Oil is the feed stock for chemical processes that produce herbicides, insecticides, and other substances critical for top yields. Higher oil prices create more demand for natural gas, which is the source of nitrogen fertilizer.

Here in the U.S. we cannot easily see how serious this problem really is. To the average American, food costs are a relatively small part of our budgets, around 10-15 percent. But consider the situation in the poorest parts of the world, where many survive on one dollar per day or less. For these unfortunates, the “beneficiaries” of the Green Revolution, most of  their scant incomes goes in one way or another to provide them with something to eat. Nearly a billion are undernourished, eating no more than one meal a day if they’re lucky. They’re living on the desperate edge of famine.

And what does it mean for those billion or two billion people at the bottom of this different kind of “food pyramid” when prices go up? Their incomes certainly do not rise accordingly, and if food that once could be obtained on one dollar a day rises to a dollar-fifty, what will become of those who still earn only one dollar? The answer is not an easy one, for their main choices are to sink further into malnutrition, become criminals and steal from others, attempt to immigrate to a place where conditions are better — or to succumb to famine.

There is a well-known principle called the Law of Unintended Consequences, and while some foresaw the bitter end game now beginning to be played out in the world as a result of the burst of agricultural production and resulting explosion of population that it made possible, few actions were taken to prevent the final calamity that was to  follow, the calamity that is even now beginning to occur.

For more about this subject, use the search field at upper right to find other essays on food security. You might particularly wish to read “Money Won’t Solve Looming Famine,” posted on June 2, in which I examined the harsh fact that the world simply can no longer afford to feed its billions.

So  let us pause for a moment in respect for the memory of Dr. Norman Borlaug. He was a good man, he did great things. One might say that he kept a candle burning against the approaching night. But darkness still gathers, and the candle is sputtering out.

Posted in Age of Oil, Agriculture Issues, Bio-Engineering, Famine, GM Crops | Comments Off

Biodiesel from Algae Holds Promise

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

By David L. Brown

The challenge of finding renewable sources of energy continues to haunt humanity. The misguided ethanol program that turns corn into alcohol has backfired, driving up food prices and helping create scarcity. Biodiesel made from soybeans is similarly plagued with problems. Other ideas such as growing switchgrass or utilizing wood chips and plant residue have failed to prove practical. One of the problems with those is the high input required to collect, transport and process the plant material.

Another option that has been kicked around for several years now is the idea of producing ethanol from algae, a.k.a. pond scum. Algae actually produces oil which can be extracted and used to replace petroleum. In the presence of sunlight and CO² algae has the ability to double its weight several timea a day. Under controlled conditions, an acre devoted to algae can produce as much as 15 times more biomass per year than an acre devoted to corn. And the good news is that algae does not require large inputs in the form of fuel, fertilizer and chemicals.

But that isn’t all—in theory algae actually grows even more rapidly when fed additional CO² and it can thrive on organic input from sewage, animal waste and other effluents. According to an article that appeared last year on the Science Daily website (here), algae could not only help replace fossil fuels, but help remove carbon from the air while reducing soil and water pollution.

Now no less an entity that ExxonMobil, that giant of fossil fuel companies, has joined the algae bandwagon, according to a report today on the web site of the British newspaper The Independent. Because shis story is so important (and not too long), I will quote it in its entirety:

Oil giant Exxon sees the future–and it is green algae

By Stephen Foley in New York

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

The oil giant that environmentalists love to hate, ExxonMobil, which for years denied the existence of man-made climate change, is sensationally “going green” in a very literal sense – investing $600m (£369m) in algae.

The company says it believes it can make a new kind of fuel for cars and aircraft, one that can be produced in its existing refineries and will not require modification of vehicles’ engines.

At the heart of the project is Craig Venter, the scientist best known for his private-sector effort to sequence the human genome, and his latest company, Synthetic Genomics.

Exxon is putting $300m into its own research and at least as much again into Synthetic Genomic’s efforts to build a lab and, ultimately, large-scale production facilities. Both sides were enthusiastic but cautious announcing the partnership yesterday. “We need to be realistic,” said Emil Jacobs, vice-president of research at Exxon. “This is not going to be easy, and there are no guarantees of success.”

Spending on the algae fuels project will require only a fraction of Exxon’s annual capital budgets of $25bn to $30bn, but it will be the world’s largest biofuels development project of its kind, Mr Venter said.

Environmentalists are keen on algae as a fuel source because, unlike many ethanol products, it is not taking up land, water and crops that might otherwise be given over to the production of food.

ExxonMobil has come under pressure from shareholders – including descendants of its founder, John D Rockefeller – to diversify from fossil fuels, though management insists oil and gas will continue to be the dominant sources of fuel for decades to come.

BP already has a partnership with Synthetic Genomics. Royal Dutch Shell, which is second to ExxonMobil in global refining capacity, announced plans in December for an algae project in Hawaii.

As you can see, ExxonMobil is hardly the first to explore this alternative fuel concept, but it is noteworthy that the world’s largest energy company has recognized the necessity to begin seeking ways to replace petroleum. It is also noteworthy that Craig Venter’s company, Synthetic Genomics is involved with Exxon in the endeavor. Venter is famous for having been the first to map the human genome. On the home page of its web site (here), Synthetic Genomics, Inc. provides the following brief position statement:

The world is facing increasingly difficult challenges today. Population growth resulting in the growing demand for critical resources such as energy, clean water, food and medicine are taxing our fragile planet. To fulfill these needs we need disruptive technologies. We believe genomic advances offer the world viable, sustainable alternatives.

At Synthetic Genomics Inc. we are creating genomic-driven commercial solutions to revolutionize many industries. We have started by focusing on energy, but we imagine a future where our science could be used to produce a variety of products, from synthetically derived vaccines to prevent human diseases to efficient cost effective ways to create clean drinking water. The world is dependent on science and we’re leading the way in turning novel science into life-changing solutions.

The latest news about algae demonstrates that there may be viable long-term alternatives to fossil fuels. It’s too bad progress on these and similar programs was not begun several decades ago when the first oil shortages occurred. Exxon’s spokesperson states that oil and gas will remain “dominant” for decades to come, but falling production tells a different story. We are past the Oil Peak and the era of cheap and plentiful oil is over. We are now in a period where prices and supplies are creating a yo-yo market, and that cannot provide a sound basis for economic stability.

Here is an artist’s rendering showing a conception of how an algae farm could be built in a desert environment unsuited for agricultural use. The facility would produce biodiesel fuel.

algae_farm

We need to develop all kinds of truly sustainable energy sources as rapidly as possible. That includes wind, solar, wave, geothermal, and now algae farming. Our future depends upon it.

Posted in Age of Oil, Agriculture Issues, Energy Technology | 1 Comment »

Money Won’t Solve Looming Famine

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

By David L. Brown

The steady increase in hunger continues to haunt the third world, but it seems that the press and world “leaders” have trouble figuring out what the cause of spreading famine might be. News reports now say that hundreds of thousands have joined the ranks of the hungry, most notably in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and even India, the world’s most populous nation.

This article on the BBC web site today is interesting, at least to me, because it lists several “factors and symptoms” relating to the growing number of hungry people in south Asia. Here, in its entirety, is the list intended to shed light on the problem:

  1. Declining wages at home
  2. A drop in remittances from abroad
  3. Poor women often go without food to feed their families
  4. Children can be pulled out of school and sent to work
  5. High prices have forced people to borrow money at high interest
  6. Income is spent on food but not on other essentials

Why do I find this interesting? Well, because it pretty much ignores what is really the most important factor, in fact, what we might say is THE factor behind growing hunger. That is the simple fact that there is not enough food in the world today. Production has faltered and stocks have been nearly exhausted. All those other things listed above are merely red herrings that serve to distract attention from the real problem.

Declining wages? A drop in remittances from abroad? These are symptoms of the worldwide recession/depression that is based in large part on food scarcity and higher costs. Borrowing money at high interest? Spending money on food rather than other essentials? Again, merely strawmen set up to help us skip over the fact that the world is falling into an economic pit caused by resource depletion.

The “problem” is being defined not as a shortage of food, but as a shortage of money. That is a serious misrepresentation of what is actually going on.

And it’s worse than that, because it’s not enough to simply recognize that there isn’t enough food to go around. We also have to understand that there are more people to be fed, and that the numbers continue to rise. There are three times as many people alive today than when I was a kid, and the Earth has delivered up no extra resources of land, water, energy and other inputs to provide for those extra mouths.

(more…)

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Economics, Famine | Comments Off

California Vulnerable to Water Disaster

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

By David L. Brown

As our readers know we have pointed out many problems facing the Earth and human civilization. There is always a common denominator, it seems, a thread that winds its way through all the dangers facing our planet. That is the imbalance between growing human numbers with “improving” lifestyles and the ability of the planet to support the ever-upward pressure of economies and societies based solely on growth.

A recent issue of Science magazine contains an article that highlights one particular example of this, the growing imbalance between the demand of California residents and farmers and uncertainties about the supply of fresh water.

As is so often the case when examining environmental impacts on human beings, the problem in California is not just that there are more people demanding more water—there is also less water, thanks perhaps to climate change. A serious drought has been plaguing the Golden State for the past three years. According to the Science article, titled “California’s Water Crisis: Worse to Come?” (March 27, 2009 issue; subscription required) in February, “Central Valley farmers were told that all water deliveries would be halted, and State Water Project managers said they would be forced to cut water deliveries to just 15% of normal.”

California is the nation’s No. 1 producer of many food crops, and yet the abundance depends in very large part on irrigation. The state has hundreds of miles of canals and waterways such as this:

1665-1-med

This is a view of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the hub of California’s fresh water system. This waterway is girdled by more than a thousand miles of levees. According to hydrologists, the levees are bound to fail at some point in the future, creating future problems that could be catastrophic.

Meanwhile, though, it’s drought that is the problem. For now, late winter snowfall brought mountain snowpack up to 90 percent of normal, relieving pressure on administrators to cut off irrigation water to farmers. For now, the bullet has been dodged. However, recent trends have been ominous, hinting at more years of drought and water shortages.

Discussing the future of the delta, Robert F. Service the author of  the Science article writes:

Over the next few decades, a one-two punch of climate change and earthquakes is expected to change the delta dramatically. The delta contains some 1770 kilometers of levees holding back water from dozens of stadium-sized sunken “islands” inside which the land has subsided. By 2050, the chance of widespread levee failures is as high as 95%, due to runoff from the northern Sierras, which is predicted to be more concentrated in the late winter and early spring, and the increasing risk of earthquake, according to a report last summer by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC). If that occurs, salt water from the San Francisco Bay would rush in to fill the voids, dramatically increasing the salinity of water in the delta, possibly making it undrinkable. Adding sea-level rise to the equation–as climate models predict–brings the date of levee failures closer. “It will happen,” says Ellen Hanek, a PPIC economist in San Francisco.

This looming threat is merely a tiny sampling of a worldwide phenomenon that is threatening some of the regions where a large proportion of the world’s people live. The problem is that glaciers which feed rivers such as the Ganges in India, the Yellow and Yangtze in China, the Mekong in Vietnam and even the Po in Italy are melting. Snow alone does not feed the rivers a steady flow of water through the summer, and as global temperatures climb winter snow in the high mountains melts faster. The result is a growing tendency to disastrous flooding early in the season followed by drought just when crops need the water most.

Fresh water is just one of the many resources which are growing in short supply, and it is a crucial one to human existence. No form of agriculture has been devised that does not rely upon reliable and abundant sources of water. As the California example illustrates, even wealthy and advanced regions can be threatened when water scarcity spreads.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Conservation Issues, Desertification and Soil Loss, Economics | Comments Off

The World in 2100: A Choice of Futures

Friday, March 20th, 2009

By David L. Brown

Despite all the hullabaloo about global warming, the resulting climate change, and the impact on humanity, I continue to be amazed at the reluctance of those who discuss the subject to face up to the fact that Mother Nature is going to take care of the problem, perhaps quite soon.

A cover story in a recent issue of New Scientist included this image showing how the world might look in 2100 if the average temperature rises by 4º C.

26971701

Now this indicates that a pretty large section of the Earth is going to be quite a bit different from what we are used to. Yellow is desert and brown is uninhabitable. Now this is not going to be very scientific, because I am going to make a wild guess here. If you disagree, please insert the number you think is appropriate. My wild guess: This map indicates that the parts of the world where approximately 95 percent of human beings live is going to become either dry wasteland or totally unfit for human habitation.

So, how can we take this data point and create a conclusion? Well, first I will tell you what the New Scientist article more or less concluded. To wit, that an estimated nine billion people could be relocated to those areas in the far North and along the edge of Australia and a melting Antarctica. (In the interest of fairness, the writer did devote a scant two paragraphs to James Lovelock who opined that such an outcome was unlikely.)

And how is this miracle to be accomplished? Well, by allowing 20 square meters for each of the nine billion people, there will be plenty of space in Canada, Siberia, Northern Europe and so forth to house them. Of course, they will be a bit crowded, but nevermind, the author supposes that all those billions will be living in high rise buildings. Food would be produced by farming the former tundra land by some unexplained means.

Now, I don’t know about you but this sounds a little bit like a fantasy scenario. We will take all the people of the world, Arab camel drivers, Indian rag pickers, Pygmy hunger-gatherers, Wall Street bankers (oops, scratch that, they’ll soon be extinct), and transport them all up to Siberia or someplace in the Arctic region of Canada or Alaska, and put them all together in high rise buildings. All nine billion of them (and no doubt still continuing to breed toward the ten, eleven, twelve billion level)? Well, okay, now let me suggest that the comment she included for editorial balance from Lovelock makes a lot more sense. Here is what he said:

The only places we will be guaranteed enough water will be in the high latitudes. “Everything in that region will be growing like mad. That’s where all the life will be,” says former NASA scientist James Lovelock, who developed the “Gaia” theory, which describes the Earth as a self-regulating entity. “The rest of the world will be largely desert with a few oases.”
So if only a fraction of the planet will be habitable, how will our vast population survive? Some, like Lovelock, are less than optimistic. “Humans are in a pretty difficult position and I don’t think they are clever enough to handle what’s ahead. I think they’ll survive as a species all right, but the cull during this century is going to be huge,” he says. “The number remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less.”

Now here are the two scenarios: First, nine billion people living in high rise buildings while growing crops on former tundra while most of the world turns to scorching desert, or, second, a “cull” during this century that is going to be “huge.”

Well, I know which way I’m going to bet. Meanwhile, we see stories like this one from today;s news:

PRINCETON, NJ — For the first time in Gallup’s 25-year history of asking Americans about the trade-off between environmental protection and economic growth, a majority of Americans say economic growth should be given the priority, even if the environment suffers to some extent.

Now this may sound innocuous on the surface, but think about this: The pursuit of a go-go growth economic model is what has gotten us where we are today, faced with environmental disaster, peak-Everything, famine, economic collapse, and climate change that could make the map above come to be reality. And given the choice between helping stave off the terrible problems that face us, most people in the end vote for the status quo, or even worse, for an impossible return to a condition that is no longer possible.

How will those millions of high-rise buildings be built up there in the presently frigid North considering that we are running out of easily produced natural resources such as oil, iron, copper, and a host of other commodities? Will some Magic Fairy appear and wave a wand? This reminds me of my previous essays in which is invoked The Rabbit of Unreasonable Hope, ready to be pulled out of a magician’s hat to solve all the problems we face.

Unfortunately, there is no fairy, there is no rabbit, there are no easy answers. But that’s okay because even though the problems facing humanity are beyond our ability to solve, Mother Nature is standing by to take control of Her planet once again. She has done it before and she knows what to do. She uses proven tools such as the concept of “overshoot and collapse,” the application of famine, plague, war and death (the famous Four Horsemen). And she can always count on the foolishness of mere human beings to aid her at every step along the way.

Posted in Agriculture Issues, Climate Change, Desertification and Soil Loss, Population Issues | Comments Off

Financial Meltdown Mirrored at North Pole

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

by Val Germann

The world’s financial markets and “The Top of the World” are exhibiting a frightening similarity as winter ends: both are melting down.   In a few days the G-20 nations will sit down for a talk as the planet’s flagship currency, the U.S. Dollar,  liquefies around their ankles.  That sinking feeling has to be shared by the world’s polar bears, forced onto land and even to cannibalism by the liquefaction of the Arctic’s ice.  As a contributor to a current article on the TERRADAILY website says:

“We don’t have hard evidence about climate change but we have evidence about the numerous symptoms of climate change on polar bears.”

And those symptoms are very bad news indeed, starting with a continuing decrease in the size and weight of the bears, down more than ten percent over the last quarter-century.   One cause of this sad decline could well be the fact that the bear’s hunting season is three weeks shorter than it was in 1980.  Another is that the loss of sea ice is forcing the bears to swim ever farther in pursuit of seals, their primary food.

Even more disturbing is a new and dangerous behavior on the part of pregnant  bears:

Faced with the growing uncertainty concerning the ice, pregnant polar bears are increasingly denning on land, researchers have noticed.  In northern Alaska, two-thirds of bears now choose to den on land in order to give birth early in the year, an inverse proportion of what was observed a few years ago.  “They are refugees rather than immigrants. This is not a chosen exile, this is a forced exile,” Derocher told AFP.

The bears are much more vulnerable on land than on ice and their food sources farther away.  But even more shocking, and revealing, is the following change in polar bear behavior:

Climate change also appears to have altered the bears’ behavioural patterns.  Several recent incidents of cannibalism in Alaska have observers worried.  “We knew of polar bears killing and eating other polar bears,” Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told AFP.  “But the difference was that this time the polar bears were clearly deliberately hunting other bears, attacking for example females in their denning area” in northern Alaska, he said.

It surely cannot get much worse than that, attacking and killing the pregnant females of your own kind.  The future for the world’s polar bears must be bleak indeed if this behavior does not stop, and soon.

But that is not likely to happen because, as one expert said:

“Any of these symptoms taken alone might not be so worrying but seen in their totality it shows a bleak picture of how climate change is impacting polar bears already now,” said Geoff York, a polar bear expert at the World Wildlife Fund.  “And it’s only forecast to get worse,” he said.

And so it may be true that the polar bear is going the way of Lehman Brothers, or that particularly ursine financial entity — Bear Stearns.  Those companies were “eating their own,” too, just as the polar bear seems to be doing, most likely with similar ultimate results.

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Posted in Agriculture Issues, Climate Change, Communications, Extinction, Melting Planet | Comments Off

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