You must put a lot of work into blogging this much!…

“Moderate drought, currently at 25 per cent of the Earth’s surface, rising to 50 per cent by 2100, the figure for severe drought, currently at about 8 per cent, rising to 40 cent, and the figure for extreme drought, currently 3 per cent, rising to 30 per cent.”

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1786829.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1886964,00.html

That 12 feet figure is interesting: that’s the depth of the original topsoil in the midwest before the advent of modern agricultrual methods.

Currently the Mississippi carries 5 tons of sediment per second.

One of the main goals of the Communist Party in China has been to make the country self-sufficient in food (rice, in particular). This, in part, accounts for the success of the party. This also helps explain China’s one-child policy. Well, last year was the first time China did not produce enough rice to feed itself. It is now importing rice and wheat. Even though it’s population growth has slowed, the population is still increasing. Not only that, the standard of living is increasing, thereby requiring more meat (meaning it takes more rice or wheat or corn to feed each person). The problem is that China’s agricultural land is decreasing: turning into desert, blowing over the Pacific to North America, washing out to sea, and turning into cities. The real problem is that the productivity of China’s agricultural land is decreasing. China has been mining it’s topsoil. The land is burned out. The organic layer is gone.

In Taiwan, even 30 years ago, the farmers noticed that applications of fertilizer changed the character of the soil. The pesticides killed the good soil critters along with the bad. This, however, hasn’t stopped Taiwan from fertlizing and herbiciding and pesticiding the heck out of its countryside.

The problem is not just that we’ll lose the oil to plow and fertilize, it’s that we’ve already lost our topsoil. This especially includes America’s bread basket. Evidence that of that topsoil loss is apparant in the Ohio River at Louisville, KY. There, the river never gets more than 12 feet deep.

So, in addition to having a huge party with oil, we’ve been squandering our principle instead of living on our interest.

http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2006/06/nonrenewable-renewables-hidden-life-of.html

The upshot:

Biofuels produced the way we are producing them today are not even close to sustainable. In truth, the current production methods for biofuels are more like mining operations than farming operations.

Also from the Alternet article was this bit:

For farmers, it’s a solution to high oil prices that makes intuitive sense, as it raises the possibility of growers cultivating their own fuel, just as most farmers did a century ago when they harvested oats to feed their horse teams.

Reminds me of something Wendell Berry wrote about using horses for farming, where he pointed out (to paraphrase) that the very people who criticize farmers who might want to use animal traction for taking land out of food production are the often very same people who are cheerleaders for biofuels.

I suspect that somewhere down the road, we’ll be using animal traction again, at least for small-field cultivation. It not only cuts out the biofuel transportation and processing costs, but provides nitrogen-rich fertilizer and results in less soil compaction.

I also better understand your “large population will not starve if a lot of food is grown” point, and I happen to largely agree. Two observations: First, I happen to think that energy is not the only factor in the explosion of our population. Public health improvements have radically reduced infant and child mortality rates. Washing hands and developing vaccines certainly uses fossil fuel inputs, but not on a scale that even faintly resembles food production. All of those children who live to adulthood become potential parents.

Second, the industrial model of farming is enormously wasteful. If we were to expect to feed our current population without fossil fuel inputs, profound changes would have to be made. Local food production (the 100-mile diet), eating lower on the food chain, less packaging, a certain degree of self-sufficiency (growing some of one’s own food) and encouraging organic methods would move us toward a more equitable and sustainable model. Sort of a true Green Revolution. Speaking of the 1970′s Green Revolution (chemical fertilizers and pesticides, etc–essentially the genesis of global industrial agriculture), it’s often assumed that it’s objective was to feed more people. It did, but the real motive behind its creation was to benefit the industrial producers of the inputs. I mean, look, then and now we still have problems with starvation in many parts of the world, and not just as a result of population growth.

Erik’s point about food pricing is also well-taken. Large increases in food prices won’t hurt the non-poor in the western industrialized countries, and higher fuel prices will make a lot of industrial farming practices untenable. Hopefully, this will push us back into a more local version of food production.

I also hope that the subsidies supporting the globalization of food dry up. Really, farmers from the midwest shouldn’t be going out of business due to price competition from farmers in Brazil or China, but that’s exactly what’s happening.

I think your perspective on this is somewhat skewed by the fact that you’re in Sweden, a country I’ve had the pleasure of visiting twice within the past year. It’s my impression that Sweden is vastly ahead of the US in terms of coming to grips with the looming oil crash, not only in terms of infrastructure (man, that X2000 is sweet!), but (more importantly) in terms of the mindset of the people.

After being there, and seeing the fantastic train service, and bicycles everywhere, and people installing geothermal heat, and the government actually paying some attention and making a plan, and then coming back here, and seeing our endless rivers of oversized automobiles, and our endless acres of asphalt, and (most dispiritingly) the vast majority of people here who can’t/don’t/won’t see any reason for anything other than full speed ahead business-as-usual… it seems to me you can’t even compare the two. Sweden is getting it right, and the US is getting it about as wrong as wrong can be.

I hope I’m wrong. But I fear that you are.

The shuttle is being replaced by Orion, which weighs 25 tons and seats five people.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=awTE9LR8w.Es

Undoubtedly true. However, at the end of the day, KE=1/2mv^2. Even when technology gets us to 100% efficiency (not actually possible), such that the fuel we use is converted to mechanical work without waste, our current lifestyle is still energy intensive relative to the amount of energy we might expect to have available in the future. Moreover, it is a questionable proposition that enough food can be grown in our sterile farmland without nutrient supplements that are derived from oil.

I too hold out hope for technological advance. But we should realize that the law of diminishing returns applies. Most items of technology grow in leaps and bounds, at first, and only in smaller increments as time progresses. Consider how similar in form today’s bicycles are to bicycles made 100 years ago, for example, even though bicycles from 120 years ago hardly resemble what we have now. Back on topic, the longer we look for energy alternatives to oil without finding one, the more likely it is that no suitable alternative exists.

Sure, we might someday revert to some new technology to make use of some previously under-used energy source. But it will never be as cheap, easy, or abundant as that to wheich we became accustomed during the oil age. Afterall, if it was as cheap, easy, or abundant as oil is now, it would already be a competitor.

We have, out of necessity become much more efficent at using the energy we have available, but what will we turn to next. The point you have made is that we have moved from wood, to oil. Where will we move next? We can’t burn our ‘technology’ to warm ourselves over winter. When you say “technology = energy” I think what you mean is “technology can enable us to make better use of energy”. It cannot create kilojoules out of nothing. Therein lies the problem with our undying faith in technology to save us from the on-coming energy crisis. You could argue the we will find the technology to utilise a new source of energy that we are not aware of yet. I have spent a significant amount of time (years) researching all alternatives on the horizon. When you do the math and try and scale even the most promising of them up to try and match our thirst for oil they don’t even scratch the surface of the problem… and we are running out of time.

While I would like to imagine a happy Star-trek like future for us all the reality is that is very unlikely to happen. The only sensible thing to do is to start preparing for the worst, and hope for the best.