In the Wall Street Journal, Matt Ridley has an interesting article about the the claims that we will run out of “X”, except that human ingenuity always seems to grasp this and then “Y” comes along.
The World’s Resources Aren’t Running Out
Ecologists worry that the world’s resources come in fixed amounts that will run out, but we have broken through such limits again and again
How many times have you heard that we humans are “using up” the world’s resources, “running out” of oil, “reaching the limits” of the atmosphere’s capacity to cope with pollution or “approaching the carrying capacity” of the land’s ability to support a greater population? The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff—metals, oil, clean air, land—and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption.
“We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we change course, that number will grow fast—by 2030, even two planets will not be enough,” says Jim Leape, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund).
But here’s a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and again. After all, as a Saudi oil minister once said, the Stone Age didn’t end for lack of stone. Ecologists call this “niche construction”—that people (and indeed some other animals) can create new opportunities for themselves by making their habitats more productive in some way.
Agriculture is the classic example of niche construction: We stopped relying on nature’s bounty and substituted an artificial and much larger bounty.Economists call the same phenomenon innovation. What frustrates them about ecologists is the latter’s tendency to think in terms of static limits. Ecologists can’t seem to see that when whale oil starts to run out, petroleum is discovered, or that when farm yields flatten, fertilizer comes along, or that when glass fiber is invented, demand for copper falls.
Full story here: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304279904579517862612287156?mg=reno64-wsj
What kind of civilization could truly use up Earth’s resources anytime soon?:
Water:
The cost of desalination of seawater has already dropped to such as $0.49 per cubic meter or so just $0.002 per gallon (example: http://www.edie.net/news/3/Black–Veatch-Designed-Desalination-Plant-Wins-Global-Water-Distinction/11402/ ).
That’s even cheap enough to be an option for agriculture if needed, although in most places unlikely to be necessary.
Energy:
* Near 200,000 TW of sunlight hitting Earth (a bit less making it through the atmosphere but with the preceding being the general order of magnitude) versus about 2 TW human electricity usage and so on
* Nuclear fuel resources like, for example, the following hints:
“The preceding reserve figures refer to the amount of thorium in high-concentration deposits inventoried so far and estimated to be extractable at current market prices; millions of times more total exist in Earth’s 3×10^19 tonne crust, around 120 trillion tons of thorium, and lesser but vast quantities of thorium exist at intermediate concentrations.[72][73][74] Proved reserves are “a poor indicator of the total future supply of a mineral resource.”[74]”
“Even common granite rock with 13 PPM thorium concentration (just twice the crustal average, along with 4 ppm uranium) contains potential nuclear energy equivalent to 50 times the entire rock’s mass in coal,[77] although there is no incentive to resort to such very low-grade deposits so long as much higher-grade deposits remain available and cheaper to extract.[78]”
Uranium can be extracted from practically unlimited quantities in seawater at a cost of hundreds of dollars per kilogram of uranium, which is actually a minor cost in context, especially if used in breeder reactors where each kilogram is of comparable energy release to thousands of tons of chemical fuel (much like nuclear bombs can be up to millions of times more energy release than conventional bombs).
* Way more natural gas and other fuels than the activists mention.
Materials:
A reality like the following:
“As some illustrations, tin, copper, iron, lead, and zinc all had both production from 1950 to 2000 and reserves in 2000 much exceed world reserves in 1950, which would be impossible except for how “proved reserves are like an inventory of cars to an auto dealer” at a time, having little relationship to the actual total affordable to extract in the future.[64]
In the example of peak phosphorus, additional concentrations exist intermediate between 71,000 Mt of identified reserves (USGS)[65] and the approximately 30,000,000,000 Mt of other phosphorus in Earth’s crust, with the average rock being 0.1% phosphorus, so showing decline in human phosphorus production will occur soon would require far more than comparing the former figure to the 190 Mt/year of phosphorus extracted in mines (2011 figure).[64][65][66][67]”
And so on.
So, returning to the question of what civilization could truly use up Earth’s resources (like the above) anytime soon:
The answer is either none or only a hypothetical future civilization orders of magnitude beyond current civilization in industrial consumption (and thus in production too). But a civilization so orders of magnitude above, if existing, would be far more capable of space colonization, and there is far more in the solar system and beyond. (The only kind of civilization capable of actually using up the solar system’s utterly astronomical resources is one capable of extending from the Oort Cloud to interstellar travel, so again no end problem…)
(Easily googleable, the prior italic quotes are just from parts of Wikipedia, with all original reference sources provided there, which has a CAGW movement team ensuring dishonest presentation on climate articles but has rather different authors in some other parts).
An article in The American Economic Review back in 1978, “The Age of Substitutability” by Goeller and Weinberg, is most relevant here. Their message is much more optimistic than Ridley’s (although I very much admire Matt). We DON’T have to hope that we’ll have some genius come along and discover a new resource, thus saving us at the last minute from resource exhaustion. The Earth has, for practical purposes, an unlimited supply of such resources, and we’re basically just going through continuous substitution based on relative prices.
Reading Ridley, I am again reminded that we (as a species) are still not having the right conversations. The issues that take our time (and resources) tend to be political fluff soaked with insane amounts of ideological delusion. Just consider how much air-time the likes of Mann or Lew are given by friend and foe despite the fact their work and persons are unequivocally irrelevant timewasters.
Is it surprising that the environmentalists make silly predictions about technology when the vast majority are non-scientists?
From WWF about Jim Leape – “A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Jim began his career as an environmental lawyer”
Well at leaast it wasn’t a degree in English!
– – – – – – – – –
Sam Grove,
Yes. Julian Simon is a must read.
Also, so is Indur M. Goklany’s general work and especially his book ‘The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet’
http://www.amazon.com/The-Improving-State-World-Comfortable/dp/1930865988
Also, for a general positive view of mankind’s economic nature, one needs to come to an understanding that human action is unlimited in reasoned options; it is not a zero sum game.. Zero sum is a false premise used by all Malthusians and radical environmental ideologists.
Zero sum is a perceptually based position; whereas human action by reasoned options is a conceptually based position.
NOTE: I thank Matt Ridley for keeping the stimulus in front of the public to think about human action in terms of reasoned options.
John
There are also some Russians who theorize the earth is a giant high pressure reactor that is constantly producing crude oil and that we’ll never run out.
Some commodities are supply-constrained, some are not. Oil appears to be constrained.
Peak oil does not occur when we run out of oil, but when the marginal consumer is no longer willing to pay for the finding, production and processing of the marginal barrel. And we actually know what these numbers. The marginal consumer, in theory, should be willing to pay around $112 / barrel, Brent basis. The marginal barrel costs around $120 / barrel on a free cash flow basis. Thus, the oil business is under some significant strain, with the international oil companies divesting and cutting capital spending even at a time of economic growth and high oil prices.
To suggest we will never run out of affordable oil misses the point. We have already run out of affordable oil. That’s why US oil consumption is 9% below it 2005 peak and why home heating oil use has fallen by nearly half since that time. That’s why UK oil consumption is down nearly 20%(!) since 2005, and it’s down 25-32% in places like Italy, Portugal, and Spain over the period.
In a market economy, a lack of supply does not show up as a physical shortage. It shows up as higher prices, which leads to reduced consumption, which is price-based rationing. That’s what we’ve seen across the developed economies with few exceptions.
Those interested in the topic should see my Columbia University presentation: http://energypolicy.columbia.edu/events-calendar/global-oil-market-forecasting-main-approaches-key-drivers
YouSoWould says:
The forces of supply and demand ensure that alternatives always become economically viable when a resource starts to become scarce.
That’s it in a nutshell. The price point is the intersection of supply and demand. Malthusians always worry that suddenly we will run out of oil, or whatever their latest scare is.
We will not run out. The price will gradually rise until alternatives become viable. To the extent government gets out of the way and resists the urge to meddle, there will never be widespread shortages of energy. Government is the problem, not the solution.
But I am a pessimist when it comes to government. The people who run things are good at:
1) Getting elected, and
2) ?
All energy shortages are 100% the fault of government. But as always, they will cause the problem, then they will ride in like the cavalry with their ‘solution’ — which will require more government.
If the issue is energy, then there is no problem, even if we do run out of oil and natural gas and coal (assuming electric cars are practical, which is highly likely – we’re not that far from a practical
battery as it is). The answer, of course, is nuclear power. A factoid reported a couple years ago by a nuclear scientist who was pushing for fast reactors (not far from commercialization – Russia just built one hooked into the grid and China is also buiding them) . He stated that since a fast reactor can extract most of the energy that remains in nuclear wastes after passing thru a conventional reactor (98%), just the nuclear wastes we now have contain enough extractable energy to provide all the energy this country will need for the next 1000 years. Another article mentioned that uranium, right at this minute, can be extracted from the oceans at a cost that would not exceed current uranium fuel costs in a conventional reactor when burned in a fast reactor. Furthermore,
such a source of uranium would be practically inexhaustible – available for millions of years
at current usage rates. And price rises due to scarcity could obviously never exist. Energy shortage? What energy shortage?
If there’s a breakthrough in LENR (aka cold fusion) in some form, that would be the start of a new age.
dbstealey:
2) making a mess of things, and
3) wasting a lot of money in the process.
(which takes us back to your item #1)
Thorium may help, but “if it were that easy, someone would have done it by now” (Rule #3)
I worry less about energy and climate “tipping” points and more about
the debt tipping point. At some point, folks will stop buying our debt, if
we try to print our way out … (think Germany in the late 20’s)
We know where that went.
Here’s a three-part solution I endorse, spelled out in a book called “Prescription for the Planet: The Painless Remedy for Our Energy & Environmental Crises,” whose details are outlined in the first reader-review, by G. Meyerson:
This book is a must read for people who want to be informed about our worsening energy and ecology crisis. Before I read this book, I was opposed to nuclear power for the usual reasons: weapons proliferation and the waste problem. But also because I had read that in fact nuclear power was not as clean as advertised nor as cost competitive as advertised and was, moreover, not a renewable form of energy, as it depends upon depleting stocks of uranium, which would become an especially acute problem in the event of “a nuclear renaissance.”
Before I read this book, I was also of the opinion that growth economies (meaning for now global capitalism) were in the process of becoming unsustainable, that, as a consequence, our global economy would itself unravel due to increasing energy costs and the inability of renewable technologies genuinely and humanely to solve the global transport problem of finding real replacements for the billions of gallons of gasoline consumed by the global economy, and the billions more gallons required to fuel the growth imperative. I was thus attracted to the most egalitarian versions of Richard Heinberg’s power down/relocalization thesis.
Blees’ book has turned many of my assumptions upside down and so anyone who shares these assumptions needs to read this book and come to terms with the implications of Blees’ excellent arguments. To wit: the nuclear power provided by Integral Fast Reactors (IFR) can provide clean, safe and for all practical purposes renewable power for a growing economy provided this power is properly regulated (I’ll return to this issue below). The transportation problems can be solved by burning boron as fuel (a 100% recyclable resource) and the waste problem inevitably caused by exponential growth can be at least partially solved by fully recycling all waste in plasma converters, which themselves can provide both significant power (the heat from these converters can turn a turbine to generate electricity) and important products: non toxic vitrified slag (which Blees notes can be used to refurbish ocean reefs), rock wool (to be used to insulate our houses–it is superior to fiber glass or cellulose) and clean syngas, which can assume the role played by petroleum in the production of products beyond fuel itself. Blees’s discussion of how these three elements of a new energy economy can be introduced and integrated is detailed and convincing. Other forms of renewable energy can play a significant role also, though it is his argument that only IFRs can deal with the awesome scale problems of powering a global economy which would still need to grow. Tom’s critique of biofuels is devastating and in line with the excellent critiques proferred by both the powerdown people and the red greens (John Bellamy Foster, Fred Magdoff); his critique of the “hydrogen economy” is also devastating (similar to critiques by Joseph Romm or David Strahan); his critique of a solar grand plan must be paid heed by solar enthusiasts of various political stripes.
The heart of this book, though, really resides with the plausibility of the IFR. His central argument is that these reactors can solve the principal problems plaguing other forms of nuclear power. It handles the nuclear waste problem by eating it to produce power: The nuclear waste would fire up the IFRs and our stocks of depleted uranium alone would keep the reactors going for a couple hundred years (factoring in substantial economic growth) due to the stunning efficiency of these reactors, an efficiency enabled by the fact that “a fast reactor can burn up virtually all of the uranium in the ore,” not just one percent of the ore as in thermal reactors. This means no uranium mining and milling for hundreds of years.
The plutonium bred by the reactor will be fed back into it to produce more energy and cannot be weaponized due to the different pyroprocessing that occurs in the IFR reactor. In this process, plutonium is not isolated, a prerequisite to its weaponization. The IFR breeders can produce enough nonweaponizable plutonium to start up another IFR in seven years. Moreover, these reactors can be produced quickly (100 per year starting in 2015, with the goal of building 3500 by 2050)), according to Blees, with improvements in modular design, which would facilitate standardization, thus bringing down cost and construction lead time.
Importantly, nuclear accidents would be made virtually impossible due to the integration of “passive” safety features in the reactors, which rely on “the inherent physical properties of the reactor’s components to shut it down.” (129)
………………..
Still, if such a new energy regime as Blees proposes can solve the climate crisis, this is not to say, in my opinion, that a growth regime is fully compatible with a healthy planet and thus a healthy humanity. There are other resources crucial to us–the world’s soils, forests and oceans come to mind–that a constantly expanding global economy can destroy even if we recycle all the world’s garbage and stop global warming.“
Here’s the Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/Prescription-Planet-Painless-Remedy-Environmental/dp/1419655825/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236568501&sr=1-1
As hard as one tries to keep ideologies out of scientific debate, it keeps imposing itself in the form of linear and zero-sum type thinking that lacks the innovation dimension. This is precisely because centrally planned direction is simply not innovative. Innovation is an individualistic activity. Yes, unfortunately, the debate about prosperity and plenty is an ideological one. The miracle that was the US economy was an ideological one. This very fact is what has so sorely tried the sinistrals and focused their energies toward bringing down this embarrassingly in-your-face success story and the irrepressable conclusions that leap out at you. The big experiments in the alternative have all either collapsed or are busy trying to hybridize themselves into a simulacrum of American political economy.
Here is where all ‘sinistral thinkers’ on resources and technology utterly fail time after time. The demand IS NOT for Zinc, but rather for coatings and other technologies for preventing corrosion of iron and steel. The demand IS NOT for copper, lumber, etc. etc. the demand is for communications, electrical conductors, shelter…..For all demands, there are infinite resources. Moreover, all metals mined haven’t disappeared, they are, to ever increasing degrees, being recycled and reused and we are learning to use less per unit as we go. Lack of resources is a buzz phrase used by sinistrals as the politically correct way to discuss depopulation of the earth by centrally directed planners.
“Oil is finite in the long run,…”
Even this is not true. Oil is likely not fossil but mineral. And there is a lot of it but lower down. And what is the the long run?
Reality Check for those willing to look at the evidence
See Charles Hall’s book: Energy and the Wealth of Nations
Peak Oil, Declining EROI and the New Energy-Economic Reality (VIMEO)
Hall highlights that to function, society requires an Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROI/EROEI) > 3, preferably > 10.
Petroleum EROEI has already declined from > 100 to ~ 12.
EIA shows Global Oil & Condensates has not increased since 2005.
Jeffrey Brown shows “Available Net Exports” of oil – after China and India’s imports, have already declined 14% since 2005.
Capex/bbl/day has been increasing 11%/year. That has forced oil companies to cut back.
We are rapidly running out of time to develop alternatives fast enough to prevent severe economic harm.
The major options are thermochemical fuel from fission and fusion: solar thermochemical and thorium reactors.
Those who think in terms of shallow surface pools of “fossil” fuel need to explain Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes and methane rain.
And the ONLY population extrapolation that has ever been close is the “Low Band” (now the “Low Fertility”) version of the UN’s Population Survey. It now predicts a peak at about 8bn. in about 2045, falling indefinitely, reaching <7bn. by 2100. By then, Bangladesh will have the income and quality of life of the current UK, e.g.
The Tesla Model S has a peculiar characteristic effect: most owners love it so much they swear they will own and drive an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) car ever again only at gunpoint. I follow the teslamotors.com/forums site closely, and have ridden one. It's the real deal.
As for electric power supply, check out LPPhysics.com for an innovation whose time has come.
George Steinbrenner said:
Where do they find these people?
As long as we have rocks we have energy. Period.
In the mean time:
Best news from a (Ex) NASA expert ever: http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/26/Former-NASA-Scientist-Global-Warming-is-Nonsense
Susan Corwin says:
April 27, 2014 at 9:51 am
As a senior manager, I view that the problem is one of skills and knowledge.
The “ecologists”, that Ridley talks about, are absolutely correct:
=> with their knowledge and skill set,
– there is no hope
– the pie is finite and “get while the getting is good”
……………..
who, unfortunately, seem to have bullied themselves to be in charge of the asylum.
…..
That summs it up nicely Susan, thanks for the post. The skills and knowledge give the worldview of the respective group.
So from their perspective and understanding each group is right. The problem comes when one group wants to impose their worldview on the other group.
db stealey, a refugee from the junk science site WUWT said:
Oh, that’s where they find these people.
Answered my own question.
Retired Engineer says:
April 27, 2014 at 12:40 pm
“Thorium may help, but “if it were that easy, someone would have done it by now” (Rule #3)”
Germany did
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pebble-bed_reactor#Germany
Chickened out after a minor accident (which happened after Chernobyl; so as Germany usually does, it shuts down its own technology when other countries who don’t care at all make a mess). Patent licensed to China. Currently under construction over there.
WebHubTelescope says:
April 27, 2014 at 1:18 pm
“db stealey, a refugee from the junk science site WUWT said:”
What are you, a Salon reader? Can you help us twist our brains into a libtard pretzel like the readers over there can?
Those of you interested in a quite serious detailed dissection of Ridley’s innovation/ substitution theses might be interested in the book Gaia’s Limits. It explores carrying capacity for projected human population and GDP in some depth. Ridley is over optimistic, but there are no foreseeable catastrophes (Ehrlich nonsense). A couple of things definitely begin to pinch hard by 2050, and those will become quite ugly and disruptive in that time frame if a few ‘simple’ course corrections aren’t made starting soon. Regrettably, China seems further along on those than either India ( which could get very ugly) or the US (which could get very uncomfortable).
The most objectionable part of CAGW alarmism is that it distracts from discussion about practical solutions to real and predictable problems that need to be implemented soon–starting about now if pretty serious disruptions are to be avoided, even in the resource blessed US. The war on coal, for example, is fighting the wrong war right now.
Unfortunately, the energy climate overlap tends to cause pro con camps that obscure the important grey intermediates where manynof the problems and possiblempolicynsolutions lie. And miss entirely other big probable issues like food and the related topic of virtual water. The poster above who thought desalination is the water solution doesn’t know much about water or how it is used. California this summer will get a very hard lesson in the Central Valley.
“A couple of things definitely begin to pinch hard by 2050”
Such as?
“And miss entirely other big probable issues like food and the related topic of virtual water. The poster above who thought desalination is the water solution doesn’t know much about water or how it is used.”
Desalination costs about 3-6 kWh per cubic metre of fresh water. You can supply a person with the essentials for under a dollar day. What’s the problem?
The reason most of us don’t use it is that there are large capital costs, and we have far cheaper alternatives. We don’t currently use it because we don’t need it. Shortages are only short-term or caused by other economic effects so far as I know. If we’ve got energy we’ve got water, and if we’ve got energy and water then we’ve got food. What do you think we’re missing?
WebHub is a frequent writer on Judith Curry’s Climate, Etc. site.
Whether he/she/it is right or not is subject to debate …