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Peak Oil

International Energy Agency forecast of global all-oil production

Heads in the Sand Report on the International Energy Agency's latest projections of energy availability, revised dramatically downwards. Oil supply is running out right now. 

Collapse, the movie about Peak Oil and why local resilience matters so much.

Population, the Elephant in the Room  links Peak Oil and population in clear modelling of global population implosion. Must read. 

The Power of Community - Web-site - Movie How Cuba responded to the sudden loss of Soviet oil.

Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas

Oilaholics Anonymous

Google Alerts - Peak Oil

Rob Hopkins (founder of Transition Towns) on Peak Oil response -TED Talk

Crude - the Incredable Journey of Oil

One barrel of oil human work equivalent

What is a human being worth in terms of energy?

Australian Petroleum Use and Emissions Annual Report 2009

Christopher Hitchens (The Australian) Current production of oil in Iraq is about 2.5million barrels a day, which could rise to 7million barrels in a relatively short time, and possibly to 12million barrels /day in 2016. Iraq proven reserves are 115billion barrels.

North Sea Oil peaked in 1999, and now the UK is a net importer of oil. Very soon it will be importing MOST of its oil and gas. The North Sea Oil fields were opened in the 1970s and markedly improved Britain's economy in the following 3 decades.

Peak Fresh Water

Global Map of Fresh Water Availability

Global Map of Fresh Water Availability, taking Population & Climate Change into account

Peak Phosphorous

Peak Phosphorous, by Patrick Dery and Bart Anderson

Peak Nitrogen

Michael Pollan: The Omnivore's Dilemma:  All life depends on nitrogen. It is the building block from which nature assembles amino acids, proteins, and nucleic acids. The genetic information that orders and perpetuates life is written in nitrogen ink. But the supply of usable nitrogen on earth is limited.

Although earth's atmosphere is about 80% nitorogen, all those atoms are tightly paired, nonreactice, and therefore useless. To be of any value to plants and animals, these self-involved nitrogen atoms must be split and then joined to atoms of hydrogen (fixed). German Jewish chemist Fritz Haber figured out how to fix nitrogen in 1909. Before that, all usable nitrogen on earth was that which was fixed by soil bacteria living on the roots of leguminous plants such as peas or alfalfa or locust trees (or a bit by lightning hitting soil).  There is no way to grow crops and human bodies without nitrogen.

Before Fritz Haber's invention, the sheer amount of life earth could support - the size of the crops and therefore the number of human bodies - was limited by the amount of nitrogen that bacteria and lightning could fix. By 1900, European scientists recognized that unless a way was found to augment this naturally occurring nitrogen, the growth of the human population would soon grind to a very painful halt.

China probably recognised this and it is probably what compelled it to open to the west after 1972. Its first major order was for 13 massive fertilizer factories. Without them, China would probably have starved.

This is why it may not be hyperbole to claim that the Haber-Bosch (Carl Bosch commercialized Haber's idea) for fixing nitrogen is the most important invention of the 20th century.

Two of every five humans on earth tody would not be alive if not for Fritz Haber's invention.  We can easily imagine a world without computers or electricity, but not without synthetic fertilizer.

The Haber-Bosch process works by combining nitrogen and hydrogen gases under immense heat and pressure in the presence of a catalyst. The heat and pressure are supplied by prodigious amounts of electricity, and the hydrogen is supplied by oil, coal, or natural gas - fossil fuels. Thus humankind relies on fossil fuel for nitrogen.

Peak oil, therefore, also has implications for nitrogen availability.

Suggested reading: Population, the Elephant in the Room.

Peak Farmers

The average age of farmers in Australia is 62 years old.

Peak Minerals

Matt Chambers & Sarah-Jane Tasker (The Australian): Few foresaw the resources boom this century. In 2000 if you told most mining bosses the next 10 years would see the biggest resources boom in living memory, you would have received, at best, a blank stare. Nobody foresaw the phenomenal surge in Chinese demand.

Copper prices were US$1600/tonne at the start of 2003 and US$8600 by mid-2006.

Nickel prices went from US$7,000/tonne to US$51,000/tonne in the same period.

Oil prices went from US$20/barrel at the start of 2002 to US$150/barrel in mid-2008.

Antimony 15-20 years left only

Iridium

Zinc

Silver

Lots of others

Peak Soil

In 1900, topsoil was 4,000 tonnes/person. In 1995 topsoil was 500 tonnes/person.

Peak Fish

Over 90% of the ocean's large fish are already gone.

Peak Uranium

While nuclear power plants are extremely expensive and time consuming to build, including using a lot of oil, and nuclear waste dumps represent a danger for millenia, global uranium supplies are expected to peak well before mid-century on best predictions.

Peak Coal

While coal is frequently talked about as if it will last forever, this is not the case.  An example is British coal, where they talked about having sufficient supplies for 900 years, but which is now mostly gone.

The lastest predictions are that global coal supplies will peak in 15-20 years.

Peak Food

World grain prices are soaring:

• Wheat prices doubled in the last 2 years
• Maize, rice and soya bean prices are soaring
• Increased costs to farmers of diesel, fertiliser, and transportation
• Growing use of grain for biofuels

Species Extinction

We are currently experiencing one of the greatest species extinction events in the history of the Earth.

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