Thanks to Jenny Goldie for this NPR interview.  To listen to the broadcast, visit http://www.npr.org/2011/08/12/139579616/feeding-a-hotter-more-crowded-planet.  Below is a transcript of the opening of the program.  For the full transcript, visit https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B5F-idWfw7TeYWNjYzIxYjEtMzhjYi00NjM3LThmMGYtNGUzN2U4MzA5Mjg3&hl=en_US

Feeding A Hotter, More Crowded Planet

August 12, 2011

Nearly a billion people worldwide don’t have reliable access to food, according to United Nations estimates, and some experts worry climate change will drive that number even higher. Ira Flatow and guests discuss the future of food security, and how farmers may need to adapt in coming generations.

Copyright © 2011 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, host: You’re listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY, I’m Ira Flatow. The American Southwest is beginning to resemble the Dust Bowl of the Depression. Cotton crops have crumbled. It hasn’t rained much in over a year.

The situation is even worse in East Africa. Droughts there have devastated harvests, and according to the U.N., over 11 million people there are at risk of starvation. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures on the nightly news and online.

Is this sort of thing going to become the norm? Because climate models predict that extreme weather events, like droughts and floods, will become more common in the future, threatening farmers’ ability to produce reliable harvests.

And not only will growing the food become more difficult, but the farmers will need to produce more of it because by the year 2050, there will be another two billion people on the planet, meaning we’ll have over nine billion mouths to feed.

To read the full story, please click here: http://www.npr.org/2011/08/12/139579616/feeding-a-hotter-more-crowded-planet

Thanks to Fred Stanback for this article.  See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/can-jeremy-grantham-profit-from-ecological-mayhem.html

Can Jeremy Grantham Profit From Ecological Mayhem?

By CARLO ROTELLA

Published: August 11, 2011

Sitting in a Panera in Boston’s financial district in early July with Jeremy Grantham, I suddenly found myself considering how I might safeguard my children’s and notional grandchildren’s future by somehow engineering the U.S. annexation of Morocco. Grantham, the founder and chief strategist of the asset-management firm GMO, was reading aloud from a rough draft of his next quarterly letter to investors, in which he ranks some long-term crises of resource limitation along a scale from “merely serious” to “dangerous.”

Energy “will give us serious and sustained problems” over the next 50 years as we make the transition from hydrocarbons – oil, coal, gas – to solar, wind, nuclear and other sources, but we’ll muddle through to a solution to Peak Oil and related challenges. Peak Everything Else will prove more intractable for humanity. Metals, for instance, “are entropy at work . . . from wonderful metal ores to scattered waste,” and scarcity and higher prices “will slowly increase forever,” but if we scrimp and recycle, we can make do for another century before tight constraint kicks in.

Agriculture is more worrisome. Local water shortages will cause “persistent irritation” – wars, famines. Of the three essential macro nutrient fertilizers, nitrogen is relatively plentiful and recoverable, but we’re running out of potassium and phosphorus, finite mined resources that are “necessary for all life.” Canada has large reserves of potash (the source of potassium), which is good news for Americans, but 50 to 75 percent of the known reserves of phosphate (the source of phosphorus) are located in Morocco and the western Sahara. Assuming a 2 percent annual increase in phosphorus consumption, Grantham believes the rest of the world’s reserves won’t last more than 50 years, so he expects “gamesmanship” from the phosphate-rich.

And he rates soil erosion as the biggest threat of all. The world’s population could reach 10 billion within half a century – perhaps twice as many human beings as the planet’s overtaxed resources can sustainably support, perhaps six times too many.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/magazine/can-jeremy-grantham-profit-from-ecological-mayhem.html

Today is the 40^th anniversary of my full time work in the field of population and family planning.  Four decades of continuous work in this field has been a very interesting ride – one that becomes more interesting every day.  The challenges that come with the issue are worth putting up with, because there is no more important work to be done on the planet in order to move toward sustainability.  So, I don’t plan to stop now, nor should you.  There is no acceptable alternative.  Thanks for all you are doing for this cause… Bill Ryerson.

Thanks to Simon Nasht for this article.  See: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-idiocy-of-endless-growth-20110529-1fata.html

The idiocy of endless growth

Dick Smith

May 30, 2011

Opinion

It’s the obvious but forbidden truth: on a finite and already swollen planet, we can’t expand indefinitely.

Some time in the next few months, the world’s population clock will tick over 7 billion people. Global population has tripled in my lifetime, and is continuing to rise. The United Nations has just predicted we face a world of 10 billion in 2100. This has immense implications for all of us, and Australia will not be immune from the impacts.

No one can confidently predict where we will find the food, energy, water and resources needed to supply even the basic needs of so many people. On a finite planet, we are already using up far more than we can replenish, literally exhausting the environment on which we rely for our survival.

For decades, overpopulation has been off the international agenda. It is barely mentioned in the media, and is rarely discussed in relation to, say, climate change or the looming global refugee crisis. Yet it is the common factor that links all our global problems, and ignoring it condemns billions of people to lives of poverty and injustice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Betsy Rate of WNET News for this link to the TV show they developed for World Population Day.  See http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/video-standing-room-only/10477/to watch the video.  Also see http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/video-phillip-longman-and-julia-whitty-on-the-population-conversation/10478/ for a discussion with Julia Whitty of Mother Jones and Phillip Longman of the New America Foundation.

Standing Room Only

July 15th

This week marked the annual World Population Day, so we at Need to Know hope it was a good one for all the 6,948,915,000 of you out there – and the approximately 266 of you who were born in the time it took to read this. This is a momentous year to be born.

2011, after all, is the year demographers predict the world population will grow to seven billion people – just a little over two hundred years after hitting the 1 billion mark.

The United States is contributing its share; at 312 million people, this country is the fastest growing of the industrialized world and the globe’s third-most populous, behind India and China. Even though the U.S. rate of growth has slowed over the past decade, the Census Bureau predicts we’ll still reach 439 million by 2050.

Given the jumbo-sized reality show families, baby bumps on tabloid covers and headlines proclaiming “Four Kids is the New Two,” it’s hard to believe there was ever a time in our history when people worried about the size of their families and whether the world would have enough resources to support them.

But there was a moment when average Americans – Democrat and Republican alike – were engaged in a conversation about the “overpopulation problem” and what could be done about it. While the era didn’t last all that long, it’s still worth revisiting it today.

Watch the rest of the segments from this week’s episode.

Many thanks to Jack Alpert for this fascinating article, which recognizes the population issue.  See http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/9335-the-peak-oil-crisis-an-announcement.html

The Peak Oil Crisis: An Announcement

Posted Jun 2, 2011 by Tom Whipple

With little fanfare, a press release appeared last week on the website of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES). The release said that during a meeting between Chris Huhne, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and representatives of ITPOES, an agreement had been reached that Her Majesty’s Department for Energy and Climate will collaborate with ITPOES on a joint examination of concerns that global oil supply will begin to fall behind demand within as little as five years. This collaboration is seen by the British government as the first step in the development of a national peak oil contingency plan.

There are many implications buried in this seemingly innocuous announcement. First, American readers should note that the British government recognizes that energy policy and climate change are inextricably linked so that you cannot formulate policies for one without the other. The major step forward, however, is the official and semi-public recognition by a major government that global oil supplies will fall behind demand in as little as five years. After years of official denial this is indeed a breakthrough worthy of note.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/9335-the-peak-oil-crisis-an-announcement.html

Thanks to the Post Carbon Institute for this report on the reality regarding natural gas as an energy source in the future.  A scathing introduction by Richard Heinberg, found at http://www.postcarbon.org/article/330223-foreword-will-natural-gas-fuel-america is found below, with a link to download the report.

FOREWORD: Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?

Posted May 12, 2011 by Richard Heinberg

This is Richard Heinberg’s Foreward to our brand new report ‘Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?’ by Post Carbon Fellow David Hughes.

Post Carbon Institute undertook this report in order to examine three widespread assumptions about the role that natural gas can and should play in our energy future:

• Assumption #1: That, thanks to new techniques for hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling of shale, we have sufficient natural gas resources to supply the needs of our country for the next 100 years.
• Assumption #2: That the price of natural gas, which has historically been volatile, will remain consistently low for decades to come.
• Assumption #3: That natural gas is much cleaner and safer than other fossil fuels, from the standpoint of greenhouse gas emissions and public health.

Based on these assumptions, national energy officials at the Energy Information Administration (EIA) foresee a major expansion of natural gas in the coming decades. President Obama touted natural gas as a cornerstone of his Administration’s “Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future”[1] and endorsed plans for converting a sizable portion of the vehicle fleet to run on natural gas. Some environmental groups, rightfully concerned about the greenhouse gas emissions of coal, have called for large-scale replacement of coal-fired power plants with those that burn natural gas, despite increasing concern over the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.

As this report details, all of these assumptions and recommendations need to be re-thought. What emerges from the data is a very different assessment.

Read the rest of this entry »

Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21^st Century has been requested by local, state and federal agencies, media and concerned citizens worldwide. Within three weeks of its release, the report has been downloaded over 11,000 times.

PCI has now released three supplements to the report that they hope you’ll find of interest and value:

“Agriculture and Natural Gas” by PCI Fellow Michael Bomford

“Problems and Opportunities with Natural Gas as a Transportation Fuel” by PCI Adviser Richard Gilbert and PCI Fellow Anthony Perl

“Public Health Concerns of Shale Gas Production” by PCI Fellows Brian Schwartz, MD, and Cindy Parker, MD.

Download all three reports in one volume at http://www.postcarbon.org/reports/NatGasSupplements.pdf

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to the Post Carbon Institute for this report.  See http://www.postcarbon.org/report/331901-will-natural-gas-fuel-america-in. To download the report, see http://www.postcarbon.org/reports/PCI-report-nat-gas-future.pdf,

A detailed new energy report argues that the natural gas industry has propagated dangerously false claims about natural gas production supply, cost and environmental impact. The report, “Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century” is authored by leading geoscientist and Post Carbon Institute Fellow J. David Hughes.

REPORT: Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?

David Hughes

Published May 29, 2011

In this groundbreaking report, geoscientist David Hughes (formerly of Geological Survey of Canada) shatters the myth that U.S. natural gas can be a “bridge fuel” from high-carbon sources of energy like coal and oil to a renewable energy future.

Abstract

Natural gas has increasingly been touted as a “bridge fuel” from high-carbon sources of energy like coal and oil to a renewable energy future. This is based on renewed optimism on the ability of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to access natural gas from previously inaccessible shale gas deposits. A review of the latest outlook (2011) of the U.S. Energy Information Administration(EIA) reveals that all eggs have been placed in the shale gas basket in terms of future growth in U.S.gas production. Without shale gas, U.S. domestic gas production is projected to fall by 20% through 2035.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.postcarbon.org/report/331901-will-natural-gas-fuel-america-in

Thanks to Jan Steinman for this article.  See http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/05/peak-coal-this-year.html, where you can watch a 20-minute talk on coal supply constraints in the U.S.

05/12/2011 Peak Coal This Year?

In August last year, the journal Energy published A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis by Tadeusz W. Patzek and Gregory D. Croft. I’ll let National Geographic introduce the findings.

A new study seeks to shake up the assumption that use of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is bound to continue its inexorable rise. In fact, the authors predict that world coal production may reach its peak as early as next year, and then begin a permanent decline.

The study, led by Tad Patzek, chairman of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and published in the August issue of Energy, predicts that by mid-century, the world’s coal mining will supply only half as much energy as today.

The idea that the world will face “peak coal” as soon as 2011 flies in the face of most earlier estimates and analysis.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/05/peak-coal-this-year.html

Thanks to Emily Spence for this article.  See  http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm

The Imminent Crash Of Oil Supply: Be Afraid

By Nicholas C. Arguimbau

23 April, 2010
Countercurrents.org

What is going to happen and how it came to pass that we weren’t forewarned

Look at this graph and be afraid. It does not come from Earth First. It does not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does not come from a progressive Democrat. And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy, and the United States military’s Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.

To read the full article, please click here: http://www.countercurrents.org/arguimbau230410.htm