Food & agriculture – Feb 19

Peak oil and food security talk by Patrick Holden of UK Soil Assn
Hamburgers are the Hummers of food in global warming: scientists
How African Farmers are Dealing with Climate Change
U.N. says food production may fall 25 percent by 2050
Massive effort underway to save endangered seeds
Fresh ideas for waste food

The peak oil crisis: parsing the numbers

The world demand for oil, while down by a million or two barrels per day seems to be holding up pretty well. If there is obvious conclusion from the $100+ drop in oil prices during the last six months, it is that world oil prices have become highly sensitive to over-supply and shortages.

Giant oil field decline rates and their influence on world oil production.

Using a comprehensive database of giant oil field production, the average decline rates of the world’s giant oil fields are estimated… The evolution of decline rates over past decades includes the impact of new technologies and production techniques and clearly shows that the average decline rate for individual giant fields is increasing with time. These factors have significant implications for the future, since the most important world oil production base – giant fields – will decline more rapidly in the future, according to our findings.