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.

Peak oil – what do we do now?

We’ve now in a period of major human disorientation, but geology does not become disoriented on the human timescale. The impending peak oil problem may now be generally absent from the media and the public consciousness, but it has not gone away. We would do well to continue meaningful studies of peak oil production and mitigation during this period of peak oil quiet.

President’s Day

I like to think that Mr. Obama really does know what’s up — that “change” means we have to live a lot differently, not mount a campaign to sustain the unsustainable. I suspect that President Obama has learned over the last several weeks that the nation’s banking system and economy — indeed, the whole world’s — are in way worse shape than anyone imagined before January 20.