ApocaDocuments (6) for the "Resource Depletion" scenario from this week
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Sat, Sep 4, 2010
from Seed Magazine:
All consuming
...are the world's environmental ills really a result of the burgeoning number of humans on the planet -- growing by more than 150 people a minute and predicted by the United Nations to reach at least 9 billion people by 2050? Or are they more due to the fact that, while human population doubled in the past 50 years, we increased our use of resources fourfold?...Ultimately, the problem isn't the number of people, necessarily. It's what those people do. The average American (just one of 309 million) uses up some 194 pounds of stuff -- food, water, plastics, metals and other things -- per day, day in and day out. We consume a full 25 percent of the world's energy despite representing just 5 percent of global population. And that consumerism is spreading, whether it be the adoption of cars as a lifestyle choice in China or gadget lust in the U.S.
"Consumerism is now spreading around the world," says Erik Assadourian, a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute. "Is this going to keep spreading? Or are countries going to start recognizing that this is not a good path?" ...
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I'll give these questions my undivided attention when I return from copulating at the mall.
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Sat, Sep 4, 2010
from New York Times:
Mariner Rig Accident Undercuts Efforts to End Drilling Moratorium
Despite the favorable outcome, the accident's timing could not have been worse for the offshore oil and gas industry and its supporters, who in recent weeks have stepped up an already aggressive campaign against the Obama administration's moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
Just one day before the fire erupted on the rig, executives from Mariner Energy were taking part in a rally against the moratorium, which was struck down by a succession of federal judges but continues to affect the region's deepwater drillers. The rally took place in Houston and was sponsored by the American Petroleum Industry.
"This administration is trying to break us," Barbara Dianne Hagood, a Mariner executive who attended the rally, told The Financial Times. "The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the Gulf Coast, Gulf Coast employees and Gulf Coast residents."... Jim Noe, an attorney with Hercules Offshore, a major driller in the Gulf of Mexico, called the fire a "drag," and "another challenge" for the industry, in an interview with Bloomberg News. "It's another issue that we have to explain," he said. ...
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I'm so sorry random circumstance became meaningful prescience.
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Thu, Sep 2, 2010
from Der Spiegel:
German Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis
A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.
The term "peak oil" is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis -- and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.
The issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes even further.... It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises.... According to the German report, there is "some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later." The Bundeswehr prediction is consistent with those of well-known scientists who assume global oil production has either already passed its peak or will do so this year. ...
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But I thought the world was infinite.
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Thu, Sep 2, 2010
from San Francisco Chronicls:
Early humans were cannibals
New anthropologic research suggests that early humans -- those living about 800,000 years ago in Europe -- ate their young. Or the young of their enemies, anyway.
Among the remains of bison, sheep and other animals in a cave in northern Spain, researchers found the "butchered remains" of 11 children and adolescents. The youngsters had been decapitated and their skulls smashed, as if to get at the brain and marrow -- which are surprisingly nutritious.
The remains dated from a period of about a hundred thousand years, demolishing the theory that cannibalism only happened when food was extremely scarce. And because the human bones had simply been tossed away with the other animal bones, it appears the early humans didn't attach any particular ceremonial value to eating kids.
Researchers speculate that eating your enemies' young was simply a way to reduce the competition and get a square meal in the bargain. Creepy.
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Let's hope prehistory isn't repeated.
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Tue, Aug 31, 2010
from Herald Scotland:
Pakistan: A land left to drown by the 'timber mafia'
The warnings regularly given by all manner of experts had been ignored for decades.
If Pakistan's authorities continued to allow the country's timber mafia and a benighted and oppressed peasantry to strip the country's forests at a faster rate than anywhere else in Asia, as is happening, floods of Biblical proportions would be inevitable. They would not be acts of God. They would be man-made catastrophes.
And so it came to pass - as August began - that heavier than usual, but not unprecedented, monsoon rains fell.... "Other than landslides, soil erosion and the occasional homes and crops being swept away, it [the forest denudation] was not considered a disaster and hence didn't make the headlines," wrote Ayesha Tammy Haq, a columnist with the Pakistan daily Express Tribune newspaper.... This year's monsoon lashing northern Pakistan with unusual intensity would historically have been absorbed by extensive forests, much like multiple layers of blotting paper, allowing the rains to run off more sedately than in modern times.
But this month the mud and water deluge cascaded off the tree-bare mountains and hills with exceptional force and barrelled down towards the plains in mammoth fury. ...
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Hey, a guy's gotta eat. Capiche?
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Mon, Aug 30, 2010
from Xinhua, via China.org.cn:
China sets up base to explore deep-sea energy
China will build a multi-million dollar research base on its east coast to accelerate the study and exploration of deep-sea energy resources, officials with the preparatory group of the base said Thursday.
The base covers 26 hectars of the ground and 62.72 hectares of the sea in the coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong Province, and will serve as a ground support station for China's manned submersible vehicle "Jiaolong".... Scientists believe sea beds at a depth of 4,000 to 6,000 meters hold abundant deposits of rare metals and methane hydrate, a solidified form of natural gas bound into ice that can serve as a new energy source. ...
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Use it or lose it, right?
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