Jim Fournier February 27, 2006 An Optimistic Scenario About Global Warming, Peak Oil and Other...

Jim FournierFebruary 27, 2006

An Optimistic Scenario About Global Warming, Peak Oil

and Other Global Crises

February 27, 2006 The Planetary Situation 2

Good News!

…Later

What Are We to Make of the Global Situation?

http://www.maa.org/devlin/GordianKnot.jpg

The Human Time Scale

Four Planetary Crises, orEvolutionary Drivers:

1. Global Warming

2. Peak Oil

3. Peak Population

4. Resource Depletion (Mass Extinction)

Global Warming: Climate Change

http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/millenniumCO2.htm

Atmospheric CO2 & Temperature, 1000 Years

CO2, Methane, & Temperature Over the Last 160,000 Years

http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gccourse/chem/gases/images/meth_temp.gif

Peak Oil

http://www.peakoil.org

The Green Party View

Peak OilWill Increase Energy Prices

• Drive Efficiency • Reduce Demand• Enable Renewables• Increase Demand for

Coal & Oil Sand

Global Energy Use Per Person Has Actually Stopped Growing

http://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/03-04/biomass/ background%20info.html

But the Population has Not, so CO2 is Still Growing Under Kyoto

http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/english/publications/ap2000/Action_Plan_2000.htm

Long-Term Population Growth

Global Population: Milestones, Hopes, and Concerns Vaclav Smil, PhD http://www.ippnw.org/MGS/V5N2Smil.html

Population S-Curve

http://www.gcrio.org/CONSEQUENCES/summer95/fig1.html

Peak Population?

http://hydro.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/GW/data/global/ciesin-sres/

Some Plausible Good News On Population

U.N. Population Figures May be Correct, Because Over 50% of the Global Population Now Lives in Cities and a Large Family is a Liability in a City, Even Among the Poor

Overall Consumption Is Still Growing

http://www.oilcrash.com/articles/kerr_02.htm

Natural Resource Use

Measured by Weight,95% of All Output from Industrial Activity is Waste

Grasberg Gold Mine, West Papua

Ecological Footprints Attempt to Combine Many Factors and Fail to Focus on Key Biological Resources:

• Forests• Fisheries• Farmland• Fresh Water

Destruction of Forests

Collapse of Fisheries

http://www.fao.org/NEWS/FACTFILE/FF9803-E.HTM

Exhaustion of Farmland

http://arch.rivm.nl/ieweb/ieweb/databases/images/NH3-fertilizer_sm.jpg

40% of allAgricultural Soils are Seriously Depleted

Limited Fresh Water Supply

http://www.waterandnature.org/eatlas/html/gm15.html

All Put Biodiversity At Risk

http://www.biodiversityhotspots.org/xp/Hotspots

If We Do Not Change Course, We Will Lose Half the Species on Earth in the Next 100 Years

Tree of Life Web Project http://tolweb.org/tree

For all of human evolution Nature was something with teeth and claws that could jump out of the dark and eat you. Now, in a single generation that situation has been inverted.Nature is suddenly something fragile that we must protect lest we perish.

What Are We to Make of the Global Situation?

One Biological Metaphor Is Cancer

Will Humanity Turn Out to Be Like a Colony of Mold in a Petri Dish?

Or Like An Embryo

Using The White of the Egg to Grow

A New Form of Complexity?

Teilhard de Chardin’s Noosphere…

Nature has repeatedly done just that before.

Life has always invented its way out of the box.

Here’s the Box

Periodic Spiral of the Elements

Eight Fold Spiral Elements

Inner Spiral of the Elements

Reframing the Evolution of Technology In the Context of Biological Evolution

Roger Dean

Life First Derived Energy from Chemicals in the Primordial Soup

Until Photosynthesis

http://fig.cox.miami.edu/~tkoop/spring00/blnphotosyn.html

Only After the Oxygen Released Rusted All of the Iron in the Earth’s Crust

The Oxygen Level Finally Spiked

Causing Spontaneous Combustion

Respiration Took Advantage of New High-Energy Oxygen

http://bioweb.wku.edu/courses/BIOL115/Wyatt/Metabolism/Glycolysis2.htm

Resulting in the Carbon Cycle

http://www.energex.com.au/switched_on/energy_environment/energy_s_html_carboncycle.html

The Carbon Cycle Has Remained in Balance Until Deforestation and Fossil Fuels Increased CO2 Levels

http://www.bom.gov.au/info/climate/change/gallery/images/9.jpg

Peak Oil Is Analogous to Previous Energy Crises on Earth When Our Ancestors, the Microbes, Used Up All of the Most Easily Available Energy

As Humanity Has Discovered How to Take Advantage of the Immense Fossil Energy Reserves of the Planet, We Have, Like Other Life Forms Before Us, Unbalanced the Atmosphere

Since the year 2000 even our president has started saying that we are going toward a hydrogen economy. Everyone seems to agree that we need renewable energy.

The Ratio of Hydrogen to Carbon Has Been Steadily Evolving

• Wood• Peat• Coal• Oil• Natural Gas• Hydrogen

Each has more Hydrogen and less Carbon

Until one arrives at pure Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the smallest element

Energy In Matter Inevitably Converges on Hydrogen

Transformation of Energy Media from Wood to Hydrogen

http://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/energytransition.html

We Can See Other Parallels With Nature As Well?

Photovoltaics Capture Photons in SiliconJust as Photosynthesis Does with Carbon

Silicon is Like the Next Octave of Carbon

Solar Is the Long-term Solution

Wind Is Cost Effective Now

Neither can reverse the climate change already set In motion.

http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/steffen/greenland/melt2002/melt1992-2002.jpg

Current Biomass Technology

• Depletes The Soil

• Is Only Carbon Neutral

We Need a Bridge, Something to Close the Gap Between:

• 6 Quads Renewables Provide Now• .06 Quads Each For Solar & Wind• 100 Quads/Year U.S. Consumes

A Quad Is: 1 Quadrillion BTU1,000,000,000,000 BTU = 580,000 barrels of oil

If the bridge were not just Carbon Neutral, like current renewables, but Carbon Negative, i.e. could remove net CO2 from the atmosphere, it would be a miracle.

Terra Preta Agricultural Soil Carbon Breakthrough

• Made in the Amazon 500 Years Ago

• Removes Net CO2 From the Atmosphere

• Restores & Improves Soil Fertility

• Replenished By Soil Organisms

Biomass Energy Breakthrough The Best Charcoal For The Soil

Also Makes Hydrogen Energy

Carbon Sequestration Breakthrough

http://www.eprida.com

Fully Integrated Small Scale Biomass Technology Will:

• Remove CO2 From the Atmosphere

• Return CO2 to the Soil As Fertilizer

• Restore Soil While Adding Nitrogen

• Create Green Diesel Infrastructure

• Create Hydrogen Infrastructure

Mimics the Carbon Cycle

http://www.energex.com.au/switched_on/energy_environment/energy_s_html_carboncycle.html

An Octave of the Carbon Cycle

“Back of the Envelop” Global Calculations

• These are NOT fully proven results• The following are a first pass approximation

of what MIGHT potentially be possible based on what we have seen from initial science, preliminary field trials and first working prototypes of the this technology

Potential Global Context• We Release 26,700,000,000 Tons of CO2

• One Unit Can Remove 4,000 Tons of CO2

• Soil Organisms Increase This Around 200%

• 3.5M Units To Remove 26.7B Tons of CO2

• Would Also Produce 25B Barrels of Diesel

• Global Oil Production = 26B Barrels (2004)

How Much Land Would That Take?

• 1 Unit Needs 10 Tons of Biomass per Day

• 1 Unit Needs 3,000 Tons Biomass per Year

• 1 to 10 Tons of Biomass per Acre per Year

• For Each Unit: 300 to 3,000 Acres

• For 3.5 Million Units: 1 to 10 Billion Acres

• Total Global Agricultural Land: 12B Acres

• Does Not Include Forestry Land

There Is No Guarantee; Stabilizing Climate Change Will Be a Race

• Increase Energy Efficiency• Increase Material Efficiency• Ethanol, Methanol & Other Biofuels• Capture Methane From Compost• Reduce Beef Production (Methane)• Capture & Sequester CO2 From Coal• Solar, Wind, Tidal, Geothermal Heat Pumps

It Is Plausible That We Could• Reverse Global Warming

• Transition From Fossil Fuels to Renewables

• Transition From Biodiesel to Hydrogen

• Restore Soil Fertility

• Eliminate Nitrogen Runoff

• Eliminate Acid Rain

• Decentralize Wealth Creation

We Could Transform the Global Situation

Into Something That Feels More Like a Winning Hand of Solitaire

Plausible Solutions For:

Global Warming Peak Oil Peak Population? Mass Extinction

An S-Curve Goes from Concave Up to Concave Down at the Point of Inflection

Point of Inflection

If Global Trends Decelerate,What Looked Like Log Curves May Turn Out to be S-Curves

An S-Curve Implies a Future Plateau Characterized by Climax Technology

We are undergoing a point of inversion in matter and culture. From this point on our technological evolution in matter may be guided by the recognition of the potential for a climax technology, a state of Meta-Nature. A state as harmonious as nature in the coherence of its design, which, like nature, is the realization of a potential already inherent in the puzzle that is matter.

Meta-Nature

GEOMAN

At the Point of Inflection Near the Millennium the System Is:• Changing So Fast That Nothing is Retained

• So Inefficient Nothing Should Be Retained

• First Glimpsing the Potential Future State

• Passing Through the Neck of the Hourglass

• Itself the Global Birth Canal

• Chaotic, Highly Unstable

The Shift must reframe the perception of society, to at once validate everything that has happened to bring us to this point, while at the same time making it self-evident to everyone that we must each now radically change course in the light of this new found perspective.

The Shift Point in Time

As We Pass Through the Neck of the Hourglass There Will BeTwo Key Measures of Success:

• Preservation of Biodiversity

• Achieving Climax Technology

Jim Fournier February 27, 2006 An Optimistic Scenario About Global Warming, Peak Oil and Other...

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