Lovelock gets it right...

It's little known even in the doom 'n gloomer blogosphere that CO2 is not the single biggest threat to climate change. It is the initial kick off, but the total warming the earth will experience will be the total set of feedback mechanisms and side effects of the initial CO2 warm up. One of these is the reduced albedo when the ice pack, snow cover, and glaciers melt. This warms the ocean faster and is a straight-forward Catch-22 situation. Ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more heat, more ice melts, etc., etc.

Another feedback loop is the methane released by thawing Tundra. Tundra is basically frozen peat and other organic matter and when it thaws it gives off a lot of methane gas. Methane is twenty times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2. If methane accumulation builds alongside CO2 we have a runway situation as Dr. James Lovelock predicted. On its own melting Tundra is a severe feedback loop.

But thawing Tundra is a drop in the bucket compared to the frozen methane stored underwater in the Arctic and Antarctic. The estimates of the amount of these frozen methane hydrates is staggering and now it looks like it is, in fact, melting and off-gassing methane. This feedback loop is going to be immense and it will push all of the warming estimates to date off the charts. I've said for many years now that we will see up to three feet of ocean rise by 2015. The Methane Hydrate feedback mechanism is the basis for my prediction. The melt, once started, is going to accelerate global warming unlike anything we ever expected. And it looks like we're there...

Peak potash and peak food

Most folks are familiar with the peak oil movement but few have noticed another critical resource that seems to have peaked. Potash is one of three critical ingredients in fertilizers that are needed to continue the level of food production that feeds the world. Seems we haven't discovered any new potash reserves in quite awhile and this critical ingredient is in short supply around the world. The other two critical ingredients in common fertilizer mixes come from oil and natural gas. Oil we know is peaking now and natural gas is probably 10 to 15 years away from a peak. With Potash peaking as well we seem to be arriving at a trifecta of fertilizer shortages. Feeding the world is going to be nigh impossible without cheap fertilizers so we're now looking at peak food.

And holy moley - Nymex crude is breaking $120 a barrel today! This is going to be one long and expensive Summer. If this keeps up we'll see $6+/gallon gasoline in the US by mid-July.

Yada yada yada...

Been watching a debate on a few blogs the last couple of days on whether we're heading for "an inflationary recession" or a "deflationary depression". These guys banter back and forth like this is some kind of temporary condition and they just need to get a handle on which way it will go. The spiraling energy costs, food shortages, and other issues crawling across the planet aren't economic preconditions for future market growth. Though I'm sure lots of folks will find lots of stuff to sell to lots of other folks the kind of banter that makes it seem like a short-term market correction is just plain silliness. One guy actually has a wager as to which way it will go. I wonder if he's betting on the famine and riot numbers in Africa as well? Jeesh...!

CNBC (or CNBS as it's often called) had Matthew Simmons on again, the author of "Twilight In The Desert". He has been warning folks for years that global oil supply was nearing a peak and he had the data to prove it. Usually he looks like the cat that ate the canary and defends himself against all "perpetual oil" pundits they throw at him. This morning he looked like the kid who cried wolf when the wolf showed up. Simmons actually made the argument that peak oil could be an economic stimulus. Whaaat? And I suppose you think famine will spawn new industries too, right Matt?

Come on folks, the days of stable markets are about to get kicked in the proverbial teeth. I'm not saying that the fundamentals of market economics or the age-old rules of business behavior have changed. But the modern concept of them is about to take a turn for the chaotic at the very least. Volatility in all things is making a run for the stratosphere and the idea of a "global wheat market" or global anything without an economic means of transport is going to make it very difficult to price anything accurately. Wheat may be $10 a bushel in California and $50 in Bangladesh (or the reverse) and the combined effects of famine, local politics, and sky-high transportation costs are going to make anything like the transparency we have now seem like the good old days.

Thought this is only the beginning of a major planetary adjustment, and one that may take hundreds of years or more to complete, it's not going to be like the frog in the slowly heated pan. Things are going to jump rapidly due to the major back pressure of the billions of folks that need food, energy, and medicine every single day of the year. The thought of trying to pick the highest profit point in all of this is, well, like betting on the outcome of your own heart transplant. Seems kind of pointless and superficial in the grander scheme of things.

How ya gonna keep'em down on the farm?

For anyone who believes that peak oil and climate change will result in large changes to human population the only rational course is to figure out what kind of lifestyle is sustainable and to achieve this before things become dire. For my family the result is to focus our lives on building up a small farm to the point that it is able to provide for our needs.

We went through about a two year process in narrowing down the nice-to-haves, the must-haves, and the pie-in-the-sky features. Our short list ended up with the following:

1. 15 acres/6 hectares or larger
   
2. 1/2 forest and 1/2 arable fields
3. a small house that can be used while we build a bigger one
4. source of water other than a well
5. within two hours of a large city
6. part of a small nearby community or town
7. easily reachable by road, rail, and water
8. full sunlight for solar power
   
9. decent wind for wind power
10. away from coastal areas due to sea level rise
    

We found the ideal place about a year ago and bought it last Fall. It's 20 acres with about 2/3 forest and 1/3 fields with a nice though small house and a decaying barn. The former owners also installed a small diesel-powered sawmill so we can cut our own lumber as well. The fields haven't been used for about 50 years and are a bit overgrown. We've outfitted an 800cc ATV as a mini-tractor and will use it to get the fields in shape for food production next year. The first year goal is to cut the weeds, plow the soil thoroughly and plant "green manure" (red clover) through Fall 2008.

The property also has a nice little pond about 50 meters by 100 meters that we'll dredge and use to aquafarm crayfish. If things get really dire we'll convert to intensive fish farming. The crayfish are just for fun.

The plan is to add a greenhouse and wood-heated hot tub to one side of the little house this Summer. I've also invested in detailed plans for a Gambrel Roof barn that we plan to build next Summer. We'll use the plans to calculate how much lumber we need. The lumber will be cut in 2008 and set up to dry in the dilapidated barn until we're ready to raze it and put up the new one in 2009.

We'll add two large greenhouses beside the barn to extend the growing season a bit. These are 5 meters by 20 meters and will extend our growing season a month or two on either side of April and October. We live in a Northern climate (picked back in the 1990's due to global warming issues) and the growing season is quite short otherwise. The fields are divided up into our greenhouse area for vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc. and two larger fields we'll use for corn, wheat, potatoes, and sugar beets. The sugar beets are for our own Ethanol production for use in our car and ATV. Both of these are modern EFI (electronic fuel injection) vehicles that can be converted to Ethanol with a simple add-on box.

The new barn will sport a high efficiency still we'll use to produce our own Ethanol. Ethanol from sugar beets is a tried and true process and there are a lot of howto guides.

Once the barns and greenhouses are up we'll start building the wind and solar power systems. I figure it's a two year process to build test and debug the system and get us entirely off grid. We'll leave the little house on-grid so that we seem at least partially respectable to the powers that be but the new house we plan to build on the property will be completely off grid as will the greenhouses and barn.

Food, fuel, and foolishness

NYMEX Oil just broke $115 a barrel today and that means $5-$6 a gallon gas in the US this Summer. The folks I mention this to in the USA give me the "glassy stare" or the look-at-the-ceiling treatment and wait for the subject to change. Doesn't change the fact that gas prices are spiraling out of control. If European gas prices are any indication the demand-destruction price for gasoline is somewhere above $12 per gallon. Europeans happily pay this price and keep on driving so it's not a stretch to think Americans will do the same. If I were a betting fellow I'd guess that $15 a gallon is the upper limit folks in the Western world can handle. The RoW is shit outta luck even at today's prices.

The Peak Oil folks have been waiting for this for years and are jumping up and down with glee that their doomer dreams are finally coming to the fore. Hubbard et. al laid down the timeline back in the '50's but some folks still think this is news.

And Peak Oil is just a blip in the road to ruin we're all traveling along. Food stocks of all kinds are collapsing. We've simply outstripped the planet's capacity to provide for 6.5 billion human beings and the roll back is in its very early stages. The honey bee, Pacific Salmon, bats, crops of all kinds, and even the plankton are all in various stages of population crash. None of these is any more critical than the others - and these are only the first of a global pandemic of plant and animal resets to much lower populations - except for the Plankton. Plankton just happen to be the critters that absorb more CO2 than any other single thing on the planet. As their numbers dwindle due to...whoops...global warming it'll add to the momentum of the vicious feedback loop we're entering.