One point which can’t be made enough about unconventional oil production is that it uses a TON of water. Fracking, tar sands, shale all require water to work and a lot of it.
So even if it’s true that we have more than enough hydrocarbons to fry ourselves (as long as we’re willing to pay a premium for it), it’s a trade-off with water. More oil = more water use. Hydrocarbons are also key in agriculture, both for machinery and for fertilizer.
Oil=Water=Food
This problem has been thrown into sharp relief recently because of the California drought. On top of Nestle bottling water in California, agribusiness growing water intensive crops, fracking is draining resevoirs and aquifers as well.
This problem is going to continue. In coastal regions and continental regions which aren’t blocked by mountains, it’s at least theoretically possible we could move to desalinization plants on a massive scale, build canals, and move the water inland. But desalinization is still an extremely inefficient technology and canals running essentially uphill also require huge expenditures of energy.
Water, oil, agriculture, and suburban expansion (eating into naturally productive farmland which doesn’t require huge supplies of water from elsewhere) are all related issues. We’re looking at genuine water shortages in large parts of the world as well as dust-bowls: Expect to see them in India, China, the US, and elsewhere.
There are solutions to these problems, but we should have been moving towards those solutions decades ago and we weren’t. As a result, a lot of people are going to suffer and die who needn’t.
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Bill H
Not to mention that 19% of the energy used in California is used to treat, and move water and purify wastewater. As supply diminishes that amount will increase.
Additionally, 12% of California’s power is hydro-power, and that power generation has shrunk 60% in the past four years due to drought.
So what happens as power demend to treat and supply water increases while hydro-power diminishes. California does not have a power surplus at this point, at least not during a hot summer, or even during a warm winter.
Cvp
I remember the Economist forcasting that Calfornia’s population would reach 120 millon.
V. Arnold
@ Cvp
April 1, 2015
I remember the Economist forcasting that Calfornia’s population would reach 120 millon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yeah, right. Contrast that with a late 60’s environmentalist’s estimating the “sustainable” (key word here) population of the U.S. was about 50 million.
That’s roughly 10 million more than the estimated native population of 30 – 40 million when America was “discovered”. Note, that’s for North America; not the American/U.S. empire.
My apologies for not supplying source links. I have searched and searched for the author of that estimate; I just can’t recall or source the author.
Stirling Newberry
the problem is that it’s variable what sustainable means.
V. Arnold
Stirling Newberry
April 1, 2015
the problem is that it’s variable what sustainable means.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Without further definition, I do not agree.
Sustainable;
Conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources:
our fundamental commitment to sustainable development.
Oxford Dictionaries
If you want to argue semantics, then all is lost. I think it’s pretty apparent what sustainable means in pragmatic terms.
Do not use more than can be replaced by the natural ecology, aka, the ability of any given ecosystem.
Exceed that and you are doomed, regardless of the time span…
mike
“sustainable” over what period? for whom? for how many? who answers these questions? guess we’re doomed.
Doc
North America’s sustainable ecosystem started its downturn in the early 1500’s when those “other” illegal aliens started showing up onshore-uninvited.
A little too late to start fretting about it now.
Bill Hicks
“As a result, a lot of people are going to suffer and die who needn’t.”
They would die eventually anyway, as the end of the oil age is the end of the road for the “green revolution,” utterly dependent as that agricultural model is on petroleum based pesticides and fertilizer, and the oil run machinery that plants, harvests and transports it. All this does is speed the process up by a few decades.
john c. halasz
Note the patent holder:
http://www.businessinsider.com/lockheed-martin-desalination-graphene-filters-2013-3
Gaianne
Time to put in a word for organic gardening. Does not need major (or, in principle, any) petroleum and can utilize water efficiently, while avoiding pesticides and similar toxins.
Learn gardening and you can be of help to those around you, help people who are gardening and you help yourself.
It won’t save the world. Nothing can do that. (Hint: The world will not be saved.) But it can make a difference to the people around you, where you live.
–Gaianne
Stirling Newberry
You have restated what it means, without providing any definition. for example, if I was to take California and say what is the fluid liquid available, your definition would not provide a number. this is because a single number would not capture the actual hydrological flow, which is not a number but a rhythm which would go up and down.
Stirling Newberry
http://symbalitics.blogspot.com/2015/04/water-in-great-plains.html
V. Arnold
Stirling Newberry
April 2, 2015
You have restated what it means, without providing any definition. for example, if I was to take California and say what is the fluid liquid available, your definition would not provide a number. this is because a single number would not capture the actual hydrological flow, which is not a number but a rhythm which would go up and down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Okay, is there any room for common sense? If we cannot agree on terms then there is no point, yes?
Just the number of people settling in L.A. is just nuts. A desert populated by people in denial of where they are living? Come on, give it a rest.
If this devolves to arguments of terminology and definition of minutiae, then fuck all; it’s done.
In fact, that is exactly where the climate change mantra is, at this time.
Numbers? Look around for F’s sake, numbers? This is just nuts…
The fucking planet collapsing all aroud you and you want numbers?
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh……………………….
Stirling Newberry
Numbers are what define things as. Generalities are not for the animus of discussion, and belong only in the first and last paragraphs. If you do not have any meat of discussion, then you should generally listen to people who do.
Doc
Newberry, aka HAL the computer.
Hit the road. This blog is for humans.
Apneaman
How about a reverse definition. Industrial civilization – not sustainable. Hence the water rationing; that is not enough. Drought and desertification tend to follow civilization.
Stirling Newberry
You’ll have to prove that. Go ahead, take your time.
Tom
Lets face it. Democracy, Capitalism, and Western Society has failed and were never workable to begin with. Absolute Monarchies when led by a competent ruler function well, but then fall because the Monarch screws the pooch on succession:
Gengis Khan- Have everyone meet up and elect a new Khan, what could possibly go wrong.
Suleyman- Roxolana is right, I should kill my only competent son in the middle of campaign and replace him with a drunkard. What could possibly go wrong.
Etc.
We say we have freedoms Carthage never had. But Carthage’s slaves had economic and human rights. A master could not dump his slave on the street to starve to death and slaves could earn money and buy their freedom. Muslim Slaves had economic rights, a Master who impregnated his female slave could not sell her, had to claim the child as his legitimate heir and support the slave mother and child or the mother could bring suite against him.
Caliphs could be sued in court in Islamic Jurisprudence and he had no sovereign immunity. Good luck suing the US Government unless it consents to be sued.
Today we don’t have economic rights, which means we really have no rights.
Viewed in that light, a Bedouin Women whose tribe is still nomadic and has resisted all attempts to get it to settle in Urban Zones, has economic rights, because her tribe has economic freedom. She may not have what a Western Woman considers rights, but she certainly has economic rights that means her tribe will take care of her if her immediate family can’t so she doesn’t have to debase herself to survive. A western woman by contrast has to debase herself and face arrest for prostitution if she loses a job and no one feels compelled to help her, thus she has no economic rights and thus all her other rights are meaningless.
How contradictory our society is. I’m reminded of the Gor series. Too many misunderstand that series as light BDSM. It isn’t, though it has it, but in reality its a cosmic horror story that reveals how hollow modern ideals are against human nature and that ironically tribal societies actually give more rights to women and that slavery and freedom are not necessarily good or bad so long as the slave or free person has economic rights. Throughout that series Tarl Cabot has to face fundamental truths about the contradictory nature of human society and its blind pride and belief that its way is secure, that they can bargain with the destructive forces beyond their ability to control but can’t, and man’s tendency to stab each other in the back for greater power. That is the real message of Gor and why the Priest Kings kept Gor the way it is, because they are trying to shepherd humanity by as little interference as possible towards Social Maturity so that it can be trusted with the tools it needs to survive against the real threat to Humanity which is the Kur. Which means Gor Humans have to conquer their egos, humble themselves before the universe, and admit that only by working together for the greater good can they rightfully inherit the Universe.
As for Capitalism. Its very principles violate the Laws of Thermodynamics and thus is doomed to failure because it does not return the Social Energy that comes from labor back to Labor so it can rejuvenate its social energy and create more labor. Without social institutions that Capitalism wants to destroy, there is no market and hence a Capitalist can’t exist to begin with. Socialism is the only economic system that obeys Thermodynamics and thus can work because it maintains the balance of energy without which there is no labor or capital.
V. Arnold
So, we already have a fail; a disagreement of definitions = no solutions, or at least a way forward.
Numbers v. common sense.
Thus the world as we know it…
DMC
We can argue semantics or we can start building desalination plants. There’s a dozen or more start-ups in California looking to do just that. The market actually is a useful thing when its not manipulated by speculative interests, in that it allows for relatively quick adoption of new technologies when they really are significanly “better, cheaper, faster”. Somebody’s going to hit the magic combination of factors that lets them scale up their demonstration product to commercial output and voila, bullet largely dodged again. And really, its not even the population thats the problem in California so much as the water intensive agriculture in what would otherwise be scrubby desert. Throw the almond farmers under the bus and you could proably keep going like this for decade. And frakers, that’s just nuts in the current climate.
Dave B
Actually, reverse osmosis is a pretty efficient way to desalinate seawater. And it is a way that plentiful wind energy via wind turbines can be converted into drinkable and useful for (some) crops water.
But it is expensive, and it does require electricity. In some cases, solar thermal can be used, but to compete with RO you need the close proximity of near desert like sun and cold ocean water for cooling, and you still need some electricity for pumping and vacuum pumps for the multiple effect evaporators.
But in either case, MANUFACTURING drinkable water is going to be more expensive that cheap treatment/purification of river, lake and groundwater. It’s what you do when the human induced demand for drinkable water exceeds the river/lake/groundwater that has been the traditional hunter-gatherer mode of water for human use. Maybe some of the people in water-sparse regions will have to migrate to places with adequate water supplies…..
Manufacturing drinkable and crop-usable water is. Also capital intensive, as the wind turbines/RO or solar thermal/wind turbine combination will create a lot of jobs, and using this water for alfalfa, rice, hay, corn, lettuce, celery, spinach and strawberries and swimming pools/golf courses, etc might have to be limited. And it will get more expensive. Odds are, growing a lot of the veggie crops now done in California will have to be done in more civilized manners in greenhouses in places near the big cities in wetter, colder areas. Also a big source of employment in areas where the economies are depressed because some much money is wasted trucking food from afar, growing it in deserts with “stolen” or borrowed water and wth massive subsidies, too.
The era of cheap water in the US southwest is coming to an end, and maybe that also applies to population growth in those regions. Maybe the population needs to shrink in water deficient regions, and this will benefit places like the Great Lakes and northeast.
Like Jagger and Richards said, you can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you can get what you need. Along coastlines, water is there for the taking, but work and jobs will be needed to extract it from ocean water, and it won’t be cheap. A lot of jobs in California that are nbased on a high water intensity are either going to have to adapt to seawater based cooling or move to areas where there is plentiful fresh water. Ditto for agriculture, especially greenhouse based agriculture. But that sure beats Arizona and Nevada, which have limited to no access to the ocean. People are going to have to move to where the water is, or be rich enough to pay for it to get brought in by railroads. Oh well, the rest of us are long since past caring. When water is cheaper in desert and sem deserts than it is in Buffalo, NY, well, that is seriously insane and unsustainable.
Apneaman
You want me to prove that civilization leads to drought which leads to desertification? I don’t have to prove it. History proves it. How about the very first civilization – Sumeria. It was once fertile and ended up a fucking desert – from overshoot. Many have followed right up to the present day in spite of the massive advantages of burning fossil carbon to move water, machines, etc and the Haber-Bosch process. How about Egypt, Syria, Brazil, U.S. Southwest especially California. You can include the Pacific NW too , since the governor of Oregon declared a state of emergency due to drought last month. The locals that are in drought are too numerous to list. Climate change plays a part and it will only get bigger and completely take over, but human overshoot is at root no matter which way you look at it. No where to run away to this time.
Anon y Mouse
Good article.
A lot of the water “consumed” by fracking lies in the polluted aquifers, not the actual water used to frack. Between leaky equipment, well communication, and companies pumping polluted waste-water into clean aquifers, the damage is probably a lot worse than the usage numbers suggest.
Anon y Mouse
You edited my comment without noting that it was edited. Poor form!