Ten Non-Surprises

Ten Non-Surprises

To stop my mind from flying around in circles worrying about ‘everything’ I have decided to record the things that I know are going to happen anyway – no matter how hard we try to avoid them.  That way I can stop wondering if I can or should do anything to divert these bundles of sadness from their destined trajectories and instead carry on with preparations to make the best of the coming times.

The occurrence of the following ten things in various forms global and local will not surprise me in the coming decades.  In fact, after much contemplation about New Zealand's social and political position and the inertia of vested interests including the majority of elected 'representatives' and professional advisers at all levels of public and private affairs I have satisfied myself that what ever efforts we may apply to these matters we are unable to turn sufficiently away from our present path to avoid these Non-Surprises.   

I am content that I am unable to make any suggestion to anybody else that will make any material difference to the course New Zealand and Humanity generally are pursuing.  Therefore this post is not to be taken in any way as a criticism of efforts being made by others, rather it is a statement of my own belief.  

As I have said before, I believe that the time for attempting to plug the holes in the sinking ship is now behind us, and we should devote our remaining resources and energies to building life boats to carry us in as much comfort as possible to our new future.  

I therefore relieve myself of my previous duty of trawling the global media for signs of change for the better and for blogging and petitioning the 'powers that be' to seek change to the current course.  Instead the only ‘news’ concerning these matters that is of any interest to me is that either these things have somehow been permanently avoided (say; a Grand Power assumes total control of global fossil fuel production and resource extraction and immediately institutes a 10% reduction in global production every year for the next seven years), or are likely to be much worse or occur much sooner than expected (say; rising Arctic ocean and air temperatures lead to abrupt releases of calthrates and tundra methane, collapse of Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets). 

I would like to know about Black Swan events and no doubt I can rely on friends (or the appearance of fire and brimstone on the horizon) to appraise me of these as and when they occur.

Climate

1    Air temperatures will continue to rise. (Some locations become uninhabitable.  For example towns in central Australia where temperatures of 48°C were recently recorded. Changes in crops grown/not grown in many areas, inability of many crops to cope with higher temperatures or frost-free growing seasons. Failure to establish heat-resistant crops in time to replace lost production.  Insect issues including increased crop damage, loss of pollinators. Reduced food production and higher food costs.  Draconian and misplaced controls on food production, distribution and storage.  Relocation of populations. Civil unrest.)

2    Droughts will become more extreme and frequent. (Impacts on public water supplies, farm production and viability and on frequency and extent of fires. Failure to develop water saving schemes to serve key food production areas.  Miss-allocation of funds and resources to poorly chosen agricultural pursuits. Failure to develop and utilise all available public lands including National Parks and reserves as forest food gardens where some portion may survive climate change to provide useful food production on the 'commons'.  Increasing cost of food. Abandonment of farms and towns. Unemployment and population relocation.)

3    Storm events will become more extreme. (Damage to and eventual abandonment of storm and flood-prone areas, increased damage to land and soils impacted by drought, unaffordable insurance policies and hence inability to obtain finance to build or rebuild, reclassification of land to prevent development. Loss of property values. Inability to afford repairs to important infrastructure or to build works to withstand storms.)

4     Predictions of end-of-century sea level rise moving to substantially higher values than the current 1.5 metres.  (Refusal of insurance for coastal areas and consequent collapse of coastal property markets. Impact on coastal food production areas [delta areas producing rice, for example]. Relocation of populations, Civil unrest and increased pressure on remaining land and food production areas.)

Economy

5    Increased fragility of financial systems and ever-increasing risk of progressive and sudden collapse of key components of the system.  (Higher rate of failure of major financial institutions and big and small businesses.  Failure of some businesses and systems to recover from collapse cycles.)

6    Increasingly frequent malfunction of local banking systems due to electricity or internet failures. (Cashflow machines empty, banking system disabled, commerce ceases or becomes cash- and paper-based.  Inability to buy or trade fuel due to cash purchase requirements on service stations by their fuel suppliers.  Failure of ‘farmers markets’ to provide food supply due to reliance on financial and energy systems. Food riots. Breakdown of law and order. ‘Arab Springs’.)

Energy

7    Progressive increases in cost of energy – especially oil.  (Reduced operating margins for businesses, reduced spending power for households, spiralling economic and business failure and unemployment.)

8    High risk of sudden failure of oil supply to New Zealand due to increased demands of ChIndia and other remaining production hubs, corralling of global oil supplies by major importers and increased internal consumption of exporters.  (Failure of national and international public and private transport systems. Abrupt disruption to commerce and food production and distribution. Breakdown of law and order. Use of the armed forces against the people.  Repressive but ineffective responses to the demands of the population including takeover of privately stored supplies.)

9    Increased burning of coal to fuel power supplies and industry - mostly overseas but partly using coal exported from New Zealand. (Failure to develop and install local demand reduction and energy storage solutions that would cope with energy supply variations arising from 100% renewable energy sources.  Failure of raw material supplies for development of renewable energy sources. Continued growth in greenhouse gas emissions and thus temperatures - see above.)

Political and Social

10  On-going efforts to solve problems by increasing rather than reducing the complexity of local and national governments, infrastructure and social support systems.  (Increasing cost of government and development, higher taxes and rates, transfer of subsidies and support from programmes supporting underprivileged and disadvantaged people to funding the operation of the increasingly irrelevant bureaucracy,  increased ‘mindlessness’ of law-making and enforcement.  Dissemination of misinformation about the cause and effect of the crisis.  Further reduction in effectiveness of representation and democratic process, increasing instances of non-compliance with ‘bad’ laws and rules, increasing separation between policy directions and the actual condition of the people.  State assuming more local powers to support failed councils (e.g Christchurch). Increased spending on projects and services that exacerbate already-bad conditions [e.g. Roads of National Importance]. Increased un-democratisation and privatisation of key public service utilities and functions.   Failure to allow domestic rain water collection and use, composting toilets and domestic greywater re-use in all areas currently served by expensive and poorly-performing water supply and sewage systems..  Failure of utilities including energy suppliers to provide required services and of councils and government to restore useful control and function of utilities to the people. Increased civil unrest concerning representation and governance and increasingly heavy-handed anddesperate responses by local and national government agencies.)

So:

None of the above will surprise me, and unless the biggest possible Black Swan event of all occurs (viz.; a complete change of mind-set by every human being on the planet Earth to restore and operate the Earth as a ‘commons’ for the gentle benefit of all) I do not see any of these issues being avoidable.

Thus I choose to watch with interest the coming times, while focussing my attentions fully on making all possible preparations for me and mine to deal intelligently with whatever comes to give us the best chance for some of our DNA to make it though.

Nigel Williams

12 February 2013

The Cost of Oil

The IEA has just published its World Oil Outlook.

http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2012/november/name,33015,en.html

http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

It presents an amazingly optimistic perspective.  The charts show continued growth in production and continuing increase in price.

So the chart I present here shows how much oil will cost the world each day, based on the IEA's own charts of production and price - assuming the current policies scenario is follows, and why not. 

The curve shows the cost of oil to the world each day.  The red line marks 2012.

So oil is not expected to cost the world less for quite a while.  Remember the cost of oil in 2008 was largely responsible for the global economic crash.  Today (2012) we are struggling, and its going to cost us more for many years to come.

Interesting.

Greenland - ready to rumble!

http://grist.org/list/study-even-a-small-temperature-increase-will-obliterate-greenland-ice-cap/


With continued growth in coal consumption the return to 350 ppm CO2, and staying below 2 degrees C increase are now both unlikely.
http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-03-12/peak-oil-review-mar-12


And Hansen reinforces the simple truth:  If we dont divert from our present path then we could get 5 metres sea level rise this century.  Listen to his latest message on:
http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_climate_change.html


Nothing here gives me any cause to change my view about the likely rates of sea level rise.

Sea levels to continue to rise for 500 years? Long-term climate calculations suggest so

ScienceDaily (Oct. 17, 2011) — Rising sea levels in the coming centuries is perhaps one of the most catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures. Massive economic costs, social consequences and forced migrations could result from global warming. But how frightening of times are we facing? Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute are part of a team that has calculated the long-term outlook for rising sea levels in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution of the atmosphere using climate models.
...
In the pessimistic scenario, emissions continue to increase. This will mean that sea levels will rise 1.1 meters by the year 2100 and will have risen 5.5 meters by the year 2500.
...
For the two more realistic scenarios, calculated based on the emissions and pollution stabilizing, the results show that there will be a sea level rise of about 75 cm by the year 2100 and that by the year 2500 the sea will have risen by 2 meters.
...
 it would be 2-400 years before we returned to the 20th century level of a 2 mm rise per year,
---
OK, so its another 'official' view that sea levels will continue to rise for a long time, and even if things 'stabilise' at the 20th century rate of 2 mm per year, its going to keep on keeping on.


Also check out:


Rising oceans: Too late to turn the tide?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110718092220.htm



ScienceDaily (2011-07-18) -- Melting ice sheets contributed much more to rising sea levels than thermal expansion of warming ocean waters during the Last Interglacial Period, scientists have found. The results further suggest that ocean levels continue to rise long after warming of the atmosphere levels off.
---
Keep building your arks and planting your spinach!!

How long do we have?

This post highlights the potential timeframes we have to deal with as far as any energy-intensive solution to impending climate change and sea level rise is concerned.

You will recall that with the global CO2 levels now passing through 390ppm, there is nothing standing in the way of an eventual melt-out of most of the global ice sheets, and consequent 70 to 80 metre sea level rise.

This chart is our view of the future of oil supply for small nations that are net importers of oil.

The chart uses two sources of data:- 
Declining production data from the IEA World Energy Outlook 2010's expected crude oil production from Existing fields plus part of the IEA's Fields yet to be developed and Fields yet to be found.  
and
Consumption data from the CIA World Fact Book:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2173rank.html
The net-exporter's consumption is incremented by a modest 2.9% per year from 2010 levels.


The premise is that net exporting nations will continue to favour supplying their internal consumption over exporting their oil during the next 20 years.  These nations will thus become prime locations for global manufacturing as oil supplies to the net importing nations become more tenuous.  


At the same time their production capacity will be affected generally in the same way as the rest of the world, as depicted by the IEA's WEO2010.  

The suggested rate of increase of the internal consumption of the producing nations used in the chart above of only 2.9% per year is likely to be very 'conservative', but things get quite bad enough fast enough with that rate; people can make their own assessment of the more likely rate and the following implications.  (Saudi Arabia's internal consumption is rising at about 5.5% per year, for example.)


The largest oil importers (say the top ten importers including USA, China, Japan, Germany, South Korea and India etc) will make (have made) agreements with other exporters to assure supply of their import requirements over the same period - at any cost.  


This leaves 'what's left' of global oil exports for the other 140 net importing nations, including many nations with little or no internal oil production at all.


The 'what's left' for these 140 nations is depicted on this chart as what could be termed a 'Triangle of Hope' spanning on the y axis from about 68 to 80 million barrels per day giving them about 12 mmbl per day today, running out to zero available to them around 2016!  


==ZERO! FOUR YEARS TIME.==  


And the internal demand of the net exporters reaches their present day production levels in 20 years time.  At which time there is nothing left to send to any of the importers.


At that stage, 20 years out from now, this chart suggests that the only oil that will be availably to any nation will be the oil it produces itself.  It appears that there will not be any nation with a surplus of supply over demand.  Its my guess that past that date any global oil movements will be by way of private treaty between parties with something to trade rather than within any open market.

I offer this perspective on the global oil supply situation as an incentive to viewers to hasten their personal and community preparations for the coming 'interesting times'.

For a fuller version of this post with background info refer to: 
http://oilshockhorrorprobe.blogspot.co.nz/2011/10/when-might-new-zealands-oil-imports-dry.html#more


Kind regards


Nigel

How are we doing? Latest Global CO2 Level

Not doing that well!  No sign of any useful  levelling-off of CO2 levels, the upward trend appears to be continuing unabated.

and so the Earth's energy imbalance caused by increased greenhouse gas levels is increasing the required surface temperature and thus driving an ever-increasing forcing on ice melt and  the rate of sea level rise.

We COULD get onto a war footing to do what we can to stop the rot, while making prudent and straightforward provision for the perils of climate change and resource depletion (the perfect storm, isn't it!?!).

As so many other scientists and commentators  have observed. if we do nothing but persist with Business as Usual catastrophe is certain.

This catastrophe is way more certain than the likelihood of a fire burning down your house (an eventuality that most homeowners pay thousands of dollars a year to insure against), yet right now very few people are making any provision against the consequences of climate change and resource depletion.

The IMF and IEA are now both shouting that the time of plentiful energy supplies are behind us and we are entering a time of increased scarcity of oil supplies.  It would pay to listen.

But if instead we initiate a national mobilisation to produce our food locally and sustainably, and to reconfigure our entire society to a low-energy operation (which WILL entail turning away from our present economic and social paradigm) then we can give ourselves and our children the best chance that we can to make it through with some sort of dignity and a fair chance of living to a ripe old age.

We have to paint this truly grim picture plainly and honestly for all people to come to understand what is in front of us, and to thus provide the emotional and intellectual basis for mobilisation.  The short-term risks involved in doing this must be determined to be worth enduring if we are to avoid the worst impacts of what at the moment is a certain unravelling of life as we know it as the global economy and energy situation spirals downwards to oblivion.

We are in for a low-energy climate-affected future ANYWAY.  We will be better off if we accept that, and prepare for it for all we are worth, directing our remaining energy resources towards building our lifeboat, rather than wasting those precious resources on useless trivia such as new motorways or the manufacture of massive volumes of soon-to-be-useless consumer goods.

Time to write some letters to MPs, Councillors and newspapers, methinks!