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  • Of course population is still a problem

     

    While admitting that world population may increase by another 2 billion or so by midcentury, he dismisses this increment as a “time-lag” problem.

    Earth to Fred: 2 billion more people is a lot of people to a world that is already struggling to feed 6.8 billion people. It’s a lot of people to a biosphere that is threatened with what leading biologists refer to as the Sixth Mass Extinction. And it’s a lot of people to a planet that is already threatened with the effects of climate change. And while “population momentum” (i.e., large numbers of people entering their reproductive years) may account for some of the projected increase in human numbers, much of it is being driven by the fact that fertility rates in many developing countries around the world are still well above the “replacement rate.”

    Yes, Fred, we must do something about consumption. Unless we in the developed world do more to curb our consumption of fossil fuels and scarce minerals, the world is headed for an ecological and humanitarian disaster. We need to lower our per capita consumption of fossil fuels and other scarce resources. A lot. But I don’t see the G8 or the G20 putting their heads together right now in an effort to lower consumer spending. Really, I don’t. Neither do I see anything happening with respect to climate change.

    And that’s why it’s especially important to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the U.S. and other developed nations. Sorry, Fred, it doesn’t matter that America’s fertility rate is right around the “replacement rate” or that Europe’s is well below it. A baby born here or elsewhere in the developed world will still consume a disproportionate share of the world’s resources and contribute disproportionately to the world’s environmental problems.

    It’s also important to prevent unwanted pregnancies in the developing world. The reasons, however, are different. It really doesn’t matter whether global fertility rates have dropped sharply; they remain unsustainably high in many of the least developed areas of the world. Yes, Fred, fertility rates have come down sharply in Iran and Bangladesh, but women in Afghanistan and Somalia and other desperately poor countries are still having four, five, or six children on average. Some poor countries, like Uganda and Niger, are on track to triple their populations over the next 40 years. Africa’s population will likely double by mid-century.

    Looking ahead, Fred, will these countries be able to feed themselves? Will they have enough safe drinking water? Will their lands be deforested or their rivers polluted? Will their maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates remain unacceptably high? Will they be caught in a demographic poverty trap? Will they become failed states? If you have good answers to these questions, please let me know. Because if you don’t, then we need to ensure that women in these developing countries are given the information and the access to contraceptives that they need to prevent unwanted and unintended pregnancies.

    Someday we will be able to declare victory. Someday every woman will have access to family-planning services and reproductive health care. Someday world population will be in decline. Someday world population levels will pose no danger to the health of the planet. But that day has not arrived. Not yet. In the meantime, your breezy dismissal of the “population problem” does an enormous disservice to the planet and every living creature that calls it home.

  • Managing Offshore Oil Risks

     

    Managing Offshore Oil Risks

    Julia Aasberg, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS)

    “This will be a significant insurance loss of more than a billion dollars and our expectation is that rates and terms will harden” (Photo: Allianz)
     

     

    What caused the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible drilling unit?

    It’s too soon to tell. However, we know there was a fire and explosion following a control of well event and the exact sequence of events is under investigation. What is interesting is that they had already struck oil and were in the process of completing the well for later production.  This process is usually regarded as lower risk than when actually drilling 13,000 feet deep into the seabed.

     

    Do we know if the problem occurred on the platform or on the seabed?

    Something happened during the completion operation in the well bore. The drilling crew was installing a casing into the well to prepare it for oil and gas production. Customarily, a special mud is pumped down to create a hydrostatic pressure to counteract the pressure from the oil reservoir.

     

    Something upset this balance and it is believed that an uncontrolled flow of oil and gas rose up to the drilling rig, found a source of ignition, and caused the explosion that ultimately sank the rig.

     

    What happened after the explosion?

    Tragically, among the 126 people on board, 17 were injured and there were 11 fatalities. Two days after the explosion, the unit sank and since then the well has continued to leak.

     

    BP is the majority owner of the lease/well and Transocean was hired by BP to drill this and other wells under a long term contract. They will be working closely together to bring the well under control and, in addition, BP has the primary responsibility for cleaning the oil pollution. 

     

    Was this well known to be especially dangerous?

    When there is drilling into a rock formation that has been there for thousands of years with trapped oil and gas the expectation is that there will be pressure, evidenced by the surveys or other well data. BP will have performed extensive surveys and compared them to other well data to establish a design for the well. Based on the information currently available, we do not believe this presented an abnormal risk

     

    You are talking about one borehole, but apparently there are several leaks.

    Yes, after the unit sank it landed on the ocean floor some 500 meters away from the original well. The riser tube that connects the seabed equipment to the drilling rig was ruptured in two places when the drilling rig sank. We understand that oil is leaking from the riser tube and possibly the seabed equipment.

     

    BP is trying to install some sort of metal dome on the well to stop the flow of oil. How would that work?

    BP developed a giant dome to sit over the leaks to contain the oil allowing it to be siphoned up to a tanker rather than let it float to the surface.

     

    Another idea is to drill once again into the oil reservoir. What would that achieve?

    That’s happening right now. There is another oil rig already on site and they are drilling a relief well into the original well bore to attempt to stop the flow. This is achieved by pumping heavy drilling mud through the relief well into the original well bore to stop the uncontrolled flow of oil. This may take 2 to 3 months

  • The fates of nation: A Biological Theory of History

     

    • Niches are professions, and have limited intake. “The squirrel is highly tuned to a very specialized profession. It cannot change its way of life. Squirrels, therefore, live only in times and places suited to the squirrel way of life, to the squirrel niche. [It follows that] the numbers of any kind of squirrel that may live are fixed.”[1]
    • Species are vehicles for niche discovery. Each niche establishes a limit on population; individuals compete for a slice of this pie by natural selection. A niche is not about survival but about lifestyle; children want to grow up in the lifestyle to which they have grown accustomed.
    • A crucial part of success in leaving behind descendants is to correctly estimate the optimum number of children to maximize one’s chances. Infanticide is one way to modulate this estimation, given the time taken for human babies to mature.
    • For the last 10,000 years man has been able to create new niches.
    • Man is an ice age species. The ice age wasn’t actually colder across the planet. Since the ice caps were larger, the oceans receded. The tropical savannahs were larger. Man has evolved to like broad open spaces, and to value choice.
    • Wealth and poverty are two extreme types of niche. The wealthy live lifestyles closer to those they were evolved to enjoy. The poor are poor because their constraints deny them various aspects of this lifestyle.
    • The poor have many children because more children don’t require much more to raise. The rich have few children because they can’t afford more in their lifestyle.
    • As a civilization grows, its poor grow in number. The rich feel first the pinch of narrowing niche spaces. These lead their children to trade.
    • A common pattern is for island nations to grow militarily, since trading ships are temptations to pirates and require armored defense, and provide the civilization with occasions to practice and perfect war.
    • As trade grows, life improves for all. Population grows in response. The rich, once again squeezed, eye neighboring lands.
    • If the neighboring lands have barbarians who live relatively ‘rich’ lives, they are conquered by large densities of poorer people. (See Prisoner’s dilemma) This explains the Roman conquest of Western Europe and Britain.
    • If the neighboring lands have another citified civilization, they must be conquered by technology. This explains the Roman subjugation of Carthage, and Alexander’s invasion of Persia. The modern European conquest of the new world is similar in many ways.
    • Wars of aggression are always caused by rising numbers. Wars of aggression are always popular wars.
    • Wars are not won by superior numbers but by superior technology and technique. All you need is a superiority of two to one or three to one at the point of contact of opposing infantry. Good generalship is about making this happen.
    • Aggressive war becomes a habit to nations that pursue it successfully.
    • Controlling birth rate is the primary way to transcend the pattern of history.

    Often depressing, this book helps understand human nature, poverty, politics and contemporary policy.

    [edit] References

    1. ^ Paul A. Colinvaux, The Fates of Nations: A Biological Theory of History. Simon & Schuster, August 1980. ISBN 0-671-25204-6

  • Kevin Rudd’s population policy already decided?

     
    “Kevin Rudd said on Saturday that the new Minister, Tony Burke, must be ‘acutely mindful’ of the positive implications of growth on the economy.
     
    “There are many other things Mr Burke could have been told to mind, such as the impact of increased population on biodiversity, or water, or shortage of infrastructure. 
     
    “The PM’s marching orders unfortunately tell Mr Burke to come out on the side of the development lobby, which has immediately skewed the whole debate.
     
    “The new portfolio being based in Treasury, rather than, for instance, Environment, further shows that the PM’s views on the matter are blinkered.
     
    “The new Minister was formerly a Shadow Immigration Minister and, given the Rudd Government’s shocking record of increasing immigration without telling the Australian public in the 2007 election that this was their intention, Mr Burke will be carrying a lot of baggage.
     
    “The former Shadow Environment Minister, Kelvin Thomson, has shown himself to be the only Federal Labor MP who understands that without an environmentally sustainable future there is no future. That Kevin Rudd has picked Tony Burke over Kelvin Thomson says far more about the PM’s politicking on this vital issue than about Kelvin Thomson’s deep understanding and commitment to a sustainable Australia” said Ms Kanck.
     
     
    Further comment: Sandra Kanck 08 8336 4114 or 0417882143
    Last Updated ( Wednesday, 14 April 2010 10:25 )

     

    Comments  

     
    #1 Brian Sanderson 2010-05-07 09:49

    There is also a strong economic argument to be made in favour of limiting population to an optimal number. I highly recommend:

    Paul Colinvaux, 1980. The Fates of Nations: A Biological Theory of History.

    Colinvaux explains the associations between human population growth, warfare, and human suffering due to diminished economic opportunity.

    Quote

     

  • UN considers review of alleged carbon offset abuses.

     

    The controversy surrounds companies which currently receive carbon credits for capturing and destroying the powerful greenhouse gas HFC-23 – a by product resulting from the production of the refrigerant gas HCFC-22.

    CDM Watch has alleged the way the CDM is structured means that chemical gas manufacturers based in China and India and South and Central America have been incentivised to increase the production of HCFC-22 and HFC-23 as they can then earn Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs) carbon credits, which can be sold into carbon markets such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

    Lambert Schneider, a former member of the UN climate change secretariat’s Methodologies Panel and one of the original designers of the CDM system, has joined the ranks of its critics. “The amount of HCFC-22 production and HFC-23 generation appears to be mainly driven by the possibility to generate offset credits rather than other factors,” he said.

    Speaking to BusinesGreen.com, CDM Watch director Eva Filzmoser said the CDM iniative was creating perverse incentives that ran counter to its original goals of promoting more sustainable activities.

    “The essence of our complaint is that we accuse the CDM Project of massively inflating HCFC-22 production,” she said. “We would like to see the UN respond to this concern by amending the methodology that is in place at this stage.”

    According to Filzmoser the CDM is not the right place to deal with the destruction of HFC-23. “We think it should all be dealt with under the Montreal Protocol [covering ozone depleting gases],” she said. “Until this happens we think the CDM incentives need to be lowered as they are much too high at the moment.”

    The Montreal Protocol dates back to 1987 and aims to phase out the use of ozone depleting chemicals, including several groups of halogenated hydrocarbons.

    David Abbass, public information officer at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change secretariat, told BusinessGreen.com that the UN is considering the evidence of abuse of the CDM system and will adjust its safeguards if necessary,

    “A request for revision of the methodology used in these projects is now with the CDM Executive Board’s Methodologies Panel,” he said.

    He added that there were already safeguards in the existing CDM project assessment methodology designed to prevent abuse of the system. “Specifically, no new plants can qualify to earn credits and the amounts that can qualify are pegged to historic production levels,” he said. “The question now is whether the safeguards need to be adjusted or added to. That’s what the Board will be looking at.”

    The CDM board is due to discuss the issue at its next meeting from the 26 to 30 July.

    However, CDM Watch maintains that the abuse of the system is widespread and endemic and will not be easy to correct. “There might be some projects out there that are not flawed but they are hardly even countable let’s say,” said Filzmoser. “If a rule incentivises abuse you are much more likely to see that abuse than if the framework tries to set in place measures that would avoid gaming the system. Unfortunately industry always wants to get more money.”

  • Nuclear Fusion Projects Worries EU

     

     

    At the centre of the issue are dreams of harnessing nuclear fusion, which releases vast amounts of energy in the core of a star, under huge gravitational forces and temperatures of around 10 million degrees Celsius.

     

    Scientists have shown the process can be recreated on Earth, combining simple hydrogen isotopes to release vast amounts of energy, but so far it has not been demonstrated on an industrial scale. Nor have previous experiments released more energy than they consume.

     

    In 2006, more than 30 countries signed a deal to build the ITER nuclear fusion reactor, under construction in Cadarache, southern France. At its core will be a 500-cubic-metre doughnut-shaped steel vessel in which a superheated stream of plasma circulates in a vacuum, held in place by superconducting magnets.

     

    If all goes well, from 2020 the project will be capable of generating around 500 megawatts of fusion energy – clean power with no climate-damaging emissions and little radioactive waste.But increasing complexity and rising prices for steel, concrete and copper have led to a tripling of construction costs since they were estimated in 2001.