From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Thursday, March 13, 2014 8:29 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: The situation at Fukushima appears to be deteriorating
On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Chris de Morsella <[email protected]>
wrote:
>> 66 million years ago 2/3 of all species, not individual animals but
entire species, became extinct quite literally overnight, and 252 million
years ago it was even worse, the extinction rate was 90%. What we're
experiencing now is not even a burp.
You do not know that those extinction events happened overnight - in fact
you are wrong on that. The asteroid may have impacted off of the Yucatan
overnight, but it could have taken decades and even hundreds of years to
play out,
Worldwide it was dark as pitch for at least a year after the asteroid hit
and photosynthesis, the engine room of the entire ecology, was completely
shut down during that time; the surprising thing is that only 2/3 of all
species went extinct. And I made a error in the above, the correct figure
for the Permian extinction 252 million years ago is not 90%, it's closer to
96%.
> the current rate of species extinction - going on right now in our
contemporary times - is around 10,000 times the average background rate
[...] the data supports the claim that the current extinction rate is around
10,000 times the usual levels
I quote from Wikipedia:
"The fact that we do not currently know the total number of species, in the
past nor the present, makes it very difficult to accurately calculate the
non-anthropogenically influenced extinction rates. As a rate, it is
essential to know not just the number of extinctions, but also the number of
non-extinctions. This fact, coupled with the fact that the rates do not
remain constant, significantly reduces accuracy in estimates of the normal
rate of extinctions."
Biologists do not need to have an exact census of all species extent in an
ecosystem; nor do they need to know exactly how many species go extinct in
any given year; for the same reason a pollster does not need to ask every
single voter (actually - if well randomized - a few thousand or so is all
that is needed to learn a lot and be able to make risk bounded predictions.
You seem to be implying that unless exact precise quantification of the
species census can be done - and every single species that exists be
included then nothing can be said. This is a position I find surprising, if
in fact this is your position.... Surprising for someone whom I assume is
familiar with probability, standard deviation, mean, margins of error etc.
A lot can be said about systems of which we only have very partial hard
measurements and data points. If there exist enough data points a lot can be
inferred about general trends, patterns and other characteristics of the
dataset that is being looked at.
Why is it impossible to make predictions or estimates - given that we do
know of many hundreds of thousands of species (if not more) and have a lot
of pretty good field data from a lot of areas.
Plus you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that coral reef
ecosystems - to name one - are in deep trouble in a lot of places where
coral is bleaching and whole reefs are dying. Coral reef ecosystems are
among the very top ecosystems on earth for their bio-diversity.
Are you trying to imply that species are not dying off at alarming rate?
I really don't get your motive or point for trying to pretend this is not an
issue; one that we all face on this earth, we all live on.
Have you ever heard of the saying "Canary in a coal mine" - of course you
have. We ignore the Canary - of bio-diversity collapse; forest collapse;
desertification; top soil loss; ocean eco system collapse; at our own risk.
Only a fool or psychopath would believe that we can rape this earth and
there be no consequences for the harm we have visited upon the biosphere we
are gravitationally bound to.
>> It's no great mystery why some animals become extinct today, it's because
7 billion large mammals of the exact same species have spread from the pole
to the equator, and that has never happened before. It would have been
amazing if a event like that didn't cause a few animals to join the 99.9%
that have already gone extinct in the last 3 billion years.
> It is not a few animals John--despite what you choose to believe - we
humans have triggered and are the cause of what is the beginning stages of a
great extinction event.
>>I don't think so but even if you're right do you have a solution that
doesn't involve the extinction or at least a major culling of my very
favorite animal? If so let's hear it.
What a total false choice you offer. If I disagree with your views then
unless I have all the answers... what John? You do realize me not having all
the answers for what we need to do in order to build a bridge to a living
future is not the same thing as you being right?
Far, far, exceedingly far from it John.
I give us a 50% chance of going out with nuclear war; I put our probability
of avoiding planetary economic collapse and a die off of the like no one has
experienced since the eruption of Toba on the low side. Does that mean I
wish for this? Hell no it doesn't; it means I am realistic and choose not to
live in make believe land where all is hunky dory, and its drill baby drill.
That Cornucopean view of things is what has got us into this mess - and it
is a mess whether you choose to believe it is or not. Look at any metric:
deforestation; desertification, loss of top soil, loss of organic matter
content in farmed soils. Add to this the impending downslope for all fossil
fuels and all fossil water. Add to this the blow back effects of loss of
watershed; climate change; ocean ecology collapse (most of the world's new
bio-oxygen is made by plankton in the upwelling zone in the oceans around
Antarctica)
You live in a make believe world; the real world is in serious trouble and a
lot of systems could reach tipping points - or maybe already have. Oil is in
decline and the decline will not be stopped by some supplies of Shale oil &
gas and Tar sands mined oil - all of these sources are gated in any case by
the huge amounts of water they require; they can only ever reach certain
peaks of production. The population explosion has given us a world with 7+
billion and going.
Anything we try to do is going to take energy to do - and lots and lots of
energy. Even to build - say to pick your fav a Nuclear power complex. It
takes huge quantities of fossil fuel to make the cement, steel, to operate
the mines, to transport everything. The supply chain is huge; and for the
most part oil dependent. We are in the twilight of the oil age and have
become petro-junkies. It is not going to be easy to kick this habit, but the
supply is running out. I give it even odds that we will do what junkies do
and self-destruct in a perhaps unintended nuclear escalation in some future
increasingly desperate energy wars. Industrial societies cannot operate
without oil.
Do, I have hope... yes, as a matter of fact I do maybe about 1%-5% chance we
will get our shit together in time. What we will need to do are things you
will definitely not like, but it is not a matter of choice - or will not be
within a few decades. We need to learn to live sustainably.
And guess what almost all the world's major global corporations have become
converted to the idea of sustainability - because they have discovered that
it makes bottom line sense and squeezes inefficiencies out of their
organization. The world is shifting from under your feet towards an ethic of
sustainable practice. It is only through mastering the art and science of
sustainable practice that we do have a chance of avoiding a hellish
population bottleneck and quite possibly species extinction, including our
own.
We can, we will argue I am sure, you will rebut me and so on and so forth.
And as we do the crisis this planet is now in will continue to worsen on so
many different dimensions, including fresh water supplies. L.A. and Phoenix
are at the end of huge mega straws sucking water that is going bye-bye
because of climate change. In fact the Pentagon puts water wars as being one
of the most probable future conflict drivers in the coming decades. IMO --
Oil will remain king as the driver of conflict.
We could probably still pull off a soft landing and transition to
sustainable practice, but the time to do so is running out as the inevitable
dynamics of energy starvation begin to set in.
What do you think the real reason is for the globally very anemic "recovery"
from the collapse of 2007-2008? Does it perhaps dawn on you that peak oil
might have something to do with it? The increasing marginal constriction of
supply vis-à-vis demand (which is growing rapidly just as supplies are
peaking) saps the blood out of any recovery. Oil is fundamental to
industrial economies economic health and its supply and reserve correlates
very well with GNP growth.
Unlike you I do see the urgency of our situation and hope to see us wake up
from this pretend game that all is well. They gave huge breaks (at the state
level) to oil majors up in Alaska, in order to drill baby drill... and fill up
that pipeline again. Well, guess what.. Alaska still remains in decline.
Same story for Saudi Arabia... they continue to publicly speak as if they had
huge swing reserve, but in recent years have not been able to ramp up their
output even during price peaks. Facts speak a lot more than political
pronouncements. Saudi Arabia was the swing producer - a decade ago it could
move the market by turning the pumps on or off; well no longer. It does not
matter what John Clark thinks or wants others to believe; the fact of the
matter is that the age of oil is coming to an end. The hard oil that remains
will yield far lower marginal rates of return both in terms of CAPEX -
capital expenditure and in terms of energy required in order to produce the
hard oil.
What that means is that there will be much less to go around to fill every
other need and desire for energy... marginal scarcity is going to grow at a
faster rate than total scarcity, because more and more of the energy
produced is going to be needed by the fossil energy extraction sectors in
order to sustain their production.
Scoff and fulminate me with counter arguments, but none of that puts any oil
back in the ground - we burned through half the recoverable oil that ever
was in about fifty years or so. That is asinine stupidity, on a colossal
scale - IMO... as a species we should be renamed homo-rapiens.
Chris de Morsella
John K Clark
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