Interesting perspective from the journal Nature in Septemebr this year:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html


Quote:

Summary A safe operating space for humanity * New approach proposed for defining preconditions for human development * Crossing certain biophysical thresholds could have disastrous consequences for humanity * Three of nine interlinked planetary boundaries have already been overstepped

Quote:

Although Earth has undergone many periods of significant environmental change, the planet's environment has been unusually stable for the past 10,000 years1, 2, 3. This period of stability — known to geologists as the Holocene — has seen human civilizations arise, develop and thrive. Such stability may now be under threat. Since the Industrial Revolution, a new era has arisen, the Anthropocene4, in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change5. This could see human activities push the Earth system outside the stable environmental state of the Holocene, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world.

Actually if you take the climate scenario in conjunction with the looming crisis for phosphate supplies, the future looks very bleak.  Sorry to be a harbinger of doom and gloom, but what happens when we can no longer produce fertiliser doesn't bear thinking about. Without inorganic fertiliser, crop yields plummet, and with 6.9 billion people on earth and counting, I wouldn't like to be around 40 years from now.

http://sei-international.org/index.php/news-and-media/1618-the-looming-crisis-for-phosphate-rock


Quote:

he consequences of a dwindling, forgotten mineral can be the world’s next inconvenient truth. - The world’s food supplies as reserves of phosphate rock, the main source of phosphorus used in fertilizers, are running out and the impacts can be immense. This is the gist of a recent article written by SEI researchers Arno Rosemarin and Ian Caldwell together with senior sanitation advisor Gert de Bruijne from WASTE, a Dutch organization advising on sustainable improvement of the urban environment. The article, entitled The next inconvenient truth: Peak phosphorus, was recently published in The Broker and warns that the current trajectory can lead the world into uncharted territory. Current trajectory not sustainable Phosphorus is an essential nutrient for all plants and animals. It is also one of the three key components (together with nitrogen and potassium) of fertilizers, and so is crucial for the world’s food supply system. With continued population growth, improving diets and rising global demand for food and biofuels, the need for phosphate fertilizers to improve crop production will only increase.

May you live in interesting times indeed.

A friend, who also happens to be a very keen supporter of the Liberal Party, was telling me of some study which claimed to use brown coal to double wheat yields, while using carbon waste to produce an effective carbon sink, and in their search for the Magic Pudding solution to environmental issues, he claimed that this process would do the lot.
He believed it would lower our carbon footprint to the world target levels, and produce more food at the same time.

I am struggling to find any scientific studies that validate his beliefs, and was wondering if you have heard this theory bandied about?

I personally feel that expecting a magic pudding solution to present itself is insanely optimistic, but I would love to be wrong on that.

This issue about fertilisers is not one I fully understand, for while the overpopulation is a very real problem for the planet, the absolute need for inorganic fertilisers is not something I particularly like anyway, and tend to think we could develop better alternatives if we put our minds to it.

There is no alternative to inorganic fertilisers if we want to maintain the current population base.

Basically we need N (nitrogen), P (Phosphorus) and K (Potassium) plus a heap of trace elements. The P supplies are  the bottleneck.

There are some plants that thrive in low P environments - most Australian species for a start. That's because P species are very insoluble in water, so in the absence of a lot of water, it's not possible to maintain higher P levels.

It's all very nice to say that we'll all buy organically grown food and be good hippies. The problem is that if we suddently stopped producing high yield crops, something like 50% of the world's population would die from starvation as a result.

It's like piling more and more people in a bus and driving the engine harder and harder. Eventually something's got to give.

Peak Phospohorus is a pretty mainstream idea. It's floating around  in most Fertiliser manufacturers' boardrooms as an impending crisis of gigantic proportions.

There is just no viable alternative. The cost of phosphorus has gone up 700% due to increased demand/ dwindling supply.

Yeah - Lignite as a fertiliser and petrochemical substitute - I think there was an article in the Science Show about it a couple of weeks ago. It made perfect sense.

Do we want to maintain the current population base?

It is time that the idea of large families was discouraged.

It seems like there is an inverse ratio at play where, the best educated, and most financially able to look after large families, are the least likely to have them.

We have seen infant mortality rates reversed, where we used see only a small percentage survive, to now only a small percentage do not, yet some societies have failed to alter their behaviours to adapt to that change.

If the world needs a one child policy for a time, then we should consider that as a better alternative to no policy, and just carry on until massive starvation events, or viral pandemics, sorts the numbers out for us.

Taking that message to non western cultures will be hard, but those with the least ability to feed their kids, must be made to recognise the folly of having too many, to merely watch them starve,

mozzaok wrote on Dec 7^th, 2009 at 12:39pm:

Do we want to maintain the current population base? It is time that the idea of large families was discouraged. It seems like there is an inverse ratio at play where, the best educated, and most financially able to look after large families, are the least likely to have them. We have seen infant mortality rates reversed, where we used see only a small percentage survive, to now only a small percentage do not, yet some societies have failed to alter their behaviours to adapt to that change. If the world needs a one child policy for a time, then we should consider that as a better alternative to no policy, and just carry on until massive starvation events, or viral pandemics, sorts the numbers out for us. Taking that message to non western cultures will be hard, but those with the least ability to feed their kids, must be made to recognise the folly of having too many, to merely watch them starve,

Well in the long term - no. In the short term, people have a fairly long life-span. Even if we started tomorrow, your one child policy might work by 40-50 years or so, but what can we do in the meantime? - because it's that imminent. We're talking about a P peak about 2030.

I already worked out the economics of using bullets  :P and there just aren't enough munitions factories in the world to do it, and not enough guns.  (it's my dark humour - ok?)  Maybe we should subsidise people to be gay LOL.

So either way, we're going to have to settle this business as humanely as possible. Allowing 3 Billion people to starve to death is not very humane either.

Soylent Green is looking tastier all the time.

Mind you, I really do not see that places like australia, will ever have any problems from issues like this, but food importing countries most certainly would.
Europe could be pretty well rogered, and we could see a return to the old age of empire days, with "bundles for britain".

The raft of Dystopian futures we could be facing, through the bloody minded hubris of the people living in a time when consumption has become the god above all others, is worrying, but I shall do my best Alfred E Neuman impression, and soldier on.