".... a form of microbes -- specifically, methane-producing archaea called Methanosarcina -- that suddenly bloomed explosively in the oceans, spewing prodigious amounts of methane into the atmosphere and dramatically changing the climate and the chemistry of the oceans."
Meanwhile, as seen below, methane levels in the atmosphere seem to be on the rise...
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Ominous Arctic Methane Spikes Continue — 2666 Parts Per Billion on October 26th
Imagine, for a moment, the darkened and newly liberated ocean surface waters of the Kara, Laptev, and East Siberian Seas of the early 21st Century Anthropocene Summer.
Where white, reflective ice existed before, now only dark blue heat-absorbing ocean water remains. During summer time, these newly ice-free waters absorb a far greater portion of the sun’s energy as it contacts the ocean surface. This higher heat absorption rate is enough to push local sea surface temperature anomalies into the range of 4-7 C above average.
(Remnant extreme heat at Arctic Ocean surface on October 8, 2014. Extraordinary warmth in the range 0f 4-7 C above average is due to recent loss of summer sea ice in the Kara, Laptev, East Siberian and Beaufort Seas. Newly exposed dark surface waters absorb more of the sun’s rays which results in a highly visible temperature anomaly. Image source: Climate Reanalyzer. Image archived by: Arctic News.)
Some of the excess heat penetrates deep into the water column — telegraphing abnormal warmth to as far as 50 meters below the surface. The extra heat is enough to contact near-shore and shallow water deposits of frozen methane on the sea-bed. These deposits — weakened during the long warmth of the Holocene — are now delivered a dose of heat they haven’t experienced in hundreds of thousands or perhaps millions of years. Some of these deposits weaken, releasing a portion of their methane stores into the surrounding oceans which, in turn, disgorges a fraction of this load into the atmosphere.
The rate of release intensifies throughout summer. But during the Arctic Fall, it reaches a peak. Then, as sea ice begins to re-form over the surface waters, a kind of temperature inversion wedge develops. The surface cools and the ice solidifies — forming an insulating blanket, trapping heat. The insulating layer, in turn, pushes the anomalously hot mid level waters toward the bottom. This process delivers a final and powerful dose of heat to the Arctic Ocean bottom water and sea bed.
Methane release rates spike as the methane flooding up from the sea bed squeezes out through cracks in the newly forming ice or bubbles up through open waters just beyond the ice edge.
Observed Arctic Methane Over-Burden
During recent years, a troubling methane over-burden has been observed in the atmosphere above these regions during the months of September through November. Dr. Leonid Yurganov — a researcher at the University of Maryland — has been using the IASI sensor to record these events. Last year, he developed this map of September through November methane readings for the 2009-2012 period:
(Highest lower troposphere global atmospheric methane readings were found in the region of the East Siberian, Laptev and Kara seas during September through November of 2009 through 2012. Data provided by IASI. Image source: Dr. Leonid Yerganov via Arctic News.)
The readings above show near-surface averages over a three month period in the regions of highest release. Note that highest methane levels occur over coastal Siberia and in the above ocean zones of near-Russia Arctic Ocean waters.
These measurements have been ramping higher in recent years with near-surface readings in the range of 1950 to 2000 ppb now common for the months of September through November in the areas affected (for comparison, global surface averages are now in the range of 1840 ppm).
By themselves, these measurements are evidence of a substantial Arctic methane release. But further up in the troposphere — at the mid cloud level — even higher levels of methane have been recorded.
For as methane releases from the sea and land surface, it becomes trapped in the mid-cloud layer. There, a sandwich of cloud and moisture form a cap beneath which methane tends to concentrate. In this layer, readings can be quite a bit higher than surface measurements. Recent years have shown numerous instances where methane readings in the mid-cloud layer spiked above 2300 parts per billion.
Last year during September, the now annual plume of methane emitting from the Arctic Oceanpushed readings as high as 2571 parts per billion at this level of the atmosphere. It was a reading more than 700 parts per billion above the global surface average. A spike fueled by the anomalously high rates of methane emission from the Arctic surface waters and Siberian tundra during the Fall of 2013.
This year, despite extraordinarily spotty coverage due to cloud interference, the METOP sensor found Arctic methane concentrations in the range of 2666 parts per billion in the mid cloud layer. The spike occurred just this past Sunday and exceeds the September 2013 spike by 95 parts per billion — a level more than 800 parts per billion above current global surface averages.
(Arctic methane spikes to 2666 parts per billion in the mid-cloud layer on Sunday October 26. Image source: OSPO/METOP.)
In combination, observations of a rapidly warming Arctic Ocean and observations of Arctic methane readings between 6 and 60 percent above the global average in near surface regions and in the mid cloud layer are a clear signal that human-caused Arctic warming is forcing an ever-greater methane release. To a greater and greater extent, large carbon stores are being weakened and tapped by the various mechanisms that are an up-shot of human warming. The location of these large-scale releases, as observed in the satellite record, is confirmation of ground and ocean based observations conducted by Arctic researchers such as Dr. Semiletov and Shakhova. And the releases themselves may well be some validation of our more dire concerns.
This new spike is yet more evidence of a sizeable, anthropogenic-spurred, release that is impacting not only regional methane levels, but global levels as well. Whether this newly observed release is part of a slow global response to the initial human heat forcing — one that will take centuries to fully emerge — or is part of a much more rapid and dangerous response to an also very rapid human heat forcing is now unclear.
What is clear is that feedbacks to the human heat forcing are now starting to become plainly visible. That they are providing evidence of a stronger release from some sources on a yearly basis. A troubling amplifying feedback to the already dangerous and extraordinary human emission. One that should serve both as a warning and as a spur to reduce and eliminate human greenhouse gas emissions from all sources and to switch energy systems away from fossil fuels as swiftly as possible.
For instance , things are looking grim for Sao Paulo, Brazil. . A city of 20 million, it is facing the worst drought in 80 years. The reservoir which feeds it is reported to be a 3% capacity. the drought is also affecting Brazil's hydroeltric capacity
Images of the drought conditions in Brazil's Cantareira water system, which supplies water to 45 percent of Sao Paulo. Credit: Getty Images / via the Weather Channel
South America's biggest and wealthiest city may run out of water by mid-November if it doesn't rain soon. São Paulo, a Brazilian megacity of 20 million people, is suffering its worst drought in at least 80 years, with key reservoirs that supply the city dried up after an unusually dry year. — Thompson Reuters Foundation
One of the most important reservoirs in Brazil is the Cantareira watershed, which supplies around 45% of the city of São Paulo's water. Back in August, authorities warned that the city, which is the largest on the continent, could run out of water in 100 days if the waters dropped to 12%. Now, supplies are at a record 3.3% and creating shortages for over 30% of the city's 44 million residents. According to the Financial Times, residents in 70 other cities in the state of São Paulo have experienced water outages, some of which have gone on for days. Despite some minor efforts to curb usage – such as reducing water pressure by 75% at night–, Vicente Andreu, president of Brazil's Water Regulatory Agency, has stated that São Paulo should prepare for a "collapse like we've never seen before" in the next few weeks.
President Dilma Rousseff, who just won reelection, had used the drought as a major campaign issue. She claimed that Governor Geraldo Alckmin, whose a member of the opposition party, has not been doing enough to curb the water shortages, even asserting that he refused federal money that was offered. Reuters reports that vital restrictions on water usage never were passed because of fear of reprisals in these elections.
Part of the reason that the drought is so exceptional is because of climate change and deforestation, scientists assert. A leading climate scientist, Antonion Nobre states, "Humidity that comes from the Amazon in the form of vapor clouds - what we call 'flying rivers' - has dropped dramatically, contributing to this devastating situation we are living today." The Amazon rainforest in Brazil has been ravaged by deforestation in recent years. A forested area the size of New York City was hewed over the course of a single year, between 2012 and 2013. The lack of trees – which once released billions of gallons of water – coupled with changes to the global climate are, quite literally, drying the region out.
The economic toll from the drought is already beginning to be felt and will likely grow worse. Half of the country's textile producers are in São Paulo and are unable to continue their dyeing processes because of the water scarcity. Solvay’s Rhodia chemical plant halted some of its production, as well. Meanwhile, concerns that the drought will affect the country's soybean production has brought up prices worldwide. The state of São Paulo is responsible for a third of Brazil's GDP, so any slowdown there would bring down the country's overall growth.
Brazil has been racked by protests for the past several years. Now, people are rioting explicitly because of water (or the lack thereof). In the city of Ito, outside of São Paulo, people have beenburning buses and hijacking water tankers.
Of course, the state of São Paulo is not the only place in the world currently experiencing water shortages. According to the Global Drought Information System, other regions experiencing extreme drought conditions include: Northern China, Somalia, Kenya, the southwest United States, and most of Australia.
Demographers had been telling us that world population would flatten out around 2050 at 9 billion. Now, the UN says that we may hit 12 billion by 2100.
So, IPAT, keeps marching along. What would stop population growth? How about ebola? WWIII? Not really, according to the studies below.
"They found that even an event that wiped out two billion people would still leave about eight and a half billion in 2100. "Even if we had a third world war in the middle of this century, you would barely make a dent in the trajectory over the next 100 years," said Prof Bradshaw, something he described as "sobering"."
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
The Human Germ
A lot of times when you hear studies pointing out that human population will not magically stabilize at nine billion when we all become latte-sipping, SUV-driving cubicle drones, but will just keep growing to perhaps 11 billion by century's end, you hear people saying "We'll never reach that!"
According to this study, neither another world war, a global pandemic, or a universal one-child policy will do anything to stop runaway population growth thanks to demographic momentum.
Apparently nothing can stop humanity from behaving like yeast:
According to the study, attempts to curb our population as a short-term fix will not work. If China's much criticised one-child policy was implemented worldwide, the Earth's population in 2100 would still be between five and 10 billion, it says.
"We've gone past the point where we can do it easily, just by the sheer magnitude of the population, what we call the demographic momentum. We just can't stop it fast enough," said Prof Corey Bradshaw from the University of Adelaide. "Even draconian measures for fertility control still won't arrest that growth rate - we're talking century-scale reductions rather than decadal scale, because of the magnitude."
In their paper, the researchers also look at the impact on numbers of a global catastrophe in the middle of this century. They found that even an event that wiped out two billion people would still leave about eight and a half billion in 2100. "Even if we had a third world war in the middle of this century, you would barely make a dent in the trajectory over the next 100 years," said Prof Bradshaw, something he described as "sobering".
The pace of population growth is so quick that even draconian restrictions of childbirth, pandemics or a third world war would still leave the world with too many people for the planet to sustain, according to a study.
Rather than reducing the number of people, cutting the consumption of natural resources and enhanced recycling would have a better chance of achieving effective sustainability gains in the next 85 years, said the report published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We were surprised that a five-year WW3 scenario, mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the first and second world wars combined, barely registered a blip on the human population trajectory this century,” said Prof Barry Brook, who co-led the study at the University of Adelaide, in Australia.
The second world war claimed between 50 million and 85 million military and civilian lives, according to different estimates, making it the most lethal conflict, by absolute numbers, in human history. More than 37 million people are thought to have died in the first world war.
Using a computer model based on demographic data from the World Health Organisation and the US Census Bureau, the researchers investigated different population reduction scenarios. They found that under current conditions of fertility, mortality and mother’s average age at first childbirth, global population was likely to grow from 7 billion in 2013 to 10.4 billion by 2100.
Climate change, war, reduced mortality and fertility, and increased maternal age altered this prediction only slightly. A devastating global pandemic that killed 2 billion people was only projected to reduce population size to 8.4 billion, while 6 billion deaths brought it down to 5.1 billion.
“Global population has risen so fast over the past century that roughly 14% of all the human beings that have ever existed are still alive today. That’s a sobering statistic. This is considered unsustainable for a range of reasons, not least being able to feed everyone as well as the impact on the climate and environment,” said co-author Prof Corey Bradshaw, also from the University of Adelaide.
The tight oil "revolution", has spawned a lot of optimistic stories. These stories are unfortunately creating a false sense of security with respect to the oil situation, and the need to address our complete dependency on oil for transportation and agriculture. Also inflated idea about the future of gas, has implications for local industry, as well as our ability to close coal plants in favor of natural gas.
It is widely known that were it not for the US tight oil production, the world production of oil would have already peaked. Therefore, the question of how long the tight oil revolution will continue is very significant.
The PCI projections are much less optimistic than the standard story put out by the industry and EIA. . These graphs from peakoilbarrel, tell the story:
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"The Post Carbon Institute’s take on things are a little different. They have the initial production a little higher than the EIA but dropping off much faster.
The Post Carbon Institute produced three cases, a Low Well Density Case, and Optimistic Case and a Realistic Case. And all three cases have three rates. In all cases the higher the initial production rate the faster the decline rate. I have posted here the Realistic Case.
Here we can see the difference in what the EIA predits and what the PCI predicts. The EIA has production still going relatively strong by 2040 while PCI has both the Bakken and Eagle Ford petering out.
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Drilling Deeper: A Reality Check On U.S. Government Forecasts For a Lasting Tight Oil & Shale Gas Boom
Drilling Deeper reviews the twelve shale plays that account for 82% of the tight oil production and 88% of the shale gas production in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reference case forecasts through 2040. It utilizes all available production data for the plays analyzed, and assesses historical production, well- and field-decline rates, available drilling locations, and well-quality trends for each play, as well as counties within plays. Projections of future production rates are then made based on forecast drilling rates (and, by implication, capital expenditures). Tight oil (shale oil) and shale gas production is found to be unsustainable in the medium- and longer-term at the rates forecast by the EIA, which are extremely optimistic.
This report finds that tight oil production from major plays will peak before 2020. Barring major new discoveries on the scale of the Bakken or Eagle Ford, production will be far below the EIA’s forecast by 2040. Tight oil production from the two top plays, the Bakken and Eagle Ford, will underperform the EIA’s reference case oil recovery by 28% from 2013 to 2040, and more of this production will be front-loaded than the EIA estimates. By 2040, production rates from the Bakken and Eagle Ford will be less than a tenth of that projected by the EIA. Tight oil production forecast by the EIA from plays other than the Bakken and Eagle Ford is in most cases highly optimistic and unlikely to be realized at the medium- and long-term rates projected.
Shale gas production from the top seven plays will also likely peak before 2020. Barring major new discoveries on the scale of the Marcellus, production will be far below the EIA’s forecast by 2040. Shale gas production from the top seven plays will underperform the EIA’s reference case forecast by 39% from 2014 to 2040, and more of this production will be front-loaded than the EIA estimates. By 2040, production rates from these plays will be about one-third that of the EIA forecast. Production from shale gas plays other than the top seven will need to be four times that estimated by the EIA in order to meet its reference case forecast.
Over the short term, U.S. production of both shale gas and tight oil is projected to be robust-but a thorough review of production data from the major plays indicates that this will not be sustainable in the long term. These findings have clear implications for medium and long term supply, and hence current domestic and foreign policy discussions, which generally assume decades of U.S. oil and gas abundance.
When the dog bites When the bee stings When I'm feeling sad I simply remember my favorite things And then I don't feel so bad
- Julie Andrews
Nothing bad ever happens to me
-Oingo Boingo
Greetings
Just saw Nate Hagens latest lecture. from the De Growth conference in Vancouver. Full of interesting info about the way humans think. (depending on your definition of "think"). Lots of psychological tricks to avoid seeing what we don't want to see. ( I recommend watching the whole thing, but if you get bogged down, I'd move to the end where we discussed some strategies for dealing with our " predicament"
".... the journey, in August 2016 will be on "a mystical Pacific-Atlantic sea route far beyond the Arctic Circle that for centuries captured the imagination of kings, explorers and adventurers."
2. Although the sea is already rising so that Miami has regular floods, even without storms, the local building market is booming. There's too much money too be ignored. Of course it helps that the feds (you and me) subsidize the insanity with cheap flood insurance (Private co's aren't that stupid), and "disaster" relief. (Who could see that coming?) Also helps that local rules can be evaded. Here's how Mike Huckabee got a permit to build his waterfront estate, despite being located in a danger zone.
"Anything other than the direst projections for temperatures over the next century more and more have to rely on unproven or non-existent carbon sequestration technologies being rapidly developed and massively produced. For the viability of the planet to sustain future generations we are now depending essentially on pixie dust"
We are hearing a lot about how things are finally coming together . Solar and Wind, will soon take over from fossil fuels, and we will move into the new age of energy plenty.
Fort instance the Washington post gushes:
"Despite the skepticism of experts and criticism by naysayers, there is little doubt that we are heading into an era of unlimited and almost free clean energy."
And its true that installation are increasing a rapid rate and costs are coming down.
But as we see in this post by Rune Likvern, below, these"green shoots" need a little perspective. If we only look at solar and wind growth, we may forget the bigger picture. Despite hyperbolic growth over the last ten years,According to BP, solar and wind still only amounted to 1.1% of total energy used worldwide.
"From 2012 to 2013 global FFs consumption grew more than what total global consumption of solar and wind was in 2013 (this according to data from BP Statistical Review 2014)."
You've come a long way ,baby.
But you've got a long way to go.
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In this post I present a brief perspective spanning two centuries of the history of energy and mainly fossil fuels (FFs) consumption. Then a brief look at the recent years growth in solar and wind (renewables) and how their growth measures up against FFs since 1990.
Figure 1: The chart above shows the developments in the world’s total energy consumption split on sources as from 1800 and into 2013. The chart has been developed in a joint between Dr Nate Hagens and me.
In the early 1800s biomass (primarily wood) were humans’ primary source for exogenous energy. Coal became increasingly introduced into the energy mixture after the successful development and deployment of the steam engine which gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. Coal is a nonrenewable, abundant and a denser energy source than wood.
The growing use of biomass had led to deforestation in those areas serving energy intensive industries like mining and metals. The steam engine and its use of abundant coal as an energy source made it possible to rapidly expand the industrial production, create economic growth, thus the Industrial Revolution was in reality a revolution made possible by fossil fuels.
With the most recent discoveries and introduction of fossil oil and natural gas there appeared to be several abundant sources of volumetric dense energy that could entertain exponential and illusive economic growth.
Fossil fuels represent natures’ legacy stock of dense energy (ancient sunlight) that during some decades has been subject to an accelerated depletion.
Several reports in the media may now leave the impression that we are at the threshold for a smooth transition from FFs to renewables (solar and wind).
However, how does this measure up against hard data?
The Renewables (Solar and Wind)
Figure 2: The stacked areas in the chart above show the developments in the consumption (production) of energy from the renewables (solar [yellow] and wind [turquoise]) from 1990 to 2013.
Perhaps it was from studying a similar chart that a speaker at the recent Offshore Northern Seas 2014 (ONS 2014) in Stavanger, Norway and according to a media headline made the bold statement;”The fossil dinosaurs will go extinct” (in Norwegian).
(With the term “dinosaurs” it is here believed the speaker referred to the fossil fuels industry.)
The speaker will with time be proven right, but demonstrates simultaneously a complete lack of comprehension of what the statement entails and thus ignorance of the powers of FFs.
I am all for renewable energy (I live in a country that presently gets around two thirds of its energy consumption from hydroelectricity and which is one of the worlds biggest exporters of oil, natural gas, coal, hydroelectricity).
No doubt renewable energy will have a role in our future, but the extent of its role is subject to much (heated) debate.
For those that closely have followed my posts (primarily at The Oil Drum and here at Fractional Flow) will have found that recently I have focused on some recurrent themes; oil (FF) prices/costs, total global debt levels, interest rates, consumers’ affordability, fossil fuel companies’ financial health, central banks’ policies (most important the Federal Reserve Bank [FRB]), and some more.
By carefully studying the recent years growth in consumption and installations of renewables (solar and wind) one will observe that their growth occured as total global debt grew strongly, interest rates were lowered and kept low (to allow for growth in total debt) and some governments allowed for competitive advantages for renewables.
Despite all the technological improvements for renewables that has brought their costs down (and further improvements are likely to follow), renewables are, like FFs, also at the mercy of consumers’ affordability.
The Race between Fossil Fuels and Renewables
Figure 3: The chart above shows the growth in the world’s consumption of fossil fuels (oil [green], natural gas [red] and coal [dark grey] stacked versus the growth in renewables (solar [yellow] and wind [turquoise]), also stacked and all since 1990 to 2013.
By putting the growth between FFs and renewables into a perspective, it demonstrates how dependent our economies, our wealth and well beings are upon FFs.
Looking at the growth in total FFs versus renewables consumption since 1990 we should now ask ourselves if we truly are prepared to wean ourselves completely of FFs and transition into a life within an energy budget made up from only renewables (refer also figure 1).
In 2013 an estimated 20% of the world’s total energy consumption came from biomass, hydroelectricity, solar and wind.
From 2012 to 2013 global FFs consumption grew more than what total global consumption of solar and wind was in 2013 (this according to data from BP Statistical Review 2014).
It is highly likely that the Earth’s climate has been/is affected from growth in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) from an accelerated growth in FF consumption.
That has led some to start looking at the wording for fossil fuel consumption because, and as is well known, words projects a lot of power.
Some alternative references are fossil carbon (which refers to our legacy of fossil/ancient sunlight)….to “fossil f***”.
So there it is in plain sight;
We are likely damned if we pursue historical trajectories of FF consumption and damned if we don’t.
Cheap energy has created the world we live in. For many of us, it is a world of excitement, leisure, and satisfaction. We have access to cultural centers teaming with interesting diversions. We have the ability to take a plane to the far corners of the globe. Products from every nation are brought daily to our stores.
But these very properties can be problematic in dealing with infectious diseases. Earlier pandemics were generally local affairs, taking long times to move from one area to another. Now, thanks to ubiquitous air travel, everyone is a "neighbor" to everyone else. Lagos Nigeria ,and Dallas Texas are basically "next door". Cities provide multiple opportunities for contact with person infected.
Here's a thoughtful piece from Mary Odum , ecologist, system thinker and nurse, about some aspects of our situation. Having come to the end of cheap oil, the complexity of the modern world will no doubt decrease. All the extra energy and money we formerly threw in the direction of health care, will shrink.
Just in time to deal with a potential heal care crisis. If not Ebola, then in all likelihood some other anti biotic resistant bug
Is Ebola really something to worry about.? Here's the view from Laurie Garret, Pulitzer prize winning journalist, who wrote "the book"on plagues. " The Coming Plague" You are not nearly scared enough. It's extremely deadly killing 70% of those who come in contact. the number of victimes double evry 20 days. And it doesn't take much contact to get infected. Which explains the use of doctors attempting to aide patients in "moon suits"
Is our complex high tech system ready to deal with a highly infectious pandemic.? Yes and no.
As Mary Odum points out, the US has the "technical " ability to deal with Ebola, and to prevent its further spread. But any system is only as good as its weakest link.
Ourhigh-transformity healthcare systemis probably the biggest problem with community/hospital preparedness. The two imported EVD patients at Emory Hospital reportedly created40 bags of medical waste per day. Logistics of caring for patients with a deadly illness would snarl routine care in unimaginable ways–probably one reason sick healthcare providers are returning to different flagship hospitals experienced in infection control, for trial runs with the process. Thechain of infectioninvolves six different steps which all need to be attended to, and in a high transformity environment, those issues expand. Perencevich illustrates this problem when he discusses PPE, saying “over-protection does not equal protection,”which also applies overall, to the relative protection of high resource availability. In an era of a shrinking emergy basis, especially in complex hierarchies such as hospitals or cities, a sudden pulse of disorder from the larger scale such as a pandemic may create just as much chaos, if not more, as it does in a low-resource system. Over-protection in one corner of the system does not make us safe from gaps in the chain of infection in other segments of the situation where less control exists. Even if we are assiduous in hospital settings, once EVD lands by air and gains a foothold, transmission might occur in other concentrated community settings where infections spread, such as cities, schools, prisons, and military operations. We are in uncharted territory here, and how this plague unfolds in other countries remains to be seen.
In a strongly worded statement Friday, National Nurses United called on U.S. hospitals to "immediately upgrade" their emergency policies, citing preliminary data from a survey of almost 700 registered nurses working in 250 hospitals across 31 states.
The results of the study are pessimistic, to say the least. Of the nurses surveyed, a staggering 80 percent said their hospital “has not communicated to them any policy regarding potential admission of patients infected by Ebola.” Nearly 40 percent said their hospital has no apparent plans to properly equip isolation rooms, and a third said their hospital does not have sufficient supplies to treat the disease."
The virus is constantly evolving, as viruses do. It is seen as extremely unlikely that it will evolve in a way that will permit it to be transmitted in an airborne manner. More likely would be a version that would be somewhat less lethal. Here's what Professor Peter Piot, who worked with the team that discovered Ebola in 1976 says. from here
"Could the virus suddenly change itself such that it could be spread through the air?
Like measles, you mean? Luckily that is extremely unlikely. But a mutation that would allow Ebola patients to live a couple of weeks longer is certainly possible and would be advantageous for the virus. But that would allow Ebola patients to infect many, many more people than is currently the case.
But that is just speculation, isn't it?
Certainly. But it is just one of many possible ways the virus could change to spread itself more easily. And it is clear that the virus is mutating"
So, what's this got to do with peak cheap oil? I'm not saying that Ebola is going to be a big problem for the US. All signs indicate that it won't be . But lets' look at in another way. Why is it such a problem in Africa? Well, obviously they have low tech medicine, and less money, less trained people. Just the sorts of problems we will will have, as we travel down the other side of Hubbert's curve. Perhaps the experience in Greece will give us a hint. of what's to come.
"Public health in Greece grew worse in the years of the world financial crisis, the Greek debt crisis and the austerity measures that followed, according to the study, which was published today in the American Journal of Public Health.
The impact of the cuts on health was larger than expected, and should inform policies in other counties, including the U.S., the researchers said.
“We were expecting that these austerity policies would negatively affect health services and health outcomes, but the results were much worse than we imagined,” Dr. Elias Kondilis, lead author and a researcher at Aristotle University, said in statement.
Will we still have air conditioned moon suits? How about plastic throw away medical tools? How about high tech ambulances, with EMT's in moon suits? Who will pay for it?
http-:www.flu.gov:planning-preparedness:community:community_mitigation.pdf 1918 pandemic CFR = <3%. Where would Ebola’s CFR line be on this graph?
We are in uncharted territory with the Ebola virus disease (EVD). The last time we had a plague that was this deadly was the Black Death in the 14th century, when there were only 450 million people in the world. That pandemic killed 30% to 70% of the population. There is no benchmark for EVD, which kills 3 out of 4 people it touches, and is emerging into a global population of 7 billion.
This pandemic signifies a turning point for society in response to peak oil, highlighting the problem of globalization for a planet of 7 billion people. We have lost control of a deadly outbreak, and our responses to its exponential growth are linear at best, ensuring that this plague will most likely spread further. Many in first world countries think we are immune to plagues. How might transmission of EVD change as it moves from a low-resource or low-transformity setting in West Africa to resource-rich (high-transformity) countries? How might the battle against this epidemic change as it breaks out into different environments?
World views in transition
Media pundits have labeled recent world events with the words “perfect storm.” The use of this term suggests a rare and unusual event that comes once in a lifetime. But the term also suggests that our world view is incomplete. First world views of society are dependent on the preservation of infinite growth. When we lack the world view to explain a new phenomenon, especially when denial is a reason, our brains may assemble responses that displace our fears, or blame the situation on powerful control from the top, and not a global system in transition during descent. We lack the systems view to explain predicted outcomes of descent. But crises not only sharpen one’s focus; crises also restructure dysfunctional paradigms.
Margaret Bourke-White, Louisville, KY, USA, 1937
Public health has gotten a free ride in the fossil fuel era, as everyone’s socioeconomic status, including sanitation, clean water, and healthy, safe food improved. That process of rising socioeconomic status during the last 200 years occurred because of fossil fuels, but because fossil fuels have been ubiquitous, we did not see it. Rosling’s video from Gapminder on 200 Years That Changed the Worldidentifies the trend, but misses the cause. His plots could be better expressed by plotting life expectancy against global per capita fossil fuel use. Our first world exceptionalism is a function of fossil fuels and the hierarchy of complexity and not some special character trait.
In energy descent, the energy basis for our public health basis will decline. Maintaining public health in local communities will need more effort and resources, especially in response to disasters from the larger scale. But Americans in particular will no longer have the resources to act as the world’s healthcare provider or police officer. The world’s population growth has created a situation where top-down control during a crisis is not possible.
High resource versus low resource systems
The epidemiological triangle consists of host, agent, and environment. The future of this epidemic will be dependent on the different environments that it travels to, as well as host factors in different countries, and agent factors as the virus mutates. EVD has only affected low resource healthcare systems historically. What might be different in a high-resource (high-transformity) system which might make combatting this disease easier or harder?
The epidemiological triangle
Pandemic factors related to the agent, the virus, include the relative infectivity, in terms of the R0 (R-zero or R-nought) and Case Fatality Rate (CFR). The R0 of this disease is relatively high for a disease that is not considered very contagious, estimated at between 1.4 and 2.0, which is higher than seasonal flu, for which there is some population immunity. The CFR is somewhere between 70 to 80%, which is twenty-fold greater than the death rate of flu. Though epidemiologists claim that this disease is not very infectious, we have my heroes and heroines, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) walking around in cobbled-together moonsuits with no exposed skin, but who are still getting infected, either in hospital settings directly, or indirectly through the community. One apparent gap is treating unsuspected Ebola patients with universal precautions, when heightened droplet precautions with visors and N-95 or N-100 masks are really what is required, especially during procedures where aerosols occur.
Host and environmental factors that might speed transmission in first world countries are related to a high-transformity system that loses control. High mobility is one of the biggest cultural factors of a high-transformity system. A high-transformity system could potentially create a larger R0, since there is a larger ecological footprint, with highly mobile imports and exports, reliance on services, and a 3-day shelf-life for goods. Americans have to shop to survive, and economic growth is our main imperative. We must work to keep our economy and wall street humming–shutting down the economy is unthinkable to most.
Host and environmental factors in first world countries that might slow transmission include less density in housing such as nuclear families, better public health, sanitation, water, and nutrition, more healthcare providers, and better handwashing. The case for handwashing as protection in first world countries is arguable—we have the means, but do we do it?
Our high-transformity healthcare system is probably the biggest problem with community/hospital preparedness. The two imported EVD patients at Emory Hospital reportedly created 40 bags of medical waste per day. Logistics of caring for patients with a deadly illness would snarl routine care in unimaginable ways–probably one reason sick healthcare providers are returning to different flagship hospitals experienced in infection control, for trial runs with the process. Thechain of infection involves six different steps which all need to be attended to, and in a high transformity environment, those issues expand. Perencevich illustrates this problem when he discusses PPE, saying “over-protection does not equal protection,” which also applies overall, to the relative protection of high resource availability. In an era of a shrinking emergy basis, especially in complex hierarchies such as hospitals or cities, a sudden pulse of disorder from the larger scale such as a pandemic may create just as much chaos, if not more, as it does in a low-resource system. Over-protection in one corner of the system does not make us safe from gaps in the chain of infection in other segments of the situation where less control exists. Even if we are assiduous in hospital settings, once EVD lands by air and gains a foothold, transmission might occur in other concentrated community settings where infections spread, such as cities, schools, prisons, and military operations. We are in uncharted territory here, and how this plague unfolds in other countries remains to be seen.
(Ulgiati, Ascione, Zucaro & Campanella, 2011, Fig. 2) Emergy-based complexity measures in natural and social systems – a heavy reliance on developed and technological sources of Emergy . . . “a high source diversity ratio in technological systems, although providing a comparative advantage, cannot last forever, and is therefore only a warranty of temporary higher resilience thanks to the higher complexity achieved. This is why societies should plan ahead in order to be ready to replace the sources that become no longer available or to quickly shift to a different internal organization that better fits the new source options that become available.”
In a low-resource system, waste is minimal, with infectious mattresses as one of the most complicated waste disposal problems. Contrast the 40 bags of waste per patient day in a hospital in Atlanta with the low-resource system for personal protection devised by Fatu Kekula, a nursing student of Liberia who made her own PPE with trash bags and kept her family alive. Kenyan and Malian hospital workers have made their own local alcohol handrubs from sugar cane. In a low-resource system, adaptation to a disordering pulse may be easier as people are more likely to be inventive, independent generalists, not as psychologically or physically reliant on a highly specialized hierarchy of goods and services. Frieden illustrates the problem of waste, suggesting that even in a low-resource setting,
“to pick up one body you might need nine full changes of PPE [personal protective equipment]. Four for the people to put the corpse onto the truck. One for the person to spray them down so they don’t get infected. And then again four to take them off the truck” (Frieden, Sept. 29, 2014).
In a high resource setting, how many more changes of disposable PPE would be required in order to comply with standards and maintain safety for this one task alone, for the multiple specialties involved? And many high-transformity systems are automated. What additional disinfection requirements would be needed with those, and how much equipment would simply have to be discarded (and where)? EVD in a high-transformity setting quickly slides down a rabbit hole of receding compliance and expanding demands on resources. High-transformity healthcare systems will need to adopt lower-transformity methods such as reusable or resterilizable equipment fairly quickly in order to keep up with this epidemic over the longer term.
http://www.mobs-lab.org/ebola.html In a model run by the Mobs lab, the US had similar risk of introduction as Nigeria, based on the assumption of flights creating relatively virtual neighbors, depending on your connections.
EVD introduction to the US is probably more likely by plane than by boat, as a boat allows time for the disease to emerge. A recent model suggested that an 80% reduction in air travel would slow the introduction of EVD to the US, but not stop it. We won’t reduce air travel by 80%
http://www.mobs-lab.org/ebola.html Because it’s bad for business, and we can’t reduce air travel by 100%, because we live in a society with a 3-day shelf life—shutting down any sort of commerce is inconceivable.
because it’s bad for business, and we can’t reduce air travel by 100%, because we live in a society with a 3-day shelf life—shutting down any sort of commerce is inconceivable to most, and is also political suicide. In another run of the same model, the US had similar risk of introduction as Nigeria, most likely based on the assumption of direct flights creating virtual neighbors. The volume of infection in other countries eventually makes its way everywhere, through the wonders of modern air travel. The Black Death took 8 years to spread to Europe through eastern trade routes–camels are slower than airplanes. I am getting a good geography lesson as I watch the news and see suspected EVD patients popping up in obscure parts of the world.
Host and environmental factors that impact fitness include genetic, cultural, systemic, and behavioral factors. Genetic fitness of the population is enhanced when there is less medical rescue, and less high-tech medicine resulting in patient sub-populations with immunosuppression or other genetic vulnerabilities. There is also the issue of increased background radiation as the result of various nuclear accidents. The radiation background in many countries has increased in the last 65 years, especially post-Fukushima.
Think globally, act locally?
Crises delineate the problems, focus the issues, and crystallize intent. What is the solution to deadly, global pandemics either now or in the future? Is the answer global health teams to rescue impoverished societies, more high-tech healthcare for everyone, or high-tech vaccines for every mutating strain of virus and new antibiotics for bacterial infections? No—we cannot continue with more growth and high-transformity globalization of society in the face of waning oil production, not in a world of 7 billion, especially when a deadly plague is spread globally for lack of vinyl gloves. A call for high-tech PPE to cool or monitor healthcare providers illustrates this conundrum. When privileged westerners have air-conditioned PPEs and computerized heart rate monitors, or are evacuated to safety when they fall ill, but the community cares for victims without gloves, the inequities continue to accumulate in the war against a plague. We must act locally to strengthen basic systems of public health as the world contracts.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1563, The Tower of Babel. In this painting, Bruegel depicted the transformation of nature into an urban hierarchy through the hubris of man, which was then destroyed by God. Breugel modeled the tower in the painting on the Rome Coliseum.
A thermodynamic principle explains the quandary—a proposed 5th thermodynamic law of Transformity states that “You shorten the cumulative length of the game the more you steal.” We build hierarchies of complexity if there is surplus energy available. Those hierarchies of complexity include high-transformity items like computerized heart rate monitors for Americans’ PPE. By doing so, however, and contributing to increasing inequities, we shorten the length of the game by exposing the hierarchy to instabilities such as plagues. Are urban centers, which were created by surplus fossil fuels, more dangerous in plagues, especially in descent?
TR Frieden April 2010, 100 (4) AJPH Genetics is at the top of the pyramid, while environmental medicine is at the bottom.
Political leaders are already talking about global health teams, more funding for vaccine research, and what we will do when the next pandemic hits. Or people worry about eating imported bushmeat, when they only have to look as far as the next Delta flight for the source of contagion. This rush to speak about Ebola in the past tense is a leap in thinking past the crisis at hand, which seems to be a form of denial and displacement anxiety. Americans similarly protect their psyches when they focus farsightedly on climate change as our biggest threat. We deny and displace our broader worries about society today with competing narrativesof safe threat that could occur in the relatively distant future. Prevention in the form of contact tracing, surveillance, and local quarantine appears to be the way to combat this disease, but surveillance only works if we can move past denial and irrational or panicky behavior. If an outbreak isn’t prevented locally, it could get out of hand quickly. Where is the United States’ awareness campaign, for example? Our media and leadership actions so far don’t suggest that a candid, direct public health perspective is in the forefront. Our actions instead are focused on stirring up war.
With waning fossil fuels, the answers to resilience in general lie in relocalization and simplification. We need to ask ourselves, “Does my action further new relocalized society or does it further the old growth regime? Does my action work to improve socioeconomic status at the bottom of the pyramid, or serve to make inequities worse through a taller pyramid?” Actions now during a time of social destabilization could be particularly effective.
In addition to basic personal preps, including gloves, masks, and bleach, my global action is to give to MSF, as I cannot bear to see caregivers without gloves. But mostly my actions will go towards volunteering at the local community level to strengthen localcommunity preparedness, since I believe in relocalization. I signed up for the American Red Cross this week, in response to a comment bySally Sellers, RN, in an earlier post.
“I’m currently working on my MSN and conducted a field community preparedness project this past summer in response to climate change threats. What an eye opener! I became a Red Cross volunteer to get a first hand look at Orlando’s preparedness . . . it is a total illusion. A wing and prayer is what we’ve got. Here we are a metro-city of more than a million strong and 4 . . . count them four…nurse volunteers for the health services for central Florida. Since my project the Red Cross has actually cut back and reduced paid staff state wide due to lack of funding. This might not be so bad but the surrounding counties have cut their employees who would serve as shelter operators and have instituted plans to rely on the Red Cross volunteers! One county even cut its #311 county wide emergency call system for lack of funds.”
The answer lies in a smaller society, with simpler, basic healthcare for everyone—less healthcare, but we can hope that everybody gets some, resulting in healthier communities and society. Nature will take care of the smaller society, as wars beget famine and pestilence which beget wars.
All recent posts on Ebola can be found using the category pull-down menu at upper left, or at this link.
Didier Pittet, an expert on handwashing, at TedX, on the multi-cultural complexity of changing handwashing behaviors, which requires a“multimodal behavior change strategy. . . . One must dare to disagree. . . Clean hands save lives.”
Header Art: Triumph of Death, Peter Breugel the Elder, 1562. Interestingly, Breugel painted the Tower of Babel a year before he painted Triumph of Death.
Abstract
![Figure 2: The stacked areas in the chart above show the developments in the consumption (production) of energy from the renewables (solar [yellow] and wind [turquoise]) from 1990 to 2013.](https://fractionalflow.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/fig-2-world-total-consumption-of-solar-and-wind-from-1990-to-2013.png)
![Figure 3: The chart above shows the growth in the world’s consumption of fossil fuels (oil [green], natural gas [red] and coal [dark grey] stacked versus the growth in renewables (solar [yellow] and wind [turquoise]), also stacked and all since 1990 to 2013.](https://fractionalflow.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/fig-3-world-growth-in-fossil-fuels-versus-solar-and-wind-1990-to-2013.png)
