VACLAV SMIL 273 How restrictive are natural factors? Photosynthetic productivity depends on the availability of solar radiation, atmospheric carbon dioxide, plant nutrients, land, water, and sufficient biodiversity. Crop yields are almost never limited by the incoming solar radiation. Similarly, the current atmospheric concentration of CO2 (about 350 parts per million) is adequate for sustained high biomass yields, and increasing concentrations of the gas will tend to enhance the photosynthetic efficiency of nearly all well-watered and well-fertilized crops.37 Thus the four critical natural determinants of future crop productivity are the availability of land, nutrients, and water, and the protection of adequate biodiversity.
Extreme carrying capacity estimates go far outside the broad, fourfold range bracketed by the estimates just cited. They have been defined by true believers in the antipodal camps of catastrophist and cornucopian futures. A generation ago Ehrlich (1968) wrote that “the battle to feed all humanity is over” and that “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” during the 1970s.2 Ehrlich’s global population maximum would have to be well below the 1970 total of about 3.7 billion people. In contrast, Simon (1981) maintained that food has no long-run, physi-cal limit. These extremes leave us either with the prospect of eliminating about half of humanity in order to return the worldwide count to a sup-portable level or with visions of crop harvests surpassing the mass of the planet itself.3 As Sauvy (1990[1949]: 774) noted crisply, “Lack of precision in data and in method of analysis allows shortcuts toward reaching an ob-jective predetermined by prejudice, shaped largely either by faith in progress or by conservative skepticism.”
ENERGY AND CIVILIZATION: A HISTORY BY VACLAV SMIL. SOME EXTRACTS OF NOTE FOR AN ENERGY BASED CURRENCY UNIT.
Energy and Civilization: A HistoryEnergy and Civilization: A History by Vaclav Smil
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Great Book, Smil manages to get the science across in an accessible style without utilising the memes of the Climate Change Cult. The Book is all the more serious and important because of that.
here is a Writer that should be taken seriously.
http://theconquestofdough.weebly.com/
View all my reviews
Box 1.10
Calculating the net energy cost of human labor
There is no universally accepted way to express the energy cost of human
labor, and calculating the net energy cost is perhaps the best choice: it is a
person’s energy consumption above the existential need that would have to be
satisfied even if no work were done. This approach debits human labor with
its actual incremental energy cost. Total energy expenditure is a product of
basal (or resting) metabolic rate and physical activity level (TEE = BMR × PAL),
and the incremental energy cost will obviously be the difference between TEE
and BMR. The BMR of an adult man weighing 70 kg would be about 7.5 MJ/d,
and for a 60 kg woman it would be about 5.5 MJ/day. If we assume that hard
work will raise the daily energy requirement by about 30%, then the net
energy cost would be about 2.2 MJ/day for men and 1.7 MJ/day for women,
and hence I will use 2 MJ/day in all approximate calculations of net daily
energy expenditures in foraging, traditional farming, and industrial work.
Daily food intake should not be counted as an energy input of labor: basal
metabolism (to support vital organs, circulate the blood, and maintain a
steady body temperature) operates regardless of whether we rest or work. Stud-
ies of muscle physiology, especially the work of Archibald V. Hill (1886–1977,
recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1922), made it possible to quan-
tify the efficiency of muscular work (Hill 1922; Whipp and Wasserman 1969).
August 29, 2017
RENEWABLES,EROI WHY MONEY DOESN´T CUT IT WHEN MAKING ENERGY INVESTMENT DECISIONS!
123
Why Money is such a bad metric for Energy investment decisions. EROI, Towards an Energy-Based Economics. More Notes from the Digital Coalface.
Population Control
Lien of OZ
August 2006
INDEX
1.0 Introduction:
2.0 Over-population-Historic background
3.0 The Global Population Control Allies
4.0 Over Population– A Rationale
5.0 Overpopulation Quotes
6.0 Billionaire Foundations and Personnel Sponsoring Population Control
6.1 William Buffett
6.2 George Soros
6.3 Bill and Melinda Gates
6.4 Packard Foundation
7.0 Eugenics and Racism Endure
7.1 Draper Family Connections
7.2 Eugenics Summary
7.3 Sterilization
7.3.1 Quinacrine
8.0 Personnel Relationships
8.1 Population Action International [PAI]
8.2 The FIRM’s Global Links
9.0 Weasel Words
9.1 Menstrual regulation
9.1.1 Chemical Menstrual Regulation
10.0 Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT)
11.0 Population Control and the Earth Charter
11.1 Sustainability and Environmentalism
12.0 Global Population Predictions
12.1 Abandoning Christianity
12.2 What of the Future?
13.0 Population Growth and Food Supply
13.1Famine and Overpopulation–Is there a link?
13.2 Famines
13.3 Population density
14.0 Muslim Birth-rate
14.1 Islamization
15.0 United Religions Initiative (URI) & Population Control.
15.1 Evangelical Environmental Network
https://longhairedmusings.wordpress.com/?s=yellow+snow
