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Human Extinction By Mid-Century?

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In this thought-provoking presentation Guy MacPherson, award winning conservation biologist and Professor Emeritus University of Arizona, gives his assessment of the current global situation. His forecast is, to be honest, very depressing!

The talk is in two halves. The first half is the bad news – a detailed run-through of the most recent research papers published on climate change. The following is a summary quote:

“Methane release will accelerate exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century (2031 for the Northern Hemisphere)”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the second half is the ‘good’ news – the global economy will collapse and, if we’re lucky, it will happen fast enough and therefore CO2 emissions will reduce fast enough, that we may avert the worst climate change outcomes:

“Only economic collapse can prevent runaway global climate change and allows for continued persistence of our species on this planet”

It ends with an exhortation to each of us as individuals to change our ways and adopt a sustainable lifestyle.

Although his predictions are dire, from what I’ve learnt studying climate change his views are based on valid data so he appears to me to be on solid ground, at least for the first half of his talk. If anyone can see any flaws, however, please comment (if only to reassure that things aren’t really as bad as he says!).

Enjoy – but you have been warned!

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This topic contains 2 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by  Trevor Larkum 13 years, 10 months ago.

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  • January 5, 2013 at 20:43 #1577

    Trevor Larkum
    Keymaster

    In this thought-provoking presentation Guy MacPherson, award winning conservation biologist and Professor Emeritus University of Arizona, gives his as
    [See the full post at: Human Extinction By Mid-Century?]

    January 6, 2013 at 16:29 #1597

    Electric Ali
    Participant

    Hi Trevor,

    Thanks for posting this – I saw Guy’s video last week via an energy website.

    I can tell you that the second half of the talk is accurate and reflects the peak oil viewpoint.

    When I first heard about peak oil, about 7 years ago, I decided to read more about it. And after reading about it, I decided to do my own modeling using data available from BP, the EIA and others. I came to the conclusion that the peak oil viewpoint was correct while realising that there were other much more optimistic viewpoints out there on world energy supplies that did not stand up to close scrutiny and were more often promoted by economists rather than geologists and physicists who seem to have a much better understanding, due to their scientific training, of resource depletion.

    While the world oil production peak is happening about now, there are other dynamics in the energy supply situation that compound this unprecedented problem.

    The first is rapidly rising oil demand in exporting countries leaving less oil to export. Then there is dramatically rising oil imports by China and India.

    These three phenoema are putting a severe squeeze on oil available on the markets to supply oil importers like the UK, the USA and the EU for example.

    The modeling I have done (a rework of original research by Texan oil geologist Jeffrey Brown and Sam Foucher) indicates that oil on the market is going to continue to reduce very rapidly in the coming years. In fact, it is the reduction of oil on the market to OECD countries since 2005 (a reduction of 12%) that has put prices up quite considerably since and which may have been a contributory factor to the sub prime crisis in the US.

    But not only that. UK North Sea oil & gas production is dropping at an eye watering rate at the moment (a fall of 26.9% between October 2011 and October 2012) and the UK is increasingly reliant on imports of oil and gas.

    And not only that, but the sources of new oil and gas that are being developed (e.g. shale oil and gas in the USA, tar sands in Canada, deep water oil) are much poorer soures of energy than the conventional sources of energy that we have built our societies upon.

    All this implies very, very tough times very soon.

    I think it is not unreasonable to expect the imminent decline of industrial civilisation.

    It is time to prepare for what is to come.

    In fact, if you listen to this interview  (from about a year ago, I think) the time to prepare was 10 or 20 years ago

    http://peakoil.com/generalideas/robert-l-hirsch-interview-peak-oil/

    Best wishes,

    Alister.

    January 6, 2013 at 20:35 #1599

    Trevor Larkum
    Keymaster

    Alister,

    Thanks for the analysis – I was hoping you’d provide grounds for optimism, but that didn’t happen! Perhaps the only think that could work is if we run out of affordable oil so quickly that we stop burning it, and so stave off climate change that way (unintentionally, in effect).

    T

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