Here’s a quick list of scares that we really ought to have a closer look at:
- Anti-biotic feeding to cattle creating ideal conditions for the development of anti-biotic immune bacteria. If it wasn’t for anti-biotics, every class of primary children would likely have more than one person dying before the end of primary. Everyone would fear the simplest infection — the luxury of living without that fear is something I would like my children to have.
- Influenza or anti-biotic immune bacterial based pandemic. Flu, whilst amazingly mild because it was a replay of an earlier virus, swine flu proved that 1) we can’t stop flu, 2) vaccines aren’t widely available until 12 months after the event, 3) flu can kill in huge numbers. Likewise a bacterial based infection where the bacteria become anti-biotic immune and where it is easily spread and deadly (after enough latency to infect others)
- World population. On its own world population isn’t (yet) a problem, but it would make many other problems far more serious if they occurred.
- Declining soil fertility. The longer a soil is used, the less fertile it becomes. That is fundamentally why land used to left fallow. But that only allows available nutrients to replenish. Once you take out of a soil the essential minerals and nutrients, they can’t be replaced until the soil has redeveloped. Nitrogen can mask this effect leading to large crop yields on soil that is fundamentally running out of nutrients. The increasing world population and demand for “western” foods means the world is increasingly reliant on “thin” soils, poor in nutrients which we have only recently started to use using energy and oil-intensive fertilisers. You might wonder why I put high on the list … the answer is this is suggested as the main reason for the decline in the Roman empire … a lesson worth learning!
- Peak Oil. It’s almost impossible to tell whether we are or will experience peak oil because the whole system of accounting for oil reserves is so corrupt. But peak oil would mean the effective end of cheap fertilisers and pesticides which added to declining soil fertility and increasing world population is a bit of one to watch.
- Climate. The real paradox, is that historically it was “the climate what done it”. Throughout history humans have been affected by climate rather than affecting climate. More than likely the biggest threat to human population is climate … not human induced climate change which is provably weak at best, but natural climate variation which has repeatedly seen the end of whole civilisations.
- Declining fish stocks. The evidence that commercial fishstocks worldwide are declining is impossible to ignore. In the UK we could probably live without fish … but only if we still have the economy to import almost all our basic foods. Worldwide many people rely on fish.
- WWIII. Quite seriously I think we are likely to see another world war this century. One or more of the other six will be a trigger leading to some kind of international incident over resources and very quickly in the heated climate of food and/or energy shortages the world will be at each other’s throat. The obvious “candidates” are the US vs. China, but just as likely is “poor” vs. “rich”, one could almost see a tidal wave of people invading Europe from Asia and/or Africa where the shear weight of people completely overwhelming the small but highly effective weaponry against them.
Like the banking crisis that “no one foresaw” (i.e. meaning it was not foreseen by the elf and safety, PC groupthink in the BiasedBroadcastingCo) it is unlikely the political elite will ever contemplate a new WWIII until it is upon us, which is why I think it is a real possibility. - Peak (nameless but rare) resources. There are so many other resources which are quite rare in nature on which we rely that the limiting factor for the future world economy may not be something commonplace, but perhaps a much less common resource, but one which is key. So, the controlling parameter for the world economy and thus e.g available food, may be some material which is far less common than oil, but much more difficult to replace. E.g. copper is a key to most electric connections, rare earth materials. Semiconductor dopants.
- Fear of fear itself . Perhaps our biggest worry is that those who seek to control us will use our fear to control our society and force us to adopt a political system which is far worse than any problem it purports to solve. Indeed, the wholesale assault on open debate which is a characteristic of global warming alarmism is actually preventing debate about much more serious problems. I don’t think this is entirely coincidental. I suspect the reason many political elites like global warming is that: fear of fear (terrorism) and fear of global warming are the opiate of the people … it keeps our fear directed at “shadow problems” and ousts real discussion of real problems so preventing us knowing the truth about the real things from which we have most to fear.
I would not worry about peak oil – the amount available in tar and shale is enormous and we are close to producingcommercially grown oil from algae. I would worry about a solar flare – the Carrington event of 1859 set fire to a few telegraph offices but with our electronic culture would be catastrophic today. I would also worry about supervolcanos and asteroid srtikes – both, as civilisation destroyers are 1 in 10s of thousand year events but that brings them to a fraction of 1% risk in a lifetime and we worry about risks far lower than that.
Add an influenza pandemic to the list. While amazingly mild because it was a replay of an earlier virus, swine flu proved that 1) we can’t stop flu, 2) vaccines aren’t widely available until 12 months after the event, 3) flu can kill in huge numbers.
If I may, I’d like to comment on some of your list of 10.
3. World Population – I actually see this as a self-regulating metric for the most part. I think it is fairly rare that a nation needs to reduce birth rates with the possible exception of China and perhaps India. Regardless, I have followed studies on this issue and believe that human population will peak mid century at about 9 or 10 billion and level off for some time.
4. Peak Oil – I’ve never connected fossil fuels with fertilizers or farming (interesting). But energy wise, I think that alternative energy technology will catch up in time and in due course and will be implemented by market demand (as opposed to fright scenarios of running out of fossil fuels or massive forced CO2 reductions).
6. Climate – I don’t see any type of climate change abrupt enough to cause problems. The next ice age is certainly coming but it won’t happen appreciably fast.
8. WWIII – I don’t think world war is the problem. I think a nuclear detonation(s) is the real worry. It might be followed by retaliation but (hopefully) not by prolonged world war. I doubt it would be China or the US either.
9. Peak (other) – Yes, perhaps. If it’s something really important then we’d better recognize it early and plan ahead.
My own: Power and control and money. I’ve read extensively about Goldman-Sachs and especially the recent sub-prime mortgage crash and have come to realize that I don’t even think that governments run society any more. My apocalyptic, paranoid scenario is a small elite class living in luxury and protection with the vast majority in a Mad Max existence.
Cheers, Mike in Ottawa, Canada (actually not much too cheer about)
MikeC .. paradoxically I think the we are able to talk sensibly about these types of scenarios, then the less likely they become. As you say the market will adapt … but it can only adapt if it has the right knowledge and it isn’t possible for the markets to adapt ahead of some quite unexpected disaster.
“I’ve never connected fossil fuels with fertilizers or farming (interesting)” … the connection hit me when I was told by a farming friend that if they turned to “bio-fuels”, then something like 50% of the fuel would be used on the farm to grow the fuel. In simple terms that means for every two tonne oil-equivalent of energy coming off the farm, one tonne of oil-equivalent is going into the farm. (And they didn’t include fertilisers and pesticides and the cost of moving produce by oil-based transport)
What that means is that in essence every second calorie we eat is derived from oil … in other words a farm is a means to convert oil based energy into twice as much crop output-energy. Or to put it another way, if we had no oil going into farms, then the output of the farms would halve (as half the farm was turned over to energy production crops to power the farm machinery) meaning that we could only feed half the population.
Or another possible conclusion, is that half the world population is kept alive by oil based calories!!! Add to that fertilisers and oil energy used “off-farm” and one might conclude that the majority of the world is kept alive by energy derived from oil.
I’m glad to participate and I’ll just sign off for this thread by saying that I pretty much overlooked the most important aspect of your post and that is the attention that AGW is taking away from other problems.
And really, you just hit on ecological problems. There are many more some of which are perhaps more serious that are purely human problems like hunger, potable water, disease or human trafficking.
MikeC’s comment leads right into Lomberg’s discussion and the Copenhagen Consensus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
Enjoy