Akiko Ogawa’s

EFB516 Ecosystems Notes

April 26, 2001 (Thu)

 

Disclaimer:

These notes are my personal notes. The course instructor or TAs have no responsibility for the contents or any discrepancies between the materials presented in the classroom and these notes. You cannot use or refer to these notes to support or defend your answers on your exams. I suggest you use these notes to complement your own notes, and not to solely rely on. I would appreciate your feedback on any part of these notes that I may be misunderstanding.

Announcements:

Ø      Hand in final exam questions for extra 2 points.

Lecture topic:

Resources and the future

Resources and the future

 

Costa Rica revisited

We talked about how the tropics in general are changing and how they are increasingly dependent upon industrial world. Dr. Hall’s principle conclusion is that it’s not possible to feed increased number of people from non-fossil fuel subsidized agriculture. It doubled or tripled the yield/ha since 1950 by enhancing (mainly N) fertilizers constructed through Haber processes, doubling cycling of N in ecosystem. It has been with many pollutional consequences, such as eutrophication, anoxia, or acid rain (not directly). Population expands, we have to expand the area we use to produce crops – e.g., banana and coffee each of which has its own gradient space. Yield-out/energy-in is much higher in the better parts of the range, which might be geographically small area.

 

Classical and Neoclassical Economics

·     The world today is dominated by neoclassical economics. Virtually anything about official national perspectives or any policies are almost universally dominated by issues that are derived from neoclassical economics.

·     Economics history. Classical economists:

- Karl Marx

- Adam Smith:  first economist to write about economics in English. TheWealth of Nations.

- David Ricardo

Adam Smith said basic problem facing mankind is that growth of agricultural production increase linearly, growth of population increases exponentially. He came to this conclusion based on the writings of Thomas Malthus (Here are some links about Malthus). He was probably right for a long time, but when we were able to bring in industry such as N-fertilizer into agriculture, then Malthus’ basic concept would no longer hold. The question is how long will that go. Any number of people argued that we can continue to increase the response of agriculture per hectare of land over time. In fact, the world as a whole, there’s has been little land expansion of agricultural land since 1950. But since 1950, population has increased by the factor of 2.5. Given that people on average are starved of anything. World is slightly better fed than it was in 1950s despite the increase of population. The reason is technicalization of agriculture, i.e., using fossil fuels.

·     (Overhead chart in the right top, click to blow up) article by John and Carol Steinhart in 1973: energy return for energy invested.1 calorie back for 1 calorie invested. Shifting cultivation: more than 10 calories return/calorie invested = efficient. Low intensity potato, rice, hunting and gathering are also efficient. Why do traditional agriculture societies have better returns/energy invested? – Human energy is invested, in other words, machine itself is using the calories that you invested. That’s very different from industrial agriculture. These ideas are consistent with classical economics. Classical economists view value as something that comes from human labor. Grass-fed beef, intensive egg, distant fishing, feedlot beef have required more energy over time. The difference is that the energy put in doesn’t come from human but from energy subsidy = fossil fuel for U.S. food system. The U.S. food system has become more and more energy intensive. The average U.S. system takes 10 calories oil invested to make 1 calorie of food energy.

·     EREI – Energy Return Energy Invested – has been declining everywhere. Because we have used up or are using the best land, the best fishing areas, or mismanaged the fish over time. And the net effect is that we have to go farther to catch the net fish, use more fertilizer because we are using poor quality land, and use more tractor fuel because we are using a steeper land. Soils have been compacted by large machinery that results in other problems that requires more cultivation to compensate for that. Compaction, for example, makes the soil too dense for worms to go through.

·     Good news is there is something called no till agriculture. Plowing is energy-intensive. You have to plow to get rid of the weeds. Two reasons that temperate agriculture tend to be successful:

1)      Short nights

2)      Winter knocks down all the competing plants. So you don’t need to compete with existing ecosystem if you sow seed at the right time.

Agriculture in temperate zones is on average five times more successful per hectare per unit of human invested. Now only 2% of Americans are farmers. 6 to 7% of them used to be farmers at the turn of the century.

·     (Graph, right bottom) The foods we eat have different energy intensities. This graph is for different kinds of proteins. Pork, catfish in the middle. Beef – 1 cal out/80 cal in. Shrimp 1 cal/150 cal. All of these are related to the price.

 

Overview

Slides

§       (Slide) Inside of a Renaissance Church, Italy. Gold – index of wealth. Dollar is index of wealth – is it a good index of wealth? Dollars inflate. Inflation in Dr. Hall’s sense: an ice cream corn when he was delivering the paper for a penny/paper/day was a nickel.  It’s about $1.30 or so. Inflation since he was a kid is about a factor of 7 or 8. CPI – Consumer Price Index is an index of inflation.

Spaniards came to New World for gold. They doubled the amount of gold in the Old World. Suddenly you couldn’t buy as much with a gold coin. The wealth of Old World was generated from the activity of farmers, fishermen, builders, artisans and so forth. Real wealth of world was based upon redirecting the flow of energy or material of nature into the thing humans considered are valuable. When we doubled the amount of gold, which has no intrinsic value except for ornamental, you are debasing it  - same as printing more money. When Soviet Union collapsed and sold gold from their enormous reserve to get dollars, same thing happened. Gold is not an index of wealth. Tremendous human cost to get the gold.

§      Classical economic theory – real wealth really comes from the energy applied by human to the extraction of resources into the fashioning of these resources into the things human find useful, that we call wealth. Hall – wealth is generated principally through activity of energy. Originally energy of human muscles.

§      (Article) “The Illusions of Conventional Economics”: Some economists have said that conventional economics is a house of cart. Conventional economics is neoclassical economics. Neoclassical economics is very different. Classical economics could not solve diamond vs. water paradox. Diamonds are not useful but very valuable. Water is most useful but have very little market value. They came up with a theory called marginal utility. The value of each successive liter of water becomes less and less. But diamonds are so rare they never leave the flat part of the curve.

Neoclassical economics focuses on market prices. Market price is dependent upon the intersection of supply-demand curves. Neoclassical economics is interested in source of resources – only once it gets in the market. Neoclassical economists believe that the value of everything is determined by price. Market prices are very poor index of values. For example, salmon used to be very valuable in Onondaga County. But price was low because they were abundant. Now salmon are expensive in Syracuse – 100 times. Does that mean it’s more valuable? – It means salmons are mismanaged and rare. Prices send wrong signals.

§       (Graph and chart) Population growth over evolutionary time: Even though per capita rate of human population increase absolute number of people added to the planet has been the largest this planet has ever seen.

§       (Article) “The biggest bangs …”: Napoleon attacked Russia in 1815 with 366 guns, 9000 people, 5000 horses that require 20 lbs of food. To supply 366 guns for Napoleon on land took fuel by direct biological energy resources by hay. By contrast, Nelson in Trafalgar had 2222 guns, 14,000 men, and required only 3 lbs food /man. By exploiting energy subsidy, in his case, the wind, Napoleon could have six times more gun power. That’s why English, originally from Dutch, ruled the world. Because they learned now to exploit wind as an auxiliary energy power. History of humans learned to enhance the force of their own muscles with such things as spear points and knives. Industrial revolution started with water power or wind power, then it vastly enhanced with the exploitation of fossil fuels.

§      (Graph) GDP and use of fossil fuel energy: For most of our development, increase of wealth is associated with concomitant increase in use of energy

 

Overheads

§      (Chart, right top – it’s also in your reading “The need to reintegrate the natural …” by Hall) Common diagram of economies: What’s wrong with this picture?

- It doesn’t take into account energy subsidy. No processes occur without energy input. It doesn’t include correct forcing function.

- Closed system – the boundary is wrong. It does not include the whole system to make this work.

§      (Chart, right bottom) Alternative economic system: At minimum we need to put this inside global ecosystem. The top chart is a LIE. The kinds of economics that teach million young people are lie.

§      (Chart below – it’s also in the your reading “The need to …” by Hall): This should be the minimal model of the economic process. Economic systems are ecosystems. Economic systems require all those systems (shown on the chart) to operate. Neoclassical economics deals with only the part after the goods enter the society, all the other part is essentially ignored. Where does the wealth come from? The answer to that and the answer to diamond vs. water paradox is, wealth comes from nature – from being able to exploit nature at low energy cost, or at no cost, to get things of very high value, e.g., build a dam and divert water.

§      (Article)  “The End of Cheap Oil”:  Next 5 to 10 years? Everything we do is based on cheap oil. We have managed our soils well so we can make our crops well with cheap fertilizer. We managed forests well. But we can have energy-intensive processing. We caught all the fish near the shore, and use oil to go farther away to exploit the fish in another part of the world. What will it mean when we no longer cheap oil?

§      (Graph below left) fossil fuels use in the U.S.: Peak in 1980. We are not going to run out of fossil fuel in your lifetime and for several generations. We also have questions about hydro power and nuclear.

§      (Graph below right) U.S. oil production models: ‘H’ is the M. King Hubbert (1995) model. He predicted the use of oil as a bell shape curve. ‘A’ is the actual data. The U.S. is producing 1/2 much oil than when it was peak.

§     
(Graph) Yield per effort:  Barrels you find per foot you drilled has been dropping off. With these technologies we still have the highest efficiency in finding oil in around 1920.

§      (Graph by Cleveland, bottom left): Barrels found from 1940 to 1956. Barrels found per foot drilled – yield per effort. It dropped and started to go up, and then it dropped off again. Secular trend is straight line going down. But there still is a lot of pattern.

§      (Graph bottom right) Graph of residual: The difference between the model and the data.

§      (Graph bottom middle) Graph of effort: shows an inverse relationship with residual. In other words, the residual is a function of drilling efforts. The harder you drill the less you get per effort. When overlay the secular trend and the inverse ratio of drilling, you’ll get an almost perfect inverse relationship

 

 

§      (Article) Science.

§      (Article) “Increased Drilling for Oil May Consume More Energy Than It Gleans, Study Finds” The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, February 3, 1981. (Click the link to read the article in a GIF graphics file)

§      (Article) by Robert Cutler.

 

This is ecosystem analysis. Human-dominated ecosystems are legitimately ecosystems. What Dr. Hall wants to do and wants us to do is to bring the tools of real science to assess these problems because economics is inadequate. The economic theory is inadequate because forcing functions are wrong, doesn’t have the energy input, the boundaries are wrong. They don’t put economic ideas as hypotheses to be tested. And when we test economic assumptions as hypotheses, they overwhelmingly fail.

Last modified: May 3, 2001.

Any comments? E-mail to akogawa@syr.edu