Petrol Who Desrves the last Litre$$$ (1 Viewer)

[Progressive]

Petrol, who deserves the last litre, and what price would it take for you to march in canberra if you where being pumped

 

[Slidey]

The last barrel of petrol is inconsequential because there are alternatives.

Get back to me when you're worried about the last tonne of phosphate.

 

[jewoneimon]

just burn that last litre of petrol, buy a gun and have fun watching the world, particularly america fall apart

 

[Snaykew]

I wouldn't even be fucked driving, let alone walking to Canberra.

 

[Nebuchanezzar]

I would imagine and hope that the last litre of cheap and flexible petrochemicals would go towards medicine.

The last barrel of petrol is inconsequential because there are alternatives.

Get back to me when you're worried about the last tonne of phosphate.

You'll have to be more specific there sir.

 

[Slidey]

I would imagine and hope that the last litre of cheap and flexible petrochemicals would go towards medicine.



You'll have to be more specific there sir.

World recoverable phosphate reserves hit peak in 30 years. As you can tell by peak oil right now, that means prices start rising exponentially, or something with a similarly horrendous growth rate. Because phosphate has no replacement, unlike oil, this essentially means a Malthusian catastrophe unless we start using our brains fast.

Why is phosphate important? Like we use hydrogen to store electricity when the sun goes down for solar panels, humans use ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) to store energy when we're not eating. Plants use it to photosynthesise. Without phosphorus, both plant and animal life will die. 90% of phosphorus used today is to fertilise crops.

The recent food shortage has been caused by a 700% increase in phosphate prices in just 14 months, which has been caused by increased demand caused by biofuels caused by rising oil prices, as well as by rising oil prices themselves. Biofuels are a horribly unsustainable fuel source unless they are based solely off waste products (e.g. molasses). Using dedicated crops for biofuels is a death sentence to for humans (albeit a death sentence arriving just a few years earlier).

The only glimmer of hope is that some of the phosphate can be recycled from waste products - e.g. urine and faeces contain a fair amount of recoverable phosphate passed out. However, recycling phosphate can only work if we start doing it before we hit peak phosphate.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article4193017.ece
http://phosphorusfutures.net/index.php
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/33164
http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5053e/y5053e07.htm

 

[Nebuchanezzar]

Bler bler bler. Hate biochemistry, but I am familar with this. Similarly to how there are other ways to fixate (perhaps the wrong word) nitrogen to plants other than ammonia, are you absolutely sure there aren't other viable means of fixating phosphorus to plants also?

 

[Slidey]

Bler bler bler. Hate biochemistry, but I am familar with this. Similarly to how there are other ways to fixate (perhaps the wrong word) nitrogen to plants other than ammonia, are you absolutely sure there aren't other viable means of fixating phosphorus to plants also?

I don't really understand you. Phosphate isn't required - it's just a molecule that carries phosphorus.

Even supposing there were backup mechanisms for photosynthesis which didn't require phosphorus (which there aren't, as far as I know), humans still need it to live, so if the plants don't have phosphorus, we're still fucked.

It's not that phosphorus runs out, or that plants can't get phosphorus unless humans give it to them, it's that we don't have enough P to keep crops economically viable. Moreover, consider for example that many fruit trees and such simply forgo bearing fruit if they don't have the right amount of K, N or P that year.

Unfortunately, ATP is one of the building blocks of life. It's a chemical signalling and energy carrying molecule that developed in bacteria, and thus carries over to every single domain of life.

OK, let me put it this way: each monomer unit of DNA or RNA requires a phosphate group. You can't build DNA without phosphorous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorus#Biological_role

This isn't something where you can grow a bunch of Azolla (what with the nitrogen fixing bacteria), drain the rice field of water, have the Azolla die and act as a natural nitrogenous fertiliser, as far as I can tell.