​Back in the 1990’s there was a lot of discussion about Peal Oil and how we would manage without our main supply of energy. Peak oil was supposed to happen in about the year 2000 and we waited for the crash but it never happened, or did it?
Conventual, easy to extract, cheap oil did diminish almost everywhere, except the Saudi reserves and we are not even sure about that, and for many years around 2010 we were burning oil at a higher rate than we discovered new sources but two things happened that hid the problems. These were the discovery of fracking practices in the USA which enabled the extraction of shale oil and propelled the USA into, once again, the biggest producer in the world, and the abundance and increasing use of gas.
A new book ‘Disruption. Hard Times in the 21st Century’ by Prof Helen Thompson of Cambridge University examines how the three pillars of Energy, Economics and Democracy are all intertwined and shape our macro world.
We all know that oil is a finite resource and we must run out eventually but because there are such huge finances involved in the production of oil and the massive economic and political consequence of every country that flow around it, that it is difficult to get real facts.
Russia produces about 14% of the worlds oil and gas supplies and supplies much of Europe’s supply of gas through pipelines that go through Ukraine but Germany and Russia have been building new pipes that go through the Baltic to reach Germany. The invasion of Ukraine has stopped that and now Europe realises that Russia is and unreliable trading partner and has declared policies that speed up the development of renewable energy and nuclear to reduce its dependence on Russia. This also brings forward the conversion to an electric economy which was bound to happen eventually anyway.
While all this happens the oil and coal industries, who have been a huge part of the worlds economy for a hundred years, are now having to relinquish this power to the new renewable energy companies which are much more scattered and located in each country independently.
New Zealand is typical of this shift in energy with an abundance of solar, wind, geothermal and hydro much of which is already in production. Rio Tinto at Tiwai point in Gore use 13% of our electricity production and get it really cheaply by threatening to leave but it might be better to let them go and use the electricity to start a hydrogen plant which we can then, either, use the hydrogen or export it and give the workers new employment.
This whole transition is going to be very disruptive as the power base of oil producing countries diminishes and new countries arise. The oil companies are not going to go quietly and will use their political clout to disrupt our democracy. This is not over by a long way.

Back in the 1990’s there was a lot of discussion about Peal Oil and how we would manage without our main supply of energy. Peak oil was supposed to happen in about the year 2000 and we waited for the crash but it never happened, or did it?
Conventual, easy to extract, cheap oil did diminish almost everywhere, except the Saudi reserves and we are not even sure about that, and for many years around 2010 we were burning oil at a higher rate than we discovered new sources but two things happened that hid the problems. These were the discovery of fracking practices in the USA which enabled the extraction of shale oil and propelled the USA into, once again, the biggest producer in the world, and the abundance and increasing use of gas.
A new book ‘Disruption. Hard Times in the 21st Century’ by Prof Helen Thompson of Cambridge University examines how the three pillars of Energy, Economics and Democracy are all intertwined and shape our macro world.
We all know that oil is a finite resource and we must run out eventually but because there are such huge finances involved in the production of oil and the massive economic and political consequence of every country that flow around it, that it is difficult to get real facts.
Russia produces about 14% of the worlds oil and gas supplies and supplies much of Europe’s supply of gas through pipelines that go through Ukraine but Germany and Russia have been building new pipes that go through the Baltic to reach Germany. The invasion of Ukraine has stopped that and now Europe realises that Russia is and unreliable trading partner and has declared policies that speed up the development of renewable energy and nuclear to reduce its dependence on Russia. This also brings forward the conversion to an electric economy which was bound to happen eventually anyway.
While all this happens the oil and coal industries, who have been a huge part of the worlds economy for a hundred years, are now having to relinquish this power to the new renewable energy companies which are much more scattered and located in each country independently.
New Zealand is typical of this shift in energy with an abundance of solar, wind, geothermal and hydro much of which is already in production. Rio Tinto at Tiwai point in Gore use 13% of our electricity production and get it really cheaply by threatening to leave but it might be better to let them go and use the electricity to start a hydrogen plant which we can then, either, use the hydrogen or export it and give the workers new employment.
This whole transition is going to be very disruptive as the power base of oil producing countries diminishes and new countries arise. The oil companies are not going to go quietly and will use their political clout to disrupt our democracy. This is not over by a long way.

​​In 1998 a mathematics graduate, Irakli Loladze, was in a biology laboratory at Arizona State University when he observed an experiment where a test tube of algae, which are the very base of the food chain and are fed upon by zooplankton, was exposed to extra light. This stimulated the growth of the algae and the zooplankton in the experiment thrived and multiplied on the new algae growth but after a while the zooplankton started to struggle and would not thrive.
This was the start of a puzzle that took years to gain interest for research but which eventually led to a very disturbing conclusion finally published in Nature entitled ‘Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition’.
The conclusion of the research was that, although CO2 stimulated plant growth, the plant had a higher level of carbohydrates but a lower level of micronutrients like zinc, potassium and iron which are vital to health.
The World Health Organisation reported that although malnutrition world wide had reduced by 15% the overall picture was not so good which led to the following statement. ‘Today, nearly one in three persons globally suffers from at least one form of malnutrition: wasting, stunting, vitamin and mineral deficiency, overweight or obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases.
This is a condition called ‘Hidden Hunger’ where we are missing the essential building blocks of life. For many of the poorer nations, where people are on a mainly plant based diet, a deficiency can have fatal results. 
Research on the subject is complicated because there are many factors at play that can reduce micronutrients such as deficient minerals in the soil from relying on artificial fertilisers, new strains that emphasise bigger growth of the crop and elevated levels of CO2 which stimulate growth and the glucose content of plants.
Research has been split into two eras, 1850 until today when CO2 grew from 280 parts per million to the present at 420 ppm, and from now until mid-century when CO2 is expected to reach 550 ppm.
One experiment in the USA, on the earlier period, used the wild plant Goldenrod where there were old samples of seeds and it had not been modified. Goldenrod flowers late in the summer and the bees use the pollen as a store to see them through the winter. The results showed a decline in nutrients of one third which might explain a poorer survival rate of bees through the winter.
Experiments that compare plants grown to day with CO2 at 400 ppm and with CO2 at 550 ppm show elevated growth, increased hydrocarbon content and a reduction in micronutrients of 10% to 15%.
In New Zealand where we have plenty of good food available it emphasises how important it is to have a balanced diet and just eating plenty does not guarantee good health and how important it is to look carefully at the contents of food and include plenty of green vegetables and adequate portions of dairy and red meat.  

We are all familiar with the way that we are changing the atmosphere by burning huge quantities of oil and coal and by doing so creating a greenhouse gas that is warming the planet but we are not so familiar with the way that the excessive production of the fertilisers, nitrogen and phosphorous, are altering the growing cycle in the wider environment.
Although nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere in its gaseous form it can not be used by plants and so needs an intermediary process to transfer it to the soil.
The various natural way of transferring atmospheric nitrogen to the soil where plants can use it is by lightning strikes, the breakdown of rocks by frost, erosion and glaciers, plus the growing of legumes.
With broadacre crops such as wheat and maize, nitrogen is an ideal fertiliser and in 1909 the Haber-Bosch production used nitrogen and hydrogen to produce ammonia which could then be used to deliver nitrogen to the fields.
There is no doubt that the production of ammonia and by extension nitrogen in huge quantities has increased food production many times over and moved many countries into self-sufficiency for food and massively reduced starvation.
The downside of nitrogen is that we produce over 100 million tonnes of synthetic nitrogen annually and only 50% is absorbed by crops and the rest is washed into the rivers and streams. This causes streams and lakes to develop harmful algae which steals the oxygen and kills aquatic wildlife.
Farmers are aware of the problem and are being more careful with the application of fertiliser and also aware that continuous use of nitrogen to stimulate growth depletes the natural minerals and fibre in the soil and they are moving towards the use of legumes and clovers to fix nitrogen in the soil and slowly regenerate the soil. Farmers are also reserving a riparian margin on the streams and planting trees to filter out nutrients and eroded soil to protect the stream and improve water quality. The trees also provide shade and keep the water cooler.
There is also a problem in that modern varieties of crops such as a short wheat and most modern varieties of vegetables have a lower content of minerals compared with the traditional old varieties. Farmer are paid by the weight and the look of their produce and not by the nutritional value of the food they produce so it is possible for apparently well-fed people to suffer from nutrition starvation.
On the upside there are huge improvements that can be made for more efficient food production so that we can use less land to feed our growing population and clean our rivers to make a better world. Scientific research can point the way to avoid disasters but as we have seen from climate change, businesses and politicians often prefer to take the money and forget about the future.
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 Let me say straight away that I am not a vegetarian, although I eat less red meat than I used to, and I am not anti-farmer as I fully appreciate that farmers provide the food that sustains us, especially the big farms that provide us with cheap food. I also appreciate that farmers cannot manage huge acreages without the use of crop protection chemicals and fertilisers.
A recent report showed that of all the mammals on the planet, farmed livestock makes up 60%, humans 36% and wild animals just 4%. There is much more living matter than mammals, but it does highlight the huge number of livestock need to provide part of our diet and the massive impact this is having on the planet. We can’t do much about the number of humans, which at the moment stands at 7.7 billion and is due to peak at 10.9 billion people later in the century. Put together with climate change we need to do something about the burden we are putting on the resources of the planet.
In the wealthier countries people consume animal products to get protein as this is a quick and easy solution to a healthy diet but it is a very inefficient method. Effectively we put a cow in the field to eat tonnes of grass and then we eat the cow. The problem is that the cow has to eat 24 calories of food for us to get one calorie in return, pigs need 15 calories and chickens about nine. It also takes 15,000 litres of water to produce a kilogram of beef.
Taken all together it shows that farming animals to get food is a very inefficient way of sustaining our diet and the time may come in the not to distant future when it will have to change, or it may be that, just like wind and solar electrical energy, the new sources are cheaper and cleaner and there is a market led change.
Scientists can analyse the nutrient content of meat and reproduce it as nourishing food and there are big strides being made in making it palatable and acceptable. The most likely type of alternative beef to be accepted is probably the minced beef we have in burgers and sausages but at the moment they are either expensive or not acceptable in taste. This will change suddenly when someone gets the formula right and commits to the volumes of production needed to get the price acceptable.
Milk is another product where alternatives are becoming available and oat milk is a good substitute for full cream milk in cereals or coffee. At the moment it is roughly the same price as cows’ milk but again, someone will get the price and volumes right and there will be a big change.
If we can get the formula right and make the change it will solve many of our water supply and quality problems and get us on a more sustainable path.