Peak Wood
by Jason Godesky“Peak Oil” is not such a strange or unique phenomenon. It is, essentially, just another case of diminishing returns. Hubbert’s Peak is the point of diminishing returns, the midpoint in global oil production where half the oil is consumed, and half remains. Of course, the half that was taken first was the half that was easiest to extract and had the highest quality. It was light, sweet crude bubbling near the surface. What remains is heavy, sour crude deep inside the earth, or in forms that are otherwise difficult to process, such as tar sands and shale. These are offered up as hope that Peak Oil may not be so bad, but they miss the point entirely. The importance of oil is not that it provides energy; energy can be had from anything. The importance of oil is that is provides cheap energy. A society’s complexity is not a function of the total energy throughput, but the ERoEI–Enery Returned on Energy Invested, or ROI in pure energy economics terms. Since the general problem (if not the specifics) is such a common one, allow me to explain with an example from our own history: the end of the Bronze Age, the beginning of the Iron Age, and a crisis we might today call, “Peak Wood.”
We can think of metal tools in terms of ERoEI, as well. A certain amount of energy goes into their creation–the energy of the smith, the energy of the miner, the energy of the fuel used for smelting, and the energy used in transporting all those elements to one another. There is a return on that investment, as well–usually in the form of the wedge. What constrained the proliferation of the Bronze Age, however, was lack of fuel, just like our current crisis. Richard Cowen describes the situation well in his essay on the Bronze Age:
Egypt, which has practically no trees, was trading with Byblos (on the Lebanese coast) for cedar for shipbuilding, temple construction, and furniture-making as early as 3000 BC. But perhaps the most famous documentation of the shortage of wood around the ancient Mediterranean is the Epic of Gilgamesh … Stripped of sex and violence, the Gilgamesh epic is about deforestation. Gilgamesh and his companion go off to cut down a cedar forest, braving the wrath of the forest god Humbaba, who has been entrusted with forest conservation. It’s interesting that Gilgamesh is cast as the hero, even though he has the typical logger mentality: cut it down, and never mind the consequences. The repercussions for Gilgamesh are severe: he loses his chance of immortality, for example. But the consequences for Sumeria were even worse. It’s clear that the geography and climate of southern Mesopotamia would not provide the wood fuel to support a Bronze Age civilization that worked metal, built large cities, and constructed canals and ceremonial centers that used wood, plaster, and bricks. Most timber would have to be imported from the surrounding mountains, and deforestation there, in a climate that receives occasional torrential storms, would have led to severe erosion and run-off. The loss of Gilgamesh’s immortality may be a literary reflection of the realization that Sumeria could not be sustained.
Theodore Wertime suggested that massive deforestation of the eastern Mediterranean began about 1200 BC, for construction, lime kilning, and ore smelting. Probably it began earlier in the drier regions further east. King Hammurabi’s laws (around 1750 BC) carried the death penalty for unauthorized felling of trees in Mesopotamia. The problem may have been even worse in intensive metal-working regions like Anatolia. Metal smelting and forging had been going on in Anatolia for at least 3000 years by 1200 BC.
…
Copper smelting needs a great deal of fuel, especially if the ore supply is dominantly sulfide. About 300 kg of charcoal are needed to produce 1 kg of copper by smelting 30 kg of sulfide ore. A tonne of charcoal needs somewhere between 12 and 20 cubic meters of wood, and for each cubic meter of wood a 100-year old tree has to be felled.
Archaeologists have estimated that the Bronze Age copper mines at Mitterberg, in the Austrian Tyrol near Salzburg, must have employed about 180 miners and smelters to produce about 20 tonnes of copper a year. Then one has to add the woodcutters, carpenters, charcoal burners, and carters who cut, carried, and processed the wood needed for the gallery timbers, the firing of the working face, and the fuel for the furnaces, and then add the farmers that fed all these. This was a very large-scale operation.
In copper smelting we find, perhaps, the first major environmental effect of mining. The Mitterberg copper mine probably required about 19 acres of forest to be felled each year, just for the smelters. Even with efficient natural regeneration of the forest, this is a sustainable harvest from perhaps 2 square miles of forest. In fact, however, the cleared land was probably used not for re-growth but at least partly for agriculture, to support the mining community.
On a time scale longer than 10 years, however, a Bronze Age copper mining operation must have caused local deforestation on a large scale, and ever-increasing costs for hauling the wood to keep the industry going.
…
The tremendous tonnage of ancient copper slag on Cyprus suggests that the Cypriot copper industry collapsed around 300 AD simply because the island ran out of cheap fuel. The slagheaps suggest a total production of perhaps 200,000 tonnes of copper, and that in turn suggests that fuel equivalent to 200 million pine trees were cut to supply the copper industry, forests 16 times the total area of the island. Even given that high-altitude Cypriot forests can regenerate quickly in the right conditions, this suggests that wood fuel was a critical constraining factor on the Cypriot copper industry, and must have been a persistent problem on the island for other industries too.
The landscape of Cyprus today (and Greece, and Turkey, and Lebanon, and in fact most of the Mediterranean seaboard) is quite unlike its appearance 5000 years ago. The magnificent cedar forests of Lebanon were felled largely for timber for buildings and ships, but copper smelting must take most of the blame in Cyprus. This Mediterranean ecological disaster used to be blamed on the Arab introduction of goats to the region several centuries AD, but the change was much earlier. There are secondary effects of deforestation, of course: hillsides are exposed to greater run-off, and erosion can be greatly accelerated. Part of the story of the later Bronze Age seems to be the silting of coastal ports and cities. The city of Tiryns, for example, spent a great deal of effort just before its end building a diversion structure to keep floods out.
The timber crisis of the late Bronze Age was obviously not the extinction of all trees in the world. It didn’t need to be, just as we don’t need to run out of oil to face a similar fuel crisis. There was still lumber to be felled; but as Bronze Age kingdoms deforested their surrounding ecosystem, the nearest forest became farther and father away. Loggers had to travel farther to reach the forest, and once the trees were felled, they needed to be transported longer and longer distances back home. The energy invested was constantly increasing, but the energy returned remained the same. The ERoEI plummeted, and Bronze Age civilization collapsed into a dark age for several centuries. Civilization finally re-emerged with the Iron Age. Iron had been used throughout the Bronze Age as well, but primarily for ceremonial artifacts. It was expensive. Iron took greater amounts of labor, and for that cost derived an inferior product. Iron could not keep its edge as effectively as bronze; it was heavier and more brittle. Additionally, it was ugly; it was for this that Hesiod wrote, “And I wish that I were not part of [this] generation of men, but had died before it came, or been born afterward. For here now is the age of iron.”
As the ERoEI of timber plummeted, so, too, did the ERoEI of bronze. Eventually, despite its higher cost and lower quality, the ERoEI of bronze dropped so low that even iron was better. Clayton Cramer writes in “What Caused the Iron Age?” [PDF]:
It is also apparent that ferrous metals displaced bronze in tools before weapons and armor. A tool that loses its edge or bends prematurely is a nuisance; a sword that loses its edge in battle puts a warrior’s life at risk. This tends to confirm the theory that iron was originally a second-best alternative to bronze, until the accidental discovery of carburization.
What ushered in the Iron Age was the discovery of carburization–the process of working and reworking iron in charcoal, allowing the iron to alloy with carbon, creating steel. Cramer writes again:
Whether the underlying cause was a tin shortage, or a copper shortage, it is easy to understand why Eastern Mediterranean societies first turned to iron as a cheaper, less effective alternative to bronze. After the discovery of carburization and quenching, steel was both cheaper and more effective than bronze.
Steel was a deus ex machina that allowed civilization to continue its rampant expansion and exploitation. In other scenarios, however, the “Peak Wood” problem was fatal. It was the proximate cause for the collapse of both Cahokia and the Hohokam. It nearly did in European civilization again in the 16th century–that time, the deus ex machina was coal.
Every civilization eventually falls prey to diminishing returns. The problem of Peak Oil–like “Peak Wood”–is just one dimension of this much larger, intractable problem, inherent to the nature of any complex society. What separates extant civilizations from extinct ones is whether or not a less attractive alternative existed, which could become the basic strategy for a new iteration in the cycle of expansion and exploitation. But eventually, miracles run out. Eventually, the deus ex machina leaves us to sink or swim on our own merit. The crisis of Peak Oil is precisely the kind of crisis that has always collapsed civilizations, and if history is any guide, then it seems very likely that we have finally run out of luck, and the time has finally come to pay back 10,000 years of debt.
Hey –
Do you have any comparable numbers for Iron, Jason? I take it from the general thrust of the article that Iron requires much less energy for processing… is this a function of high quality ores, or the fact that it does not need to be alloyed(ie copper/tin), or something else?
Janene
Comment by Janene — 22 October 2005 @ 10:43 AM
From what I read, it seems like the major input for iron is not so much fuel (though it’s hardly easy on that front, either), but man-hours. It’s actually higher cost, but it’s a different cost.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 October 2005 @ 11:18 AM
“This Mediterranean ecological disaster used to be blamed on the Arab introduction of goats to the region…”
As the author states, the goats actually came later. Kotke notes in “The Final Empire” that goats and olive trees (think Greece, Rome, north Africa, the Middle East, etc.) are two of the few remaining ways to get human sustenance out of the land, once the soil has been dangerously depleted. Goats are a soil poverty tactic.
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 22 October 2005 @ 1:00 PM
Oh yeah, about the article;
KICKASS!
I assume you’ll be pulling ideas or referencing this article when it comes time to write Thesis #29?
I’m beginning to see what you mean by impossible to rebuild civilization… you can start it up again, but it’s destined for a quick fall. It’ll never reattain dominance.
-Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 22 October 2005 @ 1:02 PM
Now you’re gettin’ it.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 October 2005 @ 2:47 PM
Will nuclear energy be the next fall-back?
Will it provide enough power to re-crystallize civilization in islands around nuclear power-rich regions until something better comes along?
Comment by Anonymous — 22 October 2005 @ 7:08 PM
If a nigh-miraculous political effort comes around in the next, umm, three weeks, maybe. That’d give civilization, ah’dunno, another century? Nuclear doesn’t need a lot of uranium, but it’s not exactly a common element.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 22 October 2005 @ 7:15 PM
Nuclear energy will NEVER work, for two very simple reasons.
1.) If the entire world started using nothing but nuclear energy right now for all our power needs, within 15 years the world’s uranium would be gone. (Not to mention, of course, Peak Uranium, not to mention, of course, the fact that disposal of the waste would require a new Yucca Mountain facility every three years…)
2.) ANY active nuclear power plant can easily turn out weapons grade nuclear materials in addition to the power generated, and surreptitiously at that. The Powers That Be(TM) would never allow every single nation in the world to have this potential, which brings us back to uranium… how does one get it when it’s in areas where people hate one?
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 23 October 2005 @ 12:54 PM
I think I realize that present scale global civilization is not possible to sustain.
However, if the collapse will leave significant islands of civilization powered by whatever is left,
these islands might undergo another Manhattan project to try and bring fusion power to practical use.
They’ll have almost nothing to lose if they fail and everything to gain if they succeed and so they might go all out to get it, squeezing every last resource and making it a very high priority project.
Thats why, I think a hundred years is a very significant time for this civilization.
Comment by Anonymous — 24 October 2005 @ 10:23 AM
See “We All Fall Down.” Collapse is an all-or-nothing proposition. There can be no surviving “pockets.”
Comment by Jason Godesky — 24 October 2005 @ 11:57 AM
We haven’t figured out how to make a usable fusion reactor, now, with all the world’s resources available for exploitation. Best estimates of anything practical are 50 years off… Fracture civilization, and the odds are even less.
Actually, we’ve already got fusion power - it’s the original source of power for just about everything on earth… It’s safely 93 million miles away, and all that this world needs. Just not a world with 6.5 billion people…
Comment by JCamasto — 24 October 2005 @ 12:30 PM
A whole astronomical unit is one hell of a walk to charge the batteries on my MP3 player… Can we get something closer, maybe?
- Chuck
Comment by Chuck — 24 October 2005 @ 1:14 PM
Global collapse never happened before.
It is uncertain, to which level of complexity the pieces will fall.
Islands of high-tech and high energy resource may pursue a policy of isolation from surrounding chaos and steady state economy, while sacrificing a small portion of that economy to develop essential technology.
It is true, that there is no usable fusion reactor, but the current civilization spends almost all of its resources on expansion and the quickest way to expand is by grabbing the low-hanging fruit - oil
Fusion power proved difficult to grasp, but if the elites wake up and realize that there is no alternative source of power to fuel further expansion, the project might get a huge boost.
It didn’t take a lot of power to come up with fission energy sources.
Comment by Anonymous — 25 October 2005 @ 11:21 AM
There can be no islands. Complexity has created a system of interdependence. There has never been a worldwide, global collapse because never before has there been a worldwide, global system of complexity. But make no mistake, all collapses are global–after all, what is the effective difference between a collapse on an island, and a collapse over the whole earth? Everything affects everything else, and even the earth isn’t independent of the rest of the universe. Rome’s collapse was global–because it saw the collapse of complexity in their entire world.
Collapse is an all-or-nothing proposition. (see “We All Fall Down.”) So, there can be no islands. Either complexity collapses, or it doesn’t–and over a sufficient time frame, the latter ceases to be an option as well. But there can be no such thing as sporadic collapse.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 October 2005 @ 12:03 PM
The post above about the possibility of fusion saving the day ignores the fact that all the not-yet-practical fusion demos rely on helium, which comes out of a small number of oil and gas wells, and which is on a similar depletion curve to oil. Helium is an element; it can’t be synethesized in useful amounts. I work in human neuroimaging using MRI magnets, which also rely on helium and low temperature superconductors to generate high magnetic fields. For better or worse, I don’t think there is enough oil (and helium) left to figure out how the brain works.
Comment by Marty — 25 October 2005 @ 3:54 PM
Easter Island is a great example of localized Peak Wood.
Deforrestation of the island led to the collapse of the Rapa Nui civilization. Result: overpopulation, food shortages, wars, cannibalism, and no more Moai. See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/civilization/first.html
Comment by dark matter — 25 October 2005 @ 4:05 PM
Well, overpopulation was more one of the causes than the results, but yes. This is exactly the problem that does in every civilization in the end. The only difference is what’s the fuel source that runs out first. Very often it’s wood; looks like for us, it’ll be oil.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 25 October 2005 @ 4:09 PM
There is a great saying in the physics community (which I know well unfortunately) that fusion is the energy of the future… Always has been, always will be. I wouldn’t bet the farm on that one.
Comment by Steve D. — 27 October 2005 @ 1:12 PM
Words of wisdom from Steely Dan:
I decline to tow the line
They tell me that I’m lazy
Worldly-wise, I realize
that everybody’s crazy
A woman’s voice reminds me
to serve and not to speak
Am I myself or just another freak?
You know there’s fire in the hole
And nothing left to burn
I’d love to run out now
There’s nowhere left to turn.
Comment by Raku — 27 October 2005 @ 3:48 PM
That link on Bronze Age essay is marvelous stuff, thanks!
I just like to turn attention of potential readers to the whole project. Other chapter on Iron Age, oil, medieval money markets, flooding etc. are also very interesting!
Basically, it’s just a gallery of various total collapses or regroupings of civilizations on lower complexity all the time, we need this bigger picture..
It can provide a comprehensive picture of the mad man’s recent adventures aka history of civilization:
http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/index.html
Comment by Mesuge — 31 October 2005 @ 7:13 AM
Malawi Is Burning, and Deforestation Erodes Economy
Excerpt
It is hard to think of many other things that Mr. Juma and his fellow loggers could do that would damage the nation more.
The problem is that it is hard to think of many other ways that Mr. Juma and his fellow loggers could make a living, period.
“The problem is that we have nothing else to do,” said Mr. Juma, a wiry 33-year-old with a neon green shirt tied around his bare waist, standing over the remains of the chopped-up masuku. “We have no money to raise our families. We have nowhere to run, nothing else to do. So we have to cut the trees to feed our families.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/international/africa/01malawi.html?hp
Comment by Peter — 1 November 2005 @ 1:41 PM
On the plus side: “The rate of cutting is dwindling,” he said, grasping for a shred of good news, “because there are no more forests.”
Sounds like Easter Island.
Comment by Peter — 1 November 2005 @ 1:42 PM
23 October 2005 Chuck says:
All this is only true if one is stupid enough to fuel Nuclear reactors with Uranium. The full argument is here;-
http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/Canopy/2265/atom.htm
But most objections melt away if one uses Thorium as the feed-stock.
# Reactors will not melt down, as in loss of pressure reaction stops.
# Thorium Fast Fission reactors generate nuclear waste, BUT less of it, and that has half life in hours & days, not the eons typical of waste from the Plutonium or Uranium fuelled monstrosities.
# Can burn traditional nuclear waste.
# Markedly a lot more Thorium around the world.
# Thorium Fast Fission reactors create nothing useful for weapons (which perversely is on the main reason many governments are not enthused about the idea of Thorium as a reactor fuel!)
Wired also recently did an article “Thorium Fuels Safer Reactor Hopes”
Best of luck, Shawn (@ AuzGnosis)
Comment by W.Shawn Gray (AuzGnosis) — 27 November 2005 @ 6:10 AM
Of course, we’ve heard such claims many times before, and there’s always a good reason why such hopes are nonsense. I don’t know enough about nuclear power to speak to it, but if thorium is so superior to uranium–why don’t we use that?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 November 2005 @ 8:03 PM
G’day
You didn’t grasp the links? ’cause you ask;-
Three short reasons.
1# It was not the OBVIOUS choice as neither the USA or Russia have much.
2# As it is of no-use in making bombs, the military who funded all the research in most cases were not interested.
3# Most of the worlds ‘known’ Thorium deposits are not in Europe or the Americas. Case of “out of sight, out of mind’.
You probably also could add that up to about ten years ago the nuke industry still believed it was just off finding ways to make the traditional waste problem go-away.
C’ya Shawn (AuzGnosis)
Comment by W.Shawn Gray (AuzGnosis) — 27 November 2005 @ 9:25 PM
#1: Uranium doesn’t seem too “obvious” either….
#2: As a general rule, any reason that relies on the conspiratorial politics of the military-industrial complex tends to be wrong.
#3: Neither uranium, which was predominantly mined out of the Belgian Congo in the early years.
So, I don’t see any of those three reasons as terribly convincing. Markets are savage in their pursuit of efficiency. If a more efficient alternative exist, there’s a fortune to be made in using it first. Unless the superior efficiency is a superficial mirage, and there are hidden costs which become evident only upon closer inspection.
For example, biodiesel seems like a much better alternative to petroleum at first blush–until you start to actually examine it closely. This scenario’s been iterated thousands of times with thousands of messianic alternatives that were supposed to save us all.
Why should I believe the claims about thorium, when it’s the latest in a long line of snake oils?
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 November 2005 @ 9:53 PM
G’day Jason,
You wrote;-
” I don’t know enough about nuclear power to speak to it,”
that is now quite clear as #1 & #2 are bald facts of history, no “conspiratorial politics of the military-industrial complex”
As for #3 “uranium, which was predominantly mined out of the Belgian Congo” that maybe so. But the USA & Canada started with handy local small sources when they where at the research stage.
Regarding “Markets are savage in their pursuit of efficiency.” is just plain krap. Markets are all about maximizing profit through the exercising of power!
And in this case Uranium did have a massive “hidden costs which become evident only” later, Secure long-term radioactive waste disposal.
Thorium is no silver bullet, just a less-dumb way of doing a Nuclear Power, which is still generally a bad idea!
C’ya Shawn (AuzGnosis)
Comment by W.Shawn Gray (AuzGnosis) — 28 November 2005 @ 6:01 PM
Well, to review, #2 was, “As it is of no-use in making bombs, the military who funded all the research in most cases were not interested.” So, the market passed on a more efficient possibility, because it was of limited military use.
This makes no sense. It’s very conspiratorial, but what of all these countries that need nuclear power, but we fear having nuclear weapons? Why don’t we just tell Iran, “Well then, you silly Iranians, why don’t you just use thorium?”
I think you restated my position. “The market” is no monolithic entity. Any corporation which spares anything in its pursuit of greater profit will be eaten alive by its competitors. That means that if a more efficient alternative exists, it will be used–because the first one to do so will bury everyone else alive. Ruthless, savage, brutal pursuit of power (in the form of money)–the result of that is ruthless effiicency.
Anyway, I decided to look a bit into this myself, and sure enough, my sneaking suspicions bore out, and this seems to be cut of the same cloth as nationwide biodiesel or any of the other salvific fuels we’ve been offered in the past. The U.S. actually has the fourth largest reserves of economically extractable thorium, behind Australia, India and Norway, of which only India would present any geopolitical trouble. According to Wikipedia’s article on thorium:
Now that is an answer I can believe. But that also means that thorium is, well, at best a hope for the future.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 28 November 2005 @ 6:19 PM
Just finsihed peak wood and all the comments regarding. Great piece. I am wondering about “fast breader reacters”. I thought the Indians already had plans for these types of reactors or maybe just protypes. These reacters are such that they will generate suffiecient fuel after 6 to 8 years to be self feeding, and not require additional fuel. Anyway, it sounds like a hopeful alternative.
Comment by charley jack — 23 December 2005 @ 1:40 PM
The thorium debate clearly shows that the “peak uranium” argument is flawed. If uranium is no longer available for power generation, thorium will be used, the unsatisfactory technical solutions will be tackled. Research funding will be supplied by desperate governments.
Corporations pursuing efficiency cannot build nuclear power plants without much government help, because nuclear power plants are very research intensive, security intensive, and not sufficiently competitive with other power generation methods. When government is involved, military priorities are important.
Comment by Anonymous — 23 December 2005 @ 11:19 PM
France and the UK tried fast breeder reactors for about 20 or 30 years and both gave up a number of years ago due to the expense and technical difficulites. As far as I know Japan is the only country plodding along.
The idea of fast breeders reactors was to irradiate effectively the depleted uranium U-238 and transmute it into plutonium, but it has turned out to be fiendishly difficult to do on a large scale and within cost obviously. Clearly the idea of producing lots of plutonium isn’t a great idea either. Since the useful U-235 makes up only 0.7% of uranium, therefore by making use of the other 99.3% it would greatly extend the supply of useful Uranium.
So as a practical idea or technology, you can safely forget about it for the moment since the nuclear industry has.
Comment by Terence — 11 April 2006 @ 1:29 PM
You assume a solution exists. I don’t think that’s a safe assumption. Just because we need it to be so, does not place any obligations on the laws of physics.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 27 June 2006 @ 11:35 AM
The ancient city of Mohendojaro in Pakistan is well-preserved. It and its people were not destroyed in war - it has been specualted they all simply left when it became too ineffective to walk an estimated 40km to get wood to bake the bricks from which the city was constructed. That, after all nearby forests were chopped down for this and other purposes.
Unfortunately, with peak oil looming, we all cannot just pack up and leave, voluntarily . . .
Comment by daan — 6 December 2006 @ 10:03 PM
I doubt the peopel of Mohendojaro really just “walked out,” either. In all likelihood, the transition was frought with all manner of conflict.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 December 2006 @ 1:32 PM
Great article
Comment by Anonymous — 25 February 2007 @ 12:39 PM