{"id":2850,"date":"2012-04-02T23:14:28","date_gmt":"2012-04-03T03:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=2850"},"modified":"2014-01-23T22:01:40","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T03:01:40","slug":"peak-x-for-many-values-of-x","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/2012\/04\/peak-x-for-many-values-of-x\/","title":{"rendered":"Peak X (for many values of X)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since <a title=\"Serendipity: Peak Oil: Are we in for a bumpy ride?\" href=\"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/?p=2270\" target=\"_blank\">I wrote about peak oil last year<\/a>, I&#8217;ve been collecting references to &#8220;Peak X&#8221;. Of course, the key idea, Hubbert&#8217;s Peak applies to any resource extraction, where the resource is finite. So it&#8217;s not surprising that wikipedia now has entries on:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"wikipedia on Peak Oil\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_oil\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Oil<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"wikipedia entry on Peak Gas\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_gas\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Gas<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Wikipedia entry on Peak Coal\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_coal\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Coal<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Wikipedia entry on Peak Copper\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_copper\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Copper<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Wikipedia entry on Peak Phosphorus\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_phosphorus\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Phosphorus<\/strong><\/a> (see also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2010\/04\/20\/peak_phosphorus\">Peak Phosphorus, and Why It Matters<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_uranium\"><strong>Peak Uranium<\/strong><\/a> (although, this might not be obvious to people: nuclear energy is not a renewable energy!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And here&#8217;s a sighting of a mention of <a title=\"Daily Telegraph: World Gold Supply runs out\" href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/finance\/newsbysector\/industry\/mining\/6546579\/Barrick-shuts-hedge-book-as-world-gold-supply-runs-out.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Gold<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Unlike peak oil, some of these curves can be dampened by the appropriate recycling. But what of stuff we normally think of as endlessly renewable:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Wikipedia entry on Peak Water\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Peak_water\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Water<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; it turns out that we haven&#8217;t been managing the world&#8217;s aquifers and lakes sustainably, despite the fact that that&#8217;s where our freshwater supplies come from (See <a title=\"Gleick PH, Palaniappan M. Peak water limits to freshwater withdrawal and use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2010;107(25):11155-62.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov\/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2895062&amp;tool=pmcentrez&amp;rendertype=abstract\">Peter Gleick&#8217;s 2010 paper<\/a> for a diagnosis and possible solutions)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nowtoronto.com\/news\/story.cfm?content=181545\"><strong>Peak Food<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; similarly, global agriculture appears to be unsustainable, partly because food policy and speculation have wrecked local sustainable farming practices, but also because of population growth (See <a title=\"Foley J, Ramankutty N, Brauman K a., et al. Solutions for a cultivated planet. Nature. 2011;478:337-342.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/doifinder\/10.1038\/nature10452\">Jonathan Foley&#8217;s 2011 paper<\/a> for a diagnosis and possible solutions).<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Stephen Leahy: Ocean Fisheries Maxed Out\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ipsnews.net\/news.asp?idnews=36811\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Fish<\/strong><\/a> &#8211; although overfishing is probably old news to everyone now.<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Post Carbon Institute report on Peak Nature\" href=\"http:\/\/www.postcarbon.org\/report\/218596-biodiversity-peak-nature\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Biodiversity<\/strong><\/a> (although here it&#8217;s referred to as Peak Nature, which I think is sloppy terminology)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Which also leads to pressure on specific things we really care about, such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/discoblog\/2010\/11\/19\/is-this-the-peak-of-peak-panic-peak-chocolate-peak-maple-syrup-more\/\"><strong>Peak Chocolate<\/strong><\/a>!!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then there is a category of things that really do need to peak:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/national\/are-we-reaching-peak-car\/article2210139\/\" target=\"_blank\">Are we reaching \u2018<strong>Peak Car<\/strong>\u2019? &#8211; The Globe and Mail, Oct 22, 2011<\/a>,<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.organicauthority.com\/blog\/tag\/peak-plastic\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Plastic Bottle<\/strong> &#8211; Organic Authority, Feb 17, 2012<\/a>,<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.physorg.com\/news\/2011-01-peak.html\" target=\"_blank\">Have we reached <strong>Peak Travel<\/strong>? &#8211; PhysOrg.com, Jan 3, 2011<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldchanging.com\/archives\/007830.html\" target=\"_blank\">What are the sustainability implications of <strong>Peak Population<\/strong>? &#8211; WorldChanging, Feb 10, 2008<\/a><\/li>\n<li>and, perhaps, but not definitely, a sighting of\u00a0<a title=\"The Guardian, Nov 15, 2011 &quot;Focusing on Cutting Back Consumption misses the real point&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/sustainable-business\/blog\/consumption-change-wellbeing-values-behaviour\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Consumption<\/strong><\/a> in the Guardian.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And just in case there&#8217;s too much doom and gloom in the above, there are some more humorous contributions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.overthinkingit.com\/2008\/09\/23\/the-hubbert-peak-theory-of-rock-or-why-were-all-out-of-good-songs\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Rock Music<\/strong><\/a> (yeah, I&#8217;m from the generation who thinks it was all over by 1979)<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"XKCD 988: tradition\" href=\"http:\/\/xkcd.com\/988\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Christmas Music<\/strong><\/a> (obvious, when you think about it)<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"XKCD 893: 65 Years\" href=\"http:\/\/xkcd.com\/893\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Peak Moonwalkers<\/strong><\/a> (sad, but true)<\/li>\n<li><strong><a title=\"Is Facebook dying?\" href=\"http:\/\/dish.andrewsullivan.com\/2014\/01\/23\/is-facebook-dying\/\">Peak Facebook<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>(although I don&#8217;t know how seriously to take this one)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And those middle two, by the wonderful Randall Monroe make me wonder what he was doing here:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"xkcd 1007: Sustainable\" href=\"http:\/\/xkcd.com\/1007\/\" target=\"_blank\">failing to predict <strong>Peak Sustainability<\/strong><\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I can&#8217;t decide whether that last one is just making fun of the the singularity folks, or whether it&#8217;s a clever ruse to get people realize Hubbert&#8217;s Peak must kick in somewhere!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever since I wrote about peak oil last year, I&#8217;ve been collecting references to &#8220;Peak X&#8221;. Of course, the key idea, Hubbert&#8217;s Peak applies to any resource extraction, where the resource is finite. So it&#8217;s not surprising that wikipedia now has entries on: Peak Oil Peak Gas Peak Coal Peak Copper Peak Phosphorus (see also [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,19],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2850"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3984,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2850\/revisions\/3984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.easterbrook.ca\/steve\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}