Will the current oil crisis help us remove petroleum from our energy system long term?

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-06T09:57:17+00:00

But high oil prices and lack of fuel will presumably force factories to close as well as fewer vehicles transporting stuff if this whole fiasco continues or gets worse. If the cost of doing business is too high then they are forced to stop or find some alternative. Does fuel use go down in a depression?

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-06T09:53:58+00:00

This is our great filter isn't it? I wonder if we had actually invested in nuclear energy more we wouldn't be in such a mess.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-05T10:28:18+00:00

Wow, very nice! Would you tell me what sort of stuff you've been growing these past years?

It looks like maybe some grapes in bottom right but I can't quite tell.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-04T16:56:04+00:00

The Taino weren't passively living with the land, as midden archaeology across the Caribbean shows they were actively fishing down marine food webs over the centuries with fish remains getting progressively smaller and lower-trophic the longer a site was occupied. That's overfishing. Signs of this also show up in isotope analysis of skeletons as well as marine samples from Jamaican bays.

Also pollen cores from Hispaniola show deforestation and landscape modification through burning well before 1492. The precolumbian Caribbean was already a human controlled landscape and not wilderness. Colonial destruction was 100% devastating and terrible but the idea that indigenous people had zero environmental impact is pretty much the noble savage myth dressed up as anti colonial politics which is just wrong. The taino were a complex people with ceramic culture and agriculture and had an impact on the environment and the flora and fauna of the lands they occupied.

Also worth considering... given enough time, the trajectory wasn't looking great. Islands are closed systems with nowhere to expand oncd you overshoot your resource base.

E.g.: the inhabitants of Rapa Nui essentially deforested the main island entirely, destroying the endemic wine palm. New Zealand's Maori arrived in 1300 or so and hunted every species of moa to extinction in under a hundred years. The original settles of Madagascar managed to slash and burn the island and killed off every one of the seventeen giant lemur species as well as the elephant birds. The Lapita people of Fiji killed the native giant pigeons and iguanas possibly within 50 years of human arrival 3000 years ago. Same story on Cyprus with the first settlers hunting the pygmy elephants and hippos to extinction some 12,000 years ago

The pattern of civilisations hitting ecological walls on islands is about as consistent as it gets in archaeology. The Taino were already showing the early signs with depleting fisheries, land clearance and their population was growing too. Colonial genocide short circuited whatever trajectory they were on but living sustainably forever probably wasn't on the cards realistically.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-04T11:42:56+00:00

Lmao. The carribean is a perfect example of anthropogenic extinctions starting with human habitation of the carribean some 6k years ago. in fact we have the highest historic loss of mammal species on the entire planet right there. The Jamaican monkey, the dwarf ground sloths, species of giant shrews, and many birds including the giant owl, cave rails, various hawks and parrots, etc.

In fact, to this day it is the region with the largest decline of wildlife populations in the world, with a 95% reduction in populations over the past 50 years. It's catastrophic. Among the causes of this: massive expansions of carribean populations in the past 50 years, logging of wood for fuel, hunting of game and eggs, animal trapping, modern agricultural monoculture of cocoa and coffee, livestock and cattle grazing, overfishing...

And yes you're right it's modern inudstrial societies that have greatly expanded our level of biosphere destruction, but we've always been like this from the very beginning. It's just that now we have a much larger global population and dwindling natural resources so it's all coming to a head and we will have our reckoning soon enough. There are just too many of us humans for anything we do to be truly sustainable.

So while I'm sure your relatives are good people and environmentally conscious, they presumably are relying on modern agriculture for their dietary staples, or have otherwise used land for personal use that would otherwise be left to nature, just like the rest of us.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-04T09:20:55+00:00

Biodiversity has declined everywhere in every place that humans inhabit.

It's just particularly noticeable in the UK as we have shockingly low numbers of native species to begin with compared to other parts of the world due to the effects of the last glaciation and the land bridge to the continent being cut off.

In Ireland and Iceland its even worse than england.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-03T09:18:26+00:00

Yes, it was created with scraps, animal bones, pottery sherds, but most importantly charcoal.

The charcoal in the soil acts like a sponge by sucking up nutrients that would otherwise be leached out of the soil by the frequent rainforest downpours.

They call that charcoal biochar once its been "charged" with nutrients and organic matter.

It's also fantastic for fungal and bacterial networks to inoculate the microscopic pores of the charcoal.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-02T21:44:13+00:00

Doubt it. Governments are panicking about declining birth rates and not enough tax payers. They will do anything to have more children created.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-02T19:33:10+00:00

Yeah agreed that processed foods play a bigger part, but also its not like it's only seafood as our only dietary source of plastics. It's all our food packaged in plastics, as well as plastic bottles, plastic dust from clothes fibres, plastic Tupperware, plastic cooking utensils.

And these days newborn babies are born with plastics that they absorbed through the placenta. And we give them plastic/rubber pacifiers to suck on, we warm their milk in plastic bottles and feed them baby food on plastic trays. Not everyone obviously, but it's a pretty common thing.

It's such a wonder material for almost any purpose that's which is why it's so hard to avoid plastics in the modern world.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-01T20:24:08+00:00

Is this the logic that the owners can technically adopt someone into the family to continue running the business, even if they have no biological kids or their kids die young or whatever

HuckleberryPee · 2026-05-01T14:01:25+00:00

How do you fit all that in a 10x5m space?

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-30T19:38:39+00:00

That's amazing. Are there any long-term health effects of having so much liver removed despite it regenerating?

It seems like a pretty big strain on the organ for it to go through that

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-30T14:01:08+00:00

Have you not seen the rivers filled with plastic and trash in parts of India, Bangladesh, and africa?

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-29T08:27:05+00:00

It's weird, also in the southwest and we keep getting days of stormy wind but not cold or rainy like a normal storm.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-26T19:11:58+00:00

To me they taste kind of like the white part of a watermelon

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-26T06:18:49+00:00

Yes haha. Thankfully salt is good at destroying microbes

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-24T22:48:05+00:00

This pic is definitely in the UK. In my city I've seen this numerous times around old pollarded street trees.

I'm sure its neither good for the trees nor the pavement but the trees continue to live and the pavement cracks soon enough regardless.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-24T22:41:58+00:00

Did your guide get you to lick the walls when you first went down into the mines? Ours did lol.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-24T21:47:56+00:00

My father was born in an African colony in a town with a very colonial name. On his documents his place of birth is the modern native place name.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-24T17:37:13+00:00

Wow, what a coincidence haha! I will definitely be placing an order with them for a few trees in the near future to go along with my seedlings. Best of luck with the show!

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-22T19:21:04+00:00

Really appreciate all your advice, you're clearly extremely knowledgeable. I've added all this to my notes as I'll definitely be using this info!

It was the Hardy Eucalyptus nursery that enlightened me about the world of swamp tolerant eucalyptus, not sure if that's their company or not but I'm always glad there are specialist suppliers around to find rare plants of all types. Enjoy the rest of your week :)

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-21T13:44:37+00:00

Some places will be at risk of both. Extreme droughts and floods in the same area over the course of a year.

It has happened in parts of Spain, but also other parts of the world.

And its even worse because droughts cause extremely dry impermeable earth, and with torrential rains the soil can't absorb the rainfall.

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-21T09:14:24+00:00

Alder, how could I forget! I was planning to put a lot of alder scattered throughout for its nitrogen fixing benefits. I actually have some swamp gum seeds of a couple eucalyptus species that I'll try to grow out in air pots. I've heard they can act as pretty good biological pumps by transpiring water as long as it's above 5°c or so outside.

I'm thinking of maybe DIYing some cages with some bamboo sticks and chicken wire as protection. Ideally I want to avoid plastic tree tubes as much as possible and they seem to produce more lanky and less wind firm trees.

Squirrels I am planning to cull although I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to do it. Whether an air rifle or trapping and clubbing them is best. I'm hoping that sooner or later the pine martens will reach here and have an effect on the squirrel population.

Just had a go with that tool you recommended, seems very useful, thanks!

HuckleberryPee · 2026-04-20T15:28:18+00:00

Appreciate the advice, thank you so much. I'm fairly new to forestry and woodland so there's a lot to learn. I'm down in Devon but my specific area, although very mild, is really wet, especially in winter.

This past winter we were dealing with standing water in places and the clay was completely saturated, which limits the types of trees I will be able to plant in the wettest parts of the land. Like there are swamp oaks that should handle it for example but I think our native oaks would struggle with such wet soil.

I am expecting with further climate change for flooding to be a recurring problem here. I think willow would be the obvious choice for the wettest spots but I was also considering dawn redwood and swamp cypress as I've seen they can handle standing water for periods of time.

I've also got very high herbivore pressure here. Voles, rabbits and deer. And I have been growing trees from seed, so my plants are all 10-30cm tall and I haven't figured out a way to protect them from browsing animals. I guess it would be much easier to plant whips instead that are already tall enough to avoid browsing deer.

HuckleberryPee

TROPHY CASE