A New Oilsands Pipeline? What Politicians Won’t Admit

[chuckChuck]

Unlimited growth and consumption on a finite planet is not possible.

Anybody who thinks the population can keep consuming at increasing rates with a mere 200 years into the fossil energy boom is dreaming.

Even Steve Harper said Canada would stop using fossil energy by the year 2100!

In another example where will all the phosphorous to keep your yields high come from?

Low cost easily mineable sources are not going to last for ever.


"Peak phosphorus" refers to the point in time when global phosphorus production will begin to decline due to the depletion of its primary source, rock phosphate. Predictions for this peak vary, with some suggesting it could happen around 2033, while others predict a later date. This event is a significant concern because phosphorus is an essential, non-renewable resource critical for agriculture and food production, and there are no artificial substitutes."

[Hamloc]

Unlimited growth and consumption on a finite planet is not possible.

Anybody who thinks the population can keep consuming at increasing rates with a mere 200 years into the fossil energy boom is dreaming.

Even Steve Harper said Canada would stop using fossil energy by the year 2100!

In another example where will all the phosphorous to keep your yields high come from?

Low cost easily mineable sources are not going to last for ever.


"Peak phosphorus" refers to the point in time when global phosphorus production will begin to decline due to the depletion of its primary source, rock phosphate. Predictions for this peak vary, with some suggesting it could happen around 2033, while others predict a later date. This event is a significant concern because phosphorus is an essential, non-renewable resource critical for agriculture and food production, and there are no artificial substitutes."

Hmmm, explain to me Chuck2 how electrifying everything, covering good farmland with solar panels, erecting windmills on windy coasts, helps the availability and or reduces the consumption of phosphorus?!

[LEP]

Hmmm, explain to me Chuck2 how electrifying everything, covering good farmland with solar panels, erecting windmills on windy coasts, helps the availability and or reduces the consumption of phosphorus?!

AI messed up his answer.

[chuckChuck]

Hmmm, explain to me Chuck2 how electrifying everything, covering good farmland with solar panels, erecting windmills on windy coasts, helps the availability and or reduces the consumption of phosphorus?!

Peak phosphorous and land use issues are 2 different issues.

So the Alberta energy regulator already studied land use issues and found that renewable energy uses very little land compared to all the other land uses. Oil and gas use much more.

It's not an issue except Danny wanted to stymie the renewable energy industry by making up very restrictive rules for renewables that don't apply to the oil and gas industry! A blatant double standard.

There is lots of lower quality land for renewables. And grazing can be integrated. And none of this has a significant impact on declining phosphorus issues.

[Hamloc]

Peak phosphorous and land use issues are 2 different issues.

So the Alberta energy regulator already studied land use issues and found that renewable energy uses very little land compared to all the other land uses. Oil and gas use much more.

It's not an issue except Danny wanted to stymie the renewable energy industry by making up very restrictive rules for renewables that don't apply to the oil and gas industry! A blatant double standard.

There is lots of lower quality land for renewables. And grazing can be integrated. And none of this has a significant impact on declining phosphorus issues.

I thought I better check on phosphorus, not the drum your usually beating on. I am curious though, we can’t live without food, how will it be produced in the future once our phosphorus resources are depleted?

[shtferbrains]

Peak Phosphorus is like Peak Oil.
A moving target.
It's the same as any mining.
Lots of regulatory making it tougher to bring on new production and even continue to mine proven reserves.
Phosphorus got so cheap in the 80's Lots of Florida mines went broke
Regulatory changed and they sit idle.

[WiltonRanch]

Nutrien has a stake in one of the world’s largest mineable phos deposits in Morocco. We haven’t even looked too hard in Canada till recently. New mine going up Quebec but most is slated for EV batteries and other industrial applications. If we want to delay peak phos.
I don’t think we need to worry about the population bomb we were taught to believe as kids. World population will peak a lot quicker than 2100. Chuck will jizz his pants.

[chuckChuck]

I thought I better check on phosphorus, not the drum your usually beating on. I am curious though, we can’t live without food, how will it be produced in the future once our phosphorus resources are depleted?

Good question Hamloc.

Approaching peak phosphorus

Nature Plants ([url]https://www.nature.com/nplants[/url]) volume 8, page 979 (2022)Cite this article ([url]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-022-01247-2#citeas[/url])

Any long-term solution to the projected decline in phosphate supply must involve improving phosphorus use efficiency in crop plants.

In times of rising food prices and global food insecurity it is important to remember the basic needs for productive and efficient agriculture. One of these needs is the use of fertilizer. While much research focuses on the problem of overfertilization and its negative environmental impacts, mostly due to nitrogen runoff, another reason to rethink the wasteful use of fertilizer is that complete fertilizer is a non-renewable resource due to its phosphorus component, an essential plant macronutrient that is almost exclusively mined as the mineral phosphorite, also known as rock phosphate.


Over 70% of global phosphorite reserves are held by Morocco, followed by China with 5%, Syria and Algeria with 3% each, and Russia, South Africa, the US, Egypt and Jordan with 2% each ([url]https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-largest-phosphate-reserves.html[/url]). However, agriculture does not just depend on phosphorite reserves, but on the whole fertilizer production process, which requires a functioning phosphorus supply chain. Production is influenced by political and economic factors such as war and conflict. Despite its vast reserves, Morocco is only the second largest phosphate producer, due to ongoing tensions with Western Sahara and high costs of mining. Therefore, it should be kept in mind that not only are the reserves critical for food security, but that the immediate accessibility of phosphates to farmers is also critical for food security. Global reserves that are accessible at a reasonable cost of mining are important in the long term, but how long will these reserves last?

Geophysicist Marion King Hubbert formulated the concept of peak oil in 1956, reminding us that the planet’s resources are not infinite. Decades later, and attracting much less attention, a similar idea was established for phosphorus, and it was predicted that its peak could be reached globally as soon as 2033^{1 ([url]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-022-01247-2#ref-CR1[/url])}. The concept is based on the assumption that increasing demand for a limited resource would inevitably reach a point where the costs to produce more would surpass the profit, leading either to a decline in production or an increase in the price. Such peak predictions have been chronically inaccurate due to the difficulty in estimating existing reserves, and the constant underestimation of human ingenuity and capacity for innovation and exploration. But whether innovation should only be focused on the exploitation side of the balance must be scrutinized.

The demand side of the balance is currently dominated by the wasteful use of fertilizer. As long as its acquisition is cheap enough, there is little pressure for practical innovation; although in theory, some solutions are possible. It was estimated that less than 20% of the phosphorus applied in agriculture contributes to the food that we consume^{2 ([url]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-022-01247-2#ref-CR2[/url])}, with the remainder running off from cultivated land, entering aqueous ecosystems and contributing to eutrophication. Some current efforts to recycle phosphorus focus on the recovery of phosphate that is removed from the land through harvesting, while others focus on reducing the run-off.

In the first category, serious efforts are being made to recover phosphorus from human urine. 50% of dietary phosphorus is excreted in urine and is thus diluted in wastewater. Therefore, there is much interest in the development of novel materials that allow efficient recovery of phosphorus from wastewater^{3 ([url]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41477-022-01247-2#ref-CR3[/url])}. In Germany, a new sewage regulation was passed in 2017 that stipulates the mandatory recycling of phosphorus from sewage after a transition period of 15 years. However, given that 80% of phosphorus used in agriculture never goes through a sewage plant and that even the other 20% might not be fully recovered, at least not at a reasonable cost, these solutions are chiefly of local importance.

In the second category, efforts are centred towards a more efficient use of phosphorus by crop plants. The aim is to achieve optimal growth and yield with much lower concentrations of phosphorus in fertilizers; a concept that is known as improved phosphorus use efficiency (PUE). Breeding and gene technology are being used to obtain new crop varieties with improved PUE that take up a larger fraction of the applied phosphorus. Since there is a large excess of phosphorus in current fertilizers, there is potentially much room for improvement. However, both breeding and molecular-based biotechnology approaches require the knowledge of relevant target genes that affect phosphate uptake and allocation by the crop plant. Every newly discovered gene with such a function is a valuable step towards improving PUE and reducing the 80% of wasted phosphorus to a lower percentage. In this issue of Nature Plants, Xinlong Xiao, from the Shanghai Center for Plant Stress Biology, and colleagues uncover a mechanism for how phosphate is withheld in roots under phosphate-scarce conditions, allowing enhanced root growth at the expense of shoots.

Slowly but steadily such pieces of information can assemble into a picture of phosphate uptake, signalling and allocation. However, new crop varieties with improved PUE are only part of the solution. The growing gap between scientific progress and practical application needs to be reduced, and knowledge transferred from papers to farmers and governments. What is true for evolution is probably also true for agriculture: a larger diversity of crops and approaches that are actively in use enhance the resilience of the overall system to unexpected fluctuations, as well as to long-term changes including climate change. Unexpected fluctuations in phosphorus supply chains due to conflicts, geopolitical decisions or temporary supply shortages should not be underestimated, as such effects might become relevant long before peak phosphorus.



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[shtferbrains]

Where our P2O5 is coming from recently.
Fairly steady between US and Morocco.
Morocco is said to have 70% of world Phosphate reserves.
West Africa is known to have more unproven reserves undeveloped do to high risk shithole situations.