Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 14.1
Rate of increase of potential food production against the time and rate of increase of
population against the time
blatant public campaign in favor of biofuels leads the soil to deviate from its princi-
pal role in the environment, which could be defi ned briefl y as feeding plants and
thus directly feeding herbivores and fi nally indirectly feeding carnivores including
Homo sapiens
. If this principal role of soils is omitted due to the preference of pro-
duction of biofuels, our basic question is: What is more important for us as a spe-
cies? Should we avoid famines of mankind or should we extend a lazy life full of
comfort to a small surviving percentage?
Additionally, let us consider the third rational reality of gaining more energy by
exploiting the energy hidden in chemical reactions on the atomic and molecular
level of the inorganic world. The deviation of principal aims of soil in the environ-
ment, taking into consideration our human views, is similar to the action of some
viruses which attack a certain part of an organism and cause its inactivity in the
frame of the other neighboring parts. Subsequently, the entire organism suffers and
eventually dies. The propaganda and political and economic support of biofuel pro-
duction are therefore very similar to infection by viruses. However, the human soci-
ety is still strong enough to stop this infection. We are not discussing a horrifying
terminological fault, as if coal, oil, and gas were not products of processes trans-
forming the original parental living organisms like trees to coal or single cells of
plankton into methane gas and petroleum (liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons). By the
way, the literal translation of petroleum is “rock oil,” and it was introduced by
Georgius Agricola in the sixteenth century as new word stemming from Latin
petra
meaning rock and
oleum
meaning oil or the Greek
elaion
.
Not being linguists, let us return to Fig.
14.1
. The aim of shifting the crossing
point as far to the future as possible can be reached in principal by two ways. One
would be the reduction of the rate of increase of the number of humans on Earth.
Expressed in simple language, it would mean the limitation of births. It is simply
