|
McDowell posted:If this is accurate: Alaska being a bread basket is amusing to think about, if only before I realize it means lots of clear cutting. I wonder what Canada makes of this?
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 08:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 19:37 |
|
|
2banks1swap.avi posted:Alaska being a bread basket is amusing to think about, if only before I realize it means lots of clear cutting. They're buying up copies of Fallout 3 for clues to how the next 50 years are going to go down.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 08:39
|
|
|
TOOT BOOT posted:They're buying up copies of Fallout 3 for clues to how the next 50 years are going to go down. The map kind of shows them benefiting?
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 09:56
|
|
|
2banks1swap.avi posted:The map kind of shows them benefiting? The game lore depicts the United States annexing them for natural resources.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 10:23
|
|
|
TOOT BOOT posted:The game lore depicts the United States annexing them for natural resources. Sorry, I played the first two fallouts so I was thinking of desertification. I'll be hosed if I wouldn't kill for a sequel in the style of the first two.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 10:32
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:It's doable but it actually does mean an agricultural revolution. Huge swathes of farmland are going to have to be converted to intensive, labour-dependent (rather than chemical fertiliser/oil-fuelled-machinery dependent) organic methods. We're going to have to stop haemorraghing nutrients, particularly phosphate, into bodies of water, which means totally altering sewage systems in every major urban area to collect human waste and return it to the fields rather than mix it up with stormwater and poo poo people dump down their sinks, etc. Basically the current corporate/scientific agricultural monoculture model will have to be totally discarded, which means overcoming some huge vested interests. I should mention that it's doubtful that this can be done under the current individual freehold property regime, so there's that, too.. Only something like 10% of corn produced in the US is used directly as food (and most of that is as high fructose corn syrup) - the rest is used as incredibly inefficient animal feed (60%), ethanol for green fuels (25%+) and other industrial applications. It will be hard but if any country is going to be able to feed itself, its the US. Sadly, the first world countries really are going to weather the global warming storm much better, at least from a survival perspective. The US is probably uniquely positioned to endure the climate change, even more so than European Nations - we are still the worlds third largest oil producer. The next century could be 'The American Century Part 2: Everyone else starves'.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 10:46
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:The occupations need to get hooked up with the food sovereignty movement ASAP. One major thing almost universally missing from the program was an awareness of agricultural issues- there's a general awareness that corporate agriculture is hosed up, but there wasn't any coherent effort that I saw to, say, occupy arable land, close nutrient loops, teach people polyculture techniques, etc. But I do appreciate the sentiment.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 10:58
|
|
|
cheese posted:Sadly, the first world countries really are going to weather the global warming storm much better, at least from a survival perspective. The US is probably uniquely positioned to endure the climate change, even more so than European Nations - we are still the worlds third largest oil producer. The next century could be 'The American Century Part 2: Everyone else starves'. When poo poo hits the fan Europe is going to experience another overwhelming demographic change only this time the migration will be sparked by climate rather than marauding Huns. There simply is no stopping billions of starving desperate people, not with Europe's borders. The US on the other hand only has to control the Panama Canal to stop 90% of the population movement.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 11:53
|
|
|
2banks1swap.avi posted:Alaska being a bread basket is amusing to think about, if only before I realize it means lots of clear cutting. I think looking at it from the framework of nation-states is wrong. They will break down together with the global economic and agricultural system and new political entities might rise, but in my mind local communities make a lot more sense, there just wouldn't be resources or enough manpower to control a huge area by a central government.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 15:22
|
|
|
MeLKoR posted:When poo poo hits the fan Europe is going to experience another overwhelming demographic change only this time the migration will be sparked by climate rather than marauding Huns. Yeah, one look at Southern Europe on that 2030-39 map pretty much tells the story of how it will play out. Spain, Italy and Turkey are hosed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 15:38
|
|
|
cheese posted:Sadly, the first world countries really are going to weather the global warming storm much better, at least from a survival perspective. The US is probably uniquely positioned to endure the climate change, even more so than European Nations - we are still the worlds third largest oil producer. The next century could be 'The American Century Part 2: Everyone else starves'. "Sadly" why do you say that? You know Karma doesn't exist, right?
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 16:00
|
|
|
'cos if we weren't, we might actually do something about it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 16:13
|
|
|
V. Illych L. posted:'cos if we weren't, we might actually do something about it. Which is exactly my point. The third world is screwed, America and to a lesser extent the UK and Europe will be ok.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 17:11
|
|
|
Powercrazy posted:Which is exactly my point. The third world is screwed, America and to a lesser extent the UK and Europe will be ok. You want to respond to any of the dozen odd comments in response to your last claim that it is a 3rd world problem? There is a huge difference between saying that the US won't be as hosed as the 3rd world, and saying that the US and UK/Europe will be ok. Even if climate change doesn't impact the US as harshly directly, it is still going to have a huge indirect impact. Watch The End of Poverty if you really don't get just how dependent on third world economic colonialism the 1st world truly is. The US is not going to be 'ok', it will be slightly better in comparison to the worst off areas, but that is a far cry from how you make it out to be.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 17:24
|
|
|
2banks1swap.avi posted:Alaska being a bread basket is amusing to think about, if only before I realize it means lots of clear cutting. I'm Canadian, and there are two things you should realize. The first is that most of our arable soil is situated along the US border, so the large areas in Canada that would "benefit" according to this map are going to be pretty useless. You can't really grow anything in the Canadian shield. Sure that land will become arable, but only on a geological time scale. The only place likely to really benefit from the change is the area along the Saskatchewan River. The second is that Alaska won't be a bread basket for just the same reason. We know we will be overrun, if not by the US military, then by hordes of armed climate refugees from the south. I'm thinking of buying some land up in one of the few areas up north with arable soil and hoping that the sheer distance from the US border will save me from extreme numbers of bandits.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 17:38
|
|
|
gently caress You And Diebold posted:You want to respond to any of the dozen odd comments in response to your last claim that it is a 3rd world problem? There is a huge difference between saying that the US won't be as hosed as the 3rd world, and saying that the US and UK/Europe will be ok. Even if climate change doesn't impact the US as harshly directly, it is still going to have a huge indirect impact. Watch The End of Poverty if you really don't get just how dependent on third world economic colonialism the 1st world truly is. The US is not going to be 'ok', it will be slightly better in comparison to the worst off areas, but that is a far cry from how you make it out to be. I know about the interconnectedness of the world. US Consumers don't get iPhones in a vacuum. However when the effects of climate change occur, the third world will be even MORE reliant upon the first world. Yea even though 2/3rds of people in the third-world are dead the ones that do survive will be starving, and hey, it just so happens that the US has food (and oil, and money) and for simply slaving away in the new factories (or even the existing ones) will allow the third world to feed himself, and maybe even his family. Basically exactly what happens now, but even more unequal, and US Centric. In the US the rich are fine, the middle class stratifies a bit more between then haves and have-nots, and the poor people are still poor but a thousand times better off than the third-world. The US will not be experiencing the mass starvation, which is the biggest problem, that most of the rest of the world will experience. As for the criticisms, the rain-fall graph is interesting, but ultimately not important because even just the mississippi river valley, can feed all of north America and unless the great lakes are going to completely dry-up, that is all America needs. As an aside I don't know if the great lakes and mississippi are projected to disappear but I imagine they are big enough, that even with a drastic climate shift, they will still persist. Feel free to show me I'm wrong though.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 17:54
|
|
|
Powercrazy posted:I know about the interconnectedness of the world. US Consumers don't get iPhones in a vacuum. However when the effects of climate change occur, the third world will be even MORE reliant upon the first world. Yea even though 2/3rds of people in the third-world are dead the ones that do survive will be starving, and hey, it just so happens that the US has food (and oil, and money) and for simply slaving away in the new factories (or even the existing ones) will allow the third world to feed himself, and maybe even his family. We aren't going to be able to count on third world factories going into the future as fuel prices will be too prohibitive for relying on factories on the other side of the world to make our clothes, food, and gadgets. Local sustainability is going to be very important, and is going to require a complete re-tooling of the way the US sees land management and city planning. The US probably will see mass starvation, mainly in urban centers, as the current food supply is reworked. Our current agricultural output relies very heavy on petroleum and petroleum based products. In the late 19th century close to half the labor force was made up by farmers, in 2000 it was 1.9%, as of Nov 2011 it is .71%. We cannot use our current agricultural production as a plan going into the future, it will not work. Even if the Mississippi river valley could potentially feed all of North America, the transportation costs of centralized agriculture are going to quickly screw over the parts of the country farthest from the Mississippi, especially those in drought ridden areas (Of which the Mississippi valley is projected to be). The only way the US is going to avoid the mass starvation other countries will go through is to actually use the massive amounts of land it has, our population density is actually very low compared to many other countries. Spreading out and starting local cooperatives will be the best bet for when the supermarkets start to close.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 18:28
|
|
|
gently caress You And Diebold posted:That's kinda the point of using the Mississippi river valley. Water navigation is far and away the easiest way to ship goods. I wouldn't doubt there will be lots of Cuba-style farming going on, but the Mississippi river valley is probably the absolute last place in the whole world to stop centralized agriculture.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 19:10
|
|
|
Claverjoe posted:That's kinda the point of using the Mississippi river valley. Water navigation is far and away the easiest way to ship goods. I wouldn't doubt there will be lots of Cuba-style farming going on, but the Mississippi river valley is probably the absolute last place in the whole world to stop centralized agriculture. That's good for up and down the Mississippi, but he mentioned that the river valley could feed all of North America. While using the Mississippi/Colorado river systems will let you cover quite a large area of land, if it definitely not the entirety of North America. The Mississippi river valley is undoubtedly going to be very important as far as farming goes, it cannot be relied upon to be a central provider of food such as we could have today.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 19:21
|
|
|
Deleuzionist posted:Do you know any website, organization or publication that I could turn to in order to begin to educate myself on these issues? I'd be obliged. For food sovereignty in general, Via Campesina is a good place to start. For legitimately sustainable agriculture (ie, "can be done forever given invariant conditions" rather than "can be done slightly longer than current methods before depleting the soil"), you might want to look at some of the publications that are broadly grouped under the name "agroecology" (it's worth noting that some authors use this term just to denote an ecology that's been modified by humans to produce food rather than a specific set of practices). The permaculture folks have some interesting things to say about closed loop systems, and will point you in the direction of classic texts like FH King's "Farmers of Forty Centuries". The UN special rapporteur on the Right to Food also has a useful recent report on agroecology and food sovereignty. If you want to get into the weeds a bit I'd recommend looking at the anthropology literature around non-European-type agriculture, eg. traditional African polyculture techniques, swiddening in South-East Asia, etc. James C Scott's work will point you in the direction of a lot of those sources. You may also want to check out some of the more out-there stuff like Fukuoka's "natural farming" techniques. Paper Mac fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Dec 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 19:40
|
|
|
gently caress You And Diebold posted:\ Our current agricultural output relies very heavy on petroleum and petroleum based products. Are you sure our current agricultural system couldn't produce enough biofuel to run itself? I suspect it could easily. Electrify our freight rail system and you're in business, "mass starvation" seems like a stretch. The natural gas used to produce fertilizer is an issue but is also a very small percentage of natural gas use. sanchez fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Dec 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 19:44
|
|
|
cheese posted:Actually, I'm not really sure it will be as difficult as you think. http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2008/06/us-corn-consumption.html You've totally missed the point. Current corn production techniques are utterly dependent on fossil fuels for fertilisers, planting, and harvesting. They also deplete fields of nutrients extremely rapidly, making them even more difficult to grow on under dry conditions. Just diverting current corn production from EtOH and animal feed to people food isn't going to do poo poo to slow the progress of climate change or make agriculture sustainable. Did you notice that the map I posted was for 2030-2040? Do you think everything arrests there? Here's the 2060-2070 map:  Where's the corn going to come from? Fields are not just interchangeable containers for crops. Crops are not just interchangeable goods destined for markets. This is a really complicated problem intersecting our agronomic practices, political economy, transportation infrastructure, labour markets, cultural practices, etc. Trivialising it may be easy when the only interaction you have with the production side of your subsistence routine is going to a supermarket to buy your food, but the era where you're going to be able to ignore what goes on in the fields is rapidly coming to an end.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 19:53
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:
If we don't need anywhere near as much corn, surely that becomes a much easier problem to solve? The end of cheap oil wont make economies of scale irrelevant overnight, I don't see how all this discussion of local small scale agriculture is useful.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:01
|
|
|
Corn sucks anyway and if you are literally worried about starving, like we will in 30 years, corn isn't even on the list of crops to grow. In fact as water starts to become scarce I can see the corn lobby slowly waning (a good thing).
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:06
|
|
|
Powercrazy posted:I can see the corn lobby slowly waning (a good thing). Let's see how good it is once congress is in the pocket of Big Goat. Goat is actually quite tasty, I have no problem with cornfields being replaced by pasture for them. They also seem to thrive in dry countries.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:11
|
|
|
sanchez posted:If we don't need anywhere near as much corn, surely that becomes a much easier problem to solve? The end of cheap oil wont make economies of scale irrelevant overnight, I don't see how all this discussion of local small scale agriculture is useful. Look at the map I just posted, keeping in mind that -3 to -5 on that scale is Oklahoma dust-bowl-like conditions. Compare that to the agricultural production map a couple posts back. Now tell me where you get the staple crops to feed, say, 400 million people on this continent? It takes 7 to 10 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce and deliver 1 calorie of food energy to your table. Biofuels aren't going replace that input. To cut emissions by the rate we need to (outlined in the OP), we need to make some serious changes to the way the agricultural system works, especially cutting down on transport ranges. Or we can blithely continue emitting because we think cheap oil might not be such a problem after all and let drought utterly destroy the most productive agricultural ecology on the planet.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:17
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:
There is no single solution, but, if that 7 to 10 calories could be reduced by not producing grain fed beef etc and then the remainder covered through renewable sources, where's the problem? It does not matter if food travels 2000 miles if it does so on a wind powered train. According to your article 10% of US energy consumption goes to agriculture. We can deal with that. sanchez fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Dec 20, 2011 |
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:25
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:You've totally missed the point. Current corn production techniques are utterly dependent on fossil fuels for fertilisers, planting, and harvesting. They also deplete fields of nutrients extremely rapidly, making them even more difficult to grow on under dry conditions. Just diverting current corn production from EtOH and animal feed to people food isn't going to do poo poo to slow the progress of climate change or make agriculture sustainable. Did you notice that the map I posted was for 2030-2040? Do you think everything arrests there? Here's the 2060-2070 map: Paper Mac posted:Fields are not just interchangeable containers for crops. Crops are not just interchangeable goods destined for markets. This is a really complicated problem intersecting our agronomic practices, political economy, transportation infrastructure, labour markets, cultural practices, etc. Trivialising it may be easy when the only interaction you have with the production side of your subsistence routine is going to a supermarket to buy your food, but the era where you're going to be able to ignore what goes on in the fields is rapidly coming to an end.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:35
|
|
|
Powercrazy posted:Corn sucks anyway and if you are literally worried about starving, like we will in 30 years, corn isn't even on the list of crops to grow. In fact as water starts to become scarce I can see the corn lobby slowly waning (a good thing). Yeah, corn is below average for water/crop but its energy content is just abysmal. I hope y'all like potatoes, every day 
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:43
|
|
|
cheese posted:I'm not suggesting that things will simply continue on as they are, merely rejecting the idea that there will be so sudden and abrupt a disruption of the food supply that millions of urban Americans will starve. We only spend a small fraction of US energy on food production and we are so wasteful and inefficient with our food production that any comparison of current energy/crop usage is irrelevant. Uh, right, my point being: totally abandoning the hegemonic centralised scientific agriculture model that's been in place for a century, over the span of a couple decades, under intense ecological pressure, isn't just a matter of moving some numbers around on a piece of paper. It's a really difficult problem that no one has any coherent plan or solution for, and we needed one yesterday.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 20:50
|
|
|
Paper Mac posted:Uh, right, my point being: totally abandoning the hegemonic centralised scientific agriculture model that's been in place for a century, over the span of a couple decades, under intense ecological pressure, isn't just a matter of moving some numbers around on a piece of paper. It's a really difficult problem that no one has any coherent plan or solution for, and we needed one yesterday.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 21:00
|
|
|
cheese posted:Again, we only directly consume for food something like 2% of the corn we produce in the US. The answer is probably 'the small area that can still grow it' or more realistically, 'we don't grow corn anymore because its a thirsty crop'. Switching over to a completely new system of food growth and distribution is not an overnight task. We don't even have even close to the political will/capital for any preliminary plans to be studied, much less any test implementations or any actual move towards change yet. These are the types of changes that take years to put into effect, and decades to fully build. There is plenty of time in between recognition of the problem and creating a solution for people to starve. Even if we still can have enough food production and distribution to feed the current population it does not necessarily mean that we will be able to.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 21:02
|
|
|
I guess it's time to move to Iceland. Pretty energy independent with all the geothermal power and stuff and its going to get warmer and wetter up there, so maybe they'll be able to grow more food too! And its an island so its way easier to keep all those poors out!
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 21:10
|
|
|
I don't know if you are serious or not, but Iceland and most islands are goign to be the first places where food stops arriving.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 21:58
|
|
|
gently caress You And Diebold posted:Switching over to a completely new system of food growth and distribution is not an overnight task. We don't even have even close to the political will/capital for any preliminary plans to be studied, much less any test implementations or any actual move towards change yet. These are the types of changes that take years to put into effect, and decades to fully build. There is plenty of time in between recognition of the problem and creating a solution for people to starve. Even if we still can have enough food production and distribution to feed the current population it does not necessarily mean that we will be able to. Think about the last time we, as a nation, unified behind a common threat to accomplish some impressive things. Hint: terrorism. As long as the rich, corporate elite can keep this 'War on Terror' boat rolling they can do whatever they want and that almost certainly includes more or less keeping up with the rate of climate change through drastic changes to our food growth and distribution system. The first thing that will probably go is Ethanol - we use a quarter of the corn grown in the US for Ethanol fuel additives (about 10 times as much corn as we use for food). Oh and it won't be just 'Government now controls all corn production'. They will use government backed Corporate control to make obscene amounts of money off of climate change.
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 22:05
|
|
|
Powercrazy posted:I don't know if you are serious or not, but Iceland and most islands are goign to be the first places where food stops arriving. On a different subject, there's a couple new pieces out in the last week about methane: New York Times Washington Post
|
|
#
?
Dec 20, 2011 23:26
|
|
|
cheese, are you betting on the free market to save us from this? The weather around here has been changing, with increasingly more freak days of unseasonal weather. I'd describe it as an uneven transition between seasons. Humans and other animals might be able to "tough it out" and deal with the changes, but plants are simplistic life whose chemical operations are based on cues of humidity, pressure, temperature, etc. For now our country is big enough that we're buffered us against crop losses in one region or another. Introduce another dust bowl in much of the country, unpredictable growing seasons elsewhere, and food supplies could get tight. There'd be panic, shelves would be bare. Other issues (fuel scarcity) could make it harder to get the machine working again. Our primary hope at that point would be to develop GMOs, hydroponics, and other kinds of indoor agriculture. But who knows what panicking societies will do?
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2011 03:07
|
|
|
McDowell posted:There'd be panic, shelves would be bare. Other issues (fuel scarcity) could make it harder to get the machine working again. I just hope that a lot of the people who were getting all hard seeing pictures of bare store shelves in the Soviet Union and making fun of famine in Africa live to see it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2011 04:37
|
|
|
VideoTapir posted:I just hope that a lot of the people who were getting all hard seeing pictures of bare store shelves in the Soviet Union and making fun of famine in Africa live to see it. As tempting as it is to think that way, everyone would be seeing those same empty store shelves. Being able to say 'I told you so' loses its luster when you're looking at societal upheaval that large.
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2011 05:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 6, 2024 19:37 |
|
|
How many calories are there in freeper tears, though?
|
|
#
?
Dec 21, 2011 05:28
|
|