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I asked this a few pages ago and I'm hoping it only got missed: Does anyone have any recommendations for Fukushima cleanup news? Obviously I can just Google "Fukishima news" or something but there's a lot of stuff out there and I don't know which of it is trustworthy.
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Sep 28, 2013 21:56
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Dusseldorf posted:I guess for the overview, the use of earth abundant materials is extremely important in evaluating new solar materials. It's also a huge drawback from the current CdTe cells that are made. Nevertheless, by far the bulk of production and efficiency leaders come from silicon cells where there is no earth abundance problems at all. Is the relative abundance of construction materials actually a more important consideration than overall embodied energy and lifecycle?
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Sep 28, 2013 22:58
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Paper Mac posted:Is the relative abundance of construction materials actually a more important consideration than overall embodied energy and lifecycle? Not at all at the production levels most photovoltaics are currently being produced. If photovoltaic cells went in to mass production to the scale that they were a major piece in the energy equation many of the thin film technologies would have a hard (or impossible) time scaling up. The chart I posted earlier shows for a number of materials what the limits on power production are based on the current stockpiles of a resource and the maximum mineable availability of a resource. Bip Roberts fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 28, 2013 23:03
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Dusseldorf posted:Not at all at the production levels most photovoltaics are currently being produced. If photovoltaic cells went in to mass production to the scale that they were a major piece in the energy equation many of the thin film technologies would have a hard (or impossible) time scaling up. Gotcha, understood.
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Sep 28, 2013 23:18
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GulMadred posted:I know very little about fracking. I think that they're subject to the same rules but (because it's a relatively young business and enjoys political support) the bond amounts are relatively small. It really depends on the state (when we are talking about the US). States like Ohio really dont give a drat about a lot of things and you have some leeway. In PA you can get a fine for spilling freshwater on the ground. Overall the oil and gas industry is punished for environmental issues on a case by case basis. Fines are issued based on the severity of the infringement. Someone stole your aluminum sign at the road when the inspector showed up? $2000 fine. Spilled a barrel of OBDM? Tens of thousands. Pollute commonwealth waters? Well you end costs of settling is probably going to be in the millions. My experience with solar has been terrible so far. I know it can work under the right conditions (where it is sunny all of the time) but it has technical shortcomings. The way in which the cells are set up in series is sort of an Achilles heel where a cell being covered in a quarter sized splatter of birdshit can cut the output of a 5ftx3ft panel by 30%. JohnGalt fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Sep 29, 2013 |
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Sep 29, 2013 21:33
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JohnGalt posted:It really depends on the state (when we are talking about the US). States like Ohio really dont give a drat about a lot of things and you have some leeway. In PA you can get a fine for spilling freshwater on the ground. Unfortunately, enforcement is all too often sporadic and inconsequential beyond fines that can be folded into the cost of doing business. Put some personal liability into it and come around more than a couple of times a year, you'll see some change. JohnGalt posted:My experience with solar has been terrible so far. I know it can work under the right conditions (where it is sunny all of the time) but it has technical shortcomings. The way in which the cells are set up in series is sort of an Achilles heel where a cell being covered in a quarter sized splatter of birdshit can cut the output of a 5ftx3ft panel by 30%. A century ago, a gas turbine was likely a finicky and dirty machine that was barely more than a proof of concept. There are some very fundamental limitations to solar power, but you just pointed out a relatively simple engineering hurdle that will be ironed out (along with many others) in due course.
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Sep 29, 2013 21:45
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GrumpyDoctor posted:I asked this a few pages ago and I'm hoping it only got missed: Does anyone have any recommendations for Fukushima cleanup news? Obviously I can just Google "Fukishima news" or something but there's a lot of stuff out there and I don't know which of it is trustworthy. This recent article isn't specific to the current problems around clean-up, but it might help you get a better feel for assessing what's accurate and what's blow out of proportions/underestimating the problem: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/09/fukushima_disaster_new_information_about_worst_case_scenarios.html
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Sep 29, 2013 21:56
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Unfortunately, enforcement is all too often sporadic and inconsequential beyond fines that can be folded into the cost of doing business. Put some personal liability into it and come around more than a couple of times a year, you'll see some change. I can assure you that enforcement is not sporadic. Compliance really depends on the company. I know of certain corporations that start with Chess and and with Peake are totally cool with screwing things up and just shell out stupid amounts of money to cover everything while I have colleagues at other corporations who cannot wipe their own asses without clearing through their environmental department. AreWeDrunkYet posted:A century ago, a gas turbine was likely a finicky and dirty machine that was barely more than a proof of concept. There are some very fundamental limitations to solar power, but you just pointed out a relatively simple engineering hurdle that will be ironed out (along with many others) in due course. I am all for alternative energy sources. I am just saying that solar (photovoltaic) is not there yet by a longshot.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:00
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JohnGalt posted:I know it can work under the right conditions (where it is sunny all of the time) but it has technical shortcomings. No one has ever claimed that solar power is perfect, but what about all of the panels in Germany of all places? They're the world's top PV installer, but their country isn't particularly sunny. There's no reason that a very sunny state like California or Arizona shouldn't be doing something similar
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Sep 30, 2013 07:29
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Hobo Erotica posted:Again, how unique is this to solar thermal, as compared to coal or nuclear? They're all running on the same principle of making steam. Are we talking about the water needed to keep the heliostats clean (in which case you'd need the same for PV), or just to spin the turbines? What's the water usage like on cleaning the heliostats anyway? I'm sure they wouldn't be doing it during the day in the soaring desert temperatures and the mirrors would be too hot. At night, it can drop past freezing in a desert and there would be very little evaporation going on. Also, why can't they use compressed air? Or make a static charge across the mirrors to help repel dust?
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Sep 30, 2013 13:50
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QuarkJets posted:No one has ever claimed that solar power is perfect, but what about all of the panels in Germany of all places? They're the world's top PV installer, but their country isn't particularly sunny. And yet they barely produce any power and the shutdown of their nuclear plants is leading to more coal being used.
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Sep 30, 2013 14:25
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:A century ago, a gas turbine was likely a finicky and dirty machine that was barely more than a proof of concept. There are some very fundamental limitations to solar power, but you just pointed out a relatively simple engineering hurdle that will be ironed out (along with many others) in due course. I think there's generally a bit odd perspective on green technologies - often it seems like an attempt to pursue the second worst option. Like growing food ecologically with the trade off that we'll need more land and water to do it. It may or may not be better than spraying pesticides all over the place but farmland isn't good for ecosystems or the climate and it's not "natural" in any way. When I look at my country it's forrests as far you could see cut down and turned into farmland. Growing food ecologically might be a bit less bad - but still pretty bad. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we're doing the planet any favors because we are still the problem. If these land intensive technologies in food and energy production is the future and we're eventually going to be 11 billion people this whole planet is going to be just one giant production facility for humanity - cities, industrial farmland and now mirrors and PV. The goal should be to use as little land as we can and turn back what we have taken to its natural state. If we don't get the technologies to make our food and energy in small foot print facilities there's not going to be anything natural anywhere near human habitats.
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Oct 4, 2013 02:22
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Anosmoman posted:I think there's generally a bit odd perspective on green technologies - often it seems like an attempt to pursue the second worst option. Like growing food ecologically with the trade off that we'll need more land and water to do it. It may or may not be better than spraying pesticides all over the place but farmland isn't good for ecosystems or the climate and it's not "natural" in any way. When I look at my country it's forrests as far you could see cut down and turned into farmland. Growing food ecologically might be a bit less bad - but still pretty bad. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we're doing the planet any favors because we are still the problem. Not really energy generation but since you're talking about land and water footprints for agriculture, this (I believe) is the future: Vertically stacked hydroponics / aeroponics: Singapore:  http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/08/singapores-vertical-farms.html UK:  http://www.newworldhydroponics.co.uk/verticrop NYC:  These all require far less water and land than conventional farming (Up to 90% less water, and depending on how high you go, 90% less land). If done in controlled greenhouses you can do it without pesticides or fertilizers as well. Growing food ecologically isn't bad, we're just not doing it right. With a growing population and increasing urbanisation I don't see any way that these techniques aren't going to become a major part of our food production systems. We'll still need conventional farming of course, but the more load we can take off by going vertical - locally and hydroponically - the better.
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Oct 4, 2013 03:02
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Vertical farming is insanely energy intensive and expensive. It's not likely to economically challenge conventional farming techniques until the structures that permit their construction and operation are under serious strain from climate change anyawy.
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Oct 4, 2013 03:12
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Paper Mac posted:Vertical farming is insanely energy intensive and expensive. Depends on how you do it. The motors in the first pic, in Singapore, use 60 watts. They use water and gravity to do most of the work, and produce 500 kg of food per day. If I'm reading the article right, I think it's with 120 towers x 60 sq ft per tower = 7,200 ft. The verticrop system in the second pic is expensive yes, but it's more of a prototype. In a goddamn zoo of all places. The third one, in NYC, feeds a restaurant, and the guy does it because it's cheaper, fresher, 'green-er', and healthier than buying food from farms. If you use artificial lights then your costs run up, but if you use natural light, there are no real extra costs beyond whatever infrastructure you use to set it up, which can be as basic as a few PVC pipes, and a cover if you want to enclose it. That's not even counting the external costs of conventional farming in the form of fertilizer production, habitat loss, soil degredation, pesticide run off, transport, wastage, irrigation, etc. People are doing it already because it is cost effective. There is nothing inherently expensive about 'growing up'.  
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Oct 4, 2013 03:35
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Or you can just use the land that's sitting right there.
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Oct 4, 2013 05:27
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Install Windows posted:Or you can just use the land that's sitting right there. This seems at odds with your last few posts concerning the land footprint for solar thermal.
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Oct 4, 2013 05:52
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I'm not talking about running pumps, I'm talking about building skyscraper greenhouses and importing all your nutrients (where do they come from? they're either mined/synthetic or you're stripping soil somewhere). It requires a pretty massive buildout of infrastructure and you're either burning oil to provide nutrients or you're depleting soil somewhere else, so it doesn't really solve the sustainability issue.
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Oct 4, 2013 06:53
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Paper Mac posted:I'm not talking about running pumps, I'm talking about building skyscraper greenhouses and importing all your nutrients (where do they come from? they're either mined/synthetic or you're stripping soil somewhere). It requires a pretty massive buildout of infrastructure and you're either burning oil to provide nutrients or you're depleting soil somewhere else, so it doesn't really solve the sustainability issue. Well it's economically cheaper to burn oil than pretty much any other energy production method - it's just that the true cost is carried by the climate and ecosystems much like conventional farming. It's difficult to compete with conveniently packaged energy from fossil fuels or just cutting down a forrest, throwing some seeds on the ground and pumping some water onto it - that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
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Oct 4, 2013 08:56
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Anosmoman posted:I think there's generally a bit odd perspective on green technologies - often it seems like an attempt to pursue the second worst option. Like growing food ecologically with the trade off that we'll need more land and water to do it. It may or may not be better than spraying pesticides all over the place but farmland isn't good for ecosystems or the climate and it's not "natural" in any way. When I look at my country it's forrests as far you could see cut down and turned into farmland. Growing food ecologically might be a bit less bad - but still pretty bad. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we're doing the planet any favors because we are still the problem. Land use for power generation, even large scale solar, is mostly a local issue. Agriculture in the US is something like 500 million acres, even the current solar thermal tech could power the entire US with a million or so. This is not to discount local land use issues, but it's not a broad environmental issue in the same way that carbon emissions are. I think we can all (generally) agree nuclear is the best option. It's pretty much ideal for how we use power currently, and it's mainly lovely politics that prevents all of the developed world from powering itself like France. But hey, those lovely politics are there, so it's definitely nice to see that there are non-nuclear alternatives approaching feasibility compared to fossil fuels. It's not about pursuing the second worst option, it's about not letting perfect be the enemy of good.
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Oct 4, 2013 12:42
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Anosmoman posted:Well it's economically cheaper to burn oil than pretty much any other energy production method - it's just that the true cost is carried by the climate and ecosystems much like conventional farming. It's difficult to compete with conveniently packaged energy from fossil fuels or just cutting down a forrest, throwing some seeds on the ground and pumping some water onto it - that doesn't mean it's a good idea. As mentioned by the post you quoted, it's not economically cheaper but arguably environmentally cheaper via nutrients. And anyway, there's not one type of "natural", letting the wild reclaim farmland will likely result in just new growth from poo poo we've spread across the world (I know in Texas any growth you see is not "natural" compared to 200 years ago).
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Oct 4, 2013 13:48
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Hobo Erotica posted:This seems at odds with your last few posts concerning the land footprint for solar thermal. The land footprint for agriculture is already taken, and we're already producing more than enough food for the world with it. Current population modelling predicts a continuance of the trend of ever-declining birth rates leading to ever-slowing growth of world population: so we're not due to have to deal with 20 billion people by 2100 ever more, instead it's looking more like 8 to 10 billion.
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Oct 4, 2013 16:04
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Anosmoman posted:Well it's economically cheaper to burn oil than pretty much any other energy production method - it's just that the true cost is carried by the climate and ecosystems much like conventional farming. It's difficult to compete with conveniently packaged energy from fossil fuels or just cutting down a forrest, throwing some seeds on the ground and pumping some water onto it - that doesn't mean it's a good idea. That's not my point- the problem with industrial farming methods is that they're brittle, relatively energy-intensive, and rely on non-renewable inputs. Vertical farming doesn't really do anything to address those problems. To the extent that scarcity of arable land is a pressing problem for particular societies, I don't really see "build ersatz arable land in skyscrapers" as a meaningful solution.
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Oct 4, 2013 17:05
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Paper Mac posted:That's not my point- the problem with industrial farming methods is that they're brittle, relatively energy-intensive, and rely on non-renewable inputs. Vertical farming doesn't really do anything to address those problems. To the extent that scarcity of arable land is a pressing problem for particular societies, I don't really see "build ersatz arable land in skyscrapers" as a meaningful solution. I don't understand what argument you're making specifically. Vertical farming is no more or less brittle than other forms of farming. If you're concerned about crop diversity nothing is stopping you from growing heirloom crops in vertical or traditional methods. Of course growing food is energy-intensive, it's one of the basic mechanisms where solar energy is converted into a form where living things can use it. Vertical farming isn't any more energy intensive than growing crops for other means. We don't really have an option to stop eating to conserve that energy either. And vertical farming seems like it would be much much better at not wasting non-renewable inputs. The biggest way those non-renewable inputs are lost is they just wash away in the rain, then end up going down the rivers and get deposited into silt. There's no runoff from a closed-loop hydroponics system. You still need to fertilize, but I'd imagine you need much much less because it stays put. It's certainly not going to solve the whole land-use problem but when you have a scarce resource every little bit of it that you can reclaim helps. If nothing else it should marginally improve air quality in cities.
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Oct 4, 2013 17:41
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Paul MaudDib posted:I don't understand what argument you're making specifically. When you farm vertically you get a much worse angle of incidence as far as sunlight goes. A lot of the light ends up reflected, the sunlight isn't nearly as "direct". It doesn't use more energy per-plant but it doesn't get nearly as much energy per second as flat farmland does from natural sunlight alone.
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Oct 4, 2013 17:44
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Paul MaudDib posted:I don't understand what argument you're making specifically. How much of an infrastructure investment would this be? It seems like replacing millions of acres of farmland with dirt skyscrapers represents a 100-years-from-now level of development and technology, not something that really matters in the time frame of energy investiture. Is there a way to develop enough solar near population centers there wouldn't need to be a culling of either forests or croplands. Neither sounds very environmentally friendly.
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Oct 4, 2013 17:45
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Jeffrey posted:When you farm vertically you get a much worse angle of incidence as far as sunlight goes. A lot of the light ends up reflected, the sunlight isn't nearly as "direct". It doesn't use more energy per-plant but it doesn't get nearly as much energy per second as flat farmland does from natural sunlight alone. It captures a lot more energy per second than an asphault roof though. Or rather it captures that energy in a lot more useful form. I wonder if you could use mirrors to spread the light and get better incidence angles, kind of like molten-salt solar, although it's probably still less efficient than flat farming on a roof. It also doesn't require scarce, non-renewable inputs like other alternate uses of the space, like PV solar panels. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Oct 4, 2013 |
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Oct 4, 2013 17:46
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Paul MaudDib posted:It captures a lot more energy per second than an asphault roof though. Or rather it captures that energy in a lot more useful form. I wonder if you could use mirrors to spread the light and get better incidence angles, kind of like molten-salt solar, although it's probably still less efficient than flat farming on a roof. This has come up several times now: PV panels are made out of silicon, which is not exactly scarce.
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Oct 4, 2013 17:57
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Paul MaudDib posted:It captures a lot more energy per second than an asphault roof though. Or rather it captures that energy in a lot more useful form. I wonder if you could use mirrors to spread the light and get better incidence angles, kind of like molten-salt solar, although it's probably still less efficient than flat farming on a roof. The point is, many crops are limited in where they can grow by how much sunlight they receive. Since vertical farming is like farming in the far north re: incidence angles, most crops will need additional energy input to produce light for them to grow. Unless you want to use nuclear power to create this light you probably are using something nonrenewable to do it. The buildings also need to be heated and cooled properly, and water has to be pumped up to the top in order to reach plants up there. I agree that vertical farming is cool and it uses space better that flat farming for sure, but the energy requirements are way higher to get the same output, it's not even close. You do save on transportation costs if you are selling the food locally, which can help offset this. I don't have time to look for research on this, but I imagine it will only ever make sense if we have some non-fossil fuel form of energy production that makes energy cheap, but still rely on (now-expensive) petrol for transportation, making growing things locally much more important than it is right now. Jeffrey of YOSPOS fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Oct 4, 2013 |
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Oct 4, 2013 17:59
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The vertical farming proposals rarely seem to mention how they're meant to be harvested, I've always found it strange.
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Oct 4, 2013 18:13
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Jeffrey posted:The point is, many crops are limited in where they can grow by how much sunlight they receive. Since vertical farming is like farming in the far north re: incidence angles, most crops will need additional energy input to produce light for them to grow. Unless you want to use nuclear power to create this light you probably are using something nonrenewable to do it. The buildings also need to be heated and cooled properly, and water has to be pumped up to the top in order to reach plants up there. I agree that vertical farming is cool and it uses space better that flat farming for sure, but the energy requirements are way higher to get the same output, it's not even close. I don't think anybody is saying we have the technology to make a transition right now - but it should be the end goal. Right now we're trying to use plants designed for seasons, open fields, sunlight etc and put them into a very different system. There's no reason to think we can't make organisms tuned to convert nutrients into food at a much faster and efficient rate then conventional farming can sustain. Maybe that's future speak on the level of fusion power but if we can't do that we're simply hosed. Water and phosphorous are limited resources so eventually something has to give. We can't just keep dumping this stuff into the ocean without a care in the world. You think high gas prices are bad for the poor - wait till aquifers start running dry, deposits become depleted and farmland turn to desert. We know this will happen and is happening right now. It's true that we produce enough food for everybody right now but are we absolutely sure that with another 3 billion people consuming more resources we'll be able to continue to do that with current systems? It's important we are certain of this. Paper Mac posted:That's not my point- the problem with industrial farming methods is that they're brittle, relatively energy-intensive, and rely on non-renewable inputs. Vertical farming doesn't really do anything to address those problems. To the extent that scarcity of arable land is a pressing problem for particular societies, I don't really see "build ersatz arable land in skyscrapers" as a meaningful solution. Well I wasn't really thinking specifically about vertical farming - I was just making a general observation that we should probably start thinking about producing our food in a different way. I just take issue with the idea that using less chemicals - organic farming - is sustainable when the problem is really much larger in scope.
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Oct 4, 2013 20:10
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never mind
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Oct 4, 2013 20:19
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Anosmoman posted:I don't think anybody is saying we have the technology to make a transition right now - but it should be the end goal. Right now we're trying to use plants designed for seasons, open fields, sunlight etc and put them into a very different system. There's no reason to think we can't make organisms tuned to convert nutrients into food at a much faster and efficient rate then conventional farming can sustain. Maybe that's future speak on the level of fusion power but if we can't do that we're simply hosed. Well adapting other organisms for this purpose would pretty much eliminate to build vertical farms as envisioned - vertical farm plans are based entirely around making a multifloor version of a farm for normal crops and their designs reflect that while something like say re-engineered algae could instead be maybe something we put on a couple floors of buildings all throughout or even have them grown in the basements.
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Oct 4, 2013 20:25
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Paper Mac posted:I'm not talking about running pumps, I'm talking about building skyscraper greenhouses and importing all your nutrients (where do they come from? they're either mined/synthetic or you're stripping soil somewhere). It requires a pretty massive buildout of infrastructure and you're either burning oil to provide nutrients or you're depleting soil somewhere else, so it doesn't really solve the sustainability issue. Vertical farming isn't about building skyscraper greenhouses. It's about rooftops, balconies, walls, fences, pillars, courtyards, anywhere there's a blank space that gets some sun basically. You guys have put the skyscaper bit on yourself. Since you mentioned it, if you can show us some examples of these multi story greenhouses, how much they produce with what inputs as compared to conventional farming, go for it. I don't know of any that exist beyond eco-blog fantasies, so I'd be interested to see. But I'm just talking about growing vertically wherever we can. Install Windows can say "just plant it in the land that's sitting right there" but most places in a modern metropolis that don't have dirt, which is why we need to go vertical. I live in an inner city apartment and I'm a terrible gardener but I've got thyme, chives, 3 x basil, mint, rosemary, and parsley, ready any time I want them. There's also tomatoes, chili, spinach, silverbeet, celery, beetroot, and strawberries, but I haven't harvested or eaten them yet. And I'm only using half of the available space. And none of it reduces the square footage of the balcony. And the only nutrients I have to to input is water and a bit of worm juice from small worm farm out there. Just water would be fine though too. I guess I was responding to this: quote:If these land intensive technologies in food and energy production is the future and we're eventually going to be 11 billion people this whole planet is going to be just one giant production facility for humanity - cities, industrial farmland and now mirrors and PV. The goal should be to use as little land as we can and turn back what we have taken to its natural state. If we don't get the technologies to make our food and energy in small foot print facilities there's not going to be anything natural anywhere near human habitats. My point is that there are ways to reduce our land intensive footprint for food production, and the first, simplest, and easiest one is to grow vertically. This means just what it says - I never said anything about skyscrapers. (I wrote this last night so I might respond to the last 10 posts later on)
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Oct 5, 2013 06:06
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There is no need to go vertical because farmland exists and is serving us just fine.
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Oct 5, 2013 07:21
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Hobo Erotica posted:Vertical farming isn't about building skyscraper greenhouses. It's about rooftops, balconies, walls, fences, pillars, courtyards, anywhere there's a blank space that gets some sun basically. You guys have put the skyscaper bit on yourself. No, vertical farming is all about building skyscraper greenhouses, it's the primary use of the term. "Farming" on balconies, rooftops, etc. is just urban gardening. I work with an urban gardening co-op and I've never heard anyone use the term "vertical farm" for anything other than this:  If you want to use "vertical farming" to mean "urban gardening", that's fine, but you're going to have to deal with the fact that the common understanding of the term, and the photos you posted from the Singapore project etc, refers to dedicated vertical farming structures. I don't have a problem with the suggestion we should be doing more growing in cities, I agree and I work to that end. I don't think it represents a meaningful solution because the nutrients are still by and large stripped from the topsoil of farmers (importing manure etc) or are synthetic, but I still think it's a good thing to pursue in the event we can ever get our nutrient flows sorted. Paul MaudDib posted:I don't understand what argument you're making specifically. No, definitionally it's more brittle, because the refined material inputs required to grow vertically (in the sense I'm describing above) are higher than using dirt. If your system is more reliant on single-source fossil fuel inputs, its more brittle. I'm not referring as much to mono vs polyculture, although you still can't get decent polycultures in a hydroponic greenhouse (polyculture is as much about soil microbial communities as it is about species diversity). To be specific, my argument is that the space savings vertical farming affords do not address the primary sustainability problems with extant agricultural systems, which are not really related to footprint. The productivity of industrial farming on a per-area basis is nothing special and there's no reason to suspect that it can't improve by increasing eg labour intensity.
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Oct 5, 2013 07:32
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Install Windows posted:The land footprint for agriculture is already taken, and we're already producing more than enough food for the world with it. Current population modelling predicts a continuance of the trend of ever-declining birth rates leading to ever-slowing growth of world population: so we're not due to have to deal with 20 billion people by 2100 ever more, instead it's looking more like 8 to 10 billion. What are the assumptions underlying this estimate? I would imagine that if conditions are favourable, then the population will increase. Is there some point at which everyone will just decide 'actually, 2 babies is more than enough'. Paper Mac posted:To be specific, my argument is that the space savings vertical farming affords do not address the primary sustainability problems with extant agricultural systems, which are not really related to footprint. The productivity of industrial farming on a per-area basis is nothing special and there's no reason to suspect that it can't improve by increasing eg labour intensity. Which is why converting conventional farmland over to more productive modes of farming (such as no-till farming and pasture-cropping) are things now. The problem is not so much finding more phosphate, it is reactivation of the loads of unavailable or locked-out phosphate that has already been dumped on agricultural land over the last 100 years. As far as vertical farming, that is a principle of some permaculture style farming techniques, but those aren't hydroponic, greenhouse based, urban or intensive in any way. They simply use several productive species colocated to maximise the beneficial relationships between the plants. Think like an orchard with root vegetables, ground layer, herb layer, shrub layer, tree layer and a few large forage trees to cycle nitrogen (e.g. leguminous trees or tree lucern). Good doco on the subject:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBYgg013KM Flaky fucked around with this message at 10:02 on Oct 5, 2013 |
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Oct 5, 2013 09:40
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Flaky posted:Which is why converting conventional farmland over to more productive modes of farming (such as no-till farming and pasture-cropping) are things now. The problem is not so much finding more phosphate, it is reactivation of the loads of unavailable or locked-out phosphate that has already been dumped on agricultural land over the last 100 years. There are many ways to improve existing methods. I'm not sure why you mention phosphate in particular, but whether or not finding new phosphate is an issue really depends on the soil you have and the rate at which you're adding to or depleting it. Flaky posted:As far as vertical farming, that is a principle of some permaculture style farming techniques, but those aren't hydroponic, greenhouse based, urban or intensive in any way. They simply use several productive species colocated to maximise the beneficial relationships between the plants. Think like an orchard with root vegetables, ground layer, herb layer, shrub layer, tree layer and a few large forage trees to cycle nitrogen (e.g. leguminous trees or tree lucern). Good doco on the subject:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBYgg013KM Again, this is not what "vertical farming" means. The seven-layers concept in permaculture is distinct from what most people mean by "vertical farming". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming quote:Vertical farming is cultivating plant or animal life within a skyscraper greenhouse or on vertically inclined surfaces. The idea of a vertical farm has existed at least since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The modern idea of vertical farming uses techniques similar to glass houses, where natural sunlight can be augmented with artificial lighting.
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Oct 5, 2013 10:17
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Flaky posted:Is there some point at which everyone will just decide 'actually, 2 babies is more than enough'.
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Oct 5, 2013 10:23
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Paper Mac posted:No, vertical farming is all about building skyscraper greenhouses, it's the primary use of the term. "Farming" on balconies, rooftops, etc. is just urban gardening. I work with an urban gardening co-op and I've never heard anyone use the term "vertical farm" for anything other than this: Ok, I appreciate the clarification I guess, but I never actually used the term 'vertical farming' (at least until that post in response to others using it). I talked about growing verticlally. If that was misleading then I'm sorry, but There were no sky scrapers in the example pictures I posted. The closest thing was the Singapore one and that was just 30 ft high, and was actual vertically oriented stacks, rather than a series of horizontal floors. Like I said, I've never seen an actual skyscraper one, so if anyone's got some decent analysis I'd love to see it. As for install windows, there are plenty of problems with the present food production system - like chemical run off and crazy distribution networks, but I'm on my phone and it's late so I might address them tomorrow.
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Oct 5, 2013 15:40
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