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Zudgemud posted:We have capacity for food production to feed much much more than we do now, it's just that it is at the cost of most meat, dairy products and tasty but nutritionally useless food items like cucumber. Basically cheap food has made some really wasteful food practices common, and one can cut through that pretty significantly before humanity starves (especially the rich part). So basically we have to go back to medieval/pre-industrial types of diet for most people then. Yeah we're doomed.
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Nov 26, 2016 00:10
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True, if people have the options to eat boring stuff or starve almost everyone chose the boring food. It's just that the economic incentives are not there for the populations with the biggest wasteage to change those aspects of their society. So the rich will moan that their cheese and pickled cucumber has gone up 30% in price while the poor will starve as a 30% price hike puts the essential imported staple food out of their grasp.
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Nov 26, 2016 00:38
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North America is not doomed because of people's diets. It will naturally be solved by the system when that food becomes more expensive. Meat consumption will fall due to the price, and prices of grain will rise giving an incentive for midwest farmers to grow stuff like wheat and soy instead of feed corn. It's one of those problems capitalism is good at solving. As for the soil thing, the article is really doom and gloom about it but I don't know any farmers that just take it for granted. They depend on their land for their livelihood and they are the most hard working problem solvers you'll ever see. Soil can be built back up, and does so without intervention given half a chance. It's very solvable, and it will be solved when there is a will to do so. The places that depend on rapidly depleting aquifers to grow crops are right hosed in a few years though.
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Nov 26, 2016 00:51
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Yeah, problems with personal solutions that dont rely on others are the ones I am completely confident in us figuring out one way or another, at least for the next hundred years. Their main barriers are largely political resistance, and they do have risks involving volatility and negative eternalities, but we will solve them. It is one of the things ownership and capitalism is at least okay at addressing. Commons problems are the issue - fishing and climate change and anything else involving shared resources and risks.
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Nov 26, 2016 03:07
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The problem with dying is I really want to see what happens next.
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Nov 26, 2016 03:28
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mik posted:The problem with dying is I really want to see what happens next. You just have to survive until the nuclear war, after that there's probably not much worth seeing
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Nov 26, 2016 06:00
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Thankfully most of that worthless, unsightly agricultural land near major settlements in North America have had their topsoil removed and paved over for endless sprawling single family homes and vast seas of asphalt parking lots for chain restaurant outlets, shopping malls, gas stations and big box power centers!
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Nov 26, 2016 06:27
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RedneckwithGuns posted:Is there any even unreasonable way this could be fixed without making us unable to grow the amount of food we would need? How would those large indoor hydroponic setups that are springing up in certain places help to fix it? Actually, automated hydroponics and aquaponics as well as inland fishery tech has reached a level of insane efficiency per m2, making it an absolute possibility to grow huge amounts and varieties of non-local foods as well as fish (you need a protein source regardless). The issue on this isn't ability, because that we have, but cost effectiveness. It's a lot more expensive to do this than simply importing poo poo, and until we start doing it on a massive scale or transportation costs go through the roof, it's not a realistic endeavour. It also requires a lot of fresh water and electricity, which may both be in short supply for some nations going forward. But yeah, and integrated skyscraper hydro/aquaponics can solve local food shortages. It's just nobody is building them now, and crops can fail massively one year to the next while these types of projects can take decades. So, not out of the woods yet.
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Nov 26, 2016 10:47
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Nice piece of fish posted:Actually, automated hydroponics and aquaponics as well as inland fishery tech has reached a level of insane efficiency per m2, making it an absolute possibility to grow huge amounts and varieties of non-local foods as well as fish (you need a protein source regardless). I doubt inland fish pens are that efficient at generating protein, I bet they like most meat farming is just an inefficient conversion of vegetable protein into animalic protein, or even worse, a conversion of cheap bycatch from trawling.
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Nov 26, 2016 12:59
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Zudgemud posted:I doubt inland fish pens are that efficient at generating protein, I bet they like most meat farming is just an inefficient conversion of vegetable protein into animalic protein, or even worse, a conversion of cheap bycatch from trawling. Well yes, as far as I know the technology requires/assumes significant insect/larvae farming for feed, and presumably the insect farming comes from mostly waste or low-grade/unusable vegetable matter. I'm not going to pretend to know everything about this, because I don't, and I'm certainly not going to pretend this is easy or will even be done, but it does exist as a potential alternative to mass monoculture fossil-fuel driven farming.
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Nov 26, 2016 14:15
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Nice piece of fish posted:Actually, automated hydroponics and aquaponics as well as inland fishery tech has reached a level of insane efficiency per m2, making it an absolute possibility to grow huge amounts and varieties of non-local foods as well as fish (you need a protein source regardless). I think you mean technological projects show that hydro/aquaponics may be able to make sense in an integrated skyscraper in the future, but not yet and it is not guaranteed. Still a lot of issues to address.
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Nov 26, 2016 15:43
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TildeATH posted:That's good. I assumed with all the resistance to banning neonics leading to the shittiest most toothless regulation that CCS was still a thing. colony collapse is still a thing but it's neither simply caused by neonics (an overly broad category that sounds weird and scary) since it also happens in places that didn't have neonic pesticides in the first place nor did it seriously threaten bee populations though it made beekeeping more expensive because of needing to set hives back up more often also the common honeybee is basically insect cattle, doesn't deserve protection as a species more than actual cattle, and is less relevant for keeping ecosystems intact than actually-threatened wild bees nobody besides three entomologists in a natural history museum basement has ever heard of
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Nov 26, 2016 16:15
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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These guys are using solar thermal to desalinate seawater and provide power to hydroponically grow vegetables in otherwise barren/hostile areas. They are already selling tomatoes in Australia and from what I can tell they seem to be cost competetive with normal farms. Seems like a pretty solid business model, no need for soil, just sunlight and seawater and there's plenty of that going around. Maybe automated food podules like this on the edges of the Death Zone will ferry their cargo in refrigerated ships to feed the last remnants of humanity living in Antarctica. Seems like a good setting for some bleak sci-fi.
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Nov 26, 2016 16:44
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Edit - accidental post
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Nov 26, 2016 17:03
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SelfOM posted:I'm Me too
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Nov 26, 2016 17:04
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Nice piece of fish posted:Well yes, as far as I know the technology requires/assumes significant insect/larvae farming for feed, and presumably the insect farming comes from mostly waste or low-grade/unusable vegetable matter. I'm not going to pretend to know everything about this, because I don't, and I'm certainly not going to pretend this is easy or will even be done, but it does exist as a potential alternative to mass monoculture fossil-fuel driven farming. Insect farming? Lol no you feed them as much corn as they can stand and supplement with fish meal or chicken byproducts. Fish are some of the most efficient sources of animal protein, especially freshwater fish like tilapia or catfish which naturally eat mostly plants anyway. Those caged tuna herds however are going to be produce less protein per unit of input.
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Nov 26, 2016 17:06
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There was an A/T thread some years back started by a goon who had a home aquaponic setup going. He kept his fish fed by growing duckweed and said that it took about 2 pounds of duckweed to raise 1 pound of tilapia from fry to adult. Since the fish crap went on to become fertilizer used to rapidly grow crops that adapted well to his method (tomatoes did very well, as I recall), that's hardly a terrible return on investment in lieu of just eating the duckweed directly. e: Might be misremembering on the fish a bit. I think he just raised tropical fish as pets and got the 2:1 duckweed:fish ratio from other aquaponics enthusiasts. Hello Sailor fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Nov 26, 2016 |
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Nov 26, 2016 20:58
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Deadlysherpa posted:North America is not doomed because of people's diets. It will naturally be solved by the system when that food becomes more expensive. Meat consumption will fall due to the price, and prices of grain will rise giving an incentive for midwest farmers to grow stuff like wheat and soy instead of feed corn. It's one of those problems capitalism is good at solving. As for the soil thing, the article is really doom and gloom about it but I don't know any farmers that just take it for granted. They depend on their land for their livelihood and they are the most hard working problem solvers you'll ever see. Soil can be built back up, and does so without intervention given half a chance. It's very solvable, and it will be solved when there is a will to do so. No till farming is catching on more in certain areas, the kicker is you have to eat some profit for a few years before the earth gets some footing again. My uncles been at it for a minute in ND and the guberment is trying to sway others to do the same.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:01
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bef posted:No till farming is catching on more in certain areas, the kicker is you have to eat some profit for a few years before the earth gets some footing again. My uncles been at it for a minute in ND and the guberment is trying to sway others to do the same. That's great! I'm actually currently investigating the feasibility of starting a non-profit organization to subsidize conversion to no-till, cover-crop, ecoagricultural approaches to farming. Ideally said subsidization would be incorporated into how the Farm Bill would work if it wasn't turbofucked by decades of politicization. As always (we're getting pretty far afield from climate change but as far as land-use issues go, the ag community is a big deal) it's an economic / distribution problem rather than any serious technical or scientific obstacle. A guy in South Dakota named Dwayne Beck is a big evangelist for this sort of approach and Dakota Lakes is a big deal for ag research in the area if you're curious. I also started a thread about this back when I was still in school but I've lost the link since.
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Nov 26, 2016 21:14
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How bad is smoking weed for the environment? Does all that ganj smoke damage the ozone layer?
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Nov 28, 2016 08:55
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No.
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Nov 28, 2016 16:14
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Fossil fuel use isn't decreasing due to its increasing costs, it's decreasing due to the rapidly decreasing costs of renewables. Every year solar, wind and battery installations get cheaper while fossil fuels get more expensive. As use further decreases their costs will keep going up due to loss of economy of scale and increasing labor/permits/insurance/lobbying costs. Meanwhile renewables are now gaining economy of scale so Trump is hosed and West Virginia is a bunch of idiot coal hicks that don't understand that Trump can't set gas or oil or coal prices. Enough industry and jobs have shifted to renewable tech that it now has critical mass, and just like how government used to be slave to the incumbent status quo of oil companies, many are now becoming slaves to renewable tech. For certain countries like Canada, renewables still don't matter because they missed the boat and are now economically hosed, for others like Germany and China, they are helming it for their own industrial interest. cowofwar fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Nov 28, 2016 |
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Nov 28, 2016 18:41
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Americans: enjoy pissing away 8 years and a trillion dollars on the clean coal quagmire under Trump.
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Nov 28, 2016 18:46
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cowofwar posted:Fossil fuel use isn't decreasing due to its increasing costs, it's decreasing due to the rapidly decreasing costs of renewables. Every year solar, wind and battery installations get cheaper while fossil fuels get more expensive. As use further decreases their costs will keep going up due to loss of economy of scale and increasing labor/permits/insurance/lobbying costs. Meanwhile renewables are now gaining economy of scale so Trump is hosed and West Virginia is a bunch of idiot coal hicks that don't understand that Trump can't set gas or oil or coal prices. https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf Fossil fuels aren't going up in price, it's just that production is outstripping demand at the moment (partially thanks to growth in renewables). Renewables are also not on the rise anywhere, they're being propped up by subsidies and tax breaks. Take away those and you'll have big problems maintaining any forward progress. And even with those subsidies renewables are just comparable to fossil fuels in future projections and, in some instances, still far worse.
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Nov 28, 2016 20:34
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nessin posted:https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf Even without subsidies and tax breaks renewables have fallen in price dramatically over the last few years. Wind is expected to be cheaper than Natural Gas, without subsidies, within a decade http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/wv_executive_summary_overview_and_key_chapter_findings_final.pdf And then we can also start to talk about the massive subsidies Oil & Gas receive. Both directly and indirectly through uncosted externalities.
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Nov 28, 2016 20:52
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We can only hope that Trump really is Pro-Nuclear and uses his likely spending spree to fund a couple new plants.
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Nov 28, 2016 20:55
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Trabisnikof posted:Even without subsidies and tax breaks renewables have fallen in price dramatically over the last few years. Wind is expected to be cheaper than Natural Gas, without subsidies, within a decade http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/wv_executive_summary_overview_and_key_chapter_findings_final.pdf Texan here paying for 100% wind power. But I took 2 international flights last year, so I am still turbofucking the environment. CommieGIR posted:We can only hope that Trump really is Pro-Nuclear and uses his likely spending spree to fund a couple new plants. I thought he was pro nuclear weapons?
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Nov 28, 2016 21:03
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Trabisnikof posted:Even without subsidies and tax breaks renewables have fallen in price dramatically over the last few years. Wind is expected to be cheaper than Natural Gas, without subsidies, within a decade http://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/wv_executive_summary_overview_and_key_chapter_findings_final.pdf I'm wondering how closely you looked at that report. The scenario they've presented in the report is dependent upon a number of highly variable factors, and they even admit it. To achieve the results from the report, including ultimately reaching the net positive value over fossil fuels you need: quote:aggressive wind cost reductions, high fossil fuel costs, federal or state policy support, high demand growth, or different combinations and assumes that continued investment in technology will lead to improvements in wind power performance and efficiency at an undefined rate. That report isn't describing the expected future of wind power, it's describing a scenario that if we accomplish those conditions in the future then wind power could achieve this result.
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Nov 28, 2016 21:06
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Would rising gas prices from Trump's Iran War Against Islam spur investment into clean energy? Edit: I will just show myself out.
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Nov 28, 2016 21:30
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nessin posted:I'm wondering how closely you looked at that report. The scenario they've presented in the report is dependent upon a number of highly variable factors, and they even admit it. To achieve the results from the report, including ultimately reaching the net positive value over fossil fuels you need: But even looking at just the LCOE pre-subsidy, Wind is almost at parity with advance combined cycle (58.5 v 55.8). Renewables have been getting cheaper fast. Or even comparing LCOE - LACE for wind, it is at -.4, indicating near price parity for new-build wind versus the electricity it would replace. Or looking at market reports: quote:Unsubsidized Levelized Cost of Energy Comparison  (Apologies for tiny chart.) Individual renewable projects are already beating some conventionals on price pre-subsidy.
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Nov 28, 2016 21:43
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Trabisnikof posted:But even looking at just the LCOE pre-subsidy, Wind is almost at parity with advance combined cycle (58.5 v 55.8). Renewables have been getting cheaper fast. Or even comparing LCOE - LACE for wind, it is at -.4, indicating near price parity for new-build wind versus the electricity it would replace. Just for the record, Lazard's has a version 9 out: https://www.lazard.com/media/2390/lazards-levelized-cost-of-energy-analysis-90.pdf However the problem is you're just looking at costs right now in that report. And Lazard's specifically states those costs don't include: quote:reliability related considerations (e.g., transmission and back-up generation costs associated with certain Alternative Energy technologies) Which can be extensive and the most significant problem with non-hydro renewable energy. If you go back and look at the EIA report I linked, it looks at the expected cost to establish new power sources, so the actual value if you were to either tear down and replace an existing power source or stand up new power sources. Just looking at the price of energy without factoring in the cost to get to where you're producing that energy or how you're going to supply power when, in this instance, the generator isn't operating at an ideal efficiency means you're not really looking at true cost of that power when determining growth or moving from one power source to another.
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Nov 28, 2016 21:56
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CommieGIR posted:We can only hope that Trump really is Pro-Nuclear and uses his likely spending spree to fund a couple new plants.
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Nov 28, 2016 23:00
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West Antarctic ice shelf is breaking up from the inside out https://news.osu.edu/news/2016/11/28/pineisland/ Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would cause a sea-level rise of nearly 10 feet in one shot.
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Nov 28, 2016 23:51
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Rastor posted:West Antarctic ice shelf is breaking up from the inside out Haha we really are hosed if you live on the coast. Well everyone is hosed, because of the population displacement this will cause.
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Nov 28, 2016 23:55
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Things are going to get really bad a lot quicker than people think
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Nov 29, 2016 02:05
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Minge Binge posted:Things are going to get really bad a lot quicker than people think That's what I thought about peak oil in 2008, but I suppose the global financial crisis helped with that.
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Nov 29, 2016 02:11
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Rastor posted:West Antarctic ice shelf is breaking up from the inside out Was ice shelf break up of this magnitude factored into studies that predicted we'd have until ~2100 before something like this started happening? I mean, it seems like this isn't particularly surprising but the timeframe is much sooner than anyone would've thought feasible.
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Nov 29, 2016 02:26
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Rap Record Hoarder posted:Was ice shelf break up of this magnitude factored into studies that predicted we'd have until ~2100 before something like this started happening? No. Sea level rise in those projections largely came from thermal expansion of the oceans, (warmer water is less dense) and from glacial melts. If I recall correctly, there was just no predictive skill in the Greenland ice shelf and Antarctic land based ice was for all intents and purposes assumed to be "safe" for the foreseeable future, out till 2100 and the like. Greenland ice has always been a concern but basically there was literally no skill in predicting if and when and how fast it could melt. And was therefore not included in the projections. There was always the caveat though, *something might happen with greenland....* Its been a while since I have dug into this specific topic, I may have some of the details wrong, feel free to correct me.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:28
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CommieGIR posted:Haha we really are hosed if you live on the coast. Would there even be the slightest chance of mitigation, in any form, at that point? It's p[robably incredibly dumb and naive to ask, but prevention would be long dead, and it seems like mass evacuations would be the only option.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:48
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Yep, that's about what I figured from what I remember of my undergraduate studies but it's been a few years since I had to read a peer-reviewed paper on sea level rise so I just wanted to be sure. Guess I picked a good time to move from the Mid-Atlantic region to somewhere further inland.
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Nov 29, 2016 03:56
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