The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[freebeard]

I'm not sure people can improve their curiosity; they either are born curious, or they are not.

I've always been curious and used to work hard. I could sure use some advice to improve my luck.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I've always been curious and used to work hard. I could sure use some advice to improve my luck.

If your luck is sometimes bad; you're unlucky. If your luck is consistently bad, it's not luck...

then again, fate suggests everything is luck, or rather, what is destined to happen, will happen.

[Xist]

"Luck is when preparation meets opportunity."--Seneca

Crazy. I remember that from twenty years ago, but I forgot that I had work yesterday afternoon. To clarify, that is bad.

[freebeard]

Were my luck consistently bad, I wouldn't be here. I've given up fate for retro-causality.

phys.org:Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by sendler

This is the only method that has allowed the world population to explode to 7.5 Billion and have enough food. The same statements are made regarding fossil fuel use. "We need to just stop burning fossil fuel". Again, we can't. Fossil fuel props up all of that super agriculture, and everything else we need, to sustain the population that we have. It's not a matter of choice. The only hope for 9 Billion people in 2050 is that we could somehow replace all liquid fuel with electric before the oil becomes too remote to make sense economically. But we will fall well short. And there will be a Great Simplification.

I think we don't know that - fossil fuels have let us reduce the number of farmers - but since we can grow enough food on the land we have, I think we can grow enough in smaller farms. The Amish farm sustainably, and they are MORE efficient in terms of productivity.

My main point is - what we are doing now WILL FAIL. We are RUINING the soil, and it is eroding away rapidly. AND we are using deep aquifers - this is also unsustainable.

We CANNOT continue to use factory farming methods - for several reasons. The system is GOING to fail - we just don't know what will be the first thing to fail.

There is a group called the Land Institute in Kansas that has written a 50 Year plan for food. It involves a lot of changes - perennials for most things. They have come up with a perennial wheat, called Kernza. Look up their plan if you are curious.

I like the quote from Wendell Berry:

"Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems."

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

I think we don't know that - fossil fuels have let us reduce the number of farmers - but since we can grow enough food on the land we have, I think we can grow enough in smaller farms. The Amish farm sustainably, and they are MORE efficient in terms of productivity.

We do know that fossil fuels are primarily responsible for allowing population to grow to the size it is, not just due to food production, but also due to pharmaceuticals, sanitation, etc, etc. There isn't an area that isn't improved by hydrocarbons. There is no chance the Amish are more productive. They essentially produce what they need, and little more, whereas modern farmers produce thousands to millions times more than they consume.

My main point is - what we are doing now WILL FAIL. We are RUINING the soil, and it is eroding away rapidly. AND we are using deep aquifers - this is also unsustainable.

We CANNOT continue to use factory farming methods - for several reasons. The system is GOING to fail - we just don't know what will be the first thing to fail.

All CAPS has NO ABILITY to make a FALSE STATEMENT into a TRUE STATEMENT.

Where is the evidence that modern farming methods will fail? Sure, there are unintended consequences that need to be addressed, but decades of modern techniques hasn't failed yet, so what would make them fail in the relevant future?

I suppose the claim that modern farming methods are unsustainable is absolutely true, just as anything ever is unsustainable, making the phrase meaningless without giving a timeframe. In other words, unsustainable when?

I like the quote from Wendell Berry:

"Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm - which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of America farm experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems."

There may be something to leveraging nature to make it work better for us, but the simple fact is that a farmer not utilizing modern techniques is at a competitive disadvantage, meaning if it were possible to get the yields needed at a low enough cost to be competitive by utilizing old farming methods, people would already be doing it.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Wendell Berry

...they can take a solution and divide it neatly into two problems."

ALL CAPS HAS NO ABILITY TO MAKE A FALSE STATEMENT INTO A TRUE STATEMENT.

You expect me to believe that?

[Xist]

The Amish farm sustainably, therefore they inherently farm more efficiently.

Did I need to take the time to use caps lock to show that I am right?

[freebeard]

The Amish do a lot of things right; murdered-out black sedans for instance.

I like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDvKJIm2WU8

1000 years of power that comes online in the late 2020s.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Xist

The Amish farm sustainably, therefore they inherently farm more efficiently.

Did I need to take the time to use caps lock to show that I am right?

Neil claimed the Amish were "more efficient from a productivity standpoint". Clearly, the Amish are not more productive. I made no claim about other measures of efficiency. Nobody farms sustainably. It's a fictional pop culture term. The claim of sustainability is meaningless without being qualified by some objective definition of what is being sustained and for how long.

That isn't to say we should not explore ways to do less environmental harm, but we have to be honest about what the opportunity cost is when we choose to do something one way over doing it another. There is a price to pay for lower crop yields, and the wealthy may not have a problem paying more for food, but the poor will suffer.

The Amish yield much less food for their hours of labor. They also don't have their own teeth due to lack of modern dental hygiene. I'm sure many are quite happy; perhaps more happy than modern folk.

Are we more likely to shift American culture towards Amish lifestyles, or can we expect people to always want more? Anyone wanting to live a simpler lifestyle is free to do so. I could be very happy living simply, except for my nagging habit of needing to know how everything works and desire to experiment.