Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst?

[Varn]

Really no sense in arguing with some of you guys. In your utopia of requiring every energy source as being "sustainable", it would lead to massive starvation in an unprecedented scale.

I remember reading in the 70's of the massive starvation that was predicted once the world population got to 6 billion. We are at 7 billion now with explosive population growth still in the offing. We have to find ways to continue to find ways to feed everyone.

Without massive industrial scale agriculture and world markets the planet will be doomed.

[RustyLugNut]

Originally Posted by Varn

Really no sense in arguing with some of you guys. In your utopia of requiring every energy source as being "sustainable", it would lead to massive starvation in an unprecedented scale.

I remember reading in the 70's of the massive starvation that was predicted once the world population got to 6 billion. We are at 7 billion now with explosive population growth still in the offing. We have to find ways to continue to find ways to feed everyone.

Without massive industrial scale agriculture and world markets the planet will be doomed.

The answers are multifaceted. We do need stability of population along with sustainable lifestyles. Educate our females and they tend to have far fewer children. Extend quality of life and health so our population is more productive. Redistribute some of the wealth to provide life and happiness to more of the population. And on and on . . .

This isn't easy. But I think we all agree something must be done.

All fossil fuels will diminish. How long till the tipping point is the only argument. Will it be long enough of a time span to make the necessary changes in technology and lifestyles?

I was not born in the West. I was raised in a country where hunger was a common occurrence, bad water and splotchy electricity. But we could sustain the family and community with what we grew and traded to nearby communities. I know this is not the sustainability all of you are talking about.

A sustainable industrial platform is what we need. That requires concentrated energy sources used efficiently.

[UFO]

Originally Posted by ksa8907

Ill bite. Sure, non-gmo would be great, but half the world would die of starvation from lower yield. Offer your own solution, I want to hear this.

Only if the west keeps up it's meat gluttony.

[niky]

A lot of poor countries associate beef with prosperity. As third world incomes rise, so does beef production.

Again, though, wildly off topic...

[NeilBlanchard]

The GMO's are designed to work with factory farming (and to pump up the profits of Monsanto etc.) Now that we have 7 or 8 "superweeds" that are not affected by Roundup, we see that the GMO emperor has no clothes.

Small scale, diverse farming has no need for GMO's. There is a lot of risk for almost no benefit other than the ease of factory farming. And after a brief time, that is no longer the case.

Edit: factory meat & dairy farms use antibiotics and growth hormones which are truly scary - eat local meat and antibiotic & hormone free eggs and dairy. And we have yet to mention endocrine disruptors in our carpets, sofas, pajamas, food packaging, etc.

[suspectnumber961]

Best bet? Get real. Buy basic foods. Cook them yourself. Avoid the processed stuff. If you avoid corn, soy, cottonseed oil, canola oil...so far at least you've reduced GMO exposure and many chemicals though you will still get some BPA in canned goods...and the usual sugar, chemical, and salt overload in any processed foods you do eat.

Most processed foods are from refined GMO junk...factory farmed. We really need a world full of people fed with this stuff....increasing rates of obesity...diabetes....alzheimers...these rates ARE INCREASING as factory farmed food is exported around the globe.

Stupid diseased people are ripe for further exploitation by Big Pharma. Remember...when the 1% win...we all win....because we all want to be rich.

Makes sense to me.....

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by ksa8907

Ill bite. Sure, non-gmo would be great, but half the world would die of starvation from lower yield. Offer your own solution, I want to hear this.

Biochar

[NeilBlanchard]

Another easy fix is to stop factory farming meat - we feed cows and pigs and chickens (and fish for that matter) lots of high protein food - and they reduce all those calories and protein to 1/20th or even less! We need to eat less meat for our own health, anyway - and we need to re-integrate animals into small scale crop farms. Plants and animals on the same farm are completely symbiotic, and these farms *improve* the soil over time, rather than depleting it.

So if we suddenly had 20X more calories available than we do now, then we most certainly will *not* starve. And we would be a heck of a lot healthier, to boot. Grass-fed beef is far tastier than soy and corn fed beef, and the cows would not get indigestion (they evolved to eat grass) so we would have a lot less cow fart methane than we do now.

Nature doesn't have any waste. Neither should we.

[niky]

Nature has lots of waste. The difference is that change in nature is so gradual that entire biosystems have had time to grow up around it. Part of the challenge is to find methods that fit seamlessly into these systems.

But industrial beef? Definitely a huge waste of resources. Hell, farmed beef, period is a huge waste of land.

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

Small scale, diverse farming has no need for GMO's. There is a lot of risk for almost no benefit other than the ease of factory farming. And after a brief time, that is no longer the case.

Edit: factory meat & dairy farms use antibiotics and growth hormones which are truly scary - eat local meat and antibiotic & hormone free eggs and dairy. And we have yet to mention endocrine disruptors in our carpets, sofas, pajamas, food packaging, etc.

Again, it saddens me that all GMOs are tarred by the sme brush based simply on the purported unethical practices of one company.

I live near the International Rice Research Institute. A non-proft dedicated to improving rice breeds in terms of yield, hardiness and Hybrid vigor. And they do use genetic modification in their research.

And not to develop pesticide dependent rice.

Yet their efforts have been frustrated by the furore and hysteria surrounding anything with the "GMO" tag. It's like being the one Afghani kid in an American public school after 9/11.

To say that genetic modification per se is bad is like saying that since antibiotics (again) are used in commercial farming, that all instances of antibiotics are bad.

Having had Typhoid Fever, a disease that's fatal without antibiotics, I would question any such assertion or blanket statement. Do we misuse and overuse antibiotics? Heavens yes! Should we stop antibiotic use completely? Hell no.

And the idyllic view that natural rotation and organic farming is all that's needed is a "one size fits all" solution to the problems of creating sustainable farming on a global scale. Not saying that we should not aspire to do either, but that we should sit back and look at the big picture.

My take, if it improve yields without creating ecological disasters downstream, increasing land use disproportionately or deiving already poor farmers deeper into poverty, it deserves further study... Whatever the method used.

[NeilBlanchard]

Where is the waste in nature?