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Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com

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Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#131

Post by Carioca »

nvahalik wrote: post #114
Carioca wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brazilian, I see a MUCH larger threat from the current right-wing government than from lefties inside academia. While the relationship between natural/hard/exact sciences and social/soft sciences can indeed be very strained, there's very little interference in the actual content of research. Meanwhile, the State Assembly of São Paulo formed an Investigative Comittee that just requested the content of all researc…

I don't think either "side" can claim any sort of moral high ground on this issue. In the case of the video I'm referencing above, the issue is decidedly from the left which has been trumpeting a post-truth, highly individualized, no-harm-freedom, and consent-based understanding of personal conduct. But on the other hand, I think you are right in that there are people who can and will say _X is unquestionably always…

I'm going to be honest with you, I won't sit through an hour and a half video that makes your point for you. I'll just say that the current president fired the director of the National Institute for Space Research (an MIT PhD) for saying satellite data indicated deforestation was on the rise, contradicting the minister of the environment. An Air Force official was temporarily put in his place. While the official is a PhD, he was found hastily after the also hasty firing

I think you'll agree that actually dismissing the director of an important research institution is very much more important than whatever new prank Boghossian has played on the “identitarian left”

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#132

Post by einpoklum »

nvahalik wrote: post #47

When reading about what Physcon, I reminded me of an interview[0] I recently listened to with Drs. James Lindsay and Peter Boghossian. They bring up some of these very ideas and how they are encountering them today in our society: i.e. people who see science and reason as "master's tools" of "oppression". It seems that everything old is new again. [0]: https://youtu.be/YDFL3xwEEG8

Part of the problem is that powerful civilizations, while pursuing science and developing reason in may respects, also involve powerful state or commercial structures which conquer, exploit, oppress and kill a lot of people - often in the name of reason and science.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#133

Post by semi-extrinsic »

ptah wrote: post #111
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the climate of our world, we have a certain amount of arctic tundra etc. The best way to extract nourishment from that is foraging by e.g. reindeer. That holds irrespective of the population density. Also, reindeer is one of the most ethical ways of modern husbandry. Animals live out in the wild, supported by humans e.g. adding feed when there is little to eat, protecting them from carnivores etc, and then they…

that is a very long chain of ifs, any of which can evaluate to false EDIT: there is also no precedent for what you propose and if we go by the partial match of grass-fed beef, the yield will be so small compared to the population as to be pointless

There's almost 2 million domesticated reindeer worldwide, compared to 1.4 billion cattle, so it's tiny for sure. But in most of those regions, it's regulated such that only first people/native inhabitants/etc. are legally allowed to work reindeer.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#134

Post by GVIrish »

squish78 wrote: post #119
GVIrish wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arable land is getting cleared out en masse to farm cattle. Cattle farming is not driven by the inability to grow crops on that land, it's driven by the demand for red meat (and dairy products).

Rainforest land is not arable. Farmers who try to grow crops (typically soybean) in the Amazon get 2-3 years of crops before the land becomes infertile, then it has to fallow again. Their only option is to add massive amounts of chemical fertilizers which washes out into the Amazon basin. Aside from leaving the forests undisturbed (which is my preference), raising cattle is better for that ecosystem than agricultural…

Slashing and burning rainforest to farm cattle or raise crops are both bad options given how critical the Amazon is to maintaining climate and biodiversity.

Either way, the amount of land and water required to raise each lb of beef is an order of magnitude greater than the amount needed for a pound of chicken, which is in turn an order of magnitude higher than the resources needed for a pound of vegetables. The expanding demand for beef is ecologically unsustainable, doubly so if people are burning down critical environments to create cow pasture.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#135

Post by ptah »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #133
ptah wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is a very long chain of ifs, any of which can evaluate to false EDIT: there is also no precedent for what you propose and if we go by the partial match of grass-fed beef, the yield will be so small compared to the population as to be pointless

There's almost 2 million domesticated reindeer worldwide, compared to 1.4 billion cattle, so it's tiny for sure. But in most of those regions, it's regulated such that only first people/native inhabitants/etc. are legally allowed to work reindeer.

how do you propose the mindset and techniques behind first people's husbandry sustainability can be scaled and applied to profit seeking "modern" farming?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#136

Post by pygy_ »

ekianjo wrote: post #123
pygy_ wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science and technology (and maybe trade?) are our global culture.

I just said there is no such thing as a global culture. It's not because you have Starbucks in every big city that the experience of living in different places is the same.

There are local peculiarities, but we share a common core built around science an technology. You can learn to drive a car anywhere on earth. You'll learn the same maths, physics, chemistry and biology. You can use phones everywhere. That is culture, globally shared.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#137

Post by dredmorbius »

philg_jr wrote: post #128
beat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology changes that game. Grains are the core of the human diet, and have been since the dawn of civilization. But they are only edible because of civilization - the grinding, fermentation, and cooking breaking them down into something our bodies can use. In the US and other wealthy countries, we might feed grain to livestock, but it's also often parts of grain that we can't really eat (hulls, etc). And in poorer…

> When farming, the questions are even more complex. The livestock generates manure that fertilizes the fields, so much of that "lost" energy is recovered. Which is why grassfed > cornfed in pretty much every situation except for the extra fat/flavor you might get from cornfed beef. Having cows that consume grass is a win-win. The grass absorbs sunlight instead of reflecting it back into the atmosphere like a feedlot…

Net of methane production from the cattle may affect that.

I don't know if it does or doesn't, but you might want to incorporate that into your model.

(NB: I'm not a vegitarian myself. I'm quite familiar with arguments. And have some familiarity with feedlots.)

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#138

Post by enriquto »

ddxxdd wrote: post #12

This feels reminiscent of the current issue of long-term data storage. Flash drives are volatile and can lose your data any minute. Solid State drives are slightly less volatile, and a hard disk has magnetic fields that will last decades, but nothing will keep our gigabytes of data alive and intact for future archaeologists. If the Library of Alexandria can burn, then so can any form of digital storage. On a side not…

> On a side note, I enjoy reading John Baez's answers to common physics questions: http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/

Me too. But take care about the infamous answer to "Why is the sky blue?", which is quite confusing. The take of Randall Munroe is much clearer, and exactly as correct: "the sky is blue because air is blue".

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#139

Post by beat »

philg_jr wrote: post #128
beat wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology changes that game. Grains are the core of the human diet, and have been since the dawn of civilization. But they are only edible because of civilization - the grinding, fermentation, and cooking breaking them down into something our bodies can use. In the US and other wealthy countries, we might feed grain to livestock, but it's also often parts of grain that we can't really eat (hulls, etc). And in poorer…

> When farming, the questions are even more complex. The livestock generates manure that fertilizes the fields, so much of that "lost" energy is recovered. Which is why grassfed > cornfed in pretty much every situation except for the extra fat/flavor you might get from cornfed beef. Having cows that consume grass is a win-win. The grass absorbs sunlight instead of reflecting it back into the atmosphere like a feedlot…

Trends in agriculture are driven heavily by cost. This is where the vegan fundamentalists go wrong, arguing that meat is "more expensive". But in the days before modern agriculture, people raised animals and had meat - it was economically beneficial to do so, even for people living at the edge of famine.

Cornfed beef is a result of economics, too - it's cheaper to buy corn than use pasture, and/or it produces meat that can sell for higher prices. We don't just see corfed beef for fancy prime steaks. It's used in cheap fast food hamburgers as well.

Fast food and junk food are the cheapest food. They've applied industrial logic to every link in the food chain. If meat was as expensive as vegans argue, we wouldn't see it as the basis of so much fast food.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#140

Post by dredmorbius »

beat wrote: post #122
dredmorbius wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reference is to trophic levels and caloric loss. Plants, in net, capture about 1-3% of available solar energy and convert that to equivalent biomass. Food conversion -- the parts you can eat -- are a small fraction of that. Herbivores and predators each convert about 10% of the food energy they eat into body mass, for a 90% reduction (approximately) at each trophic level. Grazers lose 90% of the primary plant foo…

Technology changes that game. Grains are the core of the human diet, and have been since the dawn of civilization. But they are only edible because of civilization - the grinding, fermentation, and cooking breaking them down into something our bodies can use. In the US and other wealthy countries, we might feed grain to livestock, but it's also often parts of grain that we can't really eat (hulls, etc). And in poorer…

Cultivation, selective breeding, and hybridisation of grains does not change the trophic level calculus.

The bulk of livestock feed is corn (which has seen tremendous yield improvements since the 1960s through "green revolution" techniques), and for protein content, soyabeans, which have rather pointedly not.

Additional silage provides some but AFAIU considerably less general nutritive content. And you will absolutely find vast acreages of corn and soyabean in the flyover states destined entirely for livestock feed. Not table crops with the leftovers going to livestock. Fully 100% livestock-dedicated.

Integrated farming operations in which cows run loose amongst the corn and wheat fertilising the fields are ... effectively nonexistant.

Theoretical possibilities are not on-the-ground, in-the-dirt, realities.

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