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Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

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Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#91

Post by universa1 »

Fern_Blossom wrote: post #80
CalRobert wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, though in some cases (The Burren in Ireland for instance) it was sheep that stripped the land of vegetation, then topsoil, and left it rocky, in the first place. Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty, is a good read on this.

That's over grazing. That's lazy, over zealous and/or careless herders who fucked up. You rotate your herds on different land so they don't strip the vegetation. Allowing it to regrow quickly. You're managing the land just as much as your flock. This has been known for thousands of years by people who actually farm and not armchair farm.

While I generally agree with you, there is the tragedy of the commons effect. :-)

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#92

Post by Kim_Bruning »

Jedd wrote: post #78
zelos wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it feasible for many countries - particularly small, densely populated ones - to be self-sufficient in food? In the UK, at least, I'm not sure there's physically enough space to farm enough food to supply the population. About 50% of food is imported and basically all the agricultural land is already used.

Supposing that it was an isolated 'the skies go dark' scenario, then being self-sufficient in food is quite a complex question to try to answer, as most food chains require the skies to not be dark, at least not all the time. An interesting (and today, happily, academic) question is what happens to the UK in the event of, say, AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation -- aka the gulf stream that sends warm ai…

Oddly, as an exception, the Netherlands would probably go a long way even if the skies went dark, due to the large surface area of artificially lighted and heated greenhouses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_(region),_Netherlands

Hmm, this could use translating

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westland_(Nederlandse_streek)

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#93

Post by rad_gruchalski »

zelos wrote: post #25
waihtis wrote: post #7

An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis? Always be cognizant of events that are improbable but have a high impact on survival.

Is it feasible for many countries - particularly small, densely populated ones - to be self-sufficient in food? In the UK, at least, I'm not sure there's physically enough space to farm enough food to supply the population. About 50% of food is imported and basically all the agricultural land is already used.

> I'm not sure there's physically enough space to farm enough food to supply the population

I'm sure there's an elephant in the room here.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#94

Post by Fern_Blossom »

universa1 wrote: post #91
Fern_Blossom wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's over grazing. That's lazy, over zealous and/or careless herders who fucked up. You rotate your herds on different land so they don't strip the vegetation. Allowing it to regrow quickly. You're managing the land just as much as your flock. This has been known for thousands of years by people who actually farm and not armchair farm.

While I generally agree with you, there is the tragedy of the commons effect. :-)

Yea, but that's not a "farming" or "meat" problem. That's a human problem. A well known one for a long time at that. If everyone owns it, no one takes care of it. Someone has to be responsible and thus, manage it. There are people who will always abuse a system because they simply don't care. The same as people litter. Pretending to be surprised and blaming anything else is fruitless. "Well, it's the bag's fault for existing, that's why there's trash." or "It's the consumption of meat's fault that the land was stripped bare". No, an asshole did it. An asshole is responsible. Hold particular humans responsible for their personal actions. Don't blame someone or something else.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#95

Post by fogihujy »

adrianN wrote: post #56
waihtis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Nordic Diet Need to check this out. There is definitely a possibility to go much more local by just foraging. I ate probably tens of kilograms of golden chanterelle, bilberries (local equivalent of blueberry)& lingonberries last fall - the forests are spilling with food and a lot of it rots because people don't take advantage of it. Healthy, free, very tasty food - and you get exercise and fresh air while forag…

Foraging can't sustain the current population levels. People in Europe were foraging after WW2. Population was much lower than today, people still starved.

If you're in a situation where you would need alternative ways to feed current population levels then foraging will be required even if it's not enough on it's own. It's a matter of adding whatever can be added to the total pool of resources, and not about finding a single source.

Post WWII, didn't just forage, they also rationed food, bred rabbits in parks, went fishing, planted potatoes in their backyards and so on. If any of those options hadn't been available things would have been much worse.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#96

Post by vidarh »

gambiting wrote: post #57
dijit wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this comes up I have to remind people that not all land that farms meat can be made arable. There is a lot of arable land in England itself that can be used, (and, currently used for meat production); however this is not true for many parts of wales and most of Scotland. (which combined make up a about 100,000 sqkm vs Englands 130,000 sqkm)

Cows and sheep happily graze on moors and other rocky areas that could not be suddenly used to grow any kind of plants for food. Harry Metcalfe has a good video[0] about it - he keeps cows on the fields that are just too steep and too rocky to grow anything else - but it doesn't bother animals. Same applies to sheep. I imagine animals like chickens will have different considerations, because farm buildings do take la…

In Norway, sheep herds are typically sent off into the mountains during summer and left to fend largely for themselves, so not even fenced in land. I'd expect that is the same many other places too.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#97

Post by rob74 »

waihtis wrote: post #7

An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis? Always be cognizant of events that are improbable but have a high impact on survival.

Well, if an event like this happens, even agriculturally self-sufficient countries won't be self-sufficient anymore. The only advantage we have compared to our ancestors 1500 years ago is that we could import food from the Southern Hemisphere (because the ash clouds will mostly stay in the hemisphere they are produced in). But still, there would be drastic food shortages everywhere...

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#98

Post by giantandroids »

pikzel wrote: post #40

Every time I think about the climate and events like these, I'm reminded of when it rained for two million years - "About 232 million years ago, during a span known as the Carnian age, it rained almost everywhere. After millions of years of dry climates, Earth entered a wet period lasting one million to two million years." ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03699-7 )

This is still playing out in the UK

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#99

Post by vidarh »

mnky9800n wrote: post #52
djxfade wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway, there is a large import tax on foods like cheese and meat, to encourage buying locally. This seems to work, as most shops only sell Norwegian produce.

This is also motivated by local food monopolies where they don't want competition from cheaper and higher quality cheese producers in the rest of Europe.

It's certainly maintained by that, but Norway has a couple of centuries history of political focus on food security, ever since the British naval blockade of Denmark-Norway during the Napoleonic wars, and then strongly reinforced by the nazi occupation. The strong focus on keeping the rural areas settled also in large part stems from that, though of course it is also self-reinforcing in that people who now benefit from policies designed to do so tend to want it to continue for their own reasons too.

There's a lot of cultural significance of food security, going back to e.g. decades of making primary school children learn about Terje Vigen (Ibsen's epic poem about someone trying to brave the blockade to feed his family), coupled with a lot of cold war thinking that at least up to the end of the 80's saw food security as part national defence during a time where we still had air raid siren tests many times a year in case of Soviet invasion.

While that has certainly softened up since, most Norwegian politicians still grew up with that.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#100

Post by Natfan »

EGreg wrote: post #83

This is why one Bill Gates backed project has me really freaked out! What could go wrong? This is like the plot of the Matrix... https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/amp35938287/bill-ga...

Care to fully explain your argument rather than writing three click-bait sentences and a link?

Additionally, much of the CSS on that site fails to load for me. Might just be because I'm using various privacy extensions, but if a website needs to go to a tracking service to load CSS, then it isn't a website I want to use.

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