Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Coming Food Catastrophe

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 634 posts

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#331

Post by spywaregorilla »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #290
spywaregorilla wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't really make any sense though. It changes nothing about the geopolitical reality of what's going on. If the US sends a merchant ship and a cruiser, what is russia going to do exactly? Try to bomb the ships? They will lose, and get shot down. Why would it suddenly be WWIII? Is russia really going to say "Well, they shot down our plane so its global thermonuclear war time".

> Why would it suddenly be WWIII? Is russia really going to say "Well, they shot down our plane so its global thermonuclear war time". Because Vladimir Putin is currently very very defective.

More like incompetent

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#332

Post by dotopotoro »

MaanuAir wrote: post #52
sydthrowaway wrote: post #8

It is clear that Putin needs to go. By any means necessary.

And? What’s the rest of the plan? I hear people saying that, but this is very short term with no sustainable strategy. Just genuinely pointing out he could be replaced by worse options, and you need to plan against it as well. There is the guy, the system he built, the persons he chose to put in place, all incentivised to continue.

You are right. Add to that, the constant and persistent info flow from russian media and incentives to “say the right things”, which raised whole generation.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#333

Post by axiosgunnar »

postalrat wrote: post #217
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option for #4 is supplying enough long range anti-ship rockets to sink whole russian fleet in black sea. They can't bring in more ships, because turkey is blocking the entrance.

Triggering world war 3 would also help reduce the population which could reduce co2 emissions and food requirements. Killing a few birds with one stone.

I‘d rather die trying, than live in a non-free world.

And fyi, whatever arrangement of characters your reply to this statement will consist of, it will not change my stance, so do not bother.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#335

Post by mbg721 »

sva_ wrote: post #190
mbg721 wrote: post #91

If you're in the West, it doesn't hurt to buy a couple big bags of rice from the local Indian market, and have some dried or canned beans handy, and cycle through them as you cook. A pallet of bottled water and a bag of charcoal don't hurt either. A dumb power outage or a downed wire or a tornado or something is much more likely than Red Dawn, but you'll still be happy to have all that.

I recently looked into how much rice I'd need to survive for a year. The results were fairly surprising. A kilogram of uncooked rice only provide you with about 3500 kcal, less than you'd use in 2 days of time (for the average human). So you'd need quite a lot of rice. Beans are similar, they just have more protein (not a complete protein though). I concluded that while it is definitely advisable to have some number…

My assumption is that if I'm trying to survive more than about two weeks, "possessions" are a cute theoretical idea.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#336

Post by UnFleshedOne »

postalrat wrote: post #217
UnFleshedOne wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option for #4 is supplying enough long range anti-ship rockets to sink whole russian fleet in black sea. They can't bring in more ships, because turkey is blocking the entrance.

Triggering world war 3 would also help reduce the population which could reduce co2 emissions and food requirements. Killing a few birds with one stone.

That's not much different than supplying other kinds of weapons (and anti-ship missiles are on the list anyway, if not from US then from UK).

Also everybody is mostly over nuclear threat I think. When a nuclear country keeps annexing land and threatens you with nukes if you object, you have two options -- keep giving up or call the bluff (or assassinate the leadership I guess).

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#337

Post by dredmorbius »

namdnay wrote: post #191
paganel wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re 4., that's doable if the West renounces some of its existing economic sanctions against Russia, the Russians themselves have said as much recently. It probably won't happen because the West doesn't like to see itself as being involved in the war (in a way similar to what Russia thinks about itself) and will try to resort to "Russia should unlock the blockade purely on humanitarian grounds!", which, of course, is t…

What is "the west" exactly? Japan? New Zealand? Finland? Tunisia? A better term would be liberal democracies, but that wouldn't have quite the same "both sides are the same" ring to it, would it? Russia isn't waging an economic war against anyone. A dictator tried to invade his democratic neighbour, he failed, and now the other democraties are cutting him out of their club

The Economist is cagey about the definition, but by context it works out to "America and its allies" (where "America" is "The United States of America".

See e.g., "How the West should respond to China’s search for foreign outposts" (https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/05/07/how-the-west-sh...), which uses the phrase "America and its allies" three times.

The US, NATO, NORAD, ANZUS, SEATO, and specific alliances such as the US-Japan alliance, Mutual Defense Treaty between the United States and the Republic of Korea, and the like, would likely be included. In the context of Ukraine and this article, probably the Common Security and Defence Policy (CDSP) of the EU as well.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#338

Post by throwaway0a5e »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #266
lazide wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's usually a safety feature. If there is a downed power line and you lose grid connection, energizing your (otherwise dead) side of the downed lines could easily kill the lineman who comes to fix it.

Oh certainly it is important to have some kind of cut-off to prevent back-feeding the power lines, but I thought that would just be part of the system design.

To the breaker on your solar (or genset) the resistance of the neighborhood is gonna look indistinguishable from a short circuit so you'll need to at least disconnect from the grid if you want to power your house. From there your next problem is that solar panels don't handle being overloaded very well so you either need a ton of them ore batteries.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#339

Post by ketzo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #327
tmaly wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised there are not more calls to end the corn to ethanol subsidies given the cost of food.

There is scope for substitution. About 10% of all grains are used to make biofuel; and 18% of vegetable oils go to biodiesel. Finland and Croatia have weakened mandates that require petrol to include fuel from crops. Others should follow their lead. From the article.

I think GP means more calls outside this article, particularly in the U.S. where 1) rising food prices are a hot topic 2) we grow a LOT of corn.

Re: The Coming Food Catastrophe

#340

Post by dhc02 »

Gordonjcp wrote: post #282
bryanlarsen wrote: post #144

The article actually has four solutions at the bottom. Compared to the severity of the problem, all four solutions are surprisingly simple. Not necessarily easy, but simple and straightforward. 1. Stop using so much corn to make ethanol. 2. Stop using so much seed oil to make biodiesel. 3. Stop feeding so much food to livestock. Bonus: reducing the livestock population provides short term calories! 4. Break the Black…

3. If you can figure out how to eat grass, you'll be rich.

1. Feed it to a grazing animal. 2. Eat that animal, or use its milk to make food.
Post reply on HN