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

Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 296 posts

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#271

Post by Timon3 »

Retric wrote: post #268
Timon3 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay? I don't see how this is relevant? All I was saying was that there was a point in time without rice cultivation, and another one with rice cultivation. The point with cultivation has higher levels of methane. Even if you were to return to the point without cultivation, the period with cultivation will have lead to an increased temperature.

It’s relevant because you said relatively recently then chose a completely arbitrary yet undefined point. Once you start talking about periods before written or oral records we have little basis for comparison to say if it was good or not. Why not chose the last ice age, or even periods with higher than current global temperature as the baseline?

I stay by that. On a climate scale, scaled-up rice production has started a short time ago - which is why I wrote my initial comment: looking at the climate right now and extrapolating that current rice farming has no impact on climate change is illogical.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#272

Post by Timon3 »

Retric wrote: post #270
Timon3 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s true, but we’ve been cultivating rice for thousands of years. How much rice did we previously cultivate, and how many of those fields were flooded? Around 1900 the world population was around 2 billion, so I feel confident in assuming that we've since strongly increased the amount of farms. As such I don't see how this matters. Cultivation is not a boolean state. > The global energy imbalance is simply lag b…

> Around 1900 the world population was around 2 billion, so I feel confident in assuming that we've since strongly increased the amount of farms Actually not so much, due to vastly increased agricultural output per acre the tendency is to have less acres under cultivation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/196104/total-area-of-lan... Further agriculture has also reduced quite a bit of methane production by draining…

> Actually not so much, due to vastly increased agricultural output per acre the tendency is to have less acres under cultivation.

Your source shows data for America between 2000 and 2022. Why do you think that is a good source for the topic at hand?

> Further agriculture has also reduced quite a bit of methane production by draining swamps etc. So it’s difficult to do direct comparisons even just back in 1900.

There is no reason to do so, my argument is not affected by it in any way.

> That’s true of CO2 across the next few decades but not methane because it breaks down so fast.

No, breakdown time doesn't affect anything, since I'm specifically talking about the time after it broke down. If you understood my comments differently, try re-reading them in that light.

> Assuming net zero CO2 the lag would be in the other direction where it would get colder for several years after you stopped.

Am I understanding you correctly - you believe that temperature is like a pendulum, where after a period with increased greenhouse gases, it will somehow swing to be colder than it would have been without that period? Why do you think so, and how do you believe this to work from a thermodynamics perspective?

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#273

Post by littlestymaar »

xyzzyz wrote: post #253
littlestymaar wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you point to which part exactly is “completely wrong”? First you said: > Not really. These GHG emissions from rice are in steady state with the amount of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere. And then now > That’s why, as I said, in steady state, when the we keep steady the amount of rice under cultivation, the amount of methane in atmosphere is not changing over time. These two statements are contradictory. If we…

There is no contradiction between these two statements. They both say the exact same thing: if rice cultivation is in steady state, the amount of CO2 and CH4 in atmosphere due to it is constant. You next say if we change the steady state, the amount of methane in atmosphere will change, but that again is not a contradiction with what I said.

So you eventually agree with the statement you disagreed before, that is:

> perennial rice may end up reduce GHG emissions substantially.

(because that's the starting point of this conversation, and it's the opposite of steady state)

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#274

Post by hombre_fatal »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #145
wolfgangK wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish there was a name (that I knew of) for this logical fallacy of using precise quantities of meaninglessly confused categories. What do you think "farmland" is ? Our ancestors who knew how to raise cattle and farm cereals for millennia were surviving on the verge of starvation : why do you think that was ? Were they so dumb they'd rather die of hunger than convert some of their grazing pastures to cereal a…

Certainly some cattle are grazed on land that would be too hilly / rocky etc. to farm. And that's not a terrible use of land, but enormous numbers of cattle are raised in feedlots, and fed cereal crops like corn (maize) which have to farmed on the better farmland, which is far less reasonable.

The non-arable land meme comes from a paper that considered land non-arable if it had 25% crop yield (due to things like bad soil or too rocky or too much of a grade). Yet the things that make land non-arable also reduce their yield for animal ag on that same land.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#275

Post by DuckFeathers »

tfourb wrote: post #226
DuckFeathers wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Are you arguing for that deforestation? Not the same user but I will argue for deforestation any day. Humans are grassland creatures and trees are our enemy. Trees shadow the grass and affect our natural habitat. Even elephants know this and get rid of trees when they see them. [1] In fact, when the wooly mammoths went extinct, Pleistocene Park turned from a grassland to a forest, and now an ecological disaster [2].…

That's just dump. If you really want to over simplify human history, we are Savanna creatures, and Savannas contain plenty of trees and other perennial plants. I also don't get why you are bringing elephants into this, especially because there are whole sub-species of elephants that are adapted to forest-dwelling. As are humans, by the way. Plenty of human civilizations have historically specialized to live in heavil…

>I also don't get why you are bringing elephants into this

Because trees are invasive plants and elephants keep them out of the grassland ecosystems.

>especially because there are whole sub-species of elephants that are adapted to forest-dwelling.

Yes, trees did win that battle... potentially because of sudden drop in elephant population because of disease or famine... but it doesn't have to be the case everywhere.

>Savannas contain plenty of trees and other perennial plants.

This is a cause for concern and it is a direct result of the drop in African elephant population from several million to around half a million now.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#276

Post by pvaldes »

scns wrote: post #152
wolfgangK wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish there was a name (that I knew of) for this logical fallacy of using precise quantities of meaninglessly confused categories. What do you think "farmland" is ? Our ancestors who knew how to raise cattle and farm cereals for millennia were surviving on the verge of starvation : why do you think that was ? Were they so dumb they'd rather die of hunger than convert some of their grazing pastures to cereal a…

> a pound of soy protein won't have the same effect on your body as a pound of meat proteins. True. Eating meat will raise your inflammation markers by 70%. > nutrients and their bio availability (e.g. iron and B12) Fe3 from animal sources has a better uptake by the body. Fe2 from plants is good enough if you combine it with Vitamin C. Parsley contains both. Animals in conventional agriculture have to be fed B12, for…

> Eating meat will raise your inflammation markers by 70%.

Big claim. Can you provide a source for this? [Updated, if your source is a movie, is not a real source and is useless. People fly in the movies]

In any case to avoid falling in a tunnel vision spot we would need a comparison with the effect of vegetable pesticides on inflammation markers also.

We humans, eat meat since... forever in our history. After that idea ancient people should have inflammation markers skyrocketing so could be easy to check it. Have you consider the possibility that the problem could be other than the meat like for example diesel contamination or plastic wrappings?

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#277

Post by Retric »

Timon3 wrote: post #272
Retric wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Around 1900 the world population was around 2 billion, so I feel confident in assuming that we've since strongly increased the amount of farms Actually not so much, due to vastly increased agricultural output per acre the tendency is to have less acres under cultivation. https://www.statista.com/statistics/196104/total-area-of-lan... Further agriculture has also reduced quite a bit of methane production by draining…

> Actually not so much, due to vastly increased agricultural output per acre the tendency is to have less acres under cultivation. Your source shows data for America between 2000 and 2022. Why do you think that is a good source for the topic at hand? > Further agriculture has also reduced quite a bit of methane production by draining swamps etc. So it’s difficult to do direct comparisons even just back in 1900. There…

> Why do you think that is a good source for the topic at hand?

The obvious downward line even as population and farm output increased prove your argument was completely false. That’s as much as I care to prove. Do some damn research.

> Am I understanding you correctly - you believe that temperature is like a pendulum, where after a period with increased greenhouse gases, it will somehow swing to be colder than it would have been without that period? Why do you think so, and how do you believe this to work from a thermodynamics perspective?

Hell no. I am saying if the level of greenhouse gasses drops there will be lag in the other direction. There’s nothing special about the direction of lag it’s simply a delay before equilibrium.

Clearly you haven’t understood what I said or the topic at hand and need to do some actual research before you keep spouting more nonsense.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#278

Post by DuckFeathers »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #251
pcrh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>ALL human civilizations and tribes had animal foods as a part of their diet. There is not a single tribe that survived on plants alone. FYI, India contains about 280 million vegetarians.

Don't the Indian vegetarians use milk/egg products?

They do, famously so for recognising cows as holy animals which make vegetarianism possible.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#279

Post by fwip »

xyzzyz wrote: post #196
fwip wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually describing the beliefs that you hold is not an ad hominem. You, however, are claiming that they are unable to discuss the issue - that is.

> Actually describing the beliefs that you hold is not an ad hominem. There is not a single thing I have said in this thread that can be interpreted as “denial of anthropogenic climate change”. You are welcome to find it and quote it though. On the other hand, there are many places where I very much reaffirm the reality of anthropogenic climate change, for example

Well, we can start with how you pretend that greenhouse gas concentration determines the current temperature, and not the rate of change of temperature. I bet you aren't stupid, so it's either willful ignorance or disingenuity.

Re: Perennial rice: Plant once, harvest again and again

#280

Post by Retric »

Timon3 wrote: post #271
Retric wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s relevant because you said relatively recently then chose a completely arbitrary yet undefined point. Once you start talking about periods before written or oral records we have little basis for comparison to say if it was good or not. Why not chose the last ice age, or even periods with higher than current global temperature as the baseline?

I stay by that. On a climate scale, scaled-up rice production has started a short time ago - which is why I wrote my initial comment: looking at the climate right now and extrapolating that current rice farming has no impact on climate change is illogical.

There is no “long term climate scale.” Climate responds relatively quickly to changes.
Post reply on HN