U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#61

Post by MichaelApproved » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 10:58 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #21

cryptoz wrote: post #2

Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…

I still like Gregory Benford's space umbrella. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade The guy is not a dilettante, he's professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine. It would give us basically unlimited control over solar input (depending on how big you make it). It would be a massive project that would require global cooperation, which is again good - especially in the current geo-political... um... "climate…

Wouldn't a solar flair or ejection destroy that umbrella?

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#62

Post by MattGrommes » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 11:03 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

acadien wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside being its not scalable. You need an entirely artificial setup to get aquaponics up and running, motors, pipes, and chemical cleaning. Don't get me wrong aquaponics is a great technology, I think it needs some changes in order to make it feasible for the large scale.

That is what they are tackling, the scalable aspects. Their goal is to get to thousands of equivalent acres and they are looking at the places where the system runs into scaling issues. I don't know if they will be successful but they have a heck of a start. In one of those interesting coincidences there is a well funded and ready market for intermediate versions from the marijuana folks as well. There are a number o…

I wonder if the legalization of pot will end a lot of the experimentation. From I understand, the point of a lot of the technology of pot growing came from trying to get good yields "under cover" so to speak. If growing in a field just like corn is legal, will people still push technology?

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#63

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

korethr wrote: post #27

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still like Gregory Benford's space umbrella. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade The guy is not a dilettante, he's professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine. It would give us basically unlimited control over solar input (depending on how big you make it). It would be a massive project that would require global cooperation, which is again good - especially in the current geo-political... um... "climate…

It would be really cool if such a device could also be used for harvesting solar power. Getting the power back down to earth would be tricky, though.

Getting that much power down to the surface might cause global warming...

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#64

Post by AnimalMuppet » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 11:17 PM UTC

zrail wrote: post #25

toomuchtodo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over a 50-100 year timeline, I envision us using cheap renewable energy to replenish massive aquifers. While it seems far fetched, the US has the strategic oil reserve for times of need. Why would we ever consider water less strategic than fuel?

The US and Canada share the largest bodies of fresh water in the world (the Great Lakes). That's a pretty strategic reserve.

Minor nit: I believe that Lake Baikal is bigger than all the Great Lakes put together, at least in terms of water volume. If not, it's very close.

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#65

Post by bhayden » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 11:23 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #21

cryptoz wrote: post #2

Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…

I still like Gregory Benford's space umbrella. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade The guy is not a dilettante, he's professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine. It would give us basically unlimited control over solar input (depending on how big you make it). It would be a massive project that would require global cooperation, which is again good - especially in the current geo-political... um... "climate…

I'm confused as to why he says it would require global effort but only cost $20 billion? That's barely a drop in the budget for the US.

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#66

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Feb 13, 2015, 11:28 PM UTC

tjradcliffe wrote: post #48

johnloeber wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with large-effect, untested ideas like this one is that while it might seem like an appropriate solution for this specific problem, it might carry enormous side-effects that we aren't really aware of yet (and that may be difficult to reverse).

But climate models will tell us exactly what will happen, so there's no risk of anything going rong! :-P I'm being snarky, and I both believe AGW is real and we should be taking strong specific action to alleviate it (building nuclear plants as the only proven-viable replacement for base-load coal, investing in solar and storage, shifting taxes from income to carbon emissions and putting on carbon-equivalent tariffs…

> Anthropogenic GHGs are nothing but uncontrolled geo-engineering, and either we can predict their effects accurately or not (spoiler: we can't). If we can, then we can predict the effects of other forms of geo-engineering comparably accurately.

Without addressing the first sentence or its "spoiler" (preserved only for context), the second doesn't follow: our ability (or inability) to predict the effects of GHG emissions in the ranges relevant to evaluating the effect of actual and reasonably-possible human actions with regard to them do not really have much bearing on, say, our ability (or inability) to project the impact of changes to (for example) solar energy input that are outside of past experience.

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#67

Post by phaemon » Sat, Feb 14, 2015, 12:07 AM UTC

tjradcliffe wrote: post #52

the_economist wrote: post #29

No scholars predicted the global warming hiatus was coming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_hiatus Is there reason to believe that rainfall predictions will be more accurate?

Historically the Great Plains have been very dry. Well, pre-historically, from a European colonization perspective. There is a history of mega-droughts. If Europeans had arrived in the midst of the thirty-year drought in the 1700's the settlement of the West would have been quite different. So independently of the accuracy of climate models--and the hiatus is a real, non-cherry-picked feature of the Hadcrut data, whi…

> and the hiatus is a real, non-cherry-picked feature of the Hadcrut data, which was everyone's gold standard until the hiatus showed up in it

The problems with HadCRUT4 are known:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#68

Post by alexqgb » Sat, Feb 14, 2015, 12:15 AM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #28

golergka wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, essentially, meat will get pricier and people will switch to eating more vegetables? Nothing to be cheerful about, but at least it sounds better than scenarios I thought about right after reading the article.

Current meat consumption is unsustainable anyway; it wasn't going to last.

The future of protein is in bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#69

Post by r00fus » Sat, Feb 14, 2015, 12:17 AM UTC

code_duck wrote: post #51

Retric wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US produces several times more food than we need. A single acre can easily produce enough food for a small family and we have 408 million acres under cultivation. Corn is something of a super star at 8,250 lb. of corn per acre. However, we end up feeding most of this to animals which drastically reduces overall efficiency. So, sure we are going to spend a lot of effort maximizing food production. But a 50% drop i…

One area the U.S. could definitely focus on is reducing food waste. Restaurants throw away a lot of food that was perfectly good 4 days prior. The habits of people here regarding food waste is significant, too - I have a friend who will go to Taco John late at night, get six tacos, three potato things, 10 packets of sauce, eat two tacos and a potato thing and leave the rest to waste in his kitchen counter. He sees it…

Most of what you complain about can be reduced by appropriately costing-out the externalities of meat production.

Of course, the problem always comes when big corporate AG can essentially shut down public debate by buying all the seats of any discussion (i.e., corruption).

Re: U.S. Droughts Predicted to Be the Worst in 1,000 Years

#70

Post by alexqgb » Sat, Feb 14, 2015, 12:19 AM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #47

cryptoz wrote: post #2

Optimizing crop outputs for higher-than-average temperatures and minimal rain is very important. Agricultural innovation over the next 10-20 years is going to be fast-paced; it'll have to be, to keep up with local climate changes. I work in weather prediction and hope to improve weather forecasts for agribusiness. But what if our forecast ends up just being "Hot; no rain.". What will happen, where will the water come…

We could produce the same amount of food with a tenth the water we do currently. A simple system, like drip irrigation, could save 50%. An ebb and flow hydroponic system could save 95%. These technologies aren't new, they're just not cost effective until water becomes less cheap. I think in 20 or 50 years we'll look back at the current sprinklers that just spray water into the air as ridiculously wasteful.

The degree to which agribusiness in CA has been able to block any and all rational water regulation in the legislature is simultaneously awful and encouraging. Awful, because oh my god just look; the way they're handling this resource is demonstrably terrible. Encouraging because we are so amazingly far away from running an efficient enterprise. I suspect the Israelis could farm for a century using the same amount of water squandered by the Central Valley in a single season.

Okay, that's an slight exaggeration. But only slight.