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

scientificamerican.com

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

#71

Post by dylanz »

huherto wrote: post #60
dylanz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with Geoff at his farm in AU, and he's done some amazing work there. His swale and pond layout, as well as the food forestry corridors for his animals are spectacular. Large scale implementation of arid desert techniques from the Permaculture handbook is one thing that definitely needs to be looked into.

This is fascinating. But why isn't it more popular?

I would probably guess a lot of reasons. I'm not sure that there has been "that" many large agro studies on many of the techniques. Also, I think something as simple as planting large crop on swale (not in a straight line) drastically changes how the farm would run (what equipment to use, industry-wide crop measurements, etc). That's just the first thing that comes to mind.

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

#72

Post by bequanna »

Retric wrote: post #46
bequanna wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, we are now using 40-50% of our corn to produce ethanol. ~40% of corn goes directly to feed livestock. Some of the by-product of ethanol production (dried distillers' grain) is then also used as livestock feed. The US absolutely produces enough food, way more than we need, we just aren't using it to actually feed people.

That's a fairly recent development. For scale: The us produced 1.63 billion gallons in 2000 vs 13.9 billion U.S. liquid gallons (52.6 billion liters) of ethanol fuel in 2011. Almost all of that was from the increase in corn production over that time period (7.5 Billion in 2000/2001 vs ~11 billion in 2012/2013) I think we are ~12-13 billion/year now. There is a great cart of Corn production http://www.ers.usda.gov/med…

> PS: Per acre corn yields are up something like 10x over the last 100years that's crazy vs a ~3x population increase.

I agree. The increases in yield are just incredible.

You're right, ethanol production has just exploded in the past several years. Along with that, corn prices have increased along with ag. land prices.

As a result, farmers have done quite well for themselves over the past decade. It will be interesting to see what would happen if ethanol production were to decline substantially. I would argue that as we shift toward an electric powered auto fleet, this is inevitable. I think the only question is will it happen in 10, 20 or 30 years?

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #63
korethr wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

[deleted]

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

#74

Post by erickhill »

bhayden wrote: post #65
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…

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.

More likely he meant global buy-in. A coalition of the willing, for lack of a better term, although I wouldn't brand it that way.

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

#75

Post by rd108 »

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…

The best way to cheaply remove CO2 is to plant more trees. The simplest solution is still the best: it requires no new technology, can scale itself when the trees reproduce and is eminently accessible to all sorts of people, all around the globe. As an added benefit, some trees can even give fruit... which are delicious.

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

#76

Post by code_duck »

r00fus wrote: post #69
code_duck wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Indeed, restaurants and individuals waste food because they can afford to. It's a shame if the only way to stop that is for food to become dramatically more expensive. Ending government subsidies on agriculture and food would be a good step to consumers realizing the actual cost of food.

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

#77

Post by nothrabannosir »

rd108 wrote: post #75
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…

The best way to cheaply remove CO2 is to plant more trees. The simplest solution is still the best: it requires no new technology, can scale itself when the trees reproduce and is eminently accessible to all sorts of people, all around the globe. As an added benefit, some trees can even give fruit... which are delicious.

Don't forget: when a tree dies, the CO2 it absorbed is (indirectly) released back into the atmosphere. Unless you store the wood somewhere and keep it from being consumed by nature.

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

#78

Post by greglo »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #77
rd108 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to cheaply remove CO2 is to plant more trees. The simplest solution is still the best: it requires no new technology, can scale itself when the trees reproduce and is eminently accessible to all sorts of people, all around the globe. As an added benefit, some trees can even give fruit... which are delicious.

Don't forget: when a tree dies, the CO2 it absorbed is (indirectly) released back into the atmosphere. Unless you store the wood somewhere and keep it from being consumed by nature.

On an individual tree level, yes. But planting trees usually implies either: - Designating new areas for entire forests to be grown (which all together is a store of CO2, even if individuals die and rot) - Many individual trees in towns/cities, which would presumably be replanted if they die and so, again, in summation are a store of CO2.

Or just encourage everyone to have oak panelling, wood floors, and a huge excess of fine wooden furniture

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

#79

Post by strait »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #53
Daishiman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Lab-grown meat should bring costs down (both in raw resource usage and in the market), enough that I expect it to nearly completely replace traditional meat. I expect in 50 years, the only "real" meat, like from a slaughtered animal, will be eaten on special occasions, or by the wealthy. Sort of like the internal combustion engine "saving the horse." Lab-grown meat would eventually allow for lower cost with superior…

Hope they will be able to do lab grown liver as well as bones with all the cartilage and marrow included. Many people consider these more important to health than the meat. Better yet, more people need to be educated on what it means to provide a farm animal with a naturally healthy and happy life so that a healthy product is harvested. Cows should eat primarily grass and hay, chickens should eat bugs, worms, greens, seeds, and whatever else chickens like.

I suppose that managing the fields with rotational grazing isn't quite as simple as the factory methods that churn out the naturally unhealthy animals that result in the relatively unhealthy animal meat products, but it's probably a whole lot simpler that it will be manufacturing superior-to-natural lab-grown meat.

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

#80

Post by narrowrail »

MattGrommes wrote: post #62
ChuckMcM wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Artificial light is still required for year-round cultivation. Growing outside in the winter, even where possible in the U.S., still presents a problem because of the light cycle. If there is not enough light, the plant will go into a budding cycle before it's large enough to support a healthy yield.
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