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What killed the Florida orange?

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Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#131

Post by marcosdumay »

stackskipton wrote: post #124
Spooky23 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Jones act has to be one of the most destructive stupid laws that we have.

Not really, it makes sense from point of view if you want to have an empire, you need a merchant marine to move things around by sea on ships you control. Jones Act doesn't accomplish what it's supposed to do but that's mainly because it was weak protectionism. Many other countries just shovel government money into their shipbuilding at rates that would probably make many just as angry.

I can believe it would make lots of people just as angry. But I really doubt policies like the ones from China or South Korea have an impact near as large as the US's.

It doesn't help that the US is full of non-contiguous territory separated by deep ocean. Other countries have similar laws but aren't as impacted.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#132

Post by mgleason_3 »

I hate to say it, but I wonder if we are better off letting it go. The climate in Florida makes it a constant battle that’s managed by spraying tons of pesticides, fertilizer, fungicides, and antibiotics. It all runs off into the rivers and everglades and pollutes the water system eventually making its way to the ocean polluting it as well. It contributes to a host of serious problems for humans and the ecosystem. The antibiotic resistance alone is absolutely nuts.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#133

Post by tgarrett »

caminante wrote: post #130
tgarrett wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. This is the conventional wisdom, and it is completely falsified by the actual data that I linked to. I wrote a python script to go process and plot it, and there has been zero increase in Cat 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms hitting the US since 1851 (there are only 4 Cat 5s listed total). Try it for…

As @zdragnar pointed out below, people are talking past each other whether it's claimed in the article v. whether the article is right. It seems many are jumping to biases about climate change without reviewing the data as you did. And the article should've been written with more nuance.

Yeah, exploring data is always interesting, sometimes super interesting, and it's also healthy to approach things with a mixture of open-mindedness and skepticism - a sort of zen habit you can get better at with practice. Ideas serve me, not the other way around.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#134

Post by cineticdaffodil »

caminante wrote: post #123
acdha wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adju…

OK so the grandparent's comment was clumsy. Now, I see a slate of historical hurricanes in FL from 2004-05 that hit the Ridge area. This contradicts the article as these weren't baby storms. The issue is clearly the rise of this blight bacteria that has made the groves less resilient to storms and has weakend production.

The meta reason is a missunderstanding of nature. Even the industry basically considers it a tamed beast of burden, while environmentalist usually consider it as a sort of gaia godess raped by industrial mankind. Nature is war and fast adaption of wha works. The trees war the grass for shade. And every mono culture, be they cloned crab or planted orchard, is a giant dice inviting disaster with every yearly throw. And on that scale adaption and transportation yields rewards for those animals and plants transporting anti-man properties fast. We are running a adveserial breeding program for anti-human critters. And when they exist, as they do and did in all places with longstanding human populations and agriculture- they take the invite on speed dial. We simply are dragged back into the eternal conflict. We always where a part of nature and this is how it feels like to be a part of that. Counter measures? Lets ask the statisticians.. anything that eats dice throws of the advesaries.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#135

Post by somat »

wombatpm wrote: post #126
somat wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process to make never concentrated orange juice logistically viable involves removing all the oxygen from the juice so it stores well. Now you can take a seasonal product like oranges and sell the juice the entire year around. Unfortunately removing the oxygen also removes most of the flavor. so what the bottlers do is add an engineered "flavor package" when they bottle the juice to add the flavor back. I am half…

As a chemical engineer we study the process for making frozen concentrate orange juice (FCOJ). IIRC you feed the juice into low pressure flash distillation that splits off most of the water. Problem is that many of the volatile compounds go out the top as well, and the resulting concentrate is blah. So you feed back in about 10% raw juice, pack the sludge in cans and freeze em. The fun part was trying to find good es…

Salutes on the post. After hearing the flavor tricks they have to jump through to make "never concentrate" I was sort of hoping the freezing process of FCO kept more of the original flavor. But it sounds like it does not.

The industrialization of food is really what enables our modern way of life. But it slightly horrifies me every time I learn more about it.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#136

Post by fnordpiglet »

tgarrett wrote: post #125
acdha wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. Climate change is making hurricanes stronger and wetter, so even though they've been a phenomenon for as long as humans have lived there that doesn't mean that the frequency of damaging storms over an area can't change in a way which makes it worse for agriculture. There's an inflation-adju…

> That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. This is the conventional wisdom, and it is completely falsified by the actual data that I linked to. I wrote a python script to go process and plot it, and there has been zero increase in Cat 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms hitting the US since 1851 (there are only 4 Cat 5s listed total). Try it for…

This is obtuse. The assertion was a deviation in the areas of Florida experiencing hurricane penetration. This is a localized effect. You’re discussing the gross effects of an entire nation, in this comment, of an entire state in the prior. However no one is discussing Florida or the US. They’re discussing the orange growing regions of Florida, which is a region that has not historically had hurricanes, but has had them recently.

It’s like saying the UV radiation hitting the earth is the same as it was historically so therefore an ozone hole in Australia didn’t exist and cataracts can’t be higher there.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#137

Post by tgarrett »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #136
tgarrett wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not the point being made: the article clearly states that those areas did not previously get hit by storms at this level. This is the conventional wisdom, and it is completely falsified by the actual data that I linked to. I wrote a python script to go process and plot it, and there has been zero increase in Cat 1, 2, 3, or 4 storms hitting the US since 1851 (there are only 4 Cat 5s listed total). Try it for…

This is obtuse. The assertion was a deviation in the areas of Florida experiencing hurricane penetration. This is a localized effect. You’re discussing the gross effects of an entire nation, in this comment, of an entire state in the prior. However no one is discussing Florida or the US. They’re discussing the orange growing regions of Florida, which is a region that has not historically had hurricanes, but has had t…

So what you are saying is that, yes there has not been an overall increase in hurricanes hitting the US over the last 175 years, but climate change has been specifically and precisely steering the hurricanes towards the orange growing regions of Florida in recent years, and is therefore to blame for the crop failures.

You have to diagnose a problem correctly in order to have a chance at solving it.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#138

Post by eth0up »

lovich wrote: post #128
eth0up wrote: post #109

I just want to proudly, but also sadly, boast that Polk county once produced more oranges than the entire state of California. Florida was a beautiful place not long ago, but a very peculiar and aggressively anti indigenous development is redefining it daily. Things have become so strange that squalid retention ponds qualify as wetland restoration. I could rant for a while, but won't. Sarasota once produced more cele…

Florida is a democracy. Florida voted for leaders who ignore these problems because of “woke”. Floridians deserve the results. I will grant clemency for anyone who was born there and isn’t wealthy enough to move out. I will grant 10x hate for anyone who moved there for the politics and complains about the results.

Born here. And for me, the government is the pine flats, the oaks and palmetto scrubs, the springs, the sea, the spirit of the Timucua, sandhill cranes, thunderstorms.

If Billy Bowlegs or Geronimo come back, I'll vote for them. I'd consider voting for someone who actually respected this place, but I'm not sure anyone does. I've been to nearly every state, and some other lands, but there's no place finer. I'm pure Florida man.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#139

Post by globnomulous »

jhbadger wrote: post #102
markbnj wrote: post #69

The John McPhee article that the author references was expanded into a book, and it's a great read for anyone that finds this story interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Oranges-John-McPhee-ebook/dp/B005E8AN...

John McPhee is a great underrated non-fiction author, up there with the late Tracy Kidder. I particularly like McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy" about the physicist Theodore B. Taylor.

He may have little name recognition, but he's considered, at a minimum, one of the most important, influential, masterful nonfiction writers of his generation.

Re: What killed the Florida orange?

#140

Post by throwaway2037 »

triceratops wrote: post #32
BoneShard wrote: post #6

It was a sad day for me when I realized that a glass of orange juice(or any juice in general) isn't much better for your health than a can of soda and probably even worse than diet/zero coke.

What if you make fresh squeezed OJ at home, eat the leftover pulp and skins first, and then drink the juice? I wonder if that has the same glycemic impact as eating an orange.

This sounds like a good idea for a science experiment and a following paper!
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