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The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

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Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#161

Post by shkkmo »

stouset wrote: post #152
baggy_trough wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How shortly is shortly? The linked paper suggests several hundred years or more. So we certainly don’t have to worry about this as there will be unimaginable technology changes by then.

“Unimaginable technology” does not free us from thermodynamic reality. The Earth can radiate heat into space, but convection and conduction are unavailable. We have two hundred and fifty years, assuming we completely rid the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, methane, and all other greenhouse gases. Hopefully you can see that this means it will be less than that amount of time. I don’t know about you but “some amount less…

> We have two hundred and fifty years, assuming we completely rid the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, methane, and all other greenhouse gases. Hopefully you can see that this means it will be less than that amount of time.

Global energy usage is already diverging from that exponential curve so your alarmism does not seem very rooted in reality (as long as global population continues to stabilize.)

> Hell, we’re fifty years into scientists sounding the alarm about greenhouse gases, and we’ve only managed to accelerate our production of them in the time since.

Global warming is a signifanct concern, the thermodynamic contraints on solar energy generation is not.

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#162

Post by shkkmo »

imtringued wrote: post #151
shkkmo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd be surprised as how sustainabily we could approximate the western standard of living if we had the will power to try as a whole society. There would certainly be sacrifices, but I suspect we would also gain significant quality if life improvements. What this requires is a change of mindset and I don't think attitudes like yours help. We are hundreds of years from that thermodynamic limit at our current…

>I'm sort of unclear where you are goin with your argument? Are you arguing we need to kill of people or economically retard developing countries energy use? Neither of those seem reasonable stances so I am left wondering what you see as the path forward and what value you see in advancing your argument. Lack of resources are a common cause of war. Lack of resources was a problem for humanity for its entire existence…

What lack of resources are you talking about? You comment seems completely disconnected from what you are replying to.

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#163

Post by shkkmo »

stouset wrote: post #147
shkkmo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'd be surprised as how sustainabily we could approximate the western standard of living if we had the will power to try as a whole society. There would certainly be sacrifices, but I suspect we would also gain significant quality if life improvements. What this requires is a change of mindset and I don't think attitudes like yours help. We are hundreds of years from that thermodynamic limit at our current…

> We are hundreds of years from that thermodynamic limit at our current exponential growth rate …assuming Earth is a perfect blackbody, which it is not. > It is also quite likely that extraplanetary energy sources could be available by then. This is irrelevant. As long as that power is delivered to Earth, it doesn’t matter how or where we generate or collect it. I mean, just take a step back a second. In the best cas…

> My point is that our current situation of resource usage cannot last much longer. This is unavoidable fact. We can opt to find ways to dramatically cut back—far past current feel-good greening measures—or it will happen automatically for us.

This is blantantly false.

How does an energy budget that is multiple orders of magnitude larger than our current usage imply we must reduce energy usage below current levels?

What is the "automatic" mechanism that will curtail our energy usage below current levels?

You arguments don't make any sense and seem completely pointless. If you really don't believe there are any solutions, you should shut up and let the optimists work the problem on the off chance you are wrong.

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#164

Post by shkkmo »

stouset wrote: post #150
shkkmo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its magical thinking that the earth, which has finite resources, can support an infinite number of people, if we only, "manage the resources right" I have not met a single person that thinks the earth can support an infinite number of people. If that is the position you are arguing against, I believe it is a strawman and a waste of your time. > Nobody has to be killed off, but what we should be doing is setting as…

> To do that we must find ways to aproximate the western standards of living in sustainable ways. And this is where we come full circle to magical thinking. The Earth is struggling to support the current number of people living at western standards. “Approximating” it for a few billion more people will require even more resources than we use today no matter how green you theorize we make things. This is never going t…

> The Earth is struggling to support the current number of people living at western standards.

We are having significant effects on the climate and ecology, but I don't think it is accurate to say the earth is struggling to support us.

> Growth has been slowing which means… we’re still growing. At a time when we’ve blown past the CO2 threshold to reach +2degC with barely a speed bump.

I've repeatedly acknowledged the issues we face with global warming. Halting population growth will not solve that problem alone. However you keep bringing up the thermodynamic limit amd the declining population growth and a huge impact on when we reach that limit that you seem to refuse to acknowledge.

> If the only real argument you have against this is ad hominem, you’re on shaky ground.

I made no ad hominem attack nor did I call you any names, nor did I ascribe any beliefs to you. I meant to be using "you" in the general form to explain where I see a particular line of reasoning headed. I probably should have used a different general form for clarity and I appologize for any confusion.

You've explained elsewhere that you aren't going anywhere with your argument and don't believe solutions exist.

> Maybe you disagree that we’re past a point of no return

I don't believe there is a single point of no return, but I do believe there are a large number of inflection points that if you pass make the problems haeder to solve. We have passed some of them and there are more on the way. The longer we wait to really take these problems seriously, the hardee they are to solve

I am still unclear what the "magical thinking" is...

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#165

Post by stouset »

adrianN wrote: post #156
stouset wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is plainly false, if you would actually read what I linked. We simply cannot grow at a 2-3% rate of energy consumption, period, without shortly running into thermodynamic limits of how quickly Earth can radiate excess heat into space. As I said before, this is while completely ignoring greenhouse gases and assuming Earth is a perfect thermodynamic blackbody. And the real Earth is not a perfect blackbody, so real…

Nobody believes that our energy consumption will continue increasing at the current rate for the time it would require to run into any hard limits. In developed countries energy use per capita is constant or decreasing. Population is expected to top out around 10 billion or so.

Population capping out doesn’t mean people stop wanting to use additional energy.

Raising half of the current global population to a Western standard of living would blow past this hard limit, even if we assume a doubling of energy efficiency.

Nothing in this graph[1] should give you the warm and fuzzies that we’ll all somehow band together to avoid this fate.

And keep in mind, we are fewer than five generations away on our current path to a physically-unavoidable global catastrophe. This isn’t the sort of thing we can solve with technology. There’s a hard physical limit on global energy production that cannot be exceeded. We don’t know exactly what that number is given greenhouse gases, but it’s definitely less than a few generations of growth away. How close, exactly, do you think we should creep up to this number?

[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-energy-substitutio...

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#166

Post by shkkmo »

stouset wrote: post #165
adrianN wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody believes that our energy consumption will continue increasing at the current rate for the time it would require to run into any hard limits. In developed countries energy use per capita is constant or decreasing. Population is expected to top out around 10 billion or so.

Population capping out doesn’t mean people stop wanting to use additional energy. Raising half of the current global population to a Western standard of living would blow past this hard limit, even if we assume a doubling of energy efficiency. Nothing in this graph[1] should give you the warm and fuzzies that we’ll all somehow band together to avoid this fate. And keep in mind, we are fewer than five generations away…

> Population capping out doesn’t mean people stop wanting to use additional energy.

Nobody said it did. What it does do is reduce the exponential growth rate in energy demand.

However, energy use per capita is not currently growing exponentially in developed countries and is declining in some places.

The combination of those two factors makes the prediction of continued exponential growth in energy consumption at the same rate pretty unlikely.

You should just stop mentioning the thermodynamic limit as it is irrelevant to any of our practical considerations for the predictable future.

> Raising half of the current global population to a Western standard of living would blow past this hard limit, even if we assume a doubling of energy efficiency

What hard limit are you talking about? There are several thresholds we should avoid crossing, but there are no hard limits (besides the thermodynamic limit, which we wouldn't come anywhere close to reaching even if we gave everyone on the planet a western standard of living and also doubled the population.)

> Nothing in this graph[1] should give you the warm and fuzzies that we’ll all somehow band together to avoid this fate.

The direness of the global warming situation has been repeatedly acknowledged by me. You seem to think that holding out any hope that we have a path to recovery, matter how hard and long, is "magical thinking" but somehow fail to see that taking this stance is actively making our chances of finding and following that path worse.

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#167

Post by publicola1990 »

ojhughes wrote: post #7

Another thing British and Americans have a different name for. We call them fish fingers. If you ask for fish sticks in the UK you will probably get the pinkish crab sticks that don’t have breadcrumbs

I even thought the article was about the "crab" sticks.

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#168

Post by jyounker »

nimvlaj30 wrote: post #132
dweekly wrote: post #40

This made me curious about how it was that Clarence Birdseye came to discover the fast-freeze approach that preserves flavor. The answer is surprisingly straightforward - he was a fur trader in Labrador (northern Canada) and noticed when he pulled fish out they froze immediately and were still delicious months later. So if only you could make fish as cold as northern Canada, you could make frozen fish tasty! It was f…

Sounds like he was inspired to try that by the food company of the same name

Sounds to me like he founded the company of the same name.

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#169

Post by GavinMcG »

idiotsecant wrote: post #77
GavinMcG wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why on earth should adults care what shape their food is? The childish thing is judging adults by completely substanceless distinctions like this.

Asking why this should be the case is not particularly useful. The fact is that it is true. If you offer an average adult cereal in the shape of little ronald mcdonald faces vs. generic flakes even with identical nutritional content they will, on average, select the more 'adult appropriate' option. Marketing is a thing for a reason.

The parent was alleging the opposite: that we are infantilizing ourselves by choosing child-oriented food shapes.

Re: The Unlikely Success of Fish Sticks

#170

Post by cheese_goddess »

samatman wrote: post #130
cheese_goddess wrote: post #51

> In 1953, 13 companies produced 3.4 million kilograms of fish sticks. A year later, four million kilograms were produced by another 55 companies. This surge in popularity was partly due to a marketing push that stressed the convenience of the new food: “no bones, no waste, no smell, no fuss,” as one Birds Eye advertisement proclaimed. A dirty lie, at least when it comes to "no waste", when you consider that the skin…

Why would you make such a confident assertion, filled with such vitriol, when it's completely wrong? I don't understand your motivation for this. Here, this link will set you straight, and it has a real discussion of the actual downsides and consequences of this practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_meal Rather than what you said, which is complete nonsense. I'd accuse you of lying, since you used that word, b…

Your link makes it clear that fish meal is made from fish bones and entrails that are inedible by humans, not their heads, skins and tails that I'm talking about and which are edible. Plus, it's made from by-catch which is not mant for human consumption anyway:

> Fishmeal is made from the bones and offal left over from fish caught by commercial fisheries. The vast majority of the fish from which fishmeal is manufactured are not used for human consumption; rather, fishmeal is generally manufactured from by-catch.[1][2]

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