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Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

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Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#41

Post by yetanotherloser »

AngryData wrote: post #34
yetanotherloser wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of these vertical farms do we have? How long do they take to build? What do they cost to run?

Modern LED grow lights require minimum 35 watts per square foot to grow things beyond just lettuce, which is around 1.5 million watts per acre. Americans currently consume a bit over 2.5 acres of farmland produce per year, however you could get that down to 1 acre without much problem by cutting out some of the less land efficient crops likes fruit trees, especially when talking indoor grow. So I would expect bare mi…

wow, if that is all true then vertical farming is even less relevant to this scenario than I thought. I'm not sure I'm qualified to check your figures and I suspect some of your assumptions are more pessimistic than mine, but the fundamentals pass a reality check vs. amount of energy delivered by the sun (lots).

(Just to preempt some likely replies from other people: I'm sure there is a big difference between "Americans consume" (including livestock grazing, which can't be magic-ed into anything else) and "You can get by on" (measured in hypothetical perfect-acres) - it would take esoteric casuistry to make these really comparable anyway. Nevertheless the gap is so large that AngryData's fundamental point is extremely robust: growlamp-ing everyone's basic needs is fantasy-land. I thought that, but didn't realise the case against it was as strong as I now suspect it might be)

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#42

Post by gandalfian »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #6
rnk wrote: post #4

And nothing prevents new volcanic explosions from doing this again. How would the northern world deal with this today? Not that well.

Greenhouses and vertical farms would make the famine less severe; although our population is so high that it would get complicated fast

More likely Quorn style fungus fermented/grown in dark vats connected to nuclear reactors for power. Might be tricky to ramp up in time but eventually could actually lower the cost of food, if more boring food. Flavoured fungus burgers all the time, kids might actually like it...

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#43

Post by mjhay »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #40
chrisco255 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ice in Antarctica and Greenland is not going to melt altogether and it would take thousands of years for it to melt away at current pace even if trends aren't reversed by another series of similar volcanic events.

But we will lose recent years first, so that could impact what sort of research would still be possible

Not at ice divides (like hydrological divides) where ice cores are taken (ice cores are almost always taken at divides because the ice flows apart, so the stratigraphy is not as disturbed). It's too cold to melt out there anytime soon. These are high-elevation locations, so there is either no melting (East Antartica ones ~3000 m) or extremely minimal melting, rarely, during the height of summer (Greenland and some other places in Antarctica). In Antarctica, surface melt is a rounding error everywhere, and response to climate change is almost entirely due to ice sheet-ocean interactions with a warming ocean and changing currents, and a thing called the marine ice-sheet instability.

At any rate, these locations will always be accumulation zones where more snow falls then melts (with the mass balance preserved by diverging flow so as to continuously thin the ice, to approximately compensate), with melt events occuring only rarely. The concern there is that meltwater could contaminate near-surface compacted snow (firn) layers, but even then it wouldn't be enough to do much. As such, stratigraphy will be reasonably preserved even if the ice sheet as a whole draws down significantly (including at divides).

Really extreme climate change (which is in the cards long-term) could eventually change this, especially if the ice sheets reduce enough in height such that a significant ice sheet-elevation feetback occurs. However, we'd have much bigger things to worry about at that point.

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#44

Post by chrisco255 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #40
chrisco255 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ice in Antarctica and Greenland is not going to melt altogether and it would take thousands of years for it to melt away at current pace even if trends aren't reversed by another series of similar volcanic events.

But we will lose recent years first, so that could impact what sort of research would still be possible

We have the most extensive data available for recent years, though. Ice core samples are also nothing new, they've been extensively studied for decades. Many of these cores are carefully removed and placed in ice cold storage warehouses: https://qz.com/1590747/an-antarctic-ice-core-may-show-1-5-mi...

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#45

Post by MrOwnPut »

pfdietz wrote: post #39
MrOwnPut wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our proposed planet-scale terraforming will be done gradually, don't be irrational! We'll just see how it goes... Are you serious?

So let me get this straight: in the face of a failure to control global warming by other means, you'd prefer your anxiety about possible risks to prevent any attempt to counter the warming by this approach, dooming the world to potentially catastrophic temperature increases? Are YOU serious?

Assuming your doomsday predictions are correct and all this time... then assuming your counter to the prediction is correct.

Ya'know what... go right ahead and try to terraform the Earth to whatever you think is... best.

Your doomsday prediction may then come true actually. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that.

God speed in making your artificial ice age.

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#46

Post by sour-taste »

> The team deciphered this record using a new ultra–high-resolution method, in which a laser carves 120-micron slivers of ice, representing just a few days or weeks of snowfall, along the length of the core. Each of the samples—some 50,000 from each meter of the core—is analyzed for about a dozen elements. The approach enabled the team to pinpoint storms, volcanic eruptions, and lead pollution down to the month or even less, going back 2000 years, says UM volcanologist Andrei Kurbatov.

How do they know for sure that the ice samples are chronological? What happens if in a given year the top layer of ice melts away?

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#47

Post by Archelaos »

rnk wrote: post #4

And nothing prevents new volcanic explosions from doing this again. How would the northern world deal with this today? Not that well.

Most of the northern world would not have much trouble buying its food wherever possible. For a high price, of course, but USA, Europe, Japan and even China are so extremely wealthy compared to others that they can outbid the majority of the South on the global food market without much difficulty. Thus, a decline in food production in the North would primarily affect the global South.

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#49

Post by jeltz »

rnk wrote: post #4

And nothing prevents new volcanic explosions from doing this again. How would the northern world deal with this today? Not that well.

Much better than it did back then. Modern farming is much more resilient than farming back then as is proven by how rare famnes are today when they used to be common in the past.

Re: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

#50

Post by robocat »

yetanotherloser wrote: post #41
AngryData wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern LED grow lights require minimum 35 watts per square foot to grow things beyond just lettuce, which is around 1.5 million watts per acre. Americans currently consume a bit over 2.5 acres of farmland produce per year, however you could get that down to 1 acre without much problem by cutting out some of the less land efficient crops likes fruit trees, especially when talking indoor grow. So I would expect bare mi…

wow, if that is all true then vertical farming is even less relevant to this scenario than I thought. I'm not sure I'm qualified to check your figures and I suspect some of your assumptions are more pessimistic than mine, but the fundamentals pass a reality check vs. amount of energy delivered by the sun (lots). (Just to preempt some likely replies from other people: I'm sure there is a big difference between "Americ…

> but the fundamentals pass a reality check vs amount of energy delivered by the sun (lots).

  Solar panels produce about 150 watts of energy per square meter since most solar panels operate at 15% efficiency this translates to 15 watts per square foot.
Which is 100 Watts solar energy per square foot, so 35 Watts certainly has the right order. (LEDs are not 100% efficient, sunlight is not 100% efficient with chlorophyll, some edible plants grow in shade).
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