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Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

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Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#71

Post by jhgb »

vanderZwan wrote: post #64
jhgb wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the Permian extinction considered to be generally worse?

Yeah, as a mass extinction event it is. However, I figured that took longer to escalate than one year, so it wouldn't quite work when answering the question of worst year to be alive

Ah, yes, the timescales may differ. I've always wondered how the estimates of those work for these geological events, as in, how do we estimate the "one-year-damage" curve or something like that. You're most likely right that the K-T may have had a higher peak in this respect.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#72

Post by hjek »

tokai wrote: post #66
octygen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food... or fresh/unpolluted water. For food, I think it's a little easier but societies that have a hard time producing would have to adjust what they eat and how they eat it. Also, less meat, less red wine, more beer and more potatoes. The latter are much more sustainable. E.g., In Canada, we'll have to accept we can't have bananas, pineapple, kiwis, mangos any time. We'll have to stick to locally grown apples, way…

>It's a Danish-run program. E.g., They eat more lingonberries since they grow all over the place There is no lingonberries in Denmark.

Yes, there are[0]. We call them tyttebær.

[0]: https://www.raavareguiden.dk/frugt/tyttebaer.html

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#73

Post by float4 »

nkoren wrote: post #55
samvher wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting! As a Dutch person I've never heard of this before. I'm not quite sure what numbers I'm looking at though, is it just because the Netherlands mostly exports cucumbers and watery tomatoes?

Yep, you export a lot of nice flowers and vegetables, and import a lot of meat. This makes fine economic sense in the context of well-functioning system of global trade. But if that system were to shut down and you had to produce all that meat locally... it wouldn't work so well. And the flowers wouldn't make a good replacement.

Is there more info on how your fao source performed the calculations? The Netherlands is actually a very significant meat exporter (78% of poultry and beef, 95% of calves, and 43% of pork is exported [0]). As a matter of fact, meat is the most valuable export product after flowers.

A lot of the exported animals are first imported, are then held and slaughtered in the Netherlands, and then the meat is exported again for financial gain. So in terms of meat, I'd think they are a caloric exporter but still highly dependent on other countries.

Hence my question: how were the fao numbers calculated?

[0] (Dutch) https://www.trouw.nl/economie/hoe-nederland-uitgroeide-tot-e...

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#74

Post by hypertele-Xii »

waihtis wrote: post #39
vkou wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. Which countries are those? Because I'm pretty sure that no developed country is dependent on importing food to meet the basic caloric needs of its population. Also, a fair amount of food gets fed to animals, which are incredibly inefficient at turning grain calories into meat calories.

Many will be, since you have to factor that it is not only the raw produce of food that needs to be calculated in the equation, but also all inputs needed in producing that food, e.g. fuel, fertilizers, equipment, energy. Take Finland as an example (where I live.) In pure food output terms, we produce 80% of our consumption within the country, and import 20%. However, the means of production are very much dependent o…

Many governments (including Finland) subsidize national farming for the express purpose of maintaining emergency food production capability regardless of markets. That is, governments pay people to keep farming.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#75

Post by baud147258 »

seszett wrote: post #33
indemnity wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands exports 10 times as much food as the UK with 1/10 of the arable land. In the event of a crisis I am sure the UK would be able to ramp up their production and become more efficient.

The Netherlands food industry absolutely depends on imported oil though, so that might not be a good example of self-sufficiency.

well, they're exporting tulips and other flowers, they could grow instead sunflower or colza/canola

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#76

Post by vanderZwan »

jhgb wrote: post #71
vanderZwan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as a mass extinction event it is. However, I figured that took longer to escalate than one year, so it wouldn't quite work when answering the question of worst year to be alive

Ah, yes, the timescales may differ. I've always wondered how the estimates of those work for these geological events, as in, how do we estimate the "one-year-damage" curve or something like that. You're most likely right that the K-T may have had a higher peak in this respect.

It's so weird to try to reason about deep time, isn't it? It just goes beyond human intuition due to it's scale.

Also, thanks to your comment I double-check out the wiki page for the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event[0], and meteors being the cause hasn't been ruled out yet as a potential cause, in which case it might still win out!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#77

Post by kelnage »

If you’re interested in knowing more about how this event and other ecological factors influenced the decline and fall of the Roman Empire (to coin a phrase...), “The Fate of Rome” by Kyle Harper is a great read or listen, if you prefer audiobooks (ignoring every time the narrator mistook causal for casual...)

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#78

Post by Jedd »

zelos wrote: post #25
waihtis wrote: post #7

An event like this, or anything else with a significant impact on food production is something many people should be absolutely prepared for. A bulk of countries, including where I live, are completely dependant on importing food. What do you think will happen if the net exporters experience a global supply crisis? Always be cognizant of events that are improbable but have a high impact on survival.

Is it feasible for many countries - particularly small, densely populated ones - to be self-sufficient in food? In the UK, at least, I'm not sure there's physically enough space to farm enough food to supply the population. About 50% of food is imported and basically all the agricultural land is already used.

Supposing that it was an isolated 'the skies go dark' scenario, then being self-sufficient in food is quite a complex question to try to answer, as most food chains require the skies to not be dark, at least not all the time.

An interesting (and today, happily, academic) question is what happens to the UK in the event of, say, AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation -- aka the gulf stream that sends warm air up from the equator) shutting down. Noting that London's only 4 degrees latitude away from, say, Moscow.

And then it becomes a much more fascinating question.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#79

Post by starfallg »

float4 wrote: post #73
nkoren wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, you export a lot of nice flowers and vegetables, and import a lot of meat. This makes fine economic sense in the context of well-functioning system of global trade. But if that system were to shut down and you had to produce all that meat locally... it wouldn't work so well. And the flowers wouldn't make a good replacement.

Is there more info on how your fao source performed the calculations? The Netherlands is actually a very significant meat exporter (78% of poultry and beef, 95% of calves, and 43% of pork is exported [0]). As a matter of fact, meat is the most valuable export product after flowers. A lot of the exported animals are first imported , are then held and slaughtered in the Netherlands, and then the meat is exported again…

I would imagine that caloric figures would tend to gravitate towards staples, such as wheat, rice and corn, which are high in both calories and in volume consumed.

Re: Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive

#80

Post by Fern_Blossom »

CalRobert wrote: post #58
gambiting wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cows and sheep happily graze on moors and other rocky areas that could not be suddenly used to grow any kind of plants for food. Harry Metcalfe has a good video[0] about it - he keeps cows on the fields that are just too steep and too rocky to grow anything else - but it doesn't bother animals. Same applies to sheep. I imagine animals like chickens will have different considerations, because farm buildings do take la…

True, though in some cases (The Burren in Ireland for instance) it was sheep that stripped the land of vegetation, then topsoil, and left it rocky, in the first place. Whittled Away, by Padraic Fogarty, is a good read on this.

That's over grazing. That's lazy, over zealous and/or careless herders who fucked up. You rotate your herds on different land so they don't strip the vegetation. Allowing it to regrow quickly. You're managing the land just as much as your flock. This has been known for thousands of years by people who actually farm and not armchair farm.
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