(November 13, 2021 at 3:54 pm)zebo-the-fat Wrote: It makes so much sense, a conference about climate change has people flying in from all over the world, driving in poluting fleets of cars, have they never heard of Zoom?
(or is it just an excuse for an all expences paid junket?)

and yes, I am a cynical old fart!

Too much of climate action exhortation is wasted urging feel-good deeds of trivial consequences, and the exhortations would continue to struggle to rise above shrillness into seriousness in wider perception if the fundamentally all important consideration of cost of is marginalized with an airy unqualified “consequence of not doing anything is worse” in the presentation of its case.

(November 13, 2021 at 4:18 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:

(November 13, 2021 at 3:54 pm)zebo-the-fat Wrote: It makes so much sense, a conference about climate change has people flying in from all over the world, driving in poluting fleets of cars, have they never heard of Zoom?
(or is it just an excuse for an all expences paid junket?)

and yes, I am a cynical old fart!

Too much of climate action exhortation is wasted urging feel-good deeds of trivial consequences, and the exhortations would continue to struggle to rise above shrillness into seriousness in wider perception if the fundamentally all important consideration of cost of is marginalized with an airy unqualified “consequence of not doing anything is worse” in the presentation of its case.

 I think I understood that, and probably agree. If you wouldn't mind, do you think you could have a go at simplifying it, perhaps with shorter sentences? Thanks a bunch.

(November 13, 2021 at 1:26 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Here's an outlook for your consideration.  Tell me if you think it's cynical.  There's just one way to get into sustainable ag right now.  It's super simple.  

Inherited wealth.  

Not kidding.  That's it, that's all.  It's a known known.  Dirty little secret of the food journalism industry.  plucky entreprenuers try to buck that trend and the national conversation creates a buzz about them..but then they move on to other things and don't follow up.  Those guys fail.  Overwhelmingly.  The ones that succeed...independently wealthy very nearly to a man.  The problem isn't so much to find new ways to grow, but to find ways to make money doing things we've known how to do for quite some time.  Thousands of years, in many cases.  The problem with respect to farms as a business is investment.  You can't corner the market on unpatentable systems and methods through lawfare.

Commons production, regenerative ag, closed loops, diversified crop portfolios, site specific consideration, highly specialized labor.  These aren't sci fi solutions, but they're the only game in town, in mere reality.  Outside of farming by oils numbers, that is.

95% of rice farms in Arkansas are family owned and run.  Precision levelled, low flood fields.  Real time data on display maps.  Remote irrigation control.  Hi tech stuff has increased profits and made their jobs easier.  Great opportunity for an instrumentation and controls engineer, but don't talk to them about kooky liberal vaccines and climate change.

yes, it boils down to this:

1. climate change, anthropogenic or not, will not make the earth uninhabitable. So shrill representation to the effect that it will does not add credibility to the effort to control it,

2. climate change, anthropogenic or not, impose a gradation of costs depending on its severity and speed of its onset. but effort to control it also has gradation of direct economic and indirect opportunity costs somewhat proportional to its probability of success, effectiveness if successful, and time it takes to succeed.

A pursuasive strategy needs to show it minimizes not only the cost of global warming, but the combined cost of global warming AND the effort to minimize it.

Dismissing the cost of efforts to minimize impact of global warming, rethoricalky brushing it under the rug, or otherwise trivializing by exaggerating the cost of not doing anything does not help build the necessary case.

once a case is made for a particular approach, or family of approaches, as being optimal in her sense of minimizing the combined cost of global warming and efforts to control it, there remain the issue of who should pay for the cost of combating global warming.

Some people is harms less by uncontrolled global warming than others, should they therefore pay less towards the effort to combat it? Some people have already done decades of wanton polluting but are comparatively clean now, should they be made to pay for their past pollution or does the recent work to reduce carbon foot print obsolve them of the CO2 they’ve left in the air?

no matter how much irresponsible climate advocates claim low carbon foot print equates to higher growth, voluminous evidence shows this is completely false. so for developing countries that would its people to become better off, should they be allowed to enlarge their carbon foot print on the principle that well off countries got rich by leaving behind enormous carbon foot prints?

These are all issues which needs to be addressed to the satisfaction of highly self interested parties who are no fools for airy rethorics if effective global climate actions is to be undertaken.

(November 14, 2021 at 12:35 pm)Ranjr Wrote: 95% of rice farms in Arkansas are family owned and run.  Precision levelled, low flood fields.  Real time data on display maps.  Remote irrigation control.  Hi tech stuff has increased profits and made their jobs easier.  Great opportunity for an instrumentation and controls engineer, but don't talk to them about kooky liberal vaccines and climate change.

Family farms are usually family owned, but not family run, the two in combination are wildly unrepresentative.  The idea of a family farm was more myth than anything else, and in that myth - hiring out of house specialists like engineers wasn't included..and yet, clearly, it helps. OFC, I have a dog in that hunt, so don't take my word for it. That said, laser leveled fields are a bit of an issue. We had a field laser leveled in fl a few years back, which is generally too flat to notice elevation change..and all it took was three weeks worth of eight hour days running a series 3 tractor to smooth out 2-5 inch lumps in the sand. That said, I love the long shaft wheeled jon boats boats they use in combined rice and crawdad harvest.

If you enjoy this sort of stuff..

Quote:I tried to prove that small family farms are the future. I couldn’t do it.

https://thecounter.org/sarah-mock-fails-...he-future/

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(November 14, 2021 at 12:49 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: A pursuasive strategy needs to show it minimizes not only the cost of global warming, but the combined cost of global warming AND the effort to minimize it.

exactly so.

Quote:Dismissing the cost of efforts to minimize impact of global warming, rethoricalky brushing it under the rug,  or otherwise trivializing by exaggerating the cost of not doing anything does not help build the necessary case.

However, to this, the costs being brushed under the rug are generally -not- the costs to transition.  We lay these out so specifically that for some systems we have a parts list by sku at the local box store so that we can quickly tell people the exact cost of transition for their operations..while most of them, and most of the public, are completely oblivious to the rather opaque (if addressed at all) costs of business as usual.  

Quote:once a case is made for a particular approach, or family of approaches, as being optimal in her sense of minimizing the combined cost of global warming and efforts to control it, there remain the issue of who should pay for the cost of combating global warming.
om grants.

In the extension model, it's the interested producer, with some help from federal and state grants. Usually post cost matching. As in, here's what to do if you think you can do it, and after you pay for it, bring us receipts, and well go over them and tell you what you can be reimbursed for (alot of the costs to site modification are unpredictable and uncovered). That's the weakest link in the process at present. It's hard to attract 3rd party investment for appropriate tech, and it's not hard to attract investment..for..say.....a mcdonalds franchise. If you're sitting on enough money to build a laying hen paddock you're sitting on enough money to open a fast food restaurant. The only difference between the two from a business perspective is that you don't have to come out of pocket for the latter. That and the burger joint has a faster and better roi.

That's why land use and land transfer are so thorny for the legendary family farm. You've got one heir that wants to farm it and one that wants to turn it into a mobile home park and another that wants to sell it to a developer. Guess who has the better spreadsheets for presentation to a loan officer..or their mother..and we're talking about assets commonly in excess of a cool mil.

Taking that back to ranjrs point...the things that might tip the spreadsheet in the farmers favor are things that are not traditionally the ao of the kid who wants to farm...and, not for nothing, but both the kid who wants to farm and the parents weighing that decision are very often extremely resistant to the advice of outside professionals with specific experience.

Long story short, it's a fucking shitshow.

Coal barges in Indonesia.

LOL, I don't have to go to indonesia for that. They're all over the rivers I'm trying to work and play in. Destroying the ecosystem, impoverishing the local pass through economy in sweetheart deals, and obliterating the market value of waterfront homes.

I'd be willing to call the damage in cold hard us dollars incalculable..but it's really not..just that no one empowered to do so wants to see that number or to have the economically anxious™ voters of appalachia be confronted by it. It'd ruin the game. The easy excuse is always that whatever that number is, it'd be worse if it weren't. Well, define worse for a west virginia resident whose children are either dead or in rehab and who owe more on their homes than they will ever be worth while hustling to hold down a super lucrative job at dollar tree, as they approach their so-called golden years?

Aside from some shitheel deciding to valhallan flight their way into a little white on white gentrification...those guys are fucked - now and forever, under the status quo.

(November 13, 2021 at 1:25 pm)Angrboda Wrote:

(November 13, 2021 at 1:21 pm)Alan V Wrote: I don't think you guys are accurate about the politics of climate change or about human nature and how we will respond.

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

That's encouraging, since so many people are working on a wide range of solutions.

(November 14, 2021 at 1:14 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: Family farms are usually family owned, but not family run, the two in combination are wildly unrepresentative.  The idea of a family farm was more myth than anything else, and in that myth - hiring out of house specialists like engineers wasn't included..and yet, clearly, it helps.

Like, what do you mean the idea of a family farm is a myth? I read the article. I would call it more of a fossil than a myth.

(November 17, 2021 at 5:01 pm)Alan V Wrote:

(November 13, 2021 at 1:25 pm)Angrboda Wrote: Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

That's encouraging, since so many people are working on a wide range of solutions.

Not the case with investments.  In fact here, advertising for such must state that in a disclaimer .

People however tend to be pretty predictable.

It's my suspicion that most of our behaviour is the result of habit, with little if any significant thought. I've long suspected that free will is largely an illusion, but I have no idea to what degree.

It's my observation that people generally tend never to seriously questions their religious beliefs and world view they absorbed uncritically before the age of reason. As Greg House said "if you could reason with religious people there wouldn't be any" .