Earth' Recent CLimate Spiral 2.0

[The Grand Nudger]

You might be talking about an effect of post harvest handling and shipping. Tomatos, for example, are not allowed to mature on the vine. They're picked stone green and then treated after the fact to be as red as possible. Additionally, main cultivars are often ones bred for their appearance and amenability to this process, and often enough to the detriment of their taste/content. The combined effect is that you get a piece of food bred for looks and transportability that hasn't quite finished it's life cycle and so hasn't metabolized or converted all of the stuff that we expect to find in it. They're water balloons.

With livestock, I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. Though I can guess at some little tidbits here and there. Yellow skinned birds contain carotenoids not present in white skinned birds. The chicken that built the poultry industry in the us was a yellow skinned bird - but it takes 24 weeks to reach maturity. The white skinned bird that consumers prefer, the cornish cross, takes 8 weeks to reach twice the size. In cattle, grass fed beef tends to be less fatty...and that can be consequential for our health as well.

Traditional ag or alt ag has a pr problem, largely of it's own making. From a marketing perspective, satisfying luddite impulses and ideation is a winner - but from a production perspective, it's a non starter. It's not so much that producers want to go back to scratching at the earth with sticks and broadcasting nothing but heirloom seed. We can't do that. We'd still be able to grow enough food if we did - but we wouldn't know how to monetize it for the producer. There's a reason that agricultural systems at that end of technology tended to rely on a massive and captive labor force and strong central planning by specifically trained elites. It's not so much that we want to get back to traditional methods as we want to exploit traditional interactions. Those interactions we've replaced with oil. That can be fertility, it can be irrigation, it can be pest control, it can be post harvest process and storage and delivery.

The biggest chunks are going to come out of storage and transport. The best investment for a small mixed farm right now isn't land, and it isn't a tractor. It's a walk in cooler. Followed close behind by a trailerable drip irrigation system. The only way to carve into that chunk is by re-distributing production. All of the tomatos in the us can't come from a couple counties in california, florida and mexico in a world where food miles as a carbon reality are tied to policy or taxation. By default, this would solve the water balloon problem, as the main reason those cultivars are grown and grown in that way boils down to the necessities of long range transport. This is already how local producers compete with conventional ag. By providing a more mature product with a longer shelf life.

Or, at least, this is the methodological advantage. People have to be sold. It's not enough to have a better product, you have to help them understand how consuming your product makes them a better person, or more closely aligns with the person they are. That's where luddite marketing comes in. It's not unique to alt ag. Guys who sell ice cream made in factories with no human employees like to warble about the good old days in the commercial spots.

[Leonardo17]

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   In general this push to produce more and to always be more is also set to stop at some point. In many countries population will have to stagnate and then start to decrease after a given level. This should give us plenty of room to rethink our models of production, consumption, transportation etc.
 
    For instance is it not simply better to consume the stuff that are produced locally, by local farmers and consume them hours or days after they have been picked up?
 
   I’m asking this because I saw how some Israeli agricultural engineers are messing up with tomatoes so that they still look and taste good up to a month after they have been picked up. Here I have unmodified “pink” tomatoes. They are not that expensive, their shapes can be a little twisted etc. but I know these are better.
 
    But that doesn’t work for all crops. I think apples for instance need to be a little protected so they end up being good looking and without any hole in them. And I also saw mandarins that had turned green because of whatever chemical or hormone has been used on them.
 
   And concerning meat, I think happy animals that are being raised in the open air are much tastier than the ones who are grown indoors.
 
   And on eggs and dairy products: Some people are looking for ways to replace these with insects for instance because the Methane emission that are related to the production of these animals are very high. Also plastic is simply the best packaging method for dairy products. So people are looking for ways to decrease the consumption of these products.
 
   Finally, too many people means too many carbon footprint. Some people say that if we were 4 Billion instead of 8 on this planet, than we would not need to be so vigilant about everything as we have to today.
 
   Still things are moving in the right direction. In the second half of the 90’s people started to sue tobacco companies because they were lying about their products and creating fake science to support the view that “there is no proof cigarettes create cancer”. In continental Europe it still took us a decade or so to move young people away from tobacco products. And today the same Industry is trying to gain new customers by promoting E-cigarettes among young people.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Ma..._Agreement
 
In the end, social interest did triumph over corporate interest and I can see that a similar trend is happening with Big-Oil companies now:
 
 https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-sides-y...50150.html
 
The only thing is that we need to move much faster now. Also, the Fossil fuel industry is much bigger then the tobacco industry. So they may be tempted to do too little too late, but there might be a point in which even they are going to realize that they are going to die If they keep doing things the way they always did.
 
See: in the 90’s Big-Oil refused to admit Climate Change existed. And the main argument was that action against climate change would cost the economy a lot and that the effects of climate change would not disrupt the economy a lot. This was the main rhetoric. I was / we were described as “climate alarmists”.
 
In the most recent COP’s oil companies are being invited. That’s because nobody can keep paying the bills of so many disasters and say this is economically sustainable.

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[BrianSoddingBoru4]

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   In general this push to produce more and to always be more is also set to stop at some point. In many countries population will have to stagnate and then start to decrease after a given level. This should give us plenty of room to rethink our models of production, consumption, transportation etc.
 
    For instance is it not simply better to consume the stuff that are produced locally, by local farmers and consume them hours or days after they have been picked up?
 
   I’m asking this because I saw how some Israeli agricultural engineers are messing up with tomatoes so that they still look and taste good up to a month after they have been picked up. Here I have unmodified “pink” tomatoes. They are not that expensive, their shapes can be a little twisted etc. but I know these are better.
 
    But that doesn’t work for all crops. I think apples for instance need to be a little protected so they end up being good looking and without any hole in them. And I also saw mandarins that had turned green because of whatever chemical or hormone has been used on them.
 
   And concerning meat, I think happy animals that are being raised in the open air are much tastier than the ones who are grown indoors.
 
   And on eggs and dairy products: Some people are looking for ways to replace these with insects for instance because the Methane emission that are related to the production of these animals are very high. Also plastic is simply the best packaging method for dairy products. So people are looking for ways to decrease the consumption of these products.
 
   Finally, too many people means too many carbon footprint. Some people say that if we were 4 Billion instead of 8 on this planet, than we would not need to be so vigilant about everything as we have to today.
 
   Still things are moving in the right direction. In the second half of the 90’s people started to sue tobacco companies because they were lying about their products and creating fake science to support the view that “there is no proof cigarettes create cancer”. In continental Europe it still took us a decade or so to move young people away from tobacco products. And today the same Industry is trying to gain new customers by promoting E-cigarettes among young people.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Ma..._Agreement
 
In the end, social interest did triumph over corporate interest and I can see that a similar trend is happening with Big-Oil companies now:
 
 https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-sides-y...50150.html
 
The only thing is that we need to move much faster now. Also, the Fossil fuel industry is much bigger then the tobacco industry. So they may be tempted to do too little too late, but there might be a point in which even they are going to realize that they are going to die If they keep doing things the way they always did.
 
See: in the 90’s Big-Oil refused to admit Climate Change existed. And the main argument was that action against climate change would cost the economy a lot and that the effects of climate change would not disrupt the economy a lot. This was the main rhetoric. I was / we were described as “climate alarmists”.
 
In the most recent COP’s oil companies are being invited. That’s because nobody can keep paying the bills of so many disasters and say this is economically sustainable.

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Thank you.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

 In general this push to produce more and to always be more is also set to stop at some point. In many countries population will have to stagnate and then start to decrease after a given level. This should give us plenty of room to rethink our models of production, consumption, transportation etc.

We need to rethink them either way.  
 

    For instance is it not simply better to consume the stuff that are produced locally, by local farmers and consume them hours or days after they have been picked up?

Better from the climate perspective, and also..possibly, by product quality standards - yes.  I can be seriously aggressive on this so I wanted to take a moment, right here, to say that there are reasons we've organized production this way - and those reasons may or may not trump any environmental or quality concerns...in the end.  Local pockets might contribute less co2 and they can clearly deliver a quality product...but they've also lead to mass starvation and product contamination.    
 

   I’m asking this because I saw how some Israeli agricultural engineers are messing up with tomatoes so that they still look and taste good up to a month after they have been picked up. Here I have unmodified “pink” tomatoes. They are not that expensive, their shapes can be a little twisted etc. but I know these are better.

Any well-bred tomato picked ripe is shelf stable for about that long.  This is something that doesn't comport with our experience as consumers because we fail to account for how much time has elapsed between the tomato being picked, and when -we- picked it up at the store.  That knowledge deficit is extremely marketable. People can be convinced that your tomatos are better because they last longer. They don't, but the consumer doesn't need to know that and it puts money into my pocket...so....you just nod your head and agree.
 

    But that doesn’t work for all crops. I think apples for instance need to be a little protected so they end up being good looking and without any hole in them. And I also saw mandarins that had turned green because of whatever chemical or hormone has been used on them.

Being good looking™ is the major problem for carbon neutral food, and it's a consumer problem.  So...not easy to solve on this end.  
 

   And concerning meat, I think happy animals that are being raised in the open air are much tastier than the ones who are grown indoors.
 
   And on eggs and dairy products: Some people are looking for ways to replace these with insects for instance because the Methane emission that are related to the production of these animals are very high. Also plastic is simply the best packaging method for dairy products. So people are looking for ways to decrease the consumption of these products.

Don't even get me started on how this whole bit about livestock and methane is just a product of fossil fuel companies coopting the green transition and laying blame on someone else for what they've cleanly and squarely done.  Absent synthetic fertilizers, we'll need more livestock, not less.  Good luck using bugs to fertilize crops.  In general, we try to keep them as far the fuck away as possible.  
 

   Finally, too many people means too many carbon footprint. Some people say that if we were 4 Billion instead of 8 on this planet, than we would not need to be so vigilant about everything as we have to today.

This is another misconception.  It's not even the case -now- that the number of people directly correlates to emissions.  A scant few percent of people on the earth account for the majority of the pollutants on the earth.  It's clearly not an issue of how many of us there are - and supposing we lost half our population we'd better hope it was the right half that contained that fraction and that the remaining half didn't keep pumping more of the same into the atmosphere because we'd just be buying time until we had to address it - and we should address it even if there were no climate crisis.  
 

   Still things are moving in the right direction. In the second half of the 90’s people started to sue tobacco companies because they were lying about their products and creating fake science to support the view that “there is no proof cigarettes create cancer”. In continental Europe it still took us a decade or so to move young people away from tobacco products. And today the same Industry is trying to gain new customers by promoting E-cigarettes among young people.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Ma..._Agreement
 
In the end, social interest did triumph over corporate interest and I can see that a similar trend is happening with Big-Oil companies now:
 
 https://www.yahoo.com/news/judge-sides-y...50150.html
 
The only thing is that we need to move much faster now. Also, the Fossil fuel industry is much bigger then the tobacco industry. So they may be tempted to do too little too late, but there might be a point in which even they are going to realize that they are going to die If they keep doing things the way they always did.

Nope.  You'll die, not them.  That's the point of being rich.  Think of them as preppers, but with money, in a disaster they're continually creating.
 

See: in the 90’s Big-Oil refused to admit Climate Change existed. And the main argument was that action against climate change would cost the economy a lot and that the effects of climate change would not disrupt the economy a lot. This was the main rhetoric. I was / we were described as “climate alarmists”.
 
In the most recent COP’s oil companies are being invited. That’s because nobody can keep paying the bills of so many disasters and say this is economically sustainable. [/Hide]

That's an interesting way to describe the fossil fuel industries capture of the process. It's not a good faith effort, and that's why people have started grumbling about trying to hold them accountable ala the tobacco companies. Some of the two-faced duplicitous shit they peddle makes me blush, and I'm a seasoned bullshitter.

[Leonardo17]

Nope.  You'll die, not them.  That's the point of being rich.  Think of them as preppers, but with money, in a disaster they're continually creating.

 
Maui is rather a place for rich people right? This week the capital of a US State is gone.
 
So this means that things are moving pretty fast now. At least some of the CEO’s of Big Oil companies must have understood by now that things won’t be safe for them either.
 
I’ve checked it a minute ago the average normal temperature in my city this time of the year is 74 degree. The usual maximum temperature is 86 degree. This week we have consecutive days of 104-105 degree. The previous 2-3 week were also above average.
 
Tourists in Southern Europe are now considering to go to these locations in winter. Athens Spain, Sicily, has been well above 104 degrees. Sardinia has seen the 122 degrees. The temperature in Rome is also close to 100 degrees. So the rich man in his private jet of yacht is also starting to feel the effects of his actions. The Acropolis in Athens had to close for several days this year. Tourists had to be evacuated to airports from Greek islands. These are not very cheap trips. For many it’s a once in a life-time event. And many of these tourists will probably not return to the Mediterranean in that time of the year again. That’s because things have changed now.
 
So if Elon Musk is thinking to go somewhere with his spaceship or something like that, he might be off the hook. For the rest of them they will come to realize that they are about to become like this rich guy on the Titanic:
 



 

[The Grand Nudger]

I agree that it's an absurd response, but as a short and mid term strategy, it really is going to work. The rich will offload their trouble property on people who still..somehow...believe they're buying into wealth, and buying in cheap. This can swirl the global drain for longer than you or I are likely to live.

[Leonardo17]

I agree that it's an absurd response, but as a short and mid term strategy, it really is going to work.  The rich will offload their trouble property on people who still..somehow...believe they're buying into wealth, and buying in cheap.  This can swirl the global drain for longer than you or I are likely to live.

I agree with you. The more I am reading Greta’s book (or compilation of scientific articles) the more I see that. Big Oil Companies have even scaled their own production methods to the reality of future climate change while paying fake-scientists and politicians to deny the reality of climate change. But current actions / or inaction is moving us quickly toward something around 3 Degrees above temperatures before the industrial revolution. Sometimes people have to see it to believe it. And that’s enormous ego’s we are talking about. Right now they will not be able to spend time with their mistresses on Greek islands or Sardinia either. So they will realize that there is a need to change too.
 
And I am very hopeful of Americans on these issues. The Brits are said to be much educated. If anything has happened in the world recently, they have thought about it, they have already discussed about it, they probably know it. But when it comes to action (Think of Kosovo and Sarajevo in the 90’s for instance), Americans may get it late, but when they get it, they tend to act faster than anyone else (Maybe it’s the legacy of feudalism in the old world, but I think this is true).

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Nope.  You'll die, not them.  That's the point of being rich.  Think of them as preppers, but with money, in a disaster they're continually creating.

 
Maui is rather a place for rich people right? This week the capital of a US State is gone.
 
So this means that things are moving pretty fast now. At least some of the CEO’s of Big Oil companies must have understood by now that things won’t be safe for them either.
 
I’ve checked it a minute ago the average normal temperature in my city this time of the year is 74 degree. The usual maximum temperature is 86 degree. This week we have consecutive days of 104-105 degree. The previous 2-3 week were also above average.
 
Tourists in Southern Europe are now considering to go to these locations in winter. Athens Spain, Sicily, has been well above 104 degrees. Sardinia has seen the 122 degrees. The temperature in Rome is also close to 100 degrees. So the rich man in his private jet of yacht is also starting to feel the effects of his actions. The Acropolis in Athens had to close for several days this year. Tourists had to be evacuated to airports from Greek islands. These are not very cheap trips. For many it’s a once in a life-time event. And many of these tourists will probably not return to the Mediterranean in that time of the year again. That’s because things have changed now.
 
So if Elon Musk is thinking to go somewhere with his spaceship or something like that, he might be off the hook. For the rest of them they will come to realize that they are about to become like this rich guy on the Titanic:
 



 

(Bold mine)

It's not, you know.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

Oh yes, It’s Honolulu. Sorry about that
 

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What I mean is that even Arabs are now investing heavily in Green-Hydrogen, made out of Renewables. They could just keep pushing for even more disinformation / lobbying and fake science to keep their businesses running. But in this decade, Big-oil etc. is also seeing the necessity of energy transition.
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fuel-future-g...26153.html
 
What many people still don’t get is: “Let’s safe the future and let’s maintain our way of life as we did since the 1970’s”. Scientists say this is simply not possible anymore. Our way of moving, our ways of consuming, our means of producing and consuming food, Our ways of urbanization (Ex: All of our cities will need to have green corridors + new type of green-buildings in order to reduce our AC usage in summer months). Everything has to go. There will be a new normal, like the new-normal during the pandemic.
 
And that’s where Big-business is still resisting. A deeper social change is needed and has to happen one way or the other.
 
Also one element that is not mentioned in “The Climate Book” is population. I don’t think we will be able to feed 10 billion individuals on this planet one way or the other. Population has to go back to 4 billion. And I don’t think we need to force people into that. We must actively promote female individual to become self-reliant enough to make decisions about their own bodies instead of being married to some guy and becoming pregnant every year or so.
 
Also: There is like a myriad of solutions, all of them need to be employed and put into practice simultaneously so all of us will end surviving this mess instead of repeating the story of the 4th century AD Mediterranean collapse of civilization all over again. Because, historically it’s not a rare thing for civilizations to simply collapse. But I believe that this time we will be intelligent enough to avoid it
 

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[Leonardo17]

   Another interesting personality I discovered today is the Rolling Stone Journalist Jeff Goodell. He recently wrote a book called “Heat is going to Kill You First”. I’ve added a very interesting Washington Post interview with him below.

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   The main Idea I get is 10 of thousands of people are probably dying every year because of heat. AC usage is not our solution to extreme heat and heat domes. The heat we have already created is already here and will probably last for centuries. Yet, there is a change that is happening. When I was reading about climate change and the Kyoto Protocol in the mid 90’s when I was a teenager, there was this movie featuring Kevin Costner called “Waterworld”. Most people did not even know about the issue and those who did had all sorts of unrealistic / unscientific expectation about the issue.
 
   Some 20 years later, you have to be really ignorant to not know or not care about the issue. + We now know who is trying to slow down or ignore all the drastic changes we need to put into practice right now. Then if we get some sort of miracle tech or something in a decade or two, then we can end up being a specie that has managed to survives a second major climatic event (the first one was in the end of the Pleistocene and the beginning of the Holocene some 12,000 years ago).
 
Also: Heat is turning into a silent murderer now. Poor / homeless people are probably already suffering enormous consequences. I, for instance, did not even exercise last week. I just turned my AC and remained indoors during the biggest part of the day. But I can’t keep from thinking what about these construction worker who are working some 200 meters away from my house? What about farmers? What about cattle? What about plants? We won’t be able to AC them, we won’t be able to AC the seas or the melting glaciers in high altitude areas.
 
So there is no climate extremism anymore and this has turned completely into a “How dare you?” situation

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