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Re:Yes, Haber's life is an example of that irony by Paul+Fernhout · 2015-02-24 02:07 · Score: 1 · on 100 Years of Chemical Weapons

China has been doing it for Millennia; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
"In 1909, American agronomist F.H. King toured China, Korea and Japan, studying traditional fertilization, tillage and general farming practices. He wrote his observations and findings in Farmers of Forty Centuries, Or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan (1911, published shortly after his death by his wife, Carrie Baker King; numerous facsimile reprintings, including Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-43609-8, and Rodale Press, ISBN 0-87857-867-6). King lived in an era preceding synthetic nitrogen fertilizer production and before the use of the internal combustion engine for farm machinery, yet he was profoundly interested in the challenge of farming the same soils in a 'permanent' manner, hence his interest in the agricultural practices of ancient cultures. In recent years, his book became an important organic farming reference."

"Night soil" was part of the answer -- recycling human waste back to the fields. We have modern versions of composting toilets like the Clivus Multrum that can do much the same in a more sanitary way.

Conventional "slow release" fertilizers are generally different than ground up rock dust. See this site for what is possible:
http://remineralize.org/

On micronutrients, most people in agriculture don't understand this, so it is not a surprise you don't either. I'd suggest you read Widdowson's book. It is basic chemistry. Essentially, the clay and organic matter in soil has only so much holding capacity for nutrients released by the slow decay of rocks and the faster decay of organic matter. If you flood that capacity with nitrogenous compounds, statistically you end up with a lot of nitrogen and very little of everything else. There is another process that also goes on related to reducing the soil's holding capacity as the pH drops and clay particles change their electric charge. Thus your plants don't have access to micronutrients they need to make plant defense compounds and so they are weak and sickly and need additional protection like by synthetic pesticides and such. If Haber had spent more time studying agricultural chemistry instead of figuring out how to kill people, he might have learned this and then come up with better solutions. See this diagram on page 11 of Widdowson's book for more details:
http://books.google.com/books?...

Yes, Haber's life is an example of that irony by Paul+Fernhout · 2015-02-23 08:01 · Score: 1 · on 100 Years of Chemical Weapons

Haber created a way to feed billions of people via nitrogen fertilizers(*), but then Haber supports a war based in large part on the idea there is not enough to go around and people need to steal each others land...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Sad to read Haber's first wife, who disapproved of Haber's poison gas work, committed suicide right after the first use of her husband's poison gas in war. Guess when something like that happens you either change or you embrace cognitive dissonance and dig in even further... See:
"Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes...
"Why do people dodge responsibility when things fall apart? Why the parade of public figures unable to own up when they screw up? Why the endless marital quarrels over who is right? Why can we see hypocrisy in others but not in ourselves? Are we all liars? Or do we really believe the stories we tell? Backed by years of research and delivered in lively, energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception -- how it works, the harm it can cause, and how we can overcome it."

(*) This is ignoring we now know ground-up rock dust and legumes etc. can do that too -- see: http://remineralize.org/ Also, excess nitrogen displaces other vital micronutrients which is why organic farming practices using things like slow-acting rock dust produce healthier plants and probably healthier people. See:
"Towards Holistic Agriculture: A Scientific Approach"
http://www.amazon.com/Towards-...
"This book explains the use of an ecological way of farming, with modern practical applications, to make the fullest use of land resources and the best utilization of available capital and labour. In analyzing the vital relationship between soil, plant, animal and man, the author discusses the best care of land itself, its components, grassland management and the most efficient use of crops to maximize yield, food quality and profitability without the extensive use of chemicals and without damaging the ecology. Widdowson also covers the holistic approach to animal farming, the welfare and health of poultry, cattle, sheep and goats, their nutritional needs through the various stages of their lives, and the best way to balance their diets."

That is why I feel the point in my sig is so essential for everyone to understand it the 21st century (although it has always been important, but gets increasingly important as our technology gets increasingly powerful): "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Post-scarcity post-docs? :-) by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-10-09 22:58 · Score: 1 · on Glut of Postdoc Researchers Stirs Quiet Crisis In Science

You might find the intro of this book of interest (just noticed it today) as it talks about the conflict between scarcity and post-scarcity ideas, including market failures and market-based solutions: http://books.google.com/books?...
"Sustainable Growth in a Post-Scarcity World: Consumption, Demand, and the Poverty Penalty -- by Philip Sadler"

IMHO, universities have an implicit moral obligation (including "in loco parentis") to be candid and as accurate as possible with their students about things like career prospects; that they fail to do so as evidenced by this issue is problematical whatever the reasons (including "selection bias" that you only see relatively successful academics working in universities and the advice they give may have worked for them decades ago but may not be very useful either now or for other personality types).

If you look at other countries like in Western Europe, there is not as much of a conflict between being reasonable "successful" in a field and having a family and hobbies and such. Example: http://www.salon.com/2010/08/2...
"Germany's workers have higher productivity, shorter hours and greater quality of life. How did we get it so wrong? ... But even before the recession, American workers were already clocking in the most hours in the West. Compared to our German cousins across the pond, we work 1,804 hours versus their 1,436 hours â" the equivalent of nine extra 40-hour workweeks per year. The Protestant work ethic may have begun in Germany, but it has since evolved to become the American way of life. ... In comparison to the U.S., the Germans live in a socialist idyll. They have six weeks of federally mandated vacation, free university tuition, nursing care, and childcare. ... How did Germany become such a great place to work in the first place? The Allies did it. This whole European model came, to some extent, from the New Deal. Our real history and tradition is what we created in Europe. Occupying Germany after WWII, the 1945 European constitutions, the UN Charter of Human Rights all came from Eleanor Roosevelt and the New Dealers. All of it got worked into the constitutions of Europe and helped shape their social democracies. It came from us. The papal encyclicals on labor, it came from the Americans. ..."

Various studies show that overwork does not make people more productive in the long term. Lots of things suffer -- including creativity. Overwork in the USA is a cultural pathology. BTW, it is also problematical to try to motivate the best creative work via rewards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

As for technological innovation, there is a lot of discussion related to that by people like Langdon Winner and E.F. Schumacher (including related to "appropriate technology"). Just look at how US federal dollars went as subsidies via land grand colleges to big agriculture research vs. small farm research. Why were research funds for decades going into ever bigger mechanized harvesting operations and related plant varieties (the tasteless tomato) instead of multi-purpose flexible agricultural robotics useful for small farms and heirloom seeds? Why is funding "Seed Savers" heirloom seed production (seeds with a variety of natural resistance and good nutrition) or remineralizing US soils via ground up rock dust not one of the USA's top defense priorities vs. defending long supply lines of imported oil used to create monocultures propped up in dead soil doused in petro-chemical-derived synthetic fertilizers and pesticides?
http://www.seedsavers.org/
http://remineralize.org/

Markets may be good at producing certain types of abundance, but in the absence of political oversight, markets are pro

Square foot gardening is the rebuttal by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-08-20 01:38 · Score: 1 · on FarmBot: an Open Source Automated Farming Machine

Other styles of farming whether square foot gardening or indoor hydroponics can be much more productive per acre than big field farming with tractors, but they are *labor* and *knowledge* intensive. Robotics (or other automation) make greater yields per square foot much more achievable more cheaply. That also makes vertical farming in cities more feasible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.motherearthnews.com...
http://www.verticalfarm.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

See especially:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
"A 2010 study published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems showed that biointensive methods resulted in significantly increased production and a reduction of energy use when compared with conventional agriculture (Moore, S.R., 2010, Energy efficiency in smallâscale biointensive organic onion production in Pennsylvania, USA, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, 25:3, pp. 181â188). This study states that "Current mechanized agriculture has an energy efficiency ratio of 0.9 ... energy efficiency for biointensive production of onions in our study was over 50 times higher than this value (51.5), and 83% of the total energy required is renewable energy."

The fact that many people have inefficient backyard gardens does not mean that people could not have very productive gardens if they knew more and had more time for them. Biosphere II was a good example of intensive food production in a small space.

See also books on "Survival Gardening".
http://theprepperproject.com/s...

The best one I've seen (by that name, by John Freeman) is not mentioned there though:
http://www.amazon.com/Survival...

Don't know about this new one by someone else:
http://www.amazon.com/Survival...

Granted, that is mostly about organic vegetables and beans. Grains may be a somewhat different issue, but they are already heavily automated in many ways. But as Dr. Fuhrman suggests, eating more fruits and vegetables is healthier than eating more grains (especially refined grains).

You should not discount that gardening in the sunshine can be good health-promoting exercise. It saves money indirectly by displacing other less healthy recreational activities like shopping for the next unneeded consumer item.

BTW, we can grind up rock to get good fertilizer for relatively cheap, especially if powered by excess renewable energy:
http://remineralize.org/

By this estimate by economist Julian Simon, there is plenty of opportunities for growing lots more food if we want to:
http://www.juliansimon.com/wri...

General purpose agricultural robotics makes intensive gardening so much more feasible to do on a small local scale... Still, highly-automated indoor agriculture powered by cheap energy is probably more the future of food production because it is so much more predictable.

And make your own rock dust & farm indoors by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-05-13 14:51 · Score: 1 · on What Caused a 1300-Year Deep Freeze?

http://remineralize.org/
"Better soil, better food, better planet.... We see a future of thriving farms and gardens producing healthy, nutrient-dense food in great abundance. We see exuberant forests returned to a state of grandeur not seen in centuries, silently sequestering the carbon dioxide that so threatens our planet today. We see a stable climate and a cleaner, healthier environment. We see all of this being possible through the simple and effective process of soil remineralization."

Indoor agriculture is also becoming more feasible with LED lighting -- and perhaps someday soon hot or cold fusion power. Example (but from a vendor of related technology, so no-doubt biased):
http://www.terraspheresystems....
"One such indoor farm opened in September in Vancouver, growing lettuce and spinach inside an 8,000-square-foot warehouse using a hydroponic system that replaces dirt and weather with peat moss plugs and circulated water. High-efficiency LED lighting hits plants grown on stacked shelves. ... Despommier says a stacked hydroponic operation might yield about 64 heads of lettuce per square foot annually, compared to about three heads at a traditional outside farm. ... Cityscape CEO Mike Yohay predicts that by eliminating transportation costs and fertilizer, a 10,000-square-foot greenhouse could produce $500,000 in profit and 20 to 30 tons of food a year for local supermarkets and corporate cafeterias."

User ground-up rock dust "remineralize" soil by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-04-27 09:02 · Score: 3, Informative · on Bill Gates & Twitter Founders Put "Meatless" Meat To the Test

http://remineralize.org/
"Better soil, better food, better planet.... We see a future of thriving farms and gardens producing healthy, nutrient-dense food in great abundance. We see exuberant forests returned to a state of grandeur not seen in centuries, silently sequestering the carbon dioxide that so threatens our planet today. We see a stable climate and a cleaner, healthier environment. We see all of this being possible through the simple and effective process of soil remineralization."

You are right that much of today's organic industry has become co-dependent on conventional livestock farms to use the manure for fertilizer to make up for what is removed from the soil. And returning human waste back to the soil has not proven that workable in the USA because sewage sludge is often contaminated with heavy metals or prescription drugs.That is a big difference from the "Farmers Of Forty Centuries" in China with cleaner sewage back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

From: http://remineralize.org/histor...
----
Benefits of Remineralization
* Provides slow, natural release of elements and trace minerals.
* Increases the nutrient intake of plants.
* Increases yields and gives higher brix reading.
* Rebalances soil pH.
* Increases earthworm activity and the growth of microorganisms.
* Builds humus complex.
* Prevents soil erosion.
* Increases the storage capacity of the soil.
* Increases resistance to insects, disease, frost, and drought.
* Produces more nutritious crops.
* Enhances flavor in crops.
* Decreases dependence on fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
Soil Remineralization (SR) creates fertile soils by returning minerals to the soil in much the same way that the Earth does: during an Ice Age, glaciers crush rock onto the Earth's soil mantle, and winds blow the dust in the form of loess all over the globe. Volcanoes erupt, spewing forth minerals from deep within the Earth, and rushing rivers form mineral-rich alluvial deposits.
Within silicate rocks is a broad spectrum of up to one hundred minerals and trace elements necessary for the well-being of all life and the creation of fertile soils. Glacial moraine or mixtures of single rock types can be applied to soils to create a sustainable and superior alternative to the use of ultimately harmful chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
SR has been shown in scientific studies to achieve fourfold increases in agricultural and forestry (wood volume) yields and to produce both immediate and long-term benefits from a single application.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of appropriate rock dust for soil and forest regeneration are stockpiled by the gravel and stone industry.
---

I hope more people learn about this.

On the topic of this article on meat alternatives, about seventeen years ago I wrote a letter to a person I had met who was trying to raise fund for some kind of recreational complex in Des Moines, Iowa. His family was a producer of equipment for meat grinding. Inspired by the work of Jon Robbins and "Diet for a New America" and EarthSave back then, I suggested in the letter he consider adapting the technology to make meat substitutes, which I told him was a growing industry. Never heard back from him. See also:
http://johnrobbins.info/

Glad to see peop

User ground-up rock dust "remineralize" soil by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-04-27 09:02 · Score: 3, Informative · on Bill Gates & Twitter Founders Put "Meatless" Meat To the Test

http://remineralize.org/
"Better soil, better food, better planet.... We see a future of thriving farms and gardens producing healthy, nutrient-dense food in great abundance. We see exuberant forests returned to a state of grandeur not seen in centuries, silently sequestering the carbon dioxide that so threatens our planet today. We see a stable climate and a cleaner, healthier environment. We see all of this being possible through the simple and effective process of soil remineralization."

You are right that much of today's organic industry has become co-dependent on conventional livestock farms to use the manure for fertilizer to make up for what is removed from the soil. And returning human waste back to the soil has not proven that workable in the USA because sewage sludge is often contaminated with heavy metals or prescription drugs.That is a big difference from the "Farmers Of Forty Centuries" in China with cleaner sewage back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

From: http://remineralize.org/histor...
----
Benefits of Remineralization
* Provides slow, natural release of elements and trace minerals.
* Increases the nutrient intake of plants.
* Increases yields and gives higher brix reading.
* Rebalances soil pH.
* Increases earthworm activity and the growth of microorganisms.
* Builds humus complex.
* Prevents soil erosion.
* Increases the storage capacity of the soil.
* Increases resistance to insects, disease, frost, and drought.
* Produces more nutritious crops.
* Enhances flavor in crops.
* Decreases dependence on fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
Soil Remineralization (SR) creates fertile soils by returning minerals to the soil in much the same way that the Earth does: during an Ice Age, glaciers crush rock onto the Earth's soil mantle, and winds blow the dust in the form of loess all over the globe. Volcanoes erupt, spewing forth minerals from deep within the Earth, and rushing rivers form mineral-rich alluvial deposits.
Within silicate rocks is a broad spectrum of up to one hundred minerals and trace elements necessary for the well-being of all life and the creation of fertile soils. Glacial moraine or mixtures of single rock types can be applied to soils to create a sustainable and superior alternative to the use of ultimately harmful chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides.
SR has been shown in scientific studies to achieve fourfold increases in agricultural and forestry (wood volume) yields and to produce both immediate and long-term benefits from a single application.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of appropriate rock dust for soil and forest regeneration are stockpiled by the gravel and stone industry.
---

I hope more people learn about this.

On the topic of this article on meat alternatives, about seventeen years ago I wrote a letter to a person I had met who was trying to raise fund for some kind of recreational complex in Des Moines, Iowa. His family was a producer of equipment for meat grinding. Inspired by the work of Jon Robbins and "Diet for a New America" and EarthSave back then, I suggested in the letter he consider adapting the technology to make meat substitutes, which I told him was a growing industry. Never heard back from him. See also:
http://johnrobbins.info/

Glad to see peop

Carbon from soil erosion may be underconsidered by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-04-12 10:58 · Score: 0 · on Study Rules Out Global Warming Being a Natural Fluctuation With 99% Certainty

The US great plains over the last two hundred years in some places went from two feet or more of topsoil covered with with Prairie grass, Native Americans, and Buffalo to now more like six inches of topsoil mostly due to atrocious soil farming practices by the European invaders more akin to strip mining than stewardship. That is a lot of carbon loss.
http://bigprairieprepress.com/...
"The farming practices of early settlers caused erosion of the topsoil. By the late 1870's the topsoil had vanished in the center of the prairie and the settlers who farmed there moved out to its edges. This was the beginning of the process that would create the Big Prairie Desert. This pattern of land use, dry conditions and soil erosion is what caused the dust bowl that was begining at about the same time in states further west."

Related (although perhaps an underestimate of the total loss):
http://boingboing.net/2011/05/...
"These pillars --- located outside a rest area off Highway 80 in Adair County, Iowa -- represent the topsoil Iowa has lost since large-scale farming began 150 years ago. In the 19th century, Iowa had 14-16 inches of topsoil. Today, it has just 6-8 inches of the stuff, and more is being lost all the time. The irony: The very farms that are depleting the topsoil desperately need it, too. "

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/inde...
"Although the figure is frequently being revised upwards with new discoveries, over 2,700 Gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon is stored in soils worldwide, which is well above the combined total of atmosphere (780 Gt) or biomass (575 Gt), most of which is wood. Carbon is taken out of the atmosphere by plant photosynthesis; about 60 Gt annually is incorporated into various types of soil organic matter (SOM) including surface litter; about 60 Gt annually is respired or oxidized from soil.[2] "

So, three-quarters of more of the carbon-rich top soil of the center of an entire continent (North America) was lost, much of it a century ago. That I think may help explain some global climate changes even more than recent fossil fuel use.

From:
http://people.oregonstate.edu/...
"When we lose soil, we are losing a resource that is, for practical purposes and human timespans, essentially non-renewable. An inch of soil takes between 200 - 1000 years to form, yet it can be swept away in a few seasons."

Ways to create topsoil faster included organic farming (focusing on adding organic matter to the soil) and remineralization from ground-up rock dust.
http://remineralize.org/

Still, maybe without all the extra carbon in the air we'd already be in another mini ice age?

Robots increasingly help with manual labor by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-03-17 10:32 · Score: 1 · on Conservation Communities Takes Root Across US

http://robohub.org/tag/agricul...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
http://www.ieee-ras.org/agricu...

Indoors agricultural is also rising, given cheaper energy costs for LED lighting and more consistent results in controlled environments...

Yes, hunting/gatherering in a large home range is easier than pre-modern century farming styles, which seem to have only increased because of increasing population densities and tribes pushes to marginal lands or smaller lands.
http://www.primitivism.com/ori...

Anyway, I applaud the trend in the original article. Of course, living next to a farm can pose health challenges (like from contaminated ground water) depending on what pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and fertilizers are used (even "organic" ones).

If you look at the "Biosphere II" project, or similar intensive agricultural projects (as in the book "Survival Gardening") it looks like a few people per acre can be supported with intensive methods in favorable climates, especially if you grow a lot of beans and return sterilized human manure to the land..
http://www.permies.com/t/12422...
"It is realistic to suppose that the absolute minimum of arable land to support one person is a mere 0.07 of a hectare -- and this assumes a largely vegetarian diet, no land degradation or water shortages, virtually no post-harvest waste, and farmers who know precisely when and how to plant, fertilize, irrigate, etc. [FAO, 1993] "

Intensive agriculture is knowledge intensive though, even if robots might mean it would not be so labor intensive. But no doubt eventually we will see plug-in (or cold fusion-powered) containers that have seeds and lights and robots in them and just output food given water and some other inputs. But it won't be as picturesque as a diversified semi-hobby organic farm. But it might not be as unsightly as, say, parts of Iowa where much of year the devastated industrialized farmland looks like a moonscape, and the soil is essentially only used to prop up the plants, only ~10% of calories per acre is created compared to intensive practices, and most of the result is fed to animals where ~90% of the calories are wasted relative to human consumption (so, only ~1% efficient overall compared to intensive cultivation of vegetarian foods, in round numbers).

Info on sustainable farming practices:
"Towards holistic agriculture: a scientific approach" by R. W. Widdowson"
http://books.google.com/books/...

And: http://remineralize.org/

And on economics:
http://www.juliansimon.com/wri...
"Of course an increase in consumption imposes costs in the short
run. But in the long run, population pressure reduces costs as
well as improves the food supply in accord with the general theory,
which I'll repeat again: More people, and increased income, cause
problems of increased scarcity of resources in the short run.
Heightened scarcity causes prices to rise. The higher prices
present opportunity, and prompt inventors and entrepreneurs to
search for solutions. Many fail, at cost to themselves. But in a
free society, solutions are eventually found. And in the long run
the new developments leave us better off than if the problems had
not arisen. That is, prices end up lower than before the increased
scarcity occurred, which is the long-run history of food supply.
Some people wonder whether we can be sure that food production
will increase, and whether it would be "safer" to

Night Soil and beyond by Paul+Fernhout · 2014-02-03 01:38 · Score: 1 · on Researchers Try To "Close the Nutrient Cycle" Through Better Waste Recycling

Yes, especially in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

Which is part of how they have been "Farmers of 40 Centuries": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

I've been interested in this from the point of view of space colonies. Biosphere II did this:
http://www.janepoynter.com/doc...
http://www.globalecotechnics.c...
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11...
http://b2science.org/news/1453
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

As did John Todd at Ocean Arks commercially for towns needing sewage treatment:
http://www.oceanarksint.org/in...

Here is another idea though, grinding up rock to make fertilizer, to mimic the way land around volcanoes remains fertile from the volcanic ash:
http://remineralize.org/

More people mean more solutions; eat less meat by Paul+Fernhout · 2013-01-04 16:51 · Score: 1 · on Anti-GMO Activist Recants

It's true that people take up space and use up resources. But they also create spaces worth being in and produce resources. Also, the more people we have, the more innovation we have. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

Most of the USA's land and about half its water goes to livestock agriculture. The livestock runoff then pollutes most of the other half. See:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://www.ravediet.com/

While a small amount of clean organic naturally-fed unprocessed meat (especially fish before mercury and dioxin polluted them) may be healthy in a diet, the quantities and types of animal product most US Americans are eating are part of why US health is so poor.
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx

On Earth, we could reduce water consumption by growing vegetables indoors. But in any case, we can always condense fresh water out of the air or distill it from the oceans if we have cheap energy, which we will get soon from cheap solar panels (and maybe cheap hot or cold fusion soon). The more people, the sooner we will get those innovation breakthroughs.

Since the Solar System could support quadrillions of people living in style in space habitats, even if one was to argue the Earth was overpopulated, even limited agricultural land is no reason to limit human population growth any time soon, even if one might suggest an aesthetic limit on the Earth perhaps, like putting an occupancy limit on a restaurant in a city.

The repentant anti-GMO activist is wrong on the need for GMOs, because GMOs (even if safe) are solving the wrong problem. To begin with, people starve or are malnourished for economic reasons that could be solved with a global "basic income". The market does not hear the needs of people without money, so the simplest solution to malnutrition is to give people money so the market will listen to their needs. Yes, this requires some level of social consensus leading to enforced redistribution of resources. Frances Moore Lappe and others explains why less people does not mean less starvation.
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/food-theres-lots-it
http://windward.hawaii.edu/facstaff/dagrossa-p/articles/WhyCantPeopleFeedThemselves.pdf
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html

Although a semi-rebuttal to Lappe that ignores distribution issues:
http://www.hoodrivernews.com/news/2002/sep/18/lappe-response-think-locally-starve-globally/

Agricultural robotics (including for the home gardener) and solar panels are going to change the face of agriculture over the next twenty years to produce lots of food for all, if we want that future:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

We do not need GMO crops to feed the planet. What we need is to do things like grind up rocks to make cheap organic fertilizer:
http://remineralize.org/

And then we need a space program. And we need to be better stewards of the oceans (rather than overfish because our economic systems are broken in that sense).

The current focus on plant breeding, whether GMO or conventional, has produced monocultures of crops that are dependent on s

Re:Why Albert Bartlett and William Catton are wron by Paul+Fernhout · 2012-06-09 08:42 · Score: 1 · on Earth Approaching Tipping Point Say Scientists

"What have we 'fixed' so far, anywhere, on a scale comparable with the destruction we have caused? What is the technological answer to Sahara, which was turned into a desert thousands of years ago?"

Pennsylvania used to have rivers that caught fire. Now they are much cleaner. The air is many places in the USA is cleaner from regulation of car exhaust. In general, North America has been reforesting over the last century now that most people no longer burn wood for heat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforestation#Examples

Some fisheries in the oceans have been protected and started to recover. Nature can rebound very quickly when given the chance, which given so many people live in cities in mainly a political issue at this point.

Right now, about half the land in the USA goes to raise grains to feed to livestock in factory farms, producing meat that overall is probably shortening our lives (see Dr. Joel Fuhrman's website, the Rave Diet site, etc.). If we started eating more vegetables, we'd free up plenty of land for wilderness (half the USA) and be much healthier. So, both lifestyle and technology affect carrying capacity for humans on the Earth.

To reforest the Sahara might be a big project, but it is not clear that desertification is entirely human-caused, and it may relate more to global climate changes in thousand long year cycles. But, in any case, the way nature makes fertile soil is to weather rock, so we can grind up rock and spread it as slow acting fertilizer. Then we need to protect the appropriate succession of plants and make sure they have water until they change their climate to be water attracting. See the real:
http://remineralize.org/
And the fictional:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees

However, global warming will turn Canada and Siberia into much more diverse biological areas eventually, so there are both good points and bad points about climate change. Overall, plants grow better with more CO2. The issue is more how to deal politically with the externality that, after lots of burning of fossil fuels by the USA and other industrialized countries, some people living on islands or in coastal areas or in areas with more storms will suffer, while people living in Canada and Siberia may end up much better off. That is a deep political question for a world with no unified government and no unified economic model that can account for externalities.

There are many solutions to environmental problems. Whether we decide to implement them is mainly a moral social choice about priorities (and to a lesser extent an issue of education that alternatives exists or imaginatively coming up with even better ones).

For example, how can we run out of metals on the Earth? Where do you think metals go after they are used? Why can't we just recycle them? Yes, it takes energy to mine landfills, but the universe if full of energy, with a vast amount reaching the Earth's surface every day from the sun, and with people even working on ways to tap into fusion energy or the zero-point energy of the quantum vacuum. Also, btw, right now I've heard the US automotive industry is a net producer of metal, as people switch to smaller cars and cars with more carbon fiber and plastic.

Other ideas include "Plan B" by Lester Brown:
http://environment.about.com/od/activismvolunteering/a/lesterbrown.htm

The big problem is that by claiming there are no solutions, you are contributing to a climate of negativism that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if people start fighting over perceived scarcity rather than create more abundance for all with the same technology. There are plenty of solutions. The issue is just whether we implement them (or put our minds to imagining even better solutions).

Remineralizing African soils by Paul+Fernhout · 2012-03-31 09:38 · Score: 1 · on Ask Slashdot: How To Feed Africa?

To be fertile, soil also needs micronutrients held by the clay and organic matter; see:
"Towards Holistic Agriculture: A Scientific Approach" by R.W. Widdowson
http://www.amazon.com/Towards-Holistic-Agriculture-Scientific-Approach/dp/0080342116

You can also see ideas about high nutrient gardening here:
http://www.squarefootgardening.com/

See also, for the natural way to get such soil:
http://www.kidsgeo.com/geology-for-kids/0052-volcanoes-and-plant-life.php
"While it is true that the immediate effect of volcanoes on plant life is death, the long term effect is very positive. Magma from the Earth’s core contains a rich source of nutrients that plants need to survive. Each time a volcano erupts, it brings these nutrients with it. When volcanoes explode, spreading ash around a large area, this ash acts as a fertilizer, enriching the soil. It is no surprise that the soil near volcanoes is among the richest and most fertile on Earth."

We can reproduce that effect by simply grinding up appropriate rocks:
http://www.remineralize.org/
"Remineralize the Earth is a nonprofit organization assisting the worldwide movement of remineralizing soils with finely ground rock dust, sea minerals and other natural and sustainable means to increase the growth, health, and nutrient value of all plant life. Adding minerals and trace elements is vital to the creation of fertile soils, healthy crops and forests, and is a key strategy to stabilize the climate."

See the pictures there for what vegetables are supposed to look like when raised on truly fertile soil.

I agree with you though that much energy that could go into solving problems gets ironically dissipated in fighting -- often just over the problems that energy otherwise could solve if applied imaginatively. See also the section on "What Are The Limits on Food Production?" In "The Ultimate Resource II: People, Materials, and Environment" by Julian Simon:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

An important reason Africa is such a mess politically is from the legacy of European colonization though (although that is not the only reason):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonisation_of_Africa

Re:Space habitats and abundance by Paul+Fernhout · 2012-03-21 13:55 · Score: 1 · on Surviving the Cashless Cataclysm

"Practical cold fusion, or anything that delivers on the promises of cold fusion, would nail it."

On cold fusion, see:
http://www.e-catworld.com/2012/03/dr-george-miley-to-present-on-lenr-at-march-23-conference-will-awareness-of-new-energy-source-spread/
http://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=522

The Widom-Larsen idea is that strange things happen at the surface of metals, where protons and electrons can become slow neutrons which then are absorbed which leads to conventional radioactive decay.

Or on solar panels, a commend by the director of GE's research lab:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

In theory, to have space habitats, all we really need to do is launch one robotic seed factory to the moon, and then have it make all the space craft and habitats there. No need for CO2. And rising CO2 is really the least of our problems as a species -- it may already have forestalled another ice age we are due for. Much of it may have come from topsoil depletion by bad farming practices, too. That is solveable with relatively small amounts of energy and materials like so by grinding up rock: http://remineralize.org/

A little idea sketch I made about three years ago of what it would take to evacuate all humans from the Earth into space habitats:
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004037.html
"Current launch costs are about US$10,000 a pound. People on starvation diets might weigh about 100 pounds. So, that's about US$1 million per person for launch costs using today's technology in small production runs. I feel it reasonable to assume that if we were going to launch billions of people into space, launch costs would come down by at least a factor of ten to US$100K per person, considering how people are already talking about such lower costs, and the actual energy to lift someone into space if you can do it really efficiently (space elevator) is maybe US$200 worth of electricity ... So, seven billion people soon, minus a few doomsters, times US$100K per person, is US$700 trillion. The world GDP is about US$60 trillion, so, in round numbers, this is about ten years of world economic output to put everyone into space. We can assume that with these self-replicating space habitat seeds that an entire space infrastructure is being prepared for free from sunlight and lunar ore and asteroidal ore (though it might take some time to produce it on an exponential growth curve). So, we only need to get people into low Earth orbit and shuttles can ferry people without luggage beyond low Earth orbit to a life of abundance produced with resources from space. Also, since we're evacuating the entire planet to leave it as a nature park, we don't need to do any upkeep on infrastructure as it is all abandoned. So, we can devote close to 100% of the industrial base to producing rockets. Also, people in space can still provide services to Earth like telemedicine or teleoperating mining equipment and launch control, so essential services can be kept going the whole time even as the last person goes on the last rocket (except the doomsters who want to stay :-)."

Of course, we could ask, how many times has this been done before over the last few billion years? :-)

Thanks for your other comment too (which this kind of addresses in part as well). Good luck with your robotics work. Robots could be a boon instead of a bane as long as we adjust our economy to a post-scarcity model. One example I put together:
"The Riches

Re:Efficiency? by Paul+Fernhout · 2012-03-09 23:10 · Score: 3, Insightful · on Nanowire Forests Use Sunlight To Split Water

Why not use the wind energy to make hydrogen, and store the hydrogen (as a gas, as a liquid, or in metal hydrides)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage

Or why not use the wind to make compressed air, and store the compressed air?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_air_energy_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy

Or why not use the wind to charge batteries?
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/ProgramsProjects/GRIDS/ARobustandInexpensiveIronAirRechargeableBat.aspx

Or why not use the wind to heat up molten salts, and use a steam turbine to make power? Solar does it, but so could wind:
http://grist.org/solar-power/2011-07-05-groundbreaking-solar-plant-in-spain-generates-24-hours-of-power/

Or why not use the wind energy to produce liquid synthetic fuels from carbon from the air?
http://www.staxera.de/announcement.105+M5320325207d.0.html?&L=1

Or why not use the wind energy to run energy-intensive industrial processes that can run intermittently (like grinding up rocks for fertilizer or chilling nitrogen out of the air)? And so on.
http://www.remineralize.org/

There are solutions for the lack of buffers for renewable energy. Put them all together, and you have a way to use wind.

That said, LENR and cheap solar panels seem more likely to succeed, one because it is compact (if it really works) and the other because it has now moving parts and requires little maintenance.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/01/15/0226219/can-nasa-warm-cold-fusion
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

"A Road Not Taken: Solar Panels, Jimmy Carter, and Missed Opportunities for Change "
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/06/a-road-not-taken-solar-panels-jimmy-carter-and-missed-opportunities-for-change
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2010/09/obama-no-thanks-to-carter-solar-panels

The true cost of fossil fuels:
http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/true-cost-fossil-fuels.html
"For decades now, fossil fuel company executives and D.C. politicians have worked together to ensure that coal and oil prices stay low enough to keep the American people hooked. In his new book Greedy Bastards, Dylan Ratigan explains how "vampire industries" like oil and coal have forged "an unholy alliance with government based not just on the money that they contribute to political campaigns and spend on lobbying but on their ability to hypnotize us with false prices." Industry gets tax breaks, subsidies, military support in volatile regions, the right to use our air and water like a sewer, and assurance that the government will clean up its environmental messes. Politicians get campaign contributions, a steady flow of dirty energy, and a talking point to brandish about how they kept gas affordable. But the Ame

Re:Storm... by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-11-30 07:09 · Score: 1 · on 'Alternative Medicine' Clinic Attempts To Silence Critics

You could check out a list of studies on this page:
http://www.ota.com/organic/benefits/nutrition.html
"Growing crops in healthy soils results in food products that offer healthy nutrients. There is mounting evidence that organically grown fruits, vegetables and grains may offer more of some nutrients, including vitamin C, iron, magnesium and phosphorus, and less exposure to nitrates and pesticide residues than their counterparts grown using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers."

It kind of stands to reason that richer soil means healthier crops:
http://www.remineralize.org/

Actually, getting a bit of insect damage can also improve a plant's nutritional qualities sometimes (certain plant defense compounds may be used by the human body for various purposes including fighting cancer).

While "organic" is a bit arbitrary ("certified organic" means following certain guidelines though), organic generally means no GMO, which can be beneficial.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/corn-study.cfm
"Consumers have another reason to avoid genetically modified foods (GMO). Yesterday, European news outlets reported harmful health impacts on lab rats that were fed Monsanto's root worm resistant corn (Mon 863)."

But in general, you're better off eating any kind of vegetables than none, so don't let them not being "organic" stop you.

And people can rightly point to aspects of "organic" farming that are problematical too. It becomes a weighing thing of different tradeoffs.

Other factors can also effect nutrient quality of organic or non-organic produce, like shipping or choice of variety.

The point is that what we eat, especially vegetables, fruits, and beans, can have a tremendous effect on our health.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/
"You can reverse disease, reduce high blood pressure, lose unwanted weight, lower your cholesterol levels, prevent heart disease and cancer, and improve your health - all without relying on drugs and fad diets. The importance of good nutrition is emphasized in Dr. Fuhrman's dietary program, Eat To Live."

But our agricultural subsidies in the USA don't reflect that, and instead promote factory farmed animal products and processed grains.

Peak Population crisis? by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-10-24 09:35 · Score: 1 · on Earth Officially Home To 7 Billion Humans

As I suggest here, the solar system does not have enough people: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

As Julian Simon suggests, the more people, the more creative ideas:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

How else would we get the idea to grind up rock to fertilize soil?
http://www.remineralize.org/

Or to make solar power cheaper than coal?
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/

Or to invent the computer mouse?
http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/vision-highlights.html

Or to create terrific participatory democracies?
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/08/25/german_usa_working_life_ext2010

Or to move beyond war by thinking better?
http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
http://www.anwot.org/

Or maybe even to have cold fusion?
http://pesn.com/2011/09/14/9501913_Rossis_One_Megawatt_Reactor_Gets_A_New_E-Cat_Model/

The human imagination (empowered by education and health and access to basic resources) is indeed the ultimate resource.

Re:Currently... by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-10-18 00:18 · Score: 1 · on What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years?

"Obviously, in China, young people carry their old people like burdens while they're trying to manage their own families. That's not so great, either."

When people have six kids or so, it is not as much of a burden when the kids carry the elderly. Part of the problem is we are experiencing a "Peak Population" crisis.
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html

But Japan aims to solve that with robotics...

Thanks for being part of making the 1980s happen!

My wife and our little "labor of love" venture in the 1990s:
http://www.gardenwithinsight.com/

Sorry about your loss.

Health tips by me, the most important of which for most technology people is curing vitamin D deficiency (and which I could only learn about by hypertext-supporting networks and Google):
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2478380&cid=37734208

There are plenty of resources to go around though, especially when you consider we could support quadrillions of people in space habitats in the solar system. But some causes for optimism:
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/dpg/slim.cfm

And maybe even:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/

If we had any real resource problems, why are so many people out of work? :-)

Real solutions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#

The human imagination is truly the "ultimate resource", so the more the merrier IMHO: :-)
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

You've of course read "True Names" no doubt about what an older woman is up to on the net: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names

Re:crowded and hungry planet (not) by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-10-17 09:59 · Score: 1 · on What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years?

Right now about 50% of US land goes to produce animal products which are overall killing us with bad fats:
http://www.westernwatersheds.org/watmess/watmess_2002/2002html_summer/article6.htm
http://peakperformance.runnersworld.com/2011/05/may-9-the-great-fat-debate-does-the-total-fat-in-your-diet-matter.html
http://nutsci.org/2011/05/04/the-great-fat-debate/
http://www.adajournal.org/article/S0002-8223(11)00291-4/fulltext
http://www.ravediet.com/preview.html
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/

And we can always grow food indoors using cheap energy and rock dust:
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR06.txt
"Why is the Food Outlook Made to Seem Gloomy?"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2011/10/17/hello-cheap-energy-hello-brave-new-world/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

In general, people living longer is not going to have as much effect on the population as how many kids people have -- and that amount is falling with industrialization; in Italy, every woman has about 1.2 kids but would need to have 2.1 kids to keep the population from declining. The entire industrialized world has this problem (but not as bad as Italy in most places).

Just think of all the people around to pass on wisdom to the next generation.

Baloney; see Julian Simon, Space, LENR, Solar, etc by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-06-08 12:54 · Score: 1 · on Have We Reached Maximum Sustainable Population Size?

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
http://www.remineralize.org/

Lots more if anyone looks..

Re:See also "The War on Kids" by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-06-04 03:07 · Score: 1 · on School Super Asks Governor To Make His School District a Prison

"When fossil fuels are exhausted, there may be a mass die-off event within the human species, due to the massive reduction in possible food production and transportation. "

Baloney. Who is feeding this to you? Why? Who profits from your fear?

We have centuries of coal (but it is polluting). Thorium can power our civilization for thousands of years. We have an effectively infinite supply of solar energy. People are working on zero-emissions manufacturing. We can grind up rock to make fertilizer. And so on.

References off the top of my head:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
http://nanosolar.com/nanosolar-technology-overview
http://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/993314-thorium-reactor-talk-at-ted/
http://www.nist.gov/el/msid/dpg/slim.cfm
http://www.remineralize.org/

We may even have cold fusion thanks to one of the many people you perhaps wish was never born as he took up to many resources?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer

Who has infested your mind to what end with so much negativism so that you are less likely to have kids? Who is making money off of that? Are there much uglier imperatives at work in the people who tell you this? Example:
"The Greening of Hate"
http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005/09/106-greening-of-hate.html

Did the world end when we went through "Peak Whale Oil" a century or so ago? You're still here, right?

Now, we may still blow ourselves up fighting over mis-perceived scarcity. But that is a different problem.

Resources do not exist before the human imagination looks at the universe and turns things into resources. Otherwise, say, we would not have aluminum, produced because some imaginative people figured out how. We would not have solar panels without people figuring out how to make them. And so on.

Here is a quick comparison of the beliefs of say, William R. Catton (who wrote "Overshoot") and Julian L. Simon (who wrote "The Ultimate Resource").

Catton:
* People are the problem
* People consume resources
* People take up space leading to overcrowding
* There is a fixed amount of material resources on the Earth

Thus he predicts (with some glee?) a big die-off.

Simon:
* People are the solution
* People produce resources
* People create spaces worth being in
* The human imagination creates new resources

Now, there is truth to what both of these authors say. But ultimately, you can decide for yourself which path leaning more to one or the other is more likely to produce a future more worth living in, given the truth about solar power, thorium power, grinding up rock, and so on.

Our electricity and natural gas consumption might even go down if we switched to electric cars, by the way:
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"To extract one gallon of gasoline (or equivalent distillate): 9.66 kWh (maybe not all in the form of electricity*)
To refine that gallon: 2.73 kWh additional energy (maybe not all in the form of electricity*)
Total: 12.39 kWh per gallon.
*Roughly one-third of the energy content of a gallon of gasoline produced from California wells is input from natural gas. Less than 2/3's is net energy (probably a lot less!).
So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 30

Re:We have very different definitions of "natural" by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-05-30 06:44 · Score: 1 · on Activists Destroy Scientific GMO Experiment

"I don't even know how an effect like the one you describe could be produced. "

Well, at least I'm glad you are a bit curious about what you don't know yet.

Plants of a given leaf area have a fixed amount of energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil (including water). They can either invest that in plant defense compounds or they can invest that in producing filling-to-humans but unhealthy-to-humans-in-excess starch and sugar. Some of these plant defense compunds seem essential to human health as antioxidants as we have adapted to use them to our benefit, plants without them are less nutritious to eat, but this is not obvious in the short term usually, just when you get cancer etc... Plants have been altered to have less investment in plant defense compounds, which the pesticides substitute for, and invest more in starch and/or sugar which sells well in the (ignorant-by-design-and-schooling) market. Such plants may also have weaker root systems as they expect to be drenched in synthetic fertilizer. So, take away the pesticides and fertilizer from modern GMO plants (or even many no GMO hybrids) and they do much worse that heirloom varieties (even as they may outproduce them in starch and sugar under the right circumstances).

See also:
"Towards Holistic Agriculture: A Scientific Approach" by R.W. Widdowson
http://www.amazon.com/Towards-Holistic-Agriculture-Scientific-Approach/dp/0080342116

By the way, grinding up rock for fetilizer works well and produces healthy big plants:
http://remineralize.org/

The Ulitmate Resource by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-04-17 14:39 · Score: 2 · on What Happened To the Climate Refugees?

The Earth gets something like 10000X times more energy every day than we use that day in our civlization.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

So what is the problem you are so worried about? There is room for quadrillions of people living in space habitats in the solar system, too. Why be such a doomster? Renewable energy is now close to the price of fossil fuels, but without the environmental costs (where fossil fuel companies privatize short-term profits and socialize long-term costs). We mainly have social problems, not technical ones. See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource

Have you really studied the technical possiblities for making the world work for everyone, and further, making the solar system work for quadrillions of people? We do have some big problems, but we have billions of people to help solve them. It's problematical to on the one hand say humans are a geological force and then on the other to deny that such a powerful force could be used to some benefit if we had the social will to do so. Thin film solar, wind generators, moving away from meat consumption, grinding up rocks for fertilizer, and maybe even cold fusion, are all parts of the solutions.
http://remineralize.org/
http://www.nanosolar.com/company/blog#177
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/

It is people who have used their creativity to come up with those sorts of ideas...

Re:Citation needed for skepticism about renewables by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-03-16 11:53 · Score: 1 · on Robert X Cringely Predicts More Mininuke Plants

"Solar and wind will never be able to reliably provide base load capacity."

Citation needed. I pointed to several technologies to smooth out wind and solar fluctuations (including compressed air in salt caves, hydrogen stored in metal hydrides, molten salt, lifting heavy weights) without even mentioning a smart grid, how wind complements solar (one often works when the other does not), or how we could rethink some heavy industries to run on intermittent power (like producing fertilizer from grinding up rock only when the wind blows or the sun shines).
http://www.remineralize.org/

So, citation needed please if you just hand wave all that away.

Re:Opportunity costs by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-03-12 04:30 · Score: 1 · on Nuclear Emergency Declared At 2 Plants In Japan

Well said!

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