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As The Planet Warms, We'll Be Having Rice With A Side Of CO2 (npr.org)
Grains are the bedrock of civilization. They led humans from hunting and gathering to city-building. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the fruits of three grasses provide the world with 60 percent of its total food: corn, wheat and rice. Aside from energy-rich carbohydrates, grains feed us protein, zinc, iron and essential B vitamins. But rice as we know it is at risk. An anonymous reader shares a report: As humans expel billions of metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere and raze vast swaths of forests, the concentration of carbon dioxide in our air hurries ever higher. That has the potential to severely diminish the nutritional value of rice, according to a new study published this week in Science Advances. For people who depend heavily on rice as a staple in their diets, such a nutritional loss would be devastating, says Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington and an author on the study.
Oh wait.
First environmentalists caused global warming by blocking CO2 free nuclear power, then they starve us to death by blocking GMO foods...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm pretty sure some "nice" company will create strains of GMO rice which will replace all the older strains with only slightly more cost, contractual limits and higher levels of herbicides. /s
Population * CO2 emissions per capita = total CO2 emissions. Why are we ignoring the first part of that formula? In particular this is not a planet which will be able to support 4 billion Africans by 2100 in anything except absolute destitution. Already Africa is a net food importer.
By Chunwu Zhu, Kazuhiko Kobayashi, Irakli Loladze, Jianguo Zhu, Qian Jiang, Xi Xu, Gang Liu, Saman Seneweera, Kristie L. Ebi, Adam Drewnowski, Naomi K. Fukagawa, Lewis H. Ziska
Plain white rice has very little nutritional value. Only if you leave the hull on and make it hard to chew does rice have decent nutrients.
Whereas you need a late-term abortion if you don't.
From a dispassionate point of view, isn't this nature self correcting? Humans screw things up. Nature makes it harder to sustain as many humans. Human impact decreases. Balance.
That's the basis for natural selection, right? Systems and species adapt over time.
First environmentalists caused global warming by blocking CO2 free nuclear power
Nice bit of scapegoating you have there. I'm sure the fossil fuel industry had nothing at all to do with it. I'm sure catastrophic events like Chernobyl had nothing to do with it. I'm sure the fact that we still don't have a good way to deal with the waste problem had nothing to do with it.
People are afraid of radiation. Solve that and I'm sure they'll be fine with nuclear power.
then they starve us to death by blocking GMO foods...
They aren't blocked where I live. Hunger has a funny way of getting people to cease worrying about such silliness anyway.
I thought rice was pretty much straight carbs. Just looking it up now, water, carbs, tiny bit of protein, and that's pretty much it. How is that going to get worse?
How bad can carbonated rice be?
Plus it will br warmer. So it's a win-win!
who in the US or Europe will care? Them yellow and brown people can die off and nobody will notice.
that starch-rich foods and carbohydrate-based diets, such as those based on grains, is what slowly makes you develop insulin tolerance and type 2 diabetes.
There may be plenty of grains, but that doesn't mean it's an ideal diet. In the least, the wheat diet we've been raised on here in the west since the 70's/80's, is something that should be avoided.
Since when was slashdot another propaganda tool for the Commies?
There is research that shows most foods we eat today are less nutrient dense than they were a century ago. Plants get their nutrients from the soil and the soil gets its nutrients from decaying plants/animals. Farming has led to the soil being nutrient depleted even when they fertilize. So we end up with food with less oomph.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
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... if you read TFA is that the rice grows much faster and produces a lot more in the same amount of time, but because they didn't increase the available soil nutrients to match, they are basically diluting its nutritional value relative to total yield. Which is silly. All they have to do to avoid the problem is provide the plants with balanced fertilization instead of bumping one major component of healthy growth without bumping others.
This is about as useful as reporting that rice grown with too much nitrogen relative to other nutrients may grow faster but not be as nutritious or healthy as rice grown with a better balance of fertilizers. Or with the right/wrong amount of water.
The PROBLEM in other words is that the rice grew TOO WELL for a fertilizer level set for poorer growth.
Look, it's all useful information until it is turned into propaganda. A huge fraction of fruits and vegetables are grown all over the world in actual greenhouses, and standard practice in greenhouse farms is to bump CO2 to as high as 1000 ppm because IF you balance the increased CO2 fertilization against water and other nutrients, you get much larger yields, faster, from healthier plants. C3 respiring plants all over the world are growing roughly 15% faster and with larger yields than they did 150 years ago, but if you took that 15% away arguing that food crops must have been better for us without the extra CO2 you'd literally starve a billion people. This simple fact has been carefully ignored in most of the public discussions of Demon CO2, so now it is necessary to "prove" that increased CO2 is bad for plants. But it's not. Quite the contrary. With well-known, long since published federal guidelines from the Department of Agriculture. It's one of the many things that confounds the "dendroclimatologists" who claim to be able to read off global warming and past temperatures by examining tree rings. I read a study of tree growth (in general) in Europe and the increase in the growth rate and health of European forests over the last fifty or so years has been remarkable. There is an ongoing process of "antidesertification" -- deserts starting to green up again -- as a direct consequence of increased CO2. Finally, CO2 levels in the last ice age dropped to within 10 or 20 ppm of the "critical point" that would cause mass extinction of whole classes of respiring plants due to inadequate partial pressure to drive diffusion into the plants at a rate capable of sustaining life and growth.
At this point there isn't a lot of reason to think we'll ever reach 580 ppm. Fusion actually looks like it is LIKELY to come home in the next decade, if not the next three years, and photovoltaics and batteries appear to have passed a critical point of their own and become at least break even if not win a bit as the cheapest source of new electrical power. Within the decade, we'll see more and more homes being built that are 80% or better self-sufficient in energy. And hey, one day it's not inconceivable that people will stop knee jerk opposing fission based power, and maybe LFTR or some other comparatively safe technology will take off to power the US for a thousand years or so.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
The original rice plant wasn't all that nutritious either but was improved through breeding. Adapting rice plants to higher CO2 concentrations should be fairly simple. And it's not like we have a choice: there is no way to prevent a substantial increase in atmospheric carbon concentrations. We'll likely end up with about 600-800ppm CO2 before switching to solar, and that's fine.
inflation eats away at my income a little every year. I'm being told that addressing climate change would kill jobs and in turn wages. And you know, it probably would for a lot of people. Even if it makes new jobs there's no guarantee I'll get them or that they'll pay the same as I make now.
We've got too many people living hand to mouth who can be easily kowtowed with threats of job loss. They'll come out and vote in any democracy against climate change because climate change is years from now and the rent's due today.
If you want to do something about climate change you need to fix their economy first. Until then they'll fight you tooth and nail and they've got the backing of the billionaires (who don't want to pay taxes to fix things) so they'll win.
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Attempting to use each other as evidence for their validity.
!. The totally debunked "Population Bomb"/Paul Ehrlich theory. (AGW will make it come true! Pinky-swear!)
2. AGW cultism. (the population bomb effects will make failed AGW-cult disaster predictions a reality! Pinky-swear!)
And the only solution, of course, is for everyone (except them) giving up their rights, liberties, choices, and most importantly, their money.
Fuck off, both of you groups of cultists believing and pushing this horseshit! The vast, vast majority will not go along or tolerate your lies any longer. Scream all you want, we'll just laugh at you and tell you your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries, now go away or we shall taunt you again.
Same for water, flood your plants by putting them in the tub and fill it to a few inches above the top of the plant. More is always better.
Obvious /s
So the enrichment of CO2 in the growing environment makes the plant grow faster and greener. That faster growing plant produces grain (seeds) more quickly and in greater numbers. Do those seeds (faster growing and more plentiful) actually have less nutrients than the plant produced before?
That is, if a single current plant produces 'X' grams of grain with 'Y' milligrams of nutrient, then does the CO2-enriched plant still produce 'Y', distributed over 'X+n'?
That would fit the model, but would still be touted under the headline "Less Nutrition". Per pound, perhaps. Per acre?
you're one job loss away from homelessness. If you're under 65 we have no safety net whatsoever (and a weak one if you're over 65).
And we're not living in the best economy ever unless you're a stockbroker or a billionaire. Wealth inequality the the worst it's been since the 1920s (and yes, we're on our way to another major crash. Would have had one in 2008 if the gov't hadn't bailed out the banks at the point of a gun).
The economy peaked for the middle class in the 1970s. Wages have been stagnant or declining ever since (depending on your industry). Coincidentally the decline in wages matches the growth in income at the top 1%. Imagine that.
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Thanks to the grain lobby, not because it belongs there.
Nuclear power and GMO foods are going to save us? Really?
Solar is dwarfing nuclear.
As for GMO crops, um, no. Just no.
Do you realize the connection between the nitrogen cycle, fossil fuels, and the 1973 oil embargo?
In a nutshell: World populations grew faster than land based plants can fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. The natural carrying capacity of this planet using sustainable traditional agriculture is about 2 billion humans. Oddly enough, about the time that the world population level reached 2 billion humans, the most technically advanced society at that time created a process to make large scale artificial fertilizers (and explosives) and a major engine of the industrial revolution. Both powered by fossil fuels. Farming commenced on a massive scale. And war, but that's just entertainment for idiots and of no real importance.
Fast forward to 1973. A new world power (USA) pisses off the a little Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and finds itself with insufficient energy to function. Everybody scrambled to find a way to fuel airplanes, cars, and tractors. Monsanto discovers that a chemical chelator that removes calcium, manganese, magnesium, copper and zinc (trace elements essential for most forms of life on earth), also kills weeds. Go figure. This seems to suggest a way to conduct large scale farming without having to till the earth, which greatly reduces the fuel needed to farm. Fast forward a bit, and now we have GMO crops that survive occasional applications of this new miracle herbicide. And then there's the unregulated application of this new herbicide on wheat. Because Profit.. And it seems to be everywhere.
Sadly, many forms of animal life that come in contact with Monsanto's creation get cancer, have the epithelial lining of their intestines die, and get misdiagnosed as having Celiac disease. And those that aren't so lucky end up morbidly ill and dying prematurely due to complications of a diet high in high fructose corn syrup (high cholesterol, heart disease, etc.)
Now connect the dots... stay with me here:
GMO foods today have their origin in a lack of energy and environmental planning. These are contributing to CO2 levels and a whole collection of ensuing health and environmental disasters.
Stop spewing carbon, stop processing food with short sighted techniques that result only profit for some and misery and death for most. And please realize that messing with plants has the potential to cause death and misery on a truly global scale. Do you really want to go there, for profit?
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
They will plant some edible leaf vegetables to make up for the missing nutrients. There are far more leaf vegetables than lettuce and spinach, and leaf vegetables are among the easiest to grow, and grow readily all over the world. In Africa they eat pumpkin leaves, in China, pea plant leaves, dandelions and lookalikes are edible, and so on.
Tasty.
Same here, most of the people I know also make really poor financial decisions. I think it the 'American way' of consumption.
Likewise, as far as a safety net, I know lots of examples of people scamming the government welfare system. There are probably facebook groups on how to do it.
Couples not getting married with multiple kids purely for welfare, claiming food stamps/tax refunds for non-existent children... the list goes on and on.
-Unresolved symbol? Byte me!
I remember reading something about how fortified foods like Wonder Bread saved many Americans from nutritional deficiency. The claim was that this widespread consumption of fortified foods brought us the rapid increase in height and intelligence after the Great Depression. These people can claim that increased growth in rice from increased CO2 in the air is bad but I see only good.
The problem we're seeing now is that of starvation. Perhaps not in the USA, the opposite seems to be the problem really. If we're seeing rice growing faster and with more calories per acre then we could be seeing another "green revolution". The "green revolution" was not about windmills and solar collectors, it was about the increased crop production from the use of pesticides, fertilizers, irrigation, hybrid crops, mechanization, and improved techniques. This greed revolution saved a war torn world after World War II from a mass starvation. People still starved in many parts of the world because of a loss of infrastructure, a rise of new tyrannies, and smaller wars over colonies fighting for independence from European nations. As I understand it the starvation then and now is not for lack of calories in the world but the lack of calories being where we need them.
If increased CO2 means greater calories from rice then we can reduce this infrastructure problem. Now instead of having to move calories from where they are to where they aren't we can move fortified foods to bring the nutrients that these crops lack. That's a much smaller logistical problem.
I read of a fortified peanut butter that international aid organizations would bring to far off places. This was a life saver over older foods which was bulkier. They'd bring in this peanut butter and use it on locally grown breads. They'd find ways to work this into local diets and therefore encourage locals to grow what food they could. Past tactics of fortified bread and milk not only meant a logistical problem of bulkier foods but also replaced locally produced foods, making local farmers compete with free food from aid organizations. No one can compete with free. Local farmers growing grains meant that imported food supplements did not displace their markets. This meant locals could feed themselves eventually by creating a market for local food.
In time the hope is that locals would get proper fertilizers, and locally produced fortified foods, so that they would not be dependent on imported nutrients. For this to work they need a crop that gives them calories at first. Once they get started this way they can expand to other foods.
This is only a good thing. We can make fortified peanut butter, multi-vitamins, hybrid vegetables, or whatever to fill in the rest of what makes a proper diet. Perhaps that's not ideal over getting all our nutrition from a densely packed rice grown in a CO2 starved environment but we don't live in that kind of world any more. We have billions of people on this planet now and if we are to return to this world of living off rice alone means reducing population to what it was when people lived on rice alone.
Sorry- the planet isn't warming. We're never going to experience your retarded future.
co2 levels have plateaud over the last 10 yrs it's been the same amount.
...something that already contains a negligible amount of nutrients will have even less? Holy shit! The end of the world is nigh... again!
but you can't squeeze blood from a stone. Wages are dropping adjusted for inflation. That is fact. Jobs are going overseas leaving people without work. Older people can't easily be retrained. As you get older your ability to learn new things is diminished. Again, this is just cold, hard reality.
The Charities are overwhelmed. That's how it's always been. If Charity worked there would be no poor. My experience with charity is that it's either scams (like Goodwill, which is a private for profit company that bills itself a charity) or they're just there to give well to do and wealthy people a balm on their conscience. e.g. they make you feel better without actually doing anything of material value. I know that sounds harsh, but, well, reality is harsh. I've had relatives hit rock bottom with major medical issues and charities gave them $20 gift cards to buy groceries. The Government paid for the medical care that kept them alive and made them healthy again.
What's needed is a system that leaves nobody behind. Such a system is advantageous even for the John Galts of the world because they're outnumbered 100 to 1 by folks who aren't super human wonderkinds. Fascists will find and mobilize those regular joes when the economy collapses and they'll come for the John Galts of the world how abandoned them. This pattern has repeated for thousands and thousands of years. It would be nice if we'd learn from history for a change and do something about it.
Oh, I suppose there's a third option now: Autonomous kill bots and brutal oppression via global surveillance. I guess if you get to be one of the John Galts that owns the kill bots and orders the surveillance that's Ok, but there's only gonna be about 20-50k of those world wide. Your odds of being a member of that class are really, really low...
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because money == power and power can and will be abused.
Also, if you don't think Rich people are hurting you then you don't live in Flint, Mi or drink their water. And you know absolutely nothing of history or how the power of wealth has been abused. I'm not going to bother but I could spend days explaining all the ways the power of money has been abused.
Bottom line: You're not free if somebody controls your access to food, shelter, health care and education. Until then they can make you do whatever they want by withholding those things.
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and raze vast swaths of forests
Stopped reading right here. Since the beginning of the 20th century, global forest coverage has remained stable. Mainly due to the reduction in the use of wood as heating/cooking fuel.
Have gnu, will travel.
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Only people from SHITHOLE COUNTRIES eat that filler nonfood.
One of the main problems is that we only use certain varieties of rice on large scales. There are many different varieties, and we need to encourage various wild and heirloom rice trails for rice that will store sufficient nutrients in a higher global warming environment.
Adapt. Change is coming, you were slack.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So what we have here is a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma. Perhaps the only solution is to export all the excess calories that the West produces in forms like junk food and breakfast cereal to the poorer rice-farming nations. Junk food is junk only when taken in the excessive super-sized amounts found in, for example, the standard American diet that leads to obesity and diseases like diabetes and heart attack.
From a purely biophysical point of view, the calories found in junk food is the same calories you'd get from eating rice. Of course, the rice has to be supplemented by more nutritious vegetables and fruits. Food sufficiency has already been solved. It's a distribution not a production problem, if only politics, ideology, and corporate greed didn't get in the way.
You do know China produces more food than the US right?
cull 100 million American's. The planet will thank you.
You're either a animal loving shill, or stupid. Not sure which.
The massive obesity problems in Asia would appear to support your findings.
Oh wait, no they dont, perhaps, just perhaps, rice is not the problem, but the massive intake of fried shit and cornsyrup packed crap in the west?
I like rice, ever since my kindergarten teacher introduced it to me years ago. My father didn't like it all that much...he was more a meat and potatoes man...so it was quite a treat growing up.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=NjlC02NsIt0
History is replete with wars that were preceded by famines. Those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it.