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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.
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.
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.
First environmentalists caused global warming by blocking CO2 free nuclear power, then they starve us to death by blocking GMO foods...
I'm glad you're helping with the CO2 problem by using all that straw for your men.
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.
How bad can carbonated rice be?
First environmentalists caused global warming by blocking CO2 free nuclear power
Any amount of realistic nuclear power deployment would have been insufficient to prevent global warming on its own.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
First off, you assume they are the same people. There may be overlap, just as there is statistical overlap between the GOP and KKK, but treating them as the same group is a fallacy.
Second, GMO and nuclear power are merely band-aids on climate change at best, not a solution.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh wait.
First environmentalists caused global warming by blocking CO2 free nuclear power,
Yes, yes, those mighty environmentalists with their multi-billions in profits from fossil fuels and staff of thousands of lobbyists inside the halls of power, regularly bribing politicians to favor polluting sources over any alternatives, are to blame.
then they starve us to death by blocking GMO foods...
Have you noticed how corpulent your God-Emperor Trump is getting? CLEARLY, it's the fault of the emaciated orphans living in the streets that you're not getting enough Big Macs to stuff in your own face.
But wait, wait, what if you can make the orphans useful? Let me show you a sensible proposal.
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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Yep, it's the self-correcting part that's going to be a bitch. Especially when you throw a lot of nukes and well-armed hungry armies into the mix.
And thus those who say "hey, let the problem fix itself" are basically advocating for genocide.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
... 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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I fail to see the difference between raised CO2 and the situation with all our other food and modern fertilizers. The study is essentially saying that rice will not be as nutrient dense but at the same time this means you can grow MORE RICE than you could otherwise on the same land. It also means other vegetables will grow more prodigiously...
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
Sounds like a reasonable estimate, but for something that grew +120% in the last fifty years, removing 13% of it is clearly not sufficient.
Ezekiel 23:20
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?
It isn't enough, but it would have given a lot more time to deal with the problem
We had plenty of time, but nobody cares about dealing with problems until it's too late.
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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First environmentalists caused global warming by blocking CO2 free nuclear power
Any amount of realistic nuclear power deployment would have been insufficient to prevent global warming on its own.
No single thing would be sufficient to prevent global warming on its own. Higher nuclear power adoption would have helped; it would be a step in the right direction. Alone, no, not enough. You don't walk a mile with just one step though, you take many steps... adopting more nuclear power would have been a step in the right direction.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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
Plants that share the same photosynthesis pathway as rice and wheat do indeed grow larger and produce greater yields in higher carbon dioxide concentrations by creating more carbohydrates... But they don't increase the amount of other nutrients in their grains relative to that yield gain. "They're basically getting a dilution effect of the nutrients in the grains"
For the poor parts of world, malnutrition from the lack of carbohydrates is much harder to deal with than a lack of vitamins. It doesn't take a lot of land to plant a vegetable garden.
I certainly agree with the idea that every little bit helps, but that's still very far from reaching the conclusion that "nuke-hating environmentalists have caused global warming".
Ezekiel 23:20
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!
We don't need GMO crops to avoid starvation for anyone. That's just a total bullshit narrative. The West grows much more food than it can eat and wastes most of it at every step in the supply chain.
GMO crops mainly make your Twinkies and Mountain Dew cheaper.
I also get a chuckle out of the hysterics here over the nutrition content of rice. Most rice is processed in a manner that removes any significant vitamin/mineral content.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The bigger problem is lack of protein. Rice doesn't have much of that.
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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BS. The malnutrition is not due to lack of carbs, it is due to lack of overall calories. The human body does not need carbs for anything. We run very well on a bit of fat and a little protein.
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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*This* article is about rice, but it's really merely replicating other studied that have been done with other plants. The details vary, but the general result is that the fruits and seeds become higher in carbohydrates and lower in minerals, vitamins, and proteins.
This should hardly be a surprising result, as increasing carbon dioxide makes carbohydrates cheaper to produce energetically. The details vary, whether it's that the plants reduce water evaporation so the acquire less minerals by transpirations or whatever, but the results are rather consistent, and seem, under consideration, to be exactly what one should expect, with the average result being that nutrients that become energetically cheaper to produce increase in proportion at the expense of the other nutrients. An undesired, and hopefully temporary, side effect is that the seeds become less likely to germinate. There will be strong evolutionary pressure to overcome that, however.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
If we are to effectively reduce CO2 emissions gasoline/diesel need to become prohibitively expensive to the point that you simply can't drive a daily commute to the next county, while still being cheap-ish enough to allow discretionary use, like emergency run to the pharmacy, or like driving the van with all the family to Grandma's place for thanksgiving. You know, like you can Vacation on Hawaii once or twice a year, but not every day.
Every day commute should be either public transport (preferably track vehicles) and bicycles/walking. The only way to force it is to make gas prohibitively expensive.
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! --
You know why everything needs to be fortified now? Because all of the ingredients are over processed to the point of losing natural food value, and tons of cheap added filler ingredients so they can sell more 'product'.
Sincerely hope people with these types of views never get to make any kind of grown-up decisions involving other people.
Even a 1 or 2 dollar hike in gas prices is enough to bring a pretty good chunk of Americans to their knees financially. And of course; not everyone lives in an area where mass transit is viable.
Gotta love modern environmentalism -- giving people the feeling of a moral imperative to tell others how to live their lives.
Really, the goal should be on improving sequestration capability. Curbing emissions through draconian cuts to standard of living is NOT a viable option.
A military tank is a track vehicle. Perhaps you are thinking of rail vehicles.
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On average, Asians are more intelligent than Caucasians. Their loss would not be a good thing for human progress.
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And rice isn't good for you anyway. Increased warming and CO2 concentration WILL lead to increased Quinoa production, which is much better for you.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
We've spent the last few decades arguing about if we even have problems and people are still arguing about it.
If our politicians could have been convinced this could have been started long ago.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
The highest prices I can find are in the $7 range.
Did you adjust for purchasing power parity? For example, in Croatia, relative to the average income, gasoline is about nine times more expensive than in the US. In Poland, about seven times. In the Czech Republic, about five times. So the worst gasoline prices in Europe feel to the natives very much like $20 gas would to an American.
Ezekiel 23:20
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?
Oh dear.
I wonder if you realise that much of the rest of the world uses a lower daily calorie total? Pretty much only America follows the '2000' figure.
A 'moderately sedentary adult' would probably be more healthy on a bit over 1000 per day average, depending on their size, as they do not need to carry
excess body fat to protect them over times of no food, and dont need to sustain large muscle masses for actual work.
I have no idea where you got the potatoes thing from, however it is completely false - potatoes are a VERY poor food source, and no one anywhere
has lived on JUST them.. Unless you think a nearly 100% carbo diet works..
Meat is of course the secret, and that is what kept the potato eaters alive.. They DIDNT eat just potatos.. that would have killed them.
That is obvious, but it is not the claim I was responding to.
Ezekiel 23:20
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