Maybe vertical farms are a crock but at least people are starting to realize that local food production is a better idea than shipping factory farm food thousands of miles. Eating local, seasonal food is how it has been done for 99.99% of human history. We waste hydrocarbons in a criminal fashion and our ancestors will absolutely hate our guts for it. Why should we burn up billions of years of oil inside of ~200 years just so that we can eat strawberries in NYC during winter? It is INSANE. The decision-making process we use is only what will make money in the short term. The issue of cost externalization by companies is well documented by economists. Just because it appears "cheap" to use factory farm methods, N-P-K based fertilizers, etc., doesn't mean the long term effects already showing up are not going to severely impact the food chain inside of our lifetimes.
Ultimately though agriculture itself is a non-sustainable process. That is why the fertile crescent, cradle of civilization, is now a desert. We should start creating food forests, this is a very promising sustainable way to feed people and all of the unemployment we experience can be solved by transitioning a larger % of our population to food production as a job, just like our grandparents used to do it.
The desertification caused by agriculture and our increasingly desperate use of technology to cover up the fundamental flaws in how we feed ourselves is increasing rapidly. The water table in many places around the planet is being depleted faster than it can restore itself. These issues are NOT going away and they are far more important than coupons for cupcakes and the like.
I think your comment was reasonable, but the point of the "silly locovore" link above is that insisting on locally grown food isn't the way fossil fuel conservation should be implemented, as locally grown does not imply fuel efficient. Rather, the nonlocal food market is a symptom of low fuel prices. But if fuel prices were $20 or $50 per gallon, as you'd probably like it, that would really hit the economy hard. If it turns out that by the time we run out of fossil fuels we have bootstrapped our way to some other reasonable forms of renewable energy, then arguably our resource allocation will have been pretty optimal. Cross your fingers!
"Ultimately though agriculture itself is a non-sustainable process. That is why the fertile crescent, cradle of civilization, is now a desert." It was a desert before as well. The Sumerians used irrigation to be able to turn dry but fertile soil into farmland. This requires a lot of hard work, ingenuity, and collaboration, which might be why civilization started there. It's relatively flat, with a hard subsurface, which makes salt buildup a problem, making farming there rather more fragile.
If what you are saying is true, then why is there still farming after thousands of years along the Nile and Indus river valleys?
In any case, what do you suggest the people of L.A. do? They grow a lot of their food locally, in the Central Valley, but that water is pumped from across the state and the Valley has the same problems as the Fertile Crescent.
Should they grow the food in their backyards (more locally), and if so, will there be separate water systems for crops, because it needs less water treatment than humans need?
Or should some large fraction of the population move, and if so, where? Since food forests aren't going to grow well enough in LA to feed its own population, at least, not without non-local water.
Personally, I would rather pay people to grow my food for me while I get to sit on my porch and enjoy reading and commenting on HN.
Because your comments about local food are clearly written without a basic understanding of the breakdown of energy use.
Freight shipping uses about 1 gallon of gas/ton/500 miles. Over 80% of the costs are in the final few miles - trucking from the shipping depot to the markets.
Getting food locally delivered is far less energy efficient than having it shipped in bulk by freight to supermarkets.
No, it is because the moderation policies on this site are absurd and comments saying "it sucks" get modded up while a reasonable comment gets modded down.
Bottom line the world is running out of hydrocarbons. Things that look "energy efficient" to you today won't look so efficient in 50 or so years. Peak oil already happened in the United States, Hubert's peak is reasonably well accepted, and the idea that shipping food thousands of miles is a long term sustainable strategy for feeding humanity or that the entire world can live like the people in Silicon Valley and New York City is laughable.
That is my last comment on HN - mods, please prove my point by voting it down.
There's not some crowd of elite "mods" voting you down, it's anybody who's reached a certain karma threshold (probably ~200). Sometimes rational comments will be downvoted right away by a few early and angry jerks, but the scores will later be corrected by upvoters. But, since that was your last comment, I suppose it is pointless to reply.
Some on-topic points:
1. Energy efficiency in terms of joules per kilogram per kilometer is a constant, regardless of the actual dollar cost of the fuel.
2. 50 years is a very long time to come up with the technology to replace fossil fuels, hopefully with cheap fission and eventually fusion.
3. Modern civilization thrives on being able to disregard geographic barriers. We could never have a global society if transportation of physical goods became impossible. So, since we (as a society) won't accept the defeat of modern civilization, we will simply find another way to continue to exist. If that means replacing fossil fuels, then it will happen.
They probably didn't know about these microbe's effectiveness. That, and there was so much publicity about the problems that they had to do ~something~ --- doing nothing would have been taken even worse by the public. Seriously, imagine BP saying, "uh ... yeah, there's not a problem, billions of tiny microbes are going to take care of our accident." People would have mocked them plenty, and their PR guys wouldn't want that.
Well, it doesn't seem to have hurt this process (note that a large fraction of Corexit is light petroleum distillates, i.e. more chow for these bugs) and at least one source speculated it helped by breaking the oil into small droplets. The more you increase the surface area the more access bacteria can get to it and to the extent its application was effect it likely made a big difference.
He connects sellers and buyers, just like a grocery store does.
He gives business to t-shirts producers who wouldn't necessarily be able to chose what t-shirts to make, to market them, charge for them, etc. And he helps buyers by giving them a convenient way to order and pay for t-shirts.
I think what he is saying make sense. For instance there is a huge mountain of evidence for anthropogenic global warming and the need to cut down our emissions. I'd say on 9/10 things I probably agree with the scientists, with the exception of GMO foods which to me are a really bad idea with potentially catastrophic consequences.
However, I have a problem with laymen needing to sit down and accept whatever scientists say for the simple fact that science is not some pristine incorruptible institution dedicated only to truth. Scientists are PEOPLE and are subject to the same political issues, careerism, bias to not make funders angry, etc. that everyone else is.
Science is subject to a lot of influence from the people holding the purse strings, which are often industry. Take the recent story that came out of Harvard Medical School about how pharma has been influencing the ways that drugs are being prescribed: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-co... - should we non-scientists not question scientists, physicians, and other "authorities" when this type of thing is happening?
It is a GOOD thing when people question what scientists say. What is needed are better ways for scientists and non-scientists to engage in dialogue, and more often. Believe it ot not there might be a few things scientists can learn from the non-scientists.
I think that a lot of this gets discussed by regular people on broadcast channels (talk radio, cable news) that are really terrible mediums for communicating complex ideas. It would be nice if TV and radio weren't so cluttered with advertising, which makes it almost impossible to do more than make short statements. The exceptions that are good for communiating ideas through broadcast (such as Michio Kaku's radio show) prove the rule by being commercial-free.
Another note, scientists have to understand how political discourse and beliefs work. The domain is NOT based on rational inquiry and peer review. There is no "correct answer" as to whether Social Security should be privatized or if the US should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan. The work of George Lakoff is a must-read on this topic; we form much of our political beliefs based on non-rational moral frameworks that stem from our childhood and our ideas about the family (strict father vs. nurturant parent morality), and mapping our ideas about how the family should work onto the "nation as family" morality.
I agree that scientist are not above human mistakes and bias like everyone else. But there is a way to tackle that. The scientific method tries to minimise the errors cause by bias and human mistakes. That's why we can eventually decide that the tobacco industry's results were wrong: because they had to show all their procedure and some other scientist could explain where they went wrong.
But when you take statements from alternative medicine, which are: a) not based on any scientific theory, b) often only defended by anecdotal evidence, c) their speaker is charismatic and a proficient PR, then it gets really really hard.
You may point out to research showing that homeopathy doesn't work. To avoid being branded as hiding data or such, you say everything very carefully, explaining anything you know and you don't know, and the uncertainty in the results and so. The other then replies: "You can give me all the numbers you want, but I've _seen_ cases of people who got a lot better." and then show you a few photos of before and after: "Why---he concludes---do you not want the audience to have access to the most effective treatment?".
The former was boring, hard to understand, and objective/dry. The latter spoke straight to the heart, and show evidence.
And remember that a lot of problem arise because people _want_ to believe the charlatan. They want to believe that the incurable cancer that the doctor prescribed can be cured, or that they can keep their lifestyle without destroying the world, or that the religion the believed for for so long is correct an we humans are special.
Ultimately though agriculture itself is a non-sustainable process. That is why the fertile crescent, cradle of civilization, is now a desert. We should start creating food forests, this is a very promising sustainable way to feed people and all of the unemployment we experience can be solved by transitioning a larger % of our population to food production as a job, just like our grandparents used to do it.
The desertification caused by agriculture and our increasingly desperate use of technology to cover up the fundamental flaws in how we feed ourselves is increasing rapidly. The water table in many places around the planet is being depleted faster than it can restore itself. These issues are NOT going away and they are far more important than coupons for cupcakes and the like.