That is not always so. Consider the fact that a stalk of corn or any other plant takes up a certain amount of space so you are going to come to a point when it can no longer increase yield. Then consider livestock production. If you put livestock in smaller and smaller places and crowd them more and more you get an increase in disease and/or parasites. The solution to disease is antibiotics and the answer to parasites is medication. Therein lies the problem... bacteria become resistant to antibiotics and parasites become resistant to medication. You have a real problem of not only disease and parasites greatly reducing livestock yields (suddenly and without warning) you can get disease and parasites that can infest humans exasperating the problem. When you add to that not only the threat of drought but the threat of too much rain or late springs and early winters there is no guarantee that increased demands will be met by increased production. People may just starve.
+1.. I think it is clear that there is a 'law of diminishing returns' in something like increased harvest yeilds. It is not possible to increase eternally, but eventually, you will reach an equilibrium of maximum production. And of course, the bigger problem is that while food production is levelling off, or reaching a maximum equilibrium, population & energy is going down. Many think we are already at peak oil, & production will slowly decrease. Add the INCREASE in demand, & it spells higher prices, & oil going to richer countries. The poorer countries, that have few (or none) oil reserves added to their exponential population growth, AND the same decrease of food production spells doom for them. It will not be enough for the wealthier nations to give of their excess food, especially as production decreases the amount of excess. The breeding grounds of refugee camps only compound the problems. More people are added that cannot feed or support themselves. Will they continue to be progressive 'Zoos' for the bleeding hearts, who cannot see past the immediate? Or will the starving poor of the world build an army & invade & kill off the fat rich industrialized nations? Massive wars have always been a popular solution for overpopulations.. perhaps that strategy can be revived.
sorry.. that was a typo. i meant, population is going up, while energy sources are going down. I think that is clear in the OP. and the us population is the least of the global problems. Africa & asia have a much bigger issue.
A few points. I think there is more optimism about future US food production than is warranted. More and more I think we will be producing for ourselves. Population and agricultural land are moving in opposite directions fairly dramatically. Check this out. http://www.npg.org/library/population-data.html Also global warming and agriculture our intimately connected according to Lester Brown who is an agricultural expert. He estimates there is roughly a 5% loss of land food production for every 1 deg. C of increase in world temperature. On balance the warmer areas will lose more than the colder areas will gain. And we haven't even gotten to what acidification of the oceans will do to fishing. And here is an angle that needs to be considered. A country like China as it moves up the food chain and gains economic power will buy out more and more of 3rd world soil and water resources as their soil and water resources are no longer sufficient. http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2014/update121
Good points. I know in my lifetime, i have seen great sections of fertile farmland become suburban sprawls, both near kansas city, where i built houses, & in phoenix, where i have been near for the last 30 yrs. Huge citrus groves were taken out for shopping centers, housing developments, & other non farm activities. Cotton fields fell to golf courses. And when you project the same thing happening all across the nation, and fertile, arable land continues to deplete, where will the shortfall come from? Add to that the shrinking water table, & we face perhaps millions of acres in formerly productive land being unwatered & fallow. These are easily confirmed statistics, & are NOT like the agw trumped up scare. Yet the hysterics are saved for an imaginary crisis, when a REAL one is looking us in the eyes.
Well you have got half of it right. AGW is not a trumped up scare. Climate science is simply not on your side on this one. The polar vortex alteration followed by repeated snow storms in southern areas where this was not expected along with the western drought and deep penetration of Sandy are all linked to AGW according to climate scientists. Include the added stress of drought in areas of North Africa which provide a major source of conflict. The glaciers really are melting and the ocean really is rising, incidentally degrading coastal farming areas, and the ocean is really acidifying, destroying coral reefs along with the additional habitat destroying effects of ocean warming. Where are you getting your information discounting AGW? You are totally on the wrong side of science. It's funny because you are one google click away from getting a comprehensive education on the subject with plenty of graphs to make it unmistakeably clear. I just typed "global warming" into google and this was the first thing that came up. Got an argument with these folks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming Here's an excerpt. And those water losses are critical as the AGW induced glacier melt eliminates a critical source of summer runoff. We are already experiencing that problem in California as the snow-ice of the Sierras averages lower and lower.
It is an undeniable fact that cattle and pork prices have been rising in the U.S. for several years now. My first calves were bought at 1.17 a pound and my first hogs at .77 a pound. They are now at 1.76 and 1.18 respectively. With the PED virus in hogs and continued drought in the west prices look to be steady or rising for the for foreseeable future. - - - Updated - - - It is an undeniable fact that cattle and pork prices have been rising in the U.S. for several years now. My first calves were bought at 1.17 a pound and my first hogs at .77 a pound. They are now at 1.76 and 1.18 respectively. With the PED virus in hogs and continued drought in the west prices look to be steady or rising for the for foreseeable future.
Sorry.. my bad. i don't want to get sidetracked with agw. The point was more that there is a LOT more controversy about agw, & the science behind it, than any of the topics in the OP. These are REAL problems, that the globalists do not seem to be addressing, other than to make it worse.. making breeding grounds for overpopulated regions, shipping in food for them to multiply & exacerbate the situation. OR, they want to ban fossil fuels, which are the ONLY source of reasonably priced food for the foreseeable future, both in production & distribution.
This is true, but there are other factors with prices.. the value of the dollar is a big one, too. Most of the time for the last few decades, prices have actually gone down, in real value, from historical values. The dollar inflates from govt manipulation, but as long as the supply/demand ratio is high, prices will be reasonable. The problem will be if & when the pressures to increase come from shortages, & NOT currency manipulation by the state. Making a QE dump will not help people, then, as farmers & food producing nations will begin to want something of real value, & not phony fiat money. The same will be true with oil & other energy products.
AGW generates controversy as does the problem of overpopulation. The evidence for both of them is REAL although there will always be controversy around each of them for a variety of reasons. Since they are so interrelated I see no gain in promoting one against the other. Overpopulation is a prime global warming driver and the problems generated by global warming exacerbate the challenges of overpopulation. As for the present necessity of fossil fuel it is a tragedy that needs to be solved before we take it off the cliff. As to how you feel about helping starving people or for that matter immigration that is its own topic and has nothing to do with where climate change scientists stand on the importance of AGW. Throwing in a word like "globalist" as some kind of stand in for people who are concerned about AGW is a canard that brings nothing to the discussion.
Overpopulation is a big problem but war is not the answer. Birth control seems to me to be a much better solution but I have absolutely no control over that. But I have changed my mind a little on Aquaculture. A lot of fish can be raised in a small space and it can all be done with solar power. Tilapia can be grown in warmer climes and other fish can be raised in cooler areas. I am finally building a bluegill/ catfish tank at my place and am going to use solar water pumps for filtering the water an gas exchange. Silicon Solar says they can provide a solar operated pump that runs day and night...we will see. My neighbor just gave me enough cinder blocks to build a 2000 gallon tank so the cost should be reasonable. I'm gonna give him half a pig.
One thing I like about these forums is it takes me into new areas. Here is what looks like a well informed piece on fish farming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fish_farming
Unfortunately, there are billions and perhaps trillions of machines and equipment on and around planet Earth which require fossil fuels to operate. Short of developing a non-fossil fuel alternative which operates in all of these machines and equipment I suspect fossil fuels will be greatly consumed for another 100 years or more. Further, we continue to get a bulk of our energy from fossil fuels and this is also unlikely to change much in the next 100 years. Seems that economics drives this issue more than a need to slow fossil fuel burning and reduce CO2 emissions. An oil crisis will hurry up the change over but it will still require many decades to convert and will force great economic pain...
None of us are going to get out of this life alive. At some time we are going to have to bite the bullet and pay the real cost of fossil fuel and mitigate the consequences as best we can. It's either that or Mother Nature's solution or an unleashing of some WMD end game.
War is ALWAYS the answer! There is no human problem that has not or could not be solved by war.. it is always the final arbiter of human social disputes. I tend to agree about fish.. fish ponds, either fresh or salt, have historically been good ways to produce inexpensive food supplies. But the coasts are limited, & seem to be clogging up with people. So unless those nations that are in a crisis can figure out a way to make fish & shrimp ponds near large bodies of water, & relocate the masses of people that seem to collect there, the food crisis will likely get worse. But cool job in innovating some fish growing! I hope it works out for you! Aye, there's the rub... the infrastructure & investment in fossil fuels will not easily change over.. plus, there is nothing really on the horizon, for renewable energy sources. Solar & wind will not be practical for farming, nor will they power a city. Unless better, safer methods of nuclear fission or fusion can be innovated, or hydrogen splitting, or some other yet undiscovered source, the next 100 yrs is likely to see major disruptions in food.. caused by all the factors in the OP. Of course, we will probably have some old fashioned wars, which traditionally have kept our populations down, but it has not been enough lately. Virus & plague used to be another, but medical & technological advancements have lessened those. Every generation has to figure out the best way to deal with the problems, & i hope the next ones coming up can use real science, common sense, & old fashioned human innovation to keep things together. It would be a shame if we wiped ourselves out...
This stuff just reminds me how fragile life is and that it doesn't really take much on a geological scale to either cause us great personal and economic pain or death and even extinction. Most of it we have no control so we're literally just along for the ride. The parts which we are involved or have some control we act like idiots as if the good times will roll forever...
I just read that the viewership on the recent COSMOS series is not good while the original COSMOS series was the most watched TV series in the world. Not that COSMOS has all the information and answers we need, but when we know how we got started, and the bumps along the way, and how much more we have to learn, IMO this presents a great perspective in which to approach our potential problems today. I'm not surprised that most people today would rather watch sports or some idiotic reality show instead of a boring show based in science. It's hard to imagine how we can advance much more when we have so many people in the USA and world who ignore the facts of science and instead prefer their religious and political bias to govern their lives...
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/03/19/291139714/is-that-another-wave-of-collapse-headed-our-way Excerpt; But other, sobering, news is also afoot and deserves our attention, too. A recent study led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, a National Science Foundation-supported research center at the University of Maryland, has warned that civilization as we know it may be at the brink of collapse. Rapid population growth — combined with our highly unbalanced distribution of wealth — and its obvious need for more resources (water, energy, food) may lead to a breaking point beyond which civilization becomes unsustainable. Simply put, if you don't have any water to drink or food to eat but your neighbors do and won't share, you and your buddies are going to yank it away from them. Social unrest is not a joke.
why not dig a pond?...my brother had two ponds and raised trout, only problem he had was herons raiding his stock...
It demands the estimate for the renewable energy supply entire World. The glowing population is estimated by UN. But the capacity of amount of renewable energy each area. The place of photovoltaic energy, wind turbine, micro hydro, these are help to estimate our entire energy for our life on the Earth. We'll be able to make the decision for the birth rate policy by the renewable energy.
The ground where the pond is located is on solid rock and digging is expensive. I would probably have to blast just to get the in- ground pond done. Since we have little cold weather and would like to have absolute control I decided to go above ground. I want the "tank" blue and with a waterfall. I just about have the first run of block done. I already have a small Koi pond and a small goldfish pond.-
I always wanted a pond with a bog filter system...I did have koi pond but then I moved to a different city with a smaller garden...
I am thinking about using the waterfall as the filter. I want to build it on the shallow end and run the water in at the bottom and and let it fill till it runs over the falls. The water pickup will be at the bottom of the other end with the slope running into the drain. I will pull the water out of the low end, through the drain and back up to the filter. I hope it works!
I had a big koi pond once that used a sponge like bio filter on the inlet of the pump, & it had a waterfall. Circulating the water helps a lot, but you also have to have some kind of algae control. I put a couple of algae eating fish in it, & that helped. Koi do some vacuuming of the rocks, but trout or other eating fish.. not so much. Good luck & have fun with the fish growing!
