Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 6:31 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
dorlomin wrote:
We are not out of the woods till prices drop to where they were two years ago.
They won't until the dollar strengthens and all those corn fer ethanol subsidies are eliminated. America was the breadbasket for the world with a relatively strong currency for quite some time, and we won't go back until we stop the prolific spending and wasting food on fuel. There's plenty of "waste" cellulosic feedstock for BTL/ethanol, but I think people are sitting on their hands waiting for some sort of biological breakthrough that would allow microorganisms to break down cellulose instead of using a plant with all sorts of heating dealy mabobs and whatnot. _________________
Joined: Mar 26, 2008 Posts: 1034 Location: Seattle
Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 9:29 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
FreakOil wrote:
Hydroelectic power is not sustainable. That's a myth . . .
Seriously, if this is the logic of your reasoning, absolutely nothing would be considered "sustainable" by you, and there's not much point in trying to argue with you. According to you, the mere fact someone has to occasionally do some dredging or other maintenance makes something "unsustainable." I hope you realize that living in a house or apartment is "unsustainable" because you occasionally have to vacuum your carpet.
Here's a nice picture of the Grand Coulee Dam, busily producing electricity since the early 1940's with no end in sight.
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 12:34 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
Pops, supposedly it would be about 7 billion using the inflation adjusted construction cost, but I'm not sure how much cheap labor was involved since it was a reconstruction era project, and naturally the raw material costs probably wouldn't increase in lock step with inflation. _________________
Joined: Dec 04, 2004 Posts: 2337 Location: perpetual state of exhaustion
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 2:48 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
OilFinder2 wrote:
FreakOil wrote:
Hydroelectic power is not sustainable. That's a myth . . .
Seriously, if this is the logic of your reasoning, absolutely nothing would be considered "sustainable" by you, and there's not much point in trying to argue with you. According to you, the mere fact someone has to occasionally do some dredging or other maintenance makes something "unsustainable." I hope you realize that living in a house or apartment is "unsustainable" because you occasionally have to vacuum your carpet.
Here's a nice picture of the Grand Coulee Dam, busily producing electricity since the early 1940's with no end in sight.
By unsustainable I think its meant that with no oil or extremely expensive oil it won't be easy to manufature the cement required for upkeep and repair, or to make new ones.
This is one of the main arguements behind the idea that nuclear power is not sustainable either. No matter how easy that energy seems to come by. So by the strictest standards... no its not sustainable.
NEW DELHI — Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a diet.
That has been the response, basically, of a growing number of politicians, economists and academics in this country, who are angry at statements by top United States officials that India’s rising prosperity is to blame for food inflation.
Quote:
For instance, Pradeep S. Mehta, secretary general of the center for international trade, economics and the environment of CUTS International, an independent research institute based here, said that if Americans slimmed down to the weight of middle-class Indians, “many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates.”
Quote:
The developing nations, and in particular China and India, are being blamed for global problems, including the rising cost of commodities and the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, because they are consuming more goods and fuel than ever before. But Indians from the prime minister’s office on down frequently point out that per capita, India uses far lower quantities of commodities and pollutes far less than nations in the West, particularly the United States.
Explaining the food price increases, Indian politicians and academics cite consumption in the United States; the West’s diversion of arable land into the production of ethanol and other biofuels; agricultural subsidies and trade barriers from Washington and the European Union; and finally the decline in the exchange rate of the dollar.
Someone feeling contrary might add that it is our corn and our dollar so if we want to waste them it is our business. I would think that a country like India, which weighs national sovreignty pretty heavily, would understand that. Perhaps they are more concerned with "loosing face" to those who blame increased consumption in India to high prices. Who knows... all politics, as they say, are local.
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- The benchmark price for rice exported from Thailand, the world's biggest supplier, breached $1,000 a metric ton for the first time today as importers rushed to secure supplies, heightening concern about a global food crisis.
Wheat may be down but not rice. Maybe we should tell them to eat more almonds?
Paul Roberts is the second author in the past couple of years to publish a book entitled “The End of Food”—the first, by Thomas F. Pawlick, appeared in 2006. Pawlick, an investigative journalist from Ontario, was concerned with such predicaments as the end of the tasty tomato and its replacement by “red tennis balls” lacking in both flavor and nutrients. (The modern tomato, he reported, contains far less calcium and Vitamin A than its 1963 counterpart.) These worries seem rather tame compared with Roberts’s; his book grapples with the possible termination of food itself, and its replacement by—what? Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” contains a vision of a future in which just about the only food left is canned, from happier times; when the cans run out, the humans eat one another. Roberts lacks McCarthy’s Biblical cadences, but his narrative is intended to be no less terrifying.
Roberts’s work is part of a second wave of food-politics books, which has taken the genre to a new level of apocalyptic foreboding. The first wave was led by Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” (2001), and focussed on the perils of junk food. “Fast Food Nation” painted an alarming picture—one learned about the additives in a strawberry milkshake, the traces of excrement in hamburger meat—but it also left some readers with a feeling of mild complacency, as they closed the book and turned to a wholesome supper of spinach and ricotta tortellini. There is no such reassurance to be had from the new wave, in which Roberts’s book is joined by “Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System,” by Raj Patel (Melville House; $19.95); “Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood,” by Taras Grescoe (Bloomsbury; $24.99); and “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” by Michael Pollan, the poet of the group (Penguin Press; $21.95).
Another hat tip to Savinar for most of the links above.
_________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"What I try, may not work. It may be ineffective. It might even turn out in the pages of history to be the exact wrong thing to do, but I'm going to try to do what I c
Joined: May 10, 2007 Posts: 2748 Location: The Entropisphere
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:15 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
Quote:
Bloomberg Television presents a special program on the world food crisis. Guests include Daniel Gustafson of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, Robert Zeigler, director-general of the International Rice Research Institute, investor Marc Faber, Deutsche Bank economist Torsten Slok, and Ken Hackett, President of Catholic Relief Services.
Bloomberg Video Report _________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"What I try, may not work. It may be ineffective. It might even turn out in the pages of history to be the exact wrong thing to do, but I'm going to try to do what I c
Last edited by wisconsin_cur on Fri May 16, 2008 9:30 am; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Jun 13, 2007 Posts: 3361 Location: Minniesotuh
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 9:30 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
Will dams again rise across the West?
Environmentalists urge conservation instead, but some officials weigh idea
Dam it up _________________ "RRrrruuuunnnn!!!" ~Apocalypto
Joined: Nov 06, 2007 Posts: 630 Location: Illinois
Posted: Fri May 16, 2008 5:37 pm Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
uNkNowN ElEmEnt wrote:
By unsustainable I think its meant that with no oil or extremely expensive oil it won't be easy to manufature the cement required for upkeep and repair, or to make new ones.
This is one of the main arguements behind the idea that nuclear power is not sustainable either. No matter how easy that energy seems to come by. So by the strictest standards... no its not sustainable.
This is not a good argument to make. Every method of energy generation has it's foundation built from the previous method's energy generation. As it was with the transition from wood to coal, as it was with the transition from coal to oil, as it will be with the transition from oil to alternatives. _________________ The oil barrel is half-full.
Across the border in Ethiopia, in the war-racked Ogaden region, the situation sounds just as dire. In Darfur, the United Nations has had to cut food rations because of a rise in banditry that endangers aid deliveries. Kenya is looking vulnerable, too.
A recent headline in one of Kenya’s leading newspapers blared, “25,000 villagers risk starving,” referring to a combination of drought, higher fertilizer and fuel costs and postelection violence that displaced thousands of farmers. “These places aren’t on the brink,” Mr. Sachs said. “They’ve gone over the cliff.”
Many Somalis are trying to stave off starvation with a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin. Some village elders said their children were chewing on their own lips and tongues because they had no food. The weather has been merciless — intensely hot days, followed by cruelly clear nights.
This week, Saida Mohamed Afrah, another emaciated mother, left her two children under a tree and went scavenging for food and water. When she came back two hours later, her children were dead.
Joined: Aug 03, 2007 Posts: 3168 Location: Boston Suburbs
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 12:55 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
uNkNowN ElEmEnt wrote:
This is one of the main arguements behind the idea that nuclear power is not sustainable either. No matter how easy that energy seems to come by. So by the strictest standards... no its not sustainable.
The only reason it seems unsustainable is that the support infrastructure is oil-based.
If ALL energy consumed was electrical in nature, then it would be sustainable as long as we could make enough electricity through renewable (or nuclear) means.
For instance, a portion of the dam's energy could be diverted into its own upkeep. If you need fuel other than electrons, then crack hydrogen.
Joined: May 10, 2007 Posts: 2748 Location: The Entropisphere
Posted: Sat May 17, 2008 6:54 am Post subject: Re: The Spreading Food Crisis Thread (U.S. & World)
OilFinder2 wrote:
I just noticed that the Chicago Board of Trade recently updated their charts on production of corn, wheat and soybeans.
Here's the latest.
What a coincidence, I just noticed some new population numbers were out.
_________________ "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."
-Friedrich von Schiller
"What I try, may not work. It may be ineffective. It might even turn out in the pages of history to be the exact wrong thing to do, but I'm going to try to do what I c
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