tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post1498605813626359892..comments2023-09-28T08:13:11.489-07:00Comments on Only In It For The Gold: Anthropocene Images and their MessagesMichael Tobishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-42110393422327445332015-06-21T10:30:03.646-07:002015-06-21T10:30:03.646-07:00"A Model T Ford needs way less material and e..."A Model T Ford needs way less material and energy to build and maintain than a Tesla." <br /><br />Not necessarily. Old tech tends to be made of heavy construction steel. A lot of embodied energy. What it needs more of is skill, and organization.<br /><br />I am all in favor of very small scale intensive agriculture when possible - backyard chickens etc. <br /><br />Can this feed everyone? I think Smil would say not. So if we are going to have factory farms, I'd rather they be factory-shaped, and have tight controls over inflows and outflows. I suspect the agrarian fantasy is not a practicable goal for a 10-billion person world. I'm pretty sure it isn't in an intense climate change scenario.<br />Michael Tobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-44503329596148384262015-06-20T01:47:43.186-07:002015-06-20T01:47:43.186-07:00A Model T Ford needs way less material and energy ...A Model T Ford needs way less material and energy to build and maintain than a Tesla. More complex technology is not necessarily better technology. Same with farms: I know a small organic family farm here in Bavaria that produces mostly gourmet pigs (no other way to make money and keep afloat). Their ecologic impact is way smaller (per area) than other farms. They planted hedge rows, they leave "windows" in the field for some rare ground breeding bird, the cows roam meadows with amazing plant diversity. MOST IMPORTANT, soil carbon content is slowly rising since they turned organic. Recently I ate a chicken that was allowed to live like in olden times: What a difference in taste! Compared to this, CAFO chicken are just toxic meat garbage.<br /><br />Another point of the small family farm is jobs and food sovereignty. Globally, most farms still are small family farms.<br /><br />------------<br />I know the tomatoes from those Spanish plastic greenhouses. Better than Holland greenhouse garbage, but still bad. I can't eat them. And I know why since I got my first edible tomato in rural Romania.<br /><br />But yes, greenhouses are not necessarily bad: There's a gigantic greenhouse not far from here, using geothermal heating, and their tomatoes are quite tasty (Not those industrial high-yield breeds. But grown on imported coconut fibres. No carbon sequestration there. http://www.gemuesebau-steiner.de/unternehmen.html 2013 you showed me a graphic of the Bavarian rain bullseye: it was right there.)Florifulguratorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18308710335606861438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-74258354673481601582015-06-19T15:54:29.833-07:002015-06-19T15:54:29.833-07:00You miss my point, Flor. I imagine you disagree wi...You miss my point, Flor. I imagine you disagree with it, but I'd prefer you understood it.<br /><br />Farming is not back to nature. Hunting and gathering is back to nature. Farming is technology. <br /><br />Like with any technology, the lower impact version is more complex but more sustainable. I'm suggesting that a family farm is a Model T Ford and a greenhouse is a Tesla.<br /><br />Yes, the person with the old Ford is in closer contact with the technology, but that person is also doing more damage.<br /><br />Michael Tobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-24995682250570386852015-06-19T15:15:22.056-07:002015-06-19T15:15:22.056-07:00The megacity is more a necessity than a solution (...The megacity is more a necessity than a solution (as often in the history of Homo Sapiens and its solutions). It seems the city is not only pulling the rug (earth) from under people's feet (mind), but also a real breeding place for mental illness (but expert opinion varies). So, methinks it's a kind of amplifying feedback on the core problem of the Late Homo S "Sapiens": Having lost touch with the living earth.<br /><br />Luckily this is not a dichotomy. Considerable living space and work can be left outside the city wall: Some folks have to produce the food. So, the call is less "back to nature" but "back to the farm" - sustainable small-scale carbon-negative farming embedded in a grid of natural reserves.<br /><br />I can imagine a life style of regular change between city and nature. I love forests and meadows and pigs, but also the library, jazz concertos, and a dentist.Florifulguratorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18308710335606861438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-34977187896773175702015-06-18T08:22:49.923-07:002015-06-18T08:22:49.923-07:00"greatest revulsion" - yeah, that's ..."greatest revulsion" - yeah, that's the one. I want my websites to not be totally unpleasant to the eye. <br /><br />As for the picture - there's also a question of veracity. It's hard to believe that it's real. If it is, that species is toast, I figure. But I think it could be fake.<br /><br />So I also want to resist being a vector for BS. <br /><br /><br />Michael Tobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08229460438349093944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-47983650951160571312015-06-17T23:00:13.864-07:002015-06-17T23:00:13.864-07:00I went to those "Deep Ecology" photos. M...I went to those "Deep Ecology" photos. Many were disturbing but the one that caught my attention (and caused my greatest revulsion) was <a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/05/17/13/28C18BC700000578-0-image-a-23_1431865705733.jpg" rel="nofollow">this one</a>. A close second was<a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/05/17/13/28C18D0A00000578-0-image-a-39_1431865781918.jpg" rel="nofollow">this</a>.<br /><br />But the coal fired plant was misleading, most of what you see is not combustion product but rather vapor from the 11 (!) cooling towers. But there was horror galore in those pictures. I don't know why those tires can't be used in cement manufacturing facilities, that's done frequently and saves burning natural gas to calcine the limestone.<br /><br />I've heard it referred to as "self-poisoning." It was first modeled, I believe, early in the 20th century when bacteria failed to reach equilibrium as growth models had predicted and crashed to zero instead. Volterra and Kostitzin modeled the crashing with an integro-differential equation where the derivative terms represent growth and the integral term represents accumulated poison (in our case, air pollution, water pollution, refuse in landfills, soil depletion, garbage in the ocean, deforestation, carbon dioxide, whatever else). I read of a model that showed population peaking in 2050, falling to under 1 billion by 2200, and to 0 no later than 2500. Happy reading.King of the Roadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06841601144107400103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8524070301101240472.post-26063273520692363632015-06-17T21:30:20.549-07:002015-06-17T21:30:20.549-07:00Good grief, that picture of Mexico City is liable ...Good grief, that picture of Mexico City is liable to invade <i>my</i> nightmares.<br /><br />As to your question of whether greenhouses are any worse than typical row crop agriculture, I would venture an answer of "no," seeing as how seawater greenhouses can desalinate their own water.<br /><br />https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawater_greenhouse<br /><br />-<br />Adam R.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com