3 ms·

rubs face ok so here's the thing. Food grows in topsoil. As an eater of food, you need to know this. It's important: food that does not come from the ocean[1] c

rubs face ok so here's the thing. Food grows in topsoil. As an eater of food, you need to know this. It's important: food that does not come from the ocean[1] comes from topsoil. Beef? Cows. Cows graze. Pork? Pigs are calorie batteries. They eat anything. But they don't do so great in bog. Chickens? ....yeah. The places that you think are coming online as 'greener' locations are places where the soil just unthawed. It's not topsoil. It's not loam. It's moss and bog, where it isn't boreal forest[2]. The land is not usable for agriculture or animal husbandry. Probably won't be for thousands of years. It's the crossfade. It's also going through massive subsidence as the permafrost melts, and is constantly belching methane. It's a soup of microrganisms, mosquitos, and (scientific term here) gunk. --signed, a Canadian from a farmtown that was just a lil too far north. (Yes, really.) [1] before you call loophole: yes, we're running out of that, too. Faster, in fact. Fun times. Those are some empty empty oceans. [2] Conifers often intentionally (to the extent that plants have intent) make the soil around them acidic; this is because only conifers can survive in this soil. The territories you're eyeballing as a future breadbasket are often currently boreal. When they're not bog. And the boreal tends to turn into bog. That subsidence. Trees hate it -- they like being vertical. So, yeah, idk what you'd grow there, unless you eat mosquitos.

hagbard_c 5y ago
You might want to study your farming books again before you write your next condescending rant? It will be a while before permafrost becomes farmland but luckily there is a huge - and I mean enormous - area which has not seen permafrost for thousands of years but simply is too cold for many crops to be grown profitably. If the planet really ends up those 1.5°C to 2.5°C warmer than it is now (but cooler than it has been) growth zones move up and farming those crops becomes profitable where it currently isn't. This is something you know but for some reason decide to ignore only to indulge in apocalyptic fantasies. Why is that? Why do you - and the many with you who show similar behaviour - choose this path of rapture? If you think this makes people who do not follow your beliefs take them more seriously realise that it achieves exactly the opposite: the more outlandish the proposed scenarios of doom, the less likely non-believers are to fall in line.
- undoware 5y ago
  It's honestly like you've never seen that land. Much of Canada -- one of the two big possible breadbaskets you said you were eyeing -- is literally forest. The forest starts where the farmland stops. Even if you cleared the forest, the soil is worthless. It's been covered in conifers for thousands of years. It's also goopy, as it is thawing. Or sandy. Or simply too acidic. And while it might be good enough for grasses and cattle grazing one day, that day is not today, nor tomorrow, and in the meantime, you will be quite hungry. In the medium term: good luck replacing California's food output with northern Alberta's. Now, one might be able to hasten the soil improvement that with some sort of complex, time-consuming terraforming ('agriforming?') process, but good luck getting that process to scale in a hurry. Or on-budget. (Have fun even making a budget for that.) Farming is actually just incredibly hard, the land is the biggest variable. It has to be just right. You can't just declare that an area is for food production like you'd rezone a city street for residential. Nature does not care about your lines on maps. Don't believe me? Look at the last time we tried. The same reason that turning the Amazonian rainforest into farmland has not been an awesome thing. And who is condescending to who, here? I'm not a farmer. But neither, I suspect, are you. So why do you discount my experience? I'm from the place you were talking about. My suspicion is that you simply cannot tolerate the ego-dystonicity of ushering in an age of starvation for our children and grandchildren. But we did it. You did it, with help. Check the prices at your supermarket.[1] Check the collapsing populations of insects, birds, and fish. Wait for the unravel to travel further up the food chain. Tag. You're it. And yes, it's apocalyptic. It really, really is. If you want to throw textbooks around, please read _This Changes Everything_. Then, read _Under a White Sky_. You will find them both in the nonfiction section. [1] Before you get typing: yes, inflation and supply-chain disruption can be symptoms of climate change -- specifically, when both are occasioned by a pandemic, which is the sort of event that becomes more common as habitats are squeezed up against one another. There will be more, faster now. I did PhD work on this, back in '05, in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-1. Like.
  - hagbard_c 5y ago
    I've traveled through that land for years, in both Europe as well as north-America, because of my studies (majored in forestry) but mostly because I like to be out and about. I live on a farm in Sweden, a country which stands to gain a sizeable amount of profitable crop area if the envisioned temperature increase comes about. The same is, as said, true for Russia and, yes, Canada. Get off the panic porn and broaden your mind. Read some other authors, e.g. Schellenberger's Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Lomborg's False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, Koonin's Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters just to name a few. Read them critically (as in "using your critical facilities", not "through the lens of critical theory") but keep your mind open for the possibility that those authors - environmentalists all of them - are on to something which has been covered under thick layers of ideology. I won't link to those books, you can find them anywhere books are to be had. The library is a good starting point, otherwise some local book store.

hagbard_c 5y ago

You might want to study your farming books again before you write your next condescending rant? It will be a while before permafrost becomes farmland but luckily there is a huge - and I mean enormous - area which has not seen permafrost for thousands of years but simply is too cold for many crops to be grown profitably. If the planet really ends up those 1.5°C to 2.5°C warmer than it is now (but cooler than it has been) growth zones move up and farming those crops becomes profitable where it currently isn't. This is something you know but for some reason decide to ignore only to indulge in apocalyptic fantasies. Why is that? Why do you - and the many with you who show similar behaviour - choose this path of rapture? If you think this makes people who do not follow your beliefs take them more seriously realise that it achieves exactly the opposite: the more outlandish the proposed scenarios of doom, the less likely non-believers are to fall in line.

undoware 5y ago
It's honestly like you've never seen that land. Much of Canada -- one of the two big possible breadbaskets you said you were eyeing -- is literally forest. The forest starts where the farmland stops. Even if you cleared the forest, the soil is worthless. It's been covered in conifers for thousands of years. It's also goopy, as it is thawing. Or sandy. Or simply too acidic. And while it might be good enough for grasses and cattle grazing one day, that day is not today, nor tomorrow, and in the meantime, you will be quite hungry. In the medium term: good luck replacing California's food output with northern Alberta's. Now, one might be able to hasten the soil improvement that with some sort of complex, time-consuming terraforming ('agriforming?') process, but good luck getting that process to scale in a hurry. Or on-budget. (Have fun even making a budget for that.) Farming is actually just incredibly hard, the land is the biggest variable. It has to be just right. You can't just declare that an area is for food production like you'd rezone a city street for residential. Nature does not care about your lines on maps. Don't believe me? Look at the last time we tried. The same reason that turning the Amazonian rainforest into farmland has not been an awesome thing. And who is condescending to who, here? I'm not a farmer. But neither, I suspect, are you. So why do you discount my experience? I'm from the place you were talking about. My suspicion is that you simply cannot tolerate the ego-dystonicity of ushering in an age of starvation for our children and grandchildren. But we did it. You did it, with help. Check the prices at your supermarket.[1] Check the collapsing populations of insects, birds, and fish. Wait for the unravel to travel further up the food chain. Tag. You're it. And yes, it's apocalyptic. It really, really is. If you want to throw textbooks around, please read _This Changes Everything_. Then, read _Under a White Sky_. You will find them both in the nonfiction section. [1] Before you get typing: yes, inflation and supply-chain disruption can be symptoms of climate change -- specifically, when both are occasioned by a pandemic, which is the sort of event that becomes more common as habitats are squeezed up against one another. There will be more, faster now. I did PhD work on this, back in '05, in the aftermath of SARS-CoV-1. Like.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
  I've traveled through that land for years, in both Europe as well as north-America, because of my studies (majored in forestry) but mostly because I like to be out and about. I live on a farm in Sweden, a country which stands to gain a sizeable amount of profitable crop area if the envisioned temperature increase comes about. The same is, as said, true for Russia and, yes, Canada. Get off the panic porn and broaden your mind. Read some other authors, e.g. Schellenberger's Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Lomborg's False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, Koonin's Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters just to name a few. Read them critically (as in "using your critical facilities", not "through the lens of critical theory") but keep your mind open for the possibility that those authors - environmentalists all of them - are on to something which has been covered under thick layers of ideology. I won't link to those books, you can find them anywhere books are to be had. The library is a good starting point, otherwise some local book store.