5 ms·

[flagged]

dwattttt 2y ago
Make sure to include the time and inputs to make the grass, and especially trees; those don't just appear out of nothing. And we already know how it works, it's called logging.
- lithocarpus 2y ago
  None of the inputs required for plants to grow require toxic pollution or destructive extraction. Of course humans can bring in toxic or destructive inputs to try to favor certain plants over others, or humans can do other non destructive things to favor certain plants over others. Or humans can step aside and let the plants do their thing which will create abundance too. (I like the middle of these three.) Also, trees provide far more value than timber alone.
  - ashoeafoot 2y ago
    Would you give up fertilizer and pest control and stop feeding the 8 billion ? Please dont be a holdomorehippy.. Those back-to-nature loving massmurderers without a cause creep me out beyond repair.. those that openly hate some humans at least give the monstrous game away.
    - trollbridge 2y ago
      Eventually, you won't have a choice when fertiliser produced from oil runs out, becomes cost prohibitive, or is made illegal due to greenhouse gas problems; likewise, "pest control" has already resulted in a 40% decline in insect populations; it won't be good if it gets to 100%. It would be best to find sustainable ways to grow food now, instead of continuing unsustainable ways (including supplying massive food aid to unsustainable populations so they can keep growing) until there is a precipitous crash. The idea that only industrial scale farming can feed the planet is mostly a myth promoted by producers of industrial scale inputs and the oil/gas industry, by the way.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        > Eventually, you won't have a choice when fertiliser produced from oil runs out, becomes cost prohibitive, or is made illegal due to greenhouse gas problems You mean, aside from the process of making ammonia using green hydrogen that doesn't use fossil fuel at all? A process that can be sustained indefinitely, using renewable energy? The single big concern is nitrous oxide emission from bacteria in the soil, but that can be reduced by nitrification inhibitors, some of which can be produced naturally by plant roots (and likely engineered into crop plants.)
        trollbridge 2y ago
        Promises of “green hydrogen” and fertiliser made sustainably haven’t panned out. I’ll believe them when I see it, but I’m not a believer in industrial farming, which is more akin to mining.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        Green hydrogen can't compete when natural gas-derived hydrogen is allowed to dump its waste CO2 into the atmosphere. That doesn't mean it can't or won't work when natural gas is outlawed. Your evidence shows nothing except that CO2 isn't being controlled.
      - lupusreal 2y ago
        Fertilizer is mainly made from natural gas, not oil. Accordingly it should last much longer. Worse case scenario when we run out is we switch to less efficient production, for instance splitting water using nuclear power. Any plan that relies on depopulation isn't going to work and any attempt to force it to work would require crimes against humanity.
      - mapt 2y ago
        The production of concentrated nitrogen compounds from thin air is useful enough that we'll almost certainly keep doing it en masse in an electric-only future. Mining for phosphorous and potassium fertilizers, likewise, but situationally a little different because these aren't very mobile in the groundwater column like nitrogen is, and they don't offgas back into the air like nitrogen compounds do. Quite possibly we'll be mining manure lagoons more, for CH4 and for closing the loop better on P and K. Ag will continue at industrial scale for cereal grains, because half the population is not going back to the fields. Within that framework, there's a lot of difference between outcomes in terms of how green we make our farms, what we grow, how we grow it. Herbicide and insecticide practices do not have to be what they are, as we witness massive overuse of things like neonics, glyphosate, and aminopyralid mostly because there's little financial reason to constrain use. We could stand to dramatically reduce the amount of cereal grain we consume, from a diet perspective, but the logistical difficulties of alternatives like more fresh fruits & vegetables will tend to increase carbon emissions. Eating less grain-fed meat and more high-protein legumes is basically a win-win from diet and climate perspectives. Returning to a less industrialized industry where livestock are raised on farms instead of on "feeding operations" seems like a fair tradeoff against something like subsidized corn-ethanol production. Attempting to encourage long-term soil stability with reduced tillage and is another goal that we might tangle with that would reduce yields; We have plenty of yield to spare in the US, so this is an option.
  - xhkkffbf 2y ago
    To be a pedant, the inputs for photosynthesis are pretty toxic to humans. Sunlight burns and causes skin cancer. CO2 also kills people each winter when space heaters aren't properly vented.
    - lithocarpus 2y ago
      [dead]
- trollbridge 2y ago
  Whose time and what inputs are required to make grass and trees? If you simply leave a place alone, it will turn into either a forest, a grassland, or desert (the latter when human activity has thoroughly destroyed it).
moralestapia 2y ago
[flagged]
- NiloCK 2y ago
  Warning: you may have become cynical. I didn't read that comment as snarky at all - efficiency comparisons between emerging tech and SOTA (grass, trees) are extremely relevant! (Warning to welf: you may be naive)
chongli 2y ago
I'm just picturing whole new swathes of rainforest being clearcut and bulldozed to make way for "artificial leaf farms."
joak 2y ago
Imagine you have 100 acres growing corn for biofuels, would it be nice to replace these by 99 acres of wilderness and 1 acre of photovoltaics producing the same amount of biofuels? If your photovoltaics are 100x more efficient to produce your chemicals, agriculture is the dirty way of doing it.
- saretup 2y ago
  Does it mention it’s 100x more efficient anywhere? Or is it just an example you’re providing, in which case, why not 1000x?
  - joshuaturner 2y ago
    > why not 1000x? now we're talking - can I invest in your company?
  - spauldo 2y ago
    Corn isn't particularly great for producing ethanol. I'm guessing that a synthetic process won't be able to get close to 100x less land usage, but any improvement would be welcome. The problem I see is that there's not enough money in in to develop a new process. Cellulosic ethanol outperforms corn on nearly every measure, but there's not enough money in it to pay for the development needed to scale it up to industrial levels.
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    They might be remembering the stat that: > Looking at land-use efficiency, corn-derived ethanol used to power internal combustion engines requires about 85x (range: 63-197x) as much land to power the same number of transportation miles as solar PV powering electric vehicles.
    - thaumasiotes 2y ago
      What's that supposed to be relevant to? We don't make corn-derived fuel because it's cost-effective. It isn't. The idea is to give corn farmers something to do, which won't work if you reduce the amount of corn you're growing.
Ygg2 2y ago
Grass and trees are pretty bad at converting sun into glucose. Main enzyme in photosynthesis Rubisco is both slow (few molecules per min vs several hundred per second) and lowly selective (confusing O2 for CO2 regularly). Which makes sense, for most of Earth's geological history CO2 was more abudant. So chance of mistaking O2 and CO2 was nil. https://youtu.be/vYVSH2RpHcQ?feature=shared https://youtu.be/vYVSH2RpHcQ?feature=shared
robbiep 2y ago
Photosynthesis in nature is 1% efficient so it doesn’t need to be greatly better to beat it
- otherme123 2y ago
  The rubisco enzime is specially ineficient. While most enzimes can usually do thousands of reactions per second, rubisco does up to 10. Organisms compensate making loads of copies, to the point it's the most abundant enzime in nature.
  - ordu 2y ago
    What can a molecule do for such a long time? I mean they move very fast, the distances there is very short, so I kinda assumed that all the molecules do they do almost instantly. But 0.1 sec doesn't seem like an instant event.
breakyerself 2y ago
I wouldn't replace grass or trees with this, but there's places where not much of anything is growing.
dang 2y ago
"Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

Make sure to include the time and inputs to make the grass, and especially trees; those don't just appear out of nothing. And we already know how it works, it's called logging.

lithocarpus 2y ago
None of the inputs required for plants to grow require toxic pollution or destructive extraction. Of course humans can bring in toxic or destructive inputs to try to favor certain plants over others, or humans can do other non destructive things to favor certain plants over others. Or humans can step aside and let the plants do their thing which will create abundance too. (I like the middle of these three.) Also, trees provide far more value than timber alone.
- ashoeafoot 2y ago
  Would you give up fertilizer and pest control and stop feeding the 8 billion ? Please dont be a holdomorehippy.. Those back-to-nature loving massmurderers without a cause creep me out beyond repair.. those that openly hate some humans at least give the monstrous game away.
  - trollbridge 2y ago
    Eventually, you won't have a choice when fertiliser produced from oil runs out, becomes cost prohibitive, or is made illegal due to greenhouse gas problems; likewise, "pest control" has already resulted in a 40% decline in insect populations; it won't be good if it gets to 100%. It would be best to find sustainable ways to grow food now, instead of continuing unsustainable ways (including supplying massive food aid to unsustainable populations so they can keep growing) until there is a precipitous crash. The idea that only industrial scale farming can feed the planet is mostly a myth promoted by producers of industrial scale inputs and the oil/gas industry, by the way.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      > Eventually, you won't have a choice when fertiliser produced from oil runs out, becomes cost prohibitive, or is made illegal due to greenhouse gas problems You mean, aside from the process of making ammonia using green hydrogen that doesn't use fossil fuel at all? A process that can be sustained indefinitely, using renewable energy? The single big concern is nitrous oxide emission from bacteria in the soil, but that can be reduced by nitrification inhibitors, some of which can be produced naturally by plant roots (and likely engineered into crop plants.)
      - trollbridge 2y ago
        Promises of “green hydrogen” and fertiliser made sustainably haven’t panned out. I’ll believe them when I see it, but I’m not a believer in industrial farming, which is more akin to mining.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        Green hydrogen can't compete when natural gas-derived hydrogen is allowed to dump its waste CO2 into the atmosphere. That doesn't mean it can't or won't work when natural gas is outlawed. Your evidence shows nothing except that CO2 isn't being controlled.
    - lupusreal 2y ago
      Fertilizer is mainly made from natural gas, not oil. Accordingly it should last much longer. Worse case scenario when we run out is we switch to less efficient production, for instance splitting water using nuclear power. Any plan that relies on depopulation isn't going to work and any attempt to force it to work would require crimes against humanity.
    - mapt 2y ago
      The production of concentrated nitrogen compounds from thin air is useful enough that we'll almost certainly keep doing it en masse in an electric-only future. Mining for phosphorous and potassium fertilizers, likewise, but situationally a little different because these aren't very mobile in the groundwater column like nitrogen is, and they don't offgas back into the air like nitrogen compounds do. Quite possibly we'll be mining manure lagoons more, for CH4 and for closing the loop better on P and K. Ag will continue at industrial scale for cereal grains, because half the population is not going back to the fields. Within that framework, there's a lot of difference between outcomes in terms of how green we make our farms, what we grow, how we grow it. Herbicide and insecticide practices do not have to be what they are, as we witness massive overuse of things like neonics, glyphosate, and aminopyralid mostly because there's little financial reason to constrain use. We could stand to dramatically reduce the amount of cereal grain we consume, from a diet perspective, but the logistical difficulties of alternatives like more fresh fruits & vegetables will tend to increase carbon emissions. Eating less grain-fed meat and more high-protein legumes is basically a win-win from diet and climate perspectives. Returning to a less industrialized industry where livestock are raised on farms instead of on "feeding operations" seems like a fair tradeoff against something like subsidized corn-ethanol production. Attempting to encourage long-term soil stability with reduced tillage and is another goal that we might tangle with that would reduce yields; We have plenty of yield to spare in the US, so this is an option.
- xhkkffbf 2y ago
  To be a pedant, the inputs for photosynthesis are pretty toxic to humans. Sunlight burns and causes skin cancer. CO2 also kills people each winter when space heaters aren't properly vented.
  - lithocarpus 2y ago
    [dead]
trollbridge 2y ago
Whose time and what inputs are required to make grass and trees? If you simply leave a place alone, it will turn into either a forest, a grassland, or desert (the latter when human activity has thoroughly destroyed it).

moralestapia 2y ago

[flagged]

NiloCK 2y ago
Warning: you may have become cynical. I didn't read that comment as snarky at all - efficiency comparisons between emerging tech and SOTA (grass, trees) are extremely relevant! (Warning to welf: you may be naive)

chongli 2y ago

I'm just picturing whole new swathes of rainforest being clearcut and bulldozed to make way for "artificial leaf farms."

joak 2y ago

Imagine you have 100 acres growing corn for biofuels, would it be nice to replace these by 99 acres of wilderness and 1 acre of photovoltaics producing the same amount of biofuels? If your photovoltaics are 100x more efficient to produce your chemicals, agriculture is the dirty way of doing it.

saretup 2y ago
Does it mention it’s 100x more efficient anywhere? Or is it just an example you’re providing, in which case, why not 1000x?
- joshuaturner 2y ago
  > why not 1000x? now we're talking - can I invest in your company?
- spauldo 2y ago
  Corn isn't particularly great for producing ethanol. I'm guessing that a synthetic process won't be able to get close to 100x less land usage, but any improvement would be welcome. The problem I see is that there's not enough money in in to develop a new process. Cellulosic ethanol outperforms corn on nearly every measure, but there's not enough money in it to pay for the development needed to scale it up to industrial levels.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  They might be remembering the stat that: > Looking at land-use efficiency, corn-derived ethanol used to power internal combustion engines requires about 85x (range: 63-197x) as much land to power the same number of transportation miles as solar PV powering electric vehicles.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    What's that supposed to be relevant to? We don't make corn-derived fuel because it's cost-effective. It isn't. The idea is to give corn farmers something to do, which won't work if you reduce the amount of corn you're growing.

Ygg2 2y ago

Grass and trees are pretty bad at converting sun into glucose. Main enzyme in photosynthesis Rubisco is both slow (few molecules per min vs several hundred per second) and lowly selective (confusing O2 for CO2 regularly). Which makes sense, for most of Earth's geological history CO2 was more abudant. So chance of mistaking O2 and CO2 was nil. https://youtu.be/vYVSH2RpHcQ?feature=shared https://youtu.be/vYVSH2RpHcQ?feature=shared

robbiep 2y ago

Photosynthesis in nature is 1% efficient so it doesn’t need to be greatly better to beat it

otherme123 2y ago
The rubisco enzime is specially ineficient. While most enzimes can usually do thousands of reactions per second, rubisco does up to 10. Organisms compensate making loads of copies, to the point it's the most abundant enzime in nature.
- ordu 2y ago
  What can a molecule do for such a long time? I mean they move very fast, the distances there is very short, so I kinda assumed that all the molecules do they do almost instantly. But 0.1 sec doesn't seem like an instant event.

breakyerself 2y ago

I wouldn't replace grass or trees with this, but there's places where not much of anything is growing.

dang 2y ago

"Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html