The Analysis of Sea Levels.

[kerbiloid]

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

and one of the things I recall from back then was concern that Acid Rain was harming our statues. 

Since last years sounds like lol.

[StrandedonEarth]

21 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The thing I appreciate about @SunlitZelkova 's concern with acidification is that he's highlighting something that not many people seem aware of, much less concerned about.  When I was a kid, the 'new threat' was acid rain.

Acid Rain: An Increasing Threat - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Even then, the information was often controverted and sometimes odd:

Acid Rain Doesn't Hurt Most Crops, Actually Helps Some - The Washington Post

...and one of the things I recall from back then was concern that Acid Rain was harming our statues.  Like, it's hard to get people excited about saving the monuments. 

Reefs, on the other hand have been better 'marketed' as a biomarker that our pollution is adversely affecting the planet and our environment.  If you do a search for "Ocean Acidification" highlighting the 80s-90s, it's almost never mentioned.  Acidified lakes in Ontario, yes.  But Ocean Acidification is rarely discussed.

ocean acidification - Google Search

It wasn't entirely unheard of - ( 1988 Internal Shell Report "The Greenhouse Effect" (climatefiles.com) ) but it also wasn't part of the public awareness.  I think that's changing.   Again, dying reefs are something people can see and appreciate.

 

 

 

Ironically, the sulfur dioxide aerosols from pre-scrubber coal plants masked the greenhouse effect by reflecting sunlight, cooling the region in a manner similar to a volcanic eruption, albeit without the dust/ash component. Some scientists at the time were concerned about a potential or apparent cooling trend, later disproved. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

[SunlitZelkova]

On 1/12/2022 at 11:39 AM, MKI said:

 

Being concerned and being able to do something about it are two very different things.

Hearing screaming and going to investigate is a singular choice that is either made or not made.

When it comes to ocean acidification, idk what choices even exist. Or more broadly, how does one care for their environment? Sure you can end up with the same level of concern for both, but the actions you can take, or even know you can take are vastly different. 

As Joe said, "we muddle along", and I don't think its just willful ignorance on a vast majority of people, I think it comes down to lack of clear actions that can be taken. Its one thing to be a hero and go to someone screaming, its another to make all the "right" decisions on a vague problem you know exists, but with no clear direct solutions.

 

However, I do think bad things will happen simply because I don't see how they wont happen. Either now or later. Its easier to stick on that path and ignore screaming, when your not in a forest, but in a forest of society and that voice requires you and the rest of society to make the right choices every day for decades to even get to that voice. Meanwhile that society/forest is more like a river with a waterfall at the end, and your only now getting into the rapids. 

Well, I think searching for those choices would be included within the metaphorical "going to help", whereas the lack of attention would be "ignoring the screams". If "they" (society) doesn't know what to do, they need to figure out what to do. They need to start trying. The other "they" (scientists and activists, some corporations) are, but the actions of much of the general public, media, and government feel like fluff.

I wouldn't call it "willful ignorance" but (I hold the personal opinion that) it is not excusable by "we muddle along". The problem is right in front of us, we just need to take it seriously and devise solutions. Yes, we have "muddled along", but that doesn't make the tragedies and disasters of the past acceptable, and it is not a free pass for wholesale ignorance towards future problems and threats.

So yes, what steps need to be taken aren't clear, but no one is really trying that hard to figure out a solution in the first place (it's either "shut down all fossil fuel use now" or "this problem is a hoax"), and therefore I think my metaphor is still valid.

[DDE]

5 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

no one is really trying that hard to figure out a solution in the first place (it's either "shut down all fossil fuel use now" or "this problem is a hoax"

You forgot "arguing over taxonomies", "selling green certifications" and "trying to count all the $$$ they can earn by supporting transition but not really".

[kerbiloid]

"Sell a new car instead of still normal old one".

And still can't see "Experienced aged persons  of 70+ are required for hire."
(That's about the ratio of the ecological efforts to the expected active lifespan).

[mikegarrison]

On 1/12/2022 at 1:06 PM, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

The thing I appreciate about @SunlitZelkova 's concern with acidification is that he's highlighting something that not many people seem aware of, much less concerned about.  When I was a kid, the 'new threat' was acid rain.

Acid Rain: An Increasing Threat - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Even then, the information was often controverted and sometimes odd:

Acid Rain Doesn't Hurt Most Crops, Actually Helps Some - The Washington Post

...and one of the things I recall from back then was concern that Acid Rain was harming our statues.  Like, it's hard to get people excited about saving the monuments. 

Reefs, on the other hand have been better 'marketed' as a biomarker that our pollution is adversely affecting the planet and our environment.  If you do a search for "Ocean Acidification" highlighting the 80s-90s, it's almost never mentioned.  Acidified lakes in Ontario, yes.  But Ocean Acidification is rarely discussed.

ocean acidification - Google Search

It wasn't entirely unheard of - ( 1988 Internal Shell Report "The Greenhouse Effect" (climatefiles.com) ) but it also wasn't part of the public awareness.  I think that's changing.   Again, dying reefs are something people can see and appreciate.

Acid rain is a real thing, but we took action and cleaned up a lot of the smokestack emissions that cause it. Smokestacks now have "scrubbers" that pull the sulfur out of the stack emissions.

[kerbiloid]

And the sulfur scrubbers are the same part of any metallurgical , chemical, or gas refinery plant which extract the carbon oxides, too.

[MKI]

18 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:

So yes, what steps need to be taken aren't clear, but no one is really trying that hard to figure out a solution in the first place (it's either "shut down all fossil fuel use now" or "this problem is a hoax"), and therefore I think my metaphor is still valid.

There are plenty of people who are trying real hard to make solutions. There's this one guy who made a a whole car company on the idea of making cars electric. He works to darn much and now is making another company to leave the planet. 

Jokes aside, Tesla is up there in terms of "trying hard', except even a full electrical car solution doesn't solve everything 

1. Electrical cars don't emit emissions directly, but their battery production, and thus carbon footprint off the factory floor is significantly higher. This means you need to then keep using that battery for a prolonged period of time to see "reduced carbon gains". 

2. Electrical cars run on the grid, which requires the grid to be green. The only way the grid is green is increased investments into green technologies. Except the existing grid is usually controlled by existing infrastructure, such as gas and coal. Migrating away from such infrastructure requires more money, time and effort. It also means existing workers and communities disrupted. The overall problem can be accepted, but if it means losing your job, and the community is disrupted or even destroyed for a problem that doesn't directly affect you. Few would choose to to solve the overall problem because it creates vastly worse more direct problems. 

Obviously its easy to say "why not invest into green infrastructure jobs for those that work in "dirty" infrastructure jobs" and you'd be right, but its not that simple. Green jobs don't directly correlate to "dirty" jobs. A coal miner wont exactly be in the best place or skillset to suddenly work in a solar plant, or building wind farms. Or an oil refinery doesn't really do anything good for green industry. 

 

Again, there are always things you can do, but most of them are damn hard to do, or don't make much sense at the personal level. Its one thing to buy an electrical car. Its another to get entire communities based on a specific commodity to change everything they are doing. This only touches on the obvious culprits, never mind more nuance problems like the beef industry, where the solution is actually forcing people to eat less meat and become a vegetarian (!)

 

Edited January 14, 2022 by MKI

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

13 minutes ago, MKI said:

forcing people to eat less meat and become a vegetarian

Which is stupid, too. 

[mikegarrison]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Which is stupid, too. 

Not "stupid", although also not a goal for most people.

Imagine you are making a spaceship to Mars. Not some kind of massive colony ship, but a exploration mission. Are you going to carry livestock? Hell no, because that would be massively inefficient in terms of calories/kg. Although you might well bring a lot of lard or olive oil, because that would be pretty good for calories per kg.

In terms of land use, greenhouse gasses, water use, etc. -- livestock is not the most efficient way to raise food for people. It's sometimes really directly inefficient -- you can burn up more human-edible calories raising animals than you get back from them. Sure, people can't eat grass or trees, and some livestock animals can. But even there, if you have more productive use for the same acreage, then raising cows in pasture is a bad deal environmentally and to some extent economically. This is a big reason why meat is a lot more expensive than zucchini. Cheap meat is almost always just processed scraps.

And wild meat isn't as limitless as it once seemed. Overfishing is a real thing that we now have the technology to do.

Anyway, no, I'm not advocating humans as a whole change to be vegan, but if we don't lower our collective impact on the planet, that is something that will be pretty much forced upon us. For many people in history and today, meat is a somewhat rare luxury to have already. For those of us in wealthy Western countries, even the poorest people can usually get all the meat they want (if they don't mind eating processed scraps like burgers and "chicken nuggets").

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Key word was 'forcing'.  If someone wants to make an individual choice - more power to them.  I don't like mushrooms or fish.  My wife does.  We've yet to divorce each other over it.

4 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

you can burn up more human-edible calories raising animals than you get back from them

I think these numbers are kinda fudged.  Our 'arable land' in America is way overproductive due to our agricultural processes.  Compare to the 70s when everyone thought that 6 billion people on the planet = mass starvation... and look at the productivity of farmland today compared to then.  

When you look at the fact that people are taking the numbers from 'we grow this much corn' on an acre and asking how many acres do cattle need (then comparing the fact that we actually feed cattle corn) and then finally saying 'cattle is inefficient'... its kinda silly.

Finally - when people say, 'we don't need meat...'

Harumph: Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain | Live Science

 

[mikegarrison]

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

When you look at the fact that people are taking the numbers from 'we grow this much corn' on an acre and asking how many acres do cattle need (then comparing the fact that we actually feed cattle corn) and then finally saying 'cattle is inefficient'... its kinda silly.

The key there is "we actually feed cattle corn". We would get more calories by eating the corn than feeding it to the cattle.

Now if we feed the cattle the cobs that we don't eat ourselves, then that's a net plus. Otherwise it's a net minus.

[NFUN]

17 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Finally - when people say, 'we don't need meat...'

Harumph: Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain | Live Science

 

like do you honestly think you're making good points with things like this

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 minutes ago, NFUN said:

like do you honestly think you're making good points with things like this

Meat.  It's not just for breakfast!

[miklkit]

Trivia:  More than 4 times as many people are working in Green Energy jobs than is all fossil fuel jobs in America right now today.  Green Energy is more labor intensive than fossil fuels.  After all, there are only about 700 coal miners in West Virginia.  Way more than that are building windmills.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to install solar panels either, so retraining is quick and easy. 

It doesn't matter what the lobbyists do, the economics says we are going green.  The only question is will we move fast enough to avert the worst case scenarios.

[SunlitZelkova]

7 hours ago, MKI said:

There are plenty of people who are trying real hard to make solutions. There's this one guy who made a a whole car company on the idea of making cars electric. He works to darn much and now is making another company to leave the planet. 

Jokes aside, Tesla is up there in terms of "trying hard', except even a full electrical car solution doesn't solve everything

I meant on a wider scale towards the whole problem, not "little things". Mainly because the little things alone, while good, do not actually count as a solution towards the wider issue. It doesn't matter if everyone in Europe drives a Tesla if the rest of the world primarily drives combustion engine vehicles.

7 hours ago, MKI said:

1. Electrical cars don't emit emissions directly, but their battery production, and thus carbon footprint off the factory floor is significantly higher. This means you need to then keep using that battery for a prolonged period of time to see "reduced carbon gains".

Most electric cars already do this. The manufacture of a Tesla does have a larger carbon footprint than the average gas car, but the long term savings make it still more ecofriendly than any gas vehicle.

7 hours ago, MKI said:

2. Electrical cars run on the grid, which requires the grid to be green. The only way the grid is green is increased investments into green technologies. Except the existing grid is usually controlled by existing infrastructure, such as gas and coal. Migrating away from such infrastructure requires more money, time and effort. It also means existing workers and communities disrupted. The overall problem can be accepted, but if it means losing your job, and the community is disrupted or even destroyed for a problem that doesn't directly affect you. Few would choose to to solve the overall problem because it creates vastly worse more direct problems. 

Obviously its easy to say "why not invest into green infrastructure jobs for those that work in "dirty" infrastructure jobs" and you'd be right, but its not that simple. Green jobs don't directly correlate to "dirty" jobs. A coal miner wont exactly be in the best place or skillset to suddenly work in a solar plant, or building wind farms. Or an oil refinery doesn't really do anything good for green industry. 

 

Again, there are always things you can do, but most of them are damn hard to do, or don't make much sense at the personal level. Its one thing to buy an electrical car. Its another to get entire communities based on a specific commodity to change everything they are doing.

I have not seen any studies or reports indicating this would actually happen. Furthermore, while "disruption of existing jobs/communities" is a potential problem that would be faced by a rapid shift to green energy, no one has actually looked at what steps could be taken to alleviate or eliminate such problems, merely saying "because this comes up, we aren't going to even consider this- just give up".

I don't think a rapid transition to green energy and complete elimination of fossil fuels within 8 years would be impossible. It is just absurd that we can build over 30,000 JDAM guided bombs in one year but phasing out gas cars is "hard". In general, rapid change is not impossible. If people "get the message", anything can be done. Even with widespread opposition, violence, and political shenanigans, the Soviet Union (with all that country implies as far as inefficiency goes) went from an agrarian country with little manufacturing base to a great power capable of producing thousands of tanks and planes within 10 years, and then went on to defeat Germany.

Imagine what the nations of the world in 2021 (with actual decent efficiency) could do if they put their minds to it! Of course however, "we" aren't, as such I can't help but think that people really don't care that much about things like climate change, pollution, ocean acidification, etc.

This is my personal opinion however. I am not trying to convince you to change your or anyone else's opinion, merely explaining mine as part of this discussion 

7 hours ago, MKI said:

This only touches on the obvious culprits, never mind more nuance problems like the beef industry, where the solution is actually forcing people to eat less meat and become a vegetarian (!)

The solution isn't "forcing" people to eat anything- it is just not raising cattle in the way we do and on the scale we do.

When we ban any sort of consumer item, we don't force people to stop using it, we stop its production.

4 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

And wild meat isn't as limitless as it once seemed. Overfishing is a real thing that we now have the technology to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_of_the_Atlantic_northwest_cod_fishery

It has been a thing since the 1960s.

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

I think these numbers are kinda fudged.  Our 'arable land' in America is way overproductive due to our agricultural processes.  Compare to the 70s when everyone thought that 6 billion people on the planet = mass starvation... and look at the productivity of farmland today compared to then.  

This will not be a thing forever. Arguably the worst issue surrounding meat consumption isn't the methane release, it is how unsustainable feed production for livestock is. In fact, in general the way we grow plants for food is unsustainable, too.

Quote

The vast majority of N fertilisers consumed today are still created using fossil fuels and cannot be regarded as sustainable until such times as new technological approaches emerge, which are currently in their infancy.^10,11 A review of mineral fertiliser reserves concluded that potash reserves (the source of most potassium (K) fertilisers) are of great concern and that it is time to start evaluating other sources of K for agriculture¹² but others concluded that ‘modern agriculture is currently relying on a non-renewable resource and future phosphate rock is likely to yield lower quality P at a higher price’.¹³ If significant physical and institutional changes are not made to the way we currently use and source P, agricultural yields will be severely compromised in the future.

Quote

Excessive removal of groundwater for irrigation is leading to rapid depletion of aquifers in key food-producing regions, such as North-Western India, the North China Plain, Central USA and California.¹⁸ Aquifers replenish so slowly that they are effectively a non-renewable resource. The depletion of these large freshwater stocks threatens food production and security locally and globally via international food trade.

Quote

Over 20 years ago, it was estimated that around one third of the world’s agricultural land had been lost to erosion and the rate of loss was about 10 Mha/year²² Calculations suggest that soil erosion rates under ploughed cultivation are one to two orders of magnitude greater than soil production rates.²³ This rate of soil loss is not compatible with the ‘continued satisfaction’ requirement for a sustainable food system.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-018-0027-3

4 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

When you look at the fact that people are taking the numbers from 'we grow this much corn' on an acre and asking how many acres do cattle need (then comparing the fact that we actually feed cattle corn) and then finally saying 'cattle is inefficient'... its kinda silly.

Cattle is inefficient, in land use- https://ourworldindata.org/agricultural-land-by-global-diets

Meat doesn't need to go away entirely, but its consumption does need to be drastically decreased. Taking into account the way agricultural land is being destroyed (77% of agricultural land is used for livestock) and the methane release, lowering meat consumption is the best way to solve these crises.

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Finally - when people say, 'we don't need meat...'

Harumph: Meat, Cooked Foods Needed for Early Human Brain | Live Science

Um... This article doesn't support your statement...

Quote

From health to the environment, there are many reasons to go vegetarian, go vegan and even go raw, but evolution isn't one of them.

It merely states that there is no historical reasoning for why people should not eat meat. Not "not eating meat is incorrect".

This is a pretty good article on the whole topic- https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/are-humans-supposed-to-eat-meat#evolution

It states-

Quote

Thus, as humans are always responding to surrounding conditions, the logic that your body was originally designed to eat a certain food and must stick to it doesn’t stand.

But goes over the pros and cons and then says-

Quote

Ultimately, whether you eat meat is an individual choice.

I think the article above titled "Agriculture land by global diets" makes the best argument for how to approach the question as it relates to the environment. Meat consumption should be limited (quite drastically in fact), but need not be ceased.

And if things come to push and shove, banning individuals from eating meat is not the way forward- banning its production would be. Although at that point, if the problem actually becomes "visible" and not just predictions in studies though, there probably won't be meat (or many other foods for that matter) to eat anyways.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Um... This article doesn't support your statement...

You will note a whiff of humor and sarcasm and irreverence in both my post and response to @NFUN

[kerbiloid]

https://www.rfidtires.com/how-many-cars-world.html#:~:text=Presently%2C there are 1.42 billion,reached 1 billion in 2009.

Quote

Presently, there are 1.42 billion cars in operation worldwide, including 1.06 billion passenger cars and 363 million commercial vehicles. To put that into perspective, the number of cars in the world reached 1 billion in 2009.
<...>
The 1.42 billion cars on the road will emit 2.23 billion metric tons (equivalent to 4.92 trillion pounds) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere this year.
<...>
The 1.42 billion cars on the road in 2018 need a set of new tires about every 2 years, or 2.84 billion tires annually, and those 2.84 billion tires consume over half of the earth's rubber production

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consumption

The amounts are rounded and given in million tonnes of oil equivalent per year (1 Mtoe = 11.63 TWh, 1 TWh = 10⁹ kWh). The data^[2] are of 2018.

Largest PE producers (90%) (Russia excluded in Europe)

	Total	Coal	Oil & Gas	Nuclear	Renewable
World	14420	3890	7850	707	1972
China	2560	1860	325	77	300
United States	2170	369	1400	219	180
Middle East	2040	1	2030	2	4
Russia	1484	240	1165	54	25
Africa	1169	157	611	3	397
Europe	1111	171	398	244	296
India	574	289	67	10	208
Canada	529	31	422	26	50
Indonesia	451	288	102	0	61
Australia	412	287	115	0	9
Brazil	296	2	160	4	129
Kazakhstan	178	49	128	0	1
Mexico	159	7	132	4	16

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-many-kilowatt-hours-does-electric-car-use/

An electric car spends ~30 kWh/100 km.

https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/average-miles-driven-per-year/#:~:text=Federal Highway Administration data from 2019 indicates motorists in the,of 39 miles per day.

Quote

Federal Highway Administration data from 2019 indicates motorists in the U.S. drive an average of 39 miles per day.

***********

39 mi * 1.609 km/mi  / 100 km * 30 kWh ~= 19 kWh (electric) / (car * day).

19 * 1.42 * 10⁹ * 365 ~= 10¹³ kWh = 10 000 TWh (electric)/yr for all the carkind.

Let the electric/heat power ratio be ~1:3.

So, the cars spend ~30 000 kWh (heat) / yr
30 000 / 11.63 ~= 2 600 Mtoe / yr.

And as a car can't be equipped by the industrial carbon dioxide filters, unlike the powerplants and industrial plants can, so it turns the cars into the main source of atmospheric pollution in foresseable future, making their electrification inevitable.

Another advantage of the electrocars is that they are omnivorous. They can be powered from any source of energy, blue, green or maroon. Diversity, flexibility.

And the electricity can be easily redistributed from the regions with excessive power to the regions which lack it, naking the whole system more flexible.

Also the electric cars are much more AI-controllable in wide sense, and this allows to exclude the greedy and silly human element from the decisions.

So, it's not a question if to kill the combustion engines on cars.

***

10 hours ago, MKI said:

Except the existing grid is usually controlled by existing infrastructure, such as gas and coal. Migrating away from such infrastructure requires more money, time and effort.

They are controlled by greedy people who don't care if the power is green or not.
Once the green power gets cheaper and more profitabler, they will easily become green proponents for money. So, no problem with the sharks of the capitalism.

Also, "requires more money" = "allows to get more contracts, funds, and preferences and to sell goods for additional money".

10 hours ago, MKI said:

Green jobs don't directly correlate to "dirty" jobs.

"Green jobs" correlate to "no jobs", as the greendustry requires much less people by default, so turns them from "working" into "unemployed but occupied by anything to keep them entertained and controllable". 
This means both "personal yoga trainer", "dental hygiene specialist", "pet stylist" vacancies and as well the "universal basic income", _{like in the good Ancient Roman times}.

10 hours ago, MKI said:

beef industry, where the solution is actually forcing people to eat less meat and become a vegetarian (!)

The beefarms should turn into beefabrics and start growing the "cultured meat", it's both meat and vegetarian.
Thus, the humanity will become totally vegan but meat-eating, but the cattle will be not required anymore and disappear.

***

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Imagine you are making a spaceship to Mars. Not some kind of massive colony ship, but a exploration mission. Are you going to carry livestock? Hell no, because

the livestock will be murdered on the Earth, and only their milled corpses will fly to Mars.

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Although you might well bring a lot of lard or olive oil, because that would be pretty good for calories per kg.

The oil contains only fat, and the crew will die before reaching the Mars.

The food should contain proteins, contained in grain, potatoes, fruits, and meat, and vitamines contained in them also.

So, the food won't differ.

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Sure, people can't eat grass or trees, and some livestock animals can. But even there, if you have more productive use for the same acreage, then raising cows in pasture is a bad deal environmentally and to some extent economically. This is a big reason why meat is a lot more expensive than zucchini.

We should remember that in the human history the mostly vegetarian and fish-eating equatorial peoples usually not felt very good being assaulted by the European expansion focused on meat eating.

Also, the knights and peasants had different diets, the pure bread eating never was as good as meat predating.

And historically the human species is an omnivorous predator. So, the meat is required.

Just it can be grown from cells, which utilize the available resources and energy more effective than the cows do, as they don't need horns, tails, and hair.

***

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Our 'arable land' in America is way overproductive due to our agricultural processes.  Compare to the 70s when everyone thought that 6 billion people on the planet = mass starvation... and look at the productivity of farmland today compared to then.  

Totally thanks for having a lot of energy and industry which allow to meliorate the wasteland, and for having just ~400 Mhumans per continent.

In the hot equatorial countries they festival of life is limited by the available water amount (of the whole continent, not in the nearest river) and the exponential growth of energy required for the ocean water freshening and the wastes utilization.

7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

if we don't lower our collective impact on the planet, that is something that will be pretty much forced upon us.

Not that directly "us", but directly "them" who produce the cheap goods for "us", then indirectly "us" by the need of producing cheap goods for cheap salary (or to automate as much as possible, and see above the unemploymeny and basic income).

6 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

The key there is "we actually feed cattle corn". We would get more calories by eating the corn than feeding it to the cattle.

We could grow algae to feed the unicellular cattle to grow the cultured beef and pork.

Eating corn directly poorly provides the organism with everything required, unless the organism is expendable (peasants) or philosophically gifted (famous vegan thinkers).

6 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Meat.  It's not just for breakfast!

That's obvious. It's also for lunch and dinner/supper.

4 hours ago, miklkit said:

More than 4 times as many people are working in Green Energy jobs than is all fossil fuel jobs in America right now today.  Green Energy is more labor intensive than fossil fuels.

Looking at the energy production, the Green Energy jobs are just a good way to utilize the excessive labour force before it starts rioting, and to advertise buying goods that are not actually necessary (making to replace the car after 5 years instead of 10).

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

When we ban any sort of consumer item, we don't force people to stop using it, we stop its production.

+1

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

10 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

That's obvious. It's also for lunch and dinner/supper.

I concur.

 

Dinnah ferget: midnight snackin!

Edited January 15, 2022 by JoeSchmuckatelli

[NFUN]

8 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

You will note a whiff of humor and sarcasm and irreverence in both my post and response to @NFUN

can confirm

[mikegarrison]

17 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

The oil contains only fat, and the crew will die before reaching the Mars.

The food should contain proteins, contained in grain, potatoes, fruits, and meat, and vitamines contained in them also.

Yes, you need all that, but you also need raw calories. It's actually pretty easy to supplement trace minerals, vitamins, essential proteins, etc. Harder to deal with a simple lack of calories, because calories are the energy that makes it all happen.

I recall from my climbing days the stories about Everest expeditions where the Westerners would bring all this expensive dehydrated food, but the Russians would mostly just boil a stick of butter in water and just drink more or less raw fat calories. Worked fine for the short duration. Drinking chai supplemented with (often rancid) yak butter was a staple of the Sherpa porters.

Edited January 16, 2022 by mikegarrison

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Drinking chai supplemented with (often rancid) yak butter

When in Rome...

FWIW: Cheese is a superfood, regardless of the source.

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

Everest expeditions

They last for several days, so the raw calories are pretty much enough.

While the Martian flight lasts for at least eight months (if have a food store delivered by a robot), and three years (if bring the food onboard).

As the food store may appear to be unavailable for technical reasons, actually they must have a three-year amount of food onboard in any case.

A human requires 0.8 kg of solid food per day. 0.8 * 365 * 3 = 1 t per human for all Martian flight.

So, there is no need in changing their diet beyond the obvious zero-g and low-UV requirements.

1 hour ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Cheese is a superfood, regardless of the source.

That's why trolls like cheesy food.

Edited January 16, 2022 by kerbiloid

[mikegarrison]

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

(Everest climbs) last for several days

Well yes, given that many weeks can be said to be made up of "several days". But you're not going to get scurvy or rickets or whatever.

I am not saying that a diet of only butter is good for a person. However, there are peculiarities in high-altitude climbing. 1) People lose interest in the taste of food. Food they normally like just tastes "blah" or even bad. 2) The digestion process becomes less efficient. 3) The body uses up a tremendous amount of calories due to the conditions and the workload. 4) You have to carry all the food.

For all these reasons, highly energy-dense food that is somewhat palatable and easy to digest is strongly preferred. You also need a lot of water and the only way to get it is by melting the snow. Hot soups (or simply sweetened fat melted in water) is a reasonably convenient way to take in calories, warmth, and water all at the same time.

[kerbiloid]

52 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

many weeks can be said to be made up of "several days".

https://www.alanarnette.com/everest/everestfaq.php

Q: How long does it take to climb Everest? And why so long?
A: The entire climb takes six to nine weeks. The first week is used to arrive at base camp with a trek from Lukla for the south or a drive from Katmandu or Lhasa on the north. Next you spend three to four weeks going up and down the mountain to establish camps with food, fuel and oxygen. The average time from arriving at Base Camp to reaching the summit is 40 days. On most climbs it is the Sherpas who are doing the heavy carrying so you are acclimatizing your body to the high altitude. However you are still carrying a 20lb to 30lb pack with personal gear. The acclimatization process cannot be rushed. The summit push is about one week and then another 4 to 6 days to get home.

I.e.  40 days from the camp to the summit + 7 days to dance around +  4..6 days back,  so 50+ days including the return.

The Hohmann trasfer to Mars takes about 240 days, five times longer.
The whole expedition is about 1 000 days long.

And while the climbers have a rest after the return, eat fresh food, have a spa, and so on, the Martians just start hardly working on arrival.

52 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

I am not saying that a diet of only butter is good for a person.

Someone tells, it's very bad for it, especially at high altitude.
https://sport--marafon-ru.translate.goog/article/alpinizm/o-pitanii-i-vodno-solevom-rezhime-dlya-alpinistov-i-gornykh-turistov/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru

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You can collect high-calorie foods - lard, sunflower oil, chocolate - then a daily diet of 4,000 kcal will weigh 300 g. But it will be extremely tasteless, very unhealthy (fats are poorly absorbed in the mountains) and very hungry.

High-calorie food is, I repeat, chocolate, lard, sunflower oil. Everything is extremely tasteless, unhealthy and poorly digested. Calorie content is largely a conditional thing, it is the energy that is released when a particular product is burned. That is, there is a chemical reaction, but the question is how this product is absorbed. Sunflower oil, for example, is not digested in any way. Fat at altitude is also almost not absorbed - in order to assimilate a large amount of fat, you need a lot of oxygen, and at altitude, especially in the first days of the trip, there is an acute shortage of it and mountain sickness. And fat in this case becomes just delicious food (for those who love it), but not an energy product.

And btw, yes, the fats require a lot of oxygen, which they lack especially there.

The Sherpa have acclimatized been sorted out for generations, it's like compare the diet of the Far North people to the European diet.
A European hardly can live long on pure meat and fat and consume a rotten seal corpse hidden especially for this under stones, while the Far North can't digest the amount of bread, fruits, and sugar which the European is used to.
So, unless you are a Sherpa, don't cosplay the Sherpa.

A several-week long army marine push is also not a proper example, exactly because they don't eat the pure fat daily, and don't climb Everest.)

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Hence the conclusion : it is impossible to bring so many products with you to fully replenish the energy expended. Trying to do this will lead to the fact that you will eat little and tasteless - and this will create serious psychological discomfort in the team. When, after a walking day, two pieces of chocolate, a few pieces of bacon fall into the mouth and all this is washed down with some sweet-fat product, the stomach remains empty, the feeling of hunger does not go away, and besides, it was tasteless. And then people start creating problems. It is better to eat less calorie food, but it should be a lot of it, and it should be tasty.

 

Concerning fat and fats. It is clear that they are very high in calories. But surely many of you have come across a disease called "travelers' diarrhea" - indigestion. We will definitely meet this problem in a person who climbs high mountains, above 4,000 meters. People climbing Elbrus have constant problems. This is combined with crumpled acclimatization and too fast ascent. Here they rise to a height of 4,000 meters, the body is in the phase of acute mountain sickness, there is not enough oxygen, the body sends it to the brain, heart and lungs, the rest goes to the muscles, but nothing gets to the stomach and intestines. And an attempt to eat fatty foods when there is no blood, no oxygen, no energy in the stomach and intestines is the transfer of products.

Small summary:

1. In short exits, you can incompletely restore lost energy - this is normal. You can throw energy bars.
2. The taste of food and its volume is more important than its calorie content.
3. On long hikes (more than two weeks without a descent into civilization and a drop option), energy bars will not save you. You will have to consider the layout, including in terms of nutritional value. It should contain proteins and fats - both of these components contain amino acids, thanks to which the body normally exists. There are no amino acids in carbohydrates.

(A side note. Probably, the mountain summits should shine yellow, and it's scary to imagine what will happen once they melt...

 

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In short exits, you can incompletely restore lost energy - this is normal.

So, not in the case of space transfer.
They should be as strong as possible on descending, because they have to cosplay the dwarves with pickaxes soon after.

Edited January 16, 2022 by kerbiloid