Sustainable Systems and Nuclear Energy

[ed_montague]

Theoretically. Pratically pretty sure this will result in angry masses. "We are the 99,99%" anyone?

If we've reached a economic singularity then there's no reason that "unemployed" must mean "living in a box eating dry ramen".

Um, never heard of that over here. Can you please explain with a few words?

At large, with a population of >25 billion and our capitalistic system, i can only imagine a dystopian future. -> "Soylent Green is People!"

Link related.

[Karst45]

what i see in that graph is that at 1998(ish) the yield kind of stagnate.

[junk]

You technically don't need employment for those people. You just need to keep them busy. There's a lot of ways how to keep a lot of people busy as long as they get their 3 meals a day and entertainment.

Theoretically. Pratically pretty sure this will result in angry masses. "We are the 99,99%" anyone?

VR? I mean you already have a lot of people who essentially loose themselves to a PC only environment. It's a pretty decent system of making sure that a lot of people are going to have stuff to do.

[javcs]

You technically don't need employment for those people. You just need to keep them busy. There's a lot of ways how to keep a lot of people busy as long as they get their 3 meals a day and entertainment.

Theoretically. Pratically pretty sure this will result in angry masses. "We are the 99,99%" anyone?

VR? I mean you already have a lot of people who essentially loose themselves to a PC only environment. It's a pretty decent system of making sure that a lot of people are going to have stuff to do.

Yeah, but ideally you have most of them engaged in productive pursuits, otherwise, if the masses perceive no need to work, the percentage of people doing nothing just grows and grows, whilst the number of people doing the work that maintains the society shrinks, and ultimately that is going to be unsustainable.

[Trantor]

You technically don't need employment for those people. You just need to keep them busy. There's a lot of ways how to keep a lot of people busy as long as they get their 3 meals a day and entertainment.

Theoretically. Pratically pretty sure this will result in angry masses. "We are the 99,99%" anyone?

VR? I mean you already have a lot of people who essentially loose themselves to a PC only environment. It's a pretty decent system of making sure that a lot of people are going to have stuff to do.

But without rewards? Doing unproductive nonsense-stuff all the time?
And who is going to pay their rent and food? Our turbo-capitalism surely not. That´s the problem.

[fredgiblet]

If we've reached a economic singularity then there's no reason that "unemployed" must mean "living in a box eating dry ramen".

Um, never heard of that over here. Can you please explain with a few words?

The point at which everyone can spend the amount of time they WANT to working and production will still be sufficient to handle everyone's needs.

But without rewards?

Epic level loot is a reward that most people would trade a child for. In fact people have killed their children because the child was making it more difficult to play Farmville. As for myself I would be (and in the past have been) content to play video games all day every day. I work so that I can pay for my gaming. I would prefer the work I do to be useful, however it's not a requirement since my identity is in no way associated with my work, and if I was given the opportunity to NOT work and still pay for my gaming I would do so in a heartbeat.

Doing unproductive nonsense-stuff all the time?

You mean the things that people do that they almost universally prefer to their jobs?

And who is going to pay their rent and food? Our turbo-capitalism surely not. That´s the problem.

Indeed.

[GeoModder]

what i see in that graph is that at 1998(ish) the yield kind of stagnate.

Pollution kicked in with a vengeance.

[junk]

what i see in that graph is that at 1998(ish) the yield kind of stagnate.

Pollution kicked in with a vengeance.

It's not as much pollution as fairly big drops in farmer populations as well as farming land reductions. And the west has been funneling massive amounts of cash into their own agriculture. Which means a lot less to go to those developing countries.



[quote="Trantor"
But without rewards? Doing unproductive nonsense-stuff all the time?
And who is going to pay their rent and food? Our turbo-capitalism surely not. That´s the problem.[/quote]



At this moment, we're already somewhat on a certain crossroad. Either the world will go down the path of Syndicate, where people are pretty much a mere company asset who have to work to retain some worth (I'm sure almost everyone here knows the setting) or the world of Judge Dredd|star trek, where the masses no longer have to work because work efficiency is so high.

[Ktrain]

what i see in that graph is that at 1998(ish) the yield kind of stagnate.

Pollution kicked in with a vengeance.

What is this, CIV III?

Nevertheless, I'm quite disappointed that I missed out on this economics discussion (too much researching on my part I suppose.)
The Green Revolution was mainly an initiative to get crops to disseminate longitudinally (the life cycle of many plants are highly light sensitive, look up Massive Tobacco.) Since humanity has already exploited that innovation, we need a new innovation/revolution.

Personally I am thinking about organic revolution and complex multiplant micro environments. Many plants have complimentary relationships and more complex agricultural systems are the future. It will be more labor intensive and threatens the Monsanto Paradigm so I don't know how long such a process will take.

Links of interest: http://blog.friendseat.com/study-finds- ... al-farming
http://www.takepart.com/article/2012/02 ... ood-forest

Also look up Brown Green Machine if you want to see some awesome urban agriculture:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/02/ ... chine.html

[daelyte]

There is also a lot of underused farmland in eastern europe and africa. IIRC, eastern europe used to grow about as much as north america, and basically abandoned their farmland after the collapse of the USSR. Post-colonial africa hasn't yet benefitted much from industrial agricultural improvements due to politics and lack of infrastructure. Between those two, I've seen estimates that would could double our farming output.

The Green Revolution was mainly an initiative to get crops to disseminate longitudinally (the life cycle of many plants are highly light sensitive, look up Massive Tobacco.) Since humanity has already exploited that innovation, we need a new innovation/revolution.

[Fotiadis_110]

As I come directly from a farming background, i can reveal what that graph actually means:
First, development of new breeds of grains, the understanding of the genetic potential of which was only developed in the 1930-50's era.

And then from then Yeild increase has been limited to developing new cropping methods, improving methodology and similar uptake of information of what we now consider commonly known cropping characteristics.

The problem we now face is something quite nasty... Our cropping system is based around monoculture that is cropping one species, often one genetic family in a paddock. Losses due to adaptation of pests are climbing each year at a rate larger than the modern improvement in abilities to combat them, because much like with science, all the easy stuff has already been done. In the last 20 years there have been no revolutionary new crops, new genetics to enhance production nor are there any currently known on the horizon.
Our cropping system is based entirely on rich fertile soils which are in limited supply around the world, and trying to imitate such cropping characteristics on less fertile soils, particularly while trying to save money on nutrient replacement, turns marginal soils inhospitable.
The fact that some of our genetically created 'masterpeaces' which are supposed to be the next generation of crop either cause problems with human health (toxicity or allergic reactions, potentially cumulative effects as well) or have other undesirable affects such as 'pesticide making plants' leaving their roots behind to rot, leading to the build-up of said pesticide in the soil, killing off beneficial and helpful insect organisms.
Heck it was discovered that the Canadian Soybean crop was contaminated by GM soy, which is prohibited in their main export market the EU, leading to a market collapse and mantadory testing of all soy entering the EU as well as other measures... in fact it has spread so far that it's estimated that 80% of the soybean crop is now contaminated because of people trying to sell the 'worthless' GM soybean crop under less obvious descriptions.
Despite sciences best efforts to improve our future cropping exploits, i'm seriously starting to wonder if actually planting multi culture cropping systems might actually work better :/
Problem is, we only want to have to harvest once, and do you think you could invent a machine that can harvest peas and corn at the same time?

Ultimately, how the heck do we manage to feed twice as many people when we are struggling to improve on our crops by 20%?

[Absalom]

The problem is that when you look at the in-universe descriptions of the 'binary' language, one finds that if you're not a droid, you can neither speak it nor fully understand it (though you can get the general gist of what's being said), as 'binary' could accurately be described as a form of high-speed, high-density, sonic-based data transmission that covers a range that extends both above and below the normal auditory range. Which means that a vocabulator capable of generating 'binary' ought to be capable of handling just about any 'normal' auditory language.

Not to mention that one of the primary purposes of the "vocabulator" would be to interact with non-droids, and other droids illustrate that handling normal speech is not difficult, expensive, or in any way limiting. It appears to be something so standardized and widespread that it would likely be used on a deep mining droid that might never speak to anything but droids in its entire existence, just because nobody bothers to make a version that doesn't support normal speech.

If the vocabulators convert between the thought-representations of the droids and spoken-language representations then it actually could make sense: you'd have to actually make the most important part of the vocabulator yourself, because your custom droid design likely isn't 'mentally' similar enough to other droids to use an off-the-shelf software package.

Whether you should actually hire a few linguists, programmers, & electrical engineers to build a cross-converter for one of those off-the-shelf models is something completely different...

The fact that some of our genetically created 'masterpeaces' which are supposed to be the next generation of crop either cause problems with human health (toxicity or allergic reactions, potentially cumulative effects as well) or have other undesirable affects such as 'pesticide making plants' leaving their roots behind to rot, leading to the build-up of said pesticide in the soil, killing off beneficial and helpful insect organisms.

Even worse, they haven't even had a meaningful impact on production (~5%, if I recall the numbers correctly). GMO likely won't even start helping until they get out the salt-tolerant & perennial varieties.

Despite sciences best efforts to improve our future cropping exploits, i'm seriously starting to wonder if actually planting multi culture cropping systems might actually work better :/
Problem is, we only want to have to harvest once, and do you think you could invent a machine that can harvest peas and corn at the same time?

You are aware that you don't have to use actual crops, right :p ? A number of flowers actually have an anti-insect effect. Then you have clover & co., which are a fertilizer replacement.

This wouldn't do much about driving the field twice, but what about an above-ground crop & a below-ground crop? I obviously wouldn't suggest tomatoes & potatoes in the same field (or tobacco & potatoes, for the same reason), but how would wheat & peanuts do? Is the timing compatible with harvesting the wheat first, & then getting the peanuts?

Ultimately, how the heck do we manage to feed twice as many people when we are struggling to improve on our crops by 20%?

I'd say that we could start with more oceanic horticulture, though that would certainly require dietary adjustments. At the moment our usage of the ocean as a food source is a hunter-gatherer system gone insane.

[Michael]

space farms?

[Ktrain]

Thanks for the link daelyte, another interesting bit of knowledge which will probably make me more intimidating around the opposite sex

People need to look at urban agriculture and theoretical urban farm designs. http://www.verticalfarm.com/
With greater populations we as a society need to employ that labor. Not everyone is going to be able to develop the highly technical skills which a future automated economy will demand. People need to go back to the fields and produce something. We are homofaber and production is fundamental to human psychology.

[Fotiadis_110]

Clover, everyone knows it fixes nitrogen and thus must be great.
Unfortunately most people don't stop and consider this:
It makes the nitrogen in it's roots, roots are obviously PART OF THE LIVE PLANT, correct?
Issue: How do we get it out?
We have to kill the plant or wait for it to die.
This latter issue renders clover nitrogen fixation a long term investment in a world that keeps demanding immediate solutions (thus our fixation with mobile phones among other things).


Anti-insect plants are over-rated and tend to have minor effects on certain species, or work by having said insect eating their leaves through competitive existance (whitefly doesn't care too much where it lays it eggs) and inhibition due to the plants defences (specifically whitefly on pepper plants don't live long, less than 2% reach maturity, as opposed to 99% on tomato plants).
If we could identify better ones we probably would use them.

And the ocean, i've seen this discussion before, and debunked it as a 'current' or even 'easy' alternative to land farming.
Basic issues are these:
What in the ocean do we eat?
How do we do it without spoiling the natural environment around us as well?
How exactly do we 'increase' the fertility of the ocean, a place where 99% of nutrients are normally already taken up and an oversupply leads to unwanted organisms rather than a boost of desirables?
And finally: exactly what happens when a storm comes past?

As for 'vertical farming' i've done some reading on it, and the process still requires more inputs than it produces as outputs, meaning i'd need electrical power to run some lightbulbs to grow more crop to feed my animals to make the meat to sell to the market, then use that to pay for the power, the water, the nutrients we have to add to the plant sector, additional mineral supplements for the animals themselves, yet MORE supplements to maintain correct conditions in the biodigestor I get half my power inputs from...
I suppose you suggest nuclear power? Even after what we saw in Japan?

[fredgiblet]

Even after what we saw in Japan?

An absurdly outdated design that isn't even in the same league (much less the ballpark) of modern designs getting hit by two of the worst natural disasters in history simultaneously?

I for one am not going to use that as a basis for my opinions.

[junk]

I suppose you suggest nuclear power? Even after what we saw in Japan?

You mean essentially the safest and cleanest power source we have that has less environmental impact than just about everything else?

On top of that please realise what the japanese reactor was hit by. We're talking about something that would decimate just about everything. On top of that imagine if instead of a reactor there was a chemical plant of some sort. The impact would be a lot worse.

What happened in Japan should have been a realisation for most people just how safe nuclear power plants actually are. as opposed to have instigated another panic attack.

[GeoModder]

You mean essentially the safest and cleanest power source we have that has less environmental impact than just about everything else?

Tell that to the people in Tsjernobyl. Last time I checked they still weren't home again. Those that are still alive I mean.

On top of that please realise what the japanese reactor was hit by. We're talking about something that would decimate just about everything. On top of that imagine if instead of a reactor there was a chemical plant of some sort. The impact would be a lot worse.

No doubt dangerous chemicals were released. Lots of harbor depots were demolished as well, and their contents shattered. Toxics must have been part of the "package".

What happened in Japan should have been a realisation for most people just how safe nuclear power plants actually are. as opposed to have instigated another panic attack.

The thing is that radioactive contamination is way harder to isolate.

[Fotiadis_110]

clean energy? what exactly IS it? something that doesn't damage the atmosphere? something that doesn't destroy the environment? or something that you can ignore the leftover impacts by putting them somewhere far away from yourself?

The only way to make nuclear energy 'clean' is to build a nice nuclear powered railgun to fire radioactive waste cores into the sun.
It's both safer and easier to do than store it underground like they do in the states... have you actually read about how large said nuclear bunker really is?
OR the fact it's apparently almost full again?

On the other hand nuclear power built underground, as in say 500 meters deep, would allow us to be truly- safe from impacts of fallout and contamination in non-explosive breach situations.

I've read about 'micro reactors' built into self contained megawat units with a protected lifespan of about 60 years each, they sound good but i'm not certain i want more small plants to be tampered with or damaged by those who want to do harm or threaten us with harm than we absolutely need to :/.

The sad part is we already have the technology to clean up about half the problematic emmisions globally (such as NO's Sufates and other issues from old fashioned coal or gas powerplants), but it makes more business sense to operate plants till the end of their useful lifespan with inferior technology than spend as much as you would building a new plant upgrading the old one, and even then, most companies would rather replace and refurbish than upgrade even then (using technology they know rather than improved tech with new idiosyncrasies that may be more difficult to deal with)... even worse something like 30% of power generated is lost due to transmission waste and something like 50% of that could be recovered through better placement of power plants... but then again who wants a power plant on their back lawn?

[Ktrain]

The issue with the Japanese Reactors (and most American ones also) is that they are designed to produce fissile material and generate electricity. Japan's civilian nuclear program also is a military program. Japan has stockpiled enough fissile material to build around 1000 Hiroshima sized bombs. Iran's nuclear program has similar aims to Japan's. i.e.: no nuclear stock pile but the capacity to build one relatively quickly.

Most U.S. reactors have a similar design to the Fukishima reactor since they too perform a military purpose. Namely producing fuel for naval ships.