USDA Suppressing Research- Rice Heading For Collapse

An internal government watchdog is starting an investigation into the USDA ?s handling of climate science and communication after a series of POLITICO reports found that the department has been routinely burying its w ork on climate change, even as farmers and ranchers are increasingly dealin g with its harmful effects.

POLITICO revealed one case in which USDA officials had tried to dissuade re search partners at a university from disseminating their findings about how rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere led to a drop in key nutrie nts in rice, the world?s most important crop.

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bloggs.fredbloggs.fred
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So far, so good:

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

DA?s handling of climate science and communication after a series o f POLITICO reports found that the department has been routinely burying its work on climate change, even as farmers and ranchers are increasingly deal ing with its harmful effects.

research partners at a university from disseminating their findings about how rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere led to a drop in key nut rients in rice, the world?s most important crop.

That graph is probably faked. And lbs/acre is not what you want to know. It 's nutritional calories per acre, which they don't graph.

Those figures will downturn to hell as drought becomes more relevant and th e soil is depleted from overcropping. It's happened before. Then we're runn ing out of reserve minerals with which to manufacture synthetic fertilizer. They'll be lucky to support even a fraction of the today's population.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

Doom is eternal. We are, in theory, all dead by now. Population Bomb, nuclear war, Club of Rome, global cooling, global warming, Peak Oil, ozone hole.

Somehow, life just keeps getting better. Sorry.

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Why do you think that happened?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

USDA?s handling of climate science and communication after a serie s of POLITICO reports found that the department has been routinely burying its work on climate change, even as farmers and ranchers are increasingly d ealing with its harmful effects.

ade research partners at a university from disseminating their findings abo ut how rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere led to a drop in key nutrients in rice, the world?s most important crop.

It's nutritional calories per acre, which they don't graph.

the soil is depleted from overcropping. It's happened before. Then we're r unning out of reserve minerals with which to manufacture synthetic fertiliz er. They'll be lucky to support even a fraction of the today's population.

ds/2017/09/gdp-world.jpg

Why do you think that it can keep on rising?

If we are lucky this is the rising part of a S curve,and the transition to a slower rate of rise and eventual stability will happen smoothly.

If we aren't, the rapid rise will be followed by an equally rapid populatio n crash.

Unrestrained anthropogenic global warming could produce the kind of wide-sp read agricultural failure which could deliver that.

High population and rapid international travel could make an new and improv ed Spanish flu even more lethal. The Black Plague killed off about 30% of t he population of Europe. We could do better.

Pollyannas aren't any more reliable as futurologists than merchants of doom .

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

Dumb...people poop --> fertilizer ---> rice paddy ---> people looks like a decent closed loop to me, unless some dummy insists on breaking it to make money $elling fertilizer..

Reply to
Robert Baer

That exponential growth looks rather self-destructive...

Reply to
Robert Baer

One-track mind at work.

Was a graph of 'goodness of life' presented? Was there an uptick somewhere on it?

Without knowing the cause of such an uptick to be a persistent effect, you ought never extrapolate. Leave prediction to the experts.

Reply to
whit3rd

What's pushing the world GDP curve up now is the billions of impoverished people of the 3rd world catching up to the levels of the developed countries. The curve will level off when they get reasonable living standards, approaching ours. Birth rates will drop as they have in other developed countries, population will level off below 10 billion, and if idiots quit starting wars, most everybody will be fairly happy, or free to develop Western-style neuroses.

That scenario disappoints a lot of people who relish collapse and misery.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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jlarkin

Yes, Bloggsies', obcessed with finding things to fear.

The cause of that upward GDP curve is hardly a mystery.

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Electronics took over as the mechanical bits were leveling off.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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jlarkin

e USDA?s handling of climate science and communication after a seri es of POLITICO reports found that the department has been routinely burying its work on climate change, even as farmers and ranchers are increasingly dealing with its harmful effects.

uade research partners at a university from disseminating their findings ab out how rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere led to a drop in key nutrients in rice, the world?s most important crop.

w. It's nutritional calories per acre, which they don't graph.

nd the soil is depleted from overcropping. It's happened before. Then we're running out of reserve minerals with which to manufacture synthetic fertil izer. They'll be lucky to support even a fraction of the today's population .

Malthus

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  Rick C. 

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Rick C

USDA?s handling of climate science and communication after a serie s of POLITICO reports found that the department has been routinely burying its work on climate change, even as farmers and ranchers are increasingly d ealing with its harmful effects.

ade research partners at a university from disseminating their findings abo ut how rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere led to a drop in key nutrients in rice, the world?s most important crop.

. It's nutritional calories per acre, which they don't graph.

d the soil is depleted from overcropping. It's happened before. Then we're running out of reserve minerals with which to manufacture synthetic fertili zer. They'll be lucky to support even a fraction of the today's population.

You might get away with human manure and a nitrogen fixing cover crop in a small family plot, but it's just not going happen in an agro-industrial sca le operation. Even when supplemented with synthetic nitrogen, rice requires hundreds of pounds of manure per acre. It's expensive to process sewage sl udge and it always contains lots of other unhealthy contaminants.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

A farm that feeds just its owners might do with self-fertilization.

Once the majority of the population spent most of its effort trying to feed itself, and didn't do that very well. Now, each farmer feeds scores of non-farmers, who can do other things.

That sort of ratio needs machines and manufactured fertilizer.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

John Larkin is a Pollyanna and feels hurt when he's reminded that this is an unrealistic attitude.

Turnip Townshend and the agricultural revolution didn't depend on the lathe.

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The first fully documented, all-metal slide rest lathe was invented by Jacques de Vaucanson around 1751, when Townshend had been dead for 13 years.

When less than half the population could feed everybody, the rest of the population could spend their time working in factories to make more powerful agricultural machinery, and the railways to ship the produce from the farms to the people that ate it.

It's the increase in agricultural productivity that was crucial.

If anthropogenic climate change reduces agricultural productivity much, modern civilisation becomes unsustainable.

John Larkin doesn't know much, and seems unconscious of the narrowness of his tunnel vision.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

:

he USDA?s handling of climate science and communication after a ser ies of POLITICO reports found that the department has been routinely buryin g its work on climate change, even as farmers and ranchers are increasingly dealing with its harmful effects.

suade research partners at a university from disseminating their findings a bout how rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere led to a drop in ke y nutrients in rice, the world?s most important crop.

ow. It's nutritional calories per acre, which they don't graph.

and the soil is depleted from overcropping. It's happened before. Then we'r e running out of reserve minerals with which to manufacture synthetic ferti lizer. They'll be lucky to support even a fraction of the today's populatio n.

They will have to get their energy from renewables. There is isn't enough o il left for burning fossil carbon to be an option, and if there were it wou ld inject even more CO2 into the atmosphere, which would still be a very ba d idea even though John Larkin is blind to the problem.

The amount of CO2 we've already dumped into the atmosphere - we are already up to 415ppm when our agriculture was developed for a world where it was 2

70ppm - is creating problems now.

They may get bad enough to satisfy the people who relish collapse and miser y, which is John Larkin's term for people with enough sense to understand t hat such outcomes are possible, and should be avoided.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
Bill Sloman

Thus, an unsustainable source of fertilizer, or degradation of biosphere elements agriculture depends on, will result in first overpopulation, then (as the source is depleted) displacement, agression, strife (or wars) over the last bits of the resource, and then a population collapse, and/or reversion to low-tech agrarian existence, or even hunter-gatherer.

Are you suggesting this is our inevitable doom unless agriculture is made sustainable, and greenhouse gasses scavenged? Is there any OTHER conclusion to this line of reasoning?

Careful, thoughtful, forward-thinking persons have a pretty good grasp of this situation.

Reply to
whit3rd

The likely scenario is that the population will stabilize and be in a far better state than it is now. We have enough oil and gas to last us a few hundred years, and time to transition gradually to fusion or something.

The real looming danger to life on earth is the coming ice age. Maybe we can prevent that. Save the coal for that.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin
[on unsustainable agriculture]

How does an overpopulation 'stabilize' without massive loss of life? What kind of 'better state' do you envision, and why is it better?

Rose-colored glasses are NOT suitable for adults considering long-term policies.

Reply to
whit3rd

Birth rates drop, resources rise. It happened in the western world, and Japan, and other places. It's a consequence of lower infant mortality and wealth and education, especially female education.

And access to birth control. Lots of people don't want a baby every year, especially a dead baby.

Less kids dying, less disease and suffering, better nutrition, education and literacy, electricity and clean water, floors and roofs and heaters and stoves, books, phones, stuff like that. The stuff we have.

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I'm doing my small part to help. You don't approve?

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

olicies.

aw=1

What your statistics show is that we have managed to overcome a bunch of sh ort-comings in the world as it was. They don't mention the fact that this i nvolves using up resources now faster than they are being replaced.

Past success is not a predictor of future performance. China and Japan grew their economies at fabulous rates while they were catching up to west, but Japan isn't now growing any faster as the rest of the advanced industrial world, and China's growth is now slowing down.

Once you have worked out how to deal with existing problems, you start havi ng to work out how to deal with new ones, and you don't seem to have a clue that such problems are already obvious.

I don't know exactly what you think you are doing to help the demographic r evolution - spending money on women's education in third world countries is something you have mentioned - but that doesn't buy you the right to ignor e everything else that's going on.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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Bill Sloman

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