Climate Change Could Lead To Nutrient Deficiency For Hundreds of Millions (smithsonianmag.com) 249
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Smithsonian: According to new research, rising carbon dioxide levels will sap some of the nutrients from our crops and lead to dietary deficiencies in millions of humans. In 2014, field trials of common food crops including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans showed that as the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased, the levels of iron, zinc and protein decreased in the dietary staples by 3 to 17 percent. While the decrease in a few nutrients may not seem important in food secure countries, it could have a big impact in poorer nations.
In the new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers calculated the impact of declining nutrients on human health. According to a press release, the team looked at the impact of rising CO2 on 225 different types of food. Based on population estimates for 2050 and an expected rise of carbon dioxide from about 400 parts per million today to 550 ppm by mid-century, the team found that the nutrient deficiencies of those already suffering will worsen, and 175 million more people could join the 1.2 billion who are zinc deficient and 122 million people would be added to the 622 million who don't receive enough protein. About 1.4 billion women of childbearing age and children under 5 could see their iron intake drop by about 4 percent.
In the new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers calculated the impact of declining nutrients on human health. According to a press release, the team looked at the impact of rising CO2 on 225 different types of food. Based on population estimates for 2050 and an expected rise of carbon dioxide from about 400 parts per million today to 550 ppm by mid-century, the team found that the nutrient deficiencies of those already suffering will worsen, and 175 million more people could join the 1.2 billion who are zinc deficient and 122 million people would be added to the 622 million who don't receive enough protein. About 1.4 billion women of childbearing age and children under 5 could see their iron intake drop by about 4 percent.
Not good (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Not good (Score:2)
And if things get that bad, you can just eat it!
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Not really, but someone able to drop 600 grand on a Tesla sure won't have a problem affording food.
Someone not able to drop half a million on a car might, but who cares about peasants?
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Missed a decimal (Score:2)
110010001000 spent 60 grand -- there are Tesla Model 3 configurations you can get for that amount.
But maybe the person posting that drives a 15 year old Honda Civic when not taking the city bus or walking and is having fun at the expense of people who think that a car is that labor and mineral resource intensive that it costs 60 grand is going to Save the Earth.
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You're an order of magnitude off. $60,000 is "60 grand" is not "600 grand". 60 grand is quite far from "half a million".
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Kiinda like (Score:3)
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So, when had you planned on removing yourself from the Earth?
Or is it "those people" that there are too many of? I suppose we could set up special camps for them, to make it easier to get rid of them....
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Where's Thanos when you need him ?
Considering some of the scenarios, that might be one of the more merciful ones.
They always asumme they're in the clique (Score:2)
When environmentalist say we need fewer people, they always assume that they--of course--would be included in the group that gets to keep on living when the rest are euthanized or however they envision accomplishing their population reduction.
P.S. Has Paul Ehrlich EVER been right?
Optimum Human Population Size
By Gretchen C. Daily, Anne H. Ehrlich, and Paul R. Ehrlich
Although the tremendous size and rate of growth of the human population now influences virtually every aspect of society, rarely does the public
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When environmentalist say we need fewer people, they always assume that they--of course--would be included in the group that gets to keep on living when the rest are euthanized or however they envision accomplishing their population reduction.
P.S. Has Paul Ehrlich EVER been right?
Where in the land of rapture did you ever get that opinion. When nature or our obsession with radioactive boomy things performs the great culling, it will be pretty much random. Depending on the process, I plan on adding myself to the dead manually. So enough with the environmentalist Strawmen, this is not Fox or Breitbart news. That rush of gamma rays, heat pulse, and yummy radioactive debris does not pause to go over the head of liberals or whatever group it is that you hate.
Now maybe if it a starvation
at least get the title right (Score:3)
Obviously, it's not "climate change" that lowers nutrients, it's carbon dioxide. And the "nutrients" that are being lost are zinc and iron, trivial to supplement even in the unlikely event that people don't get enough from their diet and the issue can't be addressed by simple breeding.
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You're saying it's irrelevant to you what the cause of nutritional deficiencies is? It's irrelevant to you that increased CO2 levels and climate change have very different geographic patterns, different causes, different coping strategies? That's like advocating amputating a leg to cure appendicitis.
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trivial to supplement even in the unlikely event that people don't get enough from their diet and the issue can't be addressed by simple breeding.
I only read the summary but it sounded like the "alarm" was about the billions of poor people whose diets are already not the best. Trivial the supplement is correct for those in the First World, however it would be much more of a challenge to supplement in poorer populations.
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Poor populations have many nutritional deficiencies already. The cause of those is poverty, not carbon dioxide or climate change. Our focus should be to lift these people out of poverty as quickly as possible, because then their nutritional deficiencies, as well as many other problems, get addressed.
That is, the paper says something like "carbon emissions cause lower nutritional content in cheap bulk food which causes increased nutritional deficiencies in poor populations", implying that we should "decrease
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Nevertheless, the cause of lower nutritional content is carbon dioxide increase, not climate change.
And the cause of malnutrition and nutrient deficiency in third world population is poverty, not carbon dioxide or climate change.
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It's a combination of factors, potentially, not just CO2 concentrations.
With regard to supplements, it's trivial if (1) the need is recognised and (2) people can afford them. Neither are a given, and it could mean that self-sufficiency is no longer possible for some.
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As far as the paper is concerned, the causative factor CO2 concentrations, nothing else. If you want arguments in favor of reducing carbon emissions, you should be happy about at least that much, because for this particular impact, it doesn't matter how much warming carbon emissions cause. But...
I'm glad we agree on that. Which tells yo
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Depends on what orifice you use. Sperm is pretty high in zinc and iron, afaik.
not new (Score:2)
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The result is humans will need to consume more food to achieve the same level of nutrients.
They're already getting too many carbs. Your proposal is that they eat more than too much so they can get the nutrients they need?
Interesting (Score:2)
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I guess soil depletion wasn't the cause after all!
Soil depletion is still a problem, but it's not the only problem. It's easy to account for in a study, as well, by simply testing soil.
We're doomed... if we sit on our hands for decades (Score:2)
Past, more in-depth studies on this topic have concluded that the effect varies by cultivar (with some nutrients actually increasing in some cultivars). This study briefly acknowledges that concept, then layers on several other ways to keep the sky from falling:
Beyond stepping up nutritional surveillance, there are a variety of actions that could be taken to reduce nutritional vulnerability.
Different cultivars of certain food crops—particularly rice and legumes—have shown differential sensitivity to CO2 for specific nutrients, showing that it may be possible to selectively use or potentially breed cultivars with reduced sensitivity to these effects.
In addition, biofortification of crops with nutrients and the use of developing agricultural techniques that optimize the uptake of iron, zinc or nitrogen may be possible and have shown some early promise. Also, national fortification and supplementation programmes may ameliorate nutritional deficiencies, particularly for targeted vulnerable groups.
Finally, encouraging dietary diversity through the consumption of greater quantities of nutrient-rich grains and pulses, or even through relatively small increases in animal-sourced foods for developing countries where intake is low and it would be culturally appropriate, may offset nutritional inadequacy with relatively little government intervention.
Gather 'round kids, the climate's changing again (Score:2)
Can I have a show of hands who still cares? Nobody? Thought so.
Let's face it. Those that did actually care are by now simply done with trying to convince idiots. I know that I am. Enjoy your planet once you managed to fuck it up beyond repair, I probably won't be here anymore anyway. I'm done trying to inform and teach.
I sit back with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the flooding. I'm up here on my hill, enjoy your beach front house. But don't try to climb my hill.
Re: Gather 'round kids, the climate's changing aga (Score:2)
You think new beaches will destroy the planet?
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Nah, but the smell of the people who drowned, you know what corpses that float in water smell like? Really disgusting.
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You nailed it, my friend. When I want to see deniers get all ragey and weird, I just point out that the US military and the insurance industry (quintessential, nut-cutting corporate hardasses) have completely accepted the fact of human-caused Global Warming and incorporated it into their strategic plans.
I wouldn't be surprised if 50 years from now, people are looking up some of the high profile deniers and hanging their offspring from the nearest (dead) tree.
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When I want to see deniers get all ragey and weird,
Yeah, that's a great way to get buy in to your political goals. Well done.
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You aren't going to get "buy in" from those morons anyway, so there's nothing to lose. Besides sometimes it's actually beneficial to call an asshole an asshole, and not apologize for it.
Consider your head patted and a lollypop duly handed out, along with an invitation to have a nice day. Run along, now. This is an adult conversation.
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Actuaries have no political goals. They have purely economic ones. They exist solely to make sure insurance companies aren't vulnerable to tangible and measurable risks. AGW presents multiple such risks, and since they are not childish and unable to accept hard facts, they can see greater incidents of strong storm fronts, flooding, sea level rise, wild fires, and they have but one job, to either decide what will or won't be covered by the insurance companies, or if it is to be covered, to make sure the mone
Only for Vegetarians. (Score:2)
Just run it through a cow or a chicken to concentrate the nutrients.
Correlation, not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
The root cause of almost all the problems of pollution, resource exhaustion and crowding is simple: too many human beings sharing a planet that could comfortably and sustainably support one, or maybe two billion.
It's very easy to wave arms and make facile comments about how foolish Malthus was - but, in principle, he was completely right. Thanks (perhaps) to human ingenuity, we have staved off the moment of crisis for a few decades. But perhaps the final consequence will just be a far worse collapse.
Think. As population grows, the need for food obviously grows with it. So does the amount of manufactured objects and services demanded by the larger population. Which is mainly responsible for higher CO2 levels? It's hard to say; but one thing can be said with certainty. If the human population were still one billion (or three billion even) we would not have most of these problems.
Why are crops getting poorer in vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients? Largely because too many harvests are being taken out of a fixed area under cultivation. The Green Revolution produced much greater yields - with generous application of artificial fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides - but the soil can only produce nutrients at a given rate. Quadruple the weight of your annual harvest, and pretty soon you have sucked most of the vitamins and minerals out of the fields. After the food is eaten, anything left over goes down the sewer and is lost. It definitely doesn't go back on the land, as animal and human manure used to.
For a little more information, I suggest reading Philip Lymberry's "Farmageddon" and Richard Manning's "Against the Grain".
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The root cause of almost all the problems of pollution, resource exhaustion and crowding is simple: too many human beings sharing a planet that could comfortably and sustainably support one, or maybe two billion.
Bollocks. We are simply passing up opportunities for sustainability at every turn. The planet could probably support more people than we have right now, if only sustainability were our primary goal. Unfortunately, that is very far from the truth.
So. what's the problem? (Score:2)
Look, if these environmental doomsayers had their way, the evil, disgusting scourge of humanity would be wiped form the face of Mother Gaia. They should be cheering this as good news. Thin the herd.
Someone please reset the alarmism FUD tape -- (Score:2)
...apparently we've looped back to the beginning and you guys are starting to repeat the same fears again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Didn't he pretty much say the exact same thing in 1798?
Didn't happen.
Won't happen this time either..
What's next, are you guys going to start crying about "peak oil" again (in 1909 you guys were saying we only had oil for maybe 25-30 years left)? (http://paleofuture.com/blog/2009/6/14/oil-and-gas-will-eventually-be-exhausted-1909.html)
It also makes the cows give less milk ... (Score:2)
Utterly false fear-mongering (Score:2, Informative)
A warmer climate means a MUCH wider farmable region of earth, with longer growing seasons in many northern climates.
You want proof? What has more vegetation, a jungle or Canada. You might say, but Canada is dryer (ha!), but that person would be forgetting what a warmer climate means in terms of increased evaporation across the entire surface of the ocean...
Anyone who claims that global warming leads to less food is absolutely lying and worst of all, KNOWS they are lying to try and scare you. What you shou
Research online at WSU and UW (Score:2)
If you're looking for the actual research, you can find it in various places at Washington State University and the University of Washington.
Reality doesn't care about your failed fossil fuel religion.
Re: So sick of Chicken Little climate change stori (Score:5, Insightful)
Information taken personally by simple man, feels guilty and emotionally inconvenienced. Blames conspiracy as means to emotionally divest. News at 11.
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How is that a different discussion? Research like wouldn't even be happening if the scientific community at large wasn't absolutely sure that CO2 levels will continue to rise due to human produced CO2. The research and take-away is political by nature. Click-bait is a term you can use dismissively on anything that's designed to attract attention, but "Comet about to hit earth" isn't a click bait headline if a comet is going to hit the earth.
Climate Change Could Lead To Nutrient Deficiency For Hundreds of Mi
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You claim that rising CO2 and climate change are the exact same thing. ...
Nitpicking again?
Yes, there are plenty of other things
However we have the year 2018. The most important thing on the planet at the moment is human introduced climate change, aka global warming caused by CO2. Obviously we are talking about that, and not other reasons like a nuclear war or an comet impact.
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we have to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, N2O) to slow down climate change and give us time to adapt
Maybe. How much will it help? How much will it cost to help? How much will it cost if we ignore the problem?
If we can agree to do this, we have a chance to survive.
Survive? Seriously? This sort of shit is where the science of climate change gets ignored in the religious fever of its True Believers.
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If we keep puking CO2 into the atmosphere, CO2 levels will rise. This ain't rocket science.
Re: So sick of Chicken Little climate change stor (Score:3)
But the upside is that thc and bud production is increasing, so theres that.
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Do you want massive fire storms? Because that's how you get massive fire storms. If the level of O2 in the atmosphere was 30% it might be impossible to effectively fight fires.
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Considering that some want to use insects as a staple food source, that'd be a boon. Then again, I wonder how big we'd get?
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Re:So sick of Chicken Little climate change storie (Score:4, Insightful)
See old school Catholic Church (Score:2, Insightful)
Historically, the church was responsible for telling you what is good/bad, and the bible written in Latin/Greek/Aramaic was not readable by the masses. So they would make up what it said to control people, but you could "pay money" to be absolved of sins. Martin Luther translated the bible and all that crap came to an end pretty quick.
AGW appears to be the same. They tell you what is good/bad, you are not allowed to question them because they are "experts" and you are not. However, you can pay them mone
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The difference is maybe that there is no cremation while you're still alive (at least before) just because you keep driving that SUV to get your mail because the 100 yards from front door to mailbox are too far a walk.
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AGW appears to be the same. They tell you what is good/bad, you are not allowed to question them because they are "experts" and you are not. However, you can pay them money to be absolved of your AGW sins. With the number of times they have been caught outright lying, I am beginning to believe they desire to become like the Catholic church before the Lutheran revolution.
You can question them all you want. Just don't expect to be taken seriously when your questions have no basis in science or if they're questions that have already been asked and answered.
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There's no bigger oxymoron than "we don't have to explain - we're scientists!"
Just because you're incapable of understanding the explanations doesn't mean they don't exist. The explanations are in the peer reviewed published papers. Science doesn't exist without scientists explaining their findings to other scientists.
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Sure, but that's not the context of this thread. You want people to change their behavior? Better explain it to them. Saying "you are too dumb to understand, so just do what your told" is the least persuasive approach possible. It is, in fact, exactly the approach most likely to get all funding for climate change research banned during Trump's second term.
Contrast with the talk.origins FAQ. It takes the arguments of creationists seriously, and rebuts them politely, pointing out what faulty assumption ma
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Of course science isn't in any way a democracy. Scientific findings don't get voted on. They stand on how well they explain whatever phenomenon they are examining regardless of how anyone feels about the results.
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Of course science isn't in any way a democracy. Scientific findings don't get voted on.
That's entirely beside my point, of course. You want people to change their behavior because of that science? You need to persuade them.
Also, science is often a democracy, from any talk of "consensus", to the effect on your career if you try to pursue something unfashionable (though hopefully grad students are well informed about that), to the simple fact that science is mostly funded by democratically elected governments. Think democracy had no effect on e.g. embryonic stem cell research?
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I'm not sure where you got your information but the data was deleted in the 1980s long before any FOIA requests were made. The cost of storage in the 1980s was several orders of magnitude greater than it is today. In the 1980s a 100 MB disk drive was huge and costed in the 5 or 6 figures. The data they deleted was still available from the original sources. They had no reason to keep it.
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Seriously, is the ANYTHING bad that hasn't been threatened to happen from climate change?
Halitosis?
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Oh I dunno. There may be an issue with particular nutrients in particular crops in particular climates and soils. Meanwhile, greenhouses increase co2 to 1000 ppm to increase photosynthesis. Trouble is there are so many soft areas where research is not of the highest gold standard, but I am all for science being respected and well funded in general. But that doesn't mean it is all useful, and we have seen the news about how this or that science journal editor has concluded that you just can't believe at face
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What's your point? That agriculture is more interested in size then the nutrients in the crops? I think that is well established that when someone gets paid by weight, they'll try for increasing the weight of what they're selling.
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Problem is , there is probably some truth behind what they are saying, but the hyperbole and hype are there to try and gain political control. If it was absent and people we discussing , practical , real , everyday solutions, then there would be change. Because in order to be practical a solution has to solve 'enough' of the problem the current tech does and do so more efficiently ( aka for less total money).
What people seem to want, is quick answers that let them continue doing what they have always don
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No, there is no truth. Overproduction causes depletion of nutrients in soil. Nothing to do with co2, just greed driven creation of low quality products in quantity.
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No, there is no truth. Overproduction causes depletion of nutrients in soil. Nothing to do with co2, just greed driven creation of low quality products in quantity.
You don't think they accounted for such an obvious factor, which is so very simple to account for using soil samples? You really do think you're smarter than everyone else, don't you?
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No, these young alarmists "scientists" don't account for it for they didn't use control soil sample. they're an embarrassment to the cause of lowering carbon (and radioactive ash) pollution
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The aganda here is not what many think. The agenda is to get you to stop paying attention because you are tired of hearing about it, so you'll demand we start burning coal. Peace out.
While I agree with your sentiment about paying attention, coal is going away because of natural gas.
Not the agenda (Score:2)
Even if warming is part of a natural cycle, it does seem quite likely that man is exacerbating the situation. If nothing else, if we could run our societies without belching pollution into the atmosphere, it'd be the better alternative. I look forward to clean fusion plants (now supposedly only 20 years in the future!).
So please, folks, don't call me a "denier". My issue is that few of the proposed "solutions" seem to be based on science. I see the occasional discussion of carbon sequestration and that sort
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To qualify to make a study in "climate change" you have to have studied in an university first for 5 - 10 years and made a diploma in climate and meteorology ... and then you need to be a member in a research team or found one. So: "no, there is no research industry"
You are an idiot. Researchers usually don't earn money. They barely can pay the bills, moron!
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Do you want to eat 25% more bread to get the nutrients you need
The answer to that is "yes" for the groups we are talking about. People in places where there is significant food scarcity and nutritional insecurity absolutely could stand to eat more calories and still be healthy. The vast vast majority of them wish the could!
In places that are not food insecure; that wont be necessary at all making small variations in diet will more than likely fill any nutrient deficits without increasing calorie count. Sure some westerners do manage to get scurvy even in the 21st ce
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The number cited in the report is closer to five or ten percent - and that also pushes the results into "not very significant" range. For example, with a 5% relative reduction in iron in a wheat crop, 100 grams of bread goes from 35% of the recommended daily allowance to 33% or so. The difference is tiny, when compared to the much larger increase in crop yield.
A lot of nutritional deficiencies could also be addressed by people being able to grow multiple crops for food, instead of concentrating on the one s
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So you want everyone to eat 30% more to compensate for the lack of some trace elements, vitamins and essential oils/fats and amino acids?
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I remember reading about this or a similar study a little while ago, and that was my takeaway - that yields would rise, but nutrient density decline, leading to people on the edge getting less nutrition per calorie intake. So like you said, if you keep eating the same quantity you get malnourished, if you eat more you get the ill effects of over consumption.
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Due to the difference in nutrition, instead of eating 10 units of food, you'd need to eat 10.5 or 11 - but you'd have 13 or 14 units of food available.
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Says the AC providing no evidence, let alone convincing evidence, and with no link to the project; but I'm sure your rant is going to be far more persuasive than the backing of a biology professor who has been doing research on environmental impacts on plants for over a decade, and who to quote his university profile "
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If that fails, try some Obama. It's a bit like homeopathy, you try to blame one, notice no improvement, so try blaming someone else.
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If only there was a pill people could take to help.
There's pills for that, and condoms, and all kinds of things to limit population growth. Oh, you mean vitamins? That works too. Or we could make sure people eat more meat, which was suggested in the article.
I'm pretty sure much of the issues of starvation in the world is due to tyrants running their countries into the ground.
Expect the next nation to be overwhelmed by tyranny and the starvation that follows to be South Africa. They seem to think that European descendants that owned farmland for centurie
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It's possible I'm both racist and ignorant. Oh, and sexist. Probably sexist too. Because I'm a man, with skin so white it's nearly translucent, therefore I must be ignorant, racist, and sexist. Oh, and homophobic too, I almost forgot about that.
I've been accused of so many things that it means nothing any more. How about instead of providing insults you provide some information?
The BBC has been giving some reporting on this and they aren't exactly a small time blog known for right wing conspiracy theor
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Yep, it certainly appears that South Africa is on the fast track to ignoring all the lessons that should have been learned from the stellar success that was Mugabe's Zimbabwe experiment.
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Yeah. CO2 stimulates faster plant growth, thus accelerating the depletion of the fixed amounts of minerals in the soil.
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Brawndo! It's got what plants crave! It has electrolytes!
Necessity is the mother of invention (Score:3)
Alarmists serve an EXTREMELY important role in society and we shouldn't encourage the fools who always dismiss them!
Smart people get motivated by an impending crisis and by thinking ahead (possibly even long term thinking) they find solutions to a future necessity. When the crisis has been averted the fools all spew hot air and probably are not even grateful to those who solved the problem.
NOTE: Humans can't always solve every problem in time; and some problems will prove to be beyond human mental capacity
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Alarmists serve an EXTREMELY important role in society and we shouldn't encourage the fools who always dismiss them!
No, alarmists exaggerate, usually for economic or political gain. It's the definition of an alarmist. It's why news headlines on the internet read like tabloid headlines from thirty years ago.
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Past performance is not necessarily a guide to future performance. Often it is, but it's useful to judge things on their own merits, otherwise you end up with:
Therefore, I'm immortal.
Re: Possible Solution (Score:2)
An Australian company was researching dispersal and monitoring of renewable energy via block chain.
Further, the Venezuelan government we're introducing their own fossil fuel backed crypto currency. Block chain will reduce emissions in that country once hackers short the price making petroleum too expensive to purchase.
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ROFL.. AC ignorant trolling is a mental disease
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