A new bi-monthly open thread for climate solutions discussions. Climate science threads go here.
Reader Interactions
704 Responses to "Forced Responses: July 2021"
nigeljsays
Scott E Strough @196 responding to Piotr @184 &185.
I do think you do some very useful work, and the following is my inner sceptic speaking and just some pointers on how to be more convincing. Remember this is a science website so its a bit brutal on new ideas because that’s how science works.
Its very hard to see that much connection between what Scott says and what Poitr says. Scott its better to QUOTE what people said, and explain whether you agree or disagree, and WHY you disagree! That’s how things are done.
“Yes regenerative ag has shown to restore the carbon cycle much faster than just letting it “rewild”, as as farmers call it, go fallow. Restores the hydrological cycles and function faster too. Restores wildlife and biodiversity much faster too.”
What peer reviewed studies show this? And Piotrs point was given you regenerative farmers typically promote rewilding, wouldn’t reclaimed land suit that better than land that is currently being used for crops? Which means we are left with the yields problem because we aren’t using reclaimed land for crops.
The point that you make about rewilding happening better if actively done does sound good.
“For example, Rodale did a properly controlled long term ongoing study started in 1981. Soil organic matter started increasing immediately. Within 5 years yields for the organic systems surpassed conventional, even with industrial ag’s added chemical fertilizers and pesticide inputs. ”
This looks like organic farmers reviewing their own work. Was this ever written up in a peer reviewed journal or evaluated by somebody independent? Please provide a link.
These references took me seconds to find, and show that organic farming has lower yields / productivity than conventional farming. They use highly credible objective data and analysis.
@173, fwiw — and 166 “Dude/Dudette, I’ve been saying this for a REALLLLLLLLY long time.”
I took that as meaning agreement with what I had posted. I didn’t find what was said as offensive or a taunt, nor did I take it personally but see it as a reasonable expression of long term ‘frustration’ at the lack of progress, steps forward.
and I’m a dude (if that matters to anyone), and likewise frustrated with decades going round in circles and the lack of genuine agreements and cooperation and action. eg Greta Thunberg’s verbalized anger and frustration seem equally valid and reasonable.
What’s ‘mad’, dysfunctional, unhelpful are those who are not already outraged and saying so. Of course others have their pov/opinions and personal “communication styles”. People argue. The least of our problems in my view.
siddsays
Mr. Strough wrote:
1) Why are we growing commodity crops we don’t even need? … more efficient systems that often would not grow that particular crop in the first place! The last thing we need is higher yields of corn and soy, when we already grow too much to begin with!
2) abandoned farms, since most have undergone total ecosystem cascade effect collapse … The idea that simply a hands off approach might work has been proven to fail over and over again … a regenerative farmer actually can manage the recovery to the benefit of both man and wildlife.
Mr. Strough is absolutely correct on these points. We grow the wrong crops, raise the wrong animals for the wrong reasons in the wrong places with the wrong methods for the benefit of deeply corrupt monopolies; the result is soil and animals dead and dying in vast tracts across the planet.
I have often stopped on many, many byways and farms and picked up (with permission) a handful or two of the rich black earth, say in iowa or indiana or illinois orthereabouts, some of the best in the world. Nothing lives in it except the bits of corn or soy roots. All else has been killed by herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer to the extent that the best soil in the world has been reduced to a hydroponic medium.
Less than a tenth of the crop goes to direct human consumption. A third of the corn goes to ethanol, a fifth of the soy oil goes straight to biodiesel. Almost all the rest goes to animal feed, your average steak in the USA spends the last third of its life standing in its own shit in feedlots fed grain that its digestive system cannot handle, disease suppressed by drugs leading to drug resistant strains affecting humans. US 85 from Cheyenne, WY to Greely, CO is bovine hell.
I shan’t go on about the pork or the chicken confined animal operations and the sewage lagoons or the potato farms where you cant go in the fields without charcoal filter masks and all skin covered until a week after they spray. Or about efflux from the poisoned lands into all the waters of the world.
And Mr. Strough is right on his second point, that humans can, and indeed must help in saving themselves. Some of it isn’t so hard perhaps, for example eating less meat would be a huge start, help break the animal concentration camps and the monocropping monopolies feeding them.
Nature by itself, absent human action, as Pollan and others have pointed out, easily countenances a waterway choked by kudzu for a century or two or a millennium, or a Canfield ocean, or CO2 levels of a 1000ppm, with or without human remnant.
But I fear recovery to a more human friendly ecosystem will not come in human lifetime and may never come. Nevertheless, i lean toward William the Silent(?!), “It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere.”
sidd
Reality Checksays
Everyone’s ‘frustrated’ these days.
New Zealand farmers stage huge protest over environmental rules
extract
The Howl of a Protest was organised by Groundswell NZ, a grassroots organisation made up of farmers, growers, contractors and tradespeople, who say they are frustrated with the interference in private property rights, unworkable climate-change policies and unfair costs.
New Zealand has introduced environmental protections to tackle increasing problems with polluted and unswimmable waterways, catastrophic biodiversity loss, risky agricultural and industrial practices and international commitments to reducing carbon emissions.
Protest organiser Bryce McKenzie told RNZ that farmers accepted they needed to make changes but that a one-size-fits-all approach would not work.
When I think about where we each individually stand on the issue of global warming and the nature of the response that we should be mounting to address the problem, I am thinking specifically of the bell curve that forms if you survey public opinion on global warming.
68% of opinion in a classic bell curve falls in the two center quatriles and have a standard deviation of plus or minus 1.0 from the median. I think of this group (over 2/3 of the population) as essentially centrist being in the two center quatriles. So, a person at the high end of this bell curve would deviate from the median at a standard deviation of 1.0 and would probably be seen as a pretty strong advocate for action by most of the population. I think it is safe to assume that these folks thing of themselves as pretty strong advocates for action. These folks also probably think their calculation is correct, that they are “right” about our collective situation. Almost all of us think our position is right in this sense, but the degree to which we believe we are right, our confidence in our calculation of risk, would form a different bell curve.
If we charted both, I expect we might find that personal confidence in our calculation declines as we move into higher standard deviation from the median. This would make sense for a number of reasons, social science 101, so to speak. I also think that confidence in individual opinion would peak at about 1.0 standard (plus or minus) deviations and would fall off on either side of the peak. I think this is known as a bimodal distribution in stat-speak.
I don’t know if anyone is interested in that stuff or find any of that helpful in understanding the conflicts that occur between individuals in a forum like this one, but I am a social scientist by training and I have trouble not calculating these issues when I observe a population interacting over time.
The interactions are individualized and the read on things is only generally true. It is untrue in certain interactions and yet it is mostly true over the group over time. Again, social science 101.
as to science of climate, well if you chart it, it’s a doggedly upward-sticky number:
UIUC is officially kicking off a project to partially re-power its cogeneration plant (electric power plus district heating) with a USNC Micro Modular Reactor (MMR).
UIUC on June 28 said it submitted a letter of intent to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build a “research and test reactor facility,” at the site of its 1941-built Abbott campus power plant that will integrate an MMR. Submission of the letter of intent marks the first formal step toward pursuing a construction permit, and ultimately obtaining an operating license. It follows two years “engaging with the university and surrounding community; local, state, and federal governments; and potential industry partners,” the university said in a statement.
…
Under the project, USNC will collaborate with the university’s Grainger College of Engineering (and its Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering) to deploy the new reactor system. If successfully completed, the project will provide a “zero-carbon demonstration of district heat and power to campus buildings as part of its green campus initiative,” the university said. “The project team aims to demonstrate how microreactor systems integrate with existing fossil fuel infrastructure to accelerate the decarbonization of existing power-generation facilities.”
nigeljsays
Richard the Weaver @189
Killian: There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation.
RtW: In the future they might be closely coupled. Tax rates can be variable, say exactly where gas taxes are today, but automatically adjusted each year to consume all efficiency gains as average mpg goes up. Efficiency doubles? So does the price at the pump.
Nigelj: Yes Richard perfectly logical, and the tax take would presumably have to be pushed into something with low mineral resource consumption like teaching or whatever. Although such a tax is going to be a hard sell politically. But I’ve said it myself in the past that society can counter the Jeavons paradox, if it so chooses. There are probably numerous ways. Its just utterly crazy that we would not make things more efficient.
Killian has questioned the value of efficiency gains of technology because of Jeavons paradox. Assuming there is no way around Jeavons paradox that would mean we have to get his 90% reductions in energy use in ten years purely from 90% reductions in personal consumption of things like petrol and electricity as opposed to more efficient automobiles for example. Imagine the chaos and problems that will cause at scale. It could collapse our civilsation worse than the climate problem.
My guess is you could get a maybe a 20% reduction in energy use over ten years from voluntary cuts because things would adjust, people would have time to scale down the size of cars and homes etc, and flying for tourism purposes is clearly more of a want than a need. The system would have time to adjust. Although this is still a very ambitious goal, but this will be lost on the usual suspects.
“Here, we explored the potential impact of dietary changes on achieving ambitious climate stabilization levels. By using an integrated assessment model, we found a global food transition to less meat, or even a complete switch to plant-based protein food to have a dramatic effect on land use. Up to 2,700 Mha of pasture and 100 Mha of cropland could be abandoned, resulting in a large carbon uptake from regrowing vegetation. Additionally, methane and nitrous oxide emission would be reduced substantially. A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO2-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case.”
link from Ben McM in discussion at andthentheresphysics
I repeat: A forest will take decades to centuries to millennia to cycle through to apex. A food forest takes 5 years to cycle through stages, 5=10 years to be a fully functioning, self-sustaining ecosystem. A regenerative self-regulating garden can be created in a year.
These researchers have no idea how little they know.
mikesays
I tried an app to reduce my family’s meat consumption – and it worked
“Like many families, we’ve discussed the environmental and animal-welfare impact of the meat we eat and resolved we should do better. I wouldn’t say we are massive meat-eaters – especially since cookbooks by the Guardian’s own Anna Jones and Meera Sodha entered our lives. But a packet of minced beef, a few chicken thighs and some sausages or bacon often make it into our supermarket trolley, because, frankly, they’re things everyone in our family will eat.”
Nothing to argue about here. If you want to cut your household meat consumption, you are not alone and there are apps that might help you succeed.
Cheers
Mike
Reality Checksays
196 good points and an inspiring video – a good example of how different ag could be.
nigeljsays
Interesting piece of commentary: “People may one day drill for copper as they now drill for oil. And they could even help the environment in the process.”
Hard to find a short summary in the article to copy and paste. Paraphrasing the article the issue is the growing demand for copper for renewable energy. There are vast copper rich brines under volcanoes. Copper ores were originally formed from these brines combining with sulphur. The idea is to drill into the high temperature brines and extarct the brine like drilling for oil. Drlling goes down about 2 kms.
The considerable heat, around 400 degress, can also be tapped for geothermal energy. Either way running out of copper has once again been postponed and claims that renewables are not possible due to resource constraints called into question. Before anyone says anything stupid, of course the resource is finite.
There are vast copper rich brines under volcanoes. Copper ores were originally formed from these brines combining with sulphur.
Fascinating, Nigel. This is up there with the schemes to tap acid mine drainage to recover rare earth elements. Too many hits to select one, here’s the search:
There are other unconventional sources of rare earths, including coal ash and byproducts of mining kaolin.
Reality Checksays
@205 Similar to Herding cats?
“It is untrue in certain interactions and yet it is mostly true over the group over time.”
Also known as, the exceptions prove the rule?
Or, no one is always right but most of the time most people think they are. I know I am! (joking)
Then along came the scientific method with it’s checks and balances. Not always perfect, merely better over time. Especially about atmospheric CO2 et al.
Mikesays
a few questions for EP at 199: do you think it’s possible that we may need to do less with less in the future? Is standard of living essentially a measure of consumption? Do you think it is possible that we could trade reductions in standard of living for increases in quality of life?
I think about these questions when the IPCC talks about dramatic changes in the way we live to address global warming.
At Nigel at 181: you say “I think you just probably misinterpret stuff I say for some reason. I dont know why because I deliberately use simple language. I will try saying it more clearly. I think Americas best shot at the climate problem is rapid deployment of renewables perhaps with money creation.This is better than adding to the deficit, and you will never get a carbon tax past the Republicans. Well you might, but its a long shot given their ideologival position on taxes…”
My own position/opinion is that Congress of the US will pass a carbon tax in the next ten years. Passage will require bipartisan support. As to you confusion about why you might be misinterpreted, review your statement. You start by saying it will never happen, then adjust and say it might happen… That may be simple but it is contradictory and covers a spectrum of outcomes that is wide enough to essentially mean nothing.
At KM at 198, my household is the same anecdote. Our default diet is vegetarian with a bit of vegan dishes and meals mixed in, occasional meat in the diet. We have also found that diet is associated with good general health, reasonable cholesterol, etc. for us.
Cheers
Mike
Mikesays
A couple more details on how the US is likely to finally pass a carbon tax: the bill with that tax will need to partially fund payoff to the fossil fuel companies to help them with the “economic losses of stranded assets” and the carbon tax bill will also likely provide the fossil fuel companies immunity from any liability for the costs of global warming.
It only takes a little imagination and a bit of understanding of history to understand how US democracy works.
I might think that will never happen… well, wait a minute, it might happen… but that’s rather muddy, isn’t it? Nope. I am going to stick my prediction that carbon taxes will pass Congress within 10 years and I think the carbon tax will have one or both of those other elements.
A 40% CF would be “an admission against interest?” I don’t really see why, honestly–surely more important metrics would be financial and emissions-related. I’d have thought this was just the sort of “elective load” that E-P has advocated for in the past.
But be that as it may, the math only holds if 100% of the electricity generated goes toward hydrogen/ammonia production. And that, I think, may be an unsafe assumption.
Interestingly, there’s this from another story on the project:
The consortium said the area featured a strong wind resource, with average speed of 9 metres per second, and good solar, with around 2,000kWh per square metre of solar irradiation. That translated into an expected capacity factor of around 70 per cent. A final investment decision is expected in 2028.
I don’t recall ever hearing of an onshore wind project claiming even 60% CF, and I’ve sure never heard of a solar project going that high. Heck, a lot of Chinese coal plants have lower CF these days. So I suspect that CF is calculated differently–say total system CF allowing for diurnal cycles, or some such.
nigeljsays
Mike @205
“If we charted both, I expect we might find that personal confidence in our calculation declines as we move into higher standard deviation from the median. This would make sense for a number of reasons, social science 101, so to speak. ”
Could you elaborate? My observations are the opposite. Namely that the more extreme peoples views are, the more confident they are that they are correct, in the sense that they express great confidence. This is abundantly evident on this very website.
here Sean O’Grady, drives a Skoda Octavia and lives in an unfashionable district of south London, Associate Editor of the Independent reflects on a similar ‘reality’ (perspective/framing) I see; for example a few quotes:
– Get used to devastating and deadly floods, Europe – climate change is here
– As the Queen said the other day, we must ‘change our ways’ to save the planet (civilisation?) – but we don’t seem to want to.
– Our days have a last-chance feel about them, but I can’t say I’m optimistic about saving the earth as we know it.
– What if we can’t hit our climate targets? What if this last chance is actually squandered? What if, in a few years, climate change accelerates and moves towards cataclysmically unpredictable change? What if we fail?
– [ PLUS what if we hit the COP targets in 2030-2050 but they are too little too late? ]
– The record, it has to be said, is not good. Ever since the 1980s, evidence on climate change has been building.
– The targets are ever more stringent, enshrined in treaties, and laid down in law. Yet the doubt remains that we will ever meet them, and what should we do as we consider that possibility?
– The debate is too often framed as something other people or other countries have to do, not “us”.
– … the public happily buys their products and flies on their planes. When it comes to personal sacrifice we don’t seem inclined to do much more than sort out our rubbish for recycling …
– Nor, on electoral experience, do voters seem enthusiastic about collective sacrifice. We don’t tend to support imposing punitive taxes to promote green living such as hefty levies on motoring, air travel, taxes on meat and poultry, ending fast fashion, higher gas and electricity bills, compulsory removal of older cars and gas boilers, rationing foreign holidays, limiting family size, lower speed limits, or slapping VAT on new build houses. We just won’t do it, will we?
– Given these revelations, maybe there should be a few little workshops at Cop26 quietly thinking about mitigationsADAPTION. It’s pathetic, but it may be the only thing left eg flood defences … more emergency generators and shelters, for example.
– Maybe, in reality, Cop26 and the puny efforts we do make will slow climate change a bit, but we’ll still have to “learn to live with climate change”. To adapt a topical expression, it’s not the best way forward, but the most likely one.
I think as an example, the article is Worth a read. And seriously thinking about going forward. Because (I think) it’s the current predominant habitual thinking and rhetoric that needs to change before right action can follow.
Maybe, facing up to the Realities of Adapting to the most likely impacts of climate change; and knowing how extreme the adaptions required will be, might finally trigger the Realistic Thinking, tougher Laws, and Mitigation Actions based upon the BEST ADVICE of SCIENTIFIC STUDIES that are actually fit for purpose?
Naturally I doubt anything like this will happen. Bad habits die hard.
Reality Checksays
Climate activists including Extinction Rebellion to receive £500,000 from US philanthropists
Three wealthy donors – Trevor Neilson, Rory Kennedy and Aileen Getty – have launched the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) to help support school strikes and activism groups like Extinction Rebellion.
“This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,” Mr Neilson told The Guardian. He said he hoped the fund will be increased “a hundred times” in the coming months as investors pledge to ask wealthy friends to contribute.
On its website the CEF says it wants to support activists committing their lives to addressing the climate emergency.
“We believe that only a peaceful planet-wide mobilisation on the scale of World War II will give us a chance to avoid the worst-case scenarios and restore a safe climate,” the website reads.
“These individuals and groups need our support as they carry out legal, nonviolent activities to demand that our leaders take action to ban ecologically destructive practices and save as much life as possible.”
@201 et al; regenerative agriculture, study refs., and crop yields etc
1)
Crop yields are not everything, nor the most critical aspect to agriculture. As a yardstick they are useful sure, but the tail should not be wagging the dog, surely? The issues are much larger, more complex, and broader than that.
Economics, trade rules, politics, historical cultures, and financing is not a part of the peer reviewed scientific endeavors that impact of global agriculture norms and alternatives nor drivers of what is. iow, science papers are not everything about everything either.
The focus on yields in various comments here is unjustified and not helpful for greater understanding of reality, imv.
REF/s:
Can regenerative agriculture replace conventional farming? 25 August 2020 Do restorative methods reduce yields?
In the latter half of the 20th century, global crop yields increased on an unprecedented scale. The world’s average cereal yield, for example, has increased by 175 per cent since 1961 (9). In 1950, one hectare of apple trees in the Netherlands yielded six tonnes of apples, yet by 2015 that yield was 44 tonnes (10). However, those gains have mainly been achieved using fossil-fuel-based inputs that are not sustainable in the long term (11), and via methods that can lead to soil degradation and erosion (12). Since the 1990s some crop yields have plateaued (13, 14), and while this is largely as a consequence of policy changes, climate change has also been found to be a contributing factor (15, 16).
and
Research shows that while regenerative methods, which minimise or avoid tilling and chemical inputs entirely, can lower yields, this varies greatly depending on the crop and local conditions (17). In some cases regenerative and organic methods can lead to similar yields, and even yield increases (18).
“The Rodale Institute has been running side-by-side field studies for the last 30 years, comparing organic and conventional agriculture. Results show that after a 1 to 2 year transition period, when yields tend to decline, there is no difference between conventional and regenerative farming in terms of yields. In stressful conditions, particularly during droughts, the regenerative fields perform better because they are more resilient – the soil can absorb more water because it contains more biomass. And certainly farmers we work with say the yields are the same, while their input costs go down.” Philip Fernandez, Agriculture Project Manager at EIT Food
In 2018, US researchers showed that on farms in the Northern Plains of the USA, regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over conventional corn production systems (19). The picture can be complex, and there are differences when it comes to input costs (20):
see https://www.eitfood.eu/blog/post/can-regenerative-agriculture-replace-conventional-farming – covers a lot of ground with scientific study refs and more…
2)
Labels and definitions matter. Confusing them especially conflating them as if they are the same thing creates massive problems in understanding and communication. It’s also quite frustrating for genuine people ‘following along’ when terms are incorrectly interchanged willy nilly.
Organic farming is not regenerative agriculture, despite some similarities.
In this field of ‘agriculture’ there’s four key labels in popular use today ( I think) – permaculture, organic farming, regenerative agriculture and conventional agriculture. Their objectives/goals and methodologies are very different.
What Is the Difference Between Organic and Regenerative Agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture empowers farmers and ranchers to use management principles that improve the overall health of the land.
The benefits of regenerative ranching include:
– Increased soil organic matter and biodiversity.
– Healthier and more productive soil that is drought- and flood-resilient.
– Decreased use of chemical inputs and subsequent pollution.
– Cleaner air and water.
– Enhanced wildlife habitat.
– Carbon captured in the soil to combat climate variability.
With regenerative agriculture, producers are not just sustaining the current land resource so that it can continue to be used in the future. They are actually improving what is there, leaving it better for the next generation. [ Crop Yeilds is not mentioned as a key benefit/objective.]
“Organic” is a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act. By 2002, the year the standards were implemented, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had defined “organic” as “a production system … that respond(s) to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical processes that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biological diversity.” https://www.noble.org/regenerative-agriculture/organic-vs-regenerative-agriculture/
July 02, 2019 What is Regenerative Agriculture?
In addition to a long list of incredible benefits for farmers and their crops, regenerative agriculture practices help us fight the climate crisis by pulling carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ground. The agriculture sector is one of the biggest emitters of CO2, the greenhouse gas (GHG) most responsible for the changes we are seeing in our climate today. Together with forestry and other land use, agriculture is responsible for just under 25 percent of all human-created GHG emissions.
But it also has a vital role to play in helping us end this crisis, and create a safe, sustainable future without carbon pollution. https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/what-regenerative-agriculture
3) Finding peer-reviewed and other scientific studies about regenerative agriculture is not difficult. All it takes is a little effort and a lot of time.
Noting that just because a paper has been published does not by default make it’s contents either true for all time, accurate, reliable, useful, fit for purpose nor authoritative. All Papers are not created equal. Other forms of research, DIRECT EXPERIENCE, and recorded knowledge are useful and valuable – it depends.
Personally, fwiw, I don’t have any problems understanding what Scott and Killian are saying, have said in the past about soils, CO2 sequestration, and alternative agriculture/farming, and regenerative agriculture in particular. They have been consistent and clear, afaict.
I do not think that Scott or Killian need to be a replacement for google scholar. I do not think they have to prove beyond all doubt using peer reviewed studies every comment and info shared are 100% right nor represent a Consensus Agreement by scientific experts in the agriculture field. (disagreements abound – quality of research varies – bias exists – all very normal)
People share their opinions and viewpoints and ideas about all kinds of things here on FR without always deferring to xyz scientific studies all the time.
Asking for refs is a reasonable thing to ask for though – especially about something new or different. But sometimes this can go way over the top. The info and refs are out there for everyone to look into and form their own opinions/beliefs. I haven’t noticed Scott nor Killian presenting info that’s way outside the Norm here.
Presenting Refs about yields in Organic Farming is not relevant to the pros and cons of Regenerative Agriculture. It can only muddy the waters and deteriorate discussions further. Two totally different fields, in my view, best not conflated.
It’s a complex and relatively new field of research and activity. There wasn’t much peer reviewed papers about climate change 30-40 years ago to rely upon either. And still today the best in the field have varying opinions about what the best way forward is; and argue about what is and the most reliable “facts” are.
Reality Checksays
One example of a ref paper found via the google scholar links I provided above:
A review is made of the current state of agriculture, emphasising issues of soil erosion and dependence on fossil fuels, in regard to achieving food security for a relentlessly enlarging global population. Soil has been described as “the fragile, living skin of the Earth”, and yet both its aliveness and fragility have all too often been ignored in the expansion of agriculture across the face of the globe.
Since it is a pivotal component in a global nexus of soil-water-air-energy, how we treat the soil can impact massively on climate change – with either beneficial or detrimental consequences, depending on whether the soil is preserved or degraded. Regenerative agriculture has at its core the intention to improve the health of soil or to restore highly degraded soil, which symbiotically enhances the quality of water, vegetation and land-productivity. By using methods of regenerative agriculture, it is possible not only to increase the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) in existing soils, but to build new soil.
This has the effect of drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, while simultaneously improving soil structure and soil health, soil fertility and crop yields, water retention and aquifer recharge – thus ameliorating both flooding and drought, and also the erosion of further soil, since runoff is reduced.
Since food production on a more local scale is found to preserve the soil and its quality, urban food production should be seen as a significant potential contributor to regenerative agriculture in the future, so long as the methods employed are themselves ‘regenerative’. If localisation is to become a dominant strategy for dealing with a vastly reduced use of fossil fuels, and preserving soil quality – with increased food production in towns and cities – it will be necessary to incorporate integrated (‘systems’) design approaches such as permaculture and the circular economy (which minimise and repurpose ‘waste’) within the existing urban infrastructure.
[ Note, I have heard Killian presenting those very ideas here in the past on multiple occasions. Maybe he’s actually correct on this matter? ]
In addition to growing food in urban space, such actions as draught-proofing and thermally insulating existing building stock, and living/working on a more local scale, would serve well to cut our overall energy consumption. In order to curb our use of fossil fuels, methods for reducing overall energy use must be considered at least equally important to expanding low-carbon energy production.
In synopsis, it is clear that only by moving from the current linear, ‘take, make, dispose (waste-creation)’ model for resource-consumption, to the systemic, circular alternative of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle, regenerate’, are we likely to meet demands for future generations.
“It has been pointed out that while agriculture needs to be made sustainable, and the term ‘sustainable agriculture’ might be considered an oxymoron3,4, since agriculture is by its very nature unsustainable, with much of modern food production being reliant on inputs of finite fossil fuel energy, and that it renders the soil vulnerable to erosion, with the progressive and global loss of productive land4.” (not to mention the original land clearing of established forests or historical vegetation, and in irrigation practice highly susceptible to destructive soil and water salinity.)
Agriculture may be broadly defined as the cultivation and breeding of animals and crops (including fungi) in order to provide for and improve the human condition. Thus are delivered, food, fibre and biofuels, along with plants for medicinal purposes.
In the modern age, the practice of monoculture farming on a very large scale is the basis of what is often termed ‘industrial agriculture’, which has brought its own problems and challenges, and is regarded as being unsustainable over the longer term3.”
(Therefore, what use and value to human benefit are higher crop yields when the very practice itself is already known to be Unsustainable long term?)
3. The Green Revolution (… and YIELDS?)
The origins of the Green Revolution19 are usually attributed to Norman Borlaug, an American agricultural scientist who, in the 1940s, began conducting research in Mexico, where he developed new disease-resistant, high-yield varieties of wheat (Figure 2). These are plants bred specifically to respond to fertilisers, and produce a greater amount of grain per hectare of land that is planted.
[…] It should be noted, however, that it is only through the input of large quantities of artificial fertilisers, pesticides and adequate irrigation, that these high yielding plants can flourish. […] Overall, this led to a doubling in the crop productivity.
3.1 Consequences of the Green Revolution
Undoubtedly, the use of Green Revolution technologies has vastly increased the amount of food produced across the world, and for example, India and China have not experienced famine since they adopted IR8 rice and related crops. The practices of agriculture have been changed, however, by the dependence of these high-yield crops on inputs of synthetic fertilisers, which cannot grow without their application.
Prior to the Green Revolution, much of agriculture was largely confined to areas where the rainfall was appreciable, but through large-scale irrigation systems, more land can be used for crop production, further raising the total amount of food available.
As a downside, only a few high-yield varieties, e.g. of rice, are now grown, whereas prior to the Green Revolution, some 30,000 types of rice were grown in India. Such monoculture systems are less resistant to disease and to pests – in the absence of competitive biodiversity – which has necessitated an increased use of pesticides.
9. Use of urban space for food production
Recent research led by a group at Sheffield University has identified the poor quality of soils on UK farms and made the prediction that there will be a national agricultural crisis at some point during this century.
On it goes to 14. Conclusions page 122
According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)127, 30% of the world’s cropland has been abandoned over the past 40 years due to degradation and desertification, while 52% of the land used for agriculture is moderately to severely affected by soil degradation.
44% of the world’s food production systems and 50% of its livestock are considered to be vulnerable to climate change, while 12 million hectares of crop land are lost per year (23 hectares per minute), where 20 million tonnes of grain might have been grown.
All of this must be considered against an estimated requirement to produce 60% more food by 2050, to feed a population that is predicted to increase from around 7 billion now, to 9.5 billion. Thus, we are destroying the productivity of the same soil from which we demand a relentless increase in production.
[ That sounds insane and irrational and unscientific, doesn’t it? ]
page 123 Humankind appears to be confronted by a host of different problems, which
have been described as “the world’s woes”38, among which we may list, carbon emissions/climate change, soil erosion, water shortages, resource-depletion, but also resource-waste, including ‘food waste’.
In reality, however, these are not individual problems, but symptoms of a single problem, i.e. over-consumption and injudicious use of limited resources.
— There is more in that section, but with a few facts and common sense at hand, it all seems quite self-evident by now, doesn’t it?
Please note, I am not an expert in this field, I defer to those who are.
Thus, urban food production should be seen as a significant potential contributor to regenerative agriculture in the future, so long as
the methods employed are themselves ‘regenerative’.
Permaculture is a regenerative, design system based on ‘nature as teacher’, which could help optimise the use of resources in town and city settings, while minimising and repurposing ‘waste’.
Thus, food might be produced using reduced inputs of fuels, water and fertilisers, and without pesticides and herbicides, while simultaneously building SOC. Such an approach taken by billions of individuals on the local scale, could prove of great significance in ensuring future food security and community resilience.
In addition, more of food that is grown locally, tends to be actually eaten, in contrast with an annual 1.3 billion tonnes of food, produced for human consumption, that is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about one third of the total130.
In overview, in order to achieve a viable future will require integrated ‘systems’ thinking, rather than addressing isolated components/problems, e.g. ‘climate change’, ‘peak oil’, ‘soil erosion’ etc., because these are all interconnected, and it is the integrated issue of how we use our resources that must be addressed.
Since 54% of the global population lives in towns and cities (74% in the more developed and 44% in the less developed countries), it is probably unrealistic to believe that every urban-dweller can escape to the countryside, and have their own patch of land to grow food on, since there is not enough rural space available, and the majority of us are not farmers, and lack the necessary skills and cultural background to ‘go back to the land’.
Furthermore, while there are impressive energy-efficient designs for buildings, e.g. passivhaus, it is not a practical proposition to simply raze our existing urban buildings to the ground and build-up again from scratch.
Hence, if localisation is to become a dominant strategy for dealing with a vastly reduced use of fossil fuels, and to preserve soil quality – with increased food production in towns and cities – it will be necessary
to incorporate integrated (‘systems’) design approaches such as permaculture and the circular economy (which minimise and repurpose ‘waste’) within the existing urban infrastructure.
In addition to growing food in urban space, such actions as draught-proofing and thermally insulating existing building stock, and living/working on a more local scale, would serve well to cut our overall energy consumption.
In order to curb our use of the fossil fuels, methods for reducing overall energy use must be considered at least equally important to expanding low-carbon energy production. [end quote]
I think I have heard these kinds of suggestions often, here, before.
And yet another science paper/article I have seen emphasizing the essential need of reducing energy consumption overall (thus recognising that switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy will not be enough
Along with reducing waste and general consumption where-ever possible. Seems to be a pattern.
“A recent study found that air pollution from fossil fuels kills 8 million people per year, worldwide. In the U.S. alone, a 2019 study estimated that fossil fuel use causes over 50,000 deaths and $445 billion in economic damage annually. (See also: Burning fossil fuels heats the climate. It also harms public health)”
“The economic and health burdens of air pollution are borne by individuals, families, and society, not by energy companies. The damage is socially and racially unjust, levying the heaviest toll on those least responsible for causing the problem. The fossil fuel industry’s ability to freely pollute and cause widespread degradation to public health is an example of a generous subsidy, because society bears the costs for oil, gas, and coal’s business model.”
IMHO This is another great reason to change our energy system in addition to the climate issue which is such a threat to our individual and collective well being. My observation is 30 years of considerable climate scaremongering in the media (and I’ve done my fair share of this) have clearly NOT motivated sufficient climate change mitigation efforts. While there is some evidence emissions might have peaked they most certainly havent fallen globally. But if we ALSO communicate the wider benefits of clean zero carbon energy, this might be enough to tip things more in favour of that energy.
A new clean zero carbon energy grid in 20 – 30 years is “system change”. Its changing the power generation system that is fundamental to the wider economy. Is this incremental or revolutionary, fast or slow, centrist or extreme? Who knows and nobody will agree anyway. Such words are pointless and have unhelpful political and emotive overtones. But I believe it is still an achievable, appropriate WORKABLE goal although obviously very challenging.
Mikesays
at Nigel at 217: I don’t think a forum like this one graphs out like the general population. The group of individuals that takes part in discussion self-selects and is far from the kind of large, randomly selected group that would produce a bell curve that would be similar to the general population. And, with stats, there are always outliers.
In general, I think most of us are immersed in communication and media systems that provide feedback that tends to move our opinions back toward the median. At the middle/median I think there are a lot of people who haven’t given much thought to a survey topic, so I think their confidence level is not very high and maybe the middle 20% of that confidence bell curve could be swayed rather easily with a bit of scientific or sciency argument. That would produce the dip in the middle of a bimodal distribution.
At 1.0 standard deviation, plus or minus, you have folks who have given a topic a bit of attention and they know there are off the median in a significant way. I think these spots would produce confidence spikes, the two peaks in the bimodal distribution.
Out beyond 2.0 standard deviations, I think most opinion holders are inundated with media and feedback that tells them that their opinions/positions are wrong and I think the confidence level would fall off accordingly.
I could be wrong about all that. Not a particularly important matter, just a little observation and opinion about the general population, opinions on global warming and confidence levels in personal opinions.
do you think it’s possible that we may need to do less with less in the future?
On the current course of the insanity of Western civilization, it’s not a question of “possible”; it’s going to happen. The collapse of the western Roman empire will have nothing on what’s in store for us, and “less” is guaranteed given the level of incompetence everywhere.
Is standard of living essentially a measure of consumption?
The record of the last several centuries shows that humans will NEVER opt for less consumption if they can avoid it. The only way to have more without climate disaster is with carbon-free energy, and the only way to have THAT at scale is with nuclear.
Do you think it is possible that we could trade reductions in standard of living for increases in quality of life?
Look at your own existence. What are YOU willing to give up, and how would it improve your QOL?
I’m MORE than willing to give up carbon emissions, but that’s because I’m WEIRDO (Westernized, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic and Outbred) and I know and use alternatives to more carbon-intensive bits of lifestyle. I’d be happy to trade one source of heat for a less carbon-intensive one, but that’s only feasible for me because I have the wealth to do so. I’m so selfless that I’d happily invest in clean generation that lasts for a century even though I have next to zero likelihood of enjoying it for even the next 20 years. But I’m the exception; most of humanity will burn coal in un-scrubbed plants if it means they have electricity.
mikesays
At Nigel at 224: is there evidence that emissions have peaked?
Well, Yale360 says yes.
Soaring Global CO2 Emissions May Have Peaked, Data Show
Looks like this 2015 article believes emissions may have peaked in 2014.
I read these kind of stories from time to time. I am not sure they stand up to scrutiny. But if you cite them and say emissions may have peaked, you would not be clearly incorrect.
I think covid produced some emission reduction, but I think we might already be seeing a rebound in emissions since the covid vaccines arrived. I think we need a 5 to 10 year period of emission decline to announce that a peak has arrived and we have started to see real emission reductions. I don’t see anything like that yet.
If we start at 2015 with this Yale360 story and look at emissions since that article announced the peak, then I think we see that the article in mistaken. Emissions do not appear to have peaked in 2014 as Yale reported in 2015.
I looked at this after I got stuck on this sentence from Nigel: “While there is some evidence emissions might have peaked they most certainly havent fallen globally.”
If you have a moment, Nigel, provide a link to the evidence you have noticed that indicates global emissions might have peaked. I would like to stick some particulars on that so I have a clue what evidence you have spotted on the emission peak. I agree with you on the second part, I think emissions haven’t fallen globally yet. I would really love to live long enough to see that happen.
A 40% CF would be “an admission against interest?”
It effectively admits that “renewables” are unfit to provide the always-on power required to sustain essentials like water, sewage and medical systems.
I don’t really see why, honestly–surely more important metrics would be financial and emissions-related.
The financials are driven by subsidies and mandates, and nothing can get to zero emissions if it has to rely on fossil backup.
I’d have thought this was just the sort of “elective load” that E-P has advocated for in the past.
Oh, I’m fine with demand-side management, but the source has to be dispatchable rather than operating at the whims of the weather and day/night cycles.
But be that as it may, the math only holds if 100% of the electricity generated goes toward hydrogen/ammonia production.
The article makes no mention of providing power to the grid.
On its website the CEF says it wants to support activists committing their lives to addressing the climate emergency.
“We believe that only a peaceful planet-wide mobilisation on the scale of World War II will give us a chance to avoid the worst-case scenarios and restore a safe climate,” the website reads.
I have been calling for a Manhattan project-scale effort for quite a few years now. It’s about time that the people who finance activists got serious about it, though a mere £500,000 doesn’t even approach the scale of “serious”. Put together £5,000,000,000 and you’re talkin’.
nigeljsays
Mike @ 227 I was basing my comment that CO2 emissions “might” have already peaked on commentary like this (not unlike your yale reference):
I’m not sure how much scrutiny they would stand either hence the choice of the word “might”. Although I would be fairly confident that the rate of increase has slowed recently given reducing use of coal and deployment of renewables. Although that leaves a very long way to go.
prlsays
@229:
“I have been calling for a Manhattan project-scale effort for quite a few years now. … Put together £5,000,000,000 and you’re talkin’.”
5 billion pounds (~7 billion USD)? That’s not going to get you much (and it’s only about a third of the cost of the Manhattan Project in current USD).
The nearest wind farm to where I live in Australia (Capital Wind Farm) has a nominal capacity of ~100 MW and an annual output of ~370 GWh. It cost 0.37 billion AUD (~0.27 billion USD). It supplies 0.14% of Australia’s 265200 GWh/year electricity production.
The Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, a battery with 193 MWh capacity, cost ~0.16 billion AUD (~0.12 billion USD).
At that rate, 7 billion USD isn’t going to impact much on even Australia’s renewables.
For the US, I suspect you’d probably need at least 3 more zeros on the end of that number. And that’s way bigger than the Manhattan Project.
nigeljsays
Reality Check @221, I agree about a lot of that, but yields and productivity are really important. We have billions of people DEPENDENT on the high yields of industrial agriculture, and a system with lower yields like regenerative agriculture or organic agriculture could cause obvious problems potentially food shortages, high food costs, and malnutrition. Especially as climate change will tend to ALSO push down yields and we have a growing population wanting food from the same finite land area!
However as you say industrial agriculture is harsh on soils. Its also not sustainable in the long term in the sense it may get prohibitively expensive to manufacture enough nitrates and find enough phosphates etcetera and sustaining high levels of mechanisation indefinitely may not be possible.
There are potential solutions to mitigate the yields issue with regenerative agriculture like 1) phasing in regenerative agriculture slowly so things all find ways of adjusting and time to adjust (this seems likely to happen anyway because new systems take time to scale up) 2) keeping some limited use of industrial fertilisers or other inputs or 3) using regenerative agriculture to bring abandoned land back to life as mentioned by SS (although I would like to see some hard evidence on how feasible this is and what areas.). This would help counter lower yields. 4) improved plant breeding, or other enhancements maybe using genetic engineering.
FWIW I sometimes buy organic produce and I’m all in favour of adopting regenerative agriculture (I’ve said this before) but I think its foolish to pretend there are no downsides (not that you are doing this). Regarding peer reviewed studies With such a dramatic systems change and people making HUGE claims about what regenerative agriculture can do, I think its important that such claims are backed up with published science.
Reality Checksays
This is an above average quality tv news report via the BBC recently. 7mins
Ros Atkins explains the link between climate change and recent heat waves in the US and Canada. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-57868135
One comment by Ros I liked in particular was: “Deciding to act, isn’t the same as taking the right action.” @5:05 mins
and this BBC News webpage summary is ok too
US heatwave: Could US and Canada see the worst wildfires yet?
By Reality Check team – BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/57770728
@229, a minor point perhaps, but a planet-wide mobilisation on the scale of World War II is orders of magnitude greater than the Manhattan project-scale effort. It’s telling however that both were driven at a senior Government level by decree and not by popular opinion or a vote on every aspect of what action to take or when.
The things I find most interesting about Regenerative Agriculture:
– It’s been studied extensively for years, there are hundreds of science papers and research projects been done about it.
– If it’s a genuine practical long term solution it’s little known about.
– It gets little to no mainstream press and is ignored by politicians and political parties… and gains little positive attention and focus by climate scientists, activists, and academic groups, or the IPCC processes.
– Obtains little attention by Govts and receives minute levels of Govt funding (if any in most nations.)
– It’s another issue that is polarized with biased, at times ideological industry based self-interest groups pushing their own barrows and generating distracting arguments about it versus co-operative endeavors.
– Misinformation and disinformation is the norm in the public domain.
– Reminds me of 30 years ago when PV solar was being presented as a potential global warming solution option.
– Even if regenerative agriculture should or could replace industrial agriculture “system” globally for the better, the sheer scale of such an endeavor likely places it decades into the future before having any impact at all.
– Few people know anything about it, and even less are implementing it’s practices. They likely need better PR and some high end political lobbyists?
– Proves again that Systemic / Cultural Change is hard and meets with entrenched resistance to new ideas.
July 2nd 2021 Greta Thunberg addressed the #AustrianWorldSummit along with Angela Merkel, António Guterres, Alok Sharma and others.
“Let’s be clear — what you are doing is not about climate action or responding to an emergency. It never was. This is communication tactics disguised as politics.”
The assertion is: “There are no non-radical futures.”
Is that true? The idea, the wording, possibly arose from back in 2016 when Naomi Klein said in an interview: “There are no non-radical options left before us.”
The famed author of “This Changes Everything” explains why markets cannot be relied on to solve global warming. This changes everything — how?
Naomi Klein: “So the ‘this’ in This Changes Everything is climate change. And the argument that I make in the book is that we find ourselves in this moment where there are no non-radical options left before us. Change or be changed, right? And what we mean by that is that climate change, if we don’t change course, if we don’t change our political and economic system, is going to change everything about our physical world.
“And that is what climate scientists are telling us when they say business as usual leads to three to four degrees Celsius of warming. That’s the road we are on. We can get off that road, but we’re now so far along it, we’ve put off the crucial policies for so long, that now we can’t do it gradually. We have to swerve, right? And swerving requires such a radical departure from the kind of political and economic system we have right now that we pretty much have to change everything.
My Reality:
After a couple of decades following climate change issues as an interested citizen I walked away and stopped paying any attention. It was all too depressing. I’ve taken time out from that sabbatical to have another short term peek to see where things are at today. Has anything changed much if at all? Most of the same players are still here, saying the same kinds of things they did in the past. Not much change here.
Honestly, I can’t see how anything has improved or positively changed since Naomi said that 5 years ago. Is Greta saying what she’s saying an improvement, or more wasted breath? What do you think?
Reality Checksays
Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
Vol. 46:- (Volume publication date October 2021)
Review in Advance first posted online on June 29, 2021.
Isak Stoddard, Kevin Anderson et al
Abstract
Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990.
Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses—covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries — draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve.
However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control.
Synthesizing the various impediments to mitigation reveals how delivering on the commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement now requires an urgent and unprecedented transformation away from today’s carbon- and energy-intensive development paradigm. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
Prof. Kevin Anderson
Total emissions per decade is increasing (see attached) so could reasonably be described as accelerating? And given it’s total emissions that really matter (rather than percentages) I think we always need to come back to tonnes CO2. Reinterpreted in absolute numbers, which the climate responds to (rather than percentages).
2001-2010: 295 GtCO2 in 10yrs
i.e. 11-20yrs after 1st IPCC report
School report card: D-
Kevin Anderson
@KevinClimate Jul 9
As COP approaches, policy makers will iron their “costumes”, senior academics practice their sycophancy, business leaders tailor their speeches, advisors adjust their CO2 accounting, compliant journalists softly interview ‘great &goods’, but “nature & physics will not fall for it”. https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1413467936837210113
No, it appears as if nothing much has changed.
nigeljsays
Engineer-Poet @226
“Look at your own existence. What are YOU (Reality check) willing to give up, and how would it improve your QOL?”
Good question. While we dont have to be greedy, the idea of deliberately going without things we take for granted these days strikes me as a form of self punishing stupidity.
nigeljsays
Addendum. While we dont have to be greedy, the idea of deliberately going without things we take for granted these days strikes me as a form of self punishing stupidity. I’m talking about household items. I have reduced how much I fly to help with the climate problem because theres just no other solution like electric airplanes as yet.
Killiansays
226 Engineer-Poet says:
19 Jul 2021 at 2:20 PM
@214:
do you think it’s possible that we may need to do less with less in the future?
On the current course of the insanity of Western civilization, it’s not a question of “possible”; it’s going to happen. The collapse of the western Roman empire will have nothing on what’s in store for us, and “less” is guaranteed given the level of incompetence everywhere.
If find the question naive, like asking do I expect the sun to exist tomorrow.
Is standard of living essentially a measure of consumption?
As measured in Economics, yes. As measured by life satisfaction, not always. As measured by regenerative societies and their very high life satisfaction levels, not at all.
The record of the last several centuries shows that humans will NEVER opt for less consumption if they can avoid it.
I find this extremely disrespectful to the humans who do, still, live sustainably. I find it naive to think that if we informed people of the true risks and a legitimate way forward that they would not choose that.
The only reason we are not doing that now is because of liars and/or charlatans and/or fools and/or misguided and/or deluded and/or ideologically-drvien and/or greedy and/or selfish and/or misinformed people.
If your argument is that the above is the problem, then we are in agreement. When the vast majority of people on this board, most of whom should be allies, but choose to attack that which they disagree with – even from allies – it suggests you are right. But WHY is important, and that why is far too often intentional or in some form ignorant or delusional.
The only way to have more without climate disaster is with carbon-free energy, and the only way to have THAT at scale is with nuclear.
There is no way to have more. There are only ways for a global 1% or less to have more – just as it is today. This is simple logic, particularly if taken with a “7 generations” type of view. Frankly, anything less than “indefinitely less an act of god-type event,” e.g. Chicxulub.
Rather, there is only one way to have a global “ecotechnic” society, and that is to mine the solar system, which is generations away. That is one of the few uses for nuclear that is acceptable – space travel and powering intra-solar system mining operations. We should not be using nuclear as a climate solution because it simply cannot be built out in time. In fact, nothing can. Simplification is the only *safe* choice. Rather, is the only choice that is safe if we are not already too late, and evidence is piling up that we are.
Do you think it is possible that we could trade reductions in standard of living for increases in quality of life?
Again, naive. Is there a choice? What point is there in asking a question that has only one answer? A small tweak makes it more sensical to ask:
“What do you think it is the likelihood that we will trade reductions in standard of living for increases in quality of life?”
If we continue to leave the vast majority uninformed of the reality, zero. If people who are – relatively – “woke” on the issue continue to tear each other apart, zero. If the Ivory Tower continues to minimize and belittle the Common People’s knowledge, zero.
Killiansays
222 Reality Check
This quote should put to bed any further talk of regenerative systems being in any way inferior to chem ag or in any way needing support from chem ag. Chem ag *created* those decimated soils and only regenerative ag will bring them back, and at those percentages, that alone makes up the imaginary shortfall one here keeps falsely posting about.
On it goes to 14. Conclusions page 122
According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)127, 30% of the world’s cropland has been abandoned over the past 40 years due to degradation and desertification, while 52% of the land used for agriculture is moderately to severely affected by soil degradation.
44% of the world’s food production systems and 50% of its livestock are considered to be vulnerable to climate change, while 12 million hectares of crop land are lost per year (23 hectares per minute), where 20 million tonnes of grain might have been grown.
All of this must be considered against an estimated requirement to produce 60% more food by 2050, to feed a population that is predicted to increase from around 7 billion now, to 9.5 billion. Thus, we are destroying the productivity of the same soil from which we demand a relentless increase in production.
Reality Checksays
@232 that’s all good, I understand. I tried to clarify my general thoughts in @233, emphasizing I am no expert nor well versed in the field. Others know far more than I and the hoi polloi (average Joe.)
I do think its important that claims about what regenerative agriculture can do, and claims about what it cannot do, are both backed up by credible research and analysis reporting.
Where possible published science studies too (in a perfect world) which may not always be possible or practical. There are many good published studies/articles already in those google scholar refs I provided for people to peruse, if curious.
Given farming is somewhat different than say long term climate science etc. I suspect the proof of the pudding would be in the eating. There’s a long culture of down to earth good common sense to be had in the farming agricultural communities.
For good reasons I’ll remain skeptical of analysis and reports out of political ‘think tanks’ even those with ‘qualified scientists’ on staff. I cant help but be equally skeptical of reports and science papers put out by industrial agriculture proponents too. I suspect they’re equivalent to self-serving tobacco, many state actors and fossil fuel interests. Gosh even his highness Moncton managed to a get a ‘science paper’ published.
I suspect if anything can come of regenerative agriculture that it will arise at a grass roots level with increasing good news stories and word of mouth. Eventually good results can’t be ignored forever.
The odds are already stacked against a major systemic shift to regen ag with across the board support from Govt and Industry down. Which is a massive shame if it’s potential is as good as many already say it is and can become long term.
It’s not for me to say one way or the other. I’m not qualified to judge.
Reality Checksays
@241, yes, I thought they were excellent points that science paper presented. At least they clarified the extent of the problem at hand and what had caused it.
@238, @240 and @226 … I caught a comment by Kevin Anderson suggesting that if the top 10% of income earners, the very well off, reduced their consumption to that of the Average European, then GHG emissions would drop by a staggering 30%, basically overnight. https://twitter.com/steviedubyu/status/1172205925303762944
So I’m all for recognizing that the problems and the solutions are pretty much the same issues (at least philosophically). Less Consumption, more Simplification, and making ethical decisions that are positively Life Enhancing 7 Generations Ahead, seems clear enough.
To be sustainable, or not to be sustainable, is the question.
NZ would be blessed (and lucky as) to have the Maori take responsibility for its water ways, along with researching the potential of adopting Regenerative Agriculture nation wide to help clean up the 200 year old mess. Then teaching the world how to do the same would be an honorable thing to do.
And very intelligent. So it probably will not happen.
[A 40% capacity factor] effectively admits that “renewables” are unfit to provide the always-on power required to sustain essentials like water, sewage and medical systems.
Nonsense. The CF of an individual project–even one as massive as the proposed Western Australia Renewable Energy Hub–says very about the ability of a RE system to provide ‘always on’ power at a given level, for multiple reasons. Ones E-P should be able to think through on his own, but which we’ve already litigated numerous times on RC already.
The financials are driven by subsidies and mandates, and nothing can get to zero emissions if it has to rely on fossil backup.
The WARE Hub story says nothing of subsidies for the hydrogen/ammonia which is evidently to be the primary product, and if E-P is correct in assuming that no sales of electricity into the grid will be made, then any structural financial supports for the latter are irrelevant.
E-P is the one who brings up “zero emissions,” not me. I’ll merely say that his notions of an absolute “need” for FF backup remain as unsubstantiated as in all the previous iterations of this conversation.
Oh, I’m fine with demand-side management, but the source has to be dispatchable rather than operating at the whims of the weather and day/night cycles.
If the power is all dispatchable anyway, then what is the point of managing the load?
#226–
I’m MORE than willing to give up carbon emissions, but that’s because I’m WEIRDO (Westernized, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic and Outbred)… I’m so selfless that I’d happily invest in clean generation that lasts for a century even though I have next to zero likelihood of enjoying it for even the next 20 years. But I’m the exception; most of humanity will burn coal in un-scrubbed plants if it means they have electricity.
A very strange definition of “selfless”: being happy to give up a fraction of a wealth beyond the imagination of “most of humanity”, even while apparently condemning ‘them’ for having so little in the first place.
But this self-delusion becomes blatant when compared with reality: much of the world is *more* concerned about climate change than the US, or even “the West” generally.
Concern over climate change is especially high in Latin America, where a median of 74% think it is a very serious problem… Sub-Saharan Africans also voice substantial unease about climate change. A median of 61% say global climate change is a very serious problem, including majorities in seven of the nine nations surveyed in the region. Anxiety is especially high in Burkina Faso (79%) and Uganda (76%)…
A little less self-congratulation and a little more humility would be rather more becoming on E-P’s part.
mikesays
at RC at 236: You and I appear to be in agreement with Naomi that there are no non-radical options left at this point. You mention Greta also in terms of messaging and impact, but I don’t think Greta can compete with the money behind our industrialized/chemicalized way of life and their messaging. I don’t think that we are unable to enact appropriate public policy because the scientists have been unclear about the issues or because climate activists have been scare-mongering, I think we can’t get appropriate public policy because powerful moneyed interests control public policy and they are unwilling to take a haircut on their awful assets. These folks spend a lot of money persuading elected officials to toe their line on legislation and they spend a lot of money on public disinformation campaigns and fanning the flames of the culture wars so the electorate does not respond in its best interest at election time.
At K: regarding chem ag vs. regen ag, you and I are in agreement. When I post about articles or research that are less radical than you and I may be on those issues, I do that because those articles/research may be helpful to folks who are quite mainstream in their thinking and are having great difficulty imagining a radically different form of agriculture where the soil health is primary and yield follows from soil health. The other model of pouring chemicals on the ground to become food commodities is a bankrupt process. The soil is depleted in this approach and the chemicals in use are not sustainable or healthy for living things. You, me, Scott and few others here have a pretty decent grasp on that big picture, so there is no particular reason to attack me on my discussion regarding that stuff, but if you can’t help yourself, ok. I prefer a generally civil discussion, but that’s not for everyone. Your post at 241 is exactly right on soil and ag approaches.
At EP at 226: What am I willing to give up as part of doing less with less? I am willing to give up a lot. I have already given up a lot and I will continue to work on cutting my planetary footprint as best as I can for the rest of my life. My partner and I took early retirement and put ourselves in the position of being low income retired folks. That was a conscious choice. We were careful to retire with reasonable health care coverage, with reasonable shelter in a community that we generally like that may be pretty safe from the ravages of global warming. We don’t af travel the world or drive new cars, we don’t cruise or fly. We hike and visit local parks and grow a lot of shade plants around our house that provide a microclimate that allows us to live without AC for the most part, so far. Thanks for asking that question.
We are busy making apple plum cider and a batch of our laundry detergent today and we are happy as can be. We have traded standard of living for quality of life and that trade has been good for us so far.
Cheers all,
Mike
Killiansays
236
Reality Check says:
20 Jul 2021 at 12:59 AM Honestly, I can’t see how anything has improved or positively changed since Naomi said that 5 years ago. Is Greta saying what she’s saying an improvement, or more wasted breath? What do you think?
I think I said we needed complete system change in 2011 and created a model for doing so. It is the only one that exists, so far as I am aware.
I also think as far as Naomi Klein goes, she actually states we need to alter Capitalism, not end it, which means Ms. Klein doesn’t go nearly far enough. But, again, Regenerative Governance makes the changes she is not willing to make.
Killiansays
233
Reality Check says:
19 Jul 2021 at 10:56 PM
Even if regenerative agriculture should or could replace industrial agriculture “system” globally for the better, the sheer scale of such an endeavor likely places it decades into the future before having any impact at all.
This is false. Nothing is needed that farms do not already have. No new infrastructure, nothing. Just the choice and the knowledge. A farm can make the switch in a single year. Depending on conditions, any farm can be operational and providing good gains in as little as a year. However, heavily chem-drenched fields will need longer because they will need SOC added and chemicals diminished. ANY farm can be functioning well in five years or less. Decades? That’s spoken from ignorance (non-pejorative sense), so ask first before making such dangerous, nigelKIA-esque pronouncements. Besides, it’s a lot further along than you realize. With governments and NGOs regularly identifying Regen Ag as necessary and vital, it will not likely be long before gov’ts start making it policy. The change from now to global use will be beyond exponential, it will be parabolic. Probably already is.
The regenerative agriculture movement is reviving an Indigenous approach to agriculture and flipping the narrative to show how agriculture can help restore ecologies, fight climate change, rebuild relationships, spark economic development, and bring people—consumers AND farmers and ranchers—joy.
Ecological Benefits
Our interviewees witnessed amazing transformations on their land, sometimes rapidly, within one season after they took their first steps on the regenerative journey. They saw improvements in soil health and fertility, evidenced by healthier crops and improved yields. Farmers and ranchers noticed more moisture and sponginess in their soil, as well as chocolate-colored soil aggregates sticking to the long roots of their plants. Soil tests and visual signs like earthworms revealed vibrant microbial communities in the soil, the foundation of healthy water, nutrient, and carbon cycling. Biodiversity on land, air, and water followed improved biodiversity in the soil. We heard incredible stories of a rise in bird, bee, and insect populations, as well as richer and more diverse plant life returning to the farm and ranch – all signs of ecosystems returning to health.
Regenerative farming also benefits water quality and quantity. Less chemical and pesticide inputs on regenerative farms and ranches means less chemical pollution impacting ground and surface water, and in turn, a reduction in harmful algal blooms and drinking water pollution. Improved water efficiency from better soil health leads to better soil water holding capacity and groundwater recharge, as well as more water conserved on the farm or ranch and more resilience to withstand flood and drought.
The above comes from….? The NRDC, a part of the Big Green crowd that typically offers and suggests half-assed crap. Think of them as gov’t/NGO-level nigelKIAists. Yet, look what they have to say.
After the droughts, and especially the floods, of this year, there is going to be huge interest in mitigating them. The fastest way to do so? Recarbonize our soils.
nigeljsays
Regarding: “Is that true? The idea, the wording, possibly arose from back in 2016 when Naomi Klein said in an interview: “There are no non-radical options left before us.” The famed author of “This Changes Everything” explains why markets cannot be relied on to solve global warming. This changes everything — how?”
IMHO a very tough carbon tax is a market friendly mechanism, and would certainly drive considerable change. It would push up the cost of fossil fuel energy so high people would HAVE to cut consumption of energy radically or switch to things like electric cars or some combination. Such a tax would drive rapid manufacture of clean energy on the basis of simple supply and demand forces. Of course tough carbon taxes introduced abruptly would cause significant problems for people, so they have to be phased in. However I think we are fast running out of time to phase in carbon taxes to meet Paris Accord goals. I think if we dither for another ten years it will be too late to use such things usefully.
The other alternatives are governments simply forcing change by mandating large cuts in fossil fuels production essentially rationing the resource. But if this is done abruptly it would also cause big problems, so also has to be phased in. But if governments also spent some money building out renewables rapidly at the same time this would enable things to be phased in fast and without pain or significant problems. It would be analogous to the wartime economy model. From what little I’ve read Naomy Klein seems sympathetic to plans like this.
Looks like Biden is taking the middle ground approach of focusing on helping build out renewables. At least this will help, and is less likely to get reversed by a Republican dominated government. Refer:
Government and corporates haven’t done very much about carbon taxes or they are very mild carbon taxes in most countries. This is probably because governments are not seeing urgent demand for change from their populations.Individual people have mostly not made any significant changes to their carbon footprints or voted in massive numbers for Green Parties or loudly demanded change (young people excepted) and as such such governments and corporates only do the bare minimum about the climate problem. Here’s one reason for all this, and its all about psychology, and its a real ugly sticking point:
@233 “…globally for the better, the sheer scale of such an endeavor likely places it decades into the future before having any impact at all.
@247 says: “This is false.”
No, it’s not false. But it may not be true either. Only time will tell.
And you’re misreading my meaning. Try reading it as before having any global impact at all. Follow the context of what I had already said, eg the ref back to PV solar (and wind) 30 years ago, versus the still very small renewable share of energy mix. And that is with significant Govt support for decades to expand that small growth.
And reconsider that I was not addressing the physicality of a farm switching over, in practical terms, but the big global picture going forward – given historical precedents of building systemic change to address global warming.
eg @242 “The odds are already stacked against a major systemic shift to regen ag with across the board support from Govt and Industry down.”
The later meaning there is no such support at present.
Being mindful of the actual context in that post @233 “but a planet-wide mobilisation on the scale of World War II is orders of magnitude greater than the Manhattan project-scale effort. It’s telling however that both were driven at a senior Government level by decree and not by popular opinion or a vote on every aspect of what action to take or when. “
I think it’s fair to say what I said above isn’t false but fairly realistic.
re @247 “With governments and NGOs regularly identifying Regen Ag as necessary and vital, it will not likely be long before gov’ts start making it policy. The change from now to global use will be beyond exponential, it will be parabolic. Probably already is.”
It’s good to be positive about change, but the above seems overly hyped. The supporting ref NRDC is a PR piece. But I was not questioning the benefits nor the potential.
I was being realistic. Regenerative Agriculture is not as yet widespread Government Policy globally nor in the OECD. And while many spin the words like good politicians do, the facts are no genuine Systemic changes to the Laws and Regulations have yet been passed, nor funding that would make such dreams come true anytime soon.
Now if you have some examples of this being done already please do share them.
Absolutely nothing has been implemented via the Green New Deal in the 3 years since that was presented as an ambition Regen Ag is kind of mentioned but there are no firmed up policies to be implemented. The GND was a program to be in effect making a difference by 2030, a decade away. Zero progress has been made. The present likelihood of anything in the GND being passed into lLaw in the USA is close to zero in Biden’s term, and no better in the next 4 year term. So there is a decade where the world’s #1 food bowl makes no changes to support or encourage or fund a transition from industrial Ag to Regenerative Ag.
Makes no difference how simple it is to change physically if all the Existing Policy Frameworks are entrenched barriers to change. Some examples of why this is so are explained in the following refs:
1) 2019 “Changes must be made on a grand scale, not the slow process of one farmer at a time. ” and “Fundamentally, a national paradigm shift to regenerative agriculture will require two related structural transformations: 1) a breaking up of our huge input-intensive, carbon-emitting monocultures in favor of much smaller labor-intensive, carbon-sequestering farms; and 2) the deployment of millions of new farmers to manage these millions of new small and diverse farms.” https://nonprofitquarterly.org/the-role-of-regenerative-farming-in-the-green-new-deal/
18 months later, a Democrat is in the white house and still nothing has chnaged, and nothing is planned to change. Nothing has been mobilized
4) Jan 2020 – Data for Progress – still at the recommending ideas stage. The Green New Deal is a broad and ambitious agenda that includes a [IDEA FOR A] commitment by the federal government to invest in communities, infrastructure, technology, and good jobs to help the United States meet the challenges of climate change and achieve economic and environmental justice. https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/regenerative-farming-and-the-green-new-deal.pdf
Progress is next to zero. No new Laws have been passed. No longterm funding provided. No Government commitments have been made… at the WH or the Congress.
AFAIK, (apart from the possibility of a handful of exceptions) every major food producing nation is no different to the status quo in the USA as far as Regenerative Agriculture Policy is concerned.
I’m thinking here of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, the UK, the European Union, Ukraine, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and China. https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/List_of_largest_producing_countries_of_agricultural_commodities Industrial Ag is the norm not the exception. Although I had seen some positive activity in China years ago, not sure how things are today.
Let me add, that there is not nothing Systemic and Permanent being done or offered in the countries listed. My point is that it is not mainstream, not extensive, and not system changing…. but barely incremental, only a drop in the bucket.
Scott E Strough @196 responding to Piotr @184 &185.
I do think you do some very useful work, and the following is my inner sceptic speaking and just some pointers on how to be more convincing. Remember this is a science website so its a bit brutal on new ideas because that’s how science works.
Its very hard to see that much connection between what Scott says and what Poitr says. Scott its better to QUOTE what people said, and explain whether you agree or disagree, and WHY you disagree! That’s how things are done.
“Yes regenerative ag has shown to restore the carbon cycle much faster than just letting it “rewild”, as as farmers call it, go fallow. Restores the hydrological cycles and function faster too. Restores wildlife and biodiversity much faster too.”
What peer reviewed studies show this? And Piotrs point was given you regenerative farmers typically promote rewilding, wouldn’t reclaimed land suit that better than land that is currently being used for crops? Which means we are left with the yields problem because we aren’t using reclaimed land for crops.
The point that you make about rewilding happening better if actively done does sound good.
“For example, Rodale did a properly controlled long term ongoing study started in 1981. Soil organic matter started increasing immediately. Within 5 years yields for the organic systems surpassed conventional, even with industrial ag’s added chemical fertilizers and pesticide inputs. ”
This looks like organic farmers reviewing their own work. Was this ever written up in a peer reviewed journal or evaluated by somebody independent? Please provide a link.
These references took me seconds to find, and show that organic farming has lower yields / productivity than conventional farming. They use highly credible objective data and analysis.
https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/publication/comparing-yields-organic-conventional-agriculture_en
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensavage/2015/10/09/the-organic-farming-yield-gap/?sh=64672e5a5e0e
@173, fwiw — and 166 “Dude/Dudette, I’ve been saying this for a REALLLLLLLLY long time.”
I took that as meaning agreement with what I had posted. I didn’t find what was said as offensive or a taunt, nor did I take it personally but see it as a reasonable expression of long term ‘frustration’ at the lack of progress, steps forward.
and I’m a dude (if that matters to anyone), and likewise frustrated with decades going round in circles and the lack of genuine agreements and cooperation and action. eg Greta Thunberg’s verbalized anger and frustration seem equally valid and reasonable.
What’s ‘mad’, dysfunctional, unhelpful are those who are not already outraged and saying so. Of course others have their pov/opinions and personal “communication styles”. People argue. The least of our problems in my view.
Mr. Strough wrote:
1) Why are we growing commodity crops we don’t even need? … more efficient systems that often would not grow that particular crop in the first place! The last thing we need is higher yields of corn and soy, when we already grow too much to begin with!
2) abandoned farms, since most have undergone total ecosystem cascade effect collapse … The idea that simply a hands off approach might work has been proven to fail over and over again … a regenerative farmer actually can manage the recovery to the benefit of both man and wildlife.
Mr. Strough is absolutely correct on these points. We grow the wrong crops, raise the wrong animals for the wrong reasons in the wrong places with the wrong methods for the benefit of deeply corrupt monopolies; the result is soil and animals dead and dying in vast tracts across the planet.
I have often stopped on many, many byways and farms and picked up (with permission) a handful or two of the rich black earth, say in iowa or indiana or illinois orthereabouts, some of the best in the world. Nothing lives in it except the bits of corn or soy roots. All else has been killed by herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer to the extent that the best soil in the world has been reduced to a hydroponic medium.
Less than a tenth of the crop goes to direct human consumption. A third of the corn goes to ethanol, a fifth of the soy oil goes straight to biodiesel. Almost all the rest goes to animal feed, your average steak in the USA spends the last third of its life standing in its own shit in feedlots fed grain that its digestive system cannot handle, disease suppressed by drugs leading to drug resistant strains affecting humans. US 85 from Cheyenne, WY to Greely, CO is bovine hell.
I shan’t go on about the pork or the chicken confined animal operations and the sewage lagoons or the potato farms where you cant go in the fields without charcoal filter masks and all skin covered until a week after they spray. Or about efflux from the poisoned lands into all the waters of the world.
And Mr. Strough is right on his second point, that humans can, and indeed must help in saving themselves. Some of it isn’t so hard perhaps, for example eating less meat would be a huge start, help break the animal concentration camps and the monocropping monopolies feeding them.
Nature by itself, absent human action, as Pollan and others have pointed out, easily countenances a waterway choked by kudzu for a century or two or a millennium, or a Canfield ocean, or CO2 levels of a 1000ppm, with or without human remnant.
But I fear recovery to a more human friendly ecosystem will not come in human lifetime and may never come. Nevertheless, i lean toward William the Silent(?!), “It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere.”
sidd
Everyone’s ‘frustrated’ these days.
New Zealand farmers stage huge protest over environmental rules
extract
The Howl of a Protest was organised by Groundswell NZ, a grassroots organisation made up of farmers, growers, contractors and tradespeople, who say they are frustrated with the interference in private property rights, unworkable climate-change policies and unfair costs.
New Zealand has introduced environmental protections to tackle increasing problems with polluted and unswimmable waterways, catastrophic biodiversity loss, risky agricultural and industrial practices and international commitments to reducing carbon emissions.
Protest organiser Bryce McKenzie told RNZ that farmers accepted they needed to make changes but that a one-size-fits-all approach would not work.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/16/new-zealand-farmers-stage-huge-protest-over-environmental-rules
When I think about where we each individually stand on the issue of global warming and the nature of the response that we should be mounting to address the problem, I am thinking specifically of the bell curve that forms if you survey public opinion on global warming.
68% of opinion in a classic bell curve falls in the two center quatriles and have a standard deviation of plus or minus 1.0 from the median. I think of this group (over 2/3 of the population) as essentially centrist being in the two center quatriles. So, a person at the high end of this bell curve would deviate from the median at a standard deviation of 1.0 and would probably be seen as a pretty strong advocate for action by most of the population. I think it is safe to assume that these folks thing of themselves as pretty strong advocates for action. These folks also probably think their calculation is correct, that they are “right” about our collective situation. Almost all of us think our position is right in this sense, but the degree to which we believe we are right, our confidence in our calculation of risk, would form a different bell curve.
If we charted both, I expect we might find that personal confidence in our calculation declines as we move into higher standard deviation from the median. This would make sense for a number of reasons, social science 101, so to speak. I also think that confidence in individual opinion would peak at about 1.0 standard (plus or minus) deviations and would fall off on either side of the peak. I think this is known as a bimodal distribution in stat-speak.
I don’t know if anyone is interested in that stuff or find any of that helpful in understanding the conflicts that occur between individuals in a forum like this one, but I am a social scientist by training and I have trouble not calculating these issues when I observe a population interacting over time.
The interactions are individualized and the read on things is only generally true. It is untrue in certain interactions and yet it is mostly true over the group over time. Again, social science 101.
as to science of climate, well if you chart it, it’s a doggedly upward-sticky number:
https://assets.show.earth/widget-co2/kc-monthly-0600.png
https://www.co2.earth/
Cheers,
Mike
UIUC is officially kicking off a project to partially re-power its cogeneration plant (electric power plus district heating) with a USNC Micro Modular Reactor (MMR).
https://www.powermag.com/illinois-university-seeking-nrc-license-to-build-nuclear-microreactor/
Richard the Weaver @189
Killian: There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation.
RtW: In the future they might be closely coupled. Tax rates can be variable, say exactly where gas taxes are today, but automatically adjusted each year to consume all efficiency gains as average mpg goes up. Efficiency doubles? So does the price at the pump.
Nigelj: Yes Richard perfectly logical, and the tax take would presumably have to be pushed into something with low mineral resource consumption like teaching or whatever. Although such a tax is going to be a hard sell politically. But I’ve said it myself in the past that society can counter the Jeavons paradox, if it so chooses. There are probably numerous ways. Its just utterly crazy that we would not make things more efficient.
Killian has questioned the value of efficiency gains of technology because of Jeavons paradox. Assuming there is no way around Jeavons paradox that would mean we have to get his 90% reductions in energy use in ten years purely from 90% reductions in personal consumption of things like petrol and electricity as opposed to more efficient automobiles for example. Imagine the chaos and problems that will cause at scale. It could collapse our civilsation worse than the climate problem.
My guess is you could get a maybe a 20% reduction in energy use over ten years from voluntary cuts because things would adjust, people would have time to scale down the size of cars and homes etc, and flying for tourism purposes is clearly more of a want than a need. The system would have time to adjust. Although this is still a very ambitious goal, but this will be lost on the usual suspects.
197 Mike says:
15 Jul 2021 at 9:53 AM
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-008-9534-6
“Here, we explored the potential impact of dietary changes on achieving ambitious climate stabilization levels. By using an integrated assessment model, we found a global food transition to less meat, or even a complete switch to plant-based protein food to have a dramatic effect on land use. Up to 2,700 Mha of pasture and 100 Mha of cropland could be abandoned, resulting in a large carbon uptake from regrowing vegetation. Additionally, methane and nitrous oxide emission would be reduced substantially. A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO2-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case.”
link from Ben McM in discussion at andthentheresphysics
Cheers
Mike
It can be done orders of magnitude more quickly with active restoration. See: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/forced-responses-july-2021/comment-page-4/#comment-792984
I repeat: A forest will take decades to centuries to millennia to cycle through to apex. A food forest takes 5 years to cycle through stages, 5=10 years to be a fully functioning, self-sustaining ecosystem. A regenerative self-regulating garden can be created in a year.
These researchers have no idea how little they know.
I tried an app to reduce my family’s meat consumption – and it worked
“Like many families, we’ve discussed the environmental and animal-welfare impact of the meat we eat and resolved we should do better. I wouldn’t say we are massive meat-eaters – especially since cookbooks by the Guardian’s own Anna Jones and Meera Sodha entered our lives. But a packet of minced beef, a few chicken thighs and some sausages or bacon often make it into our supermarket trolley, because, frankly, they’re things everyone in our family will eat.”
https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/jul/17/i-tried-an-app-to-reduce-my-familys-meat-consumption-and-it-worked?utm_term=7757762a8c5beabe0de15fd898ab0e9e&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUS_email
Nothing to argue about here. If you want to cut your household meat consumption, you are not alone and there are apps that might help you succeed.
Cheers
Mike
196 good points and an inspiring video – a good example of how different ag could be.
Interesting piece of commentary: “People may one day drill for copper as they now drill for oil. And they could even help the environment in the process.”
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/07/07/people-may-one-day-drill-for-copper-as-they-now-drill-for-oil
Hard to find a short summary in the article to copy and paste. Paraphrasing the article the issue is the growing demand for copper for renewable energy. There are vast copper rich brines under volcanoes. Copper ores were originally formed from these brines combining with sulphur. The idea is to drill into the high temperature brines and extarct the brine like drilling for oil. Drlling goes down about 2 kms.
The considerable heat, around 400 degress, can also be tapped for geothermal energy. Either way running out of copper has once again been postponed and claims that renewables are not possible due to resource constraints called into question. Before anyone says anything stupid, of course the resource is finite.
@211:
Fascinating, Nigel. This is up there with the schemes to tap acid mine drainage to recover rare earth elements. Too many hits to select one, here’s the search:
https://html.duckduckgo.com/html?q=acid%20mine%20drainage%20%22rare%20earths%22
There are other unconventional sources of rare earths, including coal ash and byproducts of mining kaolin.
@205 Similar to Herding cats?
“It is untrue in certain interactions and yet it is mostly true over the group over time.”
Also known as, the exceptions prove the rule?
Or, no one is always right but most of the time most people think they are. I know I am! (joking)
Then along came the scientific method with it’s checks and balances. Not always perfect, merely better over time. Especially about atmospheric CO2 et al.
a few questions for EP at 199: do you think it’s possible that we may need to do less with less in the future? Is standard of living essentially a measure of consumption? Do you think it is possible that we could trade reductions in standard of living for increases in quality of life?
I think about these questions when the IPCC talks about dramatic changes in the way we live to address global warming.
At Nigel at 181: you say “I think you just probably misinterpret stuff I say for some reason. I dont know why because I deliberately use simple language. I will try saying it more clearly. I think Americas best shot at the climate problem is rapid deployment of renewables perhaps with money creation.This is better than adding to the deficit, and you will never get a carbon tax past the Republicans. Well you might, but its a long shot given their ideologival position on taxes…”
My own position/opinion is that Congress of the US will pass a carbon tax in the next ten years. Passage will require bipartisan support. As to you confusion about why you might be misinterpreted, review your statement. You start by saying it will never happen, then adjust and say it might happen… That may be simple but it is contradictory and covers a spectrum of outcomes that is wide enough to essentially mean nothing.
At KM at 198, my household is the same anecdote. Our default diet is vegetarian with a bit of vegan dishes and meals mixed in, occasional meat in the diet. We have also found that diet is associated with good general health, reasonable cholesterol, etc. for us.
Cheers
Mike
A couple more details on how the US is likely to finally pass a carbon tax: the bill with that tax will need to partially fund payoff to the fossil fuel companies to help them with the “economic losses of stranded assets” and the carbon tax bill will also likely provide the fossil fuel companies immunity from any liability for the costs of global warming.
It only takes a little imagination and a bit of understanding of history to understand how US democracy works.
I might think that will never happen… well, wait a minute, it might happen… but that’s rather muddy, isn’t it? Nope. I am going to stick my prediction that carbon taxes will pass Congress within 10 years and I think the carbon tax will have one or both of those other elements.
Cheers
Mike
E-P, #200–
A 40% CF would be “an admission against interest?” I don’t really see why, honestly–surely more important metrics would be financial and emissions-related. I’d have thought this was just the sort of “elective load” that E-P has advocated for in the past.
But be that as it may, the math only holds if 100% of the electricity generated goes toward hydrogen/ammonia production. And that, I think, may be an unsafe assumption.
Interestingly, there’s this from another story on the project:
I don’t recall ever hearing of an onshore wind project claiming even 60% CF, and I’ve sure never heard of a solar project going that high. Heck, a lot of Chinese coal plants have lower CF these days. So I suspect that CF is calculated differently–say total system CF allowing for diurnal cycles, or some such.
Mike @205
“If we charted both, I expect we might find that personal confidence in our calculation declines as we move into higher standard deviation from the median. This would make sense for a number of reasons, social science 101, so to speak. ”
Could you elaborate? My observations are the opposite. Namely that the more extreme peoples views are, the more confident they are that they are correct, in the sense that they express great confidence. This is abundantly evident on this very website.
#203, sidd–
Eloquently said, sir.
In UV I liked agree with 106, 107 and 108. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/unforced-variations-july-2021/comment-page-3/#comment-793041
here Sean O’Grady, drives a Skoda Octavia and lives in an unfashionable district of south London, Associate Editor of the Independent reflects on a similar ‘reality’ (perspective/framing) I see; for example a few quotes:
– Get used to devastating and deadly floods, Europe – climate change is here
– As the Queen said the other day, we must ‘change our ways’ to save the planet (civilisation?) – but we don’t seem to want to.
– Our days have a last-chance feel about them, but I can’t say I’m optimistic about saving the earth as we know it.
– What if we can’t hit our climate targets? What if this last chance is actually squandered? What if, in a few years, climate change accelerates and moves towards cataclysmically unpredictable change? What if we fail?
– [ PLUS what if we hit the COP targets in 2030-2050 but they are too little too late? ]
– The record, it has to be said, is not good. Ever since the 1980s, evidence on climate change has been building.
– The targets are ever more stringent, enshrined in treaties, and laid down in law. Yet the doubt remains that we will ever meet them, and what should we do as we consider that possibility?
– The debate is too often framed as something other people or other countries have to do, not “us”.
– … the public happily buys their products and flies on their planes. When it comes to personal sacrifice we don’t seem inclined to do much more than sort out our rubbish for recycling …
– Nor, on electoral experience, do voters seem enthusiastic about collective sacrifice. We don’t tend to support imposing punitive taxes to promote green living such as hefty levies on motoring, air travel, taxes on meat and poultry, ending fast fashion, higher gas and electricity bills, compulsory removal of older cars and gas boilers, rationing foreign holidays, limiting family size, lower speed limits, or slapping VAT on new build houses. We just won’t do it, will we?
– Given these revelations, maybe there should be a few little workshops at Cop26 quietly thinking about
mitigationsADAPTION. It’s pathetic, but it may be the only thing left eg flood defences … more emergency generators and shelters, for example.– Maybe, in reality, Cop26 and the puny efforts we do make will slow climate change a bit, but we’ll still have to “learn to live with climate change”. To adapt a topical expression, it’s not the best way forward, but the most likely one.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/opinion/europe-floods-climate-change-b1885285.html
I think as an example, the article is Worth a read. And seriously thinking about going forward. Because (I think) it’s the current predominant habitual thinking and rhetoric that needs to change before right action can follow.
Maybe, facing up to the Realities of Adapting to the most likely impacts of climate change; and knowing how extreme the adaptions required will be, might finally trigger the Realistic Thinking, tougher Laws, and Mitigation Actions based upon the BEST ADVICE of SCIENTIFIC STUDIES that are actually fit for purpose?
Naturally I doubt anything like this will happen. Bad habits die hard.
Climate activists including Extinction Rebellion to receive £500,000 from US philanthropists
Three wealthy donors – Trevor Neilson, Rory Kennedy and Aileen Getty – have launched the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF) to help support school strikes and activism groups like Extinction Rebellion.
“This might be the single best chance we have to stop the greatest emergency we have ever faced,” Mr Neilson told The Guardian. He said he hoped the fund will be increased “a hundred times” in the coming months as investors pledge to ask wealthy friends to contribute.
On its website the CEF says it wants to support activists committing their lives to addressing the climate emergency.
“We believe that only a peaceful planet-wide mobilisation on the scale of World War II will give us a chance to avoid the worst-case scenarios and restore a safe climate,” the website reads.
“These individuals and groups need our support as they carry out legal, nonviolent activities to demand that our leaders take action to ban ecologically destructive practices and save as much life as possible.”
The programme aims to force leaders to declare a climate emergency and create suitable policy solutions.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/extinction-rebellion-climate-activists-us-donation-money-a9002466.html
@201 et al; regenerative agriculture, study refs., and crop yields etc
1)
Crop yields are not everything, nor the most critical aspect to agriculture. As a yardstick they are useful sure, but the tail should not be wagging the dog, surely? The issues are much larger, more complex, and broader than that.
Economics, trade rules, politics, historical cultures, and financing is not a part of the peer reviewed scientific endeavors that impact of global agriculture norms and alternatives nor drivers of what is. iow, science papers are not everything about everything either.
The focus on yields in various comments here is unjustified and not helpful for greater understanding of reality, imv.
REF/s:
Can regenerative agriculture replace conventional farming? 25 August 2020
Do restorative methods reduce yields?
In the latter half of the 20th century, global crop yields increased on an unprecedented scale. The world’s average cereal yield, for example, has increased by 175 per cent since 1961 (9). In 1950, one hectare of apple trees in the Netherlands yielded six tonnes of apples, yet by 2015 that yield was 44 tonnes (10). However, those gains have mainly been achieved using fossil-fuel-based inputs that are not sustainable in the long term (11), and via methods that can lead to soil degradation and erosion (12). Since the 1990s some crop yields have plateaued (13, 14), and while this is largely as a consequence of policy changes, climate change has also been found to be a contributing factor (15, 16).
and
Research shows that while regenerative methods, which minimise or avoid tilling and chemical inputs entirely, can lower yields, this varies greatly depending on the crop and local conditions (17). In some cases regenerative and organic methods can lead to similar yields, and even yield increases (18).
“The Rodale Institute has been running side-by-side field studies for the last 30 years, comparing organic and conventional agriculture. Results show that after a 1 to 2 year transition period, when yields tend to decline, there is no difference between conventional and regenerative farming in terms of yields. In stressful conditions, particularly during droughts, the regenerative fields perform better because they are more resilient – the soil can absorb more water because it contains more biomass. And certainly farmers we work with say the yields are the same, while their input costs go down.” Philip Fernandez, Agriculture Project Manager at EIT Food
In 2018, US researchers showed that on farms in the Northern Plains of the USA, regenerative fields had 29% lower grain production but 78% higher profits over conventional corn production systems (19). The picture can be complex, and there are differences when it comes to input costs (20):
see https://www.eitfood.eu/blog/post/can-regenerative-agriculture-replace-conventional-farming – covers a lot of ground with scientific study refs and more…
2)
Labels and definitions matter. Confusing them especially conflating them as if they are the same thing creates massive problems in understanding and communication. It’s also quite frustrating for genuine people ‘following along’ when terms are incorrectly interchanged willy nilly.
Organic farming is not regenerative agriculture, despite some similarities.
In this field of ‘agriculture’ there’s four key labels in popular use today ( I think) – permaculture, organic farming, regenerative agriculture and conventional agriculture. Their objectives/goals and methodologies are very different.
some Refs: with Refs for anyone interested to know more objectively.
What are the Differences Between Permaculture, Organic Farming and Regenerative Agriculture? June 7, 2021
https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2021/06/differences-between-permaculture-organic-farming-and-regenerative-agriculture/
What Is the Difference Between Organic and Regenerative Agriculture?
Regenerative agriculture empowers farmers and ranchers to use management principles that improve the overall health of the land.
The benefits of regenerative ranching include:
– Increased soil organic matter and biodiversity.
– Healthier and more productive soil that is drought- and flood-resilient.
– Decreased use of chemical inputs and subsequent pollution.
– Cleaner air and water.
– Enhanced wildlife habitat.
– Carbon captured in the soil to combat climate variability.
With regenerative agriculture, producers are not just sustaining the current land resource so that it can continue to be used in the future. They are actually improving what is there, leaving it better for the next generation. [ Crop Yeilds is not mentioned as a key benefit/objective.]
“Organic” is a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act. By 2002, the year the standards were implemented, the U.S. Department of Agriculture had defined “organic” as “a production system … that respond(s) to site-specific conditions by integrating cultural, biological, and mechanical processes that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biological diversity.”
https://www.noble.org/regenerative-agriculture/organic-vs-regenerative-agriculture/
Can regenerative agriculture replace conventional farming? 25 August 2020
https://www.eitfood.eu/blog/post/can-regenerative-agriculture-replace-conventional-farming
Regenerative agriculture is getting more mainstream. But how scalable is it? May 28, 2019
https://agfundernews.com/regenerative-agriculture-is-getting-more-mainstream-but-how-scalable-is-it.html
July 02, 2019 What is Regenerative Agriculture?
In addition to a long list of incredible benefits for farmers and their crops, regenerative agriculture practices help us fight the climate crisis by pulling carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the ground.
The agriculture sector is one of the biggest emitters of CO2, the greenhouse gas (GHG) most responsible for the changes we are seeing in our climate today. Together with forestry and other land use, agriculture is responsible for just under 25 percent of all human-created GHG emissions.
But it also has a vital role to play in helping us end this crisis, and create a safe, sustainable future without carbon pollution.
https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/what-regenerative-agriculture
The climate changes, but these facts don’t. Download our free Soil Health and the Climate Crisis e-book now.
https://www.climaterealityproject.org/content/right-under-your-feet-soil-health-and-climate-crisis
3)
Finding peer-reviewed and other scientific studies about regenerative agriculture is not difficult. All it takes is a little effort and a lot of time.
Noting that just because a paper has been published does not by default make it’s contents either true for all time, accurate, reliable, useful, fit for purpose nor authoritative. All Papers are not created equal. Other forms of research, DIRECT EXPERIENCE, and recorded knowledge are useful and valuable – it depends.
Google Scholar Authors label:regenerative_agriculture
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&hl=en&mauthors=label:regenerative_agriculture
Example: The potential for regenerative agriculture in the developing world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2009 [ and no doubt superseded multiple times by now.]
Increased food production and greater income for farm families are primary goals of agricultural development in the Third World. Most strategies to achieve these goals are unrealistic in assuming that limited resource farmers can move out of basic food production in multiple cropping systems to high-technology monocropping for export.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-journal-of-alternative-agriculture/article/abs/potential-for-regenerative-agriculture-in-the-developing-world/FC79BE98FAE56E3857FBD8EA5FD6359F
By Title: regenerative_agriculture since 2017
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2017&q=regenerative_agriculture&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
Add in Crop Yields? though I can’t understand why this aspect is more important than all other aspects in a HOLISTIC knowledge sense.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&as_ylo=2017&q=regenerative_agriculture+crop_yeilds&nfpr=1
4)
Personally, fwiw, I don’t have any problems understanding what Scott and Killian are saying, have said in the past about soils, CO2 sequestration, and alternative agriculture/farming, and regenerative agriculture in particular. They have been consistent and clear, afaict.
I do not think that Scott or Killian need to be a replacement for google scholar. I do not think they have to prove beyond all doubt using peer reviewed studies every comment and info shared are 100% right nor represent a Consensus Agreement by scientific experts in the agriculture field. (disagreements abound – quality of research varies – bias exists – all very normal)
People share their opinions and viewpoints and ideas about all kinds of things here on FR without always deferring to xyz scientific studies all the time.
Asking for refs is a reasonable thing to ask for though – especially about something new or different. But sometimes this can go way over the top. The info and refs are out there for everyone to look into and form their own opinions/beliefs. I haven’t noticed Scott nor Killian presenting info that’s way outside the Norm here.
Presenting Refs about yields in Organic Farming is not relevant to the pros and cons of Regenerative Agriculture. It can only muddy the waters and deteriorate discussions further. Two totally different fields, in my view, best not conflated.
It’s a complex and relatively new field of research and activity. There wasn’t much peer reviewed papers about climate change 30-40 years ago to rely upon either. And still today the best in the field have varying opinions about what the best way forward is; and argue about what is and the most reliable “facts” are.
One example of a ref paper found via the google scholar links I provided above:
The Imperative for Regenerative Agriculture by Christopher J. Rhodes
First Published March 1, 2017 Research Article
Using 130 References inside the article.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165
Accessible PDF doc in full
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165
To whet the appetite :
Abstract
A review is made of the current state of agriculture, emphasising issues of soil erosion and dependence on fossil fuels, in regard to achieving food security for a relentlessly enlarging global population. Soil has been described as “the fragile, living skin of the Earth”, and yet both its aliveness and fragility have all too often been ignored in the expansion of agriculture across the face of the globe.
Since it is a pivotal component in a global nexus of soil-water-air-energy, how we treat the soil can impact massively on climate change – with either beneficial or detrimental consequences, depending on whether the soil is preserved or degraded. Regenerative agriculture has at its core the intention to improve the health of soil or to restore highly degraded soil, which symbiotically enhances the quality of water, vegetation and land-productivity. By using methods of regenerative agriculture, it is possible not only to increase the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) in existing soils, but to build new soil.
This has the effect of drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, while simultaneously improving soil structure and soil health, soil fertility and crop yields, water retention and aquifer recharge – thus ameliorating both flooding and drought, and also the erosion of further soil, since runoff is reduced.
Since food production on a more local scale is found to preserve the soil and its quality, urban food production should be seen as a significant potential contributor to regenerative agriculture in the future, so long as the methods employed are themselves ‘regenerative’. If localisation is to become a dominant strategy for dealing with a vastly reduced use of fossil fuels, and preserving soil quality – with increased food production in towns and cities – it will be necessary to incorporate integrated (‘systems’) design approaches such as permaculture and the circular economy (which minimise and repurpose ‘waste’) within the existing urban infrastructure.
[ Note, I have heard Killian presenting those very ideas here in the past on multiple occasions. Maybe he’s actually correct on this matter? ]
In addition to growing food in urban space, such actions as draught-proofing and thermally insulating existing building stock, and living/working on a more local scale, would serve well to cut our overall energy consumption. In order to curb our use of fossil fuels, methods for reducing overall energy use must be considered at least equally important to expanding low-carbon energy production.
In synopsis, it is clear that only by moving from the current linear, ‘take, make, dispose (waste-creation)’ model for resource-consumption, to the systemic, circular alternative of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle, regenerate’, are we likely to meet demands for future generations.
Keywords
regenerative agriculture, sustainable agriculture, permaculture, holistic management, soil erosion, carbon sequestration, soil organic carbon, soil organic matter, SOM, SOC, green revolution, seed saving, 4 per 1000, peak oil, peak phosphorus, climate change, circular economy, regenerative cities
a few quotes ???
“It has been pointed out that while agriculture needs to be made sustainable, and the term ‘sustainable agriculture’ might be considered an oxymoron3,4, since agriculture is by its very nature unsustainable, with much of modern food production being reliant on inputs of finite fossil fuel energy, and that it renders the soil vulnerable to erosion, with the progressive and global loss of productive land4.” (not to mention the original land clearing of established forests or historical vegetation, and in irrigation practice highly susceptible to destructive soil and water salinity.)
Agriculture may be broadly defined as the cultivation and breeding of animals and crops (including fungi) in order to provide for and improve the human condition. Thus are delivered, food, fibre and biofuels, along with plants for medicinal purposes.
In the modern age, the practice of monoculture farming on a very large scale is the basis of what is often termed ‘industrial agriculture’, which has brought its own problems and challenges, and is regarded as being unsustainable over the longer term3.”
(Therefore, what use and value to human benefit are higher crop yields when the very practice itself is already known to be Unsustainable long term?)
3. The Green Revolution (… and YIELDS?)
The origins of the Green Revolution19 are usually attributed to Norman Borlaug, an American agricultural scientist who, in the 1940s, began conducting research in Mexico, where he developed new disease-resistant, high-yield varieties of wheat (Figure 2). These are plants bred specifically to respond to fertilisers, and produce a greater amount of grain per hectare of land that is planted.
[…] It should be noted, however, that it is only through the input of large quantities of artificial fertilisers, pesticides and adequate irrigation, that these high yielding plants can flourish. […] Overall, this led to a doubling in the crop productivity.
3.1 Consequences of the Green Revolution
Undoubtedly, the use of Green Revolution technologies has vastly increased the amount of food produced across the world, and for example, India and China have not experienced famine since they adopted IR8 rice and related crops. The practices of agriculture have been changed, however, by the dependence of these high-yield crops on inputs of synthetic fertilisers, which cannot grow without their application.
Prior to the Green Revolution, much of agriculture was largely confined to areas where the rainfall was appreciable, but through large-scale irrigation systems, more land can be used for crop production, further raising the total amount of food available.
As a downside, only a few high-yield varieties, e.g. of rice, are now grown, whereas prior to the Green Revolution, some 30,000 types of rice were grown in India. Such monoculture systems are less resistant to disease and to pests – in the absence of competitive biodiversity – which has necessitated an increased use of pesticides.
9. Use of urban space for food production
Recent research led by a group at Sheffield University has identified the poor quality of soils on UK farms and made the prediction that there will be a national agricultural crisis at some point during this century.
On it goes to 14. Conclusions page 122
According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)127, 30% of the world’s cropland has been abandoned over the past 40 years due to degradation and desertification, while 52% of the land used for agriculture is moderately to severely affected by soil degradation.
44% of the world’s food production systems and 50% of its livestock are considered to be vulnerable to climate change, while 12 million hectares of crop land are lost per year (23 hectares per minute), where 20 million tonnes of grain might have been grown.
All of this must be considered against an estimated requirement to produce 60% more food by 2050, to feed a population that is predicted to increase from around 7 billion now, to 9.5 billion. Thus, we are destroying the productivity of the same soil from which we demand a relentless increase in production.
[ That sounds insane and irrational and unscientific, doesn’t it? ]
page 123
Humankind appears to be confronted by a host of different problems, which
have been described as “the world’s woes”38, among which we may list, carbon emissions/climate change, soil erosion, water shortages, resource-depletion, but also resource-waste, including ‘food waste’.
In reality, however, these are not individual problems, but symptoms of a single problem, i.e. over-consumption and injudicious use of limited resources.
— There is more in that section, but with a few facts and common sense at hand, it all seems quite self-evident by now, doesn’t it?
Please note, I am not an expert in this field, I defer to those who are.
and finally one last extract from end of conclusions – The Imperative for Regenerative Agriculture Christopher J. Rhodes with some repeated text.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.3184/003685017X14876775256165
quoting:-
Thus, urban food production should be seen as a significant potential contributor to regenerative agriculture in the future, so long as
the methods employed are themselves ‘regenerative’.
Permaculture is a regenerative, design system based on ‘nature as teacher’, which could help optimise the use of resources in town and city settings, while minimising and repurposing ‘waste’.
Thus, food might be produced using reduced inputs of fuels, water and fertilisers, and without pesticides and herbicides, while simultaneously building SOC. Such an approach taken by billions of individuals on the local scale, could prove of great significance in ensuring future food security and community resilience.
In addition, more of food that is grown locally, tends to be actually eaten, in contrast with an annual 1.3 billion tonnes of food, produced for human consumption, that is lost or wasted globally, which amounts to about one third of the total130.
In overview, in order to achieve a viable future will require integrated ‘systems’ thinking, rather than addressing isolated components/problems, e.g. ‘climate change’, ‘peak oil’, ‘soil erosion’ etc., because these are all interconnected, and it is the integrated issue of how we use our resources that must be addressed.
Since 54% of the global population lives in towns and cities (74% in the more developed and 44% in the less developed countries), it is probably unrealistic to believe that every urban-dweller can escape to the countryside, and have their own patch of land to grow food on, since there is not enough rural space available, and the majority of us are not farmers, and lack the necessary skills and cultural background to ‘go back to the land’.
Furthermore, while there are impressive energy-efficient designs for buildings, e.g. passivhaus, it is not a practical proposition to simply raze our existing urban buildings to the ground and build-up again from scratch.
Hence, if localisation is to become a dominant strategy for dealing with a vastly reduced use of fossil fuels, and to preserve soil quality – with increased food production in towns and cities – it will be necessary
to incorporate integrated (‘systems’) design approaches such as permaculture and the circular economy (which minimise and repurpose ‘waste’) within the existing urban infrastructure.
In addition to growing food in urban space, such actions as draught-proofing and thermally insulating existing building stock, and living/working on a more local scale, would serve well to cut our overall energy consumption.
In order to curb our use of the fossil fuels, methods for reducing overall energy use must be considered at least equally important to expanding low-carbon energy production. [end quote]
I think I have heard these kinds of suggestions often, here, before.
And yet another science paper/article I have seen emphasizing the essential need of reducing energy consumption overall (thus recognising that switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy will not be enough
Along with reducing waste and general consumption where-ever possible. Seems to be a pattern.
An eye opener: “The number of lives that clean energy could save, by U.S. state”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/07/the-number-of-lives-that-clean-energy-could-save-by-u-s-state/
“A recent study found that air pollution from fossil fuels kills 8 million people per year, worldwide. In the U.S. alone, a 2019 study estimated that fossil fuel use causes over 50,000 deaths and $445 billion in economic damage annually. (See also: Burning fossil fuels heats the climate. It also harms public health)”
“The economic and health burdens of air pollution are borne by individuals, families, and society, not by energy companies. The damage is socially and racially unjust, levying the heaviest toll on those least responsible for causing the problem. The fossil fuel industry’s ability to freely pollute and cause widespread degradation to public health is an example of a generous subsidy, because society bears the costs for oil, gas, and coal’s business model.”
IMHO This is another great reason to change our energy system in addition to the climate issue which is such a threat to our individual and collective well being. My observation is 30 years of considerable climate scaremongering in the media (and I’ve done my fair share of this) have clearly NOT motivated sufficient climate change mitigation efforts. While there is some evidence emissions might have peaked they most certainly havent fallen globally. But if we ALSO communicate the wider benefits of clean zero carbon energy, this might be enough to tip things more in favour of that energy.
A new clean zero carbon energy grid in 20 – 30 years is “system change”. Its changing the power generation system that is fundamental to the wider economy. Is this incremental or revolutionary, fast or slow, centrist or extreme? Who knows and nobody will agree anyway. Such words are pointless and have unhelpful political and emotive overtones. But I believe it is still an achievable, appropriate WORKABLE goal although obviously very challenging.
at Nigel at 217: I don’t think a forum like this one graphs out like the general population. The group of individuals that takes part in discussion self-selects and is far from the kind of large, randomly selected group that would produce a bell curve that would be similar to the general population. And, with stats, there are always outliers.
In general, I think most of us are immersed in communication and media systems that provide feedback that tends to move our opinions back toward the median. At the middle/median I think there are a lot of people who haven’t given much thought to a survey topic, so I think their confidence level is not very high and maybe the middle 20% of that confidence bell curve could be swayed rather easily with a bit of scientific or sciency argument. That would produce the dip in the middle of a bimodal distribution.
At 1.0 standard deviation, plus or minus, you have folks who have given a topic a bit of attention and they know there are off the median in a significant way. I think these spots would produce confidence spikes, the two peaks in the bimodal distribution.
Out beyond 2.0 standard deviations, I think most opinion holders are inundated with media and feedback that tells them that their opinions/positions are wrong and I think the confidence level would fall off accordingly.
I could be wrong about all that. Not a particularly important matter, just a little observation and opinion about the general population, opinions on global warming and confidence levels in personal opinions.
Cheers
Mike
@214:
On the current course of the insanity of Western civilization, it’s not a question of “possible”; it’s going to happen. The collapse of the western Roman empire will have nothing on what’s in store for us, and “less” is guaranteed given the level of incompetence everywhere.
The record of the last several centuries shows that humans will NEVER opt for less consumption if they can avoid it. The only way to have more without climate disaster is with carbon-free energy, and the only way to have THAT at scale is with nuclear.
Look at your own existence. What are YOU willing to give up, and how would it improve your QOL?
I’m MORE than willing to give up carbon emissions, but that’s because I’m WEIRDO (Westernized, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic and Outbred) and I know and use alternatives to more carbon-intensive bits of lifestyle. I’d be happy to trade one source of heat for a less carbon-intensive one, but that’s only feasible for me because I have the wealth to do so. I’m so selfless that I’d happily invest in clean generation that lasts for a century even though I have next to zero likelihood of enjoying it for even the next 20 years. But I’m the exception; most of humanity will burn coal in un-scrubbed plants if it means they have electricity.
At Nigel at 224: is there evidence that emissions have peaked?
Well, Yale360 says yes.
Soaring Global CO2 Emissions May Have Peaked, Data Show
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/soaring_global_co2_emissions_may_have_peaked_data_show
Looks like this 2015 article believes emissions may have peaked in 2014.
I read these kind of stories from time to time. I am not sure they stand up to scrutiny. But if you cite them and say emissions may have peaked, you would not be clearly incorrect.
I think covid produced some emission reduction, but I think we might already be seeing a rebound in emissions since the covid vaccines arrived. I think we need a 5 to 10 year period of emission decline to announce that a peak has arrived and we have started to see real emission reductions. I don’t see anything like that yet.
If we start at 2015 with this Yale360 story and look at emissions since that article announced the peak, then I think we see that the article in mistaken. Emissions do not appear to have peaked in 2014 as Yale reported in 2015.
I looked at this after I got stuck on this sentence from Nigel: “While there is some evidence emissions might have peaked they most certainly havent fallen globally.”
If you have a moment, Nigel, provide a link to the evidence you have noticed that indicates global emissions might have peaked. I would like to stick some particulars on that so I have a clue what evidence you have spotted on the emission peak. I agree with you on the second part, I think emissions haven’t fallen globally yet. I would really love to live long enough to see that happen.
Cheers
Mike
@216:
It effectively admits that “renewables” are unfit to provide the always-on power required to sustain essentials like water, sewage and medical systems.
The financials are driven by subsidies and mandates, and nothing can get to zero emissions if it has to rely on fossil backup.
Oh, I’m fine with demand-side management, but the source has to be dispatchable rather than operating at the whims of the weather and day/night cycles.
The article makes no mention of providing power to the grid.
@220:
I have been calling for a Manhattan project-scale effort for quite a few years now. It’s about time that the people who finance activists got serious about it, though a mere £500,000 doesn’t even approach the scale of “serious”. Put together £5,000,000,000 and you’re talkin’.
Mike @ 227 I was basing my comment that CO2 emissions “might” have already peaked on commentary like this (not unlike your yale reference):
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/peak-co2-emissions-2019
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/carbon-emissions-may-have-peaked-2019-scientists-aren-t-celebrating-n1231166
https://grist.org/climate/was-2020-the-year-we-reached-peak-carbon-emissions/
I’m not sure how much scrutiny they would stand either hence the choice of the word “might”. Although I would be fairly confident that the rate of increase has slowed recently given reducing use of coal and deployment of renewables. Although that leaves a very long way to go.
@229:
“I have been calling for a Manhattan project-scale effort for quite a few years now. … Put together £5,000,000,000 and you’re talkin’.”
5 billion pounds (~7 billion USD)? That’s not going to get you much (and it’s only about a third of the cost of the Manhattan Project in current USD).
The nearest wind farm to where I live in Australia (Capital Wind Farm) has a nominal capacity of ~100 MW and an annual output of ~370 GWh. It cost 0.37 billion AUD (~0.27 billion USD). It supplies 0.14% of Australia’s 265200 GWh/year electricity production.
The Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, a battery with 193 MWh capacity, cost ~0.16 billion AUD (~0.12 billion USD).
At that rate, 7 billion USD isn’t going to impact much on even Australia’s renewables.
For the US, I suspect you’d probably need at least 3 more zeros on the end of that number. And that’s way bigger than the Manhattan Project.
Reality Check @221, I agree about a lot of that, but yields and productivity are really important. We have billions of people DEPENDENT on the high yields of industrial agriculture, and a system with lower yields like regenerative agriculture or organic agriculture could cause obvious problems potentially food shortages, high food costs, and malnutrition. Especially as climate change will tend to ALSO push down yields and we have a growing population wanting food from the same finite land area!
However as you say industrial agriculture is harsh on soils. Its also not sustainable in the long term in the sense it may get prohibitively expensive to manufacture enough nitrates and find enough phosphates etcetera and sustaining high levels of mechanisation indefinitely may not be possible.
There are potential solutions to mitigate the yields issue with regenerative agriculture like 1) phasing in regenerative agriculture slowly so things all find ways of adjusting and time to adjust (this seems likely to happen anyway because new systems take time to scale up) 2) keeping some limited use of industrial fertilisers or other inputs or 3) using regenerative agriculture to bring abandoned land back to life as mentioned by SS (although I would like to see some hard evidence on how feasible this is and what areas.). This would help counter lower yields. 4) improved plant breeding, or other enhancements maybe using genetic engineering.
FWIW I sometimes buy organic produce and I’m all in favour of adopting regenerative agriculture (I’ve said this before) but I think its foolish to pretend there are no downsides (not that you are doing this). Regarding peer reviewed studies With such a dramatic systems change and people making HUGE claims about what regenerative agriculture can do, I think its important that such claims are backed up with published science.
This is an above average quality tv news report via the BBC recently. 7mins
Ros Atkins explains the link between climate change and recent heat waves in the US and Canada.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-57868135
One comment by Ros I liked in particular was: “Deciding to act, isn’t the same as taking the right action.” @5:05 mins
and this BBC News webpage summary is ok too
US heatwave: Could US and Canada see the worst wildfires yet?
By Reality Check team – BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/57770728
@229, a minor point perhaps, but a planet-wide mobilisation on the scale of World War II is orders of magnitude greater than the Manhattan project-scale effort. It’s telling however that both were driven at a senior Government level by decree and not by popular opinion or a vote on every aspect of what action to take or when.
The things I find most interesting about Regenerative Agriculture:
– It’s been studied extensively for years, there are hundreds of science papers and research projects been done about it.
– If it’s a genuine practical long term solution it’s little known about.
– It gets little to no mainstream press and is ignored by politicians and political parties… and gains little positive attention and focus by climate scientists, activists, and academic groups, or the IPCC processes.
– Obtains little attention by Govts and receives minute levels of Govt funding (if any in most nations.)
– It’s another issue that is polarized with biased, at times ideological industry based self-interest groups pushing their own barrows and generating distracting arguments about it versus co-operative endeavors.
– Misinformation and disinformation is the norm in the public domain.
– Reminds me of 30 years ago when PV solar was being presented as a potential global warming solution option.
– Even if regenerative agriculture should or could replace industrial agriculture “system” globally for the better, the sheer scale of such an endeavor likely places it decades into the future before having any impact at all.
– Few people know anything about it, and even less are implementing it’s practices. They likely need better PR and some high end political lobbyists?
– Proves again that Systemic / Cultural Change is hard and meets with entrenched resistance to new ideas.
some promoters are
https://regenerativeagriculturefoundation.org/
https://regenfarmers.com.au/
http://regenag.com/web/
https://regenerationinternational.org/our-network/
https://www.regenagalliance.org/
July 2nd 2021 Greta Thunberg addressed the #AustrianWorldSummit along with Angela Merkel, António Guterres, Alok Sharma and others.
“Let’s be clear — what you are doing is not about climate action or responding to an emergency. It never was. This is communication tactics disguised as politics.”
watch her cutting, truth telling, fact-filled 7 minute address to the powers that be here
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1411017496212168706https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1411017496212168706
ooops sorry .. corrected url
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1411017496212168706
The assertion is: “There are no non-radical futures.”
Is that true? The idea, the wording, possibly arose from back in 2016 when Naomi Klein said in an interview: “There are no non-radical options left before us.”
The famed author of “This Changes Everything” explains why markets cannot be relied on to solve global warming. This changes everything — how?
Naomi Klein:
“So the ‘this’ in This Changes Everything is climate change. And the argument that I make in the book is that we find ourselves in this moment where there are no non-radical options left before us. Change or be changed, right? And what we mean by that is that climate change, if we don’t change course, if we don’t change our political and economic system, is going to change everything about our physical world.
“And that is what climate scientists are telling us when they say business as usual leads to three to four degrees Celsius of warming. That’s the road we are on. We can get off that road, but we’re now so far along it, we’ve put off the crucial policies for so long, that now we can’t do it gradually. We have to swerve, right? And swerving requires such a radical departure from the kind of political and economic system we have right now that we pretty much have to change everything.
My Reality:
After a couple of decades following climate change issues as an interested citizen I walked away and stopped paying any attention. It was all too depressing. I’ve taken time out from that sabbatical to have another short term peek to see where things are at today. Has anything changed much if at all? Most of the same players are still here, saying the same kinds of things they did in the past. Not much change here.
Honestly, I can’t see how anything has improved or positively changed since Naomi said that 5 years ago. Is Greta saying what she’s saying an improvement, or more wasted breath? What do you think?
Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
Vol. 46:- (Volume publication date October 2021)
Review in Advance first posted online on June 29, 2021.
Isak Stoddard, Kevin Anderson et al
Abstract
Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990.
Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses—covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries — draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve.
However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control.
Synthesizing the various impediments to mitigation reveals how delivering on the commitments enshrined in the Paris Agreement now requires an urgent and unprecedented transformation away from today’s carbon- and energy-intensive development paradigm.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
Prof. Kevin Anderson
Total emissions per decade is increasing (see attached) so could reasonably be described as accelerating? And given it’s total emissions that really matter (rather than percentages) I think we always need to come back to tonnes CO2. Reinterpreted in absolute numbers, which the climate responds to (rather than percentages).
2001-2010: 295 GtCO2 in 10yrs
i.e. 11-20yrs after 1st IPCC report
School report card: D-
2011-2019: 318 GtCO2 in 9yrs
i.e. 21-29yrs after 1st IPCC report
School report card: F
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1414549865825177603
Kevin Anderson
@KevinClimate Jul 9
As COP approaches, policy makers will iron their “costumes”, senior academics practice their sycophancy, business leaders tailor their speeches, advisors adjust their CO2 accounting, compliant journalists softly interview ‘great &goods’, but “nature & physics will not fall for it”.
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1413467936837210113
No, it appears as if nothing much has changed.
Engineer-Poet @226
“Look at your own existence. What are YOU (Reality check) willing to give up, and how would it improve your QOL?”
Good question. While we dont have to be greedy, the idea of deliberately going without things we take for granted these days strikes me as a form of self punishing stupidity.
Addendum. While we dont have to be greedy, the idea of deliberately going without things we take for granted these days strikes me as a form of self punishing stupidity. I’m talking about household items. I have reduced how much I fly to help with the climate problem because theres just no other solution like electric airplanes as yet.
226 Engineer-Poet says:
19 Jul 2021 at 2:20 PM
@214:
do you think it’s possible that we may need to do less with less in the future?
On the current course of the insanity of Western civilization, it’s not a question of “possible”; it’s going to happen. The collapse of the western Roman empire will have nothing on what’s in store for us, and “less” is guaranteed given the level of incompetence everywhere.
If find the question naive, like asking do I expect the sun to exist tomorrow.
Is standard of living essentially a measure of consumption?
As measured in Economics, yes. As measured by life satisfaction, not always. As measured by regenerative societies and their very high life satisfaction levels, not at all.
The record of the last several centuries shows that humans will NEVER opt for less consumption if they can avoid it.
I find this extremely disrespectful to the humans who do, still, live sustainably. I find it naive to think that if we informed people of the true risks and a legitimate way forward that they would not choose that.
The only reason we are not doing that now is because of liars and/or charlatans and/or fools and/or misguided and/or deluded and/or ideologically-drvien and/or greedy and/or selfish and/or misinformed people.
If your argument is that the above is the problem, then we are in agreement. When the vast majority of people on this board, most of whom should be allies, but choose to attack that which they disagree with – even from allies – it suggests you are right. But WHY is important, and that why is far too often intentional or in some form ignorant or delusional.
The only way to have more without climate disaster is with carbon-free energy, and the only way to have THAT at scale is with nuclear.
There is no way to have more. There are only ways for a global 1% or less to have more – just as it is today. This is simple logic, particularly if taken with a “7 generations” type of view. Frankly, anything less than “indefinitely less an act of god-type event,” e.g. Chicxulub.
Rather, there is only one way to have a global “ecotechnic” society, and that is to mine the solar system, which is generations away. That is one of the few uses for nuclear that is acceptable – space travel and powering intra-solar system mining operations. We should not be using nuclear as a climate solution because it simply cannot be built out in time. In fact, nothing can. Simplification is the only *safe* choice. Rather, is the only choice that is safe if we are not already too late, and evidence is piling up that we are.
Do you think it is possible that we could trade reductions in standard of living for increases in quality of life?
Again, naive. Is there a choice? What point is there in asking a question that has only one answer? A small tweak makes it more sensical to ask:
“What do you think it is the likelihood that we will trade reductions in standard of living for increases in quality of life?”
If we continue to leave the vast majority uninformed of the reality, zero. If people who are – relatively – “woke” on the issue continue to tear each other apart, zero. If the Ivory Tower continues to minimize and belittle the Common People’s knowledge, zero.
222 Reality Check
This quote should put to bed any further talk of regenerative systems being in any way inferior to chem ag or in any way needing support from chem ag. Chem ag *created* those decimated soils and only regenerative ag will bring them back, and at those percentages, that alone makes up the imaginary shortfall one here keeps falsely posting about.
@232 that’s all good, I understand. I tried to clarify my general thoughts in @233, emphasizing I am no expert nor well versed in the field. Others know far more than I and the hoi polloi (average Joe.)
I do think its important that claims about what regenerative agriculture can do, and claims about what it cannot do, are both backed up by credible research and analysis reporting.
Where possible published science studies too (in a perfect world) which may not always be possible or practical. There are many good published studies/articles already in those google scholar refs I provided for people to peruse, if curious.
Given farming is somewhat different than say long term climate science etc. I suspect the proof of the pudding would be in the eating. There’s a long culture of down to earth good common sense to be had in the farming agricultural communities.
For good reasons I’ll remain skeptical of analysis and reports out of political ‘think tanks’ even those with ‘qualified scientists’ on staff. I cant help but be equally skeptical of reports and science papers put out by industrial agriculture proponents too. I suspect they’re equivalent to self-serving tobacco, many state actors and fossil fuel interests. Gosh even his highness Moncton managed to a get a ‘science paper’ published.
I suspect if anything can come of regenerative agriculture that it will arise at a grass roots level with increasing good news stories and word of mouth. Eventually good results can’t be ignored forever.
The odds are already stacked against a major systemic shift to regen ag with across the board support from Govt and Industry down. Which is a massive shame if it’s potential is as good as many already say it is and can become long term.
It’s not for me to say one way or the other. I’m not qualified to judge.
@241, yes, I thought they were excellent points that science paper presented. At least they clarified the extent of the problem at hand and what had caused it.
@238, @240 and @226 … I caught a comment by Kevin Anderson suggesting that if the top 10% of income earners, the very well off, reduced their consumption to that of the Average European, then GHG emissions would drop by a staggering 30%, basically overnight. https://twitter.com/steviedubyu/status/1172205925303762944
“#science is necessary but insufficient” to respond to the #climate issue.
https://twitter.com/Fisher_DanaR/status/1415250482860335105
“But as yet we still celebrate excess rather than sufficiency.
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1414519717709090819
So I’m all for recognizing that the problems and the solutions are pretty much the same issues (at least philosophically). Less Consumption, more Simplification, and making ethical decisions that are positively Life Enhancing 7 Generations Ahead, seems clear enough.
To be sustainable, or not to be sustainable, is the question.
NZ would be blessed (and lucky as) to have the Maori take responsibility for its water ways, along with researching the potential of adopting Regenerative Agriculture nation wide to help clean up the 200 year old mess. Then teaching the world how to do the same would be an honorable thing to do.
And very intelligent. So it probably will not happen.
E-P, #228–
Nonsense. The CF of an individual project–even one as massive as the proposed Western Australia Renewable Energy Hub–says very about the ability of a RE system to provide ‘always on’ power at a given level, for multiple reasons. Ones E-P should be able to think through on his own, but which we’ve already litigated numerous times on RC already.
The WARE Hub story says nothing of subsidies for the hydrogen/ammonia which is evidently to be the primary product, and if E-P is correct in assuming that no sales of electricity into the grid will be made, then any structural financial supports for the latter are irrelevant.
E-P is the one who brings up “zero emissions,” not me. I’ll merely say that his notions of an absolute “need” for FF backup remain as unsubstantiated as in all the previous iterations of this conversation.
If the power is all dispatchable anyway, then what is the point of managing the load?
#226–
A very strange definition of “selfless”: being happy to give up a fraction of a wealth beyond the imagination of “most of humanity”, even while apparently condemning ‘them’ for having so little in the first place.
But this self-delusion becomes blatant when compared with reality: much of the world is *more* concerned about climate change than the US, or even “the West” generally.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2015/11/05/1-concern-about-climate-change-and-its-consequences/
A little less self-congratulation and a little more humility would be rather more becoming on E-P’s part.
at RC at 236: You and I appear to be in agreement with Naomi that there are no non-radical options left at this point. You mention Greta also in terms of messaging and impact, but I don’t think Greta can compete with the money behind our industrialized/chemicalized way of life and their messaging. I don’t think that we are unable to enact appropriate public policy because the scientists have been unclear about the issues or because climate activists have been scare-mongering, I think we can’t get appropriate public policy because powerful moneyed interests control public policy and they are unwilling to take a haircut on their awful assets. These folks spend a lot of money persuading elected officials to toe their line on legislation and they spend a lot of money on public disinformation campaigns and fanning the flames of the culture wars so the electorate does not respond in its best interest at election time.
At K: regarding chem ag vs. regen ag, you and I are in agreement. When I post about articles or research that are less radical than you and I may be on those issues, I do that because those articles/research may be helpful to folks who are quite mainstream in their thinking and are having great difficulty imagining a radically different form of agriculture where the soil health is primary and yield follows from soil health. The other model of pouring chemicals on the ground to become food commodities is a bankrupt process. The soil is depleted in this approach and the chemicals in use are not sustainable or healthy for living things. You, me, Scott and few others here have a pretty decent grasp on that big picture, so there is no particular reason to attack me on my discussion regarding that stuff, but if you can’t help yourself, ok. I prefer a generally civil discussion, but that’s not for everyone. Your post at 241 is exactly right on soil and ag approaches.
At EP at 226: What am I willing to give up as part of doing less with less? I am willing to give up a lot. I have already given up a lot and I will continue to work on cutting my planetary footprint as best as I can for the rest of my life. My partner and I took early retirement and put ourselves in the position of being low income retired folks. That was a conscious choice. We were careful to retire with reasonable health care coverage, with reasonable shelter in a community that we generally like that may be pretty safe from the ravages of global warming. We don’t af travel the world or drive new cars, we don’t cruise or fly. We hike and visit local parks and grow a lot of shade plants around our house that provide a microclimate that allows us to live without AC for the most part, so far. Thanks for asking that question.
We are busy making apple plum cider and a batch of our laundry detergent today and we are happy as can be. We have traded standard of living for quality of life and that trade has been good for us so far.
Cheers all,
Mike
236
Reality Check says:
20 Jul 2021 at 12:59 AM
Honestly, I can’t see how anything has improved or positively changed since Naomi said that 5 years ago. Is Greta saying what she’s saying an improvement, or more wasted breath? What do you think?
I think I said we needed complete system change in 2011 and created a model for doing so. It is the only one that exists, so far as I am aware.
I also think as far as Naomi Klein goes, she actually states we need to alter Capitalism, not end it, which means Ms. Klein doesn’t go nearly far enough. But, again, Regenerative Governance makes the changes she is not willing to make.
233
Reality Check says:
19 Jul 2021 at 10:56 PM
Even if regenerative agriculture should or could replace industrial agriculture “system” globally for the better, the sheer scale of such an endeavor likely places it decades into the future before having any impact at all.
This is false. Nothing is needed that farms do not already have. No new infrastructure, nothing. Just the choice and the knowledge. A farm can make the switch in a single year. Depending on conditions, any farm can be operational and providing good gains in as little as a year. However, heavily chem-drenched fields will need longer because they will need SOC added and chemicals diminished. ANY farm can be functioning well in five years or less. Decades? That’s spoken from ignorance (non-pejorative sense), so ask first before making such dangerous, nigelKIA-esque pronouncements. Besides, it’s a lot further along than you realize. With governments and NGOs regularly identifying Regen Ag as necessary and vital, it will not likely be long before gov’ts start making it policy. The change from now to global use will be beyond exponential, it will be parabolic. Probably already is.
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/arohi-sharma/regenerative-agriculture-part-4-benefits
The above comes from….? The NRDC, a part of the Big Green crowd that typically offers and suggests half-assed crap. Think of them as gov’t/NGO-level nigelKIAists. Yet, look what they have to say.
After the droughts, and especially the floods, of this year, there is going to be huge interest in mitigating them. The fastest way to do so? Recarbonize our soils.
Regarding: “Is that true? The idea, the wording, possibly arose from back in 2016 when Naomi Klein said in an interview: “There are no non-radical options left before us.” The famed author of “This Changes Everything” explains why markets cannot be relied on to solve global warming. This changes everything — how?”
IMHO a very tough carbon tax is a market friendly mechanism, and would certainly drive considerable change. It would push up the cost of fossil fuel energy so high people would HAVE to cut consumption of energy radically or switch to things like electric cars or some combination. Such a tax would drive rapid manufacture of clean energy on the basis of simple supply and demand forces. Of course tough carbon taxes introduced abruptly would cause significant problems for people, so they have to be phased in. However I think we are fast running out of time to phase in carbon taxes to meet Paris Accord goals. I think if we dither for another ten years it will be too late to use such things usefully.
The other alternatives are governments simply forcing change by mandating large cuts in fossil fuels production essentially rationing the resource. But if this is done abruptly it would also cause big problems, so also has to be phased in. But if governments also spent some money building out renewables rapidly at the same time this would enable things to be phased in fast and without pain or significant problems. It would be analogous to the wartime economy model. From what little I’ve read Naomy Klein seems sympathetic to plans like this.
Looks like Biden is taking the middle ground approach of focusing on helping build out renewables. At least this will help, and is less likely to get reversed by a Republican dominated government. Refer:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/29/fact-sheet-biden-administration-jumpstarts-offshore-wind-energy-projects-to-create-jobs/
Government and corporates haven’t done very much about carbon taxes or they are very mild carbon taxes in most countries. This is probably because governments are not seeing urgent demand for change from their populations.Individual people have mostly not made any significant changes to their carbon footprints or voted in massive numbers for Green Parties or loudly demanded change (young people excepted) and as such such governments and corporates only do the bare minimum about the climate problem. Here’s one reason for all this, and its all about psychology, and its a real ugly sticking point:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5530483
A key aspect of regenerative systems is small-scale/smallholder ag. Let the chem at apologists/supplicants watch this.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/575872913
@233 “…globally for the better, the sheer scale of such an endeavor likely places it decades into the future before having any impact at all.
@247 says: “This is false.”
No, it’s not false. But it may not be true either. Only time will tell.
And you’re misreading my meaning. Try reading it as before having any global impact at all. Follow the context of what I had already said, eg the ref back to PV solar (and wind) 30 years ago, versus the still very small renewable share of energy mix. And that is with significant Govt support for decades to expand that small growth.
And reconsider that I was not addressing the physicality of a farm switching over, in practical terms, but the big global picture going forward – given historical precedents of building systemic change to address global warming.
eg @242 “The odds are already stacked against a major systemic shift to regen ag with across the board support from Govt and Industry down.”
The later meaning there is no such support at present.
Being mindful of the actual context in that post @233 “but a planet-wide mobilisation on the scale of World War II is orders of magnitude greater than the Manhattan project-scale effort. It’s telling however that both were driven at a senior Government level by decree and not by popular opinion or a vote on every aspect of what action to take or when. “
I think it’s fair to say what I said above isn’t false but fairly realistic.
re @247 “With governments and NGOs regularly identifying Regen Ag as necessary and vital, it will not likely be long before gov’ts start making it policy. The change from now to global use will be beyond exponential, it will be parabolic. Probably already is.”
It’s good to be positive about change, but the above seems overly hyped. The supporting ref NRDC is a PR piece. But I was not questioning the benefits nor the potential.
I was being realistic. Regenerative Agriculture is not as yet widespread Government Policy globally nor in the OECD. And while many spin the words like good politicians do, the facts are no genuine Systemic changes to the Laws and Regulations have yet been passed, nor funding that would make such dreams come true anytime soon.
Now if you have some examples of this being done already please do share them.
Absolutely nothing has been implemented via the Green New Deal in the 3 years since that was presented as an ambition Regen Ag is kind of mentioned but there are no firmed up policies to be implemented. The GND was a program to be in effect making a difference by 2030, a decade away. Zero progress has been made. The present likelihood of anything in the GND being passed into lLaw in the USA is close to zero in Biden’s term, and no better in the next 4 year term. So there is a decade where the world’s #1 food bowl makes no changes to support or encourage or fund a transition from industrial Ag to Regenerative Ag.
Makes no difference how simple it is to change physically if all the Existing Policy Frameworks are entrenched barriers to change. Some examples of why this is so are explained in the following refs:
1) 2019 “Changes must be made on a grand scale, not the slow process of one farmer at a time. ” and
“Fundamentally, a national paradigm shift to regenerative agriculture will require two related structural transformations: 1) a breaking up of our huge input-intensive, carbon-emitting monocultures in favor of much smaller labor-intensive, carbon-sequestering farms; and 2) the deployment of millions of new farmers to manage these millions of new small and diverse farms.”
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/the-role-of-regenerative-farming-in-the-green-new-deal/
2) 3 years later from Jan 2019 — nothing has changed. No Laws have been made. No money or benefits are flowing. No Farm Regulations have been changed. The US Agriculture sector is exactly the same as it was. https://civileats.com/2019/02/07/what-the-green-new-deal-has-to-say-about-sustainable-agriculture/
3) Jan 2020 — update
“The Green New Deal, … nearly a year ago, laid down bold goals for transforming agriculture: It called for a “10-year national mobilization” to “eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector” while “supporting family farming.”” https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/01/green-new-deal-for-farmers-subsidies-carbon-farming-cover-crops-soil-erosion/
18 months later, a Democrat is in the white house and still nothing has chnaged, and nothing is planned to change. Nothing has been mobilized
4) Jan 2020 – Data for Progress – still at the recommending ideas stage.
The Green New Deal is a broad and ambitious agenda that includes a [IDEA FOR A] commitment by the federal government to invest in communities, infrastructure, technology, and good jobs to help the United States meet the challenges of climate change and achieve economic and environmental justice.
https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/regenerative-farming-and-the-green-new-deal.pdf
Progress is next to zero. No new Laws have been passed. No longterm funding provided. No Government commitments have been made… at the WH or the Congress.
AFAIK, (apart from the possibility of a handful of exceptions) every major food producing nation is no different to the status quo in the USA as far as Regenerative Agriculture Policy is concerned.
I’m thinking here of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, the UK, the European Union, Ukraine, South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and China. https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/List_of_largest_producing_countries_of_agricultural_commodities Industrial Ag is the norm not the exception. Although I had seen some positive activity in China years ago, not sure how things are today.
Let me add, that there is not nothing Systemic and Permanent being done or offered in the countries listed. My point is that it is not mainstream, not extensive, and not system changing…. but barely incremental, only a drop in the bucket.