With more and more people needing housing and feeding,
keeping the land for homes and putting crops in skyscapers could make
sense.
Most of the constructions shown at this web-site are
speculative designs. We do not know whether they will make economic and
energy sense.
[Note that the linked web-site is somewhat clumsy with their
handling of image files.]
“By
the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban
centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic
trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people
during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20%
more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed
to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue
as they are practiced today.”
—
“Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart
of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer
the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied
food supply (year-round crop production), and the eventual repair of
ecosystems that have been sacrificed for horizontal farming.”
“Australia's water shortage is so severe there's speculation
that it could force the shutdown of part of the Snowy Mountains power
scheme.
“10 years of drought-caused by climate change?”
There are growing fears that the south-western USA
is headed in the same direction and, of course, the Middle East is already
way way beyond sustaining its populations
without outside help.
“The shadow of "a new hunger" that has made food too
expensive for millions is the result of a sudden and dramatic surge
in food prices around the world.
“Rising prices for all the world's crucial cereal crops and growing
fears of scarcity are careening through international markets, creating
turmoil.
“Last Thursday, as world rice prices soared by as much as 30%
in one day, Egypt decided to suspend rice exports for six months to
meet domestic demand and to try to limit price increases.
“That was bad news for its main rice customers -- Turkey, Lebanon,
Syria and Jordan.
“Egypt's move was matched by Vietnam, the world's second-largest
rice exporter after Thailand, which cut exports by 25% and ordered officials
not to sign any more export contracts this year.
“India and Cambodia also rushed to curb their exports in order
to have enough supplies to feed their own people.” [Quoted from
nationalpost.com]
“THE food crisis is real and will last for a long time. The
less we inject politics to it, the less will be our problems coping
with the food crisis. The shortage of food is worldwide. Rice, corn,
bread, milk, pork, chicken and beef will cost much more than you can
ever imagine, assuming they are even available.
“You see will long lines of people buying their staple food.
You will see boycotts, riots and governments being overthrown. Food
price inflation has reduced considerably people’s purchasing power.
In Manila, the rice that could be bought for just P18 a kilo last year
is no longer available, unless you pay P30 a kilo, a 66-percent increase.
“West Bengal and Mexico have had food riots. India, Yemen, Burkina
Faso and other countries are seeing signs of food riots. Australia ousted
its prime minister this year after a ten-year drought that devastated
that country’s wheat crop.”
“To deal with soaring food prices that have caused riots in
some countries, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said Wednesday
that government leaders must act now to help people whose needs are
immediate.
“He said the U.N. World Food Program needs at least $500 million
(€319 million) in additional food commitments to meet emergency
demands and urged the United States, the European Union, Japan and other
developed countries "to fill this gap or many more people will
suffer and starve."
“In a speech that suggested a "New Deal for Global Food
Policy," Zoellick said the new mechanism should focus not only
on hunger, malnutrition and access to food and its supply but also on
the interconnections with energy, crop yields, climate change and the
marginalization of women and others.
“Speaking at the Center for Global Development, a Washington
research group, in the run-up to the April 12-13 spring meeting of the
World Bank, Zoellick said that as financial markets have tumbled, food
prices have soared. Staples such as rice and wheat have shot up 80 percent.”
“What's more, the Department of Agriculture predicts food prices
will rise another four-to-five-percent this year.
“The USDA says the price of whole milk has increased nearly 19
percent over the last year, cheddar cheese has climbed by 15 percent,
and eggs are up a whopping 25 percent.
“Jennifer Strauss, who does the shopping for her family of five,
calls the higher prices "kind of scary," saying, "Every
time you go to the store, even when you run in for one thing, you spend
$50-to-$100 on a few items."
“Some of the biggest jumps have been in wheat products. Over
the last year, white bread is up 11 percent and pasta 13 percent.”
“Created under the 2004 American Jobs Act, the "blenders
tax credit" was supposed to boost US production of biodiesel by
encouraging US diesel marketers to blend regular petroleum diesel with
fuel made from soybeans or other agricultural products. It succeeded,
perhaps too well.
“Attracted by the $1-per-gallon subsidy, US diesel-fuel marketers
mixed away, setting off a nationwide boom in biodiesel refinery building.
But no one anticipated splash-and-dash.
“The maneuver begins with a shipload of biodiesel from, say,
Malaysia, which pulls into a US port like Houston, says John Baize,
an industry consultant in Falls Church, Va. Unlike domestic diesel-biodiesel
blends, which typically contain from 1 to 10 percent of biodiesel, the
Malaysian fuel starts off as 100 percent biodiesel, typically made from
palm oil.
“Then, the vessel receives from a dockside diesel supplier a
"splash" of US petroleum diesel. It doesn't take much to turn
it into a diesel-biodiesel blend that is eligible for US subsidies.
“If the ship holds roughly 9 million gallons, it takes only about
9,000 gallons of traditional diesel (0.1 percent of the total) to make
the entire load eligible for the blenders tax credit.
“The US importer of the load applies to the Internal Revenue
Service for the credit - a dollar for each of the 9 million biodiesel
gallons, Mr. Baize calculates. The next day the tanker can set sail
- dash - for Europe. There, the US importer resells the biodiesel, taking
advantage of European fuel-tax credits that, in effect, keep biodiesel
prices above US prices.”
“Reliable, detailed information on the most invasive alien species
in Europe is an essential tool for preventing their spread and impact,
and for applying effective and appropriate control strategies.”
—
“Biological invasions by non-native or 'alien' species are one
of the greatest threats to the ecological and economic well-being of
the planet.
“Alien species can act as vectors for new diseases, alter ecosystem
processes, change biodiversity, disrupt cultural landscapes, reduce
the value of land and water for human activities and cause other socio-economic
consequences for man.
“To help those tackling the invasive species challange, this
website provides a 'one-stop-shop' for information on biological invasions
in Europe.”
Recommended talk by a world expert in this field. [Talk length:
19:30 minutes]
Winning the oil endgame by Amory Lovins, the book for this
lecture. It is seriously heavy going.
[Link goes to page where you can download a 332-page .PDF version of this book.]
“41-by-2.5km (25-by-1.6 mile) berg appears to be breaking away”
[The area of the whole Wilkins ice shelf is roughly about 5,280 square miles, or the size
of the Isle of Man.]
—
“ Professor David Vaughan of BAS said: "Wilkins is the largest
ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened.”
—
“ Scientists say the Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out into
the Southern Ocean towards the tip of South America, has experienced
unprecedented warming over the last 50 years.
“Several ice shelves have retreated in the past 30 years - six
of them collapsing completely.
“Other researchers believe the Wilkins Ice Shelf may hang on
a little longer, as Antarctica's summer melt season draws to a close.”
[Quoted from bbc.co.uk]
“The Wilkins is one of a string of ice shelves that have collapsed
in the West Antarctic Peninsula in the past thirty years. The Larsen
B became the most well-known of these, disappearing in just over thirty
days in 2002. The Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Wordie,
Muller, and the Jones Ice Shelf collapses also underscore the unprecedented
warming in this region of Antarctica.” {Quoted from NSIDC]
filthy fossil fuels - hundreds of thousands of deaths and maybe global warming
“ "The aerosols in aggregate are either acting to, you could
say, cool the atmosphere or mask the effect of CO2," said Carmichael,
"[Black carbon] is the only component of this aerosol mix that
in and of itself is a heating element."
“Previous estimates had not taken into account the fact that
it has a larger impact at high altitude in the atmosphere and that it
interacts with other particulates in the atmosphere. Scientists do not
fully understand these interactions, but observations suggest that they
result in more warming. The researchers said that programmes to replace
wood-burning stoves with clean technology such as solar energy in developing
countries such as India should be pursued to reduce the number of deaths
caused by inhaling the smoke.” [Quoted from guardian.co.uk]
Meanwhile, reality is creeping up on the socialist
legacy in Germany:
“Senior German energy executives warned yesterday that Europe's
biggest economy faces growing blackouts unless it follows the Franco-British
lead in promoting new nuclear power stations.” [Quoted from guardian.co.uk]
“The Coca-Cola Company is committed to the good health and well
being of communities around the world. One vital way that our Company
is contributing to communities is through our water stewardship programs.
Water, our most critical ingredient, is fast becoming one of the world’s
most pressing global challenges. It is estimated that by 2025, two-thirds
of the global population will live in water-stressed areas.
“In June 2007, The Coca-Cola Company made a significant aspirational
pledge to return the water we use in our beverages and their production.
For us, this means reducing the amount
of water used to produce our beverages, recycling
water used for manufacturing processes so it can be returned safely
to the environment, and replenishing water
in communities and nature through locally relevant projects.
“This report focuses on the "replenish" aspect of
our Company’s goal. Our commitment to replenish means that on
a global basis we aspire to give back by supporting healthy watersheds
and sustainable community water programs to balance the water used in
our finished beverages. We will do this by working on a wide range of
locally relevant initiatives, such as watershed protection, expanding
community drinking water access, rain water harvesting, reforestation
and agricultural water use efficiency.” [Quoted from thecoca-colacompany.com,
49-page .pdf]
Locations of Coca-Cola’s Community Watershed
Partnership (CWP) program members
“[...] Currently, between 500 million and 2 billion people are
living in conditions of water stress. It is estimated that this number
will rise to about 5.5 billion people by 2025.
“Meanwhile, experts expect water use to increase by 22 percent
over the next two decades.”
—
“• Increasing freshwater scarcity and threats to water quality
are making water one of the leading social, environmental, and economic
challenges of the 21st Century.
• Water presents both a major business risk and an increasingly
important corporate social responsibility issue.
• Businesses can make a big difference in achieving sustainable
use of water resources while adding business value.” [Quoted from
treehugger.com]
computer simulation of climate - persistence of co2 effects
“Abstract
Current international climate mitigation efforts aim to stabilize levels
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, human-induced climate
warming will continue for many centuries, even after atmospheric CO2
levels are stabilized. In this paper, we assess the CO2 emissions requirements
for global temperature stabilization within the next several centuries,
using an Earth system model of intermediate complexity. We show first
that a single pulse of carbon released into the atmosphere increases
globally averaged surface temperature by an amount that remains approximately
constant for several centuries, even in the absence of additional emissions.
We then show that to hold climate constant at a given global temperature
requires near-zero future carbon emissions. Our results suggest that
future anthropogenic emissions would need to be eliminated in order
to stabilize global-mean temperatures. As a consequence, any future
anthropogenic emissions will commit the climate system to warming that
is essentially irreversible on centennial timescales.”
“Pulse sizes of 50, 200, 500 and 2000 billion tonnes of carbon
were used. The model was set to calculate global temperatures and atmospheric
and ocean carbon dioxide levels over a simulated 500 years.
“At the end of that period, Matthews and Caldeira found that
between 20% and 35% of the initial emission pulse remained in the atmosphere
- even for the smallest emission pulse - with the remainder having been
absorbed by land and ocean carbon sinks.
“The lingering carbon dioxide means that global warming persisted
for the entire simulation. For the four different emission scenarios,
global temperatures stabilised at 0.09, 0.34, 0.88 and 3.6 ºC above
pre-industrial levels respectively.
“So far industrial emissions total around 450 billion tonnes.
"Even if we eliminated carbon dioxide today we are still committed
to a global temperature rise of around 0.8 ºC lasting at least
500 years," says Caldeira.” [Quoted from newscientist.com]
These same authors have previously suggested geo-engineering
approaches - for instance, sunshades in space. They have also modeled that such approaches
have rapid response times.
So be wary of the simplisms from school of “we’re
all doooooooomed”.
“But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed
dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found
that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming.
Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate
trends.
“The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in
the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.
“ "A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary,
greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the
most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales."
”
“By
the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban
centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic
trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people
during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20%
more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed
to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue
as they are practiced today.”
Acacia
dealbata - common names: Silver wattle, or mimosa (in France
particularly) 
Undaria
pinnatifida - common names: Wakame, Japanese kelp
