The Last Word On Nothing

In 2050, the global population is projected to stand at around 10 billion humans, and every one of them will need to eat. We already have more than 7 billion people on Earth, so perhaps another three seems like a step-wise challenge in global food security, but the scale of the problem turns out to be immense.

Cumulatively, from now to mid-century, we’re going to need to grow more food than we’ve grown in the history of agriculture – more food than was grown in the first 10,000-odd years since we’ve domesticated crops at scale. At the same time that we’re somehow managing to squeeze more food out of the dwindling arable land that urban sprawl hasn’t paved over, farmers will be coping with a perfect storm of threats.

Take fertilizer. The three big fertilizers are nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, all of which are finite in their own way. Reserves of potash—salts that contain water-soluble potassium—are limited, and phosphate is more so. Meanwhile, the amount of oil it takes to convert nitrogen gas into ammonium nitrate fertilizer makes it an energy-expensive option. Freshwater will be at a premium—that is, when it’s not flooding—and to expand our farmland we’ll need to move into marginal areas, like salinated or acidic soils. Continue reading →

May 22 – 26, 2017

Lots of reduxes this week — “redux” in this case meaning posts that were posted before but would be nice to reread, if for no other reason than that the authors liked them.

Christie on the line between dryness and drought:  “How much contrary evidence do we need before we decide it’s time to update our definition of normal? At what point do we as humans let go of the past — the way things were, the present that we’re used to — and accept the future that we’ve created?”

I wrote about how to avoid being maimed by a fall: “Physics says the best way to not let gravity hurt you is to make the fall last as long as possible, drag it out, fall as long as you can.  Just keep falling, see if you can outlast it, maybe if you fall long enough you won’t ever be felled, the splat might never happen.”

Michelle on conservation biologists learning to code:  “In 2013, the team members gradually transformed themselves from scientists into scientist-programmers. They learned to code in R and RStudio, track the different versions of their files in Git, and share their work in GitHub. . . . Now, Lowndes says, marine biologists working in the Baltic can much more easily compare their data to those gathered in the Pacific.”

Rose on readers’ inevitable question of where she gets her ideas:  “In the spirit of my former editor, who told me that anything could be a story, here is a post about ideas. Or, more specifically, not having them. This is an ode to all the ideas that have escaped my grasp. Or, that I could never quite catch in the first place.”

Jenny the nature-lover on what not to do when around sharks:  “I took off one of my dive gloves and waited. If she stuck to her pattern, the shark’s next move would take her exhilaratingly close. She turned and cut in toward me, as I expected, and I stayed still and kept my eye on hers as she closed in. Practically on me now, she swiveled slightly, just enough.”

BONUS
Emma’s comment on Rose’s no-ideas post:  “I have those big sprawling ideas too, lots of them, lumbering around like galaxies. I usually can’t see the edges of them and I don’t know if I’m in the middle of them or out in the suburbs. I wander through these translucent landscapes all day. I do dishes in them, try to pay attention to what my kids are saying.”