Using Human History As a Guide Could Our Present Civilization Fall into a New Dark Ages or Even a Collapse ?

[Larry of the Lawn]

29 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

LtI,

We need X amount of fixed nitrogen to grow Y amount of food.  The natural nitrogen cycle does not produce X.  As such we have to have artificial nitrogen fixing or we have massive starvation.

Are you disputing biologists?

I'm pointing out that the question asked by the answer you keep harping on has more to it than that.  So, to simplify things into lawyerspeak, no, I'm not disputing biologists.  I'm pointing out that there are other ways to address that question.  

For example the idea of 'x amount of food requires y amount of nitrogen' isnt what you think it is. Read the Prophets vs Wizards article again.  And then taken actual nutrition into account.  Or just ignore everything and ask me some more leading questions.

Eta: I've already addressed this and you're ignoring it.  If you can only get x amount of food out of y amount of land but 40% of food is being thrown away and your current tech is poisoning the water, and you're using lots of arable land to farm corn to feed cattle, and one of the main reasons you need to fix nitrogen is because it's cheap and easy (see what jo mentioned about terracing to save water and reuse runoff fertilizer), there are clearly things that can be done work around the limits of nitrogen.  

Biologists say that bacteria can break down methane and plastics.  Are you disputing biologists, Scot? 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I'm pointing out that the question asked by the answer you keep harping on has more to it than that.  So, to simplify things into lawyerspeak, no, I'm not disputing biologists.  I'm pointing out that there are other ways to address that question.  

For example the idea of 'x amount of food requires y amount of nitrogen' isnt what you think it is. Read the Prophets vs Wizards article again.  And then taken actual nutrition into account.  Or just ignore everything and ask me some more leading questions.

It is an article or a book?  If the former would you please provide a link?

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

17 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

It is an article or a book?  If the former would you please provide a link?

 

Of course.  It's linked two pages before this.  Here it is again.

It literally is about nitrogen fixing and industrial farming vs hippie shit sustainable practice.  And if you look at what questions are actually being asked and answered  in it there is actually a lot of room for tech solutions at other places in the nitrogen cycle.

And edited to add:. Everything I've ever read about dependence on nitrogen fixing from the atmosphere is always a qualified statement, for example "in order to produce the food we do now on the diet we are accustomed to"... And when you consider that the most nitrogen hungry crops, wheat, rice, corn, etc, aren't even the highest calorie per acre crops, the argument for nitrogen fixing being THE one thing we can't change becomes a tautological argument.  

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

45 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Of course.  It's linked two pages before this.  Here it is again.

It literally is about nitrogen fixing and industrial farming vs hippie shit sustainable practice.  And if you look at what questions are actually being asked and answered  in it there is actually a lot of room for tech solutions at other places in the nitrogen cycle.

And edited to add:. Everything I've ever read about dependence on nitrogen fixing from the atmosphere is always a qualified statement, for example "in order to produce the food we do now on the diet we are accustomed to"... And when you consider that the most nitrogen hungry crops, wheat, rice, corn, etc, aren't even the highest calorie per acre crops, the argument for nitrogen fixing being THE one thing we can't change becomes a tautological argument.  

Thank you.

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

12 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Than you.

 

Sure, sorry if I'm coming across as a dick, it's not you, dealing with some personal shit right now.  Doesn't make it ok.  

 

What I meant to say is that the hypothesis about needing a certain amount of fixed nitrogen is dependent on variables that we can actually change.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Sure, sorry if I'm coming across as a dick, it's not you, dealing with some personal shit right now.  Doesn't make it ok.  

 

What I meant to say is that the hypothesis about needing a certain amount of fixed nitrogen is dependent on variables that we can actually change.

Well, I sincerely hope it gets better.  We all have shit coming at us sometimes.  

:)

[GAROVORKIN]

And when global resources  get too scarce, that might precipitate more wars.

[Jo498]

I doubt that the production of nitrogen fertilizer is the most important bottleneck. If currently 1.2% of fossile energy are used to make fertilizer there are obviously many other ways where one can start saving fossil fuels first before cutting back on this. With scarcity of fossils this percentage would rise, so artificial fertilizer and food would become more expensive but all of this would be gradual and probably allow timely reactions. Worse problems seem to be the degradation of soil (because it is not mainly a carrier for nitrogen) and that too much nitrogen gets into the water etc.

[lokisnow]

21 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

And when global resources  get too scarce, that might precipitate more wars.

Wars are likely to be between countries fighting over scarce resources they both want. The United States in the future will want to sell provisions and war machinery to both sides, which we will possess both of in abundance, and buying from us will be cheaper than fighting us to take it. 

[TrueMetis]

Given recent droughts I'm not so sure you can assume that the US will have an abundance of provisions.

[lokisnow]

10 hours ago, Jo498 said:

I doubt that the production of nitrogen fertilizer is the most important bottleneck. If currently 1.2% of fossile energy are used to make fertilizer there are obviously many other ways where one can start saving fossil fuels first before cutting back on this. With scarcity of fossils this percentage would rise, so artificial fertilizer and food would become more expensive but all of this would be gradual and probably allow timely reactions. Worse problems seem to be the degradation of soil (because it is not mainly a carrier for nitrogen) and that too much nitrogen gets into the water etc.

There’s also this just published title, heavy fertilization contributes to the formation of NOx (nitrous oxide), the main component of smog. previously, it was assumed that fertilizer represented on 13% of nox emmissons, but that data was based on only studying small farms near large cities. Data based on surveying large agricultural areas in the Midwest, Europe and CA Central Valley suggest the contribution is much higher. Farmers are pissed and afraid CA will impose new environmental regulations on them that will make their produce less competitive in other states (I think ca farmers don’t realize they’re the only state whose farmers that still grows produce en masse, while all the other agricultural states grow almost nothing but monocrop starches at large scales)

http://www.fresnobee.com/news/state/california/article197653944.html

 

There are certainly various strategies to fix carbon in soil via grazing rotation, and no till techniques, in combination with the straightforward strategies that ameliorated the man made natural disasters of the dust bowl (like winter cover crops, and Carver’s crop rotations) point the way that the future is not so much in nitrogen Treatments, but in Soil Management. Redirecting efforts to build, maintain, and enhance high quality soil for all domestic agriculture has a ton of potential. The big problem is that our agricultural is oriented around forty ton machinery, and adapting or replacing that machine capital infrastructure to soil management best practices is hugely expensive.

[GAROVORKIN]

4 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Given recent droughts I'm not so sure you can assume that the US will have an abundance of provisions.

In scenario,  it would make more sense for the US to hold on to what they got. 

[Theda Baratheon]

The medieval period hasn't been called the dark ages for awhile, right? I think we're realising more and more that there is so much history we have lost and that there perhaps wasn't this ''dark age'' 

[Theda Baratheon]

I mean, the whole Dark Ages thing is pretty misleading to begin with, no? I'm pretty sure the terminology came from art history really. And apparently the art of the middle ages after the fall of the Roman empire being seen as more ''dark'' in themes but I think this term has been very misleading for a number of years and it's why I haven't read dark ages in an academic work in any of my studies over the last few years. So if there never was this super big bad ~dark age~ in the middle ages, why would there be one now. there might be a shitty decade, or two, or a few. But ages? Hundreds of years of shit? Nah. I'm more optimistic than that. 

[TrueMetis]

In modern academic's dark age refers to a time and place with a lack of written records, IE 5-6th century Britain or the Greek Dark Ages of 1100 – 800 BC, and often coincides with significant social instability. By this definition the medieval period wasn't a dark age, though at certain times and places it contained some.

In the more colloquial sense? Medieval Europe was neither as bad as some people want to make out, nor was it as good as some would claim.

[Spring Bass]

It was more gradual* than usually portrayed, but there was a definite "fall" in the 5th and 6th centuries in western Europe. It's questionable whether western Europe even had "states" as we might define them in the 7th century AD. 

* Except in Britain, where the fall took about 30-40 years and was so complete that early-to-mid 5th century Britain was practically a post-apocalyptic society in terms of collapse. 

[GAROVORKIN]

2 hours ago, Fall Bass said:

It was more gradual* than usually portrayed, but there was a definite "fall" in the 5th and 6th centuries in western Europe. It's questionable whether western Europe even had "states" as we might define them in the 7th century AD. 

* Except in Britain, where the fall took about 30-40 years and was so complete that early-to-mid 5th century Britain was practically a post-apocalyptic society in terms of collapse. 

With no Roman legions and drastically reduced   economic activity to many of the Western cities in 6th and 7th century , lost population and shrank.  

 

 

 

 

[James Arryn]

15 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I mean, the whole Dark Ages thing is pretty misleading to begin with, no? I'm pretty sure the terminology came from art history really. And apparently the art of the middle ages after the fall of the Roman empire being seen as more ''dark'' in themes but I think this term has been very misleading for a number of years and it's why I haven't read dark ages in an academic work in any of my studies over the last few years. So if there never was this super big bad ~dark age~ in the middle ages, why would there be one now. there might be a shitty decade, or two, or a few. But ages? Hundreds of years of shit? Nah. I'm more optimistic than that. 

To be fair, though, your citizen in 3rd century Latium actually had a much longer and more comprehensive period of economic/political/military dominance/stability to look back on in order to feel that ‘it will always be thus’. We don’t understand how short the Pax Americana or, if you want to contrast with Greco-Román, the Pax Britannia/Americana has been. And pretty much every civilization has believed that they were at the zenith of development. Like, during the so-called Dark Ages, there was an awareness that technological and social/structural superiority had existed before them, but that wasn’t their principle rubric; spirituality was, and thus they thought themselves as being the most developed, as the Church/religion had evolved into being the preeminent Power. 

That’s the biggest thing we get wrong, assuming everyone has always seen technology as the measure for social development just because it’s our measuring stick. And it’s that very misunderstanding that could lead to losing much of what we currently vale. Imagine a wider-ranging Bonfire of the Vanities in some future culture where religion or, well, one of a number of other social constructs is seen as more important than material wealth/scientific achievement, and even where those are viewed with antagonism/suspicion. That’s not impossible. 

[Larry of the Lawn]

3 hours ago, James Arryn said:

To be fair, though, your citizen in 3rd century Latium actually had a much longer and more comprehensive period of economic/political/military dominance/stability to look back on in order to feel that ‘it will always be thus’. We don’t understand how short the Pax Americana or, if you want to contrast with Greco-Román, the Pax Britannia/Americana has been. And pretty much every civilization has believed that they were at the zenith of development. Like, during the so-called Dark Ages, there was an awareness that technological and social/structural superiority had existed before them, but that wasn’t their principle rubric; spirituality was, and thus they thought themselves as being the most developed, as the Church/religion had evolved into being the preeminent Power. 

That’s the biggest thing we get wrong, assuming everyone has always seen technology as the measure for social development just because it’s our measuring stick. And it’s that very misunderstanding that could lead to losing much of what we currently vale. Imagine a wider-ranging Bonfire of the Vanities in some future culture where religion or, well, one of a number of other social constructs is seen as more important than material wealth/scientific achievement, and even where those are viewed with antagonism/suspicion. That’s not impossible. 

Uhh ur talking about post count amirite

[James Arryn]

2 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Uhh ur talking about post count amirite

That would actually take a lot of the existential angst out of my day. Maybe one day.