Tag Archives: climate change

Economist Farmer Michael Smith continues his take on Agricultural Economics. The Golden Seed . . . “Drought Resistance by Engineering Plant Tissue-Specific Responses” ____________ I’ll cut to the chase, for centuries we have been searching for the golden goose to lay the golden egg. This search for perfection in an imperfect world leads our collective minds to continue to seek out this perfection, or some amalgamation or imperfect things that...

There is another world and economy out there which we do not see or hear much from other than when we talk politics and then we wonder why views may be different than ours. Michael Smith has been adding an agricultural dimension to the Bear which I think we need to understand. Years back, I did a post which I caught some grief on because some thought I was in support of certain beliefs. In reality, there was a larger picture to what I wrote back...

by David Zetland This book by Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR) came out in late 2020. It’s a CliFi story about The Ministry FOR the Future, a (fictional) UN agency based in Switzerland with a mission to protect future generations from our current (climate-changing) selves. The book is long (577 pages; my page numbers are from the digital version), with interwoven stories that sometimes peter out and sometimes take up more space than you’d expect....

Imagine that in the 1970s you bought a plat along the coast in Florida that was on a large pile of sand that was basically at sea level upon which you planned to build a four-hundred unit, twelve story tall, condominium complex. This complex was to rest on a slab of concrete that rested atop the pile of sand and a lot of long pilings driven deep into the pile (but not to bedrock). If you will, the building(s) were to rest atop a concrete many-legged...

by David Zetland Why we’re failing to stop climate chaos Climate chaos (CC) is the largest threat to our collective prosperity. (Water scarcity, biodiversity loss, increasing vulnerability to viruses and bacteria are a few more.) But “we” (citizens of rich countries) are having a hardER time understanding and addressing CC due to a few strategic mistakes, i.e., Most discussions of impacts focus on 2100, which is too far away from our time...

Almost Record Heat In Death Valley  My niece, Erica Werner, is a reporter for the Washington Post.  She long covered heated debates in Congress over economic policy, getting on the front page a lot as during the passing of the Covid relief bill earlier this year. But then she moved to South Pasadena, CA a few months ago for family reasons and disappeared from the WaPo front page. But there she is on today’s front page and above the fold with a...

Utah and Beyond Tuesday, June 29, 2021: The small town of Lytton, British Columbia, Canada recorded a high of 121 degrees Fahrenheit. This was the highest ever recorded in Lytton, in British Columbia, in Canada. Wednesday, June 30, 2021, the small town of Lytton burned to the ground. On Monday, June 28, 2021, the temperature in Portland, Oregon reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit, the highest ever recorded. On that same day, Seattle recorded 108...

Farmer-economist Michael Smith comments from More Random News Events of the Week post ________ My comment on the open thread, “what exactly does the federal government plan to do this is a little mind boggling. The USDA is limited in the resources they have. They can provide grants but it would need congress to fund it.” A few things I am working through in the consideration of carbon capture: 1. How much is enough? My operation requires...

There have been a number of important developments in the Ontario electricity sector since my last update when I summarized my arguments in front of the Ontario Legislature against the proposed Provincial Conservative legislation, now enacted, that eliminated the Provincial Liberal rate-based borrowing scheme to subsidize electricity prices and replace it with Government revenues. The tax-payer financed subsidy of $2.8 billion in 2018/19 has now ballooned to $6.5 billion in 2021/22 and...

And if it continues to be this dry, it could become the most severe megadrought on this entire chart. “The only reason this drought is lagging behind that 1500s drought is because it’s so young,” Williams said. Via The Guardian comes this article on the current heatwave in the US…personally I have stories ranging from ducks not reproducing because of the heat and drought in Montana to severe water use restrictions in San Jose… What tree...