Jones Beene wrote:
Jed,
> Without fertilizer, insecticide, irrigation and other intense energy
inputs
> agricultural productivity everywhere in the world plummet.
None of these depends on petroleum, and especially not fertilizer.
Even India exports nuclear plants using an ammonia exchange processes
for fertilizer production. It is probably the very best use of nuclear
energy since nitrogen is everywhere - and these plants are easy to
construct in the form of floating factories.
> If we run out of oil before we find other sources of energy, the
cost of food will go sky high and agricultural productivity will fall
drastically.
That is why we need to develop Aquanol as a replacement for oil. Now!
Yes. It will require fertilizer. Lots of it. Megatons.
For instance the land in the Amazon is poor. But they have plenty of
sun and water and only need lots more nitrogen in the soil. This is
the perfect place for floating nuclear powered ammonium plants.
You would destroy the remaining rainforests in order to grow biofuel so
we can continue to have personal transportation in this country?
You've said repeatedly in other posts that our wetlands (in the United
States) are currently unused, a view you apparently hold because we
haven't drained them and converted them to farmland. You've explicitly
suggested that the Florida everglades would be a great place to grow
e-grass.
Well, you may run into a bit of resistance there. Wetlands in this
country are considered a valuable resource all by themselves, which you
would destroy if you drained them and converted them to E-grass fields.
The Federal government (yes, the current anti-environment Federal
government) has been investing a lot of effort in determining how to
_save_ the Everglades and restore them to what they were before the Army
Core of Engineers messed things up by straightening out a river (had
some unintended side effects). And you think people will stand still
for a total reversal of this policy? You seriously think we should
replace the Everglades with grasslands?
I'd like to think I misunderstood your earlier posts. Is that not what
you had in mind?
This Amazon land can be made incredibly productive on a sustainable
basis as long as there is a big river there
It already IS incredibly productive: It provides homes and sustenance
for a huge fraction of the species on Earth.
It just doesn't happen to be producing anything you can burn in your car.
