Not all doom and gloom

[alanjjohnstone]

Feeding the world with zero-deforestation

I was going to blog about this report but no time to cull  the relevant facts and factors but briefly 2/3 rds of 500 scenarios concerning various diet patterns etc support the argument that we don't need to cut down the forests to feed the world. 

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160419/ncomms11382/full/ncomms11382.html

[alanjjohnstone]

And here is a story very much closer at homehttp://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/2910843The Zero Carbon Food Company has done just this having set up a production system on a vast underground tunnel system below Clapham High Street. What was once used as a refuge in the war is now an elaborate underground farm which oversees the production of "microgreens", chiefly herbs and salad leaves using hydroponic system. 

[Dave B]

There was another really interesting programme of TV the other night re extra terrestrials and the Drake equation etc. What was relevant to ourselves as Marxist and materialists with an interest in ‘socialism or barbarism’ and history repeating itself first as tragedy and then as farce etc is the Fermi paradox and the ‘great silence’. As food for thought if nothing else.  And the term L; or the life time of intelligent technological societies that would have the ability to communicate or generate electronic noise. Eg. If L is given a value as low as say 200 years then one might only expect maybe 10 or so ET societies which means a quite possible 0. Thus Fermi paradox resolved! ie Another theory is that with intelligence comes destruction. The time between being able to make contact and the self destruction of the species is short. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/science-environment-11982757 Or in other words if the present system of capitalism persists what chances do we have of making it to say 2150? It is quite remarkable I think that ‘level headed’ scientists cold bloody and rationally contemplated the self destruction of 'supposedly'? essentially un re-formable ‘progressive’  TINA capitalism, by around say 2150. And not only that materialistically trans-solar system, and universally projected from our system onto other ‘intelligent’ societies.  

[KAZ]

This is the old deep-level shelter at Clapham North. Two tunnels about 1,200 feet long with connections to the surface. One of eight. They started building them in 1940 as air raid shelters but by the time they were finished the Blitz was over. They did use them briefly during the V-1 raids. They were intended to be part of an express tube system – a bit like the cross-rail. You can see one of the entrances when you come out of Clapham North tube. see: underground-history.co.uk/claphamn.php. Spooky ain't it. And all beneath number 52!  I've often said while at the Maharani that the building next door is the entrance to the Clapham Common shelter where the Windrush boys were stored. Actually the first post-war West Indian migrants were housed at Clapham South.

[KAZ]

Should have said – above comment is related to AlJo's at #2.

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