The future of our food production

The future of our food production

With the world population nearing 9 billion in 2050, what is our option for food? By then we would have to at least increase our production by 60% if we do not want to deal with severe food shortages. This is not only a big technological step, but also a big step on how to preserving our forest and natural habitat for animals.

GMO... Is it THAT scary?

Corn

The main vegetables that we are currently producing to get food on our table is corn, wheat and rice. These 3 crops provide the world population for their bread, rice etc. Losing only one of them would prove devastating, so we either need to diversify or just keep them and hope that nothing bad happens in the near future.


Today crops such as corn, cotton and some wheat has been genetically modified to endure harsher conditions. Genetically modified organism is the same as changing some DNA to make the crop adapt to a harsher environment to endure whatever scientist/biologist demands it to do. Although it is still debatable whether this is safe or not, as some news outlet "cough cough fox news cough" has "reported" that this kind of food threatens our natural way of living and producing.

Wheat 

The next big problem with our current agriculture is that it consumes HUGE quantities of water, and as California is experiencing, fresh water is getting more and more sparse so we need more water efficient crop in the future. Just so you know it, 70% of the fresh water gathered is used for agricultural purposes, so it is quite a lot.

One of the research goal of this decade might be to modify a crop so that it can grow with saltwater. You see, water is not the problem but fresh water is. How to do this with crops that we use in everyday life is currently not known, but if we manage to grow wheat/corn/rice with saltwater then we have solved out need for food.

There are of course many ways to fix our food problem, and my two suggestions above are only two of a lot potential solution scientist have though of. One way to sustain the food production is... to maintain the population at 7 billion. Even with our current population, we are struggling to feed people where droughts are heavily affecting the area.



Image credits
"Wheat close-up" by User:Bluemoose - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wheat_close-up.JPG#/media/File:Wheat_close-up.JPG
"Corntassel 7095" by Spedona - en:Image:Corntassel 7095.jpg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corntassel_7095.jpg#/media/File:Corntassel_7095.jpg

The suppression of renewable energy

The oppression of renewable energy

With billions of dollars to spare, what is the oil company hiding? There is one infamous conspiracy theory about that may drive the entire petroleum energy business bankrupt. Does oil and gas companies really suppress? 

Here are some renewable energy options that I will be talking about.

Solar PV array 

We all know that there is no free lunch, green energy infrastructures are expensive, but is it worth it in the long run? Once you place a solar array on your roof, it will probably cost you a few thousand to start with, but after it you are generating power for free from the sun. A few thousand is a lot of money to start with, but after years of selling electricity back to the grid, it will pay itself.

The problem is that solar arrays usually are not as effective as people want it to be. Most commercial solar panels usually converts 15% of the energy it captures into electricity, some suggest that this could be doubled within 10 years. You also have to remember that the suns energy gets absorbed because of the earth atmosphere, that is why PV arrays thrive so good in satellites is because they get huge amount of power because there is no atmosphere to the photons.

Wind turbine
If you love scenery, You will absolutely hate wind turbines. They are huge, tall and is reported to kill birds. The problem is they rely too much on the wind being strong, and strong wind is also what people do not like. Unstable power output combined with destroying the scenery is not a very good thing when proposing to the public.








Fission reactor
The fear mongering with nuclear reactor is real. In the past 50 or so years, we've humans have had two class 7 nuclear accidents. The problem with such nuclear accident is that the fuel remains radioactive for a very long time and containment zone becomes a hassle to deal with.

Thorium has also been proposed and tested by researcher as a revolutionary new fuel for nuclear reactors. It is noted that Thorium is greener because a Thorium meltdown is not likely to cause major hassle such as Plutonium and Uranium based nuclear reactors. The best with Thorium is that it cannot be weaponized, and thus helping bringing peace.

Fusion reactor
This kind of energy has not yet been developed completely or tested on industrial scale. The US based company, Lockheed Martin suggest that they are able to produce one in some decades.

The problem is fusion reactor, is that the design has to endure temperatures of the surface of the sun for generating energy. If a breakthrough is found, then we might live in a post oil world where energy is not only cheap, but green and abundant. The fuel used in fusion reactors is hydrogen, one of the most abundant materials in the universe.

The sun is in fact one huge fusion reactor, it fuses hydrogen to helium and so on. We may find out answers from the nature itself.

???Fuel???
Dark matter? Plank energy? Anti-matter? Future technology in 500 years might be impressive to us as how technology now impresses the medieval civilization. This is only applies as long we have not killed our self with wars and petty politics. 

While the option for alternative energy is plentiful, not very many of them can compete with the oil market. The oil would have to be expensive and hard to extract before a significant progress in green energy is made.



Credits for pictures
"Westmill Solar 2" by MrRenewablesWestmill Solar Co-operativeNeil Maw - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Westmill_Solar_2.jpg#/media/File:Westmill_Solar_2.jpg


"Lamma wind turbine" by Patrickmak - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lamma_wind_turbine.jpg#/media/File:Lamma_wind_turbine.jpg

"Sun in X-Ray" by NASA Goddard Laboratory for Atmospheres - NASA Goddard Laboratory for Atmosphereshttp://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rsd/images/yohkoh.htmlhttp://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rsd/images/yohkoh_l.gif. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sun_in_X-Ray.png#/media/File:Sun_in_X-Ray.png

Political position explained to dummies

So we know that there are two different wings when it comes to politics, but what are those? You see being far on either wings is not good. So let me just explain in this short post. This is a broad generalization of parties, but this is better than not knowing anything at all, and yes, I am a left winger, deal with it.


The Extreme Far Left
At this point, having a government like this would confiscate private holdings and spread he wealth equally, hence the name "communism". There are different types of communism though, anarchy communism is a system without a government of a ruling body and relies that people want to share their goodies with other equally, but forget it, this will never happen because of human natural greed. Extreme far left are not only communist, but also a totalitarian government.

The Far Left
Far left parties and government usually allows some private holdings but taxes heavily on the rich. The have strict regulation and nationalizes everything they can from defense companies, milk companies and whatever is left so that the national government has full control over almost everything.

The Left Wing
This is where normal everyday politics comes in. Left wing parties usually focuses on worker right, regulation and minimal privatization of healthcare and education. Most European countries are on the left wing due to free healthcare and heavily subsidized education. They are also usually pro immigration and most likely to be pro globalization.

Centrism/Big Tent
This is kind of tricky to explain, because centrist parties just take what they feel like from both wings.

The Right Wing
This is where most conservative parties stay, their ideologies are usually liberalism in the market, conservative liberalism and there is one thing right winger love more than anything, and that is tax break. They claim that a small government is useful for both business and individual. Right winger usually support stricter immigration law to protect the current workforce.

The Far Right
Parties that are far right are usually classified as "racist" because of their nature to preserve the "old" traditions of a country. They are usually hostile to new culture and adaptations. Some might argue that far right parties are rising in Europe because the native population felt threatened by immigrants.

ISIS, religious or a political organization?

As you should already know, the Syrian civil war created ISIS that then spilled over to neighboring Iraq. They claim to be the rightly guided caliphate with pure sharia law, but then there is some questions to this entire "ISIS" legitimacy. First legitimacy is that a fully guided caliphate is to be agreed by ALL Muslims and not just a few.

Ataturk
Founder of todays Turkey

The last caliphate, the Ottoman caliphate/sultanate/empire was abolished in 1928 after multiple power struggles inside the empire, one of the most known "rebel" commander against the empire was the first Turkish president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, where he led a rebellion and formed the modern day secular Turkey.

Did you know that homosexuality was legalized in 1858 inside the Ottoman empire? Today inside a muslim government, being open to homosexuality is almost a guaranteed deathbed. Even though the Ottoman empire is considered a legitimate caliphate by the majority of muslims, it has one of the most secularized laws by the 18 centuries.




Back to today, while some imams certainly supports ISIS the majority of muslims I know in real life is heavily against it, they claim that the caliphate is not legalized because of their brutality. Is this really the case? Some Gulf Nations actually has similar punishment as ISIS and nobody dears to speak against it. Raif Bandawi spoke against the "Sharia" government and supported secularism, now he is jailed for a long time, sentenced to 1000 lashes and fined one million Saudi Rial. His wife has defected to Canada along with their children.

It has also been reported that many of senior and important ISIS figures are from the former more secular Baath party of Iraq. A top general under Saddam Hussein's Iraq has been reportedly killed after a clash in Fallujah.

Start Of Another Yemeni Civil War

Bombs, bombs go away, come again when I have fled.

As the Yemeni goverments fall to Houthis "rebels", Saudi Arabia has led a coalition airstrike to neutralize the Houthis. The Saudis has also formed a coalition of many other gulf nations, Oman is the only one to have declared neutrality in this conflict.

The neutrality
One of the reason that Oman is neutral is because they are neither Shia or Sunni muslims, they are Ibadi muslims, and having a country that borders conflict ridden Yemen and Iran is not a good idea if Oman wants to continue with their neutrality. Just think of this, Oman is the Swiss of the middle east, you barely hear them when your read the news. Despite this, Oman maintains good diplomatic relations between the west, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The airstrike
When the Yemeni government in Sanaa falls to the Houthis, this sparked a reaction from Saudi Arabia where they are a Sunni majority (Houthis are Shia). They then began to the strike Houthis stronghold, but according to a report by The Guardians, the airstrike has also had its toll on civilian.

There has also been multiple speculations that the Houthis are backed by Iran, a country where Shia muslim is the majority. Despite having diplomatic relations to Saudi Arabia, their relations are not so good and Irans relations with the United States has been bitter since the 1979 revolution

The start of a bitter civil war
As the national government of Yemen loses hold of its territory and the expansions of AQAP, Houthis and potentially ISIS allies, the future of the country is at stake. There has also been a movement to seperate South Yemen against the rest of Yemen. During the cold war, Yemen was a divided state much like Germany.

The situation is so bad, that the Chinese has evacuated their and foreign citizens from Yemen to Djibuti with their naval ships.

The Cold War Never Bothered Us Anyway

Can you believe it, it has been one full year since Sochi olympics, back then the relations between EU and Russia was warm and cozy, and then the Crimea crisis occoured. The entire crisis has worsened relations to almost "cold war" level again. So where are we know?

Crimea has been annexed to Russia for some time now and the crisis on the east side of Ukraine is still ongoing. Of course, when it comes to guerilla warfare, the best kind of diplomacy is to deny any involvment as much and as long as possible. We all know that guerilla warfare is crazy cost effective and pose a real threat to even the best armed battalion.Afganistan guerilla warfare was no fun for both the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Big 5

The Minsk meeting where Putin, Merkel, Hollande, Luhashenko and Poroshenko met ended in a "cease fire". A cease fire is kind of like a temporary peace, you don't shoot me I don't shoot you, but as we know it... it gets broken and violated everytime... Except one time where this kind of agrement has worked since 1953. You guessed right, the Korean war is technically still an active conflict because neither parties has signed a formal peace treaty.

But can you believe it, the cold war ended in 1991, that was 24 years ago. Windows XP release date is closer to the dissolution of Soviet                                                        Union than it is to today. Anyways, I never got to experience any of                                                      this because I was born a little too early... but hey, still no nuclear                                                          war. I also apologize if I made you feel old.

Brutality To Sustain Stability And Peace

One conflict is finally gone
Oh, We've just created 1000s more.

Remember 2003? That year when Saddam Hussein's Iraq was toppled and replaced with a "democratic Iraq", guess what has happened since then. After the "brutal" dictator was toppled, the area is now more violent with different insurgensies that are currently on the run, one of the most infamous is... ISIS, think if Hussein has still in power, he'd shoot everyone that was a threat to Iraq.

Muammar Gadaffi

Not only was this done once... but twice. First in Iraq then Libya, where Gaddafi was killed after the Arab Spring came to his country. From one of the most prosperous nation in Africa, Libya is now full of insurgency and almost in complete anarchy.

From my point of view, the comedy movie "The Interview" is partially right in this situation, killing/removing a head of state will not fix anything. It is true that a dictator might be comitting grave human right violations, but should we just let it do whatever he wants?

On the other side, removing the dictator will also leave a big power vacuum within the goverment. The decision is big right here, forcibly   removing someone from power will also require the "emergency"         goverment to be as strong and stable as the previous.

1..2..3..4..5 Finally
South Korean Flag
Republic Of Korea

South Korea is probably the best example. After decades of Japanese occupation then the Korean War broke out, then some massive goverment problem after the war, it was solved with a military coup d'etat and then temporary putting a president (although he is technically a dictator with that much power) in power. It did not happen just one time, but FIVE TIMES before the South Korean goverment finally settled. It transformed the Republic of Korea from a country full of poverty into a global economic         power.

So the question is, Should the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad be removed from power? I mean after all, he did use chemical weapons on his own people, and that is a big nono according to the UN.
It is true that he has used chemical weapon, but is it really a good idea to leave a power vacuum in Syria?