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Engineered Shortages

Ascalon said:
Eh? One proceeds from the now overwhelming body of evidence of anthropomorphic climate change.
If you doubt that, just look at the recent documentary about the big oil. Just like big tobacco before, if they did not think the science, much of it their own, was true, why have they spent 50+ years trying to undermine it, and spending as much on their disinformation and obfuscation campaigns as they have done on marketing? As with so much, follow the money.

As for the people of Sri Lanka, I think the issue there is far more complex than organic food production. I think decades of corrupt and self-serving governments have much to do with the appalling vista.
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Evidence from computer models. Which aren't science.

Geological evidence is completely opposed to the anthropomorphic climate change theory, and in fact CO2 in the atmosphere is at an historically and unacceptably low level which is the principle reason the deserts are expanding. But this is not the right place for this discussion. This is about political entities deliberately causing shortages.
 
Cochise said:
Evidence from computer models. Which aren't science.

Geological evidence is completely opposed to the anthropomorphic climate change theory, and in fact CO2 in the atmosphere is at an historically and unacceptably low level which is the principle reason the deserts are expanding. But this is not the right place for this discussion. This is about political entities deliberately causing shortages.
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Agreed, this is not the place, nor the discussion at hand.
 
@Mythopoeika, in part response to your OP, the first video with someone yakking about PM Justin Trudeau is incorrect. I did not know that his government (not unilateral decision) placed a 35% tariff on fertilizer in early spring as an apparently misguided attempt to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/general-tariff-inflation-food-fertilizer-prices-1.6528857

The article states that about 85-90% of nitrogen fertilizer for Eastern Canada is supplied by Russia. Canada is the only country who made this move to put a tariff on it. Other countries who use the fertilizer did not. No intent to create scarcity, but a poorly thought out decision. Bean Growers and other farming groups in Canada are speaking out about this.
 
brownmane said:
@Mythopoeika, in part response to your OP, the first video with someone yakking about PM Justin Trudeau is incorrect. I did not know that his government (not unilateral decision) placed a 35% tariff on fertilizer in early spring as an apparently misguided attempt to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/general-tariff-inflation-food-fertilizer-prices-1.6528857

The article states that about 85-90% of nitrogen fertilizer for Eastern Canada is supplied by Russia. Canada is the only country who made this move to put a tariff on it. Other countries who use the fertilizer did not. No intent to create scarcity, but a poorly thought out decision. Bean Growers and other farming groups in Canada are speaking out about this.
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OK, thanks for clarifying.
Odd move, though. To do that without finding an alternative supply.
 
This man is a Canadian farmer. What does he have to say?

 
maximus otter said:
All interesting, particularly in view of @Yithian ‘s recently-posted infographic showing that, since their invention in 1909, synthetic fertilisers have saved 2.7 billion human lives.

maximus otter
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Well spotted! It does rather indicate that removing fertiliser use may also remove a lot of people.
Maybe that's the idea.
 
Mythopoeika said:
This man is a Canadian farmer. What does he have to say?

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So, not that I know specifically since I've not watched this person's videos, but here we are talking (not him, but us) about two different issues. The first is your initial video posted is not correct and I explained the tariffs applied to the fertilizer supplied from Russia.

This recent video is referring to possible emissions goals that the Canadian federal government has announced. And what the person is talking about is sustainable farming practises.

I agree with much of his comments, but know nothing about specific carbon neutral, or whatever it's called, goals our federal government has made for specific things. This is not referencing "engineered shortages".

So for crop farmers, they are having to deal with two different types of legislation that are currently affecting the cost of farming. The farmers are probably already doing what they need to do re: carbon emissions. I won't say anything more about govt specifically as it will be getting into the political sphere.

I don't believe the original video is someone who really knows what is going on regarding fertilizer supply in Canada. The recent one, I do believe that it is a Canadian farmer addressing issues he is experiencing, but they are not supply issues. He also knows what he is talking about regarding sustainable farming practises.

I'm just showing how I see the two videos you've posted, regarding Canada, as different issues.
 
Herr Cloaca said:
Erm, they have. It's called LED.
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If you were to dangle a single white LED in free air and run it off a 2V battery (a CR2302 works well) it would probably last for a very very long time...

But while they are relatively high reliability, they are very susceptible to 'spikes' of high voltage and I suspect the issue with the non-longevity of LED domestic bulbs are partly down to this and partly to heat issues.

LED's, especially high power ones, kick out a surprising amount of heat especially in clusters, and removing this from the substrate so that reliability isn't directly impacted is not without challenges (which cost money).

All semiconductors (and electronics in general) get less reliable as they warm up....

I'd be entirely unsurprised if there was a direct link between (for the same bulb size) reliability and wattage. Lower wattage lasting longer.

hunck said:
LEDs typically run on 3 volts so you could in theory light your house with them but you’d need to install a lighting circuit stepped down from the mains voltage.
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It's typically 2-2.2Vdc for red-green and 3-3.3 for blue, in the forward direction, they are 'one way valves' for current. 'White' LEDs are either a high brightness blue with a phosphor applied as a coating to the (plastic resin) lens to create a white-ish light, although clusters of different colours have been used to make 'white-ish' LEDs in the past.

Even a non-isolating power supply for such is not going to be amazingly efficient - such converters are improving (I read a data sheet for a buck-regulator the other day that claimed 98% efficiency for conversion).

That said, going from 230Vac to 3VDC will lose significant energy and this manifests as heat...see above. One might string such LEDs in a series to increase the voltage needs to power them (so say 8 in series would require 24V DC) which would improve efficiency, but only one failed LED would take out the whole string.

In principle one might connect white LEDs pairs (back to back) in a string of about 80 such pairs and connect them direct to 230Vac (probably hard/expensive to make that safe). Even so, mains voltage spikes would sooner of later kill a diode (every thunderstorm for example) it's pair would fail and even if they atypically failed short-circuit (generally LED's fail open circuit) circuit, the extra voltage would get dissipated over the remaining LEDs and another would inevitable fail and the failure would cascade...

One cool LED = great.

Lots of bundled together LEDS running of 230Vac rammed into a small glass container = ya cannae break the laws of physics.
 
More about why farmers are being stamped on/forced off the land:

 
I'll just park this here:

 
Mythopoeika said:
I (and many others) have noticed that governments of multiple countries have been trying to deliberately engineer shortages of power, fuel and even food.
What is the long-term endgame of this? What is the desired result? Some people have noticed that Bill Gates and other super-wealthy individuals have been buying farmland after the farmers have been forced out. Bill Gates now owns more farmland than anybody else, worldwide...
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Dr Sheila Cassidy, who was imprisoned and tortured by the Pinochet regime in Chile after the coup, wrote an autobiography of living and working there under Allende and then under Pinochet. She observed that it was clear that a concerted attempt was being made to destabilise Allende's government from several fronts, and it was noticeable in the last couple of months before the coup, barely anything was reaching shop and supermarket shelves. Whispers were being put out that this was down to the economic mis-management and corruption of a left-wing government.

Come the coup, carried out by Army officers who wanted to restore public order in Chile.

Within days, all the missing foodstuffs were flowing back onto supermarket shelves. Sheila Cassidy asked around. Apparently it had all been stockpiled in warehouses in advance of this day and had been deliberately hoarded, to make it look as if the Allende government was being criminally incompetent. The moment a government had imposed itself that was to the liking of the people hoarding the food - it was released. And with the end of Allende's price caps, it shot up in price. Sheila thought about this, and reasoned that the only way the shelves could have been restocked so quickly was if the stuff was still being made, still being packed, still being imported, and had been all along - but had been diverted to hoards and not to the shops.
 
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Another video from McCoy-Ward about Dutch farmers being forced out:

 
If you want to make something more expensive first make it scarce you can then charge what ever you want and people will pay it.
 
RaM said:
If you want to make something more expensive first make it scarce you can then charge what ever you want and people will pay it.
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Ah, we artists do this with limited edition prints taken from our original paintings (only 20 available!). I've always found it to be quite cynical, but we are small fry at the end of the day.
The problem with you tube is...we can find anything that will confirm our bias. Tricky.
 
Another example. Deliberately restricting the meat supply, creating shortages and making the desperate people agree to anything:
It's weird.
 
Perhaps you should think about becoming vegetarian then?

Meanwhile, I look at it this way. Why is murder illegal? And why has it not stopped murder happening? Do you want me to tell you?


Because murder adversely affects property ownership.
 
Tanglebones said:
Perhaps you should think about becoming vegetarian then?
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No.
Tanglebones said:
Meanwhile, I look at it this way. Why is murder illegal? And why has it not stopped murder happening? Do you want me to tell you?
Because murder adversely affects property ownership.
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Not sure what it is you're saying.
 
Murder is illegal because it stops you from thinking you can do it to gain property. Sod all to do with 'Thou shalt not kill'. It has no moral value whatsoever, unless you believe in an afterlife in which you will be held to account.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Another example. Deliberately restricting the meat supply, creating shortages and making the desperate people agree to anything:
It's weird.
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Okay - he finally lost me when he suggests that the fact that the fires were 'under investigation' was a sign of conspiracy: All property fires are investigated.

He sees nothing worth commenting on in the fact that 18 000 cattle were concentrated in a ridiculously small geographical area - but sees conspiracy in an industrial fire.

Sorry, but this is just the same paranoid nonsense that flares up any time anyone wants to address issues that patently obviously need to be addressed, but the solutions to which might just slightly inconvenience the target audience.

Here's the real conspiracy:

There are no federal regulations protecting animals from the fires and only a few states, Texas not among them, have adopted fire protection codes for such buildings, according to an AWI statement.

Around 6.5 million farm animals have died in such fires in the last decade, most of them poultry.
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Source.
Source.
Source.

Six and a half million animals have died - not because of any sinister anti-meat agenda - but because a significantly regulation shy proportion of the electorate and their government representatives don't give a shit as long as they get their Turkey Twizzlers and beef roast. The fires happen - not because of any sinister anti-meat agenda - but because not enough people who could do something about them give a shit about stopping them happening.

Deliberately restricting the meat supply, creating shortages and making the desperate people agree to anything
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Yes, access to plastic bags in supermarkets was deliberately restricted in order to force people not to use and throw away billions of plastic bags, requiring the production of billions more plastic bags. There's actually nothing wrong - per se - with the mechanism involved. But, besides, the only people setting fire to animals are those processing them, and, in the long run, those who consume them without caring how they are processed.

Incidentally, I'm a meat eater - and probably always will be. I eat less meat than I used to, because it's easy to eat less meat than I used to.
 
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Tanglebones said:
Murder is illegal because it stops you from thinking you can do it to gain property. Sod all to do with 'Thou shalt not kill'. It has no moral value whatsoever, unless you believe in an afterlife in which you will be held to account.
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Still not sure of what you're saying. Are you referring to something in the last video I posted?
Or are you referring to meat-eating as murder?
 
Surely the main reason murder is illegal (and most people agree that it should be) is because we, ourselves don't want to be murdered?
 
Why are we talking about murder? I'm going to have to re-watch that video.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Still not sure of what you're saying. Are you referring to something in the last video I posted?
Or are you referring to meat-eating as murder?
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Put simply, I believe that all law, in this present property worshipping system that we live under, is fundamentally there to protect property. Not only that, but the right to inherit property as well.

I'd love to discuss this, but I reckon that Stu, Yith and Gordon would come down very heavily. So I'll bow out here.
 
Another weirdness. Military police deployed in China to stop farmers growing crops they didn't approve:


I mean, heck, they are just growing food... but somehow that's wrong?
The stupids are definitely in charge now.
 
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