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Showing posts from 2022

If We Ever Get Real Hungry …

 There have been warnings about getting enough food if the climate gets too hot or (a smaller chance) too cold.  How could there be enough beef for our McDonald’s big mac?  Easy, the larvae of black soldier ants make a great high-protein supplement for cattle feed.  The larvae can eat almost anything organic, and they grow phenomenally fast.  How much do they grow?  About 10,000-fold in 14 days.  That’s about like an 8-pound baby growing into a 40-ton whale. The ancient Greeks and Romans thought locusts (big grasshoppers) were a delicacy.  John the Baptist in The Bible lived on honey and locusts.  There are some Arab tribes that to this day eat … yes, locusts.  Robotics and fine mesh screens mean that various insects can be penned in, fed, and harvested like very small Herford cattle.  Many of them, such as grasshoppers, are herbivores; think of very small feed lots.  You might not like the idea of eating bugs.  T...

If You Think 2022 Is Hot, You Should Have Been There in 1936!

  There have been some big worries about spectacular 2022 heat waves in Europe and North America.   that started in July heat waves.   There has been worse in historic times.   The European heat and drought of 2003 was severe. The winter of 1935–1936 was cold and spectacularly snowy in many parts of the United States.   Many thought it might be the end of the 1930s Dust Bowl of drought, heat, and blowing top soil.   That was not to be.   The winter and early spring precipitation stopped, and temperatures rose into a massive sustained heat wave that made 1936 the hottest year of the 1900s and the worst year of the Dust Bowl.   It is still significantly hotter than any other year with recorded data before, after, and including 2022.   Furthermore, there were much warmer times before thermometers and records of the daily thermometer readings.   There are fuzzier temperature periods of warming and cooling inferred from historical recor...