Posts made by HolKann

That’s true, one single event can not be generalized for a whole branch of farming…
How many do you need?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2551-hormone-food-scandal-rocks-europe.html
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2007-06-04-petfood-scandal_N.htm
http://www.expat.ru/forum/health-news/45776-donut-chain-latest-string-japan-food-scandals.html
http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/ng.asp?id=53590-water-injected-meat
http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2006/04/mineral-depleted-food-scandal.html
http://www.japaneconomynews.com/2007/10/31/yet-another-domestic-food-scandal-bush-to-lobby-for-us-beef/
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0140673602110166
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/2007/10/09/125959/China-may.htm
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/04/05/haiti-gedimex-and-the-expired-food-scandal/
http://givingupcontrol.wordpress.com/2007/07/06/more-fallout-from-the-chinese-food-scandals-heavy-metals-in-our-food/

from about 11700 hits for ’ “food scandal” -oil -pet -sex ’ on google. Not accounting those that didn’t reach the papers. Nor the routine (!) legal (!) use of antibiotics as growth stimulator in animals, resulting in harder to cure diseases.

And strange as it might be, I do not think I’ll agree that conventional farming always is less expensive than organic agriculture. (because of the ecological debt we’ll sooner or later have to pay) But if one can afford it, why not buy food which you know is better both for you and for the rest of the world?

You know, I live in Belgium, and the good thing about Belgium is we’ve got a lot of scandals. Which means, a lot of scandals that make it to the newspapers. I’m pretty sure we’re not having an above average of scandals, we’re having an above average of scandals that reaches the news. Now what does this have to do with organic food? Well, a couple of years ago, some people noticed the dioxine-levels in a lot of mega-produced chickens were too high (causing a significant increase in the cancer risk for anyone consuming those chickens). How did this happen? Producers of livestock foods for conventional agriculture mixed highly toxic motor oil (!!!) (which should have been processed in specialized recycling factories) in their foods, and thus the chickens who ate this food became “toxic” too. And those chickens should not have been sold to consumers. Which, ofcourse didn’t happen. Nowadays Belgium is one of the countries with the highest food standards and most rigurous food control procedures. Nonetheless, I believe if people don’t want to spend enough money to their food, their food will always be crap (or motor oil) (especially outside Belgium).
I’m convinced that the chances of organic food containing motor oil is waaaaay smaller than the chances conventional food containing motor oil. Now if you still think your cheap food is as good as the companies want you to believe, go ahead, though I wouldn’t really like to eat motor oil…

Well, if it could, it would be great to do only organic agriculture, but alas, it’s not possible (yet  :wink: )

Owkey, since I didn’t know exact numbers, I checked Wiki: estimates for the yields of organic agriculture in respect to conventional agriculture range from 95-100% to 90% (in undeveloped countries it’s more like 130%). This is not “a lot less”, this is a bit less. However, there are studies stating organic harvests only get to 50%, and to be honest, I don’t know who’s right. I do know it can’t be worse for the environment than conventional agriculture.

But I agree, prices are quite high compared to conventional agriculture. And there are quite a lot of people who simply can’t afford it. But no one can make better quality without raising prices, that’s just the way it works… Côte d’Or is more expensive than your local store’s chocolate, yet I don’t hear anyone complaining, because it’s obvious Côte d’Or is better quality. Ow, and those prices aren’t higher because there is lower yield per acre, but rather lower yield per hour of work spend on the acre. So more people are needed to produce organic food, resulting in higher prices.

Aw well, if I won’t buy an expensive car, leaves enough money for decent food  :-)

Woot, I’m learning! Didn’t know the EU sponsoring to keep production low part, apology there.
But aren’t they still sponsoring to keep prices low too?

@Complex:

• improve organic agriculture

Yeah, well, that has been done for 5000 years now, so there is no real possibility to further enhance the mediocre harvests (when compared to “conventional” agriculture) of organic farming.

• eat less meat

Nice slogan, but not really an option, as lots of people just WANT to eat meat (me included). Systems and ideas that don’t work because “the people don’t get it right” are bad systems and ideas. Those things have to work with the people that are around, else they are useless systems and ideas.

I don’t think any of the Egyptians/Romans/Ancient Chinese/Middle-Agers/Aztecs/Conquistadores/Romantici/Communists/… ever even had the faintest idea of what the word organic agriculture meant. Besides, why could geneticaly modifying crops not help organic agriculture? That’s not something ever tried the past 5000 yrs… And how about mass production of organic food, ever tried the passed 5000 years? And organic fertilizer (“compost” in my language, it’s not exactly a real fertilizer…)? And the growing of natural enemies of harvest reducing bugs, ever seen a viking try this?
(I’m getting the impression your definition of organic is different of mine. The way I see it: organic means without chemicals damaging the environment, with as little pollution as possible)

As for the “eat no meat”: It’s possible to make people eat less meat. Just raise the prices. Which is happening right now :-D Tbh, I’m not a vegetarian, but I don’t HAVE TO get my portion of meat every day. And I seldomly eat more than about 200 grams (most humans have fysically enough with less than 100 grams). I don’t get why everybody’s going “Don’t Touch My Meat Or I Kill Ya!”. (Un)Fortunately, if the need arises to consume less meat, we won’t have to choose: the food prices will do the choosing in our stead…
Here’s the core of the problem: meat is a luxury people have gotten used to.

@Smacktard: I completely agree with you, because we share the same opinion, differently formulated. (“biofuels are bad because they are done wrong” vs “when done right, biofuels are good”).

• eat less meat
• improve organic agriculture

Owkey, your posts seem quite reasonable, but I’m pro organic :D So I also doubt whether it produces only 50% of the conventional agriculture, and I’d like to point out the environment-friendlyness, eliminating the need to burn down forests because conventional agriculture poverished the land. I believe the ideal of mass organic production is reachable.

As for the benefits of global warming: I know they exist, but I also know that humanity has adapted to this climate, and that a rise of the sea-level with only a few metres would cause 1/2 of the population to find an new home. I do agree we aren’t sure why this is happening, but our best bet is CO2. And the problem is: most of the countries that are going to have a badder (err, as in less good) climate don’t have the means or the political stability to adapt to a situation the richer countries probably created (I don’t think that a lot of subsaharan guys have got as much influence on the world’s climate as a lot of supermexican guys).

Also, predicting the exact weather the next couple of weeks is MUCH more difficult than predicting the average temperature of a region for the next year. For the first one, you have too many variables influencing things, for the last one, you just look at the average of the last x years and know it will be about the same. The problem is, that average is rising…

@Complex:

The problem with food is the low investment into agriculture during the last decades. Because the USA and Europe have always had a surplus of food, they even spent lots of money (in Europe, not so sure about USA) to reduce agricultural production to keep the prices high.

No, a bit wrong, in Europe it’s the other way around. After the war, Europe’s countries decided they should be self-sufficient, they didn’t want to rely on foreign policies for their most basic need: food. That’s why the governments started sponsoring agriculture, leading to the cheap surplus they have today. It’s not investing to keep the prices high, but investing to keep the prices low. Hell, they even exported to Africa, and the prices of European food were lower there than the price of food produced by the local farmer, who as a result couldn’t climb out of the pit colonialism had left because he couldn’t sell his food to his subsaharan palls. Shuck, now I’ve really dragged everything into this. Just note that Europe should stop sponsoring it’s agriculture (especially France, ces imbécils!).

Err, do you guys get how biofuels work? The only pollution coming out of them is by producing them, not using them. If it would cost us nothing to produce, it would be the ultimate recoverable energy source (except for the “less room for food”-part). CO2 isn’t produced by burning biofuels. As it isn’t “produced” by burning fossile fuels. This seems counter-intuitive, but let me explain it:

-warning long post without summary, but I did my best to keep it readable-

An easy-to-use form of energy is fuels (either fossile or bio). These fuels are carbohydrates, connections of carbon and hydrogen (C and H). These are the connections, when burned with oxygen (O2), that supply us with energy, resulting in carbo-oxydes (dunnow the right English word) (like CO2) and hydro-oxydes (like water: H2O).

How did these fuels develop? Both fossile and bio developed the same way: Plants take CO2 from the air, H2O from the ground and energy from the sun’s light. They combine these elements to form the C and H connections we use. As you can see, the circle is round: CO2 is removed from air by growing plants, CO2 gets back to air by humanity burning plants. (Solar) Energy is captured by plants, energy is used by humanity. And as everyone knows, both fossile and biofuels are made of plants.

So burning both fossile and bio fuels is like putting CO2 back where it belongs: in the air, ready for new plants to grow. Why is burning fossile (bio: see later) fuels bad for our environment then? Because it has to do with the time-scale: all the CO2 in fossile fuels is gathered over millions of years, and didn’t get back in the atmosphere. The atmosphere found a balance of it’s own, not needing the CO2 from all these plants. Now we are burning all these plants (under the form of oil), and putting this incredible amount of CO2 back in the atmosphere, with global warming as a result. Which ofcourse is bad  :-(

Why is burning biofuels not bad (in theory)? Because it takes the CO2 we have in our atmosphere TODAY (as opposed to fossile fuels containing CO2 from millions of years ago) to grow these fuels. So all of the CO2 produced by burning biofuels, was removed from our atmosphere whilst growing biofuels. So the net gain of CO2 in our atmosphere by growing and burning biofuels is 0 seen on a timescale of a couple of months! It doesn’t matter how much CO2 biofuels produce when burned, because that’s also the amount they took from the atmosphere whilst being produced some months before. Which clearly is not bad  :-)

This is why some years ago governments started supporting biofuels: it is better for the environment when done right. Nowadays, problems have become clear: extra high food prices, burning of rainforests to make way for biofuelcrops, too much energy invested in growing the biofuelcrops, extra chemicals needed to grow the crops etc. Nonetheless, there are ways to make good use of biofuels bypassing most of these problems, so don’t give biofuels the bad name it doesn’t deserve. But as with all things, theory is only the first step towards reality…

@Smacktard:

There’s no doubt that current biofuels are more pollutive, even if the fuel itself is LESS pollutive, because WE have to make the biofuels. In the case of oil, nature’s already done the dirty work for us, over millions of years. All we need to do is get it out of the ground, which is ridiculously easy to do in the Middle East.

I’m sorry, but current biofuels are less pollutive (in terms of CO2) when done right (this is when grown in places with enough sun/water/…, where no forests needed to be burned down, and when the resulting fuels aren’t transported to the other end of the world. Unfortunately, these are also the ideal circumstances to grow food…).

Holland’s gonna win, but they’re not in the list…

And now the countries that are furthest (fartest sounds a bit silly, dunnow the right word) away from the States.
Iran ftw! Ow and North-Korea ofcourse.

But I don’t get the question, the purpose of the question, nor why Poland (coughrocketshieldcough) isn’t in the list…

“biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials incur little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages”
-University of Minnesota

Ofcourse, burning down forests is not a good idea, but produced well, biofuels are good for the environment. (unfortunately, the “produced well” part is a bit tricky :roll: )

On the chart below: I think it does take into account the energy costs that go into creating/extracting biofuels/oils. What else would it take into account? Not the net production of CO2 from burning the biofuel, because that is 0. (Owkey, quick explanation: CO2 in air = bad, CO2 in soil = good. Plants take CO2 from air and put them in soil = good. Burning fuels takes CO2 from soil and puts them in air = bad. Fossil fuels do only the latter = bad. Biofuels do both = good + bad = 0. )
But I do think the data doesn’t take into account burned forests unfortunately, nor the impact of other chemical elements (also generated by producing regular food) :(

@Cmdr:

And the price of oil is all speculation.  People “think” the market is bad because the media’s been telling us the market is “bad” for the past decade.  As soon as people realize they were lied too, oil prices (and gold and all the other commodities which are currently insanely too high in value to be supported) will plummet in a Commodity Bubble Burst.
…
I say we’ll see a significant commodity bubble burst in 2009-2010.   By significant I’m talking a “correction” market of 20% drop on the top end, up to about a “bear” market of 30-40%.

note: this is quite a lengthy post, summary in the last alinea…

There’s a difference between gold and oil: we need oil, but we don’t need gold (we just like to have it). Imagine tomorrow it would become clear our stocks of food (=product we need) is limited: there won’t be more food EVER. What would happen with the food prices, though there’s enough food to satisfy demands for 40 years? Would they stay the same for about 39 years and then rise insanely, causing wars etc? Or would they, since everyone knows for sure the food will be gone in 40 years, start raising today? (et en plus those other factors mentioned: rapidly growing demand in other countries, food starting to get more difficult to produce…) (note to reader: this is going about oil, not food, because the two things are a bit mixed up in this thread)

And you blame the media, like the american media has anything to do with oil prices in Russia, Iran or the Emirates…

It is true the media can make people believe things that aren’t true, but it has zip influence on the oil market, because people have zip influence on the oil market. The oil market is governed by companies and governments, not consumers. Consumers have to follow the price being given, because they need the oil!

Imagine you’re an oil company. Why would you lower your prices? If you do, everyone will buy your oil, your fields will be depleted in no time, and sure, you’re gonna be rich. But you could have been even richer if you just sold all your oil at the same price as the rest of the world. There’s no worry the oil will grow bad or won’t be bought in the near future, so why lower prices? And there’s no way of producing more, so no other company can flood the market with cheap oil without benefitting you in the long run (there will be less oil for the future, so you can make even more profit then).
If I had the capacity to store a lot of oil for a lot of years, I would immediately do it. The only thing that’s keeping oil prices in check for the moment are alternatives like solar energy or hydrogen fuel, but those are no real competitors to oil in the near future, and it’s not sure in 40 years those techniques will be adequately developed to replace oil. And since those alternatives are no real competitors yet and since it’s not sure they will be on time, the “keeping in check”-part is not that great, as reflected in the oil prices…

Summary: Oil is our only option for the moment, and whatever the price wil be, we will pay it because we need it. This together with the fact that the oil is limited and there are no real alternatives for oil, makes me believe oil companies have no reason to lower the prices significantly in the next few years. As you can see, I don’t believe the media has anything to do with high oil prices.

PS (oil price estimated in €, because the weak $ is making things worse for you guys at the moment)

Before this is going to get closed again: there is nothing wrong with talking about prices: it’s ECONOMICS not politics. As for the reasons why food prices are so high:
1. Bigger demand for food from China, India, Brazil  and other fastly developing countries
2. Speculation
3. Bad crops/harvest (don’t know what the exact term is in English)
4. High oil prices
5. As Jen said, growing use of fertile ground for organic fuel production instead of food production
6. Bigger demand for meat from China, India, Brazil and other fastly developing countries (1 kg of meat needs an equivalent of 5 kg of corn)
7. The refusal of the EU to utilize genetically modified organisms

And if you look on Wikipedia, you’ll find some more I guess ;)

As for the oil prices:
1. Bigger demand from China, India, Brazil and other fastly developing countries
2. Awareness of the fact that oil is finite (we use more oil nowadays than we find new oil on this planet, and the new oil is far more difficult to utilize)
3. Speculation
4. Most oil comes from unstable countries, which isn’t good for a steady supply, which isn’t good for a stable/low price

As to why organic fuels are not that bad:
1. They make a country less dependent on foreign (often unstable) countries/policies for its energy demand
2. It’s a bit better for the environment to use organic fuels instead of fossil fuels

Again, Wikipedia is the key ;)

There’s seldomly only one explanation as to why things are this way or that way. Don’t only blame organic fuels for high food prices. The moment people decided organic fuels were a good idea, it actually WAS a good idea, see the reasons above. Organic fuels on their own wouldn’t have lifted prices this much. If all those other things didn’t happen at about the same time as the growing production of organic fuels, the food prices would have barely moved, and organic fuels would have been an answer to some problems facing some countries today. Unfortunately, those things did happen, and a new problem was presented, which requires the opposite (producing more food, and thus less organic fuels).

In the long run however, the only solution (with 6*10^9 + people on this limited planet) is eating less meat and consuming less oil/energy. Higher prices for these products are one way of accomplishing this…

WTF a Russian carrier??
(referring to that 2nd link)
personally, I don’t believ in BB’s either, only use the ones I got on the start, they’re too expensive. Make them 22 IPC’s and I’d start considering, Make them 20 and I’d start purchasing them.

You know you’re asking to calculate something complex with simple methods. If you want a safety margin between 1 and 10%, you’ll need a calculator, there’s no other way; there are too many variables to make a simple rule with such precision.
Btw, the formula was indeed for a ±40% margin against one attacker. For double attackers: guess what you’ll have left after the first attack and detract that from the formula. If you want to be safer, throw in more inf, it’s the only simple way. Nobody can tell you how many you would need exactly, so just throw in as many as you think needed +1. That one inf won’t make or break the game.

I confirm that  8-)

as much inf as this easy formula: # defending inf = attacking land units + attacking air units + BB attacks + 1/2/3, depending on how safe you wanna play), complemented by an AA ofcourse. Every 2 ftr in defense allow you to reduce the inf stack by roughly 3.

Hmm, oh well, allright. It’s not LL, but it’s no big deal either.

@Crazy:

What was it the TBM pilot radioed back to his carrier air wing commander as they found the Japanese Imperial Carriers just north of Midway Island? Oh ya, " What good Luck!" " We caught them with their decks full!"

Hmm, nobody in Belgium thinks the loss of fort Eben-Emael was bad luck. for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Eben-Emael

the point is: catching your enemy of guard is not a matter of luck. It’s a matter of stupid enemies and smart planning.

First is, ofcourse, number of units/hits one can take. Have you got a lot more, you’re gonna win. A lot less, you’re gonna loose. If more or less even, proceed to second.
Second, attacking power, number of attack values counted together. Have you got a lot more, you’re gonna win. A lot less, you’re gonna loose. If more or less even, proceed to third.
Third, spreading of attacking power (or: amount of cannon fodder, number of units with little attacking power). Have you got a lot more, you’re gonna win. A lot less, you’re gonna loose. If more or less even, it depends on factors outside the battle itself.
IPC loss: If you’re gonna win, you’re mostly gonna win IPC. If you’re gonna loose, you’re most of the time gonna loose IPC. More detailed IPC information depends on the dice I guess. Note that in ADS games, much depends on the dice, so if you want to be sure you’re gonna win, replace ‘a lot more’ by ‘almost double’.

@Cmdr:

Honestly, I almost never use tech.  I was only including it if you wanted it. :P

Me neither, but if it were that cheap, I would seriously consider heavy bombers for the axis. I suggest we take the tech rules from from the link I gave, and let’s both just almost never use it. Ow yeah, heavy bombers just makes sbr 4-5 instead of 3-4, all right? Let’s start the challenge then  :evil:

(for the record: sbr=3-4, AA takes 2-3. AA rolls apart for ftr and bmr as in normal LL battles. sbr with hb=4-5. rest is as in http://www.daak.de/aarll/aarllregel.php?sprache=e)

@Crazy:

we all like to feel like the dice are not our friends/ or are unrealisticly for us from time to time.

Yep, this is the difference between ADS and LL… I’d go for LL any day  :wink: