Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Tofu Golem (tofugolem@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 10:53:49 JST Tofu Golem

   Of all the things Elon Musk has done, please do not forget this one.

   He deliberately chose not to end world hunger. Every person who died of hunger since then can be attributed to him. That is a mind-boggling number.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 16:19:01 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     @tofugolem @hyc That was a lie though which only emboldens his supporters as they will point this out. Please don't share this.
     
     I deliberately remember it was only covering a years worth of food. It didn't "solve" world hunger. There was no permanent solution.
     
     from WEF directly:
     
     > This would feed 42 million people for one year, and avert the risk of famine.
     
     https://www.wfp.org/stories/wfps-plan-support-42-million-people-brink-famine
   • Embed this notice
     Howard Chu @ Symas (hyc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 17:13:18 JST Howard Chu @ Symas

     in reply to

     • Jon Het.
     • Kg. Madee Ⅱ.

     @Jon_Kramer @kgMadee2 @tofugolem Aside - the total amount of energy consumed by humanity in the year 2017 was 160000TWh. https://explainingscience.org/2019/03/09/solar-energy/ We have quite a lot of headroom, if we continue to grow our facilities for capturing solar energy.

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 17:13:18 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     • Jon Het.
     • Kg. Madee Ⅱ.
     @hyc @Jon_Kramer @kgMadee2 @tofugolem I believe the amount of energy we're able to capture is actually increasing as a side effect of climate change as we are losing clouds. To my understanding this is a side effect of the air heating faster than the ocean
     
     https://archive.is/vA3sP
   • Embed this notice
     Jon Het. (jon_kramer@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 17:13:19 JST Jon Het.

     in reply to

     • Kg. Madee Ⅱ.

     @kgMadee2 @tofugolem "overpopulation is a racist myth"

     There may be a racist myth of overpopulation. But overpopulation is NOT a racist myth. When the resource we are discussing can rot, location of the resource is incredibly important. You can absolutly have to many people than there is food to feed them locally. That is the state whereby the human population rises to an extent exceeding the carrying capacity of the ecological setting. Or, overpopulation.

   • Embed this notice
     Howard Chu @ Symas (hyc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 17:13:19 JST Howard Chu @ Symas

     in reply to

     • Jon Het.
     • Kg. Madee Ⅱ.

     @Jon_Kramer @kgMadee2 @tofugolem At a basic level, food is chemical energy, and the ultimate source of that energy is sunlight, captured by photosynthesizing plants. The plants are either eaten directly by us or by other animals that we then eat.

     As such, given the total amount of energy the Earth receives from the Sun, it's possible to calculate the peak amount of people+animals the Earth can support. I haven't personally done this calculation, but I've seen rough estimates.

   • Embed this notice
     Howard Chu @ Symas (hyc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 17:13:19 JST Howard Chu @ Symas

     in reply to

     • Jon Het.
     • Kg. Madee Ⅱ.

     @Jon_Kramer @kgMadee2 @tofugolem The Earth receives about 173000TW of power from the Sun, so every hour is 173000TWh of energy. You have to allocate some of that to atmospheric absorption/weather etc., and leave some aside for mechanical/industrial needs, but you can eventually carve out a number devoted to sustaining plant and animal life. Including all the animals + plants we're familiar with today, the peak figure for humans is in the range of 40 billion.

   • Embed this notice
     Jon Het. (jon_kramer@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 17:13:21 JST Jon Het.

     in reply to

     @tofugolem I highly doubt 6 billion would end world hunger. I don't think 6 trillion could do it. Or 60 trillion.

     World hunger is ended by lowering populations, and growing food. And that food needs to be where people live.

     His comment and lack of actions could be considered heartless, but his words are true. 6 billion will not solve world hunger.

   • Embed this notice
     Kg. Madee Ⅱ. (kgmadee2@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Thursday, 20-Feb-2025 17:13:21 JST Kg. Madee Ⅱ.

     in reply to

     • Jon Het.

     @Jon_Kramer @tofugolem nah, overpopulation is a racist myth. North America & Europe use resources far out of proportion to our population. The majority of the world population could really do with a lift, and that would in no way be endangering the planet

   • Embed this notice
     Tofu Golem (tofugolem@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 21-Feb-2025 02:48:00 JST Tofu Golem

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     • feld

     @feld @hyc
     Thanks for the correction, but even so, this illustrates that there are many positive things those billionaires could be doing with that money, and they choose not to.

     At this point, they are wealthier than many countries. That kind of wealth concentration should not exist

   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Friday, 21-Feb-2025 02:48:00 JST feld

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     @tofugolem @hyc I'll admit that at the growth rate of the billionaire class' wealth they could probably indefinitely fund feeding the world but that's only if you can believe that we don't current have a super bubble in the economy that needs to massively deflate
   • Embed this notice
     lainy (lain@lain.com)'s status on Friday, 21-Feb-2025 02:48:55 JST lainy

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     • feld
     @feld @hyc @tofugolem how do you feed people with amazon shares
   • Embed this notice
     feld (feld@friedcheese.us)'s status on Friday, 21-Feb-2025 02:51:23 JST feld

     in reply to

     • lainy
     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     @lain @hyc @tofugolem They can eat paper right? We'll just print them out
     lainy likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     lainy (lain@lain.com)'s status on Friday, 21-Feb-2025 03:01:28 JST lainy

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     • feld
     @feld @hyc @tofugolem state mandated cellulase supplements incoming