Really Japan? REALLY?????

[Penguin]

See Rule #4

[gyrene81]

See Rule #4

[F22RaptorDude]

See Rule #4

[Penguin]

penguin i assure you i am in now way playing devil's advocate, you have done here in this discussion what you have repeatedly done in other discussions, spout b.s. as if you know what you're talking about when it's all clearly misquoted wikipedia reference.
i read the entire article including the reference on desertification. you are now stating overgrazing of the land merely "contributed" to the dust bowl, when your first reference to the dust bowl very specifically stated...

when the text you quoted very plain terms states...
nowhere does it state that overgrazing (40 years before the dust bowl event) even "contributed" to the dust bowl event, either in the quoted sentence nor before or after.  and a more prolonged drought would indeed have turned the source areas of the dustbowl into desert as there would not have been enough preciptation to put better farming practices into place. if that isn't clear enough, then try reading it again in it's full context.

don't make me dig up every instance you made that claim, because i will.

nowhere have i put words into your mouth, you specifically stated...

then you decided that this statement is correct...
according to your own referenced chart, the "average" acidity of acid rain as researched over several decades, can be 10 to 1,000 times more acidic than basic rain water with a ph of 5.7, and it depends on the area where the preciptation is being measured. if you used more resources, you would have seen that. like i said in my previous response, there is no such thing as "pure water". ph levels of water around the globe vary greatly, therefore the term "pure water" is simply water without any liquid or solid additives, which doesn't truly exist. you would have been better off using "treated tap water" with an average ph of 7 as the base line.



you tend to garner bits and pieces of information then make generalized statements as fact, and that is what gets you into trouble. your entire series of diatribe in this discussion has been done in that manner. and when someone corrects you and you somehow realize the error, you ignore it and make another erroneous generalized statement.

How have I misquoted?  You keep claiming that, but I don't see any evidence of it.

You are right, I read deeper into the article and changed my position.  I cede that point.  I was mistaken.

Before I launch another spiel, what exactly are we debating at this point?

-Penguin

[gyrene81]

How have I misquoted?  You keep claiming that, but I don't see any evidence of it.

you're kidding right?

You are right, I read deeper into the article and changed my position.  I cede that point.  I was mistaken.

if any of this is true, then you indeed misquoted. particularly regarding the dust bowl era. or are you still trying to maintain that overgrazing caused the dust bowl and desertification? or that fish or even sea life cannot live and breed in acidic water? or that raw highly polluted sewage is indiscriminantly being dumped across the planet?

Before I launch another spiel, what exactly are we debating at this point?

-Penguin

eating recycled poop combined with soy beans. again, not a sustainable food source due to many factors. nutritive value marginal as the soy beans it is mixed with has a higher nutritional value alone.

[Penguin]

I am not attempting to maintain that overgrazing caused the dustbowl.  I am maintaining that it had a part in it.

I can't find where I said that fish eggs will not hatch below 5 pH, nor can I find it on Wikipedia.  I'm not denying that I said it, but I can't find it.

Back to the main point:

Feces actually contain around 50% of the original energy*, so using them to augment food or to grow artificial meat would be a vast improvement in efficiency that would not require any new farmland.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feces#Ecology

-Penguin

[Plawranc]

OK.

IF. We find a medium of refining artificial meat to such a degree that it becomes tenable as a infinite food source as derived from Feces.. it will be revolutionary and in fact ESSENTIAL, if we are to ever have long range sustained space flight or sustain the population of Earth for an exceedingly long duration.

However. The scientific discussion that has followed this topic is completely irrelevant up to now as it has no bearing on the actual argument that was started... which was: COULD this become tenable?

Now, the two answers available are either yes... or no..

Taking all factors into account:

The amount of crap needed to feed a third world country for a day would be along the lines of say.... hmmm.... 4756 Krusty's? In short ALOT. Now to do such a thing with the technology we possess now.. we would need a "CRAPLOAD" (see what I did there  ) of both money and equipment. As well as technicians and scientists to operate and continuously develop the tech and methods of the process. Now if you were to assign one of these operations to every sewerage farm on planet earth, and build even more in areas which do not possess adequate drainage and STILL MORE scientists and technicians needed to be both trained and educated up to Modern Standards to operate. Your talking QUINTILLIONS! of dollars which we simply do not have. The reform needed would be so drastic it would take both a 1 world government and a nationalist abolition of free choice and currency to achieve.

To speak from the other side however, theoretically and scientifically it is not only possible but in fact essential to have this technology for the very reason penguin pointed it out. We cannot sustain life on earth or long range spaceflight without a renewable source of food... and of course both of those things, SF and Sustainabliity are the two things we need to ensure survival for any long duration.

In short. Both sides have argued a pointless excercise... this technology has to advance to the extent where this can be a simple machine in the home. When this happens. It should be installed on a large scale.. and inherently solve food and feces... Then we move planets.. to several in fact. There goes over population. It is necessary to do that soon... otherwise our race will perish..

Ok Rant Over.

[gyrene81]

I am not attempting to maintain that overgrazing caused the dustbowl.  I am maintaining that it had a part in it.

<sigh> still wrong. consider if you will, that your theory based on what you believe you read in that wikipedia article does not factor on one thing. that prior to the rapid westward migration of european settlers, north american bison numbering in the estimated millions roamed the great plains area for millenia, and even their migratory grazing habits had no more effect than the grazing of domestic animals in the same area by the time the effects of poor farming practices and a severe drought created the dust bowl effects. now had massive herds of bison or domestic animals been present at the time the dust bowl event occurred, then it might be safe to assume their presence had some contributing factor, but that was not the case.

I can't find where I said that fish eggs will not hatch below 5 pH, nor can I find it on Wikipedia.  I'm not denying that I said it, but I can't find it.

i can't say i'm surprised...

Unpolluted rain has a pH of 5.7, because of volcanic eruptions and other releases of CO₂.  However, the acid rain you hear about is many hundreds of times that level.  Below 5 pH, fish eggs will not hatch, and even lower levels will kill adult fish.
-Penguin

Back to the main point:

Feces actually contain around 50% of the original energy*, so using them to augment food or to grow artificial meat would be a vast improvement in efficiency that would not require any new farmland.
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feces#Ecology

-Penguin

once again, reading into the facts and coming up with dr. seuss science.

After an animal has digested eaten material, the remains of that material are expelled from its body as waste. Though it is lower in energy than the food it came from, feces may still contain a large amount of energy, often 50% of that of the original food.[2] This means that of all food eaten, a significant amount of energy remains for the decomposers of ecosystems. Many organisms feed on feces, from bacteria to fungi to insects such as dung beetles, which can sense odors from long distances.[3] Some may specialize in feces, while others may eat other foods as well. Feces serve not only as a basic food, but also a supplement to the usual diet of some animals. This is known as coprophagia, and occurs in various animal species such as young elephants eating their mother's feces to gain essential gut flora, or by other animals such as dogs, rabbits, and monkeys.

humans do not eat animal feces let alone their own. you're associating the energy factors of feces from herbivorous animals with that of omnivores and carnivores. that stored energy comes from undigested plant material and the gastrointestinal enzymes contained within the feces. it is not the same biology as human feces or that of carnivorous animals. and, it would take more time than i am willing to spend getting you to understand the differences.



on it's own, the processed material cited in the original article is neither sustainable nor is its nutritional value very high without the proposed additive of soybeans which in themselves are highly sustainable in a variety of environments and the nutrional value as well as the cost is far better. why it's not blatantly obvious even with elementary math is a mystery. just looking at the feces portion. just for the sake of simplicity say a human eats 2 lbs of food and approximately 1/4 of that becomes waste. at an optimistic 50% nutritional value after processing without any source of additive to augement, a person would have to eat twice as much as he is capable of producing. a single person would die of starvation from eating just what his body expels in a very short time.

[Penguin]

<sigh> still wrong. consider if you will, that your theory based on what you believe you read in that wikipedia article does not factor on one thing. that prior to the rapid westward migration of european settlers, north american bison numbering in the estimated millions roamed the great plains area for millenia, and even their migratory grazing habits had no more effect than the grazing of domestic animals in the same area by the time the effects of poor farming practices and a severe drought created the dust bowl effects. now had massive herds of bison or domestic animals been present at the time the dust bowl event occurred, then it might be safe to assume their presence had some contributing factor, but that was not the case.

i can't say i'm surprised...


once again, reading into the facts and coming up with dr. seuss science.

humans do not eat animal feces let alone their own. you're associating the energy factors of feces from herbivorous animals with that of omnivores and carnivores. that stored energy comes from undigested plant material and the gastrointestinal enzymes contained within the feces. it is not the same biology as human feces or that of carnivorous animals. and, it would take more time than i am willing to spend getting you to understand the differences.



on it's own, the processed material cited in the original article is neither sustainable nor is its nutritional value very high without the proposed additive of soybeans which in themselves are highly sustainable in a variety of environments and the nutrional value as well as the cost is far better. why it's not blatantly obvious even with elementary math is a mystery. just looking at the feces portion. just for the sake of simplicity say a human eats 2 lbs of food and approximately 1/4 of that becomes waste. at an optimistic 50% nutritional value after processing without any source of additive to augement, a person would have to eat twice as much as he is capable of producing. a single person would die of starvation from eating just what his body expels in a very short time.

Aha, I get it now.  However, to North American Bison is a poor example in that its populations would dwindle if the amount of grass became lower, unlike domesticated cattle.

Next, thanks for finding it for me (I'm a bit lazy).  I found that in a Wikipedia article, I just can't find out where.  I read the entire article on pH, but I can't find it there.  I'm certain that I read it there, though.

You are correct in stating that humans do not consume their own feces, nor do they consume the feces of other species (except for this one particular type of coffee).  Furthermore, I did not state that eating processed feces would be self-sustaining; I stated that it would improve efficiency.  However, if humans were to isolate the useful chemicals from the feces and use them to augment the food supply (e.g., artificial meat growth mediums, or directly consuming the chemicals as pills) then efficiency would improve.

-Penguin

[Rolex]

No, not really.

The original story is a hoax. The person and the company do not exist. The Japanese dubbed into the original video does not match the person talking. It's pathetic that a supposed "news" organization would help propagate an internet hoax. Japanese and Chinese have been making video hoaxes about each other like this for years now. This was likely made in Taiwan in response to an earlier hoax video about Chinese making cooking oil from sewer water.

[gyrene81]

Aha, I get it now.  However, to North American Bison is a poor example in that its populations would dwindle if the amount of grass became lower, unlike domesticated cattle.

bison populations were no more affected by dwindling grazing land as free ranging domestic cattle. hard to believe i know but, before commercial farming, cattle were primarily fed on open range, and the bison could live on what the cattle didn't eat. read up on the era of the buffalo hunters, they were the cause for the near extinction of north american bison.

You are correct in stating that humans do not consume their own feces, nor do they consume the feces of other species (except for this one particular type of coffee). Furthermore, I did not state that eating processed feces would be self-sustaining; I stated that it would improve efficiency.  However, if humans were to isolate the useful chemicals from the feces and use them to augment the food supply (e.g., artificial meat growth mediums, or directly consuming the chemicals as pills) then efficiency would improve.

-Penguin

pacman made more of an assertion that processed feces could be a self sustaining food source than you did. you stated that processed feces would be more sustainable than existing food sources. i hate to be the one to tell you this but, it's been known for 20 or so years that "artificial" enhancements to foods has lowered the nutritional value. corporations don't want the consumer market to know it. take corn for instance, what you get in the store now is not the same as it was at the turn of the 20th century, nor does it have the same nutritional value. tomatoes, oranges, wheat and many other types of produce have also been genetically altered over a period of time by humans in an effort to increase production and reduce crop loss from natural causes. the side effect has been greater volumes with less natural nutrional value than what was grown 100 years ago. meat is in the same boat, especially meat from commercial farms. hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, etc...

i have to ask, just a thought but if a person were to eat nothing but processed food, considering the low nutritional value of what is being consumed, what would the processed feces yield? undeveloped countries actually consume better nutritional food than developed countries, if they aren't suffering from famine.

[Penguin]

It's the same amino acids, lipids and micronutrients that you'd find in regular meat.  You just need to keep all the nasty bacteria that love to live in the cow's intestine out of it, and make sure that the cow isn't sick (it'll show up in the raw materials).

It's no different from taking your own urine, boiling it, filtering it, and then drinking the left over water.  Think of it as pulling out the good stuff, and you'll realize that it's recycling, not eating actual feces.  To elaborate, imagine that you are a Nutrient Bender; you have the power to move any nutrient telekinetically.  If you lifted the good stuff out of a turd, it wouldn't actually look bad at all.  It would be the same thing that you'd find in a steak.  Furthermore, you're still eating what used to be feces when you eat 'real' meat because of decomposers.

If you really want to get freaky, you are eating the cooled remains of highly radioactive fusion explosions.  Now put that in your reactor and melt it.

You guys need to relax, real meat is just as dangerous if mishandled.  If properly done, meat made from the nutrients extracted from feces would be no different from meat grown on animals.  It's just recycling, and it allows us to reuse things that would usually be lost as waste.  This isn't some hippie's dream, this is a great step forward in creating a sustainable food supply.

Rock on Doctor Mitsuyuki, your work will not be appreciated for a long, long time.

 
-Penguin

I did not state that feces would be a more sustainable alternative to traditional foodstuffs.  I stated that it could be just as good nutritionally.

The rest of your post sounds a bit paranoid.  Those who provide our food are not interested in killing us, they'd lose customers if not sleep as well.  Genetically modified crops' real risk is their homogenity, if a bug were able to exploit a hole, we could lose millions of tons of food.

-Penguin

[F22RaptorDude]

I did not state that feces would be a more sustainable alternative to traditional foodstuffs.  I stated that it could be just as good nutritionally.

The rest of your post sounds a bit paranoid.  Those who provide our food are not interested in killing us, they'd lose customers if not sleep as well.  Genetically modified crops' real risk is their homogenity, if a bug were able to exploit a hole, we could lose millions of tons of food.

-Penguin

Unless they intentionally try to kill us like the Chinese are with their plastic toys   

[grizz441]

No, not really.

The original story is a hoax. The person and the company do not exist. The Japanese dubbed into the original video does not match the person talking. It's pathetic that a supposed "news" organization would help propagate an internet hoax. Japanese and Chinese have been making video hoaxes about each other like this for years now. This was likely made in Taiwan in response to an earlier hoax video about Chinese making cooking oil from sewer water.

Are you saying the poop steak story is a hoax? 

[Penguin]

So this entire debate has been pointless.  Great.

-Penguin