Dismissed as a Joke, Uk's First Rice Crop Ripe for Picking After Hot Summer

https://www.google.com/search?q=2+subscript+unicode

The free version works OK, and for 99p it can do something fancy, I’m not sure what though.

Subscripts especially for CO₂, has been irksome for me for ages.

My guess is that the underlying issue is funding.

I also think there are often communication failures from many scientists - for example failing to distinguish between personal opinion, consensus opinion, and well proven things.

On top of that, of course, individual scientists are still fallible and biased like any human being, especially about things they feel strongly about.

A good journalist would speak to multiple people in the field with different opinions, ask them questions like how well proven a theory actually is, etc. Pity they are not more common!

Should science journalist hold themselves to a better, special standard? True. Especially with the age old war that's waged on it by those who hold power through selling incredibly unscientific world views. But I think the overt actions these forces are more to blame than poor science journalism. People don't like inconvenient facts, people will forever be victims to a voice making a problem go away by denying the problem even exists.

Am I missing some irony or subtle sarcasm here? You're attacking the BBC for being inaccurate - with an argument containing a claim which is not just inaccurate but completely false - about the habitats which support growing bamboo.

> and I can smell the BS already

Where is this BS? You haven't identified a single sentence containing a scientific inaccuracy as far as I can see.

"Smell" is a weasel word - a way of avoiding the effort of actually presenting an argument or evidence - or even using the opportunity for some introspection about your own emotional reaction to an article because it mentions climate change.

I've read the article - it uses the usual light entertainment style favored by the BBC - which is the reason I don't bother with the BBC at all. But unless you're actually offended by being reminded of the existence of AGW, I can't see anything at all offensive, inaccurate or false in it.

The privatised water companies chose to stop building additional reservoir capacity. From what I've read, the UK pipes currently leak about the same percentage of the water going through them, as the percentage by which the population went up since privatisation.

It's money and incentives, not a property of the geography.

Eg potatoes grown for eating are almost completely unregulated and unsubsidised in the EU. Similar with grapes grown for eating. In comparison with potatoes grown for starch and wine grown for grapes. It's crazy.

Rice is now very much a staple food in the UK.

> And you can still have efficient food production in the UK, it's just that small artisanal "under 100 food-miles" farming is inefficient.

Economically inefficient, but diversity of local supply in a key factor in food security, and as a hopeless food insecure country, the UK should be diversifying as much as possible, especially to crops that will thrive in the coming climate.

Unless and until it's the only carbohydrate source available due to some global war or disaster. All countries should be aiming for domestic food security and diversity.

Common misconception: Ireland actually had a little problem with the British. Even during the most intense parts of the famine Ireland was still exporting food. The British absentee landowners simply did not care that their peasants were starving. The ruling party wanted to let the "free market" solve it, with some politicians considering it "divine providence" or a "lack of moral character". This was made even worse by refusing aid to small landowners, which killed sustenance farming.

People often forget that it was a European famine, rather than an Irish one. The Irish potato yield was reduced by 30%, while the potato yield in Denmark was reduced by 50%, The Netherlands by 71%, and Belgium by 87%! Tens of thousands died in those countries, but it is only Ireland where the population was reduced from 8 million to 4 million.

Monoculture (as decided upon by the absentee British landlords) was indeed the direct cause, but it only got as bad as it did because the British elite chose to let them die. Had they imported alternative crops to feed their peasants, or even just stopped potato export, it would've been far less severe.

It seems like smaller fully automated fields could also do?

The USDA reworked their fallow fields program a couple decades ago to pay for fallow fields low in watersheds, to reduce erosion and eutrophication. My reasoning is that you could use rice paddies to similar effect. Because they serve as containment ponds.

So in this hypothetical you restore the coastline, then approach the farmers you didn’t displace about what to grow in their lowlands.