Sparked by my reply to Vizzer about greenhouses and their advantages for crop and fruit growing, especially in extreme climates as in cold and hot parts of the world, even deserts, I thought about their history and perhaps other possibilities as isolated houses to use a kind of greenhouse-like constructions as zero energy buildings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building

And greenhouses have quite a history, even from Roman times...and during the Renaissance and Victorian time as the Palm house...



a bit the same as our Royal Greenhouse in Brussels Belgium.

 

But that has nothing to do with a modern industrial greenhouse:


As a history of the greenhouse and its future I found this interesting articles from a New York based consult bureau:
https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2019/5/7/growing-more-with-less-the-past-present-and-future-of-greenhouses
https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2019/5/13/growing-more-with-less-part-2

And why not combine a kind of greenhouse with solar panels in the desert and near the sea and with a water supply pipe line from the sea and use it as a habitat not only for plants and animals but also for humans... ? a kind of self sufficient community...

A modern Heliopolis as the one from our Belgian Baron Empain in Cairo Egypt...
http://www.theegyptianchronicles.com/History/Heliopolis.html

Perhaps one has to have a chat with Bill Gates...? What a man and what an ideas...one of his best ones, was in my opinion his subsidizing of a study for a decent toilet with waste water treatment and recycling...

Perhaps as in France, which, as we in Belgium, has no "petrol", one has to have "ideas"...
"En France on n'a pas de pétrole, mais on a des idées"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHoJ130hQ3E&t=2s

For instance a new "Heliopolis" South of Cairo in the desert coast? The same 25 KM2 (6250 acres) as the former Heliopolis...

A self-sufficient "hamlet" for "daring" tourists with all the latest robotica and solar panels, geothermal heat pumps, heat exchangers, waste water treatment, water recycling and so on...
Only water from the Nile and fertilizer from outside...and for energy stock...conversion to liquid hydrogen and back to electricity when needed...
And for the tourists only a few miles from the city highlights of Cairo to visit the "old" life...perhaps connected with a high speed tubular tramway...?

Edited once to change the location of Agadir to Cairo. Agadir for its earthquake...although I was there on holidays end of the former millenium...and after the nearly complete devastation, again a city of more than 300,000 inhabitants and from my observations on the first sight not earthquake proof...
And yes when one uses perhaps the technology of the Japanese, experts on earthquakes in their country? And yes glass is perhaps not the same breakable material as before with the present technologies?...

At the end, just to say that there is still place on the earth for its inhabitants and they haven't to seek it on Mars...and then we haven't yet spoken about the sea...perhaps better staying firmly with the feet on earth...or on the water...?

And the African Congo bassin, Nigeria and South-East Asia already starting with their "demographic transition"?...
https://populationeducation.org/what-demographic-transition-model/

And from one of my former links and about our northern neighbours...From the National Geographical:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming

You'd think it would be worth having retractable, insulating covers with a reflective underside, covering those greenhouses at night ... to reduce light/heat loss and cut out the light pollution. I've flown over the southern Netherlands at night and the enormous area of illuminated greenhouses is certainly a very impressive sight from above. A pity all the tomatoes produced have absolutely no taste at all.  

iirc a greenhouse works by absorbing energy in daylight,which gets re-radiated at night  - but at wavelengths that glass will not allow out so only the light is lost in the pictures you show. Given that most of the output for most lamp types is actually heat (c. 80% for incandescent types) that probably doesn't make "greenhouse duvets" cost effective.

Meles meles wrote:

You'd think it would be worth having retractable, insulating covers with a reflective underside, covering those greenhouses at night ... to reduce light/heat loss and cut out the light pollution. I've flown over the southern Netherlands at night and the enormous area of illuminated greenhouses is certainly a very impressive sight from above. A pity all the tomatoes produced have absolutely no taste at all.  

MM, of course you are right with the insulating covers at night, but all those greenhouses, especially the recent ones, are the result of hightech studies, according to "der letze Stand der Technik" (the state of the art?) and assisted by the TNO
https://www.tno.nl/en/  on the same level as a MIT 
https://www.mit.edu/
perhaps they will invent an heat reflecting layer on the inside of the glass  ...

And taste...you seem to be right...after a quick research...found an article in Dutch...
https://www.trouw.nl/nieuws/nederland-kweekt-smaaktomaten~b7a9074d/
As the German market is the biggest export market for Dutch tomatoes and the Germans find them not tasty enough and as you said too "watery?"
And they do something about it: new taste tomatoes (already 20 kinds)? they do even taste rounds to the greenhouses with German journalists and cooks.  And it seems to work in the last year...according to this recent article...
And indeed it is always: "het is het geld dat telt" (it's the money that counts) (in that the English translation is more French than Germanic I think: c'est la monnaie qui compte)

In our household the taste of tomatoes is not that important as we mix them with all kind of "taste inducers?" (smaakmakers). A bit the American way? 
For instance this evening for me "tomato soup" with all kind of other tastes in it as onions, leek and celery with 4 beef stock cubes" and as evening meal the rest of "red peppers with meat in the oven" from at noon added to cutted in slices raw tomatoes with a vinaigrette sauce on it with added musterd and a bit of honey in it...
The partner all the same, but instead of the red peppers an "omelette" of eggs...

Kind regards, Paul.

Green George wrote:

iirc a greenhouse works by absorbing energy in daylight,which gets re-radiated at night  - but at wavelengths that glass will not allow out so only the light is lost in the pictures you show. Given that most of the output for most lamp types is actually heat (c. 80% for incandescent types) that probably doesn't make "greenhouse duvets" cost effective.

 
OOPS, Gil, crossed posts...
Indeed...and I who "sat" in my speciality about "plastics" technologies together with those of the "cooltechnique" and I learned a lot of them too about insulation...as the K and R factor... ...
Kind regards, Paul.

Paul - is that use of "monnaie" a local thing? The French I learned "argent" was money, and "monnaie"  was small change! re tomatos - we visit a local farm shop to "freegan" surplus vegetables - eg the outer leaves they cut off and discard from the cabbages, and the thick stems from calabrese. Last time we went, the bins contained punnet after punnet of tomatos. Most were sound, and the split and squashed ones were cooked up with the potato peel we collect from the neighbours and my mother. The sound ones, apart from a few set aside to eat with lunchtime sandwiches, were also cooked and now reside in our freezer. Almost without exception my recipes start with sweating off onions and garlic (at double the amount suggested) and then have tomato added.

Clarification - peel and tom stew, like cabbage leaves, is fed to our hens and ducks. Nice chunky calabrese stems are for the rabbits - help keep them amused and wear down their teeth since the teeth of lagomorphs grow throughout their lives. Pity human ones don't!

Green George wrote:

Paul - is that use of "monnaie" a local thing? The French I learned "argent" was money, and "monnaie"  was small change! re tomatos - we visit a local farm shop to "freegan" surplus vegetables - eg the outer leaves they cut off and discard from the cabbages, and the thick stems from calabrese. Last time we went, the bins contained punnet after punnet of tomatos. Most were sound, and the split and squashed ones were cooked up with the potato peel we collect from the neighbours and my mother. The sound ones, apart from a few set aside to eat with lunchtime sandwiches, were also cooked and now reside in our freezer. Almost without exception my recipes start with sweating off onions and garlic (at double the amount suggested) and then have tomato added.

Clarification - peel and tom stew, like cabbage leaves, is fed to our hens and ducks. Nice chunky calabrese stems are for the rabbits - help keep them amused and wear down their teeth since the teeth of lagomorphs grow throughout their lives. Pity human ones don't!

Gil - yes "monnaie"...no, no ,it is not a local thing...you are right again..."ter mijner ontlasting/ à ma décharge" (in my defence?) I was a bit lurred in it trying to translate immediately "it is the money that counts" and of course took the first word resembling to "money"...in the factory in the time they said that I had always an excuse and an escape way...
And to be honest, when you mentioned it, I immediately felt that I was wrong, as when pronouncing it aloud I heard that it had to be "c'est l'argent qui compte" And looked as check on the mighty google with the "c'est la monnaie qui compte" sentence, but without the quotation marks and I seemingly had results, but with the quotation marks I have only four entries. And with "c'est l'argent qui compte" I had more than 200,000 results...
As I feel the accusingly staring eyes from nordmann and Priscilla on me I will start a new thread about different evolutions of a language in different regions...even about a special women language among the Russian bourgoisie...

And your story about your hens and duck supplies reminds me about my father's "fauna": always two small pigs, some rabbits and some "engelse haantjes" (english roosters? but a small race..)



And yes, I remember the cooking of the potato peel for the "zwijnen" (swines) (BTW why do someone says "pigs" and not swines in English? Is that a new example for my language thread...?

And yes perhaps a bit! deviating from the subject, but still on track with the "tomatoes" from the "greenhouse"    ?

Kind regards, Paul.

Paul these are Old English forms of plural - cow / kine (originally cy / kine aiui), sow / swine, ox / oxen.
I recall the boiling of "pig potatoes" - the "chats", small, unsaleable ones, dyed purple to ensure they were only used as stock food - at my grandparents which were made into mash with meal and fed to the poultry and the pig, (usually the runt of the litter from a local farmer, who was the "pig farming adviser" on the Archers in its early days). Yes, there were always rabbits (a beed called Belgian Hares, actually) and bantams small birds Old English Game breed, usually, though my grandfather never took part in the cockfighting that still goes on locally. To buy the poultry meal, all eggs had to go to the "packing station", a relic of rationing, but bantam eggs weren't wanted - too small!

Thanks a lot GG for your clarification and the memories about your grandparents.
Kind regards, Paul.

Greenhouses a kind of strategy to capture "greenhouse" gasses as CO2?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2588913318300061
From the site:
To control the global temperature rise below 2 °C by 2050, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut by more than 80%. At the same time, our land needs to be utilized more efficiently and productively in order to produce enough food to feed projected 9 billion people with less available land area for food production in 2050. We propose to develop a modern urban vertical farming system, i.e. greenhouses equipped with a Carbon Enrichment for Plant Stimulation (CEPS) system, to enhance land use efficiency and thus increase food productivity and, at the same time, to sequestrate CO2 from ambient air.