The following news release was issued by Macquarie University in
Australia. It describes a project incorporating data collected in
ecosystems around the world, including data from the Arctic tundra
acquired by Alistair Rogers, a biologist at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory as part of DOE's
Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) project. For more
information about Rogers' work, see the accompanying sidebar and
links. Media inquiries about the overall study should be directed to
Amy MacIntyre at Macquarie University: +61 (2) 9850 4051,
.

***

Macquarie University News Release

Plants Use Water Wisely - Mostly

March 2, 2015

Plants trade water for carbon - every litre of water that they extract
from the soil allows them to take up a few more grams of carbon from
the atmosphere to use in growth. A new global study, led by Australian
researchers and published this week in Nature Climate Change, shows
that plants trade their water wisely, with different plant species
having different trading strategies depending on how much it costs
them to obtain their water.

"Our study looks at how much extra water it would take for a plant to
gain one more gram of carbon," says Dr Yan-Shih Lin of Macquarie
University, lead author of the study.

"We predicted that individual plants should keep this exchange rate
constant, but that the exchange rate should differ depending on what
type of plant it is and where it grows."

Comparing data from the different ecosystems showed that most of the
researchers' predictions were supported, indicating that plants have
adapted their water-use strategies to their environments. The biggest
surprise was that evergreen savanna trees were among the most
spendthrift plants with water, despite living in hot and arid
environments.

The researchers expected that plants with costly water transport
structures, such as conifers and trees with dense stemwood, would be
more conservative with their water, while grassy plants should be more
spendthrift. They also predicted that plants growing in cold or dry
environments should be more miserly with their water than plants
adapted to hot or wet environments.

"We crowd-sourced the data we needed to test these predictions," says
Professor Belinda Medlyn, of the University of Western Sydney.

"We couldn't travel the whole world ourselves, so we contacted other
researchers around the globe and together we put together data from
all kinds of ecosystems, from Arctic tundra to the Amazon rainforest
to the backblocks of Australia."

"This work is important because it provides insights into how plants
have adapted to their environments" says Dr Lin.

"Vegetation plays a really major role in the Earth system, by storing
carbon, moving water around the landscape and cooling the planet's
surface. These results provide us with crucial new information needed
to predict these effects, especially under different climate-change
scenarios."

Yan-Shih Lin et al. "Optimal stomatal behavior around the world"
Nature Climate Change, March 2015, Vol. 5. DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE2550

***

Brookhaven National Laboratory Sidebar: Serendipitous Data Sharing

Alistair Rogers, a Brookhaven Lab biologist with expertise in plant
physiology, has been collecting data in Barrow, Alaska, as part of the
U.S. Department of Energy's Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments
NGEE-Arctic project. His work is focused on improving how Arctic plant
physiology is represented in Earth system models.

Some of this data has now been incorporated into an international
effort to improve how the behavior of plant structures that regulate
the flow of carbon dioxide (CO2) and water between leaves and the
environment are represented in these models. That project, led by
Yan-Shih Lin of Australia's Macquarie University and Belinda Medlyn of
the University of Western Sydney and published in Nature Climate
Change, aimed to build a new global dataset describing how these
pore-like structures, called stomata, function in different
plant/climate environments, or biomes.

"Stomatal control of the transfer of CO2 into the leaf is an important
process controlling CO2 uptake," said Rogers, "but current Earth
system models represent this process in a way that treats most
vegetation identically. A global dataset incorporating measurements
from multiple biomes around the world will improve our understanding
of the role stomata play in the global carbon cycle."

Rogers was one of many scientists from around the world participating
in this ambitious project.

"Data on Arctic species are particularly rare, so I was excited to
have the opportunity to share data from the NGEE-Arctic project-the
only Arctic data in this synthesis," Rogers said.

NGEE-Arctic is led by DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is
supported by the DOE Office of Science (BER).

One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the
Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven
National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and
environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national
security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific
facilities available to university, industry and government
researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE's Office of
Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company
founded by the Research Foundation for the State University of New
York on behalf of Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of
Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit applied science and
technology organization.

Related Links

Scientific Paper: "Optimal stomatal behaviour around the world"
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journ...imate2550.html

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Brookhaven National Laboratory www.bnl.gov

Once upon a time on usenet Brooklyn1 wrote:
The following news release was issued by Macquarie University in
Australia. It describes a project incorporating data collected in
ecosystems around the world, including data from the Arctic tundra
acquired by Alistair Rogers, a biologist at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory as part of DOE's
Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) project. For more
information about Rogers' work, see the accompanying sidebar and
links. Media inquiries about the overall study should be directed to
Amy MacIntyre at Macquarie University: +61 (2) 9850 4051,
.

[snipped]

Interesting, thanks. There's a factor in global temperture variation that's
rarely mentioned (and is often used to explain the Gaia hypothesis) - that
growing plants cool the area in which they are growing due to transpiration,
sequestering and slowly releasing water and absorbing solar radiation (that
otherwise just heats the ground up). This was mentioned here;

"Vegetation plays a really major role in the Earth system, by storing
carbon, moving water around the landscape and cooling the planet's
surface.

It's always amazed me how, as a race we seem to be fixated on reducing
carbon emissions only as a way of preventing a large swing in global
temperatures. Surely another useful method would be to start to replace all
of the large swathes of vegetation that the planet has lost in the last few
millenia?

England used to be covered almost from coast to coast in forest if we go
back six or seven thousand years. Here in New Zealand it's been much more
recently that the forests that cloaked the country have been decimated (only
six or seven hundred years since polynesians arrived and started
deforestation, there are artists here who specialise in making furniture and
objet d'art out of 500 year old wood sourced from tree stumps dug out of
farm land. The last remains of some of the giants which dominated this
land). We all know about the decline of the South American rain forest and
the way the South-east Asian rain forests are being cleared to grow oil
palms....

Heck, in old testament times large areas of the Middle East was largely
'forested' - or at least covered in scrubland Goats were the biggest agents
of 'deforestation' there, grazing on young trees until there wasn't enough
re-growth and the old trees died off. Goats raised by humans for food.

Ok, we need to reduce the amount of carbon that we're putting into the
atmosphere but that's going to happen as we run out of fossil fuel anyway.
More importantly we need to get into massive planting programmes so that the
plants will sequester the excess carbon that's already there as quickly as
possible and get the planet back into the state of balance that it was at
before we started geoscaping.

Anyone who's kept a (semi)closed aquatic system knows that for every gram of
animal life you need 50g of plant life to keep things in even a semblance
of balance. With the human population growing exponentially (and meat
animals being raised to satiate our destructive desire to eat too much
flesh) we *really* needed to be increasing plant growth on the planet.
Instead we've reduced it to maybe 10% of what it was 10,000 years ago. How
much would we all weigh? Then add in our food beasts....

The only significant large masses of vegetaion left on the planet (other
than remnants of forests) are the algal masses in the oceans and, while they
*do* sequester carbon they don't contribute to global cooling.

We've just had the hottest, driest January and Febuary on record in NZ (yet
again!) with major horticultural irrigation systems around the country
having to be shut down due to reservoirs running dry. I wonder why?

I suggest that we need to start growing forests and, when we've got enough
start 'ploughing (some of) them under' then re-planting. Put all of that
carbon back underground where we got it from. Or (and this just popped into
my head) use it for making massive amounts of cheaper (goverment/s
subsidised? Economy of scale?) carbon-fibre and use it to make light strong
structural materials that will last for a very long time.

shrug Sorry for the OT stream-of-consciousness writing provoked by that
one sentence.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Brooklyn1 wrote:
The following news release was issued by Macquarie University in
Australia. It describes a project incorporating data collected in
ecosystems around the world, including data from the Arctic tundra
acquired by Alistair Rogers, a biologist at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory as part of DOE's
Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) project. For more
information about Rogers' work, see the accompanying sidebar and
links. Media inquiries about the overall study should be directed to
Amy MacIntyre at Macquarie University: +61 (2) 9850 4051,
.

[snipped]

Interesting, thanks. There's a factor in global temperture variation
that's rarely mentioned (and is often used to explain the Gaia
hypothesis) - that growing plants cool the area in which they are
growing due to transpiration, sequestering and slowly releasing water
and absorbing solar radiation (that otherwise just heats the ground
up). This was mentioned here;
"Vegetation plays a really major role in the Earth system, by storing
carbon, moving water around the landscape and cooling the planet's
surface.

It's always amazed me how, as a race we seem to be fixated on reducing
carbon emissions only as a way of preventing a large swing in global
temperatures. Surely another useful method would be to start to
replace all of the large swathes of vegetation that the planet has
lost in the last few millenia?

England used to be covered almost from coast to coast in forest if we
go back six or seven thousand years. Here in New Zealand it's been
much more recently that the forests that cloaked the country have
been decimated (only six or seven hundred years since polynesians
arrived and started deforestation, there are artists here who
specialise in making furniture and objet d'art out of 500 year old
wood sourced from tree stumps dug out of farm land. The last remains
of some of the giants which dominated this land). We all know about
the decline of the South American rain forest and the way the
South-east Asian rain forests are being cleared to grow oil palms....

Heck, in old testament times large areas of the Middle East was
largely 'forested' - or at least covered in scrubland Goats were the
biggest agents of 'deforestation' there, grazing on young trees until
there wasn't enough re-growth and the old trees died off. Goats
raised by humans for food.
Ok, we need to reduce the amount of carbon that we're putting into the
atmosphere but that's going to happen as we run out of fossil fuel
anyway. More importantly we need to get into massive planting
programmes so that the plants will sequester the excess carbon that's
already there as quickly as possible and get the planet back into the
state of balance that it was at before we started geoscaping.

Anyone who's kept a (semi)closed aquatic system knows that for every
gram of animal life you need 50g of plant life to keep things in
even a semblance of balance. With the human population growing
exponentially (and meat animals being raised to satiate our
destructive desire to eat too much flesh) we *really* needed to be
increasing plant growth on the planet. Instead we've reduced it to
maybe 10% of what it was 10,000 years ago. How much would we all
weigh? Then add in our food beasts....
The only significant large masses of vegetaion left on the planet
(other than remnants of forests) are the algal masses in the oceans
and, while they *do* sequester carbon they don't contribute to global
cooling.
We've just had the hottest, driest January and Febuary on record in
NZ (yet again!) with major horticultural irrigation systems around
the country having to be shut down due to reservoirs running dry. I
wonder why?
I suggest that we need to start growing forests and, when we've got
enough start 'ploughing (some of) them under' then re-planting. Put
all of that carbon back underground where we got it from. Or (and
this just popped into my head) use it for making massive amounts of
cheaper (goverment/s subsidised? Economy of scale?) carbon-fibre and
use it to make light strong structural materials that will last for a
very long time.
shrug Sorry for the OT stream-of-consciousness writing provoked by
that one sentence.

Don't be sorry for that. This kind of thing is on topic because too few
gardeners understand very much about how plants work.

At least you are not rambling about the latest social issue (that may be
very noble and worthwhile) but that has absolutely nothing to do with
gardens.

I think I have seen some studies that considered how much carbon could be
sequestered by re-planting forests but I can't recall where. IIRC the
conclusion was that it would help but it would not be sufficient.

--
David

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Corporate propaganda is their
protection against democracy

On 3/03/2015 9:42 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Brooklyn1 wrote:
The following news release was issued by Macquarie University in
Australia. It describes a project incorporating data collected in
ecosystems around the world, including data from the Arctic tundra
acquired by Alistair Rogers, a biologist at the U.S. Department of
Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory as part of DOE's
Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiments (NGEE Arctic) project. For more
information about Rogers' work, see the accompanying sidebar and
links. Media inquiries about the overall study should be directed to
Amy MacIntyre at Macquarie University: +61 (2) 9850 4051,
.

[snipped]

Interesting, thanks. There's a factor in global temperture variation that's
rarely mentioned (and is often used to explain the Gaia hypothesis) - that
growing plants cool the area in which they are growing due to transpiration,
sequestering and slowly releasing water and absorbing solar radiation (that
otherwise just heats the ground up). This was mentioned here;

"Vegetation plays a really major role in the Earth system, by storing
carbon, moving water around the landscape and cooling the planet's
surface.

It's always amazed me how, as a race we seem to be fixated on reducing
carbon emissions only as a way of preventing a large swing in global
temperatures. Surely another useful method would be to start to replace all
of the large swathes of vegetation that the planet has lost in the last few
millenia?

England used to be covered almost from coast to coast in forest if we go
back six or seven thousand years. Here in New Zealand it's been much more
recently that the forests that cloaked the country have been decimated (only
six or seven hundred years since polynesians arrived and started
deforestation, there are artists here who specialise in making furniture and
objet d'art out of 500 year old wood sourced from tree stumps dug out of
farm land. The last remains of some of the giants which dominated this
land). We all know about the decline of the South American rain forest and
the way the South-east Asian rain forests are being cleared to grow oil
palms....

Heck, in old testament times large areas of the Middle East was largely
'forested' - or at least covered in scrubland Goats were the biggest agents
of 'deforestation' there, grazing on young trees until there wasn't enough
re-growth and the old trees died off. Goats raised by humans for food.

Greece too used to well covered with trees in ancient times and now much
of it is like parts of Oz - olives and poor land because the top soil
went along with the trees.

Ok, we need to reduce the amount of carbon that we're putting into the
atmosphere but that's going to happen as we run out of fossil fuel anyway.
More importantly we need to get into massive planting programmes so that the
plants will sequester the excess carbon that's already there as quickly as
possible and get the planet back into the state of balance that it was at
before we started geoscaping.

Anyone who's kept a (semi)closed aquatic system knows that for every gram of
animal life you need 50g of plant life to keep things in even a semblance
of balance. With the human population growing exponentially (and meat
animals being raised to satiate our destructive desire to eat too much
flesh) we *really* needed to be increasing plant growth on the planet.
Instead we've reduced it to maybe 10% of what it was 10,000 years ago. How
much would we all weigh? Then add in our food beasts....

The only significant large masses of vegetaion left on the planet (other
than remnants of forests) are the algal masses in the oceans and, while they
*do* sequester carbon they don't contribute to global cooling.

We've just had the hottest, driest January and Febuary on record in NZ (yet
again!) with major horticultural irrigation systems around the country
having to be shut down due to reservoirs running dry. I wonder why?

We all know the answer to that one. Or should I say, those who haven't
been put in our Bozo bins, know the answer to that.

I suggest that we need to start growing forests and, when we've got enough
start 'ploughing (some of) them under' then re-planting. Put all of that
carbon back underground where we got it from. Or (and this just popped into
my head) use it for making massive amounts of cheaper (goverment/s
subsidised? Economy of scale?) carbon-fibre and use it to make light strong
structural materials that will last for a very long time.

shrug Sorry for the OT stream-of-consciousness writing provoked by that
one sentence.

What you had to say was both interesting and relevant IMO. I agree with
you about trees. I'm always propagating trees of some sort or other.
And even if we just restricted the planting of trees to urban areas
because they are so good for shade and lowering the temperatures in the
city deserts, then I'd still see the value in what you have to say.
But we certainly need far more trees on this planet. We could get rid
of at least 50% of the population and we'd still have too many humans.

Fran Farmer wrote:
~misfit~ wrote:
....
It's always amazed me how, as a race we seem to be fixated on reducing
carbon emissions only as a way of preventing a large swing in global
temperatures. Surely another useful method would be to start to replace all
of the large swathes of vegetation that the planet has lost in the last few
millenia?

i dunno what you've been reading, but there are plenty
of people who are working on reforestation and restoration
of habitats.

the problem is that the balance is still tipped too
heavily in favor of the exploitation of natural resources.
until the poisoners and destroyers are put back into
balance the system will continue to degrade.

unfortunately, with most people on the planet living
in cities there is little knowledge any more at the
cultural level about what topsoils and ecologies are
like and what they need.


England used to be covered almost from coast to coast in forest if we go
back six or seven thousand years. Here in New Zealand it's been much more
recently that the forests that cloaked the country have been decimated (only
six or seven hundred years since polynesians arrived and started
deforestation, there are artists here who specialise in making furniture and
objet d'art out of 500 year old wood sourced from tree stumps dug out of
farm land. The last remains of some of the giants which dominated this
land). We all know about the decline of the South American rain forest and
the way the South-east Asian rain forests are being cleared to grow oil
palms....

Heck, in old testament times large areas of the Middle East was largely
'forested' - or at least covered in scrubland Goats were the biggest agents
of 'deforestation' there, grazing on young trees until there wasn't enough
re-growth and the old trees died off. Goats raised by humans for food.

Greece too used to well covered with trees in ancient times and now much
of it is like parts of Oz - olives and poor land because the top soil
went along with the trees.

the Greeks and Romans did quite a number, but it just followed
on the agricultural practices of peoples in the middle east or
northern Africa. however, by upping the extractive practices a
notch and never returning organic materials to the soils they
soon stripped the topsoils bare.

when you have renters instead of owners there is little incentive
to treat the land well.

the overall culture must change to get land restoration to
work over the longer term.


....
I suggest that we need to start growing forests and, when we've got enough
start 'ploughing (some of) them under' then re-planting. Put all of that
carbon back underground where we got it from. Or (and this just popped into
my head) use it for making massive amounts of cheaper (goverment/s
subsidised? Economy of scale?) carbon-fibre and use it to make light strong
structural materials that will last for a very long time.

shrug Sorry for the OT stream-of-consciousness writing provoked by that
one sentence.

What you had to say was both interesting and relevant IMO. I agree with
you about trees. I'm always propagating trees of some sort or other.
And even if we just restricted the planting of trees to urban areas
because they are so good for shade and lowering the temperatures in the
city deserts, then I'd still see the value in what you have to say.
But we certainly need far more trees on this planet. We could get rid
of at least 50% of the population and we'd still have too many humans.

until more people start dying from ecosytem failures
i don't see much changing on the larger scale.

there are localised small patches where people are
working to restore and improve things, but it isn't
yet a large enough effort to counter the destroyers and
poisoners.


songbird

songbird wrote:

when you have renters instead of owners there is little incentive
to treat the land well.

Ain't that the truth. Today most people rent/lease most everything
and few pay their debts, and everything they touch they destroy...
under the presenty system those responsible few are punished for the
destruction caused by the renters/leasers. The only way to save this
planet is to bring back debter's prison, this needs to change, and
most importantly institute sterilization of the non productive because
the primary cause of this planet's destruction is over population...
CULL!
Every productive person who volunteers for sterilization is to be
totally supported by society; fed well, housed well, clothed well,
treated well medically. Debters recieve minimal nourishment and no
medical care whatsoever.

On 5/03/2015 3:24 AM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:


Greece too used to well covered with trees in ancient times and now much
of it is like parts of Oz - olives and poor land because the top soil
went along with the trees.

the Greeks and Romans did quite a number, but it just followed
on the agricultural practices of peoples in the middle east or
northern Africa. however, by upping the extractive practices a
notch and never returning organic materials to the soils they
soon stripped the topsoils bare.

when you have renters instead of owners there is little incentive
to treat the land well.

Well the Greeks were the owners and they screwed their own topsoil and I
can't see that modern agriculture is a great deal different. To much of
it is like strip mining over a long term.

the overall culture must change to get land restoration to
work over the longer term.

Yep.

What you had to say was both interesting and relevant IMO. I agree with
you about trees. I'm always propagating trees of some sort or other.
And even if we just restricted the planting of trees to urban areas
because they are so good for shade and lowering the temperatures in the
city deserts, then I'd still see the value in what you have to say.
But we certainly need far more trees on this planet. We could get rid
of at least 50% of the population and we'd still have too many humans.

until more people start dying from ecosytem failures
i don't see much changing on the larger scale.

Many people are already dying from ecosytem failures. We well fed rich
******* in the western world just aren't listening and nor do we care so
long as we can still get cheap shoddy products from whatever low wage
country can be convinced to take on the job.

there are localised small patches where people are
working to restore and improve things, but it isn't
yet a large enough effort to counter the destroyers and
poisoners.

Nope. Denial and/or ignorance and/or self interest is alive and well
and living amongst us.

Fran Farmer wrote:
On 5/03/2015 3:24 AM, songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:


Greece too used to well covered with trees in ancient times and now much
of it is like parts of Oz - olives and poor land because the top soil
went along with the trees.

the Greeks and Romans did quite a number, but it just followed
on the agricultural practices of peoples in the middle east or
northern Africa. however, by upping the extractive practices a
notch and never returning organic materials to the soils they
soon stripped the topsoils bare.

when you have renters instead of owners there is little incentive
to treat the land well.

Well the Greeks were the owners and they screwed their own topsoil and I
can't see that modern agriculture is a great deal different. To much of
it is like strip mining over a long term.

not nearly as badly during that time period as
compared to what came afterwards when they were
taken over by the Romans, and the same thing
goes for much of the rest of Europe, northern
Africa, etc. the Romans turned marginal lands into
deserts because they exported so much grain and
ruined the croplands to do it.

many of those areas have never had a chance to
recover. the remaining people who could survive did
so by keeping goats, counting much of their wealth by
the number of animals, not by improvements in topsoil
or pasture diversity.


the overall culture must change to get land restoration to
work over the longer term.

Yep.

What you had to say was both interesting and relevant IMO. I agree with
you about trees. I'm always propagating trees of some sort or other.
And even if we just restricted the planting of trees to urban areas
because they are so good for shade and lowering the temperatures in the
city deserts, then I'd still see the value in what you have to say.
But we certainly need far more trees on this planet. We could get rid
of at least 50% of the population and we'd still have too many humans.

until more people start dying from ecosytem failures
i don't see much changing on the larger scale.

Many people are already dying from ecosytem failures.

not nearly as many as what will be coming.


We well fed rich
******* in the western world just aren't listening and nor do we care so
long as we can still get cheap shoddy products from whatever low wage
country can be convinced to take on the job.

sadly, ******* is a very apt word for what
happens to most of that junk too.

if we could get to a more heavily recycled system
i wouldn't mind it as much, but we're still a long
ways from what it should be.


there are localised small patches where people are
working to restore and improve things, but it isn't
yet a large enough effort to counter the destroyers and
poisoners.

Nope. Denial and/or ignorance and/or self interest is alive and well
and living amongst us.

i keep hoping for bigger changes. a lot of people
want them to happen too, but it isn't a majority yet.


songbird

On Tuesday, March 3, 2015 at 12:32:22 PM UTC-8, Fran Farmer wrote:
On 3/03/2015 9:42 AM, ~misfit~ wrote:
Once upon a time on usenet Brooklyn1 wrote:

[...interesting stuff...]

What you had to say was both interesting and relevant IMO. I agree with
you about trees. I'm always propagating trees of some sort or other.
And even if we just restricted the planting of trees to urban areas
because they are so good for shade and lowering the temperatures in the
city deserts, then I'd still see the value in what you have to say.
But we certainly need far more trees on this planet. We could get rid
of at least 50% of the population and we'd still have too many humans.

Copy that. Seen the estimates for the next century or so? Food riots. Powerful eat, vulnerable don't.

The fastest growing segments of the world population are the poor, the minorities, those in totalitarian societies. What these have in common are inadequate, unreliable or NO access to planned parenthood. Behind this factor lurks the millennial denigration of females by males. A very large element in rendering females powerless to control their fertility has, of course, been religious dogma, used to support males' right to dominate females by invoking "divine" authority and by blaming females for their own sexual urges.

However, most of these factors over the last few centuries in the West have operated, as above suggested, to the detriment of the "wretched of the earth".
Prosperous (largely secular or non-observant) societies have had no problem limiting their families, religious dogma or not.

Do we have time to educate the ignorant masses? And will education enable them to become prosperous enough to demand to share power with their former masters -- "religious" and political -- to raise the masses world-wide to where they can control their fertility?

One can only hope that for the sake of future generations, people in the US will concentrate less on the next electronic toy and more on how to defang Our Corporate Masters and their Fundamentalist lackeys in Congress.

As a card-carrying space freak, I still think exporting our current values to Mars or other Earth-like planets might not be such a good idea. Much easier to restore our original"garden of eden" right here on Earth.

Nobody said it better than Benjamin Franklin: "We must all hang together or we will surely hang separately!"


HB

Once upon a time on usenet songbird wrote:
Fran Farmer wrote:
~misfit~ wrote:
...
It's always amazed me how, as a race we seem to be fixated on
reducing carbon emissions only as a way of preventing a large swing
in global temperatures. Surely another useful method would be to
start to replace all of the large swathes of vegetation that the
planet has lost in the last few millenia?

i dunno what you've been reading, but there are plenty
of people who are working on reforestation and restoration
of habitats.

Rather than plenty of people I'd say a relative few who get a lot of media
exposure. I commend them for what they're doing but it's a drop in the ocean
compared with the amount of forested land the world needs to regain balance.
Especially when you consider that the animal bioload (us and our foodbeasts)
has increased massively in the last ten thousand years or so as the trees
have vanished.

the problem is that the balance is still tipped too
heavily in favor of the exploitation of natural resources.
until the poisoners and destroyers are put back into
balance the system will continue to degrade.

Exactly.

[snipped the rest - I mainly wanted to address the "i dunno what you've been
reading" comment].
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)

Once upon a time on usenet Brooklyn1 wrote:
songbird wrote:

when you have renters instead of owners there is little incentive
to treat the land well.

Ain't that the truth. Today most people rent/lease most everything
and few pay their debts, and everything they touch they destroy...

When I injured my back a couple decades ago after just starting my own
business I ignored my accountant's advice to declare banckrupcy and instead
paid off everything I owed. However I was left a pauper having lost my home,
my ability to work and my life savings.

under the presenty system those responsible few are punished for the
destruction caused by the renters/leasers. The only way to save this
planet is to bring back debter's prison, this needs to change, and
most importantly institute sterilization of the non productive because
the primary cause of this planet's destruction is over population...
CULL!
Every productive person who volunteers for sterilization is to be
totally supported by society; fed well, housed well, clothed well,
treated well medically. Debters recieve minimal nourishment and no
medical care whatsoever.

I have no children and am hardly likely to now. My sister has four and I've
always said she's done the breeding for this generation of our family. She
'got in' before I did - I was waiting until I'd got my business running well
and was financally secure. So much for that plan.
--
Shaun.

"Humans will have advanced a long, long, way when religious belief has a
cozy little classification in the DSM."
David Melville (in r.a.s.f1)