Derald wrote:

What gets me is that advocates always seem to be so sure of themselves that
"unintended consequences" never occurs to them despite millennia of human
history that is filled with them. I fail to understand how a 21st-century
"educated" citizen cannot recognize narrow-minded, ideological, pedantry and
advocacy disguised as science or journalism and give it precisely the credence
it deserves: Roughly the same credence we all give to someone else's religion.

i dunno, the benefits seem pretty obvious
to me. keeps the ground covered more and
holds the water better. reduces the temperature
as there is more shading. provides a
variety of habitats instead of just the one.

what are you seeing that is religious here?
this is all basic multicropping that used to
be done on small scale farms before. it's
not particularly new it is more a return to
what used to work just fine that was disrupted.

i can imagine a few drawbacks, but nothing
that cannot be mitigated. the more growth
that is about during the wet years means there
will be more fuel for wildfires in the dry
years. a good design of the homestead using
a big enough open space and materials that
won't ignite could mitigate that problem.
sure the dead stuff burns, but otherwise the
ground is protected the rest of the time.
selectively cutting and burying the dead stuff
to increase the organic content of the soil
(to hold moisture better and insulate the
soil from the heat even further) could also
go a long ways towards dealing with the fire
hazard. as it is i think a lot of burning
that is currently done is sending a lot of
material into the air that could be more
useful if buried and burned and turned into
charcoal (however, the darker the soil the
hotter it will get when exposed to the sun
so that's going to be a trade off of sorts
in places).

unintended consequence of diversity or
keeping water from running off too quickly?
sure, the downstream folks aren't going to
get as much runoff all at once, but they
might get a smaller amount over a longer
period of time. this is the same sort of
effect that forests and prairies provide.

invasive species? perhaps some dangers
there, but we are talking semi-arid places
aren't we? so i can't imagine this being
a huge risk as compared to what the wetter
areas of the world contend with (kudzu!).


songbird