In article ,
songbird wrote:

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

fascinating but expendable conversation snipped


Top soil can be regenerated. Joel
Salatin is doing it at the rate of 1"/year.
http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/archives/0104saveworld.htm

i've read most of what he's published.

he is not building topsoil, he amends it
heavily with organic materials that he brings
in by the truckload. they get run through
the cow barn, the pigs, chickens, before they
get scattered on the fields.
...
Thanks, but why do you say he's not building topsoil. He has picked up
the pace, but this is how soil is built.

he is taking materials from other places.
these materials are what would eventually become
a part of the topsoil in those locations. he's
mining topsoil components from other locations.
Seems like splitting hairs. The claim is that he is conjuring up 1" of
topsoil/year. That's still pretty impressive.

(snipped for brevity)



i still give him high marks for what he
does compared to many farmers. he at least
does understand the importance of topsoil.

he loses marks in that he could be using
organic corn for his meat chickens (he
complained that his source had too much
chaff/cob in it, well duh, get a different
supplier or grow your own).

So he is really just attenuating the impact of conventional farming. I
wonder what we would do differently, if we made the decisions. I mean
profit isn't the sole motive, or he'd be running a CAFO.

well, that is the problem with any sustainable
farming effort, that it must work within the broader
society and economics to keep going. his farm has
to make enough money to support him and his wife and
children and the interns that stay there. he can't
afford to not have money for taxes and the other
basics needed that cannot be provided by the farm.

if i were claiming to be a sustainable farmer i'd
be working with a supplier to fix the problem.

returning to my more local issue as one with a
limited amount of land in trying to be as sustainable
as possible i cannot raise both enough veggies in
the current gardens and sell them to raise enough
money to cover the taxes on the land let alone
the other expenses of having this place.
I have no familiarity with that. What I have is a marginal growing
environment, and I simply try too get more from what I'm given.
Clear plastic over the mulch, and drip irrigation seem to be a good way
to heat the soil and promote earlier harvests, but if you have a cool
summer, there's not much you can do.

for some people property and other taxes are reasons
behind extractive agricultural practices. if property
isn't taxed then it takes some pressure off people to
exploit it.
Duh. Federal land is nearly free, but it is exploited by ranchers, and
mineral extractors.



...
Corporations are obligated to make a profit for their investors. Any
action that reduces earnings is considered illegal. They may be able to
argue that some actions will avoid legal consequences which in the long
run will increase earnings.
In other words, being a good neighbor costs a corporation too much.

an action which loses money is not illegal
as if it were there would be no corporations
for very long. i think you are confusing
what would be considered corporate malfeasance
and misuse of corporate resources, but even
some of those actions would also not be
considered illegal, just inadvisable...

Under eBay v. Newman, the law is as Franken said: "it is literally
malfeasance for a corporation not to do everything it legally can to
maximize its profits." Just ask Jim and Craig; no one disputes it's
their company, but they're legally prohibited from taking steps to
preserve the profit-alongside-community-service mission that's served
them well. Maximize profits, or else.

i think that is a case where the company should be
taken private or turned into a non-profit. if their
social aims are broader than being a business then
i think that is a more accurate classification for
them anyways.

$$$$$$$$ won't permit.



The impact of this duty-to-maximize-profits stretches far beyond mere
investments. Under Citizens United, corporations now have the First
Amendment right to influence our fragile democracy however they want,
since they're "people," just like you and me, albeit profit-maximizing
zombies who care not for truth, justice, or the American way.

i still think you have a bit too jaded a view of
corporations. not all are as bad as Monsanto or
whatever the devil of the moment is.

See the movie, "The Corporation", it's on DVD. It's also on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y888wVY5hzw



Non-profits are a different animal, except for where earnings are
channeled into the managements pockets as compensation. When non-profits
do try to mitigate a social problem, which reduce corporate profits, the
corporations have more litigation power. Take farm cruelty for example.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/us...y-is-becoming-
the-crime.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

yeah, i saw that one. somehow i suspect when it
gets challenged in court it will get thrown out.
some laws passed are not enforceable when put before
a jury and a judge.

Like The Supremes? Good luck. Clarence Thomas used to be counsel for
Monsanto.

it will be interesting to follow how they
talk about "free speech" in one aspect (campaign
funding) yet have this other limited speech in
another aspect. they might try to justify it
but i think the judges and juries are a bit more
able to see through this. likely it won't ever
see the Supreme Court. too obvious a bonehead
law that deserves a spanking.
The history of the Supreme court shows it is very susceptible to wealthy
interests. I wish us all good luck.


...
Terra preta
should be encouraged to invigorate soils, and sequester CO2.

in some areas it is fine, but it is not a universal
answer. remember that albedo plays a role in climate.
if we covered the earth with dark materials soaking up
the sun's radiation we'd bake. so it cannot be used
in areas that are left bare for long periods of time.
once an area is put into perennial or permaculture
then it's a great thing to have.

But anything that grows will have a better chance with
terra preta. What could Joel Salatin do with charcoal
in his soil?


Turns out he does (see above)

i didn't see any mention of charcoal or
biochar in any of his books. he does claim

He doesn't. My error.

it happens.
So my wife tells me ;o(



to sequester carbon in the soil, but it is
more the kind of sequestering that happens
when creating humus. i.e. if he stops
adding composted manures and organic materials
then his topsoil will gradually compress down
as the organic materials rot faster and turn
into humus. if he keeps grazing cattle without
amending then his soil can only grow as fast
as the bedrock will produce nutrients along
with what the rain and dust in the air provide.

this will not be an inch a year. i can
guarantee that.

Just reporting what I read.
http://www.acresusa.com/magazines/archives/0104saveworld.htm

ok.


don't get me wrong, he's not stupid and he
takes care of his fields well enough to have
improved them from their previously degraded
state. just that he's doing it along with
using extra organic materials brought in from
outside areas. he also cuts down trees and
chips them to use as bedding material.


sequester some percentage of carbon for a longer
period than the current method he's using. probably
also increase some of the nutrient cycling because
of the higher bacterial count in the soil. depending
upon how he gets the carbon source would make me rate
it better or worse...

I suspect that the benefits of lignified wood comes from the amount
surface area exposed.

i'm not sure what lignified means and can't
look it up at the moment. do you mean pyrolized
instead? lignified to me would mean wood with
added lignin and as far as i know wood already
contains some amount of lignin...

lignified
Botany
make rigid and woody by the deposition of lignin in cell walls.

ok, haha, good to know i wasn't far off in
what i thought lignin was involved in.


if you do mean pyrolized then yes, as it is
pyrolized it creates more surface area. the
temperature and type of feed stock and several
other factors (moisture content, rate of heating,
etc.) also influence how much surface area there
is in the resulting material along with the
percentage of carbon and the amount of leftover
compounds are not released.

Yes, that is what I meant. I doubt, though that Amazonians put such a
fine point on their charcoal.

they may have. hundreds of years experience and
tradition of making terra preta they might have had
a fairly sophisticated knowledge. unfortunately, we
don't have any of their writings. a modern analysis
of the layers at an undisturbed site would be very
interesting.
The grain of the wood and the heat applied to it is also important in
making black powder.



(another snip)

I think this is where corporate greed comes into the picture again. If
we stop consuming, they lose potential profits. Notice how many ads in
the media pitch an image, and say very little about the product? PR
works. Edward Bernais proved it. Lies can become reality.

Noam Chomsky used to write some very
interesting things too, but i haven't
seen anything from him lately. he might
have retired or given up in disgust.
i haven't looked either so i just could
have missed what he's done.

You've just missed what he's done, probably because the corporate press
is afraid of him. Most recently he's been agitating for human rights for
Palestinians. Pretty amazing considering that he was born in 1928.

he's one of my heroes. i wish him many more years
of cranky intellectual poking.

You may enjoy his encounter with William F. Buckley.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbTxLmbCoo4


...
...CO2, biochar and pyrolysis...

How much cellulose would you have to char to heat
yourself during winter
with H2?

no, that's a waste as the heat directly from
burning the cellulose would be what you want. not
a loss from another layer of processing. also the
gas given off and condensed if using the cellulose
to produce both heat and charcoal can be stored
and used just like gasoline. no need to turn
anything into H2.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas
Wood gas is a syngas fuel which can be used as a fuel for furnaces,
stoves and vehicles in place of petrol, diesel or other fuels. During
the production process biomass or other carbon-containing materials are
gasified within the oxygen-limited environment of a wood gas generator
to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide. These gases can then be burnt
as a fuel within an oxygen rich environment to produce carbon dioxide,
water and heat.

What is your reference here?

check the wiki under pyrolysis, but i have a list

Wiki: While the exact composition of bio-oil depends on the biomass
source and processing conditions, a typical composition is as follows:
Water 20-28%; Suspended solids and pyrolitic lignin 22-36%;
Hydroxyacetaldehyde 8-12%; Levoglucosan 3-8%; Acetic acid 4-8%; Acetol
3-6%; Cellubiosan 1-2%; Glyoxal 1-2%; Formaldehyde 3-4%; Formic acid
3-6%.

I'll withhold judgement.

bio-oil is a different topic. i'm not going
there as i don't have petrochemical or specific
refinery knowledge in detail (i do know something
about refineries, distillations, catalysts and
such, but that's about it).


...
...HERE...
...
I hope to have early ripening, mid ripening,
and late ripening tomatoes, i.e. a long tomato
season.

good luck! so far this has been the
most normal spring we've had in several
years. we actually got rain yesterday and
a few minutes ago it was raining again.
happiness! that will green up the plants
and wake up the wormies. three dry days
now would be perfect as i could get things
spread and dug in and perhaps even some
planting done.

now it's looking like it will be too wet
for a while longer. days and days of rain.
my water catches have gotten a good workout.

Our squash are in the ground i.e. 2 Portofinos, 2 Crookneck, and 2
Zucchini Romanescos. There are also some bitter melons, and zucchini
replicante, that aren't ready yet for planting.


last year for us the Roma tomatoes were ok
for adding to the salsa to give it some more
thickness, but they didn't do much for juice.

That's why they're good for making sauce. You don't have to reduce them
as much.

have you ever tried the viva italia?

No, I grow the Juliet which is similar to the viva italia, but about a
third the size.

smaller works out better for ripening in
uncertain times too as far as i'm concerned.

It sets in about 70 days, a prolific plant, and even though it is a
hybrid, it's off spring are very similar to the parents.



do you have a favorite tomato?

Probably the "Striped German". A little lower acid than the Brandywine,
but is very perfumed, at least it is when grown here. Whether it is
location, or nature, I don't know. I was reading, when the perfume of it
struck me. I looked up, and my wife was slicing them.



as we put up most of the tomatoes we grow we need
a regular acid tomato.

I only have about 600 sq. ft. for everything.



...
i've wanted to go back and look at his book
on germs and steel, so those will be the next
books on the list.

You may want to look at
http://www.livinganthropologically.c...lture-as-worst
-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race/
too.

i did, finally, and ran away with my nose plugged
and wishing i had tongs. it seems that Jared gets
the anthropologists upset.
While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard
to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got
better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until
recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results
(surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one
example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers
really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several
dozen groups of so called primitive people, like the Kalahari Bushmen,
continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people
have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than
their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each
week to obtaining food is only twelve to nineteen hours for one group of
Bushmen, fourteen hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One
Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by
adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many
mongongo nuts in the world?"
While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and
potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving
hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a better balance of other
nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during
a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and ninety-three
grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily
allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that
Bushmen, who eat seventy-five or so wild plants, could die of starvation
the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did
during the potato famine of the 1840s.

Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped
bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions.
Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food
sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild
plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no
kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from
others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, nonproducing elite
set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs
at Mycenae c.1500 B.C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than
commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and
had better teeth (on average, one instead of six cavities or missing
teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A.D. 1000, the elite were
distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a
fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.

There are at least three sets of reasons to explain the findings that
agriculture was bad for health. First, hunter-gatherers enjoyed a varied
diet, while early farmers obtained most of their food from one or a few
starchy crops. The farmers gained cheap calories at the cost of poor
nutrition. (Today just three high-carbohydrate plants--wheat, rice, and
corn--provide the bulk of the calories consumed by the human species,
yet each one is deficient in certain vitamins or amino acids essential
to life.) Second, because of dependence on a limited number of crops,
farmers ran the risk of starvation if one crop failed. Finally, the mere
fact that agriculture encouraged people to clump together in crowded
societies, many of which then carried on trade with other crowded
societies, led to the spread of parasites and infectious disease. (Some
archaeologists think it was crowding, rather than agriculture, that
promoted disease, but this is a chicken-and-egg argument, because
crowding encourages agriculture and vice versa.) Epidemics couldn't
take hold when populations were scattered in small bands that constantly
shifted camp. Tuberculosis and diarrheal disease had to await the rise
of farming, measles and bubonic plague the appearance of large cities.

Besides malnutrition, starvation, and epidemic diseases, farming helped
bring another curse upon humanity: deep class divisions.
Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food
sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild
plants and animals they obtain each day. Therefore, there can be no
kings, no class of social parasites who grow fat on food seized from
others. Only in a farming population could a healthy, nonproducing elite
set itself above the disease-ridden masses. Skeletons from Greek tombs
at Mycenae c.1500 B.C. suggest that royals enjoyed a better diet than
commoners, since the royal skeletons were two or three inches taller and
had better teeth (on average, one instead of six cavities or missing
teeth). Among Chilean mummies from c. A.D. 1000, the elite were
distinguished not only by ornaments and gold hair clips but also by a
fourfold lower rate of bone lesions caused by disease.

Similar contrasts in nutrition and health persist on a global scale
today. To people in rich countries like the U.S., it sounds ridiculous
to extol the virtues of hunting and gathering. But Americans are an
elite, dependent on oil and minerals that must often be imported from
countries with poorer health and nutrition. If one could choose between
being a peasant farmer in Ethiopia or a Bushman gatherer in the
Kalahari, which do you think would be the better choice?
(Search for it on the web: mistake_jared_diamond.pdf)


without having a chance yet to look at the
article i still can't agree with the gist of
the title completely. i think there are ways
of doing agriculture that are sustainable.

i'm stuck off-line for a while so i'll have
to get back to this later.

Agriculture created class divisions, concentration of wealth and
inequality, and illness. It's a good read.

i don't see agriculture as a cause of things
as i think that agriculture, cities and specialization
came about all together as groupings of humans
got larger. why they got larger is also a combination
of many factors. one of those might simply be
because it's more fun to hang with more people
than to be alone for most people. loners are a
minority. another reason could have also been
for protection from other groups, i.e. weaponization
when stone tools used to be the greatest risk a
person had to face it wasn't quite the same thing
but then slings, arrows, spears, and armor started
showing up and people banded together as armies
then in order to be safe you needed your homies
at your back. out on the range no longer is as
appealing when you might get run over by an army
and your farm ransacked.

so, no, i don't put the ills of modern society
on agriculture.
Read above.



but back to international waters and
fisheries. we as a world have to get agreements
and enforcements in place to deal with rogue
fleets and overfishing. otherwise it's just
not going to be there later as a food source.

It won't be either if it is poisoned with carcinogenic confetti of
plastic.

(snip)

if only i were king. people would hate
me, but i'd sleep at night knowing the world
had a more sustainable future.

Right on, but the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre was described as nearly
the size of Africa in 2005, and it is only one of several gyres. That's
a lot of plastic.

well then, clearly time to get started on such
a large project.


The plastic, for the most part isn't poisonous, but it is non-polar, and
attracts things like polychlorinated biphenyls, and dioxin.

incineration or refining could change or
destroy those compounds.


...if only i were king...
the energy could be used to desalinate water
or fuel pumps to move sea water into desalination
greenhouses and condenser setups. i'm not sure
what works better. they'd have a lot of free
plastics to recycle into sheeting to make
covers.

Ah, back to procreating are we?

plant propagation or water desalinization
wise. i mean green house covers.

Awwww. Spoil sport.



...the oceans, floating trash...

You have my vote for dictator. Pay everyone a living wage. Enough of
this employment of wage slaves.

what if a person doesn't need that much?
isn't a part of the destruction of resources
by a greedy society the problem that people
don't learn moderation? or that they aren't
allowed to adjust their own demands because
the system has a one-size fits all mentality
(super-size me bucko)?
You would like B.F. Skinner's book, "Walden II".
People who tended flower beds got one wage. Those who worked in the
sewers got several times more.

i dislike minimum wage legislation. since
when do i want the government telling me what
my labor is worth? what if i want to work for
less for a charity or non-profit? i don't
need a minimum wage. i need the government
to get out of my way.
You would think that since all work deserves respect, that all work
would give at least a living wage.

right now there are a lot of low skilled jobs
that get done by sub-contractors or individuals
and they are being paid cash. so no taxes are
being collected for social security or medicare
for those workers. they may never be in the
position to become a full time worker.


...polyethylene plastic particles...
Or moved up the food chain by its predator.

it if is a particle it passes through
and gets conglomerated and then would
settle out. if it can't be degraded then
it becomes a substrate (just like mineral
grains or humus or other nearly undigestable
materials).

These are poisonous materials that dissolve in fat. Once in the body,
they persist. They get passed from predator to predator, and
concentrated in the top predator, us.

Best get your fish from down the food chain, not the top.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...ing_away_the_p
oison

Packing Away The Poison
Genetic mutation allows Hudson River fish to adapt to PCBs, Dioxins
2/17/2011

Some fish in New York's Hudson River have become "resistant" to
several of the waterway's more toxic pollutants. Instead of getting
sick from dioxins and related compounds including some polychlorinated
biphenyls, Atlantic tomcod harmlessly store these poisons in fat, a
new study finds.

i don't eat that much fish any longer. i used
to eat sardines a few times a week or canned
tuna. then i discovered sashimi and lost my
taste for canned tuna and the price of sardines
went up too and i found out i'd much rather
grow and put up as much of my own food as possible.
instead of buying fish from thousands of miles away
i'm eating more from foods grown a few feet away.


if it is incorporated in the animal
then at some point it settles out and
gets buried. excreted materials are
usually coated with mucous often also
with other stuff like bacteria and
fungi. i.e. also things that tend
to clump and settle.

In the predator.

where?
In the fat tissues. These are unnatural compounds that have no method of
being metabolized. That's why they are no longer produced.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persist...nd_toxic_subst
ances

yes, i know about those.

i've also heard it being a method of cleaning
up an environment by harvesting the bioaccumulators
of such things and then incinerating them too.
yuck.

this sort of problem is why i'm very much in
favor of testing of all materials in use and
recycling taxes. so we have the means for getting
things cleaned up and taken care of.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...mical-controls
April 2010, Scientific American
p. 30
Chemical Controls
Consequently, of the more than 80,000 chemicals in use in the U.S., only
five have been either restricted or banned. Not 5 percent, five. The
EPA has been able to force health and safety testing for only around
200.


i don't recall the alimentary
canal having a permanent resting place.
undigestible stuff goes through. the
original claim is that the stuff doesn't
have any way of being broken down wasn't
it?

Maybe not, but if you eat this stuff, you will lose your ass, so to
speak.

i wouldn't eat parts of plastic knowingly.
i try to avoid buying things packed in plastic.

Compounds that have a charge separation like water
H+ H+
\ /
O -- are called polar compounds.
H H
Chemicals like ethylene H-C-C-H have no charge separation and are
H H
called non-polar compounds. In chemistry like dissolves like. Water will
mix with vinegar, but not a polar compound like oil. Oil will dissolve
grease. Soap has a polar end, and a non-polar end. The polar end will go
away with water, dragging the oil, or grease with it.

Dioxin, and PCBs are non-polar, and will accumulate, and concentrate
these toxins.


as for pollution and plastic, you know i'd get
on with cleaning it up no matter how much of it
there is or how long it took. a 3000 sq mile
floating mass is unlikely to be thick so perhaps
it would be 3000 trips of a large tanker? get
100 tankers and that becomes 30 trips. processing
and sorting would be a lot of work. yay for real
jobs.


songbird

That's my dictator ;o)

--
Remember Rachel Corrie
http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

Welcome to the New America.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg