Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
....
just glad to be here.

back then, being born premature wasn't as
treatable as it is now.

So, you've always been precocious?

more likely impatient. "Let me out!"

*plop*


songbird

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:

not sure if chestnut flour can replace flour
in baking, but i don't object to reforestation
and sustainable agriculture.

If you're still on dial-up, you'll just have to wait and let this 8
minute and 39 sec fragment (V) of "A Farm for the Future" load on your
hard drive. At about 2 min. 20 sec. they start going on about replacing
grains with nuts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Ez5ViYKYA

It is really, a very good series (five parts).

yes, i'm still on dial-up, yet i bookmark things
for downloading if they are worth it.


songbird

Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

....
[for those who want to just get to the
gardening stuff at the end, search for the word
HERE ]

....profits, eating, survival...
....Easter Island...
The island was deforested but a few trees survived. When Europeans
finally arrived they noticed some trees that were about some 10' tall.

Jarod Diamond does an analysis in his book, "Downfall" on page 181 for
the reasons of the lack of fertility of Easter Island's soil (low rain
fall, cooler climate than in other parts of Polynesian, lack of
micronutrients that come from volcanic ash, and continental dust).
Once cut, Easter Island's forest wasn't coming back anytime soon.

sure, but that doesn't mean it won't
recover if replanted and the animals
are kept from destroying the seedlings.
like many things it's a matter of will.


....
one thing that seems to be ignored for topsoil
remediation and reversing erosion is dredging
and putting it back where it came from. sure it
is work, but we are not short of people needing
jobs and if the situation is so bad that we need
every square foot of soil to be producing food or
carbon sources to trap CO2 then the projects
become more important.

ok, yes, contamination and poisons are a problem
with much sediment, but that too should be a
priority to deal with. if you are using sediments
for topsoil and fill as a base for CO2 sequestration
then there isn't quite the problem from poisons
as compared to if you are using it as a base for
a garden or animal fodder. sunshine and time can
do a lot to break down a lot of poisons, and
bacteria and fungi can do a lot more. so i'm not
really discouraged as some might be.

No need to disturb the buried poisons. 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.

i don't think he's much wrong in what he
does, but some aspects are not sustainable
in the sense that he is using inputs from
other areas.

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).

his cows are fed from hay grown on his
land, he could change to more bison as the
grazing animals and not have to harvest hay
or have barns.


Everybody knows what has to be done to save the oceans, and feed the
hungry, but it will never happen in a Randian "free market", driven by
maximum profit. We are told that a government must live within its
budget, but who has a "free market" household, where the family members
try to extract the maximum profits from each other?

some families are worse, as instead
of trying they actually force extraction.

You're going to have to explain that to me, unless you mean parents that
force their kids into prostitution.

forced labor on farms and, yes, prostitution.


i think you are stuck in the idea that only
for-profit corporations exist as active
entities in the world. there are non-profit,
individual and governmental entities which
can make a difference. i see a lot of
differences being made from these other
entities, but i also see a lot of difference
happening in the for-profit companies and
individuals.

Would you care to share the sunshine? Who, what, when, and where?

what part do you need expanded?
non-profit, for-profit or government?


The oceans need to be cleaned up. Mono cultures need to be curtailed in
order to feed more. Interplanting leads to higher yields. Real farming
needs to be renacted, instead of chemical farming that pollutes
drinking water and the the oceans, and leads to soil erosion, requiring
more chemicals to maintain yields.

all agreed with.


The government could start a large orchard of chestnuts to introduce the
ground nut as a replacement for wheat, and/or rice flour.

not sure if chestnut flour can replace flour
in baking, but i don't object to reforestation
and sustainable agriculture.

Again, "A Farm for a Future", [a BBC documentary on the precient global
farming and food crisis, filmed in the UK. Featuring Martin Crawford
(Agroforestry Research Trust), Fordhall Farm, Richard Heinberg and
others. Topics covered are the influence of oil on the food production,
peak-oil, food security, carbon emissions, sustainability and
permaculture.] is very worthwhile. It comes in 5 parts. Parts 1 & 2 set
up the problem, and parts 3 - 5 offer solutions.

Again the part on perennial nuts replacing annual grains is found in
part V at about 2:20 minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Ez5ViYKYA

i was able to grab the smallest format for
them (6Mb vs 62Mb) and watched them a bit ago.

some interesting parts in there worth
watching. being a gardener i like the whole
system approach of permaculture.


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?

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...


The
chemically induced glut of cereal carbohydrate has made us sick as a
society. We really need to increase fruits, and vegetables in our diets.

not just carbohydrates but also animal protein
could be reduced. the other aspect is that
carbohydrates are much better if they are
complex and not so refined.

You can only eat so much. The more fiber that goes into your diet, the
less carbs, and fat go in.

only one of the many positive aspects of
eating well.


the past 40 years have really been a mess when
it comes to diet and nutrition recommendations
from the scientists. it's not that they've
intentionally gone wrong, they just didn't know...
the longer term view that i like to keep in
mind is to "eat real foods" i.e. those that
don't have a long list of ingredients on the
package.

That's what Michael Pollan says.

yeah, plus he gets points for feral pig
harvesting.


which reminds me to yell about all the stupid
stickers on fruits and vegetables now. like
i want more plastic on my food, yeesh.

See below.


With that in mind financial barriers to education should be dropped, and
agriculture, and cooking should become part of any primary, or secondary
curriculum.

i think we are in a period of transition when
it comes to education. in the longer term i
think much of what currently exists as formal
schools will be removed and more people will
self-learn as needed. much of what i was
forced to learn in college was wasted time and
money.

Well, commodifying education is a mistake, if you care about community.

i'm not talking about commodifying, i'm talking
about self-teaching using freely available materials.
commodities cost something and are easily exchanged.
knowledge doesn't cost anything, but does take
some time to learn.

the community for many people these days is not
local but virtual and distributed. much like this
medium of usenet. unfortunately or fortunately
virtual community still isn't enough for most
people.


If primary, and secondary schools would teach critical thinking, instead
of the rote memorization that is "No Child's Behind Left", they would be
a better place. Present provocative ideas to them, but then let them
study what they want. Even planning a business model for gramming out an
oz. of hash, and its distribution (worst case scenerio) will lead to the
realization that there is 28.35g/oz. The metric system will lead to
history, agriculture, music, and science. History, music, and science
will lead to the rest of the studies of mankind. I'm not suggesting that
everybody should start their own cartel, just that all roads lead up the
mountain. The same could be said for a kid who wants to design clothes.
It's all good. You will still need a teacher to make suggestions, and
critics.
If they decide that they want to be doctors or engineers, they will have
the research skills to seem them through the classes, and tests required
for a license in those professions.

i don't think we disagree about a lot of this,
but education reform is a side tangent i'll leave
alone...


one point in the book that is made (which
i do agree with) is that there will always
be hungry people because we have this capacity
built in to keep on screwing even if the
surrounding countryside is going up in smoke.
in fact the countryside going up in smoke
sometimes sets off rounds of screwing much
the way winter storms in the northlands can
set off mini-baby-booms...

I would have expected you to be more of a romantic than that. A good
orgasm can put that tap back into your toes, but that too comes to a
halt, when people get hungry. A friend was in Berlin when the city fell
to the Allies in WWII, and she found the romantic sub-plot to the movie
"Enemy at the Gates" to be incomprehensible. Her reaction was that no
one is romantic, when they are hungry, no one.

oh sure, beyond a point hunger is going to
shut down reproduction as starvation shuts down
menstruation when it is that severe. i don't
know of any place in the first world that has
suffered such starvation outside of periods of
war. do you?

I was responding to your statement, "we have this capacity
built in to keep on screwing even if the surrounding countryside is
going up in smoke." Procreation is difficult when you are hungry, and
expecting the roof to fall in at any minute.

yeah, but for some reason there seems to be
no shortage of children born in war torn
countries full of starving and displaced
people.


and i don't discount the benefits of a good
sex life. just that we need to make sure in
lands that are marginally able to support
people that they don't keep having more
children than the land can support.

Traditionally, where subsistence farming has been a way of life,
children are the family's work force, and often children die from
disease, so you create replacements.

yes, i know the normal explanations for
why population goes the way it does, but
it isn't the whole story. which is why
i talk about birth control choices, women's
rights, fundamentalism and governmental
stability.


Passion requires ambiance, good food, good wine, or at least a storage
closet, and then it's that ol' "bim-batta-boom", so to speak.

unfortunately in many poor areas it's not a
matter of passion but of rape, failed birth
control, ignorance, societal breakdown or ...

Let's not start blaming the victims.

i'm not, i'm stating facts that are well
known. when it comes down to the final
equation where each calorie is critical
does it matter who eats the one that tips
the balance for another person in another
place to starve? you may never actually
be able to point to any one situation in
that fine a detail, but i think you
understand that the carrying capacity is
a hard limit that once passed is going to
take it's due one way or another.


A better target of your wrath may be where all those people came from,
chemical nitrogen that produced abundant crops, and ad campaigns to get
us to eat "Ding Dongs", and "Ho-Hos". The calories provided by the U.S.
food supply increased from 3,200 per capita in 1970 to 3,900 in the late
1990s, an increase of 700 per day. We eat today for the same reasons we
go to war, "public relations" ( propaganda) as practiced by Edward
Bernays, "manufactured consent" as Walter Lippman called it.

i have a book called _Fat Chance_ on request, but
it will be a while yet before i get to reading it.
sounds pretty interesting and likely speaks of a
lot of these things.

but think of this, without abortion being an
option in the USoA how many more million people
there would be. i think someone said about 30
million abortions.

And how many more of us would there be without contraception?

yep. as exploitive omnivores we are just
too capable and we are also making the mistake
of making plants too capable. if i were a
farmer who was into breeding corn i would be
breeding for a sustainable corn yeild within
the natural soil rate of recovery and not
trying to breed a more productive sucker of
nutrients from the soil as seems to be the
direction of so many others.

the feedback mechanisms outside of human
behavior we have to control the population are
the accumulation of poisons (making reproduction
less likely), environmental degradation making
offspring less likely to survive and general
catastrophes (volcanism, weather, comet strike,
sun getting weaker or going nova), probably
others i can't think of at the moment too, but
those seem to be the biggies.


so it's not just about that much food being
available, but the lack of effective birth
control or the lack of women to even control
their lives in many cultures. really when you
look at much of the radical fundamentalists
what they most hate about western society is
the changes it brings to how women are treated.

I'd call them reactionary fundamentalists. I don't think anyone wants an
abortion, BUT that is the woman's call. If a person can't control their
own body, what are they allowed to control? If the wacko Christian right
really want to get into it, why don't they try to save all the
non-menstrual eggs left in the ovaries, and match them up with all the
single semen that they can find? At the least, they could try to set up
a support system for poor mothers, and their off spring. As it is, the
people who condemn abortion are the same who will call for capital
punishment. I wish they'd make up their minds. Is life sacred, or not?

this is all a far tangent, but yes, i think
that for many they would prefer any situation
than having to get an abortion. for the rest
of it i mostly agree.


....
Then you are going to have to shovel against the tide of "denier" money
from the Koch brothers, Exxon, and the rest of the usual suspects.
http://www.treehugger.com/corporate-...irtiest-tricks
-played-by-foes-of-clean-energy-reform.html

i'm off-line at the moment to take a look at
that, but i'm sure it's going to be a fun read.

i know that big oil isn't going down without
a fight. they have a huge interest in keeping
the status quo. they are however going to have
to change. we simply cannot afford not to
change.

You might find
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article...3/1070/OPINION
04?Title=Power-to-change-A-few-surprising-facts-found-along-the-road-to-r
enewable-energy&tc=ar
and
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-1...more-aid-than-
clean-energy-iea.html
interesting.

the problem with reality is that it
exists no matter what we might desire
from wishful thinking. deniers to
climate warming and CO2 sequestration
being important are eventually going to
come around or die off. there will be,
in time, enough people who will act
differently that it will no longer
matter what the minority deniers do.
like scientific theories, in time the
people who are unable to adapt will
be replaced and the world will continue.

just that the short term can get
rather messy.


....
right now i'm trying to work through all
the references in books that i've read
recently that strike me as interesting.

the really sad thing is that many links
given in printed material no longer work even
only a few years past when the book was
published. stuff gets moved around on web-sites
or the person leaves the university and their
docs are gone, etc.

I try to save what I think is really important, either on my hard drive,
or in the books in my study.

unfortunately, these are links in books
to on-line resources that are gone stale
or vanished by the time i get the book.
as time goes on i see it getting even
worse.

how can i honestly evaluate an argument
or a theory and results of experiments if
the data is gone? the web just isn't a
scholarly medium as much as it should or
could be.


....
...snip...
...yes, i did actually finally trim something...

A fat lot of good that'll do ;O)

*snickers*


....rant trimmed a bit ...
around. it's stupid. we have all these
chemicals going into the water that have
strange effects and it is so embedded into
everyone's habits that they just dump stuff
and "it goes away and gets dealt with by
someone else" that it makes me sick. and
more and more it just might be really making
others sick too.

it is that kind of mentality that needs to
be changed. we have to think of entire
waste streams. that thinking doesn't happen
if someone gets a free pass to dump (be it
CO2, pig poop or even plant stalks).

Yup, infinite world mentality in a finite world.

to improve things a fair bit would be
to start finding the supports in place
which make such thinking "normal" and
starting to challenge that system and
get reforms in place.

unfortunately i think some of it (maybe
even a fairly large portion) is based in
religious ideas and practices. so it is a
major challenge. we no longer have to
"go forth, be fruitful and multiply and
subdue the earth" that's already been done,
we need to put out a revision of that bit
and people get ****ed when you talk about
revising "The Word".


....
one thing that i don't see mentioned too often
is that all this building we do and all these
houses with all this wood. that is CO2 sequestration
too of a kind. sure houses burn and get destroyed
but each house is a CO2 sink for some time. if
even a fraction of that wood ultimately gets turned
into biochar and buried then that is a step in the
right direction.

By buried I presume you mean spread on the soils of agricultural
regions. If we want to bury CO2, some could be compressed and stored
underground. Increasing the fertility of the soils seems like a better
choice to me.

spread on the surface isn't always the right
answer. agricultural use in areas not already
dark soil types that would decrease albedo. which
for a warm planet is likely not a good thing. for
areas of permiculture or perennial agriculture
where the soil is not exposed to the sun directly
then it could be spread without too much bad
effect.

The charcoal needs to be where the roots are, and plowing the soil isn't
good for it. The charcoal will be covered by the crops, and the
non-harvested part of the crop would cover the charcoal after that.

around here the non-harvested part is not
enough to cover the soil, it's stubble for
the most part. this is where i do like some
other source of production than annual crops.
perennial forms of the same crops would be
an interesting change. in some ways i do
that already via the alfalfa and birdsfoot
trefoil green manure and forage crop, but
it's not quite the same as a blueberry bush
or a beet tree. i'm very interested in what
might eventually happen with genetic
tinkering, but we're a long ways from that
tinkering being really systemically smart.
i'd love to do a Rip Van Winkle for about
500 years...


If
you want to increase the albedo, we could all paint our roofs white.

roads should be made from lighter materials
too especially in southern climates...


i keep seeing studies mentioned of how much
carbon the soil can hold. these studies are
blatantly wrong. they are assuming that the
carbon is only mixed into the top layers and
left to rot. what they do not measure is
how much carbon can be stored in trenches
down deeper. so they miss the fact that the
soil can hold many times the carbon they
state.

You're advocating burying compost (organic material)? Charcoal
effectively takes it out of the carbon cycle, and makes agricultural
land more fertile.

compost is processed organic materials, in
some areas it would sequester a lot of CO2
quickly if any of them were buried without
any composting step at all. like around
here where the water table is fairly high.
burying materials here would be very similar
to how peat is formed, just stack it up down
under the ground where not much air or critters
get to it and it will stay put for a long
time. i have dug down and found trees buried
here only a few feet down. they've been
there for quite a long time as this is old
agricultural land (cleared in the late 1800s) --
those trees have been buried close to two
hundred years.

charcoal is one way of taking carbon out
of the cycle, i do agree with that, but the
added steps of processing is not needed in
some locations -- let's take advantage of
those locations and get a larger percentage
of the material sequestered than would happen
if turned into charcoal. the volatile
compounds trapped in the wood are better
left in there if we don't need them for
any other process.


CO2 pumped under ground is not a
real solution. you think FL would last
very long if they pump CO2 into the ground
there? limestone and carbonic acid... sink
hole heaven...

CO2 pumped under ground is an option that has best talked about, but,
personally, I don't like it. Charcoal is so much more simple.

agreed. for some locations it's an ok
stop-gap measure, but it's not sustainable
IMO.


....
it's not something that gets done by shutting
down extra CO2 production alone. not now. we've
already tipped the scale and the slide is starting.
to stop the slide we gotta put some mojo into it.

Hey, I'm the choir, remember?

yea, i know, i just gotta roll with
it sometimes. like a preacher on a
street corner...


solar furnaces are not really needed as biochar
creates it's own fuel as it is being made.
Without creating more CO2? Solar furnaces offer "zero" CO2 in converting
cellulose to charcoal.

suppose the gases given off during making
biochar are combustable or even yet another
greenhouse gas? last i knew wood gives off
fuel enough to power a car.

What are you using to heat this future charcoal to create the H2, and CO?

no, it starts as celluose when harvested and
as it is harvested it gets heated up by what is
already burning (or a starter fuel like wood
taken from a wood lot). so that forms the base
for the process, the celluose is heated and
gives off wood gas (which is burned immediately
as a fuel to the engine) and the result dropped
out the back is the ashes from some burning, the
charcoal from the wood gas process and a percentage
of unburned organic materials which keep the
soil critters in some alternate food sources.
converting it all to charcoal removes the cover
and structure that the soil needs and the fungi
need the cellulose sources too.

i'm not sure how large such a thing could be
or how it would all work, but for a sustainable
system of harvesting that doesn't need oil it
could be an alternative. or even in combination
with wood as a fuel. as someone who likes
steam engines and trains i just kinda love the
idea of a tractor that actually takes some
fuel right from the plant it is harvesting so
that it doesn't need to be refueled at all or
as often.


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.


I just think that if we can seriously cut the amount of CO2
that we're putting into the atmosphere, and encourage reforestation, and
the production of charcoal, we have a chance of turning this barge
around. Otherwise, when the methane hydrate that lines the Atlantic
seashore goes of goes off, the tide will roll in to Raliegh, N.C., and
Harrisburg, PA. Of course this will aversely affect the profits of some
major corporations, but so will having New York go under water.

yeah, the hydrates and the methane from thawing
arctic tundra and permafrost are also feedback
additions that we have to worry about and counter.
add more decomposition of carbon compounds in
northern soils as they warm...

there is a possibility that the northern areas
will grow more trees as a result so the feedback
cycle might be very interesting. i still think
we need to reduce CO2 below what we are adding
so the oceans can recover and increase the pH.
corals and shells are important parts of building
shoreline erosion breaks.


it can be a source of fuel for cars/trucks/industry
too. my ideal for a farm combine would be that
it could use a portion of what it harvests (stems,
stalks, cobs) to create the fuel on the fly and
leave a trail of buried biochar behind it as it
goes. add to it a chopper, disk, and cover crop
planting on the same pass and you've almost got
a sustainable industrial agriculture.

Uh, now you've lost me, monoculture, discing the soil?
More food come from interplanting.

it could be a mix of planted species, but
the result is still the same. we get a portion
of buried charcoal from each pass of the
harvester/planter and that adds up over time to
a significant amount of sequestered CO2. if you
have to spread something on the soil wouldn't
it be best if it were done by using fuel derived
right there instead of from fuel transported in?

if we can go perennial plants for cereal
grain production (corn, wheat, rice) and
also perennial legumes (i ain't giving up
my beans bucko ) for adding some nitrogen
that still does not get charcoal into the
ground. there would still have to be some
method of harvesting and spreading the charcoal
and it makes the most sense to me if it were
to happen as a part of the same process be
it from burning the fields once in a while
(bad idea as all that energy is then wasted
where it could otherwise be used as a food
source or a fuel -- not counting the air
pollution aspect).


You got a cite for this?

cite for what aspect? that wood contains
compounds which when released by biochar can
fuel a vehicle? that's already a well known
thing. Mother Earth News had an article a few
issues ago on a wood fuel driven truck. wood
gas could have been the gas we used if cheap
oil hadn't been found.

the combine process would be fun to
work on. but like i've said up above,
biochar is an albedo killer.

Your going to create CO2 to make H2, and CO?

no, i'm going to use cellulose to create
more heat, wood gases (wood alcohols, etc.),
charcoal and probably some ashes too along
with some of the harvested organic material
also going back onto the surface. a mixed
output system driven by a mixed input system.

it has to be buried deeply enough to
smother it. otherwise you'll lose even more
of it to further burning. quenching with
water -- water too heavy. pipe the exhaust
into the trench with the charcoal so that
it helps smother the charcoal, but also the
soil will trap some of that exhaust.


Wheat may be dry when it is harvested, but I can't think of any other
crop that is.
I bury my charcoal under mulch.

corn, rice, soybeans are usually harvested
when the seeds are firm enough (dry enough)
to not be damaged by harvesting and further
processing. i'm pretty sure all the plants
are dry enough to burn, the dust flies during
harvesting around here. if the harvest is
too wet there is a problem with potential rot
so that is an aspect of harvesting that is
watched pretty carefully. i do know that
loads are tested before they are put into the
grain elevator for moisture content.

sometimes there is a wet period during the
harvest where the corn has to be dried further
but this is to prevent troubles with rotting
in the crop, not with how well the stalks and
cobs might burn. might actually work out that
the waste heat from the making of the charcoal
that it could be used to partially dry the
corn if needed too.

once in a while it is too wet too often and
a crop is lost due to spoilage in the field.
that can just be left until it gets freeze
dried and can then be run through a charcoal
machine in the spring during planting. for
warmer and wetter climates it could all be
turned under or left fallow to collapse
naturally. a loss of a crop and a loss of
a chance to sequester some carbon but not
likely to be a regular happening because if
it was then they'd be growing something else
anyways...

consider for a longer term project where
fast growing trees could be planted, then after
a few years (seven or less for some poplars
i've seen grow here) they could be chopped
and left to dry and then chipped and burned
on the fly and the charcoal buried at the
same time. no crop needed to harvest but
there might be a wood gas surplus that could
be stored and then used later as fuel. not
sure about that though as wood chipping might
need a lot more power than dragging a single
blade through the soil and spinning some blades
and a fan.


....infrastructure costs from rising sea-levels...

i think they are points to raise when talking to
governmental officials. especially the points about
how much it will cost to keep FL, Washington DC, LA
and many other cities above flood stage or protected
by levees. Hurricane Sandy shook some branches, but
we gotta keep on shaking the tree or they'll think
that they can go back to doing nothing.

when you consider the feedback from expanding water
as it warms and how we've already primed the pump to
increase water temperatures (less ice at the north
pole for longer periods of time, melting permafrost,

= methane which is 20 times more efficient at trapping solar radiation
than CO2 is. The scary part is the water vapor, which also traps heat,
but also drives storms like Sandy, and Katrina when it releases heat
when it shifts from vapor to liquid.

yeah. Sandy was a wakeup call, but i think the
government is still hitting the snooze button and
likely will continue until we replace the alarm
clock with a rabid porcupine dressed in oil as
a disguise.


etc.). well i just don't see how anyone in government
today can keep a straight face and say we don't have
a huge infrastructure budget coming up already and
that's just if we stop what we've done now. that
doesn't even get to the point of the fact that we're
still making it worse! arg!

Arg, indeed!

*le sigh*

the larger and more long term point is that
i really think that no matter what happens
short term it will get dealt with one way or
another. either Momma Earth will take us out
or we'll learn to live within what we've got.
the only other alternative is to head off to
other places in the universe and in order to
do that we'd have to figure out how to live
in a closed environment for an extremely long
period of time that is even smaller than a
planet. Biosphere II pointed out that we
still have a lot to learn there.


...HERE...
Got about half of my garden beds prepped. Even without digging, it
wore
me out. Good sweat though ;O)

i can still find frozen ground here.
the sun was out most of the day and some
flowers made progress. maybe by Saturday
there will be some blooms.

I always find it odd, that here in California, gardeners can start
earlier, but then comes your longer Midwest summer days, and warmer
nights, and you leave us (me anyway in the dust). I'll be lucky to have
tomatoes by Aug.

our tomatoes won't be ripening until
mid-August if we have anything like a
normal season. we don't start too early
with tomatoes. the end of May is when
the warm weather tender plants get set
out and planted.

I plan to have early, mid, and late ripening tomatoes, mostly early.
Stupice-55 days, Juliets-60 days, Glacier-65 days, Koralik-70 days,
Blondkopfchen-75 days, Marmande-80 days, Stripped German-90 days,
Brandywine Sudduth's-90 days. Mostly one of each, but maybe 2 Stupice,
and 2 Stripped Germans.

that's a lot of tomatoes!

which do you like the best or the
least? do you put them up or freeze
them?

Eyes eats them! It's only about 10 vines in the soil, and 2 in
containers. If I was going to put them up I would be planting romas, or
San Marzanos. Between salads, sandwiches, and gazpacho there won't be
any left over, especially now that I know that I can use green tomatoes
in making salsa verde for enchiladas.

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.

we put the green ones in the garage in a
place where the sun didn't fall and they
ripened enough for a while afterwards that
we ate and put some up and made more salsa.
not the best tasting, but better than throwing
them out. some did rot. the worms got those.


first crocuses flowered today. we walked
around the yard/gardens today and checked out
the winter damage. the deer did trim some of
the cedar trees the past few weeks and some
bunny damage too -- nothing extensive enough
i'll worry about.

rhubarb and strawberries still in hiding.

Thanks for reminding me. I need to divide the rhubarb.

glad to be of service.

Oh, and thanks again. I gotta tie a string on my
finger or something.

just don't ask me to pull it...


i'm anxious to see how the transplanted
rhubarb came through and if the oldest
strawberry patch will produce well after
being rearranged a bit last fall. i needed
to thin out the june-bearing plants and
spread out the ever-bearing plants...

I'm hoping to get a descent blueberry harvest, but I did a half-assed
job of dropping the pH on them (Spread sulfur on ground, and then
covered it with newsprint, and alfalfa, as is my wont.)

are they flowering or past flowering?

They are just flowering.

Next time I think I'll use my dibble, and pour the sulfur into the holes.

Steve Peek recently posted to r.g.e or
r.g he's got a fairly large blueberry
plot so might have good advice about this.


that may not work quickly, but it should
make a difference longer term. to change
things quickly is likely to cause a bit
of shock to a plant anyways. so i'd
prefer a more gradual method. how much
did you put down?


...
"Though an old man, I am but a young gardener." - Thomas Jefferson



Seems like I've known Tom since he was a young whipper-snapper ;OP

now you're making me think of Grandpa on
_the Munsters_ or Uncle Fester of the
Addams family...


Addams Family is probably close to the truth.

har!...


Anyway, I woke up this morning with my brown colored glasses on, and I
though I'd give you my view of ocean health.

The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman
http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-...2427905/ref=sr
_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274206221&sr=1-1
(Available at a library near you.)

read a while ago.



p 152 - 59
....
There is a half a pound of debris on the surface for every 100 square
meters in the 1,000-mile crossing of the gyre some 3 million tons of
plastic. That's more plastic by weight than plankton on the ocean's
surface, six times as much.
....
All this plastic had appeared in barely more than 50 years. Would its
chemical constituents or additives‹for instance, colorants such as
metallic copper‹concentrate as they ascended the food chain, and alter
evolution?

Tokyo University geochemist Hideshige Takada reported that in the sea,
nurdles and other plastic fragments acted both as magnets and as sponges
for resilient poisons like DDT and PCBs.
....
The gyrating Pacific dump is 10 million square miles‹nearly the size of
Africa, and it wasn't the only one: the planet has six other major
tropical oceanic gyres, all of them swirling with ugly debris.

these are harvestable sources of fuels and
materials.


Everyone has seen polyethylene and other plastics turn yellow and
There are two problems. For one, plastic takes much longer to
photodegrade in water. The other hitch is that even though a ghost
fishnet made from photodegradable plastic might disintegrate before it
drowns any dolphins, its chemical nature will not change for hundreds,
perhaps thousands of years.

not sure about this, once it falls apart then
it can become host to bacteria, algae, fungi or
concentrated by a critter which eventually dies
and parts fall to the ocean floor. if we stop
dumping such compounds into the oceans then eventually
they will settle out and then get covered up. in
millions of years they get pushed down under the
continents and heated up to the point they break
down or get turned back into oil.


Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no
mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule."
Even if photodegradable nets helped marine mammals live, their powdery
residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it.

if it is large enough to be filtered out
then it is: incorporated in the animal,
excreted or the animal is eaten before it
has done any of the previous two things.

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.

i'm not worried about particles i'm
worried about molecules that act as
hormones, but as long as we stop
putting so many into the waterways then
eventually they get deactivated or
absorbed and then are settled out. if
enough get absorbed by people and that
causes reproductive problems or more
disease then eventually that will take
care of the problem as the population
will decrease either enough that the
effect goes away or so badly that we go
away. sure i don't want people to go
away completely, i just want moderation
and respect for other species.

i think the planet has a vast amount
of ability to heal and cleanse things if
we don't overload it. right now the
world is telling us in clear ways that
we are overloading it.


G'day

ditto!


songbird

In article
,
Billy wrote:
Only problem I see is who the hell is Jay Green? I'm not saying that he
is lying, but Pollan is an established journalist, and University
professor. Who would you believe, and why? It would be easier if Mr.
Green could make his bona fides known.

Among other things, he's one of very few folks that can (or at least
does) raise healthy cornish cross, and he's got actual farm experience,
which I rather doubt Pollan has. And he freely admits that this is the
observations of a single visit, but I would doubt he has much interest
in making another, given that he's a farmer, not a reporter, and he
wasn't overly thrilled with what he saw. Seems likely that post-Pollan
publicity may have changed things at Polyface, but I really don't know.

Heck, he uses some of what Salatin writes about - he was just not too
excited to go to the source and find that reality (at that time) did not
match the writings.

He showed up on my radar in discussing fermented chicken feed, and
pasturing/foraging cornish cross. The pictures of his cornish cross
flock right up to slaughter day were impressive, having seen a flock
which friends had in a "chicken tractor" that nevertheless ended up in
the more typical bedraggled, lame, kill-me-now-please state that is
considered "normal" for cornish cross. I have not raised cornish cross,
but until I saw his, I wouldn't even have considered it (though I am
presently "out of chickens" and just as happy to be, at present.)

As such, I consider his insight on raising chickens to be pretty well
founded, to the extent that I can judge anyone on the internet I've not
met. YMMV.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

In article
,
Ecnerwal wrote:

In article
,
Billy wrote:
Only problem I see is who the hell is Jay Green? I'm not saying that he
is lying, but Pollan is an established journalist, and University
professor. Who would you believe, and why? It would be easier if Mr.
Green could make his bona fides known.

Among other things, he's one of very few folks that can (or at least
does) raise healthy cornish cross, and he's got actual farm experience,
which I rather doubt Pollan has. And he freely admits that this is the
observations of a single visit, but I would doubt he has much interest
in making another, given that he's a farmer, not a reporter, and he
wasn't overly thrilled with what he saw. Seems likely that post-Pollan
publicity may have changed things at Polyface, but I really don't know.

Heck, he uses some of what Salatin writes about - he was just not too
excited to go to the source and find that reality (at that time) did not
match the writings.

He showed up on my radar in discussing fermented chicken feed, and
pasturing/foraging cornish cross. The pictures of his cornish cross
flock right up to slaughter day were impressive, having seen a flock
which friends had in a "chicken tractor" that nevertheless ended up in
the more typical bedraggled, lame, kill-me-now-please state that is
considered "normal" for cornish cross. I have not raised cornish cross,
but until I saw his, I wouldn't even have considered it (though I am
presently "out of chickens" and just as happy to be, at present.)

As such, I consider his insight on raising chickens to be pretty well
founded, to the extent that I can judge anyone on the internet I've not
met. YMMV.

I thank you for introducing me to Permies; http://www.permies.com/.
What groups does Jay Green post in, or is it just Permies?

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

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

In article
,
Billy wrote:
I thank you for introducing me to Permies; http://www.permies.com/.
What groups does Jay Green post in, or is it just Permies?

Several farming and poultry sites; when I was researching the use of
fermented feeds, his stuff came up in several places since he's someone
who does it and posts about it.

Be aware that permies is somewhat prone to being what its owner wants to
hear - minor discussion is allowed, major disagreements vanish into thin
air, leaving only what he agrees with (not even a "post deleted by
moderator" message.) I thought more highly of it before I saw that
happen a few times. I haven't been back much since then. I prefer to
talk with grown ups, or wise children.

I like tree and bush crops and "permanent agriculture." When lazy and
efficient are the same thing, I'm all for that kind of lazy.

permaculture-with-a-capital-P seems to be more about paying money to
take courses to get certified to teach courses that you charge people
money for so they can get certified, in my somewhat jaundiced view. I
don't find it all that compelling, though it has produced some materials
I think worthy of a read, so long as I'm not paying an arm and a leg for
them, or required to believe (or pretend to believe) everything in
them...but there are also good books on the subject that predate the
certification-mad folks.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

In article
,
Ecnerwal wrote:

In article
,
Billy wrote:
I thank you for introducing me to Permies; http://www.permies.com/.
What groups does Jay Green post in, or is it just Permies?

Several farming and poultry sites; when I was researching the use of
fermented feeds, his stuff came up in several places since he's someone
who does it and posts about it.

Be aware that permies is somewhat prone to being what its owner wants to
hear - minor discussion is allowed, major disagreements vanish into thin
air, leaving only what he agrees with (not even a "post deleted by
moderator" message.) I thought more highly of it before I saw that
happen a few times. I haven't been back much since then. I prefer to
talk with grown ups, or wise children.

I like tree and bush crops and "permanent agriculture." When lazy and
efficient are the same thing, I'm all for that kind of lazy.

permaculture-with-a-capital-P seems to be more about paying money to
take courses to get certified to teach courses that you charge people
money for so they can get certified, in my somewhat jaundiced view. I
don't find it all that compelling, though it has produced some materials
I think worthy of a read, so long as I'm not paying an arm and a leg for
them, or required to believe (or pretend to believe) everything in
them...but there are also good books on the subject that predate the
certification-mad folks.

You did see a Farm for a Future?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xShCEKL-mQ8
The first 2 parts presents the problems, and the last 3 parts try to
answer them.

It's always good to question authority.

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

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

Ecnerwal wrote:
In article
,
Billy wrote:
I thank you for introducing me to Permies;
http://www.permies.com/. What groups does Jay Green post in, or is
it just Permies?

Several farming and poultry sites; when I was researching the use of
fermented feeds, his stuff came up in several places since he's
someone who does it and posts about it.

Be aware that permies is somewhat prone to being what its owner wants
to hear - minor discussion is allowed, major disagreements vanish
into thin air, leaving only what he agrees with (not even a "post
deleted by moderator" message.) I thought more highly of it before I
saw that happen a few times. I haven't been back much since then. I
prefer to talk with grown ups, or wise children.

I like tree and bush crops and "permanent agriculture." When lazy and
efficient are the same thing, I'm all for that kind of lazy.

permaculture-with-a-capital-P seems to be more about paying money to
take courses to get certified to teach courses that you charge people
money for so they can get certified, in my somewhat jaundiced view. I
don't find it all that compelling, though it has produced some
materials I think worthy of a read, so long as I'm not paying an arm
and a leg for them, or required to believe (or pretend to believe)
everything in them...but there are also good books on the subject
that predate the certification-mad folks.

I would really like to see a credible estimate of two things:

- The cost efficiency of wide scale permaculture, that is what would food
cost compared to conventional agriculture a) on the market today b) taking
into account long term costs of pollution etc, which almost never figure in
our 'costs'.

- Whether it can really be sustainable in a closed system. The best
examples that I have seen still use considerable external inputs. The answer
is to this is in part tied up with how you define the system's boundaries
but the dedicated are claiming that boundary is and ought to be at the
property boundary - in which case I wonder if it is possible.

David

In article ,
Rick wrote:

is that organic and permaculture methods fall behind on grain
production, but do better with other crops. It seems likely that for
the forseeable future many farming methods will be required to sustain
a growing population at affordable prices while minimizing damage to
the eco system.

Square one is to deal seriously with the "growing population" issue, but
mother nature will do that eventually if we don't - it's just going to
be much messier her way.

Grain is not really all that "permaculture" in nature, being (with few
exceptions) the seed of an annual grass. Perennial wheat seems to be a
subject of current research; It likely gives "less per-acre per-year"
than annual wheat, as is typical of crops which have means other than
seeds to carry on their genetics, but it also would not require annual
tillage fuel, and soil loss from tillage and resulting wind and rain
erosion. It may also need less fertilizer, and it offers the ability to
use it for forage or hay as well as for grain, evidently.

Real permanent agriculture is not based on producing the same crops as
annual agriculture, but (in large part) on producing end products using
many tree or shrub based crops which you won't really find in a
grain/annual based system. ie, it's not about growing corn.

As one fairly well researched and formerly common example, raising pigs
on fruit, locust beans and acorns (which they gathered themselves)
rather than on corn (maize, for the wider world) trucked to them in the
delightful (I jest) facilities that are common now. For a decade or so
there was even research into breeding better honeylocust for forage and
even human consumption, but that was cut off (and cut down) something
like 60+ years ago. The land with the trees growing on it also produced
a sizable hay crop. Cows fed the beans as forage had increased
butterfat, etc...

(_Tree Crops, a permanent agriculture_, J. Russell Smith, 1950)

There is ongoing but slow work in increasing domestic (USA) hazelnut
(filbert) production east of the rockies. Problems include breeding past
eastern filbert blight. Also, getting farmers to think about growing a
crop that stays put and does not yield a great deal for several years,
which is a hard sell for anyone carrying debt.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 08:17:30 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
wrote:
I would really like to see a credible estimate of two things:

- The cost efficiency of wide scale permaculture, that is what would
food cost compared to conventional agriculture a) on the market
today b) taking into account long term costs of pollution etc, which
almost never figure in our 'costs'.

- Whether it can really be sustainable in a closed system. The best
examples that I have seen still use considerable external inputs.
The answer is to this is in part tied up with how you define the
system's boundaries but the dedicated are claiming that boundary is
and ought to be at the property boundary - in which case I wonder if
it is possible.

David

Rick wrote:
here is a synopsis of a recent study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0425140114.htm

There are, of course, others out there. Bottom line from my reading
is that organic and permaculture methods fall behind on grain
production, but do better with other crops. It seems likely that for
the forseeable future many farming methods will be required to sustain
a growing population at affordable prices while minimizing damage to
the eco system.



It's a shame that the paper is paywalled. To me the core question is not
the relative yields but the productivity in relation to inputs and wider
costs, the review doesn't mention whether this is covered in the paper.

The measurement of yield by itself is not that useful, one can have very
high yields that are quite unsustainable.

One critic wailed that for the underfed of the world a drop in yield as
described would be catastrophic. This is such a simplified and narrow view
that conveniently dismisses the issue in one sweep. If the chance of
catastrophe is to be a major evaluation criterion then there are many other
possible catastrophes, such as soil destruction or conventional fertiliser
becoming prohibitively expensive, that need to be considered when choosing a
long term system of food production. And of course there are many
non-catastrophe consequences and issues to consider. To collapse the
evaluation down to only yield is inadequate to say the least.

The desire to simplify the world and the future into neat sound bites (that
miss the point or tell half-truths) is very powerful in some quarters.


David

Ecnerwal wrote:
Billy wrote:

I thank you for introducing me to Permies; http://www.permies.com/.
What groups does Jay Green post in, or is it just Permies?

Several farming and poultry sites; when I was researching the use of
fermented feeds, his stuff came up in several places since he's someone
who does it and posts about it.

Be aware that permies is somewhat prone to being what its owner wants to
hear - minor discussion is allowed, major disagreements vanish into thin
air, leaving only what he agrees with (not even a "post deleted by
moderator" message.) I thought more highly of it before I saw that
happen a few times.

yuck, yeah that's a turn off.


I haven't been back much since then. I prefer to
talk with grown ups, or wise children.

i'll talk to anyone (and apparently i have no
sense of knowing when someone i'm talking to is
drunk because i've had several happenings that
would have been better avoided had i noticed
the person was smashed).


I like tree and bush crops and "permanent agriculture." When lazy and
efficient are the same thing, I'm all for that kind of lazy.

i'm ok with some dirt moving for annual
crops, cover crops, green manures and for digging
up and dividing perennials. that's not the
majority of what is going on here.

by far the most heavy work i do each season is
to try to mitigate mistakes that others are
making. right now i'm looking at minimally three
weeks of this season that are or will be wasted
due to the negative actions of others. that's
from this point. in a few weeks there might be
other things added to this list. the good news
is that at least by spending the extra day this
week i'll head off two-thirds of a future major
pile of BS. i'll take my victories where i can
find them...


permaculture-with-a-capital-P seems to be more about paying money to
take courses to get certified to teach courses that you charge people
money for so they can get certified, in my somewhat jaundiced view. I
don't find it all that compelling, though it has produced some materials
I think worthy of a read, so long as I'm not paying an arm and a leg for
them, or required to believe (or pretend to believe) everything in
them...but there are also good books on the subject that predate the
certification-mad folks.

yep, i was noticing this trend and then the
usual call for organizing a regulating organization
to make sure things were ok. all a bunch of yuck
pretty similar to how "Organic" was corrupted by
organizations and governmental fiddling.

anyone with a little time can find quite a few
good references from "the old days.". i've been
working on a list the past few weeks. when i get it
done and posted i'll post a link to it.

i like to go around and look at projects and
see if they've lasted and what the results have
been. some are quite impressive. others folded
due to lack of funding (it wasn't really
permaculture then was it?) yet, if they've
improved an area even a little and made it better
then at least they've not done as much harm as
could be done by more destructive methods.

the bones of projects are well worth examining.
you can learn a lot. what works years later even
when the maintenance folks are gone are the kinds
of things you want to do yourself. learning by
observing.


songbird

In article ,
"David Hare-Scott" wrote:

On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 08:17:30 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
wrote:
I would really like to see a credible estimate of two things:

- The cost efficiency of wide scale permaculture, that is what would
food cost compared to conventional agriculture a) on the market
today b) taking into account long term costs of pollution etc, which
almost never figure in our 'costs'.

- Whether it can really be sustainable in a closed system. The best
examples that I have seen still use considerable external inputs.
The answer is to this is in part tied up with how you define the
system's boundaries but the dedicated are claiming that boundary is
and ought to be at the property boundary - in which case I wonder if
it is possible.

David

Rick wrote:
here is a synopsis of a recent study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0425140114.htm

There are, of course, others out there. Bottom line from my reading
is that organic and permaculture methods fall behind on grain
production, but do better with other crops. It seems likely that for
the forseeable future many farming methods will be required to sustain
a growing population at affordable prices while minimizing damage to
the eco system.



It's a shame that the paper is paywalled. To me the core question is not
the relative yields but the productivity in relation to inputs and wider
costs, the review doesn't mention whether this is covered in the paper.

The measurement of yield by itself is not that useful, one can have very
high yields that are quite unsustainable.

One critic wailed that for the underfed of the world a drop in yield as
described would be catastrophic. This is such a simplified and narrow view
that conveniently dismisses the issue in one sweep. If the chance of
catastrophe is to be a major evaluation criterion then there are many other
possible catastrophes, such as soil destruction or conventional fertiliser
becoming prohibitively expensive, that need to be considered when choosing a
long term system of food production. And of course there are many
non-catastrophe consequences and issues to consider. To collapse the
evaluation down to only yield is inadequate to say the least.

The desire to simplify the world and the future into neat sound bites (that
miss the point or tell half-truths) is very powerful in some quarters.


David

Last night, I was listening to William Moseley, a development and
human-environment geographer with particular expertise in political
ecology, tropical agriculture, environment and development policy,
livelihood security, and West Africa and Southern Africa.
http://archives.kpfa.org/data/20130408-Mon1900.mp3
http://www.macalester.edu/academics/.../billmoseley/a
rticles/
One of his observations was that the food riots in Africa in 2008
weren't caused by lack of food, but by the price of the food. Local
farmers get pushed off the land, and then the land is leased to
countries like China who come in farm the land, and then send the crop
back to China to feed Chinese. The other whammy that farmers around the
world have to live with is government subsidized crops. Many of our
crops in the U.S. are tax-payer subsidized (so much for "free markets")
and sold on the world market at below the cost of production. This in
turn ruins corn farmers in Mexico, rice growers in Haiti, and wheat
farmers in Africa, and the result is a dependency on the food producing
countries. In any event, IMHO, this is the path that Monsanto and others
are taking us down, i.e. they will control the seed.

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

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

In article ,
songbird wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote:
Billy wrote:

I thank you for introducing me to Permies; http://www.permies.com/.
What groups does Jay Green post in, or is it just Permies?

Several farming and poultry sites; when I was researching the use of
fermented feeds, his stuff came up in several places since he's someone
who does it and posts about it.

Be aware that permies is somewhat prone to being what its owner wants to
hear - minor discussion is allowed, major disagreements vanish into thin
air, leaving only what he agrees with (not even a "post deleted by
moderator" message.) I thought more highly of it before I saw that
happen a few times.

yuck, yeah that's a turn off.


I haven't been back much since then. I prefer to
talk with grown ups, or wise children.

i'll talk to anyone (and apparently i have no
sense of knowing when someone i'm talking to is
drunk because i've had several happenings that
would have been better avoided had i noticed
the person was smashed).


I like tree and bush crops and "permanent agriculture." When lazy and
efficient are the same thing, I'm all for that kind of lazy.

i'm ok with some dirt moving for annual
crops, cover crops, green manures and for digging
up and dividing perennials. that's not the
majority of what is going on here.

by far the most heavy work i do each season is
to try to mitigate mistakes that others are
making. right now i'm looking at minimally three
weeks of this season that are or will be wasted
due to the negative actions of others. that's
from this point. in a few weeks there might be
other things added to this list. the good news
is that at least by spending the extra day this
week i'll head off two-thirds of a future major
pile of BS. i'll take my victories where i can
find them...


permaculture-with-a-capital-P seems to be more about paying money to
take courses to get certified to teach courses that you charge people
money for so they can get certified, in my somewhat jaundiced view. I
don't find it all that compelling, though it has produced some materials
I think worthy of a read, so long as I'm not paying an arm and a leg for
them, or required to believe (or pretend to believe) everything in
them...but there are also good books on the subject that predate the
certification-mad folks.

yep, i was noticing this trend and then the
usual call for organizing a regulating organization
to make sure things were ok. all a bunch of yuck
pretty similar to how "Organic" was corrupted by
organizations and governmental fiddling.

anyone with a little time can find quite a few
good references from "the old days.". i've been
working on a list the past few weeks. when i get it
done and posted i'll post a link to it.

i like to go around and look at projects and
see if they've lasted and what the results have
been. some are quite impressive. others folded
due to lack of funding (it wasn't really
permaculture then was it?) yet, if they've
improved an area even a little and made it better
then at least they've not done as much harm as
could be done by more destructive methods.

the bones of projects are well worth examining.
you can learn a lot. what works years later even
when the maintenance folks are gone are the kinds
of things you want to do yourself. learning by
observing.


songbird

Besides the BBCs A Farm for a Future, the book ,
Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture
(Paperback)
by Toby Hemenway
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...culture/dp/160
3580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1
(It's at the library)

is a good introduction to permaculture.

Looking at some of what's available for permaculture on the internet
suddenly reminds me of the dictum of one of our local madams, Sally
Stanford, "Never give away anything that you can sell."

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

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

In article ,
Rick wrote:

here is a synopsis of a recent study.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0425140114.htm

There are, of course, others out there. Bottom line from my reading
is that organic and permaculture methods fall behind on grain
production, but do better with other crops. It seems likely that for
the forseeable future many farming methods will be required to sustain
a growing population at affordable prices while minimizing damage to
the eco system.

The problem with grain production is that you are talking about
monocultures, chemicals, and possibly a second crop in a season.

Numero-uno: Monocultures produce less food per acre than inter-planted
crops.

Numero-two-o: Planting the same crop on the same land year in, and year
out will encourage crop pests to flourish.

Number-three-o: The cost of chemical fertilizers, and pesticides is
linked to to the price of fossil fuels. As the price of fossil
fuels go up, so must the cost of the yield.

Numero-four-o: The use of chemical fertilizers kills topsoil buy killing
microorganisms (like salt on a snail), and the lack or organic inputs
(manure, stubble). Dying and dead soil requires ever more chemical
fertilizers to maintain crop yields. The nitrates poison the ground
water, and the water table. Phosphates cause algal blooms, which
when they die suck the oxygen out of the water, and give you
"dead zones" at the mouths of rivers, further reducing available
food. The nitrogen from chemical fertilizers is stored in the leaves
of the plant. These are fast growing leaves because of the nitrogen.
Insects are attracted to the leaves because of the nitrogen, which is
easily accessed because the fast growing leaves are tender.

Numero-five-o: Lest we forget, GMOs don't produce more yield,
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/20/8405
and some GMOs do have nasty side effects on lab animals. GMOs do
allow more biocides to be pour onto our food (Roundup), and introduce
bacillus Thuringiensis toxins into our food.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...toxins-blood-9
3-unborn-babies.html
Roundup has been shown to reduce crops, and bacillus Thuringiensis
toxins and meant to kill insects, both beneficial, and pests. We are
still trying to figure out what is killing off the bees that
pollinate 70% of what we eat.

It's not just bees. We are losing our agricultural biodiversity with
industrial agriculture.

Numero-six-o: You have none of the above problems with organic farming.
Productivity in industrial agriculture is measured in terms of
"yield" per acre, not overall output per acre. And the only input
taken into account is labour, which is abundant, not natural
resources which are scarce.

A resource hungry and resource destructive system of agriculture is
not land saving, it is land demanding. That is why industrial
agriculture is driving a massive planetary land grab. It is leading to
the deforestation of the rainforests in the Amazon for soya and in
Indonesia for palm oil. And it is fuelling a land grab in Africa,
displacing pastoralists and peasants.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/03/08/us-food-idUKTRE7272FN20110308

Numero-seven-o: Commercially grown fruits and vegetables are less
expensive, are prettier to look at, contain approximately 10-50% of
the nutrients found in organic produce, are often depleted in
enzymes, and are contaminated with a variety of herbicides,
pesticides and other agricultural chemicals.
In comparing organically and commercially grown wheat, researchers
found the organic wheat contained 20-80% less metal residues
(aluminum, cadmium, cobalt, lead, mercury), and contained 25-1300%
more of specific nutrients (calcium, chromium, copper, iodine,
magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, phosphorus, potassium,
selenium, sulfur, and zinc).
Journal of Applied Nutrition, Vol. 45, #1, 1993.



On Tue, 9 Apr 2013 08:17:30 +1000, "David Hare-Scott"
wrote:

Ecnerwal wrote:
In article
,
Billy wrote:
I thank you for introducing me to Permies;
http://www.permies.com/. What groups does Jay Green post in, or is
it just Permies?

Several farming and poultry sites; when I was researching the use of
fermented feeds, his stuff came up in several places since he's
someone who does it and posts about it.

Be aware that permies is somewhat prone to being what its owner wants
to hear - minor discussion is allowed, major disagreements vanish
into thin air, leaving only what he agrees with (not even a "post
deleted by moderator" message.) I thought more highly of it before I
saw that happen a few times. I haven't been back much since then. I
prefer to talk with grown ups, or wise children.

I like tree and bush crops and "permanent agriculture." When lazy and
efficient are the same thing, I'm all for that kind of lazy.

permaculture-with-a-capital-P seems to be more about paying money to
take courses to get certified to teach courses that you charge people
money for so they can get certified, in my somewhat jaundiced view. I
don't find it all that compelling, though it has produced some
materials I think worthy of a read, so long as I'm not paying an arm
and a leg for them, or required to believe (or pretend to believe)
everything in them...but there are also good books on the subject
that predate the certification-mad folks.

I would really like to see a credible estimate of two things:

- The cost efficiency of wide scale permaculture, that is what would food
cost compared to conventional agriculture a) on the market today b) taking
into account long term costs of pollution etc, which almost never figure in
our 'costs'.

- Whether it can really be sustainable in a closed system. The best
examples that I have seen still use considerable external inputs. The answer
is to this is in part tied up with how you define the system's boundaries
but the dedicated are claiming that boundary is and ought to be at the
property boundary - in which case I wonder if it is possible.

David

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

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

Bill Rose wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:
songbird wrote:
Billy wrote:

...
[for those who want to just get to the
gardening stuff at the end, search for the word
HERE ]

...profits, eating, survival...
...Easter Island...
The island was deforested but a few trees survived. When Europeans
finally arrived they noticed some trees that were about some 10' tall.

Jarod Diamond does an analysis in his book, "Downfall" on page 181 for
the reasons of the lack of fertility of Easter Island's soil (low rain
fall, cooler climate than in other parts of Polynesian, lack of
micronutrients that come from volcanic ash, and continental dust).
Once cut, Easter Island's forest wasn't coming back anytime soon.

sure, but that doesn't mean it won't
recover if replanted and the animals
are kept from destroying the seedlings.
like many things it's a matter of will.

Replanting is an option, but not a simple one. The problem is similar to
what the Greenlanders found. Once their cattle had grazed away the
natural pastures, they didn't recover in any meaningful sense, because
the weather was so cool. With the ground cover gone, there was erosion,
and then the topsoil was gone, and their problems just cascaded.

Iceland is probably in a similar boat with
the added trouble of periodic volcanic events
that can degrade areas for a long time.

we might have to agree to disagree on this
point... i'll keep looking for examples and
counter-examples as i keep my research going.

cooler climates might have fewer growing
days per season but they also have lower
biological decay going on too, so the offset
of the one by the other should be enough to
make it close to an even thing. i think the
general problem is that people in degraded
areas don't really ever recall the area
being different so they don't have the
vision and that lack of vision means they
also are unlikely to have the will to enforce
what needs to be done to make the changes.


....dredging oceans/deltas for topsoil...
No need to disturb the buried poisons. 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.

i don't think he's much wrong in what he
does, but some aspects are not sustainable
in the sense that he is using inputs from
other areas.

Bird, can you reference this? Where do the amendments come from,

i've read most of the books he's published
(all but two) in a short period of time all
together so i can't tell you which of the
books mentioned what he does, but i think it
is in more than one book he mentions that he
hauls in whatever organic materials he can
find for cheap. straw, ruined hay, sawdust,
wood chips, expired sweet potatoes are some i
specifically recall. i can't give book or
page numbers.


and
what do you mean they get run through the cow barn, the pigs, chickens?
Are we talking feed, or soil amendments?

he uses a deep bedding system for the cows
during the winter when he keeps them off the
pastures (he doesn't have the mix of grasses
in the pastures which resists damage like the
folks in the _A Farm for the Future_ segment
had... could be climate is harsher and such
so they wouldn't grow or he's not gotten into
it, dunno.). so he puts down bedding until it
gets full of cow poo/pee and then he scatters
corn on it and adds another layer and keeps
doing that all winter until he can get the
cows back to the fields. after they are out
of the barns then he lets the pigs in to stir
the bedding (they go after the fermenting
corn). when they are done then it all gets
taken out and spread on the pastures.


http://grist.org/sustainable-farming...e-new-york-tim
es-re-sustainable-meat/
While its true that at Polyface our omnivores (poultry and pigs) do eat
local GMO (genetically modified organism)-free grain in addition to the
forage, the land base required to feed and metabolize the manure is no
different than that needed to sustain the same animals in a confinement
setting. Even if they ate zero pasturage, the land is the same. The only
difference is our animals get sunshine, exercise, fresh pasture salad
bars, fresh air, and a respectful life.

It has been charged that Polyface is a charade because it depends on
grain from industrial farms to maintain soil fertility. First of all, at
Polyface we do not assume that all nutrient movement is
anti-environmental. In fact, one of the biggest reasons for animals in
nature is to move nutrients uphill, against the natural gravitational
flow from high ground to low ground. This is why low lands and valleys
are fertile and the uplands are less so. Animals are the only mechanism
nature has to defy this natural downward flow. Fortunately, predators
make the prey animals want to lounge on high ground (where they can see
their enemies), which insures that manure will concentrate on high
lookout spots rather than in the valleys. Perhaps this is why no
ecosystem exists that is devoid of animals. The fact is that nutrient
movement is inherently nature-healing.

But, it doesnt move very far. And herein lies the difference between
grain used at Polyface and that used by the industry: We care where ours
comes from. Its not just a commodity. It has an origin and an ending,
start to finish, farmer to eater. The closer we can connect the carbon
cycles, the more environmentally normal we will become.
Second, herbivores are the exception to the entire negative nutrient
flow argument because by pruning back the forage to restart the rapid
biomass accumulation photosynthetic engine, the net carbon flow
compensates for anything lost through harvest. Herbivores do not require
tillage or annuals, and that is why all historically deep soils have
been created by them, not by omnivores.
-------
So, the Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic's
system isn't quite closed, but it is creating topsoil (soil with the
highest concentration of organic matter and microorganisms), which other
meat producers don't.



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).

You have a reference for this?

his books. no specific cite i can
make. i didn't take notes as i was
reading these. they aren't long, takes
an hour or two to read one.

the most informative about the development
and gives interesting info between the lines
is the book which includes at the end some of
the previous newsletters/sales information
that they sent out to their customers. i
think it was the _Salad Bar Beef_ book...


his cows are fed from hay grown on his
land, he could change to more bison as the
grazing animals and not have to harvest hay
or have barns.

Again, a reference, if you have it. Livestock is often fed harvested
nourishment during the winter.

his books... sure they are, i'm just saying
that he could avoid some of that effort (at
putting up hay and having to empty the barns
and spread the compost) if he ran bison instead
of cows.


From their web site:
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/principles/
We havent . . . . planted a seed, own no plow or disk or silowe call
those bankruptcy tubes. We practice mob stocking herbivorous solar
conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertlization with the cattle.
The Eggmobiles follow them, mimicking egrets on the rhinos nose. The
laying hens scratch through the dung, eat out the fly larvae, scatter
the nutrients into the soil, and give thousands of dollars worth of eggs
as a byproduct of pasture sanitation. Pastured broilers in floorless
pasture schooners move every day to a fresh paddock salad bar. Pigs
aerate compost and finish on acorns in forest glens. Its all a
symbiotic, multi-speciated synergistic relationship-dense production
model that yields far more per acre than industrial models. And its all
aromatically and aesthetically romantic.

yep, and if that's what's being done it's
better than what a CAFO does.


....
i think you are stuck in the idea that only
for-profit corporations exist as active
entities in the world. there are non-profit,
individual and governmental entities which
can make a difference. i see a lot of
differences being made from these other
entities, but i also see a lot of difference
happening in the for-profit companies and
individuals.

Would you care to share the sunshine? Who, what, when, and where?

what part do you need expanded?
non-profit, for-profit or government?

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...


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.


....
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
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.

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...

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.


....
and i don't discount the benefits of a good
sex life. just that we need to make sure in
lands that are marginally able to support
people that they don't keep having more
children than the land can support.

Traditionally, where subsistence farming has been a way of life,
children are the family's work force, and often children die from
disease, so you create replacements.

yes, i know the normal explanations for
why population goes the way it does, but
it isn't the whole story. which is why
i talk about birth control choices, women's
rights, fundamentalism and governmental
stability.

It has been shown that once a society reaches middle class, their birth
rate drops. Presently Germany, and France can't maintain their
population without immigrants.

i've yet to see a convincing report of
what actually is happening and why. is
it because the middle class is actually a
myth that really means that people no
longer have time to relax and have fun
and make babies as they are all so busy
working... or is it that the middle class
lives rather sedate lives which means
everyone sits at home in front of the tv
(or computer or cell phone or iphone or
game console) and doesn't actually talk
or interact with others much at all?


Passion requires ambiance, good food, good wine, or at least a storage
closet, and then it's that ol' "bim-batta-boom", so to speak.

unfortunately in many poor areas it's not a
matter of passion but of rape, failed birth
control, ignorance, societal breakdown or ...

Let's not start blaming the victims.

i'm not, i'm stating facts that are well
known. when it comes down to the final
equation where each calorie is critical
does it matter who eats the one that tips
the balance for another person in another
place to starve? you may never actually
be able to point to any one situation in
that fine a detail, but i think you
understand that the carrying capacity is
a hard limit that once passed is going to
take it's due one way or another.

War drought, or floods come to mind. I've read that we throw away 30% of
the food that we buy. 30%!

i saw that quoted recently at 45%. i know
here we don't come close to that. perhaps 1-3%.
we're very careful with what we do as i consider
it a primary fault to waste food. i grew up on
the poor side, so i'm more like my grandmother
than my neices or nephews. Ma is the same way.
very rare i have to feed anything to the wormies
other than trimmings from cooking.

which makes me wonder what a worm thinks of
a piece of chocolate.


....population control...
yep. as exploitive omnivores we are just
too capable and we are also making the mistake
of making plants too capable. if i were a
farmer who was into breeding corn i would be
breeding for a sustainable corn yeild within
the natural soil rate of recovery and not
trying to breed a more productive sucker of
nutrients from the soil as seems to be the
direction of so many others.

That certainly is true for GMO corn.

it sure seems to be.


....
unfortunately i think some of it (maybe
even a fairly large portion) is based in
religious ideas and practices. so it is a
major challenge. we no longer have to
"go forth, be fruitful and multiply and
subdue the earth" that's already been done,
we need to put out a revision of that bit
and people get ****ed when you talk about
revising "The Word".

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.


Religion has meaning for many people, but for the fundamentalists, it is
still manipulation. No more go forth and prosper, but wanting for the
good ship "Rapture".

yeah, i really have a difficult time around
people who don't care about the world they are
in currently because they are more intersted in
where they are supposedly going (and also the
amount of effort they spend in trying to figure
out where everyone else is going too along with
making sure to evangelise). if they put 1/10 of
the effort into actually helping others and took
better care of themselves the world would be a
much better place. but then don't get me
started...


....a biochar harvester...
The charcoal needs to be where the roots are, and plowing the soil isn't
good for it. The charcoal will be covered by the crops, and the
non-harvested part of the crop would cover the charcoal after that.

around here the non-harvested part is not
enough to cover the soil, it's stubble for
the most part. this is where i do like some
other source of production than annual crops.
perennial forms of the same crops would be
an interesting change. in some ways i do
that already via the alfalfa and birdsfoot
trefoil green manure and forage crop, but
it's not quite the same as a blueberry bush
or a beet tree. i'm very interested in what
might eventually happen with genetic
tinkering, but we're a long ways from that
tinkering being really systemically smart.
i'd love to do a Rip Van Winkle for about
500 years...

I thought you turned the soil. Good for you, if you don't. You're near a
forest aren't you? Can't you gather leaves for mulch? Either way it
would get the char out of sight.

yes, i do turn some gardens using a shovel.
i'd do a lot less digging if it was just me
running things. unfortunately, i'm not the
manager, i can make suggestions, but i get
overruled at times.

we are a half mile from the woods but it is
a park (not a place that i can harvest materials).
the past few years i haven't needed to do that
sort of thing anyways as i have a friend in a
nearby city who is bringing me the leaves from two
lawns plus the shredded bark and wood scraps from
their wood cutting. they just had two large trees
come down in the neighbor's yard so they are
cleaning that up for free which means i might be
getting several more yards of stuff to use. they
brought a load last week and i'm champing at the
bit to get it out on the gardens. along with some
wood ashes from their wood stove.

whatever i can't use for top mulch or mixing in
the clay will be used to raise up areas to help
keep the garden above the flood stage. i dig a
deep trench and then pack it half full of material
then pile the dirt on top. eventually it may rot
but that is years in the future. in the meantime
i have better drainage and higher ground. later
if i need materials and don't have any i can
excavate this stuff and use it like peat or leaf
mold.


If
you want to increase the albedo, we could all paint our roofs white.

roads should be made from lighter materials
too especially in southern climates...

Oy. The glare! Maybe we could just do white cars.



....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
of products from the Biochar book (_the Biochar
Solution_ by Albert Bates) along with a few other
thoughts that i've been compiling for further
reading/research:

- pyrolysis, cellulose and lignin broken down into
phenols, aromatics, methane and CO2

- volatile gases
- wood vinegar
- char 80% carbon

- temperature and feedstock dependent,
also the pH varies by feedstock and temperature

- 300C, 300-500C (wood vinegar), 500-700C (90% carbon
and higher surface area)

- heating rate, particle size, moisture content

- other outputs mentioned: ethanol, dimethyl ether, heat,
steam, hot water, CO2, carbon monoxide...

- biomass smoke contains: benzene, butadiene, dioxin,
formaldehyde, styrene and methylene chloride (to name
a few), so clearly should be made in a closed system
where those things can be captured instead of emitted.

- 1 gram of soot warms atmosphere as much as 1500watt
space heater running for a week (what about the kicked
up dust from a dark soil if it was amended with biochar?
comparable at what percentage? equivalent to percentage
of carbon? or?)

- dust settling on snow and ice, makes it melt much faster


I just think that if we can seriously cut the amount of CO2
that we're putting into the atmosphere, and encourage reforestation, and
the production of charcoal, we have a chance of turning this barge
around. Otherwise, when the methane hydrate that lines the Atlantic
seashore goes of goes off, the tide will roll in to Raliegh, N.C., and
Harrisburg, PA. Of course this will aversely affect the profits of some
major corporations, but so will having New York go under water.

yeah, the hydrates and the methane from thawing
arctic tundra and permafrost are also feedback
additions that we have to worry about and counter.
add more decomposition of carbon compounds in
northern soils as they warm...

there is a possibility that the northern areas
will grow more trees as a result so the feedback
cycle might be very interesting. i still think
we need to reduce CO2 below what we are adding
so the oceans can recover and increase the pH.
corals and shells are important parts of building
shoreline erosion breaks.

They'll have to grow fast to make up for all the forest that is being
cut in the tropics.

considering how thinly populated much of the far
north is it might be enough if the trees are not
cut. however, it also has to offset the trees of
the northern forests that are dying off due to
disease and climate change. like most of these
things it is hard to be sure what is going to happen.


it can be a source of fuel for cars/trucks/industry
too. my ideal for a farm combine would be that
it could use a portion of what it harvests (stems,
stalks, cobs) to create the fuel on the fly and
leave a trail of buried biochar behind it as it
goes. add to it a chopper, disk, and cover crop
planting on the same pass and you've almost got
a sustainable industrial agriculture.

Uh, now you've lost me, monoculture, discing the soil?
More food come from interplanting.

it could be a mix of planted species, but
the result is still the same. we get a portion
of buried charcoal from each pass of the
harvester/planter and that adds up over time to
a significant amount of sequestered CO2. if you
have to spread something on the soil wouldn't
it be best if it were done by using fuel derived
right there instead of from fuel transported in?

if we can go perennial plants for cereal
grain production (corn, wheat, rice) and
also perennial legumes (i ain't giving up
my beans bucko ) for adding some nitrogen
that still does not get charcoal into the
ground. there would still have to be some
method of harvesting and spreading the charcoal
and it makes the most sense to me if it were
to happen as a part of the same process be
it from burning the fields once in a while
(bad idea as all that energy is then wasted
where it could otherwise be used as a food
source or a fuel -- not counting the air
pollution aspect).


My only doubt is with the conversion of the wood to fuel/char.

without having worked on anything like this
directly i can't say, but you could not do it
well as a combined process in one chamber instead
you have to divide the materials and one path
goes to the burning for fuel/heat/steam and the
other is for char and gas production so that the
gas can be condensed and then burned or if it is
extra it can be saved for fueling the next years
tasks, used as winter heating or sold.

or to keep the thought experiment running,
perhaps just digging a deep enough trench as
the harvester goes, burying the dry materials,
firing it and piling dirt on it as it goes.
so in that way the actual firing chamber is
the earth itself and that keeps the smoke,
soot, volatiles and some of the CO2 right in
the soil. sure it ****es off some of the soil
food web for a while, but as soon as it cools
off and there is some settling, rains the
critters will invade and colonize. with each
pass as the years go by it will build the
biochar and soil organic materials as you would
have some that aren't burned/charred.


....
consider for a longer term project where
fast growing trees could be planted, then after
a few years (seven or less for some poplars
i've seen grow here) they could be chopped
and left to dry and then chipped and burned
on the fly and the charcoal buried at the
same time. no crop needed to harvest but
there might be a wood gas surplus that could
be stored and then used later as fuel. not
sure about that though as wood chipping might
need a lot more power than dragging a single
blade through the soil and spinning some blades
and a fan.

Europeans plant lots of poplar for firewood. Forests are so thick that
you can't see 5 feet into them.

i'm sure plenty of it is planted here too.
i know the university forestry department has
a lot of research going on using them. in
some cases trying to breed trees with less
lignin making it easier to process for paper
products and similar aspects of changing the
trees for industrial reasons.

....
...HERE...
....
that's a lot of tomatoes!

which do you like the best or the
least? do you put them up or freeze
them?

Eyes eats them! It's only about 10 vines in the soil, and 2 in
containers. If I was going to put them up I would be planting romas, or
San Marzanos. Between salads, sandwiches, and gazpacho there won't be
any left over, especially now that I know that I can use green tomatoes
in making salsa verde for enchiladas.

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.


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?

do you have a favorite tomato?


....
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.

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.


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.

if we can decrease production of plastics
that become poisonous and replace them with
materials that safely degrade then that would
help a great deal. i'm very much in favor
of taxing and regulating plastics based upon
how much gets recycled and then using that
tax money to fund cleanup efforts to harvest
and recycle what is floating on the seas.

i'm generally all for any type of program
which taxes products and materials based upon
the percent that is recyclable and making the
taxes both inversely and exponentially tied
to the percentage that is recycled. so for
things that are 100% recycled there is no
additional tax, but for items that are not
recycleable the tax is quite large to offset
the unsustainable costs of dealing with it.

that type of policy would immediately
create some jobs for people to work in the
recycling processes, but also i'd have
bounties for picking up trash that get paid
out of fast food and other waste streams that
seem to be showing up as debris along the
road (or in the air).

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


money and capital after all are figments
of the imagination, so if you can get enough
people convinced that CO2 sequestration has
value then some kind of market forces will
be created along with that determination of
value.

now though, i think that value needs to be
set higher and immediately to get the whole
process going.

Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.
-Lucy Parsons
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Parsons

who said anything about voting? i'm a
benevolent dictator. first order of business
is governmental reform and rewriting the
constitution to change election laws (there
wouldn't be elections any longer it would
be representation by random selection).

second order of business would be environmental
reforms would be to make the USoA the first
nation to go 100% recycling, get off oil
completely and outlaw *cides and restore the
grasslands, wetlands, rivers, to hold back water
instead of the current policies which exacerbate
the flash flooding and drought low flow patterns.
plant more trees, restore marginal lands by using
keyline water traps and stacking rocks and then
planting trees to help keep things more stable
and shaded. soak up CO2, more trees that can be
planted in city parks and vacant lots that aren't
otherwise claimed for community gardens.

third order of business is to get rid of
minimum wage laws for unskilled labor. like the
above trash bounty type of program that would
get trash picked up and recycled or incinerated
or turned into biochar. the price can be good
enough to make marine floating trash worth the
effort. mixed in there are likely to be a good
deal of organic materials that could be charred,
chipped or otherwise used.

i think some folks would like to work but can't
because the cost for minimum wages is too much for
what the job is actually worth. let's say that a
job picking up trash along the road is worth $2/hr
and with a bounty on trash that might bump the
effort up to $3/hr. that's a good enough wage to
get some kids out to earn extra money, or a older
or retired person who would like a little extra to
help with bills. good exercise, getting paid for
it and not having to sit at a desk inside. think
about the health benefit from that or even if they
wanted to help out in a community garden or a CSA.
most of these cannot afford to pay a lot but they
might be able to afford a little. subsidized by
trash and fast food taxes it would be the best
health improvement thing that could be done with a
very small shift of money. some of that money
then gets taxes as income and some more people get
back on the payroll and contributing to social
security and medicaide. a bunch of small peanuts
in terms of amounts but it adds up in aggregate.

if i were a poor country with severely depleted
soils in need of an energy source or organic
materials to recondition the topsoil i'd be looking
into buying some old tankers and then sending them
off to harvest a floating goldmine.

sunlight can degrade quite a bit of toxic
compounds, soil bacteria can do a good job on other
and fungi can work on those that don't get taken
care of by the first two.

short of heavy metals or radioactives i don't
think there's much likely to be floating that
i'd worry about once it was sorted and processed.
any plastics that are too toxic to be reused
could be incinerated or cracked into other
molecules. a poor country with a lot of heat
and sun could use mirrors to concentrate sunlight
and cook stuff to dry it and char it.

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.


....the oceans, floating trash...
Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no
mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule."
Even if photodegradable nets helped marine mammals live, their powdery
residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it.

if it is large enough to be filtered out
then it is: incorporated in the animal,
excreted or the animal is eaten before it
has done any of the previous two things.

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).


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? 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?


....


songbird