Originally Posted by Billy[_10_]

In article lnet,
"James" wrote:

Billy, your rambling, psychotic , cut and paste response included the
following claim:



"Chemical fertilizers (henceforth referred to as chemferts) are made from
petroleum, for which we have gone to war."



Since you have made this claim in public, can you provide proof ? I am a
student of world history and world events, and I know of no instance in
which the United States of American has gone to war for petroleum products.
Of course, there is plenty of oil in Iraq, but we have not taken one gallon
of it yet, and I see no administration plans to do so.
Well, you got me there. It's probably just a coincidence that most of
the natural gas deposits are around the Caspian Sea, and the Caucus
Mountains, and that Afghanistan straddles the intended pipeline to get
it out.
EIA - International Energy Outlook 2009-Natural Gas

At least I didn't mention the 5 military bases that we are setting up
next to Venezuela, which has the greatest oil reserves in the world, oh,
damn.

You are quite right, there is no reason to get into why coalition forces
left the Baghdad museum unprotected, while it threw a cordon of troops
around the oil ministry, or Iraq's history of pumping its own oil, that
will now be produced by foreigners, but this is getting off the topic of
what fertilizer will work best for you.

Do you have some sort of mental disorder, obssessing on gasoline products ?
Loss of top soil, global warming, insecticides, Operation Iraqi
Liberation, industrial chemicals in our drinking water, no, no, I don't
think so.

Do you also hate the United States of America ? Part of the Hate America
First crowd ??
Love the country, I just don't think that the populous and the
leadership are on the same page. You think the plutocrates are America?
Hmmm.

Is there some medication that you may have skipped today ?
I take them after dinner;O)

James



But moving along, I'm surprised that you, a gardener, are unfamiliar
with how chemferts are made.

Fritz Haber - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fritz Haber (9 December 1868 * 29 January 1934) was a German chemist,
who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his development
for synthesizing ammonia, important for fertilizers and explosives.

Haber process - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Haber process, also called the Haber*Bosch process, is the nitrogen
fixation reaction of nitrogen gas and hydrogen gas, over an enriched
iron or ruthenium catalyst, to produce ammonia.

As mentioned, chemferts like ammonium nitrate (NH4+ and NO3-) are salts
that kill some microbes, leaving the rest of them in jeopardy, you did
read the report that I prepared for you, didn't you?

The over application of chemferts speeding up the disappearance of
organic material from the soil, requiring ever larger applications of
chemferts. This excessive application of chemferts poisons potable
water, as in our mid-west, and creates huge dead zones in the ocean at
the mouths of rivers, that used to teem with sea food for human
consumption.

That bit on humus is also very important because it conserves water, and
only about .35% of the water in the world is drinkable, but then you
probably knew that.

And the report boiled down to: you could leave the world in worse or
better shape than you found it. It is your choice, but all of us, and
your descendants will have to live with it.

Remember, all the material is in:

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web
Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis
Amazon.com: Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web (9780881927771): Jeff Lowenfels, Wayne Lewis: Books
/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815176&sr= 1-1

Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture
(Paperback)
by Toby Hemenway
http://www.amazon.com/Gaias-Garden-S...ulture/dp/1603
580298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271266976&sr=1-1

Oh, yeah there's a couple of good riffs in:
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
http://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dile...ls/dp/01430385
83/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206815576&sr=1-1
about using petroleum for fertilizer p. 41-47, and p. 146-9.
Michael Pollan opines that it's a shame that we can't drink the oil,
because calorie for calorie, it would be cheaper than using it for
fertilizer.

No, there's no need to thank me.

Is there something else that I could help you with?
--
- Billy
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the
merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.
YouTube - A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn page