10 replies to this topic

[Dustoffer]

No mention here so far of our major needed resource, the soil.   Here are some ways it has been ruined;
Citification (US 2MA per year lost to development), Salinization (from years of irrigation with river water), heavy metal pollution (from mercury fallout, with allowed contaminants in fertilizer),  pollution with pesticide and herbicide buildup to soil sterilization,  lack of constituent micro-nutrients, or organics,  desertification from drought, erosion from increased vulnerability, and on....
Since it was measured on a global scale in 1910, the Earth's farm soil has depleted 60%
This here accelerates it!!!
Oil and Gas Operations Are a ‘Death Sentence for Soil’
Amy Mall, Natural Resources Defense Council | May 5, 2014 9:45 am | Comments

Yesterday’s Denver Post has a very important story about the toll of oil and gas production on soil.
soilFIFrom spills to disruption, oil and gas operations take a heavy toll on soil. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

"Soil sounds like a really boring topic. But, as the Soil Science Society of America says: “soils sustain life.” According to the Society, “soil supports and nourishes the plants that we eat” and that livestock eat; soil “filters and purifies much of the water we drink;” “soils teem with microorganisms that have given us many life-saving medications;” and “protecting soil from erosion helps reduce the amount of air-borne dust we breathe.”

According to the Post:

At least 716,982 gallons (45 percent) of the petroleum chemicals spilled during the past decade have stayed in the ground after initial cleanup—contaminating soil, sometimes spreading into groundwater.
Oil and gas drilling produces up to 500 tons of dirt from every new well, some of it soaked with hydrocarbons and laced with potentially toxic minerals and salts.
Heavy trucks crush soil, “suffocating the delicate subsurface ecosystems that traditionally made Colorado’s Front Range suitable for farming.”

These impacts from the tens of thousands of wells in Colorado alone led a Colorado soil scientist to state that oil and gas operations are ”like a death sentence for soil.”

The Post points out that no federal or state agency has ever assessed the impact of the oil and gas boom on soil and on human health."
You know, I just don't get how terrible people are to their planetary home, and the very things we need to live.
http://ecowatch.com/...tence-for-soil/

[Shortpoet-GTD]

http://www.altenergy...d-healthy-soil/

http://www.altenergy...-stop-the-loss/

[Dustoffer]

I see, from 2012.  About time.  Maybe they can all be joined in one topic on soil.  The soil loss from one is not accurate at all, 30% vs the actual 60%.  Of course, if you count sterilized soil only holding up petro-chemical partially fed crops, with lowered nutrition, and count other depleted/damaged/polluted soils in use, then you could get off significantly.  Look at the list of ways we have ruined the soil.
Permaculture is not quite the same, and localized agriculture with the return of fallowing and composting with added charcoal could help lower CO2, if we had the ability to transition in a decade.
Of the three big needs, good climate, good water, and good soil, soil is possible to fix the quickest, except where it has been long term ruined by salts, heavy metals and other long term poisons like organo-phosphates.
Some water can be recycled and purified better.  The oceans and plastic?  No.  Fracked water?  No.   Wierdo insecticide/herbicide/industrial chemicals and hormones/pharmaceuticals are very difficult to filter out on large scales.
Climate will fluctuate more and more with increasing crop failures, and quickly rising temperatures will probably lead to an ELE unless people reduce emissions 90% in 9 years.  However, there has been very little of any corrective measures to reduce emissions enough in time, to replenish the soils, or replenish the pure waters.
If we don't this year, then the next years will need even greater change, until time has run out, and we lose our biosphere, or at least most of it.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

As a kid, my Pop would always dump several barrels full (sometimes a few truck loads) of cow manure in the fall, on
our side yard where we always had a garden. No chemicals, just good ole' poop.

It stunk til the snows came but we always had a bumper crop.

Too many apartment dwellers nowadays? They can't compost, and even homeowners don't compost much anymore.
We have to feed the soil so it will feed us.
Growing organics seems to help somewhat but when I read several years back that the nutritional values
of produce has been in decline since the 1950's; it makes me wonder why we don't do more to boost
the soil; in a natural way and not with chemicals that only poison us in the long run.

But common sense seems to have gone by the boards too. Or it's all down to money.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

From an article in Nature via BBC news-
CO-2 is depleting other key nutrients in soils=crops.
http://www.bbc.com/n...campaign=buffer

[Dustoffer]

There has been the soil conservation corps since the dust bowl days.  They have helped, but the flush and forget society of throw away ignorance and greed have continued this organics and micro-nutrient depletion.  River irrigated areas are salinated to death, like the Imperial Valley in CA.  Idaho soil sterilized, and large areas devoid of organics that only grow because of petro-chemical impure fertilizers which add heavy metals to poison the soil.  Diminishing returns have lead to over-fertilization and estuary dead zones.
Even the way we take care of our dead is wrong.  Cremation adds to AGW and burial in preservatives in a refined metal casket also keep our bodies from returning to the Earth as they would "in nature".
As CAGW sets in, we are losing tremendous amounts of formerly marginal soils to erosion, wind and water from fluctuation floods past historic.  Increasing heat kills the soil organisms, too.
It is a return of worse than the dust bowl, because it is happening world wide.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

Dustoffer, on 08 May 2014 - 09:20 AM, said:

Even the way we take care of our dead is wrong.  Cremation adds to AGW and burial in preservatives in a refined metal casket also keep our bodies from returning to the Earth as they would "in nature".

87 million% agree. After they cut me up for parts (if any are still usable) toss me in a cloth sack and be done with it.

[Dustoffer]

A quarter of India's land is turning into desert - minister

Source: Reuters - Wed, 18 Jun 2014 08:14 GMT
Author: Reuters


A trader herds his camels at Pushkar Fair in the desert Indian state of Rajasthan. Picture taken November 2013. REUTERS/Stringer

NEW DELHI, June 18 (Reuters) - "About a quarter of India's land is turning to desert and degradation of agricultural areas is becoming a severe problem, the environment minister said, potentially threatening food security in the world's second most populous country.
India occupies just 2 percent of the world's territory but is home to 17 percent of its population, leading to over-use of land and excessive grazing. Along with changing rainfall patterns, these are the main causes of desertification."
http://www.trust.org...ce=fiOtherNews2

I would never even want to visit such a horribly overpopulated place.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

America's stupid habit of raking leaves in the fall so the lawn looks "neat" strips away vital nutrients.

If people can't stand the look of them, rake them into a pile and let them cook over the winter. If there
is anything left in the spring, add it around trees, flower beds and bushes.
Those leaves will help replenish the soil. And they attract beneficial insects including Earth worms-
excellent critters.

Leaves? Leave em' be. Free compost.

[Dustoffer]

The secret to richer, carbon-capturing soil? Treat your microbes well

By Nathanael Johnson   Kelsey Amelia Bates
"Imagine if someone invented machines to suck carbon out of the atmosphere — machines that were absurdly cheap, autonomous, and solar powered, too. Wouldn’t that be great? But we already have these gadgets! They’re called plants.
The way that soil locks up greenhouse gas has been frustratingly mysterious, but the basics are clear: After plants suck up the carbon, the critters (microbes and fungi and insects) swarming in the topsoil chew up plant molecules, subjecting them to one chemical reaction after another as they pass through a fantastically complex food web. If everything goes right, the end result is microscopic bricks of stable carbon, which form the foundation of rich black soil.
They will eat corn stalks and wheat straw, but that, alone, is not a balanced diet. That’s like giving people nothing to eat but a mountain of sugar. There are certain elements that all creatures on earth need to build the bodies of the next generation: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, oxygen, and hydrogen. These six elements are the basic ingredients of living organisms. By leaving stalks and stems on the fields they were providing a lot of carbon, and oxygen and hydrogen comes easily from the air, but the bugs were lacking in nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus.
Instead of simply trying to optimize for the plants, they’ve realized, you can optimize soil along with the plant – you can optimize the whole system.
All this helps explain why organic farms often capture more carbon. In adding compost to amend the soil, organic farmers are adding the same ratios of nutrients.
One thing is certain: If agriculture were able to switch from an emitter of carbon to an absorber of carbon, the effect would be huge. Plants, those cheap carbon-removal machines that nature has given us, work well. If we can get them to make our dinner while they are also sucking up greenhouse gas, what a coup that would be."
http://grist.org/foo..._campaign=daily
I've got two large outdoor composters, 4 composting gardens complete with nematodes and worms of several species and of course fungi. I used compost starter periodically as the outdoor ones filled.
The easy way of "night soil" and cow poop on the ground or piles of leaves, but they are, in reality, very incomplete compost.  Real compost doesn't stink.  It should also contain charcoal bits or biochar.   Healthy soil has a web of life  in it, that true compost feeds and becomes fertilizer for the system including edible/usable  plants on top.

[Shortpoet-GTD]

In an area that is cracked clay, dry as a bone, that nothing survives in; I started putting large chunks of
bark from a dead tree in that area.
This gave the critters cover from the blazing sun and heat.
I haven't seen any insects in that area for years.

The recent rains have helped a lot, the whole area is green (albeit weeds) but when I lifted up a chunk
of bark, the ground underneath was moist, full of various insects and it looked a bit looser.

In recent years, I didn't want to waste my good compost on that area; I considered it a lost cause but I've
been tossing coffee grounds, egg shells, the clippings of produce ends out there and within a few days,
the various insects have taken it all in. I may bring that area back yet.
Ever hopeful.
Regardless of the rain (which I know helped) I believe that bark helped a great deal.