Keith_McClary wrote:How much will that cost per square mile?Tanada wrote:I will make you a bet right now Pete, go to the hardware store and get a bag of pure silica sand with no organic material in it. Dump it in a tight pile on any corner of your property you want so that it is thick in the middle at least several inches.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
pstarr wrote:Tanada, you said "
Bull Pucky. I can make an inch of topsoil out of raw silica sand by dropping it on the ground and leaving it alone for a few years, it in no way shape or form has ever taken the often claimed 'thousands of years'."
The ground is raw silica sand. You have just dropped more ground on the ground. But it is not topsoil. It is the addition of carbon material that turns dirt or ground into soil. Not silica. Dirt is silica. It would have been more accurate to have replaced peat in the above equation. It was nonsense exercise. It made no sense really.
Empty lots in cities remain empty lots for years, decades with little more than weed tufts. That's because there is no carbon to create humus. Soil does makes itself, but it takes hundreds or thousands of years.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Lore wrote:I would contend that agriculture, specially modern agriculture, is not a natural state of food security in which a balance can be maintained for very long. Humans living in equilibrium with their environment should be mimicking the larger forms of wild carnivores.
We started this folly when we moved from being hunter gatherers.
onlooker wrote:Lore wrote:I would contend that agriculture, specially modern agriculture, is not a natural state of food security in which a balance can be maintained for very long. Humans living in equilibrium with their environment should be mimicking the larger forms of wild carnivores.
We started this folly when we moved from being hunter gatherers.
I would not say agriculture is bad, it is the modern methods of doing agriculture which are bad which started around the 1930's.
"The battle to feed all of humanity is over," Paul Ehrlich declared in the prologue to his 1968 book The Population Bomb. "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." Still, he said, "We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail." Half a century later, Ehrlich is still at it, notwithstanding the spectacular failure of his prior prophecies. "Collapse of civilization is a near certainty within decades," says the headline over a new Guardian article featuring Ehrlich's latest predictions. Ehrlich tells the paper "population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation
Newfie wrote:I find one of biggest problems we have communicating here is keeping a consistent time frame.
We have not yet exhausted our food - true fact
We will sometime in the future - true fact
Yet we fight over such statements. A pity.
Newfie wrote:Well he was wrong in his time frame, not in overall theory. Nor was Malthus.
If someone were to say we will never have a food shortage problem, we’ll that is wrong.
The simple facts are
1) the green revolution has increased population without reducing the fraction in hunger
2) Earth’s ability to produce food is being greatly disimished.
Newfie wrote:Ah yes. In fact I’m posting because we got up at 4:39 this am to make the short crossing from Guadeloupe to the Saints but the weather forecast was atrociously wrong yet again, so we turned back. We plan to try again Sunday but will now skip the Saints and go straight to Dominica.
In the meantime, booooored
Newfie wrote:I find one of biggest problems we have communicating here is keeping a consistent time frame.
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