PeakOil is You
"Can Collapse of Global Civ. Be Avoided?" by P&A Ehrlich
Re: Ehrlich: 10% chance of avoiding total collapse
by onlooker » Sun 18 Oct 2015, 15:07:30
Yes P, unfortunately all this is the stark truth if one is not hesitant to uncover it.
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
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Re: Ehrlich: 10% chance of avoiding total collapse
by Tanada » Sun 18 Oct 2015, 15:14:52
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '&')quot;People lived in all those places before industrial civilization, and those who have kept the necessary skill sets will be able to do so after the collapse of industrial civilization. You seem to have a blind spot Pete"
You have the blind spot Tanada. Skill sets don't revegetate forests or refill the mines. It takes hundreds to thousands of years to form an inch of topsoil. There is little or nothing out there to subsist on. Sorry (:
You have the blind spot Tanada. Skill sets don't revegetate forests or refill the mines. It takes hundreds to thousands of years to form an inch of topsoil. There is little or nothing out there to subsist on. Sorry (:
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 land where my fat butt is sitting right now was under a 2000 meter pile of ice 20,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago it was under a glacial lake caused by the melting of that ice. 8,000 years ago more or less that ice had all drained away and within decades there was mossy tundra, which seceded to mixed pine forest and then mixed hardwood forest as the climate warmed to the Holocene Maximum. Topsoil is not some magical combination of special elements it is dirt full of bacteria with a little organic carbon to sustain it. That organic carbon comes from mosses and lichens and algae and critters doing #2 as they wander around eating. The first secession of plant life are the ones that don't need organic carbon to thrive, but they leave behind organic carbon for all of the other plants that do need organic carbon in the soil.
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. Put a little fence around it to remind yourself hands off. Observe it for two years without disturbing it. Do not water it unless you are watering the soil around it at the same time. Come back in two years and tell me it is barren and nothing is growing in it.
You can try this yourself any time instead of believing the speculations of someone who never tested their assumptions. Heck write up a nice column for some eco-journal or op ed page of the LA Times after you try it. By the time the bugs and birds and small mammals have been walking over, digging through and dropping #2 all over it for 24 months it will have a nice layer of top soil and likely be covered with plant colonies of different sorts of weeds and grasses from the area where you dump it. It will only cost you about $10.00 for the bag of sand and the little fence around it. And the struggle to not do anything and just observe how nature works.
Nature thrives in the absence of interference. You could get lucky, maybe the drought will last another two solid years and everything around the pile will be dead from lack of moisture, then you can crow about how dumb I am.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e 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.
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.
- Tanada
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Re: Ehrlich: 10% chance of avoiding total collapse
by onlooker » Sun 18 Oct 2015, 15:32:28
Wow, I am wondering Tanada if in your opinion this could theoretically be done for much of agricultural land in the US. I heard you see that the soil is pretty dead from excessive use, pesticides and fertilizers and having a denuded landscape for growing crops which is not a teeming climax ecosystem. Permaculture I imagine would also be involved. All this by the way from reading "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future"
Book by William H. Kötke
Book by William H. Kötke
"We are mortal beings doomed to die
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Re: Ehrlich: 10% chance of avoiding total collapse
by Tanada » Sun 18 Oct 2015, 16:16:52
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'W')ow, I am wondering Tanada if in your opinion this could theoretically be done for much of agricultural land in the US. I heard you see that the soil is pretty dead from excessive use, pesticides and fertilizers and having a denuded landscape for growing crops which is not a teeming climax ecosystem. Permaculture I imagine would also be involved. All this by the way from reading "The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future"
Book by William H. Kötke
Book by William H. Kötke
Onlooker you should read
Wormwood Forest by Mary Mycio and
Restoration Agriculture by Mark Shepherd.
What is Topsoil? Topsoil is rock powdered and granular (sand) mixed with organic carbon and filled with bacteria and tiny animals. That is all it is and everything it is. It ranges from sticky clay to sandy loam to sandy gravel as the matrix, but the bacteria and tiny animals and fungi and mosses living in it are what make it 'topsoil'. Everywhere the roots of plants penetrate is a source of organic carbon and a pathway for the bacteria, fungi and tiny life to use. You can do the same experiment I challenged Pete to do above. If you have the least bit of an open mind you will prove to yourself for minimal cost which of us is correct.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e 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.
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.
- Tanada
- Site Admin
- Posts: 17094
- Joined: Thu 28 Apr 2005, 03:00:00
- Location: South West shore Lake Erie, OH, USA
I'll miss it. 
lol
