Why is the climate changing. (Page 135)

zeffur: This is excellent:

zeffur:

ghostgeek: Best summed up by the term: déjà vu.

zeffur: That seems strangely familiar...lol

zeffur: "In the US alone, soil on cropland is eroding 10 times faster than it can be replenished. If we continue to degrade the soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in about 60 years, according to Maria-Helena Semedo of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization."
src: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil-farming-agriculture-food-toxic-america

How long does it take to produce top-soil?

"in environments characterized by a mild climate, it takes 200-400 years to form 1 cm of soil. in wet tropical areas soil formation is faster, as it takes 200 years. in order to accumulate enough substances to make a soil fertile it takes 3000 years."
src: http://www.eniscuola.net/en/argomento/soil/soil-formation/how-long-does-it-take-to-form/

"It can take over 500 years to form an inch of topsoil on the surface!"
https://www.soils4teachers.org/lessons-and-activities/teachers-guide/soil-formation

ghostgeek:

zeffur: At 8:13 she says "The matter of the fact is..."

ghostgeek: Your point being?

zeffur: Just an odd thing to hear. Perhaps she's verbally challenged (verbal dyslexia)

Sir Loin: Zeff, you're referring to the geological component of topsoil Ie; rockdust. Soil can be built up rapidly by the addition of organic matter, it does require human intervention though. I've built up clay using horse shit quite successfully

zeffur: re: "Sir Loin: Zeff, you're referring to the geological component of topsoil Ie; rockdust. Soil can be built up rapidly by the addition of organic matter, it does require human intervention though. I've built up clay using horse shit quite successfully"

No, that's not what those posts referred to. They refer to actual topsoil. When they measure the topsoil to the subsoil below (usually clay with little organic material), the average depth of the topsoil is decreasing each year. You're not going to have enough manure to cover millions of acres of farmland over the whole US... Once the soil has eroded away, it doesn't easily get replaced.

Sir Loin: If topsoil in USA is decreasing something is terribly wrong. How much do farmers rely on agrochemicals rather than good land husbandry?
Topsoil should be increasing in depth if farmers know what they're doing

zeffur: I don't think you understand the magnitude of the problem--this isn't like your backyard organic garden. There have been some changes in methods (e.g. no till), however, erosion is still a problem in many places due mainly to wind & rain/runoff.

""The estimate is that we are now losing about 1 percent of our topsoil every year to erosion, most of this caused by agriculture." [5] The United States is losing soil at a rate 10 times faster than the soil replenishment rate while China and India are losing soil 30 to 40 times faster."
src: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph240/verso2/

kittybobo34: A big difference there is the type of crops planted.. Rice in Asia is planted in a bog of sorts, and human waste is a part of the fertilizer used. Western crops tend to be on dry land that gets tilled etc. Western farmers have learned allot over the last century about proper land use, so I am not sure that the statistics are correct in how much top soil is being lost these days.

zeffur: re: "Currently, only about 21 percent of American row-crop farmers use no-till practices, while about 12 percent use cover crops or a double cropping system, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).Jun 24, 2020"

It looks to me like we've got a long way to go to reduce topsoil loss...

Here's another quote--but it is a bit dated:
"What Do the Data Show? Approximately 35.5 percent of U.S. cropland (88 million acres) planted to eight major crops had no tillage operations in 2009, according to ERS researchers who analyzed 2000-07 data from USDA's Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS)."

kittybobo34: You are probably right, there is always room for improvement

Sir Loin: Zeff, living in NZ I would hardly be referring to just my own vege patch, This is an agricultural country capable of feeding almost the entire population of USA. Topsoil loss is not a problem here, despite the extreme weather. The first soil horizon has showed little change in 150 years. Mainly due to careful tilling and choice of crops.

zeffur: Maybe it's greater than you realize:

"Soil erosion in New Zealand is sinking carbon (C) at 3 million tonnes per year. Over two hundred million tonnes of sediment are lost from New Zealand to the ocean every year, primarily during storms. Intense rainfall erodes soil from steep slopes and this ends up in waterways as sediment."
src: https://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/publications/soil-horizons/

"Nearly 200 million tonnes of soil are being lost in New Zealand every year - an out-of-sight problem that could pose far-reaching consequences for our environment and economy."
src: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12035548

Sir Loin: No Zeff, you're relying on incorrect info there. Most sediment in coastal waters here comes from braided rivers flowing out of greywake ranges, you dont have this type of river where you live. They're peculiar to NZ and Canada. It is why our beaches are composed of grey sand.
In the heavily forested mountains very little sediment is lost. It is a problem in Hawkes Bay though but it is actually merely building up the coastal plains, larger boulders deposited on farmland do play hell with machinery.
Farming in NZ may very well sink as much as 3 million tonnes of carbon, grass is a very effective photosynthesiser but atmospheric C or rather, reducing it will not affect climate if that's what you're getting at.

zeffur: Chicken little has been busy since 1969...
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions

kittybobo34: Zeff,, once again we see the opposite side of the facts. Your "wrong again" article implies that we always get it wrong, I say we saw the disaster coming and found away around it.
the world food shortage,, genetics found a way to produce super food plants.
the ozone hole,,,, science found a way to eliminate the chemicals that were causing it
the coming ice age,, its still coming, but global warming via too much co2 is countering that, but giving us another worse problem..
the population problem, again science gave us birth control and womens rights to decide. This has stopped the expanding population of the western nations that have it.

zeffur: Lol.. we fell bass-ackwards into it by burning fossil fuels & unintentionally increasing CO2--which led to higher harvests--etc. Then we later realized amongst ourselves after we had to deal with our growing pollution problems, that we probably prevented an imminent ice age that was coming, by the unwitting consequences of our desire for more convenient transportation, more electricity, etc.

re: "the population problem, again science gave us birth control and womens rights to decide. This has stopped the expanding population of the western nations that have it."

Population growth didn't give us BC--we invented it so we could put females to work to increase wealth. The legal right to allow women to conspire with a medical professional to murder a fetus wasn't an improvement--it was a tragedy. A better method would have been to legally license births & penalize people who violated the law via ligation surgery (that they are required by law to pay for when they violate the law).

kittybobo34: So pretty much the way China did it, with the one child families?

zeffur: The China program established a “one family, one child” policy in 1979 and a family planning law in 2002. Under the one-child policy, couples were encouraged to marry late, usually in their mid-20s, and allowed to have only one child.

I would suggest a different plan. The first thing it would include are laws regarding individual sexual responsibilies (much like drinking & driving laws). Those laws would also put the financial burdens of sexual irresponsibilities on the individual. They would provide optional loans for ligation surgeries for people who want to insure they cannot get pregnant or impregnate anyone. They would also make individuals responsible for financial costs due to STis, abortions (until made illegal (hopefully one day), & having a baby--rather than shifting those cost to other people via insurance pools.

In order to legally have a child, they would have to be married, be of the opposite sex, be of a certain age, pass rigorous tests (intelligence, psychological, moral, etc), & have sufficient financial income or means to be able to properly provide for a child. Once they qualify & pass all tests then they will be issued a nontransferable license to birth license that grants them the right to legally have a child. If they do not or are not able to procreate after a set time, then their license expires. They may also exchange their birth license for an adoption license.

People who violate the law & get caught should be prosecuted, fined, imprisoned, forced to have ligation surgery at their expense, & lose their illegal child/ren--who would be put into a public child welfare system for adoption or foster care.

I would personally support additional birth licenses be granted to highly qualified individuals (high intelligence, highly educated, having significant means, etc) & no birth licenses allowed for poorly qualified individuals (low mentally capable individuals, sociopaths, etc)

Those ^^ are just a few ideas that people could debate on when creating such legislation. We should be smarter about human management rather than continuing to pay for the uncontrolled breeding of trailer trash in the US.

The number of new birth licenses issued daily should be highly correlated with an ideal population density for an area, the current population, & deaths as they occur.

kittybobo34: You know as well as I do, that would never work in a western Democracy.