[Terrapreta] Fw: if yer not forest...

[Sean K. Barry]

Hi David,

I'm sorry if you felt what I said was too critical of you.  I just don't think that your proposals can really grapple with the scope of the problem we are faced with.  I have Bill Mollisons book, "PERMACULTURE A Designers' Manual" from TAGARI press.  I have read only parts of it, but my take so far is that it is poorly written for a scientific text, it sometimes has too many pictures and pseudo-science rambling (perhaps like some others in the movement), and very scant on references (Section 14.16 References is 1 1/2 pages with only 15 sources).

Here is story, which might illustrate what I mean.  It goes something like this;  There is a comet headed towards Earth.  It been in its orbit around our sun for hundreds of millions, perhaps billions of years, inertia and gravity guiding it the whole time.  It has past close by maybe a few times in the distant past.  Now, because of random synchronicity, it is on a collision course with Earth, right into Earth's orbit, through our delicate atmosphere, and smack onto the rock.

Some "wise-n-heimer" figures out that we can send all our nuclear warheads out into space ahead of the collision and just give it a "Big Boom" on one side, pushing just a little bit to the side, altering its course slightly, making it a near miss instead of a collision and a global catastrophe.  There is probably a good chance that someone here can muster the physics understanding and humans COULD actually make this happen.  Humans will once again beat back the Natural Universe, making it do what we want.

Inertia is amazing though.  We may be able to move that comet a slight bit out of its orbit, but inertia will keep it still in just another slightly altered orbit.  Without any further "Big Boom" external forces that comet will continue along in its "new" orbit for a very long time, as long or longer than it had before.

I believe the Earth's atmosphere and the natural systems in the "Living Biosphere" have this same sort of inertia.  Humans are exercising what amounts to a "Big Boom" against the side of this moving body (the "Living Biosphere").  We have altered the course of it.  Slaughtering forestland by the millions of acres, pumping copious amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, and destroying billions upon trillions of soil microorganisms and plants formerly inhabiting in and on the soils.  We have made the Earth into a very different place in a very short period of time.

We have made an impact on a slowly changing phenomenon.  Every year now, we throw 5% (~6 Gt) more carbon into the atmosphere, which has the "Living" part of the Biosphere under it only recycling ~120 Gt of carbon in and out of it each year.  It is like the big kid pushing the big heavy merry-go-round on the playground faster and faster every time it goes round.

The atmosphere is mostly passive, subject to the very slowly changing movement of the living systems underneath it.  The inertia of our environment (Atmosphere within the "living Biosphere") will keep on at the "new" way for a very long time.  Well past our lifetimes, even if we work as hard at moving it back the other way as we did getting here.

Then, there is little stomach from people for the real level of work that would be required to remediate the problems in the environment.  Foot-dragging and half measures will be the norm for a long time.  The masses are un-reactive and guided by inertia as well.  Just look at what the word "Conservatism" means; "We like it the way it is, so lets just keep it that way".   Just imagine the arm of the ventriloquist, Dick Cheney, shoved up the ass of the puppet, George Bush, making him say that.

I think, therefore, that we will be the one's required to adapt to a changed Nature.  We won't put Nature back to the old ways.

"Speed up, Brother" would be a better proposal.  Don't you think?  It might be less condescending too, more helpful to put the fire under some ones belly, rather than to lay back harmonizing and glorifying about the way things were, and how we all ought to appreciate this once wonderful time.   I am way more interested in proactive realism.   If you want to help, grip the reality of the problem at hand and quit trying to lambaste me for the way I say things.

"Our roots do not cast shadows".  <= To me this means we can only learn from history, but seeing in the light of today, history cannot effect the future.

Do you see a way that Terra Preta can work?  Do you see a way that we can enlist the entire world's populations to try and make Terra Preta perform an environmental miracle that will help us all survive in the "new" environmental reality that we have already created?

Regards,

SKB


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David Yarrow<mailto:dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> 
  To: terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
  Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 12:24 PM
  Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] Fw: if yer not forest...


  slow down, brother, and stop projecting your assumptions into my words.  i never said or suggested "enough oak trees to supply enough acorns to feed 6 billion people."  it's hard to have a fruitful communication when the other person puts words in my mouth, then uses them to criticize my idea.

  i merely suggested a marketing & consumer education strategy to develop acorn meal as a new natural food so forest landowners have a marketable crop to harvest and sell to support their mainenance of that land as forest -- something besides harvesting timber to pay taxes, fees and land upkeep expenses.  and maybe consumers will get a nutritional boost from this unusual and powerful food.

  in truth, the tone of your response is damned condescending.  except you are arguing with your own projected assumptions, not my expressed ideas.  or are you just exercising some sort of boomerang sense of humor?

  there are a variety of other tree and forest crops that could be developed as marketable items to produce an income from forested lands.  fiddlehead ferns and mushrooms are two that are already being used by some agroforestry explorers.

  ever hear of permaculture?  bill mollison?  permanent agricultural landscape design?  bill would go further than the simple idea i expressed, and suggest the smart way to harvest acorns is to lie in your hammock and watch where the squirrels stash their acorns.  then go collect your rent from their hidden food stores.  why do stoop labor picking up acorns when squirrels and chipmunks are much better suited to such tasks?  and he would also approve of harvesting two or three squirrels each year to supplement and diversify a chicken-based diet.

  then again, i guess we could just make charcoal and biodiesel out of those oak nuts and trees, shoot the squirrels, then plow the ground with a tractor and plant more corn.  my great-grandfather used to make us boys shoot squirrels because they were stealing his corn.

  i have a special fondness for acorns because 30 years ago, it was a squirrel in an oak forest that first taught me that wild animals are highly intelligent, and have rights to nature's abundance, too.  this came after a squirrel 40 feet up in a white oak tree nailed me in the head with an acorn as i was scooping up his food supply into my pillowcase.  and he was chattering loudly at me the whole time.  to make sure i got his message, he took a bite out of that acorn first, then aimed in at my noggin.  definitely got my attention and taught mea profound, lifelong lesson.

  this was my first lesson in what it means to share our planet with all other living creatures -- with "all my relations."

  i've since had intelligent communications with everything from bumblebees to bears and buffalo.

  mitakuye oyasin.

  David Yarrow
  "If yer not forest, yer against us."
  Turtle EyeLand Sanctuary
  44 Gilligan Road, East Greenbush, NY 12061
  dyarrow at nycap.rr.com<mailto:dyarrow at nycap.rr.com>
  www.championtrees.org<http://www.championtrees.org/>
  www.OnondagaLakePeaceFestival.org<http://www.onondagalakepeacefestival.org/>
  www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/<http://www.citizenre.com/dyarrow/>
  www.farmandfood.org<http://www.farmandfood.org/>
  www.SeaAgri.com<http://www.seaagri.com/>
   
  "Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, 
  if one only remembers to turn on the light."  
  -Albus Dumbledore
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> 
    To: terrapreta<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
    Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 9:38 AM
    Subject: [Terrapreta] Fw: if yer not forest...



    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Sean K. Barry<mailto:sean.barry at juno.com> 
    To: David Yarrow<mailto:dyarrow at nycap.rr.com> ; terrapreta at bioenergylists.org<mailto:terrapreta at bioenergylists.org> 
    Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 8:06 AM
    Subject: Re: [Terrapreta] if yer not forest...


    Hi David,

    Your quest to support the re-growth of the natural world is laudable and Nature should love you for it.  But, there is not enough land to grow enough oak trees to supply enough acorns to feed 6 billion people.  Is there?  We cannot get enough sustenance from forests alone.  I think even the indigenous people would admit this.  This is why agriculture for food crops even exists.  Starting maybe twenty five centuries ago and continuing until only 500 years ago, the Amazonian people did not turn an area the size of France into Terra Preta soils to support the growth of the tropical rainforest.  They did it to feed many 100s of thousands of people.
    When the tropical rainforest returned, those people had vanished.  Do you support that fate for humans now?

    When fossil fuel supplies are exhausted (and God help us, the mining interests are really going to completely exhaust them before they stop digging them up), then this world may have even more than 6 billion people (maybe, maybe not?).  That kind of hunger for food and energy is incredibly demanding on global resources.  Can managed forests supply both all the food we will need and all of the energy?  The energy interests will be the ones who push for fast growing loblolly pine plantations (and maybe Yule Gibbons ancestors).
    But humans will not survive on acorns alone.

    Survival of forests and of the human population together is an almost intractable problem.   It will not be flowery words or illegal "stump" speeches, that hearken to the days when the world was covered in ancient forest that will solve this, I don't believe.

    In 1750 the world population is estimated at having been 791 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population>).  In 1620 it was probably closer to only 500 million.  Do you honestly believe that we could re-growth enough "full-featured" forests and still be able to feed and provide for the energy needs of 12-18 times more people (6-9 billion)?

    Humans have a way that we think we can rest control of nature, to serve our purposes only.  Unfortunate in this belief is the more likely scenario that Nature, with all of its other diverse life forms, will probably win out in the end.  Nature probably has something completely different in store for us.  Your wish for forests over people may well come true.  But I doubt that it will be at the hands of men.

    I once again, find this kind of discussion terribly disheartening...


    Regards,

    SKB


    Below was David's post with world maps of historical forestation levels  ... I respond to this


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