From a press release from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we learn that you don’t need to worry anymore about global warming, we can just garden our way to carbon nirvana, that is, if the bugs don’t eat it. -Anthony
WASHINGTON (April 26, 2010) Home gardeners can avoid contributing to climate change by using certain techniques and tools that are more climate-friendly than others, according to a new gardening guide released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The science-based guide explains the connection between land use and global warming, and offers recommendations for conscientious gardeners to maximize the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide their green spaces store and minimize the other global warming gases gardens can emit.
“Many Americans understand that powering our cars and computers overloads our atmosphere with heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, a senior analyst with the UCS Food and Environment Program. “With the right practices, farmers and gardeners can lock up some of that carbon in the soil.”
When too much carbon dioxide and other global warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are released into the air, they act like a blanket, trapping heat in the atmosphere and altering weather patterns around the world, Stillerman explained. Unchecked climate change will have serious consequences for public health and the environment.
Although agriculture can store carbon and reduce other emissions on a much larger scale, gardeners can help. The Climate-Friendly Gardener: A Guide to Combating Global Warming from the Ground Up (www.ucsusa.org/gardenguide) offers five recommendations for gardeners.
1. Minimize Carbon-Emitting Tools and Products. Gasoline-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers are obvious sources of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which require a lot of energy to produce, also contribute to global warming. The new guide provides several tips for avoiding garden chemicals and fossil-fuel-powered equipment.
2. Use cover crops. Bare off-season gardens are vulnerable to erosion, weed infestation and carbon loss. Seeding grasses, cereal grains or legumes in the fall builds up the soil, reduces the need for energy-intensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and maximizes carbon storage. The guide recommends that gardeners plant peas, beans, clovers, rye and winter wheat as cover crops and explains the specific advantages that legume and non-legume cover crop choices have for gardens.
3. Plant Trees and Shrubs Strategically. Planting and maintaining one or more trees or large shrubs is an excellent way to remove more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over a long period of time. A recent study estimated that the trees in U.S. urban areas store nearly 23 million tons of carbon in their tissues every year. That’s more than all of the homes, cars, and industries in Los Angeles County emit annually, or about as much as all of the homes in Illinois or Pennsylvania emit every year. Well-placed trees also shade buildings from the summer sun or buffer them from cold winter winds, reducing the need for—and cost of—air conditioning and heating. UCS’s guide discusses the most suitable types of trees for a climate-friendly yard.
4. Expand Recycling to the Garden. Yard trimmings and food waste account for nearly 25 percent of U.S. landfill waste, and the methane gas released as the waste breaks down represents 3 to 4 percent of all human-generated heat-trapping gases. Studies indicate that well-managed composted waste has a smaller climate impact than landfills. The UCS guide describes how to create a climate-friendly compost pile.
5. Think Long and Hard about Your Lawn. Residential lawns, parks, golf courses and athletic fields are estimated to cover more than 40 million acres—about as much as all the farmland in Illinois and Indiana combined. A growing body of research suggests that lawns can capture and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide, but some newer studies warn of the potential for well-watered and fertilized lawns to generate heat-trapping nitrous oxide. The science is unsettled, but there are practical things gardeners can do to maximize lawn growth and health with a minimum of fertilizer and water. The new UCS guide summarizes the science and offers tips for homeowners to make their lawns truly “green.”
“Gardening practices alone won’t solve global warming, but they can move us in the right direction, just like installing super efficient light bulbs and using reusable bags,” said Stillerman. “Seventy percent of Americans garden, and they can have a positive impact. Our guide shows them how.”
###
h/t to WUWT reader Milwaukee Bob
See? I’m saving the planet without doing a thing – I hate gardening.
Perhaps there is a gardening technique that could utilize the used bull food AGW promoters produce so much of?
I bet if this technique was developed, it would not only cure AGW but it could feed the world, as well.
Union of Concerned Scientists? There’s a point at which advocacy becomes so obvious that even a retarded monkey catches on. Are these guys really serious?
Mark
Heaven knows vegetation hates warmth and CO2.
Why do articles like this make me feel like I should be wearing a babushka while harvesting wheat by hand?
My god is there no depths to which they won’t sink to flog their dead horse? I love gardening and they can go pound salt! UOCS? Useless Over Creative Slaves! Slaves to money at their trough to publish such tripe.
Seriously these people just lose whatever credibility they have when they open their mouths. Next time I pick and eat my raspberries I’m going to fart loudly in their general direction!
I think these guys meet in Ed Begley Jr.’s treehouse.
I am an avid home gardener and never thought I would end up sick of the word “green”, but here I am today sick of all references to green and all of the other holy bs.
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. ”
?
“Many Americans understand that powering our cars and computers overloads our atmosphere with heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide,”
They do? Oh come on, they’re not that stupid.
Most of the problem is the city folk greenie weenies that know it all and live in urbasn 15 story concrete bunkers. They need to get out in the fresh air. Raise goats that mow the lawn and chickens thatt table scraps.
Farmers do not compost. They feed the chickens which crank out plant food in 24 hours. Much smarter and more efficient.
Because the Union of Concerned Scientists is called the the Union of Concerned Scientists it leaves the impression that its members are all scientists. But they are not.
From their web site:
“…..is now an alliance of more than 250,000 citizens and scientists….”
Note they put the word ‘citizens’ first before the word ‘scientists’.
http://www.ucsusa.org/about/
It is an activists group. It is not a group of scientists. I am wondering if it violates some sort of law to give the impression to the public they are all scientists.
April E. Coggins says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:05 pm
LOL
Don’t forget the blue scarf and apron dress.
I do believe this is the most pathetic thing
I’ve ever read.
hunter,
Would that be watermelons supplying the wherewithall to grow mushrooms?
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
In simple terms please, I do horticulture, not physics.
Union of Concerned Scientists?
Sounds more like a new religion to me that is out there to ban everything that is fun for a lot of people. I mean come on gardening, in most parts of the world it is also known as food production and only in the richer and more developed countries it becomes what can be described as gardening because people actually have time and money to spare to indulge in a bit of fun like gardening.
Not any more then, don’t anger the climatechange gods and their high priests is the new word, gardening is a sin and therefore bad, now redeem yourself and plant your garden in such a way as the holy scriptures demand.
This would be funny if it was not for the ridiculous amount of thinking and effort that went into all of these recommendations.
Life is certainly not this complicated.
It is only the A retentive people who think we have to plan every little thing we do. This borders on obsessive behavior.
Sure, it is good to be efficient and not use too much of anything and to not pollute, but planting cover crops every time you turn around with the “hope” that it “might” make a difference regarding a supposed, unestablished problem does not make sense.
Why not have goals that are real and forget the stupid idea of avoiding releasing a gas that is good for us and the plants? It is plant food and the plants make our oxygen from it. Why would these people be against having more oxygen?
We are at a relatively low, almost alarmingly low, concentration of CO2 – below 280 and plants are in danger of really suffering. I think it would be a very good thing to be far from that lower range.
In short, CO2 is our friend.
Sometimes I think I could toss my own poop in a box, slap a “green” label on it, and sell it as environmentally-friendly mulch on ebay.
Mike’s Green Poop-In-A-Box for Home Gardens: For the “Concerned” Among Us.
Here is a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Bill Nye, debating Richard Lindzen. The Union of Concerned Scientists comes up. Bill Nye brings it up and gives the appearance in what he is saying that this is a group of scientists and they are worried over global warming.
20 lbs per gallon of CO2?
If gasoline is 6.073 lbs per gallon (Wikipedia) and heptane is 100 g/mol, then there are 18.7 lbs of CO2 produced per gallon.
NO alarm here, its good stuff and never hurt anybody unless they put a plastic bag over their head for too long.
Its scarcely credible that PhDs in the sciences can make such ridiculously unscientific statements like that. Blankets don’t warm via this mechanism. Nor have weather patterns been altered.
Its a perfect storm of how money and not science does all of the talking.
We need a Union of Unconcerned Scientists!
2. Use cover crops. Bare off-season gardens are vulnerable to erosion, weed infestation and carbon loss. Seeding grasses, cereal grains or legumes in the fall builds up the soil, reduces the need for energy-intensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and maximizes carbon storage. The guide recommends that gardeners plant peas, beans, clovers, rye and winter wheat as cover crops and explains the specific advantages that legume and non-legume cover crop choices have for gardens.
Maybe that’s fine in FL and CA and other warm places. But when you take yer carrots off on October 10 and then get winter for 7 months before you plant yer next crop of carrots, there ain’t a ton o’ time for cover crops. What utter nonsense that is just more “feel good” crap that the eco weenies eat up as if they actually care while driving their Beemers 50 miles one way to work each day from the burbs. “But we mulch … pass the sushi and Perrier.”
It is just like the rest of the “green” advertising we are being bombarded with these days. “Green” electric lawnmowers that don’t use gasoline…they get their power from coal where I live. ☺ “Green” subdivisions with 3,500 sq. ft. houses. Okay fine. Recently, a local company sponsored a series of radio spots on “going green” house construction. They listed some “going green” recommendations such as “buy local construction materials” followed by “consider bamboo for you new home.” Bamboo?!? Not a lot of local bamboo here in the Frozen North. ☺ (Where I live in southern Alberta, crop planting is THREE WEEKS behind because of the recent snows and unseasonable cold here in Western Canada. Bah.)
I digress … ☺ Feels better.
Clive
Warren says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Illl wager they are throwing in the “carbon” from the decomposition o the mowed grass…. same as they do when they are showing the carbon foot print from agriculture(never mind the fact the carbon is there from photosynthesis and is essentially carbon neutral)
They just seem to bounce from one scam to the next, with out any concern that their lies are destroying the profession of science with the public.
People have always planted things, humans like plants, for some reason.
Astounding that such a report should make a link to backyard gardening. Pity they didn’t compare backyard activity with deforestation and CO2 emission from other sources.
This ranks up there with dietary advice to help cut down on methane emissions.
What a clever, clever way of trying to brainwash people. Every time you need to say “CO2”, say “heat-trapping carbon dioxide” instead! Brilliant.
Charles Higley says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Hi Charles,
Your figures are correct, but these small engines waste (do not burn) approx 25/30 percent of the gas used. The “20 pounds” mentioned is still on the ‘alarmist’ high side.
I just went to the “Union of Concerned Scientists” website for about 5 minutes. I clicked on Publications and checked out a couple books they were selling. The second book I clicked on was “A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Media.” The 8th chapter of that book is titled “The Scientist as a Celebrity and Activist.” I think that says it all.
See for youself: http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/scientist-media-guide.html
First off, they’re probably using an American gallon, not an Imperial gallon, as they refer to Americans in the press release. An American gallon is less than an Imperial gallon, and weighs perhaps 6 pounds.
Makes the 20 pounds of CO2 sound less likely, you say? Hang on.
The gasoline’s weight is mostly carbon. If it were pure octane, C8H18, the 8 carbon atoms in each molecule weigh 8 times 12 = 96 units (because carbon’s atomic weight is about 12) and the 18 hydrogen atoms weigh 18 times 1 = 18 units (because hydrogen’s atomic weight is about 1). So the carbon represents about 96 / (96+18) = 84% of the weight of the gasoline. Call it 5 pounds of carbon in each gallon.
Let’s do the same math for CO2. In each molecule, the carbon atom provides about 12 units of weight, while the oxygen accounts for 2 times 16 or 32 units. So the carbon in CO2 accounts for 12 / (12 + 32) = 27 % of the weight of CO2.
So when gasoline combusts, enough oxygen is added to the 5 pounds of carbon to create 5 pounds / 0.27 = 18.3 pounds of CO2.
OK, I didn’t get exactly 20 pounds. But pretty close. I suspect the difference between the above calculation and UCS’s is in the weight of a gallon of gasoline. I used 6 pounds — a quick google shows a range of values, perhaps according to different octane ratings? But it’s in the right ballpark.
Hope that helps.
Warren asks:
#
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
#
Add in the weight of the oxygen.
Nitrous oxide generated by lawns? Don’t they call nitrous oxide “laughing gas?”
Many of the points in the leaflet are wrong because they confuse statics with dynamics. Generally, it’s carbon in = carbon out over a long term (unless you are making coal or its equivalents). But they forget the long term, which with CO2 and plant growth means that the extra plant growth has to be maintained FOREVER. Not just for that wrongly-calculated 25,000 years for nuclear.
So, unlike nuclear waste, living carbon sequestration plants have to be maintained in perpetuity. Otherwise, they are just a temporary blip in the ageless story of Nature.
Lots more wrong assumptions in the leaflet. If you choose to mow your lawn with a manual push lawn mower, you have to factor in the extra amount of food it takes to provide human energy. It is not axiomatic that there is a carbon saving.
How can people call themselves “Concerned Scientists” when their chosen description of the greenhous effect is so scientifically naive?
The Union of Concerned Scientists, whose chief skill seems to be to regularly put out press releases. Now then, just consider this line of … thought … from their most recent pronouncement:
I wonder how many of these self-righteous, pontificating little greenies practice what they preach, beyond those who have burrowed into the concrete bowels of an urban center.
It seems we are going to get a not so warm summer on the west coast and in order to get a good crop this year I will need to resort to boosting my soil with anthropogenic chemical fertilizer… Viva La Chemistria !!!!
I have a riding mower, and 12,000 sq ft of lawn. But I mow very fast, and consume carbon friendly wine while I mow. I also flash cook my filet Mignon on the grill, helping to rid the world of evil cows that would otherwise destroy the planet. It’s hard, but I do what I can.
These people are SCIENTISTS?
Am I the only one here that knows gasoline is heavier than water? That’s why the Hollywood stereotype of a torpedoed WWII gasoline tanker burning the poor survivors in the water is Grade A bs. Crude oil may float, gasoline doesn’t. A standard US gallon of water weighs, if memory serves, 7.47 lbs and a gallon of gasoline more like 8 lbs. So, to repeat an above question, exactly how does 8lbs become 20lbs without some accomplices? L
That’s awfully nice of the concerned scientists, but the organic farmers are miles ahead of them. They have been there, done that, and spread the word years ago. Unlike those who have locked themselves in sterile Ivory Towers, the common folk have been practicing what they preach. C02, that’s one of the building blocks of Life on Earth. If a little gets by what I grow it’s no big deal. Share some with the next place down the road. No need to get greedy. C02 is just another building block of Life on Earth.
Betcha that’s whats got the Aliens all in a bunch. They hate it.
Oh, and btw… Steven Hawking says “Don’t talk to Aliens”.
“Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which require a lot of energy to produce, also contribute to global warming.”
That is as full a disclosure as you could possibly want from these environmentalists. Just eliminate all of the most important scientific progress in growing food, and they’ll be content.
Let’s look at these dreadful “synthetic fertilizers,” which it takes actual “energy to produce.”
The primary ingredients in the Miracle-Gro powder are as follows:
• 5.8% Ammoniacal Nitrogen
• 9.2% Urea Nitrogen
• 30% Available Phosphate
• 15% Soluble Potash
• 0.02% Boron
• 0.07% Copper
• 0.15% Iron
• 0.05% Manganese
• 0.005% Molybdenum
• 0.06% Zinc
So two strikes against fertilizer: it’s “synthetic” and it requires “energy to produce.” That rules out the use of all the elements in the periodic table, now doesn’t it? Again, they are stating what they really do believe. You have to love full disclosure.
Now if you want to start a competition for the most insane and most stupid research conclusions made by “scientists”, I wish to enter this particular item from Australian scientists with considerable help from the Purdue University.
“Half the planet to be too hot in 300 yrs”
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/1050740/half-the-planet-to-be-too-hot-in-300-yrs
And these are the sorts of guys who are moaning that the public is losing respect for scientists!
As far as I am concerned they are right and I am one of those who despite being a layman have had an enormous and maybe in retrospect, a very misguided and very misplaced respect for science and scientists all my life.
Recently read an article about a woman in the midwest building her dream green home. She researched and bought only the best green materials, which is why she bought her roof trusses from New Zealand. She is 78 years old and the house is 2800 sq ft, just for her.
Anthony, a warmist retired scientist contact sent this to me today. Might check it out:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116862&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
How do the “emission savings” the Union Of CONcerned “scientists” wants to achieve this way compare to the average volcano eruption? Just wondering….
Here’s a gem from another whacko, Mike Hulme, in the so-called “Science/Environment” section of the BBC:
“In an article for the BBC’s Green Room series, another of the authors, Mike Hulme, writes: “Climate change has been represented as a conventional environmental ‘problem’ that is capable of being ‘solved’.
“It is neither of these. Yet this framing has locked the world into the rigid agenda that brought us to the dead end of Kyoto, with no evidence of any discernable acceleration of decarbonisation whatsoever.”
”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10106362.stm
Is he coming to his senses? Don’t forget he’s “professor of climate change” so don’t count on it; he’s gotta keep that job. More from him here, attention, he tries to sound a little bit like a skeptic while still not questioning the CO2 dogma so it’s all a bit Monty-Pythonesque.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8673828.stm
I’ve been screaming continuously in terror since Dr. Hansen’s first presentation to Congress in 1998. Should I take a breath?
Just a quick question is the union of concerned scientist’s like the league of extraordinary Gentlemen, like Super Gardeners or something.
Or just Lawn mover fascists?
Ha the good old ElReg has a better one cloud boats or what evername they will give them.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/11/silver_lining/
Shows you, you can have all the money int he world and still be conned out of your cash.
UK Sceptic May 10, 2010 at 10:56 pm
These people are SCIENTISTS?
Who else would think anything north of the Florida border actually *grows* in the winter?
ROM said:
“As far as I am concerned they are right and I am one of those who despite being a layman have had an enormous and maybe in retrospect, a very misguided and very misplaced respect for science and scientists all my life.”
I’ll second that. I see one of the perpetrators is a Professor Dear. Maybe that should be Dear, oh dear, oh dear? What’s the plural for people from ANU?
Maybe someone can get through to them and the Union of Crackpot Scientists that an essential attribute of coal is that it is a fossil – fossilised vegetation – and all of the billions of tons of carbon that was fixed by that vegetation must have come from CO2 in the atmosphere. And growing conditions back then were evidently excellent – we don’t have anything comparable now. So putting some of that carbon back in the atmosphere where it came from is more likely to recreate those excellent growing conditions than the wasteland scenario envisaged by these scaremongers.
A bunch of mostly lay people calling themselves ‘concerned scientists’ are an advocacy group, nothing more or less and their grand title is a fraud. A fraudulent title gives no hope for honest comment from them. People who enjoy gardeneing (and I’m not one of them) should get on with it and take no notice of this dishonest group who are attempting to make gardeners feel guilty for indulging in normal and perfectly acceptable practices.
First they can genetically engineer a new version of E. Coli that can also break down cellulose. Make it a robust strain that will readily propagate worldwide in a natural fashion and supplant existing E. Coli strains.
Then we can forget about mowing since grass is now a food crop, just go outdoors and graze in our yards. The vegans will be happy, PETA will be happy, and the Union of Concerned Scientists can stop being so concerned. Global warming averted, planet is saved.
Then the news reports will warn of the expected alarming rise in cancer and heart disease since the dietary fiber is now being consumed instead of doing something useful. Many experts will be sounding the alarm on the impeding peril, backed with alarming evidence from their computer models.
*sigh* I think they really need to pin “Federated” to the front of their Society’s name.
Someone coined the phrase, “Mankind in Amnesia.” That seems to fit this generation that has no clue what it’s been like trying to get bread from the earth for the last few thousand years, without pesticides and herbicides.
Some aphids have 10 to 15 generations in a growing season. Cucumber beatles may produce up to seven generations in one year. In moist conditions, a single fungus bearing plant can infect thousands more in just a few days.
I don’t mind a bit having health food stores and organic food sections where rich hippies pay twice as much for half as much to “save the planet.”
But beyond these pro-biofuel, high-energy-price, and anti-pesticide green policies there are potato and rice famines.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=60480
I thought the Union of Concerned Scientists was a self help group for tax funded pseudoscientists who have developed obsessive–compulsive disorder after believing in their own end of the world predictions.
@L
You are wrong, Gasoline does float on water. Try it!
HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY TO THE LASER
A nostalgic trip down the memory lane for the older readers. An informative article marking the anniversary.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7706967/Happy-50th-birthday-to-the-laser-the-death-ray-at-every-supermarket-till.html
It’s only an educated guess, but I’d bet dollars to organic whole grain donuts that a human pushing a hand mower produces more excess CO2 per square foot of lawn than a gasoline powered mower. A well designed engine is simply more efficient at producing mechanical work than we are.
Warren says: May 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
Warren – Warren firtstly a US Gallon of petrol weighs about 6 pounds not 10.
Assuming Petrol to be propane C3H8, 6 pounds of petrol contain about 4.91 pounds of carbon. Carbon is about 27.27% of CO2 so 1 gallon of petrol would produce about 4.91/0.2727 = 18 pounds of CO2 if completely combusted.
However I doubt if a “typical mower” is 100% effiecient. I would estimate at least 10% of the fuel remains unburnt and a further 10% partially burnt to produce CO.
Thus the Fuel totally combusted would be about 3.93 pounds producing 3.93/0.2727 = 14.4 pounds of CO2
I am not a scientist, merely an engineer but I am concerned that the scientists have exaggerated their figures by about 5.6 pounds or 38.9%.
If they are so poor with their facts there is reason to be concerned.
Sometimes when people are faced with wicked problems too difficult to understand,
they revert to magical thinking.
Signs, omens, being convinced of this or that, making sacrifices, trying to acquire “good” karma.
Sometimes not knowing is a fact of life. A rock could hit us tomorrow. A volcano could go off. We don’t know. Fact of life.
I hate this sort of stuff, as it looks a lot like gossip; but I recently have been about the Joyce Foundation and Chicago Climate Exchange story from the Cypress Times, summarized by Jo Nova, and as I had already heard about the TIDES Foundation, decided to scratch a bit, something in which this site was helpful, for whatever it’s worth – which I don’t know, it can just be a flip side activist site, an anti-activist activist site.
The connections that come up are these. It’s not in English, but you can read the titles in the boxes and easily get the idea.
This must, of course, be taken with a large grain of salt, and much balance.
(As I’m here, and for who hasn’t followed the older thread, the first tabular data is out re/ the NAS letter’s sigantories backgrounds: 72.6% cannot be related to climate science. Still in progress.)
How do I control my lawn so that it doesn’t upset the balance of the planet?
I don’t remember who says that (or something approaching) : “Rebutting alarmists is like shooting fishes in a barrel”.
It seems fraudulent (to me,at least) that an advocacy group whose membership consists largely of lay people should call itself an ‘association of concerned scientists’. Most keen gardeners I have known over the years have knowledge and expertise way beyond that exhibited by this strange group.
Their advice is nothing more than a nasty attempt to frighten people and should be condemned for what it is.
“It is an activists group. It is not a group of scientists. I am wondering if it violates some sort of law to give the impression to the public they are all scientists.”
Conspiracy to extort?
Layne Blanchard says:
May 10, 2010 at 10:55 pm
I have a riding mower, and 12,000 sq ft of lawn. But I mow very fast, and consume carbon friendly wine while I mow. I also flash cook my filet Mignon on the grill, helping to rid the world of evil cows that would otherwise destroy the planet. It’s hard, but I do what I can.
I am “green” with envy & aspire to your ecological enlightenment!!!!!:-))
Won’t they exert even more CO2 doing gardening. What makes the grass grow in the first place? This sounds like pure twoddle! On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with gardening & growing your own vegetables, etc if that’s your bag or whatever the hip ‘n happening term is today! A recent study in the UK concluded that organic food showed no improvement in nutritional quality over inorganic food. It’s just a feelgood factor, the mind plays very strange tricks, I even recall many years ago digging up some of my mother-in-laws fresh new potatoes for Sunday lunch, they tasted very nice but logic dictated that they cannot be any better nutuitionally! Yes inorganic fertilizers can be toxic in the right quantity, (the poison is always in the dosage) that’s why we’re advised to wash vegetables before cooking them.
Warren says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
Short answer: Carbon in the gasoline mixes with twice as much oxygen to create CO2.
Longer answer: if the gas was 100% carbon (it’s not, but hey), it would combine with 2x the amount of oxygen to form CO2 (one C, 2 O’s). Carbon relative weight is 12, O 16 (I think) That would, if fully burnt and 100& carbon, become 42, or 3.5 x 12. For 10lb of carbon fully burnt you would get 35lb of CO2.
I have no idea how much of gasoline is carbon, but most is, I’d guess (coal is almost all carbon), so it sounds about right.
L says:
May 10, 2010 at 11:00 pm
Ummm, not sure about that. I understood US pints to be smaller than UK pints and 16 fluid Oz to 20 fluid Oz. You may wonder what a fluid Oz is? It is the volume of water that weighs one Oz, hence the name.
I always thought it odd, but it makes sense because the US pint (of water) weighs 1 il, whereas the UK one weighs 1.25 lb.
So one US gallon of water weighs 8 lb.
Oh, and L, the Carbon mixes with twice as much Oxygen from the air, that’s how more CO2 is produced than there was gas.
OK HaroldW got it much better than me.
I’ve had a browse of the interweb, and there are so, so many people trying to convert Kg and litres of water to pints and ponds. Has nobody ever heard of a fluid ounce?
There are also (claimed) flight engineers telling people that 1 gallon of water is 8.33 lbs. I hope they never have anything to do with any plane I travel in when spreading my carbon footprint.
A poem for our time
by MostlyHarmless
We have a lot of weather here
We get it every day
Rain falls, wind blows, but when sun shines
Global Warming’s on the way
Switch off your Lights! Recycle now!
Make those polluters pay!
Don’t fly! Don’t drive! Give up red meat!
Global Warming’s on the way
The polar bears will soon die out
I read that every day
The ice is melting, sea is rising
Global Warming’s on the way
What can we do? The deadly CO2
Means we’ll have to pay
For human sins and follies past
Global Warming’s on the way
Snow falls, ice forms, the cold wind blows
The freeze remains all day
Stoke up the fire, put on your coat
Global Cooling’s on the way
But wait! What’s that? They got it wrong?
We’ve been through this before?
Forget your woes, and rush outdoors
Live life, love life – forget Al Gore
Mankind is just a tiny speck
No matter what they say
A blip the universe ignores
Carpe Diem – seize the day!
We have a lot of weather here
We get it every day
Rain falls, wind blows, but when sun shines
It warms the blues away
L,
You need to check your memory. Water weighs about 8 lbs/gal and gas is much closer to 6 lbs/gal. Yes, gas does float. Under most conditions it disperses too thinly to burn on the surface of water, but it does indeed float.
I for one am NOT a fan of the Union of Confused Scientists. But, frankly, although this little offering of theirs points to a continuing naivete and contains hints of their alarmist/activist agenda, I don’t understand some of the reaction to it.
Yes, in round terms, a gallon of gas is converted to about 20 lbs of CO2. It’s difficult to actually give a highly accurate number because there are literally hundreds of gas grades in the US with densities ranging by 10% and chemical composition varying even more widely. HaroldW did a decent job at showing how to get to the 20 lb number. When one realizes that gasoline has significant aromatic content (CxHy where x is usually greater than y) going back to HaroldW’s calculation will lead quickly to the conclusion that 20 lbs. Is a perfectly reasonable number.
Are some of the other suggestions a bit naïve? Pro ably. So what? I personally don’t see a problem with suggesting off-season ground cover or composting. Will is stop something called AGW that I don’t believe in? Well, since I don’t believe in it…
But go after the underlying issue of AGW and their disinformation campaign their. This offering is otherwise not that offensive.
These moronic advocates always fall down on one particular major point: they NEVER give any figures. i.e. If everyone in the developed world suddenly switched to gardening without fossil-powered tools tomorrow, and, say, doubled the mass of shrubbery in their gardens, what would be the net effect on world temperature over the next, say, 50 years? More than 0.0000000001 degree C?
I might come across as a Chicken Little, but I’m planting a garden this year for the first time in about 10 years because the way our government is going here in the US there just might be such civil unrest by this coming fall that fresh vegetables might not be available and I love nothing more than fresh-picked corn, beans, tomatoes, etc.
And even though I’m working up a rather large garden (65 by 55 ft), I’ve used less than a gallon of gas to till it even though all of it is newly-broken ground. I figured that approach had less impact, CO2-wise, than had I spent a week digging it up with a shovel and it was a far better use of my time.
But again, I’m not gowing a garden to be green–I’m growing one to satisfy my apetite for fresh, phytochemical-rich affordable food, for these green weenies that are foisting the Cult of Climate Change have far more disdain for capitalism and liberty than they do for CO2 (the latter being simply a transparent method of gaining power over the gullible masses). I’m just grateful for the boost in life-essential CO2 since the last time I grew a garden. That’s perhaps the best source of “fertilizer” a gardener could hope for.
I have planted hundreds of trees along the railway line as a wild life corridor, (even got on a tv gardening program,) but I am an AGW sceptic who distrusts the political, ‘religious'(?) agenda of the ‘greens’ and loves the informed debate here on WUWT.
Many years ago when I was a student we had a few real Universities and a host of Technical Colleges. In the main these were quite small and prepared undergraduates for HND or External London University degrees. These Colleges have now been transformed into pip squeak universities setting their own pip squeak degrees. In order to justify their existence they carry out research work largely geared to making enough money to keep them solvent. If that is beyond them they take in large numbers of Overseas students which does little to improve their educational standing.
Now we can all sit back and await the time when at least 110% of the population enjoys the benefits of higher education.
Sort of off topic, but in the immortal words of Dorothy Parker:
” You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”
Hey Aaron, good stuff that Candide, huh?
================
I say grow your garden really tall, harvest a bit of food, and burn it as an offering to Gaia, preferably while dancing around chanting. That’s how a real concerned scientist does things.
@L says: May 10, 2010 at 11:00 pm
From the Wikipedia article on gasoline: The specific density of gasoline ranges from 0.71–0.77, higher densities having a greater volume of aromatics.[7] (0.026 lb/in3; 719.7 kg/m3; 6.073 lb/US gal; 7.29 lb/imp gal). Gasoline floats on water; water cannot generally be used to extinguish a gasoline fire, unless used in a fine mist.
Gasoline and diesel both float on water, that is how water separating fuel filters work. Also why the fuel filter bowl on my diesel tractor is mounted vertically and has a clear bowl. When you see water in the bottom of the bowl you need to drain the water.
As far as getting ~20 lbs of CO2 out of a gallon of fuel, see the explanation from Harold in the comments above @HaroldW says: May 10, 2010 at 10:22 pm.
I support the union of CC in their fight against GM crops and the lies that the agricorps are pushing, I am saddened that they have hopped on the idiots bandwagon though:-(
synthetic fertilizers made from chemical waste arent good, Melamine is a classic, coal byproduct touted as nitrogen and a great fertiliser, uh uh eventually they had to admit the plants dont utilise it as its structure is not assimilable without soil biota and they dont like it much either! storing carbon as plant material in the soils, especially in Aus, is a desperate need. our topsoils are so shallow its not funny. NOT for warmistas bull ideas just for soil water and nutrient retention.
plenty of evidence that roundup and other chems are NOT as safe as touted and that some are killing bees, ie Bayer admitted Imidacloprid was a bee and small mammal issue, yet they still allow it to be used..theres money and power behind it.
Incitec bags here had a warning that they conatined Fly Ash with Cadmium at varying levels, the company itself warned NOT to graze animals on the crop residue..yeah what! thats the same crop WE are eating the grain from..
Bt isnt the Bt that the greener growers use, its a lb rat variety many thousands of times stronger and sorry but I for one do NOT want to be ingesting it in the food I buy.
I flatly refuse to buy any american foodstuffs due to GM, and I am wildly angry at the renewed campaign b the GM advocates to try and stop anyone labelling their food as NON GM..cos it may “predjudice their sales” like they did with rBGH milk, utter bas**rds! the consumer HAS the Right to KNOW and decide accordingly.
Union of CC did prove that the GM increses are lies! and they used USDA own figures to prove it.
they aren’t/weren’t all bad, really.
Is not gas and oil far more toxic in liquid form compared to burning it?
The concept that organic produce or “natural” pesticides aare better for the environment ignores the reality that all pesticides and fertilizers are chemicals. Some of the organic pesticides are far more harmful than man-made pesticides. An example is the widely used pyrethrum (made from chrysanthemums) which is high on the list of dangerous chemicals. It can effect the central nervous system and immune sytems and is implicated in pollution of waterways. In short it is an approved “organic” pesticide that is far worse than most “chemical” pesticides. “Organic” farmers are able to use it because it is organic and are forbidden to use more effective and safer man-made alternatives which are far kinder on the environment.
Organic is not necessarily more environmentally friendly or safer. It does however seem to be able to help sooth the insufferable guilt of liberals that they tend to try and inflict on those of us whose main purpose in life is to enjoy it.
During the late ’80’s Opinion Magazine sent out 2500 surveys to people randomly selected from “Who’s Who of American Men and Women in Science and Technology”.
There were about 100,000 people in the volume at that time. It included most R&D department heads of all companies, heads of research labs, published scientists, etc.
The survey was on attitudes towards Nuclear Power. 87% favorable responses! (And they recieved 1800 of the surveys back, an INCREDIBLE return rate!) They got ONE positive response to the question, “Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists?”
They said statistically it was 90% likely that less than 200 of the 100,000 in the Who’s Who were associated with the UCS.
The UCS has steadfastly refused to release any information on the credentials of their “membership”. Henry Kendall, their titular leader, was given a Nobel Prize in the ’80’s for his work on “quarks” in the ’70’s. Perhaps one of the most politically motivated NP’s in the sciences of all time, as the work was trivial. (But used mightily to try to bolster the “credibility” of the UCS.
Sorry my info is so dated. I was strongly involved in nuclear power at the time. What’s interesting to me is that the UCS and their ilk SUCCEEDED in their goal to destroy nuclear power (now a DEAD DUCK). So they have moved on. Now we understand their goal: DESTROY ALL OF MODERN SOCIETY. “Luddite” anyone?
Mark T says:
May 10, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Union of Concerned Scientists? There’s a point at which advocacy becomes so obvious that even a retarded monkey catches on. Are these guys really serious?
Mark
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I just came across a site, “Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist”, that praises Greenpeace, Union of Concerned Scientists and the Animal Liberation Front.
The slant on other articles in WUWT [Marketing Advice For Mad Scientists] is rather interesting:
“What would be the Olin Foundation’s motivation in funding a conference on the Science Wars? Did it think that “intellectual relativism” was eating away at the fiber of the American academy? I don’t quite know how to put this, but the idea of the Olin Foundation coming to the aid of “enlightenment values” strikes me as almost as ridiculous as Christopher Hitchens opposing “establishment power”. Their main interest should be obvious. Olin doesn’t want leftwing scientists mucking about on issues such as global warming, carcinogens in the food we eat, water and air pollution, etc.
Just to take one example, the Olin Foundation donated more than $25,000 to an outfit called the American Council on Science and Health. Other donors included the General Electric Foundation, the Monsanto Fund and other such bodies dedicated to fighting bad writing and fashionable nonsense.
If you go to their website, you will find an article on the home page titled “Claims of Industry Tampering with Science Are Overblown”. Well, I should have known. The executive director of ACSH, who claims that “A new scientific McCarthyism is alive and well in America today”, was introducing an ACSH study titled “Scrutinizing Industry-Funded Science: The Crusade Against Conflicts of Interest”, written by one Ronald Bailey. Bailey argues:
Why should having once consulted with Pfizer or DuPont disqualify a scientist from serving on a government advisory board or writing a review article in a scientific journal, while being a lifelong member of Greenpeace does not? And if owning $10,000 in Dow stock represents a potential conflict of interest, surely $10,000 in funding from the Union of Concerned Scientists does too.
This argument raises speciousness to stratospheric levels. The mission of the Union of Concerned Scientists is to search for science-based solutions to problems facing society as a whole. Nobody has ever accused the Union of bias, except perhaps against corporations…..” http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/07/21/butterflies-and-wheels/
Do these “scientists” actually know where most of the CO2 is turned into O2. Where do you think most of the CO2 is converted to O2? If you answered trees, you’d be wrong. In fact, if your answer had anything that requires soil to grow, you would be wrong. Most of our oxygen is generated in the ocean. I don’t remember the exact ratio, but I believe it is 2-1. Whatever the ratio, it is a proven fact that the ocean produces the vast majority of oxygen.
So these “scientists” come along and say my tiny garden is going to reduce my carbon footprint. (*slaps head*) Considering that most of the oxygen we need comes from the ocean, my tiny garden is going to help very little. It would be like adding a drop of water to a lake. That is why I know these people aren’t real scientists, because they are greedy and they don’t check their statement against known, proven, and related variables.
Look, I’m growing a tiny garden, not to reduce my carbon footprint, but because I like fresh vegetables and to save money.
Meanwhile there’s another AGW front group with the same old crowd behind it:
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/mackinderProgramme/theHartwellPaper/Default.htm
Have you wondered how this is perceived by foreigners (not- “Green-Goes”)?, well…..simply this confirms that most of you are simply and painfully SILLY.
Now, there is a book which says:
Although rarely acknowledged, environmental religion owes its moral activism, ascetic discipline, reverence for nature, and fallen view of man to the Protestant theology of John Calvin. A remarkable number of American environmental leaders, including John Muir, Rachel Carson, David Brower, Edward Abbey, and Dave Foreman, were raised in the Presbyterian church (the Scottish branch of Calvinism) or one of its offshoots. Earlier forerunners of modern environmentalism who were influenced by Calvinism include the American transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who offered a secular version of the fall of man from the original “state of nature [in which] man lived happily in peace.”
I don´t know if this explains it but…don´t you feel embarrased by the whole issue?
Anyone in the world who could dare to tell you the truth (as the majority will not-just in case there is some money to get from you-) will tell you the same.
A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon.
Really? A gallon of gasoline weighs 6 pounds and the mower emits other things besides CO2. Also, I think some the O2 is already in the gasoline. Like the candy bar that causes a 5 pound weight gain I guess.
Well yet another reason not to have to cut the grass.
Flash news: Mike Hulme accepts the Enlightenment, championing human dignity over human guilt.
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Warren says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
Warren-
CO2 follows temperature, not the other way. Open a coke and you´ll see it: The more you have it in your warm hand the more gas will go out when you open it.
CO2 is the transparent gas we all exhale (SOOT is black=Carbon dust) and plants breath with delight, to give us back what they exhale instead= Oxygen we breath in.
CO2 is a TRACE GAS in the atmosphere, it is the 0.038% of it.
There is no such a thing as “greenhouse effect”, “greenhouse gases are gases IN a greenhouse”, where heated gases are trapped and relatively isolated not to lose its heat so rapidly. If greenhouse effect were to be true, as Svante Arrhenius figured it out: CO2 “like the window panes in a greenhouse”, but…the trouble is that those panes would be only 3.8 panes out of 10000, there would be 9996.2 HOLES.
See:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28018819/Greenhouse-Niels-Bohr
CO2 is a gas essential to life. All carbohydrates are made of it. The sugar you eat, the bread you have eaten in your breakfast this morning, even the jeans you wear (these are made from 100% cotton, a polymer of glucose, made of CO2…you didn´t know it, did you?)
You and I, we are made of CARBON and WATER.
CO2 is heavier than Air, so it can not go up, up and away to cover the earth.
The atmosphere, the air can not hold heat, its volumetric heat capacity, per cubic cemtimeter is 0.00192 joules, while water is 4.186, i.e., 3227 times.
This is the reason why people used hot water bottles to warm their feet and not hot air bottles.
Global Warmers models (a la Hansen) expected a kind of heated CO2 piggy bank to form in the tropical atmosphere, it never happened simply because it can not.
If global warmers were to succeed in achieving their SUPPOSED goal of lowering CO2 level to nothing, life would disappear from the face of the earth.
Warren says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
Warren-
First of all, they are probably talking of a US gallon, which is 5/6 the size of Imperial. Second, each pound of carbon produces 44/12 pounds of CO2 (basic chemistry).
Murray Carpenter says:
You are wrong, Gasoline does float on water. Try it!
So does gravy, very small rocks, apples, and a duck.. so logically… gasoline is a witch!
Robert says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Union of Concerned Scientists?
Sounds more like a new religion to me that is out there to ban everything that is fun for a lot of people. I mean come on gardening, in most parts of the world it is also known as food production …
Not any more then, don’t anger the climatechange gods and their high priests is the new word, gardening is a sin and therefore bad, now redeem yourself and plant your garden in such a way as the holy scriptures demand.
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Be careful what you wish for. The WTO/UN already has a bill, HR 2749, before Congress to do just that: http://www.newswithviews.com/Hannes/doreen100.htm
It tells us how to Run our farms and gardens according to the holy scriptures as handed down by the UN, OIE, ISO and WTO.
A consolidation of articles written by farmers about recent food bills (there have been several) can be seen here:
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2287
or here
http://farmwars.info/?cat=116
From Farmwars: This account of a story in the recent news is a real eye opener. Amazing how the MSM gets the facts wrong. And good grief the guy IDENTIFIED his murderer, the murderer was cornered by his neighbors and the authorities LET the murderer GO! Gives you the warm fuzzies does it not? (BTW I know the author who wrote this piece & Marti does not lie)
http://farmwars.info/?p=2858
Warren says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:26 pm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
Warren-
First of all, they are probably talking of a US gallon, which is 5/6 the size of Imperial, so 8.33 lb of water. Second, each pound of carbon produces 44/12 pounds of CO2 (basic chemistry).
It then comes down to the amount of carbon in a gallon of gasoline. Making the wild assumption that gasoline is all straight-chain octane, C8H18, molecular weight is 114. Specific gravity is somewhere around 0.9, so a US gallon of gasoline would weigh somewhere around 8.33 x 0.9 = 7.5 lb. Of that 7.5 lb, the carbon would be 96/114 x 7.5, or 6.3 lb. That would produce 44/12 x 6.3 = 23.2 pounds of CO2.
So, the mower wold produce more than 20 lb of CO2 per gallon of gasoline burned.
Apologies if someone else has posted on this subject before I have read all comments.
IanM
For people concerned with spreading so much crap around, the UCS knows so little about crap, perhaps they know nothing at all. I love the idea of growing ground cover under snow, brilliant, who else could have dreamed this up? What literally fertile minds!
I garden avidly. I agree with #’s 2 and 4. However, I’d prefer more CO2 in the air please. Buy an SUV and help my garden. Thanks in advance.
Gail Combs,
That is a very scary Farm Wars link.
“A growing body of research suggests that lawns can capture and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide”
Are public schools no longer describing the deep layer of black earth which the settlers found on the Great Plains grasslands?
But sheep eating my grass produce methane which is more of a GHG. We will be one big happy Rodale Press. Lots of folks who starve, but heck, they don’t matter, they live overseas anyway.
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”
Eureka! This is not just perpetual motion, but perpetual motion with turbo drive!
What I don’t understand is how it is that people like this don’t starve for want of employment.
Scarlet Pumpernickel says: May 11, 2010 at 2:29 am
How do I control my lawn so that it doesn’t upset the balance of the planet?
Use a mulching lawn mower and don’t bag the clippings.
The same mindset is running the UN’s World Health Organisation [WHO]. This is the result.
Sadly, I was a member of the UCS 20 years ago. When some new information came out that a certain aspect of AGW was not as damaging as previous information indicated, the Union of Concerned Scientists sent me a letter saying just the opposite and asking for more money to fight the noble cause. I sent them a letter referring to the new, more accurate study to which they replied: “Okay, but what if this new information is wrong?”
I immediately canceled my membership and felt stupid for being duped.
Re: “A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon.”
To put this in perspective…
A typical person exhales 2.3 pounds of CO2 per day.
A typical gas mower has a gas tank capacity of about 1.5 quarts.
For my lawn (about 2/3 acre) I never use more than about 2/3 of a tank (or 1 quart = 0.25 gallons) per mowing (every 7 – 10 days).
So using the UCS inflated figure for CO2 production by gas mowers, I am generating only about 5 lbs of CO2 per mow. In the 7 days between mowings, I will exhale about 16 lbs of CO2 (note – I’ll be running a marathon at the end of this month, so my CO2 production will be increased dramatically ;^).
“I’ve been screaming continuously in terror since Dr. Hansen’s first presentation to Congress in 1998. Should I take a breath?”
my finger slipped, meant 1988. All these years of doom-saying and no doom. It wears on one.
Ummm…as a water/wastewater design engineer in the United States I typically use 8.34 lbs per gallon as the weight of water, but 8.33 is probably close enough (been many years since I derived the actual weight but as I recall it is around 8.335 or so, for fresh water mind you).
The “A pint’s a pound the world around” saying my dad taught me is a decent enough rule of thumb for back-of-the-napkin type calculations (ease of math) but I’ll happily fly in the plane with the flight engineer using 8.33 lb/gallon and let someone else fly in the plane that is using 8 lb/gallon for the weight of water.
And gasoline / diesel / oil definitely float. The cruiser I served on many years ago used seawater compensated fuel tanks, and central to their operation was the concept that fuel floats on water (the tanks were always full of fuel and water, with the seawater coming in as the fuel was consumed to fill the void which (a) increased ship stability, and (b) decreased free gaseous space to reduce any potential risk of explosion). Also, as an aside as I recall the deep diving bathyscaphe Trieste used gasoline for bouyancy:
(“The Trieste consisted of a float chamber filled with gasoline for buoyancy, with a separate pressure sphere. This configuration (dubbed a bathyscaphe by the Piccards), allowed for a free dive, rather than the previous bathysphere designs in which a sphere was lowered to depth and raised from a ship by cable.”)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste
Murray Carpenter says:
May 11, 2010 at 1:32 am
@L You are wrong, Gasoline does float on water. Try it!
Before aircraft take off, the pilots drain some of the lower liquid from each fuel tank. The heavier stuff that signals danger is water. Water is more dense than Avgas.
Bill Tuttle says:
May 11, 2010 at 1:01 am
UK Sceptic May 10, 2010 at 10:56 pm
These people are SCIENTISTS?
Who else would think anything north of the Florida border actually *grows* in the winter?
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UHMmm Bill, I am in North Carolina and we grow winter wheat, oats and rye in the winter. I over seed my bermuda grass with grazing rye (abruzzi) every fall for winter pasture. So yes you can over seed in the winter if the summer crop is harvested soon enough in the fall. Rye is the seed of choice since it will germinate in about a week and grow whenever it is not freezing
“Compared to other cereal grains, rye grows faster in the fall and produces more dry matter the following spring–up to 10,000 pounds per acre, although 2 tons is more typical in the Northeast. Rye is the most winter-hardy of all cereal grains, tolerating temperatures as low as -30°F once it is well established. It can germinate and grow at temperatures as low as 33°F, but it sure won’t grow very much when it’s that cold.” http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/winterrye.html
On the issue of over seeding bare fields in the winter, I am afraid I have to agree with them as much as I hate too. My farm lost over two to three feet of topsoil since the 1940 soil survey because it was rented tobacco fields and no one bothered with a cover crop. I have seen a heavy rain remove 2″ of topsoil (and my seed) in a couple of hours. I lost 4″ of CLAY in my sacrifice area this winter due to the heavy rains and constant mud. This winter was so bad I could not put my animals out to pasture as I usually would without killing my pastures.
To amicus curiae ….
” Bt isnt the Bt that the greener growers use, its a lb rat variety many thousands of times stronger and sorry but I for one do NOT want to be ingesting it in the food I buy.”
Are you talking about Bacillus thuringiensis? Or a variety of? I suppose you eat organic grown food all you can. Remember that crop yields are dependant on the use of fertilizer and herbicide/pesticides. Yields decrease with the reduction of said usage. Lower yields lead to higher prices and lower availability to consumers. Look at yourself in the mirror and smile as you tell yourself the poor appreciate your efforts. Food shouldn’t be only for the rich.
Too bad these guys are serious. Now, if they included tips as to how I can cheaply and easily increase the CO2 levels around my plants then the writers would be on to something. Maybe I should get a gas mower…
Ok, that was a painful article to read. I think the best use for it is to collect any printed copies, shred them, and use it for my worm bin.
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/easywormbin.htm
“A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon”. This is idiotic on several levels. First, the number is wrong. Autos, which are far more efficient, oxidize perhaps 99% of the gasoline and emit about 19.4 lbs. of C02. The typical mower oxidizes perhaps 75% of the gasoline, and thus emits much less C02, perhaps 15 lbs. The C02 of course is not only completely harmless, but in fact beneficial, so they are worrying about exactly the wrong thing. The problem with mowers is the actual pollutants they emit, which contribute to smog particularly in urban areas. Additionally, there is a great deal of spillage, much of which winds up in groundwater.
The union of concerned scientists is a leftist maybe even communist front organization. They are responsible for such things as the Alar scare and others.
Scarlet Pumpernickel says:
May 11, 2010 at 2:29 am
How do I control my lawn so that it doesn’t upset the balance of the planet?
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I would say get a goat or sheep, but livestock are EVIL so I guess you have to capture in the wild and turn loose a bunch of rabbits…. no that won’t work either because you have to have a wild life rehabilitation license…. Do you have any nail clippers???
I think these folks who wrote the article should bid on items from Ed Begley’s garden, as a message, where he minimizes his carbon pollution by recycling his human feces for fertilizer. Don’t they do that in Mexico and isn’t that a bad thing?
Beth Cooper says:
May 11, 2010 at 4:22 am
I have planted hundreds of trees along the railway line as a wild life corridor, (even got on a tv gardening program,) but I am an AGW sceptic …
________________________________________________________________
Good for you. Only idiots think skeptics are not concerned with treating the earth “with kindness” Planting trees and flowers along the railroads and highways are good for the animals and good for the human soul. Planting trees and grass buffers became mandatory in the USA after the dust bowl days blew the great plains top soil all the way to Washington DC. see: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_02.html
Green living as the elites see it: Morning: Serf gets up hooks wife and kids to the plow.
Plows field for the Lord and Lady (think Prince Charles and Camillia or Al and Tipper)
Then they pick the bugs off the plants for the Big House’s Kitchen (Arugla comes to mind). As they are doing that, the Lord and Lady ride by in their Horse driven Coach.
“Serf’s Up!” say the lady to the lord as they ride by, then they go to the Stable, get out of the Coach out of site of their rabble, and get into the H3 Hummer and drive to the
Airport, not to worry about air traffic as they and certain others are the only ones to be allowed aircraft. They are on their way to Cancun to the newest UN/World govn’t
Environmental congress. As they land they are cut off in the pattern by JohnTravolta in his Boeing 707, but they are ok with that- as he does that. In Cancun, the congregants are taken to the meeting in Sedan chairs and Rickshaws. (There is
a woman who runs a Pedicab here in my home town.) They listen to the New UN head
man-AlGore as the is blaming Global Warming for the Glacier that justs slicked off
Chicago.. This is what “Green” living means to me….
‘Sight” -darn it not enough coffee..
” Frank K. says:
[…]
16 lbs of CO2 (note – I’ll be running a marathon at the end of this month, so my CO2 production will be increased dramatically ;^).”
This could explain why people feel so hot after running a marathon. Greenhouse effect. Plus, they sweat – high water vapor! Do you observe desertification or rising sea levels during a run?
Henry chance says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:17 pm
Most of the problem is the city folk greenie weenies that know it all and live in urbasn 15 story concrete bunkers. They need to get out in the fresh air. Raise goats that mow the lawn and chickens thatt table scraps.
Farmers do not compost. They feed the chickens which crank out plant food in 24 hours. Much smarter and more efficient.
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Gee Henry,
A lot of farmers do indeed compost as well as feed scraps to the girls who also do a bit of composting while enduring the wait for the egg song sing-a-long.
BTW: Goldie, Red, Ebony, and Ivory wanted you to know that.
amicus curiae says:
May 11, 2010 at 5:37 am
I support the union of CC in their fight against GM crops and the lies that the agricorps are pushing, I am saddened that they have hopped on the idiots bandwagon though….
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amicus, you might be interested in this.
“Horizontal Gene Transfer from GMOs Does Happen. Recent evidence confirms that transgenic DNA does jump species…” http://www.i-sis.org.uk/horizontalGeneTransfer.php
The idea of GMOs has never bothered me but the slipshod nod to safety and environmental concerns definitely does. When Mike Taylor as the “FDA” stated there is no difference between GMO and normal food crops [“substantial equivalence”] and therefore no testing is need and then goes to work for Monsanto you know concern for safety had nothing to do with FDA policy.
“It is not our purpose to endanger the financial interest of the pharmaceutical companies.” FDA Commissioner Dr. Charles C. Edwards
http://www.communicationagents.com/sepp/2003/11/30/fda_monsanto_dangerous_relations.htm
Bios of Taylor:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18866.cfm
http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/OC/OfficeofFoods/ucm196721.htm
Taylor’s connections: http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=2590&name=Michael-Taylo
When I was a lad just after the Great Depression and World War II “green” meant inexperienced, unseasoned, misguided, clueless, or in the pre-politically correct idiom of the time “didn’t know one’s arse from a hole in the ground”.
The offering by UCS confirms it still does.
How many pounds of matter can be derived from 1 pound of gasoline after combustion in an a lawnmower engine?
Sean Peake says:
“So does gravy, very small rocks, apples, and a duck.. so logically… gasoline is a witch!”
Sean, in order for gasoline to be a witch it must do more than float, it must weigh the same as a duck!
But I appreciate your having brought the Pythonian theorem to this thread. After all, a technical question requires a technical answer! 😉
I grow my own vegetables because they are fresher than those bought in the shops, FAR tastier, but I am not sure they are cheaper. I dread to think how much I spend on horse muck and seeds and potting compost. And I have just put up a fabulous new greenhouse to start things off early. I am also plaqued by flipping birds – pigeons, pheasants, partridges – deer, rabbits and mice (probably rats too but I don’t look too hard) and have resorted this year to using horticultural fleece to fend the blighters off and give the seeds a chance to get going. We are harvesting asparagus for the first time this year, having nurtured the crowns when planted 3 years ago, putting loads of muck on the bed each year. So, I would say, after a little reflection that it must be more expensive but I love gardening, so who cares.
I usually sow broad beans in the autumn so that they get cracking earlier in the year but for the last two years I have had to re-sow them in the spring as our harder winters have killed them off. Must have been all that hot air coming from the concerned scientists, do you think?
I learned most of my gardening “skills” from my parents who were avid gardeners so I’m just continuing their traditions, including making my own compost. Nothing new here.
My husband mows the lawn. He sings maniacally as he does it so perhaps there is something in that nitrous oxide argument.
“Adam Smith was convinced that nothing but the waste of war and the fault of seasons…had ever created a dearth, the violence of well-intentioned governments however converting dearth into famine.”
Steve Keohane says:
May 11, 2010 at 6:38 am
For people concerned with spreading so much crap around, the UCS knows so little about crap, perhaps they know nothing at all. I love the idea of growing ground cover under snow, brilliant, who else could have dreamed this up? What literally fertile minds!
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Steve you plant winter rye. It germinates down to 33F (1C) and has a very aggressive root system. You plant it in the FALL and it will grow whenever it is warm enough. Although it is an annual, temps down to -30F do not kill it and if there is snow cover lower temps (cold snaps) won’t touch it either. If the snow melts and the temp warms it will happily continue to grow. It is a great plant and if you keep it grazed or mowed or till it under so it does not go to seed and produce “weeds” (yes I really do love the stuff, it saves me lots of money)
Smokey says:
May 11, 2010 at 6:40 am
Gail Combs,
That is a very scary Farm Wars link.
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Yes, the stuff going on at the border is really pretty bad from some of the first hand accounts I have heard. Armored vehicles and military style operations according to one friend from Texas who was an eyewitness. Remember these are the same people Congress wants in the country permanently.
see this article for more information: http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty566.htm
L says: May 10, 2010 at 11:00 pm “Am I the only one here that knows gasoline is heavier than water? “
I hope so. Where do you get your information from? Hollywood? Take some “gasoline”, we call it petrol, and pour it in a bowl of water.
Ian L. McQueen says: May 11, 2010 at 6:31 am…. “Making the wild assumption that gasoline is all straight-chain octane, C8H18, molecular weight is 114. Specific gravity is somewhere around 0.9,..”
Most gasoline is iso-octane and its specific gravity is 0.688 and not 0.9. Even straight octane’s sp gravity is far less than 0.9
So taking your assumption that all of it is iso-octane, 1 US liquid gallon of gasoline = 3.785481784 litres = 3.785481784 x 0.688 Kgs = 2.604411467 Kgs = 2.604411467 x 2.2 lbs = 5.73 pounds and not 7.5 lbs as you have worked out
5.73 lbs of butane would have 5.73 x 96/114 lbs of Carbon, which would produce 5.73 x 96/114 x 44/12 = 17.69 pounds of CO2, if there was 100% combustion.
Assuming 80% of the fuel will fully combust to form CO2 we are left with 17.69 x 0.8 = 14.15 pounds of CO2 from a gallon of gasoline from a typical mower
Smokey says:
May 11, 2010 at 6:40 am
Gail Combs,
That is a very scary Farm Wars link.
And the prospect is that all this green religious fanaticism it is going to end in a Holy War, so it should be stopped at any cost, but it seems that it is being constantly fed by an unending source of money.
Mullah Nassr Al bedwetter Imam is to blame as the visible leader but also those who cheated him telling him he was the most intelligent man on earth and he was going to be the saviour of Gaia.
Smokey says:
May 11, 2010 at 6:55 am
The same mindset is running the UN’s World Health Organisation [WHO]. This is the result.
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Smokey, Don’t you understand you have to be able to impose taxes to have David Rockefeller’s “supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers” You just can not have a world government without the power to tax. /sarc
(Sorry Smokey I couldn’t resist )
Gail Combs says:
May 11, 2010 at 7:53 am:
I am a biochemist of many years, and the problem with the anti-GM folks is that they have a little bit of knowledge that, on the whole, ends up with foolishness. “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans chapter 1).
Of course all genes may undergo R-factor transmission (recombination) to other species. This is mostly facilitated in more primitive species, like bacteria and plants. (It does not happen in animals, thank goodness, or my eyes would turn brown, not just from spouting BS!). The question of GM is whether it is safe or not. To pass a drought resistant gene to another crop, in the short run, may not be a bad thing. But remember, all mutations, or GM are not energy neutral. The organism has to, in accordance with 2nd Law of thermodynamics type of issues, give up something that makes it less able to compete on another front, and the improvement reverts quite rapidly in succeeding generations.
So, the gene in the long run, wears out, so to speak, and reverts to the wild type. Witness selective breeding in chickens or other animals, for instance. You can make them pretty and fluffy and big for a few generations, but given a few generations more and they will revert to the wild type, a plain ordinary old chicken.
The ignorance of the U of CC is rampant in the “hormone” arena, especially. BGH (bovine growth hormone) is bioidentical to the natural “hormone”. I dislike the term hormone, because it is a clever ruse to make non-scientific laymen think of bad hormones, like DES, or other synthetic steroids that have since been banned from food animals, and that, rightly so. Call BGH it by its real name, rather than the trivial name. It is bovine somatotropin (BST). Without ST, all animals would not be able to live. It controls fat and protein balance in animals and humans. As we age, ST, goes down, and is the most significant cause of ageing in humans.
More to the point, BST in milk occurs at extremely low levels. Importantly, it cannot be absorbed by ingestion, because this protein has a molecular weight of 21,000! It MUST be injected to be absorbed at all. If we eat it in the milk, the body considers it as just another protein, and is broken down immediately in the stomach and used as food, just as egg albumin or any other protein food source. It is impossible to have a “hormone” effect on us humans!
SO, the Union of CC, like the blind squirrel who survives by tripping over an acorn every once in a while, may be right occasionally, but on the whole they are full of misinformation. They exist by propagandizing and scare tactics, and should be discounted in preference for a real, educated scientific body.
“Though it didn’t involve gene cloning, the green revolution still wasn’t “green” in the modern sense. High yields demanded artificial fertiliser, chemical pesticides and new soil technology. But where would all the extra food have come from without these inputs? Organic farm ing has fed people for centuries but it hasn’t the capacity to feed the world’s burgeoning population. If all our organic waste were somehow diverted into spreading over our fields, it wouldn’t be sufficient to fertilise half our current world cereal crop.
Bullsh*t may be unlimited in the GM debate, but on the ground, supplies are much more limited.” Johnjoe McFadden
greg2213 says:
May 11, 2010 at 7:09 am
… use it for my worm bin.
http://whatcom.wsu.edu/ag/compost/easywormbin.htm
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Thanks for the pointer I was thinking of trying some worm “farming” for fishing.
DirkH says:
May 11, 2010 at 7:40 am
“This could explain why people feel so hot after running a marathon. Greenhouse effect. Plus, they sweat high water vapor! Do you observe desertification or rising sea levels during a run?”
Actually – your core temperature increases after running that long, which in turn makes you feel cold relative to the ambient. That’s why they give you those silver plastic capes at the end of the marathon. I should also mention that runners are emitting more than just CO2 during the marathon ;^)
I beg to differ on no time to plant cover crops. I was raised on a farm. We had no money for weed control or fertilizer. We used what we had. Chickens provided lots of fertilizer. So did white fish. Pea vine rows kept weeds down inbetween other row crops and fixed nitrogen into the soil. Grandma always planted pole beans in the corn rows for the same reason. Cow and horse tea provided additional fertilizer. Straw kept a lot of weeds at bay, along with strips of used carpet. Soapy spray took care of a lot of bugs during the season and we encouraged biocontrol (ladybugs, praying mantis, birds, etc). At the end of the season the chickens were let into the garden to take care of bugs and larvae in the soil. Left over plants were never plowed in until Spring, creating a very nice cover for the garden bed. We did those things because we had too. If my budget gets that tight again, you can bet your sweet momma I will be using those same practices.
Never could understand the use of bins to grow worms or compost paper and veggie scraps. My grandma did it right in the soil. She chose the shady, always moist spot near the house foundation (there is a water spigot there that always leaks a bit in the summer) and laid moist cardboard boxes flat on the ground in the earliest part of the spring when the ground is still a bit frozen. About two to three weeks later she would remove the cardboard, throw on newspaper strips and lawn clippings with handfulls of nearby soil and started burying kitchen leftover veggies in that spot along with additional grass clippings, leaves, etc. Then whenever she went fishing, the worms were right there without even having to shovel them up. Just a small trowel was all she used. I do the same thing in the same spot. Just last weekend I started the process after removing the cardboard boxes. The sight of all those worms made me dream of fishing that night.
The acronym for their organization should be ASAB, for the Association of Scientists Around the Bend. Born in 1935, and reared on a farm in Iowa, I remember how difficult (and uncertain) dealing with pests was before modern synthetic pesticides, including weed killers.
Either we deal with pests and weeds by killing them, or the pests and weeds will do us in. Life for a farmer (and everyone else) is indeed better with chemistry.
The “dirt” that the worms produce is an excellent fertilizer. Do the bin at all right and you’ll have enough worms for the entire season and your plants will be happier.
bubbagyro says:
May 11, 2010 at 8:33 am
Gail Combs says:
May 11, 2010 at 7:53 am:
I am a biochemist of many years, and the problem with the anti-GM folks is that they have a little bit of knowledge that, on the whole, ends up with foolishness….
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Thanks for the information. As I said I am more or less neutral on GMOs as long as they are tested for safety. The politics of GMO is something else again. The name of the game seems to be to patent all seeds so royalties ca be collected. Again if a farmer wants to plant a patented variety and pay extra so be. I just get angry when governments are used to coerce farmers into buy the seed.
“December 2006 – “In the EU, there is now a list of ‘official’ vegetable varieties. Seed that is not on the list cannot be ‘sold’ to the ‘public’ To keep something on the list costs thousands of pounds each year…Hundreds of thousands of old heirloom varieties (the results of about eleven thousand years of plant breeding by our ancestors) are being lost forever .” http://www.defra.gov.uk/planth/pvs/pbr/app-procedure.htm & http://www.realseeds.co.uk/terms.html & http://www.euroseeds.org/pdf/ESA_03.0050.1.pdf”
The worse one is
June 2006 – Global Diversity Treaty: “Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) a standardized contract that will enable much easier access to crop diversity. [ germplasm for patenting] royalty payment (1.1% of sales) is paid only if product is unavailable for further breeding and research. funds will be devoted to conservation efforts.” Translation: Bio-techs Corporations steal seed from third world farmers, patents it and pay money to Bioversity International. http://www.bioversityinternational.org/publications/pdf/1144.pdf
coupled that with:
“FAO is supporting harmonization of seed rules and regulations in Africa and Central Asia in order to stimulate the development of a vibrant seed industry …An effective seed regulation harmonization process involves dialogue amongst all relevant stakeholders from both private and public sectors. Seed quality assurance, variety release, plant variety protection, biosafety, plant quarantine and phytosanitary issues are among the major technical areas of a regional harmonized seed system. The key to a successful seed regulation harmonization is a strong political will of the governments involved” http://www.fao.org/ag/portal/archive/detail/en/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=5730&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=1886&cHash=7f04326e35
In a word I support capitalism but I hate “corporatism” the unholy mix of international corporations and government where the chase for the almighty dollar promotes the trampling and even killing of people. I hate “corporatism” even worse when it is hidden under the cloak of “Altruism”
biddyb,
Think of some of those pest that cause you a bit of trouble as the meat to go with the gravy, peas, and potatoes, just before that big slice of hot homemade apple pie.
That will make things seem a bit better.
I also do a bit of gardening and keep a few chickens, I usually use a “healthy” amount of compost to cover my raised beds (made using downed tree branches) with. My compost comes from a number of sources some form my own compost piles, the chicken coop litter (pine shavings and well you know), and the neighbors composting manure stack (alas they moved so that source isn’t getting replenished anymore).
What gets raised gets used fresh, cooked, frozen, or canned.
In short I make use of as much organic “waste” as I can that is close by.
It is all a valid part of reduce, reuse, or recycle.
Gail Combs says:
May 11, 2010 at 9:42 am
That IS bad stuff, although there has to be incentive for agribusiness to develop new strains so we can reduce chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
Some patented wheats incorporate a legume root gene so that nitrogen can become fixated. It cost hundreds of millions of $$$ to develop, but is a very good thing for developing countries with poor soil. The catch that they have larger start-up costs is a small price to pay when they would have zilch otherwise. Let the UN or some other group do something positive for a change and pay the fees! [BTW, if the third-world seeds were so great, why do they need our grain?]
The cost of registry is another thing. I don’t know the pros and cons of this issue, but I’m sure there is a valid reason besides revenue enhancement. (Although the Cap-and-Trade has no purpose except for revenue enhancement, so I hedge my case!)
greg2213
Could you make enough room in your worm’s bin to put the incomparable Mullah Nassr Al bedwetter Imam in it?
Let’s praise the The Union of Concerned Idiots to make us laugh today!
mbabbitt says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:11 pm
I am an avid home gardener and never thought I would end up sick of the word “green”, but here I am today sick of all references to green and all of the other holy bs.
Once upon a time green referred to the chlorophyll molecule, and the promise of reverse-engineering it. Now green is just a Color Revolution.
We cannot turn a fool into a sage, but we can laugh at him.
All those who want to fix the world and fix our lives according to their naive dreams should remember that “You will harvest what you have sowed”, so please do not complain afterwards.
The only positive thing these clowns could add to gardening would be to figure out how to bag the bovine scat they have been pushing for decades and sell it.
Doesn’t pesticides kills carbon-exhaling insects?
Great comments all and here is the problem I have with the whole thing: It’s 90% propaganda and (about) 10% relatively correct (valuable) info. The complete pamphlet is 324 Col inches, with only 37 Col inches (and that’s being generous) of REAL world info – a bit on “chemicals”, “cover crops”, some on “trees” and a bit on “grass”. And that is it and, not unexpected from this Org., (Is it?) But THAT is my problem with it!
90% – fluff, supposition, misinformation, contradictory science, unsubstantiated theory, uncorroborated references, non-real world ideas and proven wrong (here and other places) statements that IMHO total into scientific malfeasance! Is it conceivable to anyone reading this, that anyone could put out a more summarily disgraceful and dishonest document then this piece of ________!?! (fill in the blank) And so what? Well, they were either foolish or stupid enough to say it right in the brochure: TODAY THE BACKYARD, TOMORROW THE NATION.
READ that again. Think about the real meaning in that.
Folks, these are NOT scientists! Sure, there are a few on their board but they don’t give a hoot about “global climate”. They know damn well that NONE OF THIS will make any difference to the temp. at 14,000 ft above Timbuktu in 30 years.
They are Marxist Progressives! They don’t “see” the world the way it IS, they mentally (that’s why some have termed it a mental disease) see it through their Rose Colored Glasses as they want it to be. And they “hate” capitalist/capitalism and the concept of YOUR individual freedom and inalienable rights to make decisions about your life. Why? Because there is no reconciliation fathomable in “their perfect world” for the limitations they see in the human spirit. And their minds can NOT accept that imperfections are NATURAL, or as we would call it, HUMAN NATURE. And therefore YOU, the “unwashed”, are THE problem. YOU are not educated enough, have not “seen the light” and therefore must be lead (forced) away from your “addictions” to happiness, liberty and yes, even life. Not “them” of course. THEY are the enlighten ones. And what better place to start then when you are a child – – or with YOUR children. Which is THE focus of this latest indoctrination document from the Union of Concerned Marxists – Moralists – ah, Scientists.
Put that on your wall folks and go to their website and see what else they have written – – then Google “propaganda machine”….
Newspapers, Posters, Films, Books, Comics, Magazines, Radio, TV, websites, blogs, your church, your local “science” museum (is next), your k-12 Public school & even Gardening Brochures to be handed out no doubt at your local library (and school).
YOU will be re-educated! YOU will be assimilated! Resistance is futile! We are the chosen ones. And if we can’t “get” you, we’ll get the next generation.
All with the help of the benevolent US federal government….
Well the beauty of green gardening and organic food, is that you can go into a place like Whole Foods, and pay extra to get your lettuce with built in animal protein at the same time. You can even buy organic water nowadays in bottles. I think it comes from some place where the water is 370 million years old, and it contains no Deuterium oxide. So the ladies and beerbellies can put on all that water bloat and still meet their bathroom scale weight limit; without all that heavy water in them.
Just think, that you can buy apples that have already been inspected for quality by their own Codlin moth caterpillar; and you can chew on the inspector as well.
I always had an urge as a kid to try and eat those Huhu grubs that grow up into those horrible looking huge Wetas, in the NZ bush. I must have thought they might metamorph inside me, so I’d have those hideous scratchy things inside my stomach.
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that somebody at Whole Foods has figured out how much animal protein is the right mix with the veggies; so that they don’t leave the wilds with an over-abundance of hungry insects to chow down on their organofood. If you eat the right mix; then Gaia keeps everything in balance.
By the way, the plant seed patenting thing is not necessarily the big bugaboo that is often presented. Monsanto has all these GM corns and such. Well some of them you aren’t aloud to eat unless they get eaten by a cow first; and then you can either eat the cow or drink the milk. How smart is that; not in your Tortillas; but ok in your meat.
Many of these seeds have weird interspecies genes in them; and the last thing that anybody wants is to have those genes hop the fence into tomething else. So that is why all those GM things are designed to be sterile; so they can’t reproduce, and end up crossing with the weed from hell. So you have to buy the seeds from Monsanto every year. Call it a monopoly if you like; but how would you control unintended crosses.
I used to work for Monsanto, in their Central Research Labs in St Louis Mo.; but we only made Gallium Arsenide which is even worse for eating than GMcorn. Far as I recall, there wasn’t any GM crop business in those days; just nylon, silicon, Aspirin, detergent (all of them) and hydraulic fluid for jets; well astroturf and also Sacharin; their very first product.
bubbagyro says:
May 11, 2010 at 10:05 am
That IS bad stuff, although there has to be incentive for agribusiness to develop new strains so we can reduce chemical pesticides and fertilizers.
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There is plenty of incentive for farmers to buy hybrid or good GMO seed and even heirloom varieties if they work and are cost effective for the farmer.
I am waiting for the development of a new wormer for animals and so are a lot of other farmers. I am willing to pay double what I pay for ivermectin if there is no worm resistance.
US carbon dioxide emissions have already fallen about 10% in 2009 due to the economic slowdown, reduced consumption in general, and utilities switching from coal to natural gas for electricity production:
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/EE-Record_drop_in_US_energy_related_emissions-1105104.html
OK, so now let’s all buy a goat for the front yard! Heh, that will fix the lawn-mower problem!
Uh, no wait, enteric methane emissions from a ruminant, nitrous oxide from the manure….damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Gail Combs at 9:42 am said:
In a word I support capitalism but I hate “corporatism” the unholy mix of international corporations and government where the chase for the almighty dollar promotes the trampling and even killing of people. I hate “corporatism” even worse when it is hidden under the cloak of “Altruism”
Perfectly stated! And now mix in a good dose of Intellectual Elitism and what do you have? Right! Exactly what individuals have been fighting for as long as societies have existed- slavery. The suppression of freedom and liberty. Because someone “thinks” they’re smarter, better, more capable? Nope. Because of their excessive addiction to the most basic of human needs; social and self approval! (primarily via power and/or money) They run the world and when they “forget” they also are human, a lot of people suffer and die. As it was in the beginning, is now and …..
George E. Smith: May 11, 2010 at 11:19 am
Gaia keeps everything in balance This is precisely what ecology means. Thus it would be ecologically right to promote the reproduction of natural predators to eat the excess of green idiots so as to reestablish balance.
opps, forgot the after ‘Altruism’ above.
bubbagyro says:
May 11, 2010 at 10:05 am
Let the UN or some other group do something positive for a change and pay the fees! [BTW, if the third-world seeds were so great, why do they need our grain?]
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Yes I would love to see the UN do something positive for a change like pay the fees.
On the third world seed and importing grain:
A long story in short: NAFTA and WTO opened the borders of third world countries. The grain traders like Cargill could buy EU and USA grain at below the cost of production because of tax subsidies and monopsony. They could afford to sell below cost for a year or two to bankrupt the native competition. On top of that in some countries with World Bank/IMF SOPs in place, government help for farmers was cut and “cash crops” for exports had to be grown to satisfy the bankers. The net result was native farmers went bankrupt and the big corporate farms moved in.
see:
Farmer suicides in India:
http://alternatives-international.net/article1394.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/sainath02122009.html
NAFTA and WTO in Mexico a 75% decline in farm families:
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/publication/rg/RGRich.shtml
http://www.countercurrents.org/mohanty230608.htm
Milwaukee Bob says:
May 11, 2010 at 11:08 am
“Great comments all and here is the problem I have with the whole thing: It’s 90% propaganda…
YOU will be re-educated! YOU will be assimilated! Resistance is futile! We are the chosen ones. And if we can’t “get” you, we’ll get the next generation.
All with the help of the benevolent US federal government….”
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And as I was told by one of them in Cambridge MA “… When we take over we are going to KILL people like you”
If we refused to be “re-educated” there are definitely those in the “movement” ready to kill dissenters. Talking to the herds of wild-eyed fanatics when I lived in the Cambridge area was very very scary. It was like being on a different planet.
Gail Combs: May 11, 2010 at 7:07 am
UHMmm Bill, I am in North Carolina and we grow winter wheat, oats and rye in the winter.
Yeah, I got a tad overly-sarcastic this morning — my bad.
I’m in Jersey (when I’m home) along the Delaware, and even with the ameliorating effects of the river, any vegetable seed planted in the fall rots in the ground due to the freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw cycles in November and December.
Enneagram says:
May 11, 2010 at 11:38 am
George E. Smith: May 11, 2010 at 11:19 am
Gaia keeps everything in balance This is precisely what ecology means. Thus it would be ecologically right to promote the reproduction of natural predators to eat the excess of green idiots so as to reestablish balance.
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Finally, a proper use for green idiots —- predator bait.
“peas, beans” … those freeze over the winter … what climate type is this guide aimed at ?
@Gail Combs: May 11, 2010 at 7:07 am
don’t think you really grow winter wheat … most likely you seed the wheat in the autumn, it germinates just before winter, then it pretends to be alive until the spring comes. A cold winter without snow cover will kill “winter wheat”.
I don’t think rye is a “winter” crop, it used to be put in the ground in the spring … but you never know, with the new GM crops 😛
Gail Combs
May 11, 2010 at 12:04 pm
What will you do?.
Gail:
♫♫♫♫
What goes up must come down
spinning wheel got to go round
Talking about your troubles it’s a crying sin
Ride a painted pony
Let the spinning wheel spin
You got no money, and you, you got no home
Spinning wheel all alone
Talking about your troubles and you, you never learn
Ride a painted pony
let the spinning wheel turn
Did you find a directing sign
on the straight and narrow highway?
Would you mind a reflecting sign
Just let it shine within your mind
And show you the colours that are real
Someone is waiting just for you
spinning wheel is spinning true
Drop all your troubles, by the river side
Catch a painted pony
On the spinning wheel ride
Someone is waiting just for you
spinning wheel is spinning true
Drop all your troubles, by the river side
Ride a painted pony
Let the spinning wheel fly
♫♫♫♫
tmtisfree says:
May 11, 2010 at 2:51 am
I don’t remember who says that (or something approaching) : “Rebutting alarmists is like shooting fishes in a barrel”.
If you can get them into a barrel, for heaven’s sake, don’t shoot them. You’ll be arrested for discharging a firearm within city limits or some such. Simply secure the cover back on the barrel and move it well away from habitations into an area of strong sunshine for two or three weeks. That should take care of the initial problem. Whatever is left over can be used as fertilizer.
As to the 20-lb weight of CO2 from 6 or 7 lbs of gas–is it fair to count the oxygen that was already in the atmosphere as part of the “excess” weight of CO2? Isn’t that a wash, just moving it from one column (O2) to another (CO2) in the same location? I’d love to be able to work this trick with cash or some prescious metal and recover more than I burned.
I don’t understand why everybody is so hard on UOCS.
They fill a market niche.
It used to be not too long ago that the process of becoming a scientist was long, expensive and hard. But the social rewards were good. Scientists were looked up to and listened to.
But with college tuition nowadays it’s getting almost impossible to let your kids become scientists.
Enter UOCES.
Just $25.- donation check makes you a scientist. Even a “concerned” one, which is nowadays even more respectable. Much cheaper that college tuition. And you can even put out press releases that are published in the MSM. Old-style real scientists even struggled with that often.
Emil says:
May 11, 2010 at 1:00 pm
“peas, beans” … those freeze over the winter … what climate type is this guide aimed at ?
@Gail Combs: May 11, 2010 at 7:07 am
don’t think you really grow winter wheat … most likely you seed the wheat in the autumn, it germinates just before winter, then it pretends to be alive until the spring comes. A cold winter without snow cover will kill “winter wheat”.
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The area I am in, middle North Carolina does just fine. The December avg minimum temp is 31F/ max 52F, January is 29F/49F and February is 31F/56F so winter rye grows quite well and so does winter wheat and oats.
“WINTER RYE: A RELIABLE COVER CROP
Vern Grubinger
Vegetable and Berry Specialist
University of Vermont Extension
Why Rye? Cereal rye is an excellent winter cover crop because it rapidly produces a ground cover that holds soil in place against the forces of wind and water. Rye’s deep roots help prevent compaction in annually tilled fields, and because its roots are quite extensive, rye also has a positive effect on soil tilth.
Compared to other cereal grains, rye grows faster in the fall and produces more dry matter the following spring–up to 10,000 pounds per acre, although 2 tons is more typical in the Northeast. Rye is the most winter-hardy of all cereal grains, tolerating temperatures as low as -30°F once it is well established. It can germinate and grow at temperatures as low as 33°F, but it sure won’t grow very much when it’s that cold….” http://www.uvm.edu/vtvegandberry/factsheets/winterrye.html
Winter wheat has to be sown sooner than rye but can be used in most of the USA as a “cover crop” and in the south as a “double crop” see http://www.sare.org/publications/covercrops/winter_wheat.shtml
“Wheat is a versatile crop. There are 6 classes of wheat grown in the United States but there are more than 30,000 different varieties, each with its own characteristics.
Spring wheats are planted in late spring, usually before or in the month of April. Spring wheats do not go thru a dormant stage, but just develop and mature until they are harvested.
Winter wheats are planted in the fall, starting in September and continuing thru October. Winter wheat sprouts and grows in the fall. Once it freezes in the fall, winter wheat becomes dormant until the soil warms up in the spring. Then the wheat grows and matures until harvest in the summer. In fact, without the cold temperatures, winter wheat would just continue to produce leaves and would never produce the head of wheat kernels …
Soft Red Winter Wheat – This wheat is used for flat breads, cakes, pastries, and crackers. It is the dominant wheat grown east of the Mississippi River. Soft Red Winter Wheat states include Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New Jersey, and Wisconsin….”
http://www.cyberspaceag.com/kansascrops/wheat/wheatclasses.htm
Enneagram says:
May 11, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Gail Combs
May 11, 2010 at 12:04 pm
What will you do?.
__________________________
I took my painted ponies (all six) headed for North Carolina and bought a farm. Big change from an apartment in Boston’s Combat Zone, and best move I ever made.
Richard et al, thanks for the answer, I should have spent more time thinking about it.
So I’m putting more plant food into the garden by cutting it with a motorised lawn mower? Excellent, I’ve been looking for a reason to upgrade from the push/pull hand mower.
Smokey says:
May 11, 2010 at 6:55 am
The same mindset is running the UN’s World Health Organisation [WHO]. This is the result.
Ah! So you found that. For years that I found out (scratching the surface of a “scientific” claim, as usual) that the WHO is not respectable at all. But you wouldn’t believe me, so I’ll stay shut. The biggest lies are the best.
biddyb says:
May 11, 2010 at 8:06 am
I grow my own vegetables because they are fresher than those bought in the shops,
FAR tastier, but I am not sure they are cheaper.
Definitely not cheaper in this corner of the woods. But they’re real.
I dread to think how much I spend on horse muck and seeds and potting compost.
Horse muck, well, all I can get is cow.
My husband mows the lawn. He sings maniacally as he does it so perhaps there is something in that nitrous oxide argument.
And what I really wanted to say was we can’t possibly get enough N2O, and doubling the CO2 will be ah cool.
LarryOldtimer says:
May 11, 2010 at 9:32 am
Either we deal with pests and weeds by killing them, or the pests and weeds will do us in. Life for a farmer (and everyone else) is indeed better with chemistry.
As I had the opportunity to learn, nature is not kind to anyone. City/concrete people don’t know that, and that might be one of the points.
Gail Combs says:
May 11, 2010 at 11:34 am:
In reply to you, I invented a drug called albendazole in the 70s. It is now the 8th most used drug in the world, especially for parasites in humans. It is the drug of choice in the southern hemisphere for sheep and cattle.
The brand name for cattle is Valbazen, originally from SmithKline (my old company). It kills 3 classes of parasites, nematodes, tapeworms and flukes.
It works great in cattle. Ivomec was pushed in this country by Merck and Pfizer. SmithLine did not have a strong veterinary marketing force, so they chose to compete in Australia and South Africa where it is still the drug of first choice for worms. It has the advantage of killing insect larvae (bots), but this is not important in the US. It is ideal for your case, and non-toxic to humans and dogs, unlike Ivomec.
Merck pushed the idea that there was “benzimidazole resistance”, and since they had the only detail force, the stigma caught on. There is such a thing as BZ resistance, but ABZ is not like the other benzimidazoles, and although Merck and Pfizer paid a few authors for a few papers to conjure up resistance in a laboratory setting, it does not occur in the field.
ABZ does not kill beneficial insects, either, like Ivomec and the milbemycin family. It is nice that dung beetles are courteous enough to till the dung into the soil for the farmer, no?
North of 43 and south of 44 says:
May 11, 2010 at 9:44 am
It is all a valid part of reduce, reuse, or recycle.
We moved into the country (in the “Portuguese Desert” – which happens to be unexpectedly fertile, to my own surprise) about ten years ago. When we arrived we noticed that we produced almost an entire garbage container of waste a week (garbage is collected weekly), while our neighbors seemed to produce a single plastic bag per household in the same time . Now that was shameful!
In a couple of months we were producing just two or less plastic bags of trash too, recycling most via the neighbors dogs and pigs and the compost heap (completely frustrating, the heap never grows!) And by the way, don’t mention plastic bags, there’s no alternative here. Unless you opt to dump the garbage without a bag.
The economy is pretty much tighter (hence independent) and there’s much less waste. Our neighbors grow, say, extra potatoes they sell us (they find the idea of selling them unusual), we provide them services, etc., the barter approach. The generalized idea in the village is, nobody will ever be hungry here, we can grow our own food (includes sheep – a sheperd/owner uses my land for grazing, and “pays” in sheep). Seems to work. And we got the Internet too 🙂
George E. Smith says:
May 11, 2010 at 11:19 am
You can even buy organic water nowadays in bottles.
Organic water. I’m speechless.
CRS, Dr.P.H. says:
May 11, 2010 at 11:35 am
Uh, no wait, enteric methane emissions from a ruminant, nitrous oxide from the manure….damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
And the organic poop, and overgrazing Thought about overgrazing? Otherwise, great cheese.
Josualdo says:
May 11, 2010 at 3:29 pm
biddyb says:
May 11, 2010 at 8:06 am
I dread to think how much I spend on horse muck and seeds and potting compost.
Horse muck, well, all I can get is cow.
Oops, forgot. Clostridium tetani. Tetanus. Cow doesn’t seem to have that problem, but I wouldn’t bet my hat on it. I’ve heard it from a vet. And anyway, no big problem. (Why should we be afraid of every potential problem? Life becomes impossible thus. Precautionary principle, eh.)
I think this is the final nail in the coffin of climate alarmism. Union of Concerned pseudoScientists is NEVER right. It is their most sacred tradition.
The Union of Concerned scientists is a group that thinks being able to clone chess pieces makes them chessmasters.
bubbagyro says:
May 11, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Gail Combs says:
May 11, 2010 at 11:34 am:
In reply to you, I invented a drug called albendazole in the 70s. It is now the 8th most used drug in the world, especially for parasites in humans. It is the drug of choice in the southern hemisphere for sheep and cattle.
The brand name for cattle is Valbazen….
________________________________________________________________
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you
I take it it also works on goats at 1.5 times the dose for sheep?
Speaking of worming: I now sequester my animals (horses, sheep, goats) in a sacrifice area, worm with fenbendazole to wake up the encysted larvae -[encysted strongyles for horses & Haemonchus contortus for sheep & goats] wait a few days and then worm with ivermectin or Cydectin wait another 48 hours and then move them to a relatively clean pasture. I do this first thing in the spring. I am fencing in several acres of new virgin pasture so I want my animals with as few worms as possible when I move them onto it. Any other advice?
Anyone want to start a Union of Concerned Gardeners? Our platform could constist of the following:
1. Fertilizer is good. C02, chemical, animal excrement, or rotting vegetation is all good. They all make gardens grow.
2. Warmth is good. It is illogical to fight warmth, especially when its imagined.
3. Plants growing where they are not wanted is bad. They take up the space and nutrients of plants that are desirable. RoundUp is good.
4. Insects eating people food or property is bad. Insecticides are a boon for the human and animal competition with insects. Humans should embrace insecticides. (Death to insects, long live humans and bring comfort and tenderness to their meat foods.)
5. Time is precious, therefore all methods which elimitate the wasting of time is good. Gasoline powered machines save time, allowing for more gardens and longer lives.
6. Truth is good. Without truth and facts, we will waste precious, finite time on non-problems.
Life is too short to waste time on people who purposely devise ways to demonize and overcomplicate a simple, voluntary. pleasurable pastime. And yet they can’t even leave us alone to tend our tomatoes and petunias. Everything is politicized and every aspect of our private lives is under attack. Every single thing we do is up for scrutiny and all recommendations point in one direction, more government oversight of our lives.
Gail:
You don’t have to worm that much. FBZ is not as good for parasites as ABZ, but is slightly better for liver flukes. I doubt you have those, mostly just the large and small strongyles and ascarids, but ABZ gets these at 15 mg/Kg. For goats, same as the sheep on a per Kg basis with the paste. ABZ is safe up to 3X. No tissue residue after 7 days. Follow label directions for cattle, sheep, goats, or deer. Helminths have 31 day cycles from egg to mature. So a 31 day cycle with ABZ gets each new generation. It has some ovicidal activity, so the worm burden can be reduced on pasture. Like I said, the good “poop” insects are safe.
I developed a cattle bolus (pill) that was electronic for cattle, giving three automatic doses every 31 days while in the rumen so that you did not have to touch them in pasture and it would be good for the whole grazing season. It was not developed in the late 80s for mostly internal political reasons, but funny you should bring this to mind, because I got a call to rejuvenate it under a new improved device patent I have just filed. It would use ABZ (or other wormer – each of the three automatic doses could be a different drug, also); it would enable cattle to be raised in Africa and other tropics where parasites make it near impossible to raise cattle without intensive manual labor now.
Anyhow, this is off-topic, I apologize to the others here. Look me up on Google, R. J. Gyurik.
Interesting article in the Chicago Tribune about the effect of agriculture on regional cooling:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-weather-crops-20100511,0,3679184.story
@Gail Combs, May 11, 2010 at 2:47 pm
“The December avg minimum temp is 31F/ max 52F, January is 29F/49F and February is 31F/56F so winter rye grows quite well and so does winter wheat and oats.”
We call those temperatures “it’s going to be summer soon” 🙂 … our minimum this winter was -5F, and we had 5F for almost a month, without the windchill … I’m no longer into farming, but I grew up on a farm: winter crops were a gamble, and topsoil erosion during winter a non-issue, since the earth was frozen solid since the end of November until March.
My computer causes global warming? I don’t think so, my home electricity comes from a nuclear power plant. I do agree though that lazy folks should use an old fashioned rake and get rid of those obnoxiously noisy leaf blowers.
Modern hybrid plants, fertilizers and pesticides have been responsible for eliminating famine in many areas of the world with crops producing multiple yields from the same acreage. I have no problem want to pay more for “organic” food which is indistinguishable from non-organic except in price. Hey, it’s their money to waste as they see fit.
Not to recognize and even rabidly advocate against modern agriculture is wishing for pain and suffering and untold deaths from starvation, worldwide. Denying animals antibiotics when they are sick and allowing them to suffer is cruel leaving the alternative of destroying animals unnecessarily or selling to commercial operations who will use modern medicines to cure the disease.
we have the safest, most productive farms in the world and much of it is due to modern techniques. the one thing that is not sustainable is our food supply if we listen to those who would have us utilize “sustainable” techniques that are anything but.
I wish these “scientists” would make up their minds! Yesterday I read this:
Carbon dioxide is not just making the atmosphere trap more heat, they say. It also enables plants to absorb CO2 more efficiently, so they don’t have to open stomata (pores) in their leaves as much, and they evaporate less water.
That should be good news, as it enables plants to survive better under dry conditions, even in desert areas where they couldn’t before. Any botanist or visitor to CO2science.org knows this. Indeed, hundreds of experiments show how growth, water efficiency and drought resistance of crop and wild plants are enhanced by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. So more CO2 and better plant growth should be celebrated – not serve as another “climate crisis” to further the political goal of ending hydrocarbon use and controlling our factories, jobs, cars, lives and living standards.
But the Carnegie folks turned this good news into bad, ominously saying the reduced evapotranspiration means plants don’t cool down as much, and that supposedly raises global temperatures slightly.
The above “science’ was posted here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/23/cause-for-alarm/#more-19831
So, maybe we should actually destroy all plant life on Earth. That seems to be the goal of this loony climate cult anyway.