Comments LandMan has made

Fertilizer and Switchgrass

While switchgrass doesn't need fertilizer to grow and you shouldn't fertilize it while establishing it, like any other grass in a nitrogen limited soil it will grow better and provide greater yields with fertilizer. Since the increased yields will almost certainly be more than the cost of fertilizer, you can pretty much count on the fact that it will be fertilized.

While increased yields is good for reducing the number of acres needed for production, there are going to be some major climatic downsides to its production.

1st, acidic soils will need to be limed to produce switchgrass well, the liming reaction releases carbon dioxide directly to the atmosphere.

2nd, when nitrogen fertilizer is used it can make soils release nitrous oxide (a 310 times  more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) into the atmosphere when it otherwise wouldn't.

3rd, According to the USDA the remaining ground cover biomass after harvest will need to be burned before the new growing season. This releases CO, CO2, Methane (21 times more potent than CO2), and nitrous oxide. The spring burning will release greenhouse gasses equivalent (factoring in GWPs) to about 20% more carbon than the weight of the carbon in the remaining biomass.

Hopefully somebody smarter than me has looked into these three production issues, and switchgrass is still a net positive.On U.S. House approves toned-down energy bill, Bush to sign it tomorrow posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Nature Conservancy

They say they don't like the fence, but share the public concerns about illegal immigration and security. On Why environmental groups have been slow to fight the border wall posted 2 years, 1 month ago 38 Responses

good point

Good point on global warming and climate refugees. Now, how is increasing our population by 30% (and plugging about 35 million new households into the grid) over the same timeframe that we are supposed to be reducing our overall energy consumption going to help us reduce our carbon footprint?

I'd agree that being "anti-immigrant" would be racist, to dicriminate against someone because they came from another country is appalling. If we had a policy to allow one immigrant in for everyone who is already here that undergoes voluntary sterilization, I'd be fine with that. Unfortunately that isn't going to happen. We are also not going to suddenly make everyone want to live in condos, ride bicycles, and eat grass in the next 30 - 40 years either.

The bottom line is that if something isn't done to stem the flood we won't be able to make the necessary headyway on conserving our natural resources and biodiversity. Millions of acres of wildlife habitat will be wiped out and millions of new drivers will polute even more (and they won't be driving fancy new hybrids, they'll be driving '78 ford vans as long as they can keep them running).

I agree that the wall is a bad idea and will only be effective at stopping things without opposable thumbs to hold a ladder.On Why environmental groups have been slow to fight the border wall posted 2 years, 1 month ago 38 Responses

kind of cool

Costa Rica was planning on defaulting on their debt anyway. This sounds like a way that provided both countries a way to save face, at least it was to the benefit of nature.

Land_Man

Unduly?

I wonder why she prefaced it with "unduly interfere"? Why not just say political appointees WON'T interfere, as in not at all.

Land_Man

need fewer people, not more cities

I like the idea of dispersed micro-cities surrounded by agricultural and conservation lands, but I've never seen them work as intended for more than a few years.

Does anyone have an example of one that has actually maintained the halo of countryside? Everywhere that I have seen this concept employed the "micro-city" is placed just beyond the fringe of an existing metropolitan area. This acts as an impulse to have all the nice agricultural land in-between developed into new public/private services (schools, affordable housing, hospitals, executive airports, malls, and big box stores to name a few) for the new micro-city in one direction and the existing metro area in the other. In ortherwords these micro-cities make sprawl much worse than it otherwise would have been had the density variance not been granted for it.

I think the most realistic way to significantly reduce congestion is to reduce the number of people looking for space to live. The only reason we are facing a growth problem is because of excessive immigration, and that can be shut down any time we choose to. Americans aren't having enough babies anymore to replace ourselves and our population would start dropping within three decades if it weren't for our immigration problem.

If our country is going to go from 300 Million now to 400 Million by 2050, then we will need a lot more land and energy to accomodate that size of a population than we currently use.

Land_Man

Fire and Fuel Management

I have a few questions on forest land offsets.

I'd ask how much fire management and understory vegetation management get factored into the offset equation. Is there a table of deductions or something for burn frequency and forest fuel density to account for carbon released by fire?

It's my understanding that open pine forests with an herbaceous and graminoid understory that is maintained by fire store more carbon in the growth of timber and root stock each year than is released through periodic prescribed fire, but it seems that you'd still need to deduct for them; but when forests are allowed to become overgrown with a thick shrubby understory that are ripe for intense canopy-reaching wildfires all bets are off.

Should carbon offsets be intended more for non-fire dependant communities like forested swamps?

What happens if we start using forest thinning operations to harvest overgrown understories for biofuels? Do the forests still get the offset credits? Is there a deduction for what is harvested?

Are offsets given to work that would be done anyway on land that is already preserved and managed? Or exclusively to restoration projects? If they are given to existing forests that are already preserved and managed in a way that naturally maximizes carbon storage, what new carbon is being stored due to the offset money?

Land_Man

Enviromentalism and Animal Rights

This seems to be quite an issue; with PETA saying you can't be a meat-eating environmentalist, and others saying you can't be an environmentalist without making the hard choice to use eradication of introduced animal species as a tool to fix the huge ecological damage problem that they cause.

Is there really a humane way to solve this problem?

Because of our collective actions free roaming cats are killing over 2 billion small animals (including half a billion birds)a year, feral hogs are completely denuding woodlands of vegetaion, the nest predating cow birds have expanded their range and are wiping out the birds the cats have missed, thousands of 15 foot pythons are upsetting the natural system in the Everglades,pouch rats the size of raccoons have invaded the Florida Keys, exotic fish are destroying the productivity and diversity of our lakes and wetlands, and the list goes on and on and on.

The problem is on the order of hunderds of millions of problematic species living here now. What do we do about it? Sit back and watch the natural system be devoured? Kill Millions of animals that are just trying to live life the only way they know how? Biological warfare? Something else?
On Umbra on live trapping posted 2 years, 1 month ago 28 Responses

way off base

What a waste of a question. You should have stuck with your first one, which is a far more important issue. Every attempt to shoe-horn all "progressive" socio-economic issues into environmental awareness only works to marginalize the movement.

Whenever a non-profit foundation has a fundraiser, like a benefit gala, they almost always seek to have a volunteer staff to park cars, serve drinks, and  whatever else. To give of your time to reduce costs so more can be raised for the issue is an extremely honorable thing to do. I'd criticize any foundation that can't recruit volunteers to help offset their costs.

To criticize the film for using volunteers who believe so much in the issue that they are willing to give of their time and expertise to reduce costs to make it a success and raise money for the issue is ludicrous. They should rightly be criticized if they had thrown money away at unions when dedicated volunteers were available.On Leo's feel-good press conference is interrupted by a feel-bad question posted 2 years, 3 months ago 10 Responses

Hunting for it

Perhaps the best way to eat meat is if you hunt it yourself. There are a lot of great tasting game animals; and if you do you're research, you can kill you're own food and take comfort that you are providing a valuable ecological service. Wild hogs, for example,  are a great thing to hunt because there is perhaps no other introduced animal that causes as much damage to our natural areas as feral hogs. I think they taste much better than farm raised.

There are also crtain herbivores (deer, elk) in many areas that require hunting to keep their populations down in the absence of carnivores (wolves. mountain lions), else we suffer the ecological damage from over grazing and out competing the more selective herbivores.

I know there are many cases of sportsmen lobbyists forcing hunting of a particular species in a particular place where it should not be allowed, but if you do you're research you can provide yourself with a cheap supply of great-tasting meat while providing a valuable service that protects the environment.  On Umbra on sustainable meat posted 2 years, 3 months ago 32 Responses

Hanging on to my smoking calculator

The thing that bothers me most about social conservatives is how they trump objective facts and science with ideology in the face of disaster. When environmentalists do the same we are really in trouble.

When I look at the big picture I see very little time between now and when the U.S. Population jumps from 300 Million to 400 Million. Just 33 years! At 300 Million we are now causing a global catastrophe with climate change. How much worse will it be with 400 Million over-consuming Americans.

No matter how much we want to hold onto our social ideology in face of this, there is no way that you can be intellectually honest and say it doesn't take more land and energy resources to accommodate 400 Million pursuing the American dream than 300 Million. I'm not an immigrant phobe, but I am phobic of an America with 400 Million over-consuming citizens who will pollute more and have more carbon emissions even with our best efforts to conserve than an America with 300 Million.

When I look at the big picture I hear the experts say we only have 10 years to make major changes to cut back our CO2 emissions; 10 years based on our current energy consumption. Any emissions savings that we can possibly come up with will be wiped away by adding Millions of new drivers and consumers every year.

When I look at the big picture I also see the social realities that will define this small window of time. Our wildest ideological dreams as environmentalists will not be realized within the next 10 years. People in general won't start living in nice compact clean urban communities, and if they do we will face future generations who will grow up separate from nature and care nothing about it. People may start buying new cleaner vehicles, but these will be offset by new drivers who for the first generation will only be able to afford to drive the older ones.

Lastly, when I look at the big picture I see the political reality where 54% of Americans don't believe global warming is being caused by humans. I believe we can make headway and clean up our act somewhat, maybe enough to make a difference but not in the face of 3 Million new Americans per year. Being a nation of 300 Million or 400 Million (with all its implications) is a political choice that we can make a difference with. Americans aren't having the babies necessary to replace ourselves, our growth is from immigration. Holding back the tide of immigration until the baby boomer wave is over is the only realistic chance we have to make a real difference for the local and global environment.

It's time to make the hard choice.

Land_MakingTheHardChoiceLookEAsy_Man

Global Fertility Decline: Another Sign of Hope

The most hopefull sign that is see is the global collapse of fertility rates. As of the United Nation's latest population projections (2004), the entire developed world has a fertility rate below replacement levels. Many of the developing countries also have fertility rates that are below the replacement level, all of them are projected to be well below by mid century. Only the least developed countries are significantly above replacement levels, but even these have dropped dramatically in the last 30 years and are projected to be closing in on the replacement level by 2045.

With every new update of their projections the fertility rates are dropping by more than the median predicted level. The most long-term projections now recognize the possibility of a global population collapse and a population that's back down to 2 Billion in the low end of the predicted range and at most 9 billion by 2300.

How many environmentalists do you know that are even aware that the global population is anticipated to either at worst slow down, most likely level off and become sustainable, or has a decent chance of a fall perhaps even a collapse.

To me this is incredibly hopeful, because it means that conservation efforts today are not being done in vain. If we can hold on to what's left for the next century, then we may very well have a future where we have to decide what to do with abandoned farmlands and urban areas that no longer need to support an explosive population.

Why are fertility rates plummeting? Better contraceptive use, success of population control laws, modern couples choosing not to have more than one ore two children in the developed world, and perhaps something we are doing to the environment (like releasing estrogen mimickers found in common household products into our water supply) is helping to make us less fertile.

Whatever the combination of factors. Both the United States and Mexico (and even Albania) have dipped below replacement levels for the first time. So why are we hearing about the population of the U.S. burgeoning to 400 Million by 2100 when we are below replacement levels? Why are we growing while European and Asian countries are very worried about the economics of population collapse?

Immigration is out of control adding 3 Million new people per year, and we are all living longer.  If environmentalists and conservationists value the conservation of natural resources and want to see less impact to our well-being and biodiversity they have to make an odd partnership with social conservatives and reign in immigration. If we can do that, and if we can hold on to the biodiversity we have now, we may indeed have a future that is not bleak at all.

Land_KeepingHopeAlive_Man