Comments LauraH has made

  • organic tobacco

    Maybe this is common knowledge - I'm not exposed to much advertising - but I was recently amazed to see an ad for "additive-free cigarettes" made with "organic tobacco."  Ummm... I guess it's less harmful to the cute babies...On What is your position on smoking? posted 4 years, 1 month ago 9 Responses

  • deer overpopulation

    no, sjdunnejr, the deer are not short of land to live on.  They are thriving because human modification of prairie landscapes suits them perfectly.  Humans suppress fire, allowing groves of trees and shrubs to establish.  Humans add tree rows and hedges.  Thus the deer have places to shelter from storms and hide from predators (most of which humans have already removed).  Humans grow crops and put up hay piles and generally make it easier for deer to find food, especially in winter.  I am speaking of the prairies in southern Saskatchewan, Canad, the area I am most familiar with, and an area where whitetail deer were virtually non-existent before European settlement, and now are abundant.  Like robins and dandelions, deer do just fine with people.  Btw, your vegan lifestyle doesn't save them from trucks.On Umbra on soy vs. meat posted 4 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

  • on sinks

    Soy is no more of a sink than a cow; they both store carbon in their tissues, they both transfer some of that carbon to their human consumers, and they both release some of it when their non-food parts break down.On Umbra on soy vs. meat posted 4 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

  • leaving it wild

    Another point - just in case you're thinking that the answer for the prairies is to "let them go wild" - that approach would not work on the small pieces of native prairie that remain.  It's been tried.  The grassland gets engulfed by trees, brush, and invasive introduced plants.  It might work if you could "rewild" a large tract of land and let wildfires and wild bison do their work.  Good luck with the politics of that.On Umbra on soy vs. meat posted 4 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

  • vegan good, free-range meat better

    I fully understand that feedlot and factory-farm meats are among the worst choices of foods available.  However, I think the criticism of ranchers for "consuming" large amounts of land is simplistic at best.  Where I come from, ranch land is the healthiest land around.  Over huge areas, ranch land is the last refuge for wildlife that has lost the vast majority of its habitat to crop production.  Meanwhile, cropland has lost 50% of its productivity since these prairies were broken a century ago.  To reduce soil erosion, farmers have switched to zero tillage with high chemical use.  If you want to use this land to grow food, the gentlest, most effective way to harvest it is with a grazing animal.  There is no destruction of soil biota through tillage, no consumption of fossil fuels for tillage and seeding and harvest, no hazardous concentration of manure, and no need to transport manure back to fields.  Yes, there is often some fossil fuel consumption involved in managing and processing these grazing animals for meat.  Yes, cattle give off methane, but this problem is reduced (and their efficiency of meat production is increased) when they get a better diet.  Native grassland pasture is an excellent diet for cattle; research shows that they produce more meat from less plant material on this pasture (compared with tame forage pasture).  Yet native grassland is still being destroyed here.  Unless you dream of strict legal protection for native grassland (yeah, right, since when do politicians even notice the rural prairies, let alone attempt something so controversial?), the best hope to preserve our native grassland is to generate a significant market for range-fed bison and beef.  I'd buy some, if I could just get that freezer cleared out...On Umbra on soy vs. meat posted 4 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

  • drag is only half the answer

    In fact you can explain it pretty well without bringing drag into it at all.  I believe rsidall has it right:
    "The most efficient speed will be the minimum it can pull the highest gear comfortably."
       The aim is to drive at the lowest possible engine RPMs (revolutions per minute), because each revolution is driven by the pistons firing, using fuel.  You also want to drive in the highest gear, because you get more distance out of each engine revolution.
       This seems obvious to me, but I drive manual transmission vehicles all the time.  I recently switched from a 90 Nissan pickup to a 94 Ranger pickup and noticed that the gearing is different - with the Nissan I shifted at 25kph, 40, 75, and 85, but with the Ranger it's 30, 50, 70, 90.  So with the Nissan, the most efficient highway speed was 85, and with the Ranger it's 90.  I haven't tested this, but I suspect that if I drove both at 100, the Ranger would be more efficient, but the Nissan at 85 should be better than the Ranger at 90.  But with speed limits going up, 85 may be too slow for safety.
        So are newer vehicles more efficient?  Depends on how you look at it.
        Anybody have tips for figuring out the speed where your automatic shifts into top gear?  That should be the speed to aim for (or enough over it to minimize downshifting).
        Now, with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) I suspect you would have to consider drag directly.  The optimum speed would presumably be some sort of tradeoff between increased drag versus decreased engine running time for the same distance travelled.
       (BTW, the pickup is for work: I need the clearance and hauling capacity.  The family car is a Geo Metro and my personal run-about is a bike.)On Umbra on speed limits posted 4 years, 2 months ago 10 Responses

  • private property and the public will

    As you say, land trusts and private stewardship may give stronger, more lasting protection than public stewardship, which lasts only as long as the will of the public supports it.  But even these private methods of preservation rest ultimately on the will of the public to support private property rights.  Private ownership is granted by the state, and the state can take it away.  It is not enough to preserve and protect; we must also find ways to limit the scale of the human enterprise.  Otherwise no amount of preservation will withstand the mounting pressure for development.On Preserving wild spaces posted 4 years, 2 months ago 3 Responses

  • as the world learns

    I think Ted Trainer gets to the heart of the matter with "Toward a Conserver Society."
    For a fun and hopeful angle: "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver.On Umbra on getting up to speed on enviro issues posted 4 years, 7 months ago 28 Responses