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Climate Change, Carbon Cycles, Mythologies
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PART 1: Climate Change -- Science or Myth
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{Farming uses 75% of US land surface, releases many chemical pollutants, and consumes many
industrial products. Therefore farming has large impacts on society and the environment. This
article brings to attention facts for apprehending farming's role for the future.}
Myths are necessary. A myth is not fiction. A myth is assertion, statements or declarations which
cannot easily (practically, economically) be proven to be "true" or "false". People have always
needed myths and will always need them, to structure their lives and provide signposts for
direction.
Most scientists use and need myths as much as anyone else in any other field of endeavor. It is not
possible to replay the universe, or to examine the distant reaches of it, so myths are created about
the first few seconds of the big bang, or the age of distant galaxies. These are myths because they
cannot ever be scientifically verified to the standards of what constitutes science.
Because all predictions about the future would require two (identical) Earths to verify that
predictions "happened" as a consequence of specific identified "causes", predictions of climate
change are in the catagory of myths, even when promoted by legions of respected and respectable
scientists. Without a "control" planet, one could never be sure that what happened "because" of
certain events, might not have happened anyway without those same causes.
Here on SANET there have been statements, assertions, declarations, often resorting for authority of
science about the future effects of human activities. Some of these statements can be sieved with
science, and some become exposed as myths. Following are three example messages from the SANET
archives:
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http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail/html-home/45-html/0042.html
Climate Change & US Ag: Impacts of Warming, Extreme Weather Events on Productivity, Plant Diseases,
and Pests
From: Beth von Gunten (colibri@west.net)
Date: Tue May 16 2000 - 10:34:30 EDT
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http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail/html-home/45-html/0173.html
CO2, climate change, and humans
From: Michele Gale-Sinex (mgs@rprogress.org)
Date: Fri May 26 2000 - 21:30:44 EDT
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http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail/html-home/45-html/0409.html
when the rain doesn't quit . . .
From: Mike Miller (mmiller@pcsia.com)
Date: Sun Jun 18 2000 - 22:46:46 EDT
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Science is that which can be observed and measured through the human senses plus prosthetic
extensions to the human senses (instruments, machines, tools) which aid us to (1) explain, and (2)
predict, the behavior of the physical realm. Myths are conceptions which very well might be true,
but it is not realistically possible to bring into the catagory of science at this moment in time.
Science did its best to predict a drought in various areas of the United States this year, for the
first time in history. Two areas specifically predicted to be abnormally dry (the NorthEast and
Arizona) have posted messages in recent days of unusual moisture.
[http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail/html-home/45-html/0408.html, when the rain doesn't quit,
From: kandmhfarm@sprintmail.com Date: Sun Jun 18 2000 - 21:37:20 EDT AND
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail/html-home/45-html/0429.html, rain--this time in the desert,
From: Edna M Weigel (eweigel@juno.com) Date: Wed Jun 21 2000 - 14:50:59 EDT]
Science is not yet in a position to make assured predictions weeks or months in advance of weather
and climate change. However, science is not helpless to predict and explain everything, just because
the weather is still too complex. There are plenty of hard proven, totally predictable and
completely explained phemonena which science has a good handle on.
The "GREENING of the Earth" crowd are a coal-burning energy-production, CO2 emitting industry group
personally enriching themselves from the consumption of fossil fuels. Science does know that CO2 is
increasing in the environment. CO2 is known to be a greenhouse gas. To protect their power, wealth
and status, this group employs mercenary scientists who pick and choose among proven scientific
facts to confuse and defuse opposition to their pollution.
Examination of known scientific facts, replicatible in laboratories worldwide, undermines the
contentions of these deceivers. Dealing with these misrepresentations made for cash profits at
public harm will be following shortly, but first it is necessary to cull out myths from science and
examine them.
CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. This is scientific fact. Whether this is good, bad or
irrelevant is subject to dispute and is not confirmed as scientific fact.
CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. This is ascertained to be true scientific fact. Whether this will lead
to a hothouse earth or ice age is equally impossible to confirm.
Plants need CO2. This is scientific fact. Plants obtain an abundant supply of CO2 in concentrations
of up to 50 times the general level in the atmosphere from the soil life and decomposition of soil
organic matter, and increases to the general level of CO2 in the atmosphere are irrelevent. This is
scientific fact, provable in any laboratory or farmers field.
The GREENING of The Earth crowd are using deceptive practices to sell the public that there are
benefits to their air pollution which cannot be scientifically confirmed, but which can be
scientifically refuted.
Sunlight more than CO2 is a limiting factor to plant life flourishing. N-P-K fertilizers are more a
limiting factor than CO2 supply. Water availability is more a limiting factor. These are
scientifically proven facts.
The Earth is already green in every spot that has water, N-P-K, sunlight, the usual CO2 supply from
the air, and other basic ingredients of life. Every inch which can support plant life has plant life
now already. Tall forests shade out the life below and are less biodiverse. Increasing quantity of
bulk (which comes from Carbon) does not improve the quality of life to humans, their vital
domesticated species, or the wild co-species. These facts are observable to the senses and are
scientific truth.
The public needs/desires power production. This is a scientific fact. There are many methods of
obtaining power production, and the marketplace can provide the solution if truth is enforced in
public advertising. The "Greening of the Earth" gets tax breaks for advertising expenses in their
promotion of their false fake science. There should be FTC penalties for false advertising to make
the marketplace fair for non-polluting competitors. There should be public censure and peer pressure
brought to the fraud peddlers. They should be outcast.
The opponents of the "Greening of the Earth" crowd do no favors by abusing science, confusing the
young and undereducated by picking and choosing which science they will present, AFTER THE SAME
FASHION AS THE "GREENING OF THE EARTH" FRAUDS. Peddling hysteria, or inciting to panic, through
passing off mythologies as scientific truth is no benefit to society.
It is SCIENTIFICALLY TRUE, provable everywhere on the planet, that scientists do not know what the
ultimate effects of human activity will be in the long term or even within a few decades. They are
like the rest of us, guided by their favorite myths. Their myths are not better than anyone else's
myths, and not more likely to come "true".
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PART 2: Carbon Cycles -- Science or Myth
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The natural world (pre-human domination) has disappeared from so much of the planet that many people
think that parks are "nature". Parks violate so many rules of nature that they require constant
human attention and expense to keep from reverting to their desired and natural state.
Plants in community spontaneously and almost invariably produce "bell jars" to hold onto their
resources. These "bell jars" are replicated over various scales from small clumps of vegetation to
mighty forests covering half of continents. Two resources are conserved by this pattern repeated
endlessly through all climate zones: water and CO2. As is common in evolution, many different
species converge on the same solution, even when many other aspects of their lives are extremely
different.
These "bell jars" are the best compromise by beings evolved by eons of time to the conditions of
planet earth. The foliage serves multiple purposes of sunlight capture, respiration, local
microclimate moderation and gas conservation. The foliage often does an effective job in single
specimen plants, but often it relies on the synergy of a community of plants (and their symbionts).
Plants consume Carbon most directly through their foliage as gas in the form of CO2, but some
dissolved Carbon in water is taken through roots. During the sunlight periods photosynthesis
converts water and CO2 into CARBOhydrates and sugars, expiring Oxygen. The Carbon and water are the
two bulking agents in plant growth, and a mature tree might be as much as 50% Carbon in total bulk.
Cellulose and lignins are the two main building blocks of plant structures, and both are heavy in
Carbon.
During the darkness plants require Oxygen for metabolic needs and inhale it, exhaling CO2, but it is
a much lower level of conversion than the opposite daylight inhalation of CO2 and exhaling O2
excess.
The foliage provides wind baffles which conserves the gases from immediate disappearance into the
general atmosphere. Although imperfect as a "bell jar" it is improved by the community of
neighboring plants. The plants at the edges of a community canopy suffer from vapor loss and
windborne gas loss, but are compensated by access to more sunlight.
Natural plants in community normally form "skirts" of mixed species of grasses, shrubs, vines and
tree limbs enclosing a canopy. The cool darkness of the shaded interior conserves moisture and keeps
the roots from being overheated and dried too fast. Gases are likewise conserved under these
conditions.
Forests even generate their own weather patterns. Shaded snow is conserved and snowmelt moisture
availability is extended for longer periods. Sequoia trees may transpire as much as 500 gallons of
water a day, which is reconsumed in significant amounts as fogdrip and dew. Carbon is similarly
conserved by plants physiology and community.
Plants deposit carbon residues of dried leaves and dead wood at their ground root zone. Small life
(bacteria, molds, worms, insects) digest these wastes and return the material into a form eventually
usable by plants for growth. The carbon accumulation can at times become up to 50 times the amount
of Nitrogen, limiting lifeform growth to species adapted to low Nitrogen requirements (fungi) at
such times. Over time a stable Carbon to Nitrogen ration of 12 to 1 is achieved by these Carbon
transformations from cellulose/lignins into CARBOhydrates, sugars, proteins and urea. The soil life
stores Carbon for a lifetime, and exudes/deficates it as soluble wastes for reprocessing by other
decomposers/consumers. Carbon is passed from lifeform to lifeform in cycles.
All the non-photosynthesizers inhale O2 and exhale CO2. There are symbionts among the plants who
contribute both fertilizers and CO2 which the plants enjoy. Living in the soil interstices there can
be up to 50 times the CO2 concentration than in the atmosphere. This CO2 escapes gradually. If the
plants have constructed an effective windbreak and canopy the CO2-rich atmosphere in the porous
"bell jar" is readily available for plant consumption.
Plants have their CO2 absorbers, stomata, on the underside of the leaves. Partly this is because the
upper surface is covered with solar absorbers, so the underside is "unused" from one paradigm.
However from another way of looking at things, this is the most sensible development considering
that the soil below is a dependable source of high concentrations of CO2 in a normal environment.
Parks, with pruned bushes, raked grounds and open ground levels are very unnatural places requiring
constant thwarting of the plants natural state.
Everthing here is certainly scientifically confirmable, available directly to the senses without
requiring major laboratories of hyper-expensive equipment.
There are only two agricultural systems I have ever heard of which take advantage of the community
aspect of plants with intensive-bed plantings. The "BIOINTENSIVE" system, developed by Ecolgy Action
in Willits, California, and described by author John Jeavons, has 28 years of scientific
observations on production. Increases of production from 4 to 16 times the national averages of many
crops have been observed and recorded. Water conservation, using an average of 1/6th the irrigation
water have been observed and recorded. Practioners have demonstrated success using these practices
is over 90 countries. The role of Carbon-conservation by intensive plantings have not been
scrutinized by scientific observers, perhaps because the dominent paradigm considers CO2 to be
uniform in all places.
The other agricultural system, "ECOLOGICAL SYNERGY" is theoretical, without a physical location for
demonstrations, observation, and recording of results. Like Biointensive, this system uses intensive
planting for space and water conservation, but varies from Biointensive over Carbon cycling.
Ecological Synergy is based on "vermicompost" and fungi to incorporate Carbon into living bodies,
while Biointensive depends on "compost" to break down carbonaceous material into plant-ready soil
amendments. There are other differences in practices between Biointensive and Ecological Synergy,
but this is a crucial philosophical difference.
Science cannot accurately PREDICT what will happen if Carbon increases in the atmosphere.
"Scientists" can make predictions, but the predictions are based on mythology, which might be true
or false, but is unproven either way. Humans can observe their senses, their memories, their
archives and through instruments can sense the remote past.
Atmospheric Carbon has been higher at times in the past. Humans share so much cellular technology
with other lifeforms that it is plain that the environment support human-type life during high
Carbon periods. Scientists in a 2-year enclosed experiment, "Biosphere II" in Tucson, Arizona
demonstrated that elevated CO2 levels in themselves were not dangerous to human life.
[http://www.acs.org/vc2/2my/my2_biosphere.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=CO2+Biosphere+II&num=100&meta=hl%3Den%26lr%3D&safe=off ]
There have been over 20 episodes of simultaneous extinction spasms, including five mass extinction
episodes. Only one of them has had a probable cause identified: an asteroid strike to the Yukatan
Penninsula 65 million years ago. CO2 has not been advanced as a possible or probable cause by any
scientific weighing of surviving evidence. Because answers are not know what caused these mass
extinctions, and because there have been so many mass extinctions, it would be prudent to keep the
Earth in a status known to be livible. Large changes with unknown effects ought to be avoided.
Large changes have already occurred in the past century, and to the extent that they can be reversed
it would be prudent to do so, as we continue to await scientific study on the causes of mass
extinctions. We are currently operating in ignorance without scientific truth to guide us as to
future courses of conduct. This is not the same as saying that we are on a course of certain
destruction. People who have financial interests, profits or incomes dependant on certain courses
ought to regularly and plainly disclose their bias. People ought not be herded, duped, deceived, or
misled, by the blind leading the blind. No person is in a position of having scientific certainty,
and we are all blindly feeling our way into the future.
What was safe and good in the past is the surest, most certain scientific knowledge of what will
most probably be safe and good in the future. This is not a "return to the past", "luddite"
rejection of technology or progress. It is best scientific application of the knowledge obtained by
the human race from experience, and wisdom.
Forests can sequester significant amounts of CO2 as sold 50% Carbon by weight celluous/lignins.
Humans can co-exist with forests and a restoration of forests can have a stabilizing effect on local
climate, making it more often pleasant from a human perspective as well as from the forest's
perspective.
Forests of the future will never be a return of forests of the past. This is not escapist mythology
desiring a return to the simple past. It is a desire to return to a scientifically proven livable
environment. There is a clear difference, and persons with vested money-grubbing interests
benefiting from the destruction of life on earth will try (again) to deceive people that there is no
difference.
Scientifically, it is proven that we are in an episode of mass extinctions. Before human domination
only one species expired every four years (after an average 5,000,000 year species-span) -- but now
74 die every day. A species goes extinct every 20 minutes, and human usurptation of habitat is the
clear cause.
Forests are necessary for our co-species, even if they did not sequester significant tonnages of 50%
solid carbon trunks. But living ecosystems conserve significant amounts of solid Carbon in bodies,
which is briefly exhaled and rapidly reinhaled by the biomass.
True, trees die in years or hundreds of years, and their Carbon escapes back into the atmosphere.
But a fallen tree is quickly replaced, and a burned forest soon is regrown, and always there were
forever forests until Home Necrans (Man who kills indiscriminately) ascended. Large masses of Carbon
once stood over many continents as tree trunks, and are now smoke in the sky.
Coal, oil and natural gas were once forests too, sequestered for millions of years underground and
they too are now smoke in the sky.
It is possible to farm 4 to 12 times as productively, freeing up significant amounts of farmlands to
become forests and wildlife sanctuaries as they were not long ago. Such high-yield productivity
works with the natural forces, such as Carbon conservation of the plants rather than against these
forces. Human energy, once rare now abundant, is sequestered in McJobs, while Carbon once safely
buried is now smoke in the air, while machine deprive people of work and fresh air. These are
scientific observations.
People who pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for exercise in "health clubs" and gyms, mock
efforts to restore livibility to the world. It is disparged to consider the mining of human energy
instead of mining machine fuel (soon to become smoke in the communal air).
It seems that honest labor under blue sky is a subject for ridicule by vested interests making
mechanized dollars from planet death.
It is scientifically proven that current lifestyles and directions are killing the species of the
earth, and human life depends on some of those species being pollinated. This is evident to the
senses: scientific fact. It is not mythology about what might happen: it is now happening and there
to see.
Farming consumes 75% of the land area in the USA. It has a large responsibility to consume less
hydroCARBONS, and produce less smoke over all that land. It has a responsibility to conserve the
many species who own their share of all the land. It has a duty to the children to give them a world
as good as the farmers received, with some hydroCARBONs stored in the earth for future generations
to have some too.
If you knew the difference between science and mythology, you would know that what I have been
writing about for two years is based on science, provable and measurable. Some of the science is
hard to grasp from the wrong starting place, and almost requires unlearning what you might have
thought was science, but turns out to be mythology disguised as science and really is wishful
thinking.
A few years before I first met him, a friend of mine was a member of a successful musical group (the
"Limelighters"). In a small aircraft chartered to take them from one concert to another there was an
engine failure and the pilot told them "We are going down". Certain that it was going to be a fatal
crash, Lou Gottlieb (owner of Morningstar Ranch) told me later that he prayed fervently all the way
down. I asked him if he attributed the fact that they all walked away with nothing more than minor
injuries to his prayer. He was absolutely definitely convinced that he was saved by God and divine
intervention.
Divine intervention was fervently prayed for by the people whose plane crashed into the sea near the
turn of the year/century. But they did not get it. Divine intervention is not guaranteed no matter
how fervently you pray for it in time of need. We have enough "energy" and time and resources to
find solutions to pressing problems of real right-now collapse of the living systems upholding life
on earth. We do not have such a surplus of any of it that we can afford to squander it away; neither
time, energy, or limited supply resources.
There have been 60,000 species gone extinct, forever, since the first message I wrote to SANET two
years ago.
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail/html-home/26-html/0169.html "Morning Star Institute of
Ecological Synergy" LionKuntz@aol.com Sun, 5 Jul 1998 19:11:57 EDT
Some other old messages from that time in the archives cover CO2, "greening/browning of the earth":
http://www.sare.org/san/htdocs/hypermail/html-home/26-html/
LionKuntz@aol.com
Sustainable for 10,000 Years Sun, 9 Aug 1998 19:50:02 EDT
The Roots of Fertility Sun, 9 Aug 1998 16:56:28 EDT
How Much Does Science Need to Learn? Sat, 25 Jul 1998 17:21:57 EDT
Trademarks and public assurance Thu, 23 Jul 1998 00:50:02 EDT
Re: sanet-mg-digest V1 #434 Thu, 23 Jul 1998 00:49:58 EDT
Ecological Synergy Wed, 22 Jul 1998 00:00:09 EDT
How Much Does Science Know? Tue, 21 Jul 1998 22:56:14 EDT
How Much Does Science Know? Tue, 21 Jul 1998 20:28:44 EDT
Re: Browning of the Earth - part 7 Sun, 19 Jul 1998 19:40:31 EDT
Re: Browning of Planet Earth - Part 3 Sun, 19 Jul 1998 19:06:28 EDT
Browning of Planet Earth Thu, 16 Jul 1998 23:15:03 EDT
Re: Dialog about Anecdotal Information-part 6 Thu, 16 Jul 1998 00:47:09 EDT
Re: digest V1 #410 -- Indicators of the journey Sat, 11 Jul 1998 18:07:04 EDT
re: Dialog about Anecdotal Information Sat, 11 Jul 1998 16:39:59 EDT
Morning Star Institute of Ecological Synergy Sun, 5 Jul 1998 19:11:57 EDT
Nobody will ever see these 60,000 animals and plants again for all the future history of the world.
Unfortunately, my brother Steve Kuntz, founder of a successful wildlife conservation institution
(Wolfhaven International) had to pull out of this Morningstar Institute project because he uncovered
massive corruption in the board of directors of Wolfhaven just after I posted that message. I never
found one single human being willing to go forward with that project, and 60,000 species deaths
later I am still looking.
I am not praying for divine intervention. I am waiting for members of Homo Necrans and Homo Satanus
to evolve enough to care about more than their leisure time and fattening their wallets at the cost
of killing this world. I am waiting for the birth of Homo Divinus who does not love lies and the
murder of a world. I am waiting for you to do something real with your life before it is all gone.
Signed by Lion Kuntz
email: LionKuntz@email.com
website: http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/synergy1.html
website: http://homepages.msn.com/VolunteerSt/lifesaviors/index.html
website: http://LifeSaviors.nav.to/microfarming
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