Re: A clean planet

From: Mike Maxwell (maxwell_at_ldc.upenn.edu)
Date: 09/23/04 

Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 12:57:15 -0400

Aidan Karley wrote:
> In article <ciuiqs$5m4a$1@netnews.upenn.edu>, Mike Maxwell wrote:
>
>>Why not grow them in areas that _DON'T_ currently grow them? Like
>>(further north in) Canada, or Siberia?
>>
>
> Because in most of those areas the soil is crap and this will
> lower yield...
> Most of the soils in the sub-arctic are, frankly, crap. I should
> know - I'm a geologist by trade, I did a specialised unit in soil
> science as an elective part of my courses, I live in Scotland, and I've
> spent 2½ months of this year with my Siberian fiancee.

Well, it does sound like you know more about this than I do. My
experience was having a aggy for a roommate one year in college :-).
Still, are the northern soils really worse than the red clay you get in
North Carolina (where we used to live) or the tropics (where we have
also lived, and which have virtually no soil)?

>>Global warming does not necesssarily mean desertification everywhere.
>
> Which is not a claim I made.

No, here's what you did write:
> That some of the most productive areas of ground in the
> world are close to becoming desert should be obvious from
> a study of recent American history. Read up on the
> "Dust Bowl" while you think about that (actually there
> were 3 or more separate bowls, but that's a sideline).

So I did stretch what you said by using the word "everywhere." I guess
my point should have been that rather than showing that "some of the
most productive areas of ground in the world are close to becoming
desert", the study I mentioned (based on "recent American history")
showed the exact opposite: some of the most productive areas of ground
are apparently becoming _less_ desert-like.

> The changes in climate are not the only thing you need to
> consider - there's the decades it takes for soil, vegetation and
> farming practices to accommodate themselves to those changes.

But isn't that the same time scale as (or even faster than) the time
scale of climate change?

        Mike McSwell

Relevant Pages

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