Silflay Hraka

I will tell you now, that potatoes will one day save us all.

I will discuss the global warming problem in detail because it is interesting, even though its importance is exaggerated. One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas. To understand the movement of carbon through the atmosphere and biosphere, we need to measure a lot of numbers. I do not want to confuse you with a lot of numbers, so I will ask you to remember just one number. The number that I ask you to remember is one hundredth of an inch per year. Now I will explain what this number means. Consider the half of the land area of the earth that is not desert or ice-cap or city or road or parking-lot. This is the half of the land that is covered with soil and supports vegetation of one kind or another. Every year, it absorbs and converts into biomass a certain fraction of the carbon dioxide that we emit into the atmosphere. Biomass means living creatures, plants and microbes and animals, and the organic materials that are left behind when the creatures die and decay. We don’t know how big a fraction of our emissions is absorbed by the land, since we have not measured the increase or decrease of the biomass. The number that I ask you to remember is the increase in thickness, averaged over one half of the land area of the planet, of the biomass that would result if all the carbon that we are emitting by burning fossil fuels were absorbed. The average increase in thickness is one hundredth of an inch per year.

The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere. If we use genetic engineering to put more biomass into roots, we can probably achieve much more rapid growth of topsoil. I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology. No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land.

via AMCGLTD

For years whenever “peak oil” is mentioned in one of the neighborhood’s beer-powered late-night driveway debates, I announce that the supply of oil is essentially infinite, then proceed to make a hash of Julian Simon’s arguments on the Earth’s supply of physical resources. I get funny looks every time, like I’d just dropped a button in the church collection plate.

I live for those looks, but perhaps next time I’ll just mention Jack.

Sacrifice is for thee, but not for me.

Gitmo poems

What kind of spring is this,
Where there are no flowers and
The air is filled with a miserable smell?

Gitmo lyric, is more like it. Why, there’s not even a Prisoner of Chillon reference.

via dustbury

Deja vu: Sony uses rootkits, charges F-Secure

Cause I’m a blonde! B-L-A-N-D! I’m a blonde! Don’t you wish you were me?

Klingons Crossing The Delaware

1. Solomones Songz of Songz, kthx.

Teh Beluved:

7. Hey yu! Yeh, teh wun I luv, where yu grazed yur flockz and wherez yu bring yer lazy sheepz at lunch time. Why shood I be like teh veiled woman next to teh flockz of yer friendz?

via Dustbury

Has been found in fruit bats.

In the new paper, scientists say they tested over 1,100 bats representing 10 species. They found Marburg in only one species, Rousettus aegyptiacus, a common type of fruit bat that lives in caves. Four bats tested positive for the virus, and 21 tested positive for at least low levels of antibodies to the virus, Towner said.

It’s not yet clear if bats are that reservoir. They could be getting infected just like people, Towner said.

Good for him.

The actor Gary Sinise helps run Operation Iraqi Children, which delivers school supplies with the help of U.S. forces. When he visits Baghdad grade schools, the kids yell, “Lieutenant Dan!”