[geeks] I really don't get it ...

[Mike Hebel]

wa2egp at att.net wrote:
>>What I always find funny about agriculture is just how many people think 
>>the resultant landscape is natural ... English people looking at 
>>rolling green fields. It isn't natural at all as it was originally 
>>mostly covered in forest.
> 
> 
> I just hate that old British holdover...the lawn. (No offense to
> our friends across the pond.)
> 

I'll see you a lawn and match you four golf courses within a 10 mile 
radius. ;-)


>>Just how much "global warming" is due to iron age axes ?
> 
> 
> Got me.  But I think we pumped a lot more nto the air since then.
>  

That we have.  Maybe a hydrogen engine wouldn't be that bad after all.

>>>>biodiversity is in a field.....very little.  One disease can wpe
>>>>out a crop.
>>>
>>>Hmmm...thus the reason for all the gentically engineered crops.  Both
>>>a good and bad thing IMHO.  Jury's still out on that one from my
>>>point of view.
>>
>>What I don't like about GE crops is the lack of diversity ... they've 
>>engineered them to be immune to the known crop diseases. What happens 
>>when a new crop disease springs up ?
> 

As with anything - it will die out or adapt.  What happens to the humans 
in the meantime well....


> All agriculture has limited biodiversity.  I'm really up in the air about GE
> since if you think about it, we've been doing it for centuries by breeding
> plants.  Putting genes in a plant so it creates its own pesticides...I'm not
> too sure about that. 
> 
> 
>>We know the answer to that one ... an Irish Potatoe famine (yes that's 
>>at the extreme end of the possibilities).
> 
> 
> Yep.  

A possibility but not one that's any more likely than others IMHO.

>>>>We may have caught the thinning of the ozone in time through.
>>>
>>>Maybe.  
>>
>>I'd go so far as to say probably, but that doesn't mean we should start 
>>using ozone-depleting chemicals again.
>>
>>
>>>But I still believe that we don't have enough data to make
>>>that judgement call.
>>
>>We never really do.
> 
> 
> Unforch we haven't discovered a good substitute for freon so the
> limited use seems to have reduced leakage into the atmosphere.  I'd rather be
> safe than sorry.   Bob 

Yet we still don't know if the ozone hole was there or not originally. 
At least if you listen to some scientists. Others say that it is new. 
That's part of the reason I reserve judgement on it, because I don't 
have enough data to interpret or enough knowledge to interpret the data 
we do have.

Mike Hebel