Tag Archives: soil

Book review of Dirt: the erosion of civilization

Posted on March 16, 2019 by

Preface. On average civilizations collapsed after 800 to 2,000 years because they’d destroyed their topsoil. Today, industrial agriculture is doing this far faster – in most of the United States half of the original topsoil is gone from the richest … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Agriculture, Peak Food, Soil | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Mineral: Soil from Ugo Bardi’s “Extracted”

Posted on June 8, 2017 by

Preface. Ugo Bardi’s book on minerals covers a wide-ranging territory, including soil, which is a mineral.  In this section of the book he shows how humans have damaged the soil so much we have greatly overshot carrying capacity by lowering … Continue reading →

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Chemical industrial farming is unsustainable. Why poison ourselves when pesticides don’t save more of our crops than in the past?

Posted on March 16, 2017 by

Pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides destroy soil, ecosystems, and a third of the crop is still lost to pests, just as in the many millennia of farming before chemicals. Preface. This is a book review of Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen”, … Continue reading →

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Large animals driven extinct by human hunters still affect ecosystems today

Posted on July 1, 2016 by

Below is an excerpt/paraphrased of Michael Marshall’s 14 August 2013 NewScientist Ecosystems still feel the pain of ancient extinctions, the abstract of the original Nature Geoscience article, and future losses of large animals will affect tropical forests in the future. … Continue reading →

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Signs of collapse: topsoil erosion

Posted on December 4, 2015 by

[ Although I wrote about a lot of issues in 2007 when I published Peak Soil, these articles have more recent statistics. Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer and … Continue reading →

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Climate change impacts on agriculture in the U.S.

Posted on June 5, 2015 by

[ I’ve added a senate hearing from 2013 on drought, fire, and freeze effects on agriculture below.   Alice Friedemann   www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation, 2015, Springer] Notes from 25 page: Hatfield, J., … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, BioInvasion, Drought, Extreme Weather, Heat, Soil, Soil, Water, Where to Be or Not to Be | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Climate change impacts on agriculture in the U.S.

Overshoot and dieoff : humans beyond carrying capacity

Posted on March 24, 2014 by

Hooke, R; Martin-Duque, J.F. 2012. Land transformation by humans: A Review.  Geological Society of America. Prognosis for the Future Looking ahead a few decades, land suitable for agriculture will likely continue to diminish as urban areas expand soil is degraded … Continue reading →

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