Comments on: The Weekly Carboholic

By: Scholars and Rogues » The Weekly Carboholic: Cassava, sorghum yields drop, toxicity rises with more CO2

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:18:08 +0000

[...] CO2 has been referred to as “plant food” in some circles. This study suggests that this is not necessarily the case. Other studies have discovered increased crop yields due to more CO2 in the atmosphere could actually lead to more starvation as the protein content of those crops falls dramatically. [...]

By: Scholars and Rogues » The Weekly Carboholic: Distributed nuclear a cheaper nuclear solution?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:31:14 +0000

[...] warmer world with more carbon dioxide will produce more plant growth, but at reduced nutritional value for staple crops like potatoes, rice, and corn. In other words, more plant mass but less food, and [...]

By: Scholars and Rogues » The Weekly Carboholic

Scholars and Rogues » The Weekly Carboholic — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:30:59 +0000

[...] couple of weeks ago, the Carboholic pointed out a story about how Suncor Energy was expanding their tar sands petroleum extraction in Alberta. This week we have a couple of follow up stories to that [...]

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 21:06:11 +0000

I have the math skills, what I may not have is the time to understand the underlying theory well enough to say “feasible” or “not feasible”.

By: jackpine savage

jackpine savage — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:35:47 +0000

Thanks for the reply. I would certainly expect to go through an acceptance process and editing. I’ve got another week or so before its back to the greenhouse grind; i’ll work on coming up with something informative, simple, and readable. Thanks for the opportunity.

My pleasure on the link, i thought you might find it interesting. It looks like an interesting concept, but i don’t have the math skills to evaluate their scientific reasoning.

By: Brian Angliss

Brian Angliss — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:27:46 +0000

You can send us a post and we decide as a group whether we want to post it.

BTW, thanks for the link you sent in last week – I had to push it back a week due to severe writing time constraints on my part, but I’ll definitely be using it eventually.

By: jackpine savage

jackpine savage — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:22:53 +0000

Good one. “Clean coal”, man i hate that phrase…never mind the mess we made by scooping the top of a mountain off.

I guess that i’m not overly surprised that that increased CO2 levels do not increase yield. Its a fact that plants love CO2, but the relationship between the atmosphere, the plant, and the soil eco-system is complicated. And the last bit is the most important part. Fertile soil requires far more than N-P-K. There are microbes, micro and trace elements, fungi. Unfortunately, our agricultural techniques mostly ignore everything except N-P-K.

I don’t see how we can avoid changing the way in which we grow our food. Smaller farms will be less economically efficient (particularly in the short term), but they are probably the only way to address soil fertility. The good news is that once you build fertile soil, it is a self-perpetuating process.

Mass starvation is about the scariest thing that can be imagined. Don’t wait, grow a garden. And even if you don’t have lots of space, you can get a lot of food out of some containers.

Can i write a post about ways to feed ourselves?