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Comment by chicob | Hacker News Reader

This is happening not only in the US but around the globe. I struggle with it myself.

I find there are 4 main problems associated with erosion where I work (Portugal):

1) Herbicides overkill leads to the death of useful grasses that help hold soil structure. Some fungicides may kill mycorrhizae which are fundamental in soil maintenance (http://mycorrhizae.com/wp-content/uploads/Effects-of-Fungici...)

2) Tillage avoidance is recommended, and in some cases prohibited. But people do it nevertheless... The consequences are obvious.

3) Dams built with irrigation in mind often accumulate mineral salts at a rate larger than what Nature would drain towards the sea. Since water is used in places with lower rain levels, drainage in those places is low as well, which leads to salination (Sometimes it also leads to lower levels of mineral salts in river mouths, thus a decline in phytoplankton and as as consequence fish populations).

4) Global warming means tougher draughts and heavier rains, which means more erosion.

We're headed to some serious problems if we don't take these issues seriously.

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Let's play a game. First, assume you're correct and these soil issues really exist. I'm sure there are entities who have a short or long term interest to not do anything about it.

For example, somebody might be selling land (because they know such issues will get worse in the future), and if farming will be prohibited, they will get a worse price for the land. Hence best to deny, or at least question the existence of soil problems.

If these entities have a lot of money, they can create their own journals and publish science that says "there is no problem with the soil". They can also bribe scientists and reviewers with high status. They can lobby politicians. And lastly, the media can be caught too, you have to frame it as a political issue so you have 50% of the media in your pocket.

Now look at it from a politician's point of view. If you really get the signal that it's not a real problem, then it certainly doesn't make sense to spend resources on it.

Ok.

In agriculture, people tend to ignore the problem because it leads to lesser profits in the short term. The food industry, one of the major clients of agrobusiness is very competitive. The phyto pharmaceutical industry keeps pushing their products just like the pharmaceutical companies in hospitals. In fact, they're the same corporations most of the time.

In this case, lobbying happens in the Union level, i.e. the European Parliament.

The pressure is to great for small farmers to deal with.

That is also happening with the construction/concrete lobby (and I presume that sometimes the land price rises if you plan to build housing around cities in the countryside).

Construction companies build regardless of erosion or flooding problems. It's not their problem once they finish the job. That happens a lot around here. Politicians only think in the short term. "Yeah, sure there's the problem of seasonal fires, draughts and floods. We'll make use of some catastrophe fund. But you can't forget jobs in construction and tourism infrastructure!" Result: concrete all over.

So you buy farmland high in the water catch basin where you're not subject to salination and as few upstream pollution problems. Dig yourself a well, grow your own food using as few herbicides, fungicides and pesticides as possible. Build your own ecosystem and let the rest of society go to hell. Eventually, if you do it properly, you'll be the only one left with farmable land, you'll be bought out for a handsome price and you take your newfound riches and fuck off to somewhere that doesn't have this problem yet and do it all again.

It doesn't matter if anyone believes in it or not. Either you're wrong and you're no further behind, in fact, from a trust standpoint, you're ahead because you're now in control of your food supply from the ground to your plate... and if you're right, then you win.

I'm over simplifying to be facetious, but my point stands. If everyone put not only their money where their mouth was, but took legitimate action to ensure their lifestyle fit what was important to their belief, I don't think we'd suffer from half of the problems we do. Unfortunately 90% of the population are happy with just complaining and being armchair politicians and only make the convenient choices that don't interfere with their comfort and their status quo.

If you believe big agriculture is destroying the planet, find a sustainable way to not support them, or support them as little as absolutely possible. Support your local farms and farmers. Support Mom & Pop stores in your local area. Buy from farmers markets. Learn to preserve food over the winter months when it's not available. Eat seasonal produce.

Of course, everyone's lives are nuanced and complicated. It's not as easy as it sounds for most people. But I firmly believe that if you truly believe we have a problem (which I do), then do something about it instead of just talk, complain and continue life as normal.

> If everyone put not only their money where their mouth was, but took legitimate action to ensure their lifestyle fit what was important to their belief, I don't think we'd suffer from half of the problems we do.

One problem with this is that we fall into a very suboptimal, deleterious Nash Equilibrium. Imagine you're in the 90% of farmers that can't set themselves up "high in the water catch basin" because there is limited space up there. You may be very aware of the problem, but it can only be solved if a majority of farmers in the valley adopt sustainable practices. And, if a majority are not going to do so, then you're am simply hurting myself if I incur the expense of adopting those practices yourself. There is some missing ingredient that needs to be added before people will start cooperating to ensure a long-term good state of affairs.

Another problem is that, even if you do set up high in the catch basin and use sustainable farming practices, your produce is going to be comparatively expensive and noone is going to buy it until such time that all those farmers below you finish ruining their soil/aquifer. And you have to eat in the meantime.

The purpose of growing your own crops is to eat your own crops, you just sell the excess. There always seems to be plenty enough people to buy your excess to subsidize the remainder of things you need.

The problem with everyone finding problems is that they use these problems as excuses not to make any changes. That puts them in the 90% of people who complain and do nothing.

As Venture Capitalists always say - they're not interested in ideas, they're interested in people who can execute. Either you can (and do) execute, or you can't (or don't).

Not all legitimate action means moving up the catch basin and growing your own crops. There is legitimate action that can be taken in the city, in the suburbs and in low lying rural areas. You're not hurting yourself by adopting a sustainable lifestyle, you're helping yourself and the planet in the process.

I love the down votes on this as if I don't speak from experience. This is the life I live, every day. It can be done if you're willing to do it.

>The problem with everyone finding problems is that they use these problems as excuses not to make any changes.

This is true. But in the case of many problems around Ecology, most solutions orbit around collective action. Individual actions count, but some of them must be taken in the community/region/national level.

Absolutely, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take the actions that are within your power and ability.

I work in the software business.

It's definitely the state's function to care about soil erosion, not mine.

I vote and pay taxes and expect stuff like courts, law enforcement and military to be taken care of as well.

We all have a lot of expectation of our taxes. But one thing you can be sure of - the Government can and does fuck up pretty much everything you hire them to do. History has proven this time and time again. So at what point do people get off their asses and make things happen instead of just talking about it?

P.S. I work in the software business too.

Additionally: Do you honestly think that given the Government's lack of guarantee to provide you with free healthcare, clean water, even clean air... given many states atrocious track record for this: Look at Flint with the lead in the water, look at Pennsylvania with oil companies fracking and polluting the drinking water meaning you can literally light the water pouring from your kitchen tap on fire. Do you really trust your Government to provide you any kind of regard when they've got lobbyists campaigning left, right and centre for the interests of people who don't give a shit about you and yours, just their shareholder profits?

I think it's naive to expect that the Government will do the right thing, even though as tax payers we should rightfully be able to expect that. They've proven too many times that they won't. The definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If you want different results, something's gotta change. You have no surer way of doing something different than doing it yourself.

Flint situation is so visible because generally the gov't does a great job at regulating water quality.

We are not there on greenhouse gas pollution, but the EPA has done some wonderful work on particulate pollution. Also, remember that the old ozone hole is healing? That was helped by a consortium of governments.

"Gov't" can mean so many things. This meme ("the Government can and does fuck up pretty much everything you hire them to do") is inaccurate and heavily influenced by the high profile failures that lead to availability bias.

I suspect that it is also corporate propaganda, to reduce popular support for regulation, and to encourage the privatization of government services.

Perhaps to most people it would be such, but I personally disagree. I agree with regulation, I agree with socially owned services, I agree with free healthcare for all, I agree that taxes should be spent for the good of the people both in the present and the future. I believe in effective Government. What I don't believe is that to this point the Government has been as effective as the tax payers should be expecting and to which the Government should be held to account.

> Dig yourself a well

Where is the water for your well coming from?

Your plan sounds good, but the details have to be got right, and we do not know how to get the details right (though we know more now that we need in the past)

Like in most wells, out of the ground ;)

I jest... but not really.

You'd be surprised just how accessible the water table is, depending on your region. If there are trees on your property, there's a reasonably good chance you're close enough to water to dig a well and get good throughput. If you're looking to buy property, look for properties that have trees that normally require a lot of water. Just by way of example, if there's a Willow tree(s) on the property, there's a good chance you've got water... and aspirin.

If your question was related to contaminants and so forth, obviously you have to be aware of where the water is flowing from upstream. If you're downstream of a high contamination zone, your only real choice is to move, sadly.

My question was related to aquifer depletion. Some deserts have great soil, but there isn't enough water to grow anything, try to dig a well and the well will go dry.

Contaminants are a valid question too though.

This would definitely be another situation you'd need to consider relocation. In that situation, you'd need to find alternative measures to become more sustainable. Like living in the city, the measures you take would look significantly different than someone living in the green zone.

I want to move to this libertarian paradise where I'm not affected by externalities and acting selfishly is always pareto efficient. I want to live in this magical place where we don't need government. Where is it?

Nobody suggested you don't need Government. I do believe in an effective Government. What I don't believe is that the Government has to this point been as effective as the tax payers should be holding them to account.

> Build your own ecosystem and let the rest of society go to hell. Eventually, if you do it properly, you'll be the only one left with farmable land, you'll be bought out for a handsome price and you take your newfound riches and fuck off to somewhere that doesn't have this problem yet and do it all again.

Actually, that is not correct. If your neighbour uses fertilizers in excess, your well will be contaminated through drainage. Then you have to adjust your own fertilizer's NPK levels, by subtracting the NPK levels on your contaminated water. Unfortunately, this often saturates, but you still have to fertilize because ammonia/urea and their salts degrade and are easily dissolved in water thus improving acidity and draining fast.

If your neighbours use insecticide in excess, your pollination rates drop as well, and so your yields.

If your neighbours use the wrong kind of fungicide, mycorrhizae will suffer, and so will your crops if they depend on them.

> It doesn't matter if anyone believes in it or not.

Yes it does. If you believe that you will be the last farmer standing, you're wrong. Your yields will drop as well.

It's like a stampede: you can't stop it, you can just join everyone and run. Unless people organize and stop the madness.

Putting my money where my mouth is doesn't work because other peoples' actions count.

>If you believe big agriculture is destroying the planet, find a sustainable way to not support them

I try every effin day. But it turns out everyone has to do it, otherwise it's just (collective) suicide.

I was being slightly facetious when I suggested you'd be the last farmer standing. Of course you won't be the last farmer standing. Most farmers are slowly coming around to the fact that their actions affect future generations of crop growth and are making changes. You will not be the last farmer standing. Sure, you've gotta put in time, effort and even money to make it go, but overall it's not as expensive as you're led to believe. I do this every day, this is the life I live. Sure it has its problems to negotiate and master, but it's doable. I know this, because I do it.

I was not referring to myself or you, but to the hypothetical farmer taking actions only in his self interest.

>I know this, because I do it.

I didn't want to imply that there was no solution for this problem. I only stated, from my own perspective as a farmer, how hard it is.

I get your point. I did point out in my original post though that I was being deliberately facetious to make my point ;)

Thanks for participating in the conversation though, it's an important conversation that I feel more people should be having and helping to find solutions for, because it's not a simple problem to solve and many hands make light work.

Another thing.

>Now look at it from a politician's point of view. If you really get the signal that it's not a real problem, then it certainly doesn't make sense to spend resources on it.

That is true, but even if there is a perception of a real problem, the short term rules. If it is not as profitable, they ignore it. It's not going to be their problem 50 years ahead.

That would require a massive, coordinated conspiracy by a large group of landowners, and would be very expensive to carry out and would suffer from a free-rider issue of funding it.

It's just not within the realm of possibility.

In what we actually observe, this doesn't seem to be the case. (In this case - obviously issues like smoking went exactly this way.)

Rather, everything from "best to deny..." to "...bribe scientists and reviewers" got skipped. It just didn't change anything.

Pretty much everyone knows soil erosion, desertification, and aquifer drawdown are major issues in the US Midwest. Certainly everyone with a big enough farm to have a major impact does. Cattle feedlots have been moved out of the TX/OK panhandle area because water is so scarce. Politicians are painfully aware of it.

But there's no incentive to fix it, because the fix is basically just triggering the shutdown sooner. Eventually soil and water issues will cripple midwestern farming, but avoiding that means slashing farming volume now. Better for the environment, but not for most of the people there.

So... no conspiracy, everyone knows, but the problem continues. Ironically, the conspiracy story shows too much faith in our government - it assumes they would act if they knew!

Sometimes I think it must really suck to be in public administration. If you want to do something about anything, you get attacked for trying to limit people's freedom. If you don't do anything, you later get blamed for letting the problem happen.

It sucks because the job is impossible for technical reasons: Just moving 100 meters often changes the correct best practice for long term soil health. How you can you regulate when you need that many different regulations?

>4) Global warming means tougher draughts and heavier rains, which means more erosion.

Erosion is not the result of global warming. Erosion is the largest source of CO2 on Earth. It's an order of magnitude larger than all fossil fuel combustion combined.

http://soilcarboncenter.k-state.edu/carbcycle.html

Not picking on you specifically. It's a common misunderstanding. The media has badly misinformed people in an effort to push an agenda.

I think chicob was saying that climate change causes more severe storms, which increases the weather; not saying that increased erosion leads to climate change. Your point is valid, but your cause and effect are backwards from chicob's.

The way I reconcile both those comments is that 'chicob suggests there is - or might be soon - a positive feedback loop here.

That would also be wrong. Earth is a buffer system, not something easily tipped into runaway Armageddon.

A buffer system within small scale perturbations. Take anthropogenic CO2 emissions: they are changing the entire planet's climate.

Take permafrost, for instance. A small increase in the temperature might lead to an even bigger one. This is well documented.

>chicob was saying that climate change causes more severe storms

Storms lead to weathering. Weathering is a carbon sink.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883292711...

>Your point is valid, but your cause and effect are backwards from chicob's.

Ice cream doesn't lead to hot summer days. It's the other way around. Erosion exposes further, deeper, top soil to erosion. By the time layer 1 is eroded to expose layer 2, layer 1 is already a done deal. You can pave over it if you like, but the CO2 is already gone. Close the barn! The horses escaped... too little, too late.

I'm not understanding the point you're trying to make. The article you posted states clearly that fossil fuels are the largest net contributor (4-5 gigatons/year) to atmospheric carbon:

"Before the industrial revolution, the main source of fluctuation in atmospheric carbon was from changes in biomass and soil organic carbon. Now, fossil fuel burning is the greatest factor in atmospheric carbon fluctuations."

Lots of carbon is absorbed into the soil and lots is released as part of the normal carbon cycle, with the net effect being:

"The soil organic matter pool is currently losing about 1 to 2 gigatons of carbon per year to the atmospheric pool."

> Erosion is not the result of global warming

If global warming causes more droughts, and droughts cause soil loss, then isn't global warming contributing to erosion?

>isn't global warming contributing to erosion?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14515367

Sorry but you have blatantly misquoted and confused your reference which gives "Soil organic matter oxidation/erosion" at 62GtC/yr --as part of an existing cycle which has been balanced with 110GtC/yr absorbed by photosyntheis. The modern fossil fuel carbon output of 4.5GtC/yr is additional to the long established natural cycle.

Your source and almost the entire amount of professional and informed review on this subject recognises the fossil fuels additional output is of great effect and danger to global climate.

Since you've arrived to share your opinion, let me ask you which sounds easier:

a) Reduce erosion by 10%

b) reduce fossil fuel combustion by 100%

It is likely completely impossible to reduce erosion globally by 10% and neither is all soil oxidation dependant on erosion.

Soil oxidation and erosion should not be confused as the same process.

>likely completely

Well you probably certainly showed me. I'm glad we resolved that argument and can now continue doing nothing to solve problems like the destruction of arable soils.

It'll be interesting to see what boogeyman agribusiness can dream up after we've all switched over to solar and it can't shout about "muh fossil fuels" anymore.

Im not trying to deal "my opinion" or to show you up. My corrections to your comment are not simply relate-able to the arable soil problem, because the reference that you mistook, did not include any information on erosion of arable soils. It included mention of "global soil erosion" as an unquantified contribution to carbon emissions of "global soil oxidation".

It is "likely completely impossible" to reduce global soil erosion by 10% because when you consider that it includes all soil erosion globally (running off the sides of Mongolia.. Amazon.. Siberia.. etc.) -- I hope you can appreciate it is not what you took it to be at first glance.

What correction did you make? Is the chart wrong?

62 gigatons of CO2 from soil erosion/oxidation

5 gigatons from fossil fuel combustion

If this were code paths and milliseconds, where would you start? I need to save 5ms, do I go for a 10% optimization in one function or do I eliminate a critical function? Hmm, would your brain really be this disconnected in that circumstance? Your conclusion is not rational.

You blame the source for your position. I know how the source arrives at fossil fuels. Soil science is in the agriculture department. You don't get far blaming the problem on farmers in a classroom full of farmers.

What I don't understand is how you manage to throw out all logic and reason on such a simple optimization problem. Your conclusions seem beyond reason. You can't look at that chart and draw your own conclusion? Did you even read the article?

"Across the country, farmers decided not to re-enroll 15.8 million acres of farmland in the CRP when those contracts expired between 2007 and 2014."

Hmm, 2007, hmmm,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01...

Brilliant idea. Let's burn the food and tear up new crop land to do it. We can actually make global starvation worse and increase atmospheric CO2 at the same time. It's like you have a vested interest in raising the price of corn at the expense of everything else. "LOL, we'll call it renewables!"

Maybe you aren't looking at solving the problem at all. Maybe you want to mislead everyone like the media does. Follow the money, as always.

>What correction did you make? Is the chart wrong?

The term is "organic matter oxidation/erosion", sorry ive not the time to explain at length what this term means when I already have highlighted its obvious meaning, but that is what you should revise if you wish to understand my correction to this thread. -- It is not a function which we know we have any significant control over.

Also engineering solutions to global environmental disturbance is no simple matter as shaving milliseconds here or there is. Even if the term "oxidation/erosion" meant what you took it to mean, and if we could adjust that global phenomenon as we wish we could, the effect and side effects of the adjustment are liable to further confound the aim to stabilise the system. (The system whose stability we depend on for everything, which can not be simply rolled back or upgraded)

>Maybe you want to mislead everyone like the media does.

Ive been observing media manipulation against knowledge of global warming, (and many other industrial wrongs) since the 1990s. Its an exasperating form of double-duping that after the achievement of the Copenhagen consensus, the oil funded message of denial started convincing people that it was the science which was a product of manipulation. As you are obviously thoughtful, open minded and concientious, i do hope you realise in time the true absurdity of the idea that AGW science is the product of manipulation and the oil industries are the victim of such a "green conspiracy".

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