More Green

I have been working on figuring out ways to reduce my carbon footprint and mitigate or reverse global warming since 1969. Since then, I have gardened organically, super-insulated houses, installed solar and been a professional forest activist.

 

Global warming is caused by a variety of factors which include changes in solar radiation, changes in reflection from the Earth's surface and probably the largest factor which is increased "greenhouse gasses" like carbon in the atmosphere. A 1994 Greenpeace document titled "The Carbon Bomb" describes how atmospheric carbon contributes to global warming and suggests some remedies that might be instituted to reduce atmospheric carbon.

 

In 1995 I scanned "The Carbon Bomb" and in 1997 I sent the electronic version to Jay Hansen, one of the leading researchers on peak oil and global warming. You can read "The Carbon Bomb" on Jay's site at:

 

http://dieoff.org/page129.htm

 

In 1998 I wrote the article at:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/bmnfa/global.htm

 

and put it on my forest web site.

 

In this article I cited research about how reductions in forest health and growth were exacerbating global warming and asked:

 

"What are the economic impacts of global warming? How will this affect commerce? What have the recent "natural disasters" cost and how are they related to global warming or ozone depletion?"

 

I believe that global warming and the end of the petroleum economy are the greatest threats to our well being as a culture and as a species. In 2002 I wrote the following about this:

 

"As corporate, governmental and religious structures grow very large and powerful they tend to loose track of the other needs of the people they were built to serve. They also tend to maximize short term "profit" by "mining" resources without consideration of sustainability. Supply lines tend to get longer, more interdependent and more fragile.

 

Our food supply capability is a good example of this. The small, local, family farm has given way to large, distant corporate farms. These large farms are much more dependent on petroleum for running equipment and for shipping food to the distant consumer. As nearby petroleum is "mined" out, the supply lines for it grow longer and more difficult to support and defend. The large corporate farms also become more and more dependent on chemical poisons and fertilizers to maintain production levels because they have depleted ("mined") the mineral productivity of the soil.

 

As nearby soil is depleted we must go further and further to find productive land. This same scenario has been repeated over and over by every city-based civilization in the past. At some point the supply lines and profit margins are stretched so thin that the smallest disruption can bring the entire structure to the ground."

 

According to the Nutrition Security Institute at:

 

http://www.nutritionsecurity.org

 

the content of several common minerals in apples has declined by the following amounts between 1914 and 1992:

 

Calcium        -48.15%

Phosphorus -84.51%

Iron               -96.09%

Potassium       -1.71%

Magnesium   -82.70%

 

The decline of these minerals translates into a loss of taste as well.

 

Modern agricultural practices typically try to replace these common minerals in the soil but they don’t do as well with essential trace minerals. Furthermore, there is a group of essential plant and animal nutrients that was previously unknown to science. These essential nutrients have been mostly discovered since 1990. We call these nutrients the ORMUS minerals. When applied to soils they typically improve plant growth, taste and nutrient content by 40% to 60% in the first season. They also increase drought tolerance and freeze tolerance for many plants. (I describe a simple method for concentrating these minerals later in this page.)

 

Everyone who has tasted any of the fruits, nuts and vegetables grown with these ORMUS minerals agrees that they taste way better than without the minerals. You can see a picture of a couple apples at:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/apples01.jpg

 

The one on the left was grown conventionally. The one on the right had these minerals applied. You can listen to a description of their relative taste at:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/apples.mp3

 

I believe that the interrelated problems of peak oil, global warming, nutrient depletion and hunger pose the greatest threat to our modern culture. I also believe that ORMUS has the potential to provide the most significant contribution to solving all of these problems.

 

Here is why I believe this:

 

First: Atmospheric carbon comes from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, changes in ocean currents and the melting of the permafrost in arctic regions, among other things. If there was a way to increase carbon sequestration (the binding of carbon in trees, soil, sea water and agricultural plants) this would pull carbon dioxide (one of the largest contributors to global warming) out of the air and lock it up where it no longer works as a greenhouse gas.

 

It looks like ORMUS can more than double the growth of plants and this will sequester more carbon. The walnuts at:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/walnuts.htm

 

and the oranges at:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/oranges.htm

 

more than quadrupled in size after being given ORMUS sea water precipitate for four years.

 

The trees they grew on also showed similar increases in growth as you can see here:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/walnutcomparison.jpg

 

These changes in agricultural production should also apply to increases in forest growth if ever ORMUS is applied to entire forests.

 

Second: The underground ecosystem is also significantly enhanced by ORMUS. There is probably more biomass underground than there is above ground. One very significant component of this biomass is called mycorrhizal fungi. You can read an article I wrote in 1997 on mycorrhizal fungi in forest soils at:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/bmnfa/soil.htm

 

Sea water ORMUS precipitate typically doubles the mass of mycorrhizal fungi in soil within a month after application. Since these fungi are the largest organisms on earth, ORMUS can significantly increase the sequestration of carbon in agricultural and forest soils.

 

Third: Mycorrhizal fungi feed plants by dissolving minerals in the soil and helping to transport these minerals to the plants they are attached to. This reduces the need to add nutrients and fertilizers to the soil. Since these nutrients and fertilizers often come from petroleum sources and must be transported using fossil fuel fed vehicles; reducing the need for fertilizer in half will also significantly reduce the release of carbon into the air.

 

Fourth: The nutrients that have been put into solution and moved into the associated plants by the mycorrhizal fungi will remain bioavailable and eventually will make their way to the ocean where they will feed the ocean microorganisms, which are one of the earth's greatest carbon sequestration factors. These ocean microorganisms are finally being recognized as comprising one third of all of the earth's biomass as you can see at:

 

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34176

 

They are also a major factor in global climate:

 

http://www.asm.org/microbe/index.asp?bid=40060

 

Also see:

 

http://www.nhmag.com/master.html?http://www.nhmag.com/0503/0503_feature.html

 

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE0DC173FF936A2575BC0A96F948260&sec=health&pagewanted=print

 

http://www.bio.utk.edu/wilhelm/Wilhelm%20lab%20papers/wilhelm%20et%20al%202002%20P&P.pdf

 

Fifth: While I am not advocating the use of biofuels at the expense of feeding the hungry, plants that are grown with ORMUS supplements have increased sugar content in both the edible and in the more "woody" inedible portions. This means that they should produce more alcohol per acre if fermented. This also would give us the option of producing alcohol from only the woody portions of the plants.

 

It looks like ORMUS can double, triple or even quadruple the plant production on an acre of land and that ORMUS also increases the sugar content of these plants by 30% or more and there are some reports that ORMUS makes the brewers yeasts hardy enough that they can make higher percentage alcohol before they die. If these observations are consistently confirmed by the growing body of agricultural experience with ORMUS, we may see as much as a ten fold increase in alcohol production per acre with ORMUS.

 

Add in the burning of biomass, the use of biodiesel and other bioenergy products that would be increased by the greater productivity of ORMUS crops and we should see a significant reduction in the burning of fossil fuels and their contribution to atmospheric carbon.

 

The greatest thing about using the ORMUS minerals to increase plant health, carbon sequestration and productivity is that anyone can do it. The ORMUS mineral nutrients can be concentrated from commonly available source materials using simple kitchen chemistry. One of these methods (the Wet Method) consists of taking sea water or whole sea salt dissolved in water and raising its pH to 10.78 using lye (also known as caustic soda or sodium hydroxide) to precipitate out these beneficial minerals. You then “wash” the precipitate two or three times by adding clean fresh water and letting the precipitate settle for a few hours again.

 

The Wet Method for making ORMUS from sea water reduces the amount of salt with the precipitate by 80% if you only wash it once, by 96% if you wash it twice and by 99.2% if you wash it three times as recommended.

 

This precipitate is typically applied at the rate of only 2-5 gallons per acre - once per year. 

You can read a story and see some pictures of a yard that was recently transformed using home made sea water ORMUS precipitate at:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/Santa-Manna.htm

 

Here is a link to a story about green onions that were grown using rock source ORMUS made using a different method:

 

http://www.OrmusMinerals.com/greenonions.htm

 

As you can see, growing more food in your own garden using less imported fertilizer is a great way that each of us can decrease our carbon footprint and help reduce atmospheric carbon. The examples we each provide also help our neighbors to choose similar methods to eat better and reduce their footprint.

 

When weeding in my garden I have noticed that the grassroots are so well hidden and so thoroughly connected that it impossible to get rid of them all.