More Green
by Barry Carter
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:
In 1998 I wrote the article at:
http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/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%
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 at the end of this post.)
I believe that the interrelated problems of peak oil and
global warming pose the greatest threat to our modern culture. I also believe
that ORMUS has the potential to provide the most significant contribution to
solving both 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.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/walnuts.htm
and the oranges at:
http://www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/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.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/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.subtleenergies.com/ormus/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://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.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/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.subtleenergies.com/ormus/tw/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.
