US land use
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Started by pj - Aug. 6, 2018, 2:44 p.m.

Thought this pretty interesting. Wouldn't have guessed range land took up that big a % of total area. The last map maybe the quickest easiest way to get the info across. https://tinyurl.com/y89bv8go. 

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Re: US land use
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By metmike - Aug. 6, 2018, 3:26 p.m.
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pj,

That link didn't work for me.

By pj - Aug. 6, 2018, 3:38 p.m.
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Think the period after the URL was screwing it up, try https://tinyurl.com/y89bv8go

By metmike - Aug. 6, 2018, 4:18 p.m.
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still getting this message:

404 - Not Found

By pj - Aug. 6, 2018, 4:28 p.m.
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By metmike - Aug. 6, 2018, 4:45 p.m.
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Thanks for your persistence pj........3rd times a charm (-:


Actually, thank you VERY MUCH because it was well worth the effort. That link and those maps are saved/bookmarked for me because of the massive amount of good information there.

I can add another item. We would require 25% more land usage to produce the same amount of food if the CO2 were to return to pre fossil fuel burning days.

Dial in the best weather/climate in the last 1,000 years for most life and especially crop growing and it's probably above 30% more land needed...........or same amount of land and 30% less food;/crops.

Agree on the enormous amount of land devoted to raising cows. And the massive amount of corn grown for ethanol. 

What if cows and ethanol did not exist?

As an environmentalist, those are the factors that really count. 


You know my position on CO2 of course(that the warming has been exaggerated and benefits far outweigh the negatives) but its actually ironic that because the CO2 has gone way up, it allows us to do the same things without polluting as much. 

Increasing CO2 doesn't just make plants more water efficient and drought tolerant, it means that we could, if politics didn't muck everything up, we could, if we really were serious about the environment, we could, if money was not more important and people's preference for a diet with lots of beef(I like it too), we could make changes that would actually reduce real pollution.

Growing corn causes the most soil and water pollution of any crop and, along with ethanol plants, uses up the most water(as in causing the inevitable Ogallala Aquifer drying up crisis to arrive sooner). 

I decided awhile back to stop the ethanol bashing based on showing the authentic data to prove most of the things it was sold on are misleading to blatantly wrong. 

Since its helping a group of people, farmers that I have a close alliance with and have many personal friendship with........ I'll just be happy for them. 

However, it's really either, very ignorant or  disengenous for what I call the "fake" environmentalists to be spending a massive amount of effort to sell the snake oil idea of cutting back on the beneficial gas CO2, then completely ignoring all the real pollution and environmentally detrimental situations that exist.