Michael Shermer vs. "alternative history" Hancock and Crandall

[Andy_Ross]

This is another standard CT tactic.
Ignore or wave away the reams of evidence and documents presented and claim the evidence we don't have is what will decide it.

 

[King of the Americas]

That would explain why all those tree plantations you keep posting about are modern creations.

Except that they pre-date modern colonization, seemingly. I need someone one site to do further testing to age these plants.

 

[JesseCuster]

I checked every year... Meaning, I went back to the 1960's and looked for a spike in agricultural spending, and I read about the evolution of their economy and the fluctuation of their GDP, as well as how what crops or exports they have used have change.

1. Show your work. You have a terrible track record. Nobody is going to believe that you've done this research if you don't show it.

2. Government spending on something does not necessarily (or even usually) mean a spike in spending.

There is no mention or record of a historic desert tree planting project.

There's no mention of it where exactly? There's plenty of mention of it in various sources, as evidenced in this thread.

Not that it would matter, as if you found any record of it (and we all know you haven't looked) in Chilean government records, you'd simply dismiss it as part of the bizarre conspiracy you have concocted whereby the Chilean government invented a tree planting project in the desert to help prop itself up. Because reasons.

 

[King of the Americas]

1. Show your work. You have a terrible track record. Nobody is going to believe that you've done this research if you don't show it.

2. Government spending on something does not necessarily (or even usually) mean a spike in spending.

There's no mention of it where exactly? There's plenty of mention of it in various sources, as evidenced in this thread.

Not that it would matter, as if you found any record of it (and we all know you haven't looked) in Chilean government records, you'd simply dismiss it as part of the bizarre conspiracy you have concocted whereby the Chilean government invented a tree planting project in the desert to help prop itself up. Because reasons.

Show the 'nothing' that I found...??

Building and establishing a non-existent million-tree desert forest WOULD be something that showed up in the financial record.

The evidence presented in this thread shows EXISTING orchards back in the 1960's...

 

[Craig B]

Buddy, you JUST got off the coal-list...

If I have nothing sensible left to tell you, take your leave.

You never have had anything sensible to tell me. You were looking for names of people involved in the project. My source contains a reference to

The enthusiastic, active participation of the agronomist, Francisco Araya, the CORFO officer in charge of field operations, deserves metion here.​

Are this guy and his colleagues frauds, or is Snr Araya so incompetent an agronomist that he can't tell the difference between new trees and a 12,000 year old forest?

I will take my leave of this thread when I see fit to do do. Put me on ignore meantime, if you wish.

 

[Reality Check]

Cannot understand the English in a 1991 paper.

So, now it is 75-91??? And NOT the 1960's anymore...!?!?

23 November 2017: Cannot understand the English in a 1991 paper.
A paper published in 1991 used data from one region between 1975 and 1989 (no date range in the quote for the other region). The planted areas cited allows us to estimate the number of trees plants by 1991: That was ~5.7 million trees actually planted by 1991.

22 November 2017: A lie about having no clue about the age of plantations - he has been given many sources on the planting of the Chilean trees starting in the 1960s.

23 November 2017: A lie that he even read the Chilean historical financial record.

23 November 2017: A lie that the Chilean tree planation needed watering.
He knows that the Chilean trees are desert species whose seed sprout and grow into mature trees in deserts.

23 November 2017: A delusion that this is not "modern" planting because the 1960s onward are modern.
Doubly deluded if this is anything to do with his ignorant fair story of a globally connected civilization 12,0000 years ago (or whatever he makes up). Trees produce seeds. Trees die. A man-made forest that is not maintained turns into a wild forest within a few tree "generations" !

23 November 2017: A delusion of "director, project designer, lead engineer" not existing when the Chilean agencies promoting the planting have been provided to him.
"Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile (CORFO) (Chilean Corporation for the Promotion of Production) will have a head person maybe with the title director! CORFO was established in 1939 and still exists.

22 November 2017: The cost of seedlings for planting 1 million trees a year would be about $500,000 dollars per year (GDP of 4 billon dollars in 1960 and rising!)

 

[Reality Check]

Double idiocy - no citation and what looks like a manual about growing seedlings

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR SOWING AND PLANTING TAMARUGO
Lanino (1972)

23 November 2017: Double idiocy - no citation and what looks like a nursery manual about growing from seed to seedlings.

The cost of growing from seed to seedlings is what I cited:
22 November 2017: The cost of seedlings for planting 1 million trees a year would be about $500,000 dollars per year (GDP of 4 billon dollar in 1960 and rising!)

Forests are not planted with seeds. Forests are planted with seedlings (a young plant). This is the cheap part of creating a forest. The manual process is simply understood. Provide the forest workers with guides, e.g. strings stretched across the ground. A worker gets a sack of seedlings. They walk 40 feet along the string. They push a tool (like a spade but a longer, thinner blade and a foot stand) into the ground, twist to make a hole, drop n a seedling, take the tool out and press the ground with their boot to stabilize the plant. Walk another 40 feet and repeat. A worker can easily plant 1000 trees a day at unskilled manual pay rates.

Planting manually is usually done on hilly terrain as in my local forests. We are talking about flat plains where machines can be used to speed the process and make it even cheaper. Ploughs. Hole borers. There are even dedicated tree planting machines. Rather than a delusion that the tees were planted before the 1960s's KOTA should be astounded at the small size of the forests !

 

[King of the Americas]

You never have had anything sensible to tell me. You were looking for names of people involved in the project. My source contains a reference to

The enthusiastic, active participation of the agronomist, Francisco Araya, the CORFO officer in charge of field operations, deserves metion here.​

Are this guy and his colleagues frauds, or is Snr Araya so incompetent an agronomist that he can't tell the difference between new trees and a 12,000 year old forest?

I will take my leave of this thread when I see fit to do do. Put me on ignore meantime, if you wish.

1. STOP using the date 12,000 with this site, as I have not dated any of these forests.

2. Francisco Araya was the agronomist & officer in charge of field operations....??? I asked who was the project's director, designer, and lead engineer... Did you not find it odd that these things were inaccessible? Where's the test results to justify the expenditure? Where are the blueprints and layouts of other potential sites? Who decided this site- one person, a board, the Chilean Government? What Act or Law brought about its construction, and what was the projected cost? In America, these things would be easy to find...the third world, South American version has less demanding transparency standards, sadly.

Ignore request!?

Fulfilled.

 

[Reality Check]

How the Chilean forests were actually planted (including some watering!) in 1981
CHAPTER 6 - Planting and Management

1. Seed collecting. Producer trees are identified by their phenotypic characteristics. The fruit is picked, cleaned by machine, and ground in a stone mill set at 4 mm. Clean seed is then obtained by sieving and floating the milled product. The seed is treated with a 0.2% solution of Aldrin before storage to control insect pests. One kg contains 65 000/75 000 seeds. The seeds are treated with sulphuric acid for seven minutes to abrade the cuticile, and facilitate the exchange of gases and penetration of water through the single micropyle aperture of the seed. This causes the colloids to rehydrate and germination to begin. An alternative practice is scarification.

2. Nursery. A 2:1 mixture of soil and sheep manure is prepared in the nursery. Plastic bags 12 cm in diameter and 30 cm long, without rips or tears, are filled with the mixture and placed in carefully-levelled planting beds. These “pots” are sown with 3–5 seeds at a depth of 1.5 cm. In watering these pots, care should be taken to keep the top layer of soil, where the seeds are, moist without accumulating water in the bottom. This averts fungi infestation. Before sowing, it is advisable to treat the soil with specific fungicides, or with fumigants such as methyl bromide (CH3BR), to ward off pathogens in the early stages of germination and development of the seedlings.

Once the seeds have germinated and the seedlings emerge, they are given more water, but less frequently, thus ensuring that the downward-growing roots get enough moisture 9. It is important not to use too much water.

The seedlings remain in the nursery for 3–5 months, until they reach a height of 8–10 cm. Root development is rapid and vigorous and care must be taken to see that the roots do not rip or grow out of the plastic bag (Lanino, 1972).

3. Planting. The seedlings are planted in plots (1 km2) covering 100 ha. Planting systems used are: 10 × 10 m in square formation and 15 × 15 m in triangular.

The planting hole, some 30 cm in diameter by 40 or 50 cm deep, can be dug manually or by machine. Manually dug holes may have a greater diameter because of the process of removing the salt crust surface. Mechanically dug holes are sunk with a specially designed frontal plough Caterpillar tractor, leaving a sort of trench 80 cm wide by 1 m long at the base. With this operation, the good farm soil, or “sweet soil” is reached. The depth of the opening depends on the terrain; it is generally 80 cm in diameter, according to the depth of the saline layer, which must be penetrated completely before the planting hole is dug. When the soil is uncovered, the planting hole is dug to a depth of 30 cm and a diameter of 20 cm, either by hand or with a mechanical post hole digger.

Before planting, saturation irrigation is applied to the planting hole so as to wet it as far down as possible.

4. Irrigation. To ensure that the plants become properly established, enough water must be given to penetrate down to root level so that there is constant moisture around the roots. How many establishment irrigations are needed varies with the ground-water situation, and there will be considerable divergence as to the depth of the moisture (Lamagdelaine, 1972). An average estimate for the establishment period would be 11 waterings. The plant is established when it begins to send out new shoots. When this occurs, irrigation can be carried out every 20 days (Lanino, 1972).

One of the major items of planting costs is watering. One way to reduce the number of irrigations is to cut water losses from evaporation by stretching a plastic tarp over the hole -- another is to use drip irrigation, which makes for better water use. Carvallo (1970) compared four treatments aimed at cutting irrigation outlay: i) a sealed sack (sealing the polyethylene “pot” just at plant neck height); ii) covering the planting hole with a 40 × 40 cm polyethylene sheet 0.06 mm thick, perforated in the centre, and held down by salt blocks cut from the crust; iii) polyethylene sheet around the neck of the plant (25 × 25 cm and 0.06 mm thick) inside the planting hole and held down with dirt, with a slit for the plant to grow through; iv) drip bag for slow irrigation -- two variations: a) bag with small orifice at one end to allow water out, drop by drop; and b) wick through orifice in contact with neck of plant maintaining constant moisture but without dripping; v) control, planted under customary conditions. (See pages 39, 40, 41 and 42).

In the first three treatments, watering was done with 5-litre bags every 10, 20 and 30 days respectively, and the plastic sheets were withdrawn at 30 and 90 days. The author concluded that there was no difference among the treatments with respect to tamarugo survival, nor did he find significant differences among the watering timetables. In other words, watering could be done every 30 days. Nor were there different effects between the types of plastic sheets and between the drip and wick method of watering. Lastly, the author recommended changing the frequency of watering to every twenty days, which would mean a 50% reduction in its cost.

The Foreword has a date that KOTA needs to understand is in the 1960's!

Man-made tamarugo plantations are being introduced in the Tamarugal Pampa which are transforming the absolute desert ecosystem into an agro-ecosystem. The result, so far, has been a noteworthy increase in overall productivity in one of the most inhospitable regions of the world. The major objective of this programme, begun in 1963, is to utilize tamarugo as a means of gaining income.

 

[Reality Check]

A lie that the forests have not been dated - the Chilean planting started in 1963

..., as I have not dated any of these forests.

23 November 2017: A lie that the forests have not been dated - the Chilean planting started in 1963 as he knows.

 

[Reality Check]

Repeats his delusion that modern forests dating from 1963 are ancient

I think the global artificial forests ARE evidence that the previous civilization was that of advanced agriculture.

23 November 2017: Repeats his delusion that modern forests dating from 1963 are evidence of a "previous civilization was that of advanced agriculture"

 

[King of the Americas]

23 November 2017: Cannot understand the English in a 1991 paper.
A paper published in 1991 used data from one region between 1975 and 1989 (no date range in the quote for the other region). The planted areas cited allows us to estimate the number of trees plants by 1991: That was ~5.7 million trees actually planted by 1991.

22 November 2017: A lie about having no clue about the age of plantations - he has been given many sources on the planting of the Chilean trees starting in the 1960s.

23 November 2017: A lie that he even read the Chilean historical financial record.

23 November 2017: A lie that the Chilean tree planation needed watering.
He knows that the Chilean trees are desert species whose seed sprout and grow into mature trees in deserts.

23 November 2017: A delusion that this is not "modern" planting because the 1960s onward are modern.
Doubly deluded if this is anything to do with his ignorant fair story of a globally connected civilization 12,0000 years ago (or whatever he makes up). Trees produce seeds. Trees die. A man-made forest that is not maintained turns into a wild forest within a few tree "generations" !

23 November 2017: A delusion of "director, project designer, lead engineer" not existing when the Chilean agencies promoting the planting have been provided to him.
"Corporación de Fomento de la Producción de Chile (CORFO) (Chilean Corporation for the Promotion of Production) will have a head person maybe with the title director! CORFO was established in 1939 and still exists.

22 November 2017: The cost of seedlings for planting 1 million trees a year would be about $500,000 dollars per year (GDP of 4 billon dollars in 1960 and rising!)

I stopped counting somewhere around 7.5 million trees...and there's more, in this area, alone.

Some of these trees have a canopy 40+ feet wide. A seedling would not be that size in 60 years.

The photographs I've posted, are from the study provided, and they all show fully matured trees, not saplings.

The instructions noted in the study, that I also posted, include constant watering...READ MORE POST LESS.

If you have the project's designer's name, or the lead engineer, or the director of operations...please provide it...or you could remain silent on the issue?

What does the cost of modern day pine tree saplings have anything to do with the cost of tea in China or the cost of planting millions of TAMARUGO in a desert?

 

[King of the Americas]

23 November 2017: A lie that the forests have not been dated - the Chilean planting started in 1963 as he knows.

Objection: Mischaracterization of the Record

The study provided, come with "pictures"...these are images rendered through a process called photography. And in the ones provided, we see fully matured trees, NOT fields of saplings.

 

[Reality Check]

A lie of having photographs from 1963 when the Chilean tree planting started

This is an artificial forest, that is photographed, fully formed and mature, at the time it is said to have been planted.

23 November 2017: A lie of having photographs from 1963 when the Chilean tree planting started.
You have given no sources for your images.
prosopis tamarugo: fodder tree for arid zones was "Originally published in Spanish, 1980, by the FAO Regional Office for Latin America, Santiago, Chile English version published 1981". Any photos in it will be of the planting from 1963 onward and so contain 17 year old trees at most. Those will be "fully formed and mature".

 

[Andy_Ross]

1. STOP using the date 12,000 with this site, as I have not dated any of these forests.

2. Francisco Araya was the agronomist & officer in charge of field operations....??? I asked who was the project's director, designer, and lead engineer... Did you not find it odd that these things were inaccessible? Where's the test results to justify the expenditure? Where are the blueprints and layouts of other potential sites? Who decided this site- one person, a board, the Chilean Government? What Act or Law brought about its construction, and what was the projected cost? In America, these things would be easy to find...the third world, South American version has less demanding transparency standards, sadly.

Ignore request!?

Fulfilled.

Why would you expect all the information you want to be on a website?

Why haven't you checked yourself? It's bad form to get other people to do your due diligence after you make a claim. You should be doing it yourself before the claim.

 

[carlitos]

I need to append my earlier post. To plant a forest full of trees in a straight line, you need:

Seeds
String
Plastic Bags
Sheep Manure
Water
Countless Billions of Dollars

Thanks for the update!

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Some of these trees have a canopy 40+ feet wide. A seedling would not be that size in 60 years.

What species of tree, that you have observed, are you making this claim about? You don't know do you?

 

[Reality Check]

A probable lie since you do not give the sources you checked

I checked every year...

23 November 2017: A probable lie since you do not give the sources you checked.

Make me wrong by telling us the sources you checked and get an apology from me - I double dare you !

 

[King of the Americas]

How the Chilean forests were actually planted (including some watering!) in 1981
CHAPTER 6 - Planting and Management

The Foreword has a date that KOTA needs to understand is in the 1960's!

Aheeeeeeeeeem...

"...10 × 10 m in square formation and 15 × 15 m in triangular..."

These squares have trees 45 feet apart, 15 feet apart around the border...

 

[Reality Check]

A "pre-date modern colonization" delusion since he includes a modern photo

Except that they pre-date modern colonization, seemingly.

23 November 2017: A "pre-date modern colonization" delusion since he includes a modern photo of a modern worker, maybe in a Chilean forest.
Plus a persistent lie that the Chilean trees are not dated or that "dating" them will give dates that "pre-date modern colonization": The conquest of Chile began in earnest in 1540 when there was no man-made forests in the desert.