Should China End Its One-Child Policy?

[Wolfman]

I think you should go back and re-read your links. They don't say what you think they say.

Given his past patterns, I predict that being pretty much conclusively proven wrong in regards to his arguments, he's gonna' either A) refuse to respond, and pretend that nothing happened, or B) go on a rant to claim that we're all twisting his words around, and that he never said what we claim he said.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Good point there: although it is true the various physical, mechanical activities of farming universally cause erosion, I did forget about depositional environments, and one where deposition is fast enough can cancel that out, so the loss of soil from agricultural activities only slows the deposition down. The catch is that very few places are like that, and it has no counterparts for the other issues I mentioned.

AFAIK, most of Northern Europe is like that, including sustainable water supply. Apparantly also large parts of China and other parts of Asia where terrassed paddy fields have been cultivated for centuries or more.

I'm not sure about the distribution, but it is far more than 'very few places'.

Are you sure you are not US Midwest focused? Northern Africa is bad, too.

Also, when I mentioned the limited supply of elements which are included in fertilizers at all, I forgot to mention that soil nutrient replenishment isn't the reason why we have fertilizer. The real reason is to make the plants get bigger right now than they would naturally, which can actually increase their rate of nutrient extraction.

Well, I'm no farmer. All I can do is look out on those well cultivated fields all over the part of the world where I live, that seem to provide bumper harvests generation after generation, and assume that .... somebody must be doing something right. ... Lately, we have even managed to reduce the resultant spill of nutrients to the ocean.

But, sure, if we continue like now, eventually, all the planet's phosphor will be on the sea-bed. However, before that I assume we will have found a way to mine it back ashore.

Hans