19 results for tag: Climate change


How the Farm Bill 2023 can help solve climate change

During a listening session, Maine residents raised concerns to Rep. Chellie Pingree regarding the introduction in the United States Congress of the latest five-year Farm Bill.

Getting Real: Munson’s New Book Calls For A ‘Positive Solution To Climate Change’

Remineralizing the planet increases soils’ ability to produce flora capable of absorbing and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide, thus combating global climate change without resorting to the elimination of hydrocarbons from the energy mix — that is a central theme from David Munson’s Get Real: A Positive Solution to Climate Change.  In his new book, this entrepreneur and inventor also calls for more biochar production and implementation of holistic and regenerative agricultural practices en masse, along with somewhat unorthodox methods for spreading crushed rock dust to all corners of the world. Further, he invites readers to ...

The Threat of Thawing Permafrost: Further impetus to remineralize the Earth

Photo by Sergey Dolya, sergeydolya.livejournal.com A subterranean threat  A new study, published by a team of geologists at the University of Bonn, has presented scientists with a new worry: thawing permafrost. In the past year, the Taymyr Peninsula in Northern Siberia recorded its hottest summer to date. From May 2020 to March 2021, arctic temperatures rose a whopping 6°C above the typical 1967-2000 baseline. While this rising temperature alone is cause for concern, the deeper issue lies below the Earth’s surface. The Taymyr Peninsula is coated with an impermeable layer of permafrost about 700m thick – approximately the length of six ...

Cycling for Change: Oregon Lawyer Bikes to D.C., Promotes GHG Petition

Dan Galpern is bicycling 4,705 miles, through 19 states and two Canadian provinces, to accomplish one goal — pressure the White House to use its full executive authority in order to address climate change. During more than 11 years as a legal and policy advisor to James E. Hansen, former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, Galpern witnessed little coherence in federal climate change approaches, as the government failed to assume leadership on mitigation efforts. “No legal liability to date has been attached to prior carbon pollution, and there should be,” he says, adding fossil fuel producers have not only profited by ...

New UC Davis Center Paves the Way for Rock Dust Research

If the world were to judge soil remineralization based on what could happen, rock dust amendments might already be standard procedure for the world’s farmers. The potential to use rock dust as a carbon storage tactic for climate change mitigation is well known in the scientific community, in addition to its ability to improve agricultural yields and soil health. Benefits like these are enough to make any policymaker or farmer at least consider the use of soil amendment programs, but expectations alone are not adequate to persuade any party to go “all in.” Stakeholders include farmers, ranchers, politicians, business owners, and everyday ...

Rock Dust Crop Dusting: Pulverized Rock Makes for Effective Pesticide

As long as there has been agriculture, there have been insects, mites, and other creatures eager to share in the bounty. Pests remain an enduring problem for agriculture. Increasingly, communities are seeing even pesticides designed to deter or eliminate pesky insects become a liability as essential pollinator populations decline, unwanted toxins infiltrate crops—endangering farmers and consumers—and insects develop resistance to traditional deterrents and poisons. One possible solution: rocks. Crushed rocks, to be precise. Seeding mineral-poor soils with pulverized rocks not only introduces badly-needed nutrients to the plants they house, it ...

Basalt Rock Dust Increases Carbon Capture Fourfold

A research team within the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation has demonstrated basalt rock dust as a method of improving crop yield and sequestering carbon.

Love Your Neighbor: Texas philanthropist makes remineralization part of his Christian mission

‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is not only the Second Great Commandment as cited by Jesus Christ in the New Testament, but it’s the mantra by which David Munson operates — both when he’s booking guests on his Dallas-Fort Worth-area TV show, as well as when he advocates on behalf of remineralization to politicians. “There’s a fight between good and evil going on in this world,” he says. “You can either be on the good side or the bad side. You can either be working to make the world a better place, or you could be pulling it down and mining it and just living for immediate pleasure.” As for his digital program (available on the ...

Planting a Trillion Trees to Save Earth? Remineralization Can Help

Reforesting the Earth with a trillion trees may be the best way to fight climate change, and remineralizing the Earth with crushed rock dust is perhaps the best way to ensure those trees take root, grow and prosper. A recent study from scientists with Crowther Lab in Switzerland found 223 million acres (900 million hectares) of global tree restoration is the most effective climate change solution, as those trees (about a trillion) would store about 205 billion tons (186 tonnes) of carbon, or roughly two thirds of the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, decades of poor agricultural practices, desertification and simple ...

Review of Eelco Rohling’s The Climate Question

The Climate Question: Natural Cycles, Human Impact, Future Outlook, 2019, Eelco Rohling, Oxford University Press, 162 p., reviewed by Tom Goreau, August 10, 2019   This slim volume is the best possible source for those who wish to understand how much humans and natural forces have changed the climate in the past and present, and what realistic options we have for nature-based solutions to prevent runaway climate change. Unlike other books about climate change, this one is firmly based in an understanding of the global carbon cycle and the changes it has undergone in the past. The book is very tightly focused on the facts, and entirely ...