I am marking this as "General," although it could go "Politics," but most likely it won't "go" (much) at all in terms of Reply messages.

I like the RealClear Science website.

I just clicked on this one.

"Organic Farming Is Not Compatible With Conservation."

But it is compatible with conversation.

Here's how that one starts:

quote A [recently published research paper in the science journal "Nature"] finds that if just 15 percent of farmland reverted to nature, it would wipe out nearly a third of the carbon [carbon dioxide; ~ global warming, greenhouse gas reference] we've generated since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The good news; we can do that easily. The bad news; it involves science, and western elites in environmental activism, from "Environmental Working Group in the U.S." to "Swiss Public Eye in Europe" are never going to allow that without a fight. America actually does quite well protecting the environment . . .

California gets special mention:

quote An analysis of California, one state which monitors [all] chemicals and does not exempt [the "Organic" label] from scrutiny, shows that [Organic-certified] food requires 800 percent more chemicals than [non-organic food.]

The reference at the very beginning to a recently published research paper in the science journal "Nature"--that's this:

Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration From a long list of authors and co-authors, the first of which is affiliated with the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. The article abstract is quite a mouthful:

quote Extensive ecosystem restoration is increasingly seen as being central to conserving biodiversity1 and stabilizing the climate of the Earth. Although ambitious national and global targets have been set, global priority areas that account for spatial variation in benefits and costs have yet to be identified. Here we develop and apply a multicriteria optimization approach that identifies priority areas for restoration across all terrestrial biomes, and estimates their benefits and costs. We find that restoring 15% of converted lands in priority areas could avoid 60% of expected extinctions while sequestering 299 gigatonnes of CO2—30% of the total CO2 increase in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. The inclusion of several biomes is key to achieving multiple benefits. Cost effectiveness can increase up to 13-fold when spatial allocation is optimized using our multicriteria approach, which highlights the importance of spatial planning. Our results confirm the vast potential contributions of restoration to addressing global challenges, while underscoring the necessity of pursuing these goals synergistically.

So that's from the Science 2.0 blog. It's credited to Hank Campbell.


I had a feeling that not everyone would be a "fan" of Science 2.0 or of Hank Campbell. Which led me to this:
Hank Campbell’s Maze of Monsanto-Loving Science Blogs

That's from "U.S. Right to Know" which bills itself as "an investigative public health group working globally to expose corporate wrongdoing and government failures that threaten the integrity of our food system, our environment and our health."
https://usrtk.org/about/

Within Stacy Malkan's article at "U.S. Right to Know"--that's the article I just linked to:

quote NYU Professor Charles Seife posted documents in November that shed light on [Hank] Campbell’s network of science blogs that help promote the American Council on Science and Health. In a Twitter thread [that Seife] called “Mapping a Monsanto-loving octopus,” Seife reported that . . .

Farther into Stacy Malkan's article, there are encounters with these sub-headings:

• Anti-Semitic material on Science 2.0
  
• Using USA Today as an outlet

So, maybe some (organic) food for thought here.

Or not.

"You make the call."

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 10-23-2020).]

I agree with the ideas expressed in the "Science 2.0" article:
- Much environmental activism is foolish, ill informed and counterproductive.
- American capitalism can lead the way to a cleaner, healthier environment and help eradicate global hunger.

We need to return to "common sense" solutions instead of emotional overreaction. This is much like the electric car and forest management issues.

The never ending quest for all natural, free range, 100% "certified' organic, non-GMO, gluten free, non pesticide, no inorganic fertilize EVER, no antibiotics, growth hormone free, herbicide & fungicide free, no artificial colors or preservatives used, food.........

(cut out the middle guy(s). Just eat the dirt.)

Hank Campbell, you're a low down, dirty, stinkin' Monsanto-luvin' OCTOPUS, and this planet ain't big enough for the two of us.

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 10-23-2020).]

There are 249,253,271 people living in urban areas in the United States
219,922,123 are in Urbanized areas (UA) population.
29,331,148 are in Urban clusters (UC) population.
They occupy 106,386 square miles as of 2018.
(Estimated US population as of 2018 was 327 million people)

This is approximately the same size as the whole state of California.
If everyone in urban areas would allow their front and back yards to simply grow up into the tangled mass of vines, brush and then the inevitable tree growth, the world would be a much less climate challenged place.
Problem solved.