Stuffing a Goose versus Global Warming
www.stardustersociety.org

by Donald J. Supkow, PhD

A number of years ago I saw a motion picture called Mondo Cane. This video adventure pictured a variety of bizarre vignettes of human activity from around the world. One of the scenes showed a European goose farm and how the farmers force the geese to grow faster. As most people are aware, the more an animal eats, in general, the fatter it gets. The geese farmers would like the geese to eat as much as possible so that the geese can grow as fat as possible. Unfortunately for the farmers, when the geese have their fill of goose feed, they stop eating. Mother Nature seems to have some sort of built in mechanism to keep a goose from overeating. After all, if a goose were to get too fat, it wouldn’t be able to fly. But the goose farmers figured out a way to get the geese to eat more and thereby get fatter than normal. The goose farmer sticks a hollow tube down the goose’s throat and stuffs goose feed down the tube directly into the goose’s stomach. The goose’s stomach has no choice but to digest the excess feed that was stuffed into it. As a result, the force fed geese grow extra fat. You are probably wondering now what stuffing a goose has to do with global warming. Please bear with me and you will find out.

During the past few decades the news has been filled with items relating to global warming. The media report that most scientists believe that the Earth is in the grip of a significant warming trend. The media also report that scientists believe that the present global warming trend is being caused by the buildup of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the so called greenhouse gas effect. A major cause of this carbon dioxide buildup is believed to be the excess burning of fossil fuels by humanity, especially in the heavily industrialized countries such as the United States of America. The fossil fuels are used to run automobiles, heat homes and other buildings, and to produce electricity to power industry and domestic electrical equipment upon which we have become dependent. As a proposed solution to this perceived global warming problem, the Kyoto treaty calls for industrial countries to reduce their outputs of carbon dioxide in order to reduce the greenhouse gas warming effects of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The United States, as of this date, has not yet ratified the Kyoto treaty. While there is controversy regarding whether the measured global warming trend is part of a natural cycle or is being caused, at least in part, by human activities, this essay will focus on solutions rather than the debate about the causes. Therefore, for purposes of this analysis, we will assume that 1) the present global warming trend is real, 2) global warming is not a desirable condition for the planet, and 3) the buildup of excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is somehow related to the present global warming trend.

When I was a child, I lived on a chicken farm in New Jersey. Some chickens were raised to produce eggs and some were grown to produce chicken meat. Farmers generally relate the production of a chicken to the amount of feed consumed by the chicken to produce the product manufactured by the chicken. "How many pounds of chicken feed are needed to produce a pound of eggs or a pound of chicken meat?" is a question farmers and agricultural scientists are concerned with, because it relates to the profitability of the farming operation. If the cost of feeding the chicken approaches the value of the useful product manufactured by the chicken, the farmer stops feeding the chicken and sends it to the market, or has the chicken for dinner.

Over the years agricultural scientists have studied chickens and other farm animals to determine how many pounds of feed are needed to produce a pound of meat and have been developing new strains of chickens which produce more and more meat per pound of feed. Most people are aware that all of the chicken feed is not converted into chicken meat. Scientists tell us that no process is 100 percent efficient. There is always some waste involved in a process. For example, if a chicken eats 10 pounds of chicken feed and gains 1 pound of weight, this chicken meat production process is only 10 percent efficient. What happens to the other 9 pounds of chicken feed? It is excreted by the chicken as chicken manure. This process is illustrated in Figure 1 in which we consider the chicken to be sorme sort of a machine that produces something useful for us. A scientist studying a chicken machine generally measures the useful product (eggs or chicken meat) as some percentage of the input (nutrients or chicken feed). However, notice that a scientist could just as easily measure the useful output of his chicken machine (eggs or chicken meat) as some percentage of the waste output (chicken manure). If he carefully measures the manure output and notices a sudden drop in chicken manure production along with a sudden drop in egg production, he would suspect that the chicken machine has something wrong with it and is therefore eating less. He would then take action to find out why the chicken is eating less, and thereby hopefully increase egg production back to the expected rate.

Chickens have the reputation of being rather dumb and easily fooled. So farmers don’t have to resort to stuffing chicken feed down a chicken’s throat to get it to eat more. Chickens generally spend most of the daylight hours walking around, pecking at the ground, and eating. When it gets dark, they stop eating, perch on a roost, and go to sleep. So chicken farmers simply turn on lights in the middle of the night, fooling the chickens into thinking that the sun is coming up. The chickens then start eating again and produce more eggs or chicken meat. With a chicken machine, we stuff the goose simply by turning on the lights in the middle of the night.

Anyone who is familiar with horses can make the same analysis as with chickens shown asbove. Figure 2 illustrates a schematic process diagram for a horse machine. This horse machine functions in a manner similar to a chicken machine. One primary useful product of the horse machine is a means of transportation or running fast in a horse race. The horse takes in nutrients and excretes waste, commonly known as horse manure. A casual examination of horse manure shows that much of it consists of undigested straw. The horse machine does not operate very efficiently in terms of digesting straw. Much of the straw just passes right through the horse machine relatively unaffected. So what does the horse do with all the feed it consumes? It simply extracts some energy from some of the feed by converting some of the organic matter into carbon dioxide through a complex series of chemical reactions. While the horse is growing up, some of the feed is converted into horse flesh. However, during most of the life of the horse, most of the mass of feed just passes through the horse and is excreted as horse manure. If we want the horse machine to produce more useful product (run faster), we increase the quality of the input (provide vitamins and minerals). With horse machines, we stuff the goose by giving it better quality feed.

Most of us are familiar with automobiles. A similar analysis can be performed with an automobile as with a chicken machine or a horse machine as shown in Figure 3. Notice that the automobile machine operates just like a horse machine. Give the automobile nutrients (gasoline) and the machine produces a useful product (transportation) while producing waste out the tail pipe (carbon dioxide and other gaseous emissions). Again, most of what goes into the machine comes out of the machine as waste. We usually measure productivity of this machine in terms of miles of travel per gallon of gasoline consumed. Likewise, a scientist could also measure productivity of the automobile machine in terms of miles of travel per pound of carbon dioxide produced. If we want the automobile machine to produce more (go faster) we simply stuff the goose (feed it more gasoline by pressing the accelerator pedal).

A schematic process diagram for a temperate forest machine is illustrated in Figure 4. Notice that this machine operates just like all the other machines we have examined. The temperate forest machine has inputs, waste outputs and useful products. The inputs consist of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, sunlight, water from precipitation, and nutrients (minerals derived from the decomposition of airborne dust and from the decomposition of rock crystals in soils and bedrock). The waste outputs consist of oxygen, minerals dissolved in rivers draining the temperate forest (total dissolved solids expressed as milligrams per liter of river water [in the range of 102 to 892 milligrams per liter (Douglas, 1969)]), residual clay in soils, and useful products such as wood, foods of various kinds, medications, fuel, habitats for various life forms, mediating the hydrologic cycle by promoting evaporation of water and infiltration of precipitation into the ground, and sequestering of carbon (in wood, in soils as root mass, in soil pore air spaces as carbon dioxide [as much as 3%], deep in the earth as lime deposits [calcite veins in rock] and in rivers as dissolved lime [calcium carbonate in solution]).

A tropical forest machine is illustrated in Figure 5. Notice that this machine operates just like all the other machines we have examined. The tropical forest machine has inputs, waste outputs and useful products. The inputs consist of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, sunlight, water from precipitation, and nutrients (minerals derived from the decomposition of airborne dust). The waste outputs consist of oxygen, minerals dissolved in rivers draining the tropical forest (total dissolved solids expressed as milligrams per liter of river water [in the range of 34 to 198 milligrams per liter (Douglas, 1969)]), residual clay in soils, and useful products such as wood, foods of various kinds, medications, fuel, habitats for various life forms, mediating the hydrologic cycle by promoting evaporation of water and infiltration of precipitation into the ground, and sequestering of carbon (in wood, in soils as root mass, in soil pore air spaces as carbon dioxide [as much as 3%], deep in the earth as lime deposits [calcite veins in rock] and in rivers as dissolved lime [calcium carbonate in solution]).

At first glance, Figures 4 and 5 appear to be identical. However, careful examination shows that they have a few significant differences. First of all, the temperate forest machines shut down for the winter, while the tropical forest machines operate 365 days per year. The temperate forest machines obtain nutrients from airborne dust and from decomposition of rock crystals in soils and bedrock, while the tropical forest machines obtain nutrients only from airborne dust. Why don’t tropical forest machines derive nutrients from the soils and bedrock? Simple. 1) The tropical soils generally don’t contain nutrients because they consist of residual clays in most tropical forest areas. 2) The bedrock zone of weathering, which releases nutrients, is generally many feet below the shallow root zone of tropical trees, the two zones being separated by a thick layer of residual clay. The waste output from the tropical forest machine, in terms of dissolved mineral content of rivers, is much lower than it is for temperate forest machines, on average about five times less. Data regarding the total dissolved solids content of various tropical and extra-tropical rivers are given in Table 1.Why is there such a big difference in the waste output between the temperate forest and tropical forest machines? The answer is that the temperate forest trees are generally growing on bedrock or glacial soils containing a vast quantity of unweathered rock crystals. As the soil bacteria which inhabit the root zone of the trees decompose the rock crystals, they release the vital nutrients that the trees need for growth. Some of the vital mineral nutrients are absorbed by the trees and some are released to the groundwater which discharges into rivers draining the forest area. In the tropical forest machine, the tree root zone is shallow and generally far above the zone of active bedrock weathering and separated from it by a thick layer of residual clay. Nutrients derived from the weathering of bedrock are out of reach of the tree roots and are discharged by ground water directly to rivers. The bacteria in the root zone of the tropical trees have no fresh rock crystals to work on to release the vital nutrients that the trees need to grow. The only source of nutrients for the shallow soil bacteria is the recycled organic matter that falls to the ground and the dust that falls down out of the sky from distant dust storms, volcanic ash eruptions, and cosmic dust from outer space.

One solution to the perceived problem of atmospheric carbon dioxide buildup is to stuff the goose in the forest machines. An examination of the waste output from our temperate and tropical forest machines (low total dissolved solids in tropical rivers) suggests that the tropical forest machines are operating at far less than their genetic potential. The total dissolved solids data from rivers suggest that growth rates in tropical forests could be increased by a factor of about five simply by spreading mineral nutrients on the tropical forest soils. If the trees grow faster, they would sequester carbon faster and reduce the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere. Is there any evidence that forests could be induced to grow faster and sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere faster? Absolutely! Take a look at Figure 6, based on carbon dioxide data provided by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and explosive volcanic ash eruptions provided by Jones et al (2000). While scientists and the news media have been raising alarms about the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, NOAA calculated how fast the carbon dioxide is building up in the atmosphere year by year. During the period of 1984 to 1993, while humans have been putting about 5.9 billion tons of carbon or more into the atmosphere each year by burning fossil fuels and another 2.1 billion tons by deforestation (Siegenthaler and Sarmiento, 1993), the atmospheric carbon dioxide content actually stopped growing during 1992 and 1993 (NOAA, 2000). Where did this total of about 16 billion tons of carbon go during 1992 and 1993? The answer suggested here is that it was absorbed primarily by the trees world wide during this time period. Why did our forest machines decide to be more productive during this time period? Who stuffed the goose in our temperate and tropical forest machines? The answer is that Mother Nature did the job. How? By the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 and other explosive volcanos. Very fine ash from the volcanic ash eruptions entered the stratosphere and encircled the globe, the fine dust gradually falling out over a period of a couple of years, providing nutrients for all trees to grow faster world wide. Did the excess tree growth make a significant difference? NOAA’s data shown in Figure 6 indicates that it did.

Can we humans stuff the goose in temperate and tropical rain forests? Of course we can. Simply add pulverized volcanic rock to the soils in all forest areas. The stuff for stuffing the goose is very abundant on the Earth and is literally dirt cheap. The primary cost would be in spreading it on forest area soils. Can we afford to do it? If we can afford to drop bombs on neighbors, we can afford to drop mineral nutrients in the form of rock dust on forest soils. You say you don’t have an airplane to do the job? That is no excuse. Anyone can help stuff the goose by putting rock dust on soils under trees in their yard. You only have one tree in your yard? That is not a very good excuse for doing nothing. Remember, every little bit helps. You have no trees? Then plant some.

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Douglas, I., 1969, The efficiency of humid tropical denudation systems. Transactions Institute of British Geographers, 46, 1-16.

Jones, A., K. L. Siebert, P. Kimberly, and J. F. Luhr, 2000, Earthquakes and Eruptions: Temporal and spatial display of earthquake hypocenters, seismic-wave paths, and volcanic eruptions, v. 1.0 (CD-ROM). Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program, Digital Information Series, GVP-2.

Siegenthaler, U., and J.L. Sarmiento, 1993, Atmospheric carbon dioxide and the ocean, Nature, 365, 119-125.

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ã Starduster Society 2001