Ableton Forum

Pitch Black wrote:Re: Australia's drought, I really reccommend Jared Diamond's "Collapse" for an overview of the situation.

Basically, Oz's current system of agriculture is doomed, even without climate change, because before the European settlers arrived all the nutirents in the biosphere were locked up in the vegetation, instead of the soil. When the colonists burnt and cleared the land for pasture and crops they permanently removed these nutrients from the biosphere. They're not coming back. Irrigation and such moves water around to certain areas, giving arable land in the short term, but ultimately this breaks down too, because this increases salinity, ultimately making the land unusable.

from wikipedia: "Salinity from irrigation can occur over time wherever irrigation occurs, since almost all water (other than natural rainfall) contains some dissolved salts. When the plants use the water, the salts are left behind in the soil and eventually begin to accumulate. Since soil salinity makes it more difficult for plants to absorb soil moisture, these salts must be leached out of the plant root zone by applying additional water. This, in turn, can lead to rising water tables, requiring drainage to keep the saline groundwater out of the root zone. If the water table rises too high, then natural soil evaporation will begin to draw the salts back upward into the soil profile. The problem is accelerated when too much water is added too quickly due to inefficient water use such as over-irrigation, applying more than is required for leaching, using bad estimates of evapotranspiration and poor system design, and is also greatly increased by poor drainage and use of saline water for irrigating agricultural crops. These practices result in the concentration of salts."

So I'm afraid Oz's system of farming is fucked, even without taking climate change into account.

b0unce wrote:basically, all you cunts who have all day and night to type/talk shite on MUSIC forums about world issues and complain about cunts using the word cunt all the cunting fucking time are the root of the fucking cunt of a problem.

ras bogle.

chrysalis33rpm wrote:@ Popslut:

@ Sweetjesus : It's definitely not black and white that's for sure. But I think the important question is, does the general population even care? Obviously that is what it will take to demand progress from our political and business leaders, and to make the small but significant changes like sorting garbage, turning off switches and faucets, choosing more efficient products... in America, up until my generation it was pretty much looked at as un-American to even consider conservation. I don't know about Australia, but it really makes sense when you consider a people arrived on a virgin continent, bent on exploitation, with a very mechanistic/economic/technocratic nascent culture. I can only imagine that Australia was similar (they were all crooks too! we got the religious nutjobs!).

@ Forge : Climate change + Salinity of arable land = big problem in America too. In a way we could probably express all of the world's problems by analyzing the distribution and quality of fresh water.