Sedna, space probes?, colonies? what's next?

Dick Morris wrote in message ...
Someone's obviously never seen the US from the air.
There's lots of room out there.

Someone obviously cannot tell the difference between wildlife habitat
and agricultural land from the air.

Yeah, you. Only about half a percent (less actually) of the
land area of the US is arable.

Christopher M. Jones wrote:

Yeah, you. Only about half a percent (less actually) of the
land area of the US is arable.

Utter bull****.

Paul

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 04:58:13 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick
Morris made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

OK, you said that twice the current population would be
overpopulation. That's equally nonsense.

I said that we *could* double our population, but at the cost of a
substantial portion of our remaining wildlife habitat.

That's not necessarily true.

Someone's obviously never seen the US from the air.
There's lots of room out there.

Someone obviously cannot tell the difference between wildlife habitat
and agricultural land from the air.

There is no difference, except in how much technology is applied to
them.

Rand, stop spewing nonsense about stuff you have no idea about. There
is basicly almost zero wildlife that makes a habitat in agricultural land.
And one of teh large reasons fo rthat is that argicultural land has several
orders of magnitude less plant biodiversity than what would be there
otherwise.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Paul F. Dietz wrote:

Christopher M. Jones wrote:

Yeah, you. Only about half a percent (less actually) of the
land area of the US is arable.


Utter bull****.


Google is our friend:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/...k/geos/us.html
United States arable land: 19.32%
These are the CIA's figures... and if you can't trust the CIA, who can
you trust? Be specific...we want names and addresses. :-)

The CIA

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:53:27 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Someone obviously cannot tell the difference between wildlife habitat
and agricultural land from the air.

There is no difference, except in how much technology is applied to
them.

Rand, stop spewing nonsense about stuff you have no idea about. There
is basicly almost zero wildlife that makes a habitat in agricultural land.

I didn't say there was. Perhaps the adjective "potential" would make
things more clear.

"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:

Dick Morris wrote in message ...
Someone's obviously never seen the US from the air.
There's lots of room out there.

Someone obviously cannot tell the difference between wildlife habitat
and agricultural land from the air.

Yeah, you. Only about half a percent (less actually) of the
land area of the US is arable.

Where did you get that remarkable bit of information?

Pat Flannery wrote:

Dick Morris wrote:

Someone obviously cannot tell the difference between wildlife habitat
and agricultural land from the air.


Look for the big checkerboard pattern; it's a dead giveaway.

The big green circles are also a dead giveaway, but in some areas, like
the western plains, the wheat fields stretch as far as the eye can see,
and may not be easy to distinguish from a tall-grass prairie from a
distance. Rangeland may be impossible to distinguish from a short-grass
prairie. Tree farms may also be difficult to distinguish from
old-growth forests - for someone who is not familiar with the appearance
of old-growth forests.




Or even driven. California by itself is for the most part empty.


Try northern Montana sometime- I'm from North Dakota, and that area
makes _us_ look crowded.

Pat

Rand Simberg wrote:

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:53:27 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Someone obviously cannot tell the difference between wildlife habitat
and agricultural land from the air.

There is no difference, except in how much technology is applied to
them.

Rand, stop spewing nonsense about stuff you have no idea about. There
is basicly almost zero wildlife that makes a habitat in agricultural land.

I didn't say there was. Perhaps the adjective "potential" would make
things more clear.

The entire Earth is "potential" wildlife habitat, since all inhabited
areas were once wildlife habitat. Land can return to the wild, though
in many cases it may take the better part of 1,000 years for the land to
return to it's original condition. But little if any land that is
actually suitable for agriculture is going to be turned back into
wildlife habitat as our population continues to grow.

Rand Simberg wrote:

On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 20:09:39 -0500, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In article ,
h (Rand Simberg) wrote:

Someone obviously cannot tell the difference between wildlife habitat
and agricultural land from the air.

There is no difference, except in how much technology is applied to
them.

The important difference is the species diversity. Agricultural land is
much more monocultural than wild land. This is important because
diverse ecosystems are much more robust than monocultures; the latter
are much more likely to collapse when perturbed.

My point is that one can easily be transformed into the other.

Monocultures are much simpler than ecosystems, so it is much easier to
destroy an ecosystem than to rebuild one. Even in the best of cases it
may take years to approximate the ecosystem that once existed on a piece
of land. In many cases, however, the original ecosystems in North
America cannot be restored exactly to what they once were due to the
extinction of many of their original species.

Dick Morris wrote:

In many cases, however, the original ecosystems in North
America cannot be restored exactly to what they once were due to the
extinction of many of their original species.

Another great obstacle to even approximate reconstruction is
the increasing prevalence of aggressive alien species.

Paul