AgPhysics

By Hugh Lovel

Global warming gets a lot of press and not many are aware that half our excess CO2 dissolves into the oceans reacting with calcium to form limestone which settles into the deeps. This won’t last. As the oceans acidify and lose their calcium they absorb less CO2. Gradually more will stay in the atmosphere, and global warming may double and redouble.
There is also global dimming, since particulate matter going up in smoke along with CO2 cools the earth. Cleaning up these emissions may further increase the doubling effect. With polar ozone depletion, more ultra-violet hits the ice caps in summer. If this reaches the point where a layer of dirt is exposed on the surface of the snow, it will accelerate melting. As the ice lifts off Greenland and Antarctica the global weight shift may give us more earthquakes and volcanoes. Of course, volcanoes may send aloft enough sulphur dioxide and other dusts and volatiles to cool the earth off again for a spell. But what goes up will come back down as acid rain, further acidifying fields, forests and oceans. Already acid rains ensure that we can lose forests without cutting the trees down.

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By Hugh Lovel

On a recent trip to Japan where I visited several organic farms as well as a golf course I noted that no matter how good their other practices none were composting well enough. All omitted clay from their compost mixtures. The same is commonly true on organic farms elsewhere, though I know of cases—most of them biodynamic operations—in Europe, India, the USA, Australia and New Zealand where composting is excellent. Read the rest of this entry »

By Hugh Lovel

Back in early 1924, Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, who later became one of the early leaders in biodynamic agriculture, was anxious to find ways to build bridges between active participation and the carrying out of life purposes without being derailed by personal ambition, illusions and petty jealousies. These were the negative qualities his mentor, Rudolf Steiner, had named as the main inner hindrances.
On a train from Stuttgart, Germany to Dornach, Switzerland he asked Steiner, “How can it happen that the spiritual impulse, and especially the inner schooling, for which you are constantly providing stimulus and guidance, bear so little fruit? Why do the people concerned give so little evidence of spiritual experience, in spite of all their efforts? Why, worst of all, is the will for action, for the carrying out of these impulses, so weak?”
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