By Tom Kimmel
The other day I ran into—figuratively speaking—the Berrien Springs public works people who are best known for plowing snow and putting up Christmas decorations in town and who drive out to one of my farms regularly dumping the paper bags of lawn waste that they collect around town. Several of my farms have heavy clay soil and can use organic material to loosen it. The technical term is to make the soil more friable. As we all know, “Friable soil is a crumbly, loose soil that breaks apart easily when you squeeze it, making it ideal for plant roots to grow.” Composted organic matter also has something to do with cation exchange capacity (CEC) which is a measure of a soil’s ability to hold and trade positively charged nutrient ions, which are called cations. That, and a high buffer capacity make soil better for whatever soil is supposed to be doing. By and large, our local populace is very good about leaving regular household garbage and glass bottles out of these paper sacks. Wood, branches, and twigs are fine as they compost along with the leaves and grass clippings.
I used the opportunity of the social call to get more information on the single seal paving job done recently on Main Street. As we now know, a single seal is the application of liquid asphalt emulsion covered by a single layer of crushed stone aggregate. It restores friction and waterproofs the base. What I had not known, was unaware of, was what happened next to our village’s streets—it is referred to technically as a ‘fog seal’ which is a single light spray of asphalt emulsion, diluted with water, over an existing pavement surface. The emulsion is asphalt suspended in water with an emulsifier, and diluting it lets a small amount of binder spread thin and even across the surface. As the water leaves, (evaporates) the asphalt is left behind in the surface voids and over the aggregate, sealing fine cracks, binding loose fines that were starting to ravel, and slowing further oxidation. This emulsion takes two hours to dry. A real benefit is that it is not sticky like tar and so can be walked on without damage to one’s shoes. It is interesting what a person can find out if they ask someone who knows. They tell me that is the hard part—the finding of someone who knows.
Buoyed up by that success, I asked them if they had fixed the big vacuum leaf vacuum that is pulled behind their snowplow dump truck every fall blowing leaves into the fabricated big box on the truck, except that last year the vacuum fan broke halfway through leaf vacuuming season. Those dump trucks full of macerated leaves are also dumped on my farms. They said that everything was repaired/replaced and now they were ready for the leaves to fall. This is a relief. The blades on the high-speed centrifugal fan that vacuums up the leaves had eroded over years of use by encountering dirt, sand, and some small rocks in the gutters of our village. After eroding too much, a few of the blades broke off and then it became unbalanced and did not work well vacuuming the leaves, while also vibrating intensely causing wear on the bearings. It will take a few years for that to happen again.
While on the subject of friability and CEC I want to thank the Knuth Excavating people for hauling animal bedding from the fair out to the same fields that receive the leaves and lawn waste. Most of their work is a public service for the fair grounds. It is that combination of carbon and nitrogen and air whenever we can get the piles turned that supports composting, which is the oxidation (low-grade burning) of these organic components. When tilled into the soil we get carbon sequestration, which is the ideal towards what we aspire. Tall grass prairies use grass roots to do carbon sequestration.
Because this newspaper is written for the entire Berrien Springs/Berrien County area I have to cover all viewpoints. It is this being polite that puts quite the strain on my psyche as it is not natural or something my parents trained me for. Anyhow, I keep finding my research material that I could not find in time to print it logically and in order. You can thank me later for assisting you in delaying Alzheimer’s as, they tell me, these complex mental games that involve dealing with ambiguities are very good for you.
And that is how I found an interesting essay on the Biblical basis for the Noachian Flood put out by the Associates for Biblical Research whose motto is—Dig. Discover. Defend. Entitled “A Universal Flood: 3000 B.C.” that is quite comprehensive as it includes quite a bit of Sumerian history and cites the Gilgamesh Epic. It does not mention one of the more recent proposals, that the story of the flood was inspired by the flooding of what is now the Black Sea when the Mediterranean Sea level rose during one of the glacial cycles such that the water broke through the Dardanelles and flooded the basin where many agriculturists were living at the time.
And then I found another long essay on the subject of confirmation bias. This was put out by The Decision Lab and entitled Why do we favor our existing beliefs? It says many things, and calmly and rationally, including this definition: “Confirmation bias is likely to occur when we are gathering information for decision-making. It occurs subconsciously, meaning that we are unaware of its influence on our decision-making.” I think, that by now, we are getting the idea that trying to find out the truth is not for the faint hearted as it is a long and difficult process. I suggest that if someone can figure out how to get through life without having to look for the truth about everything, their lives will be much easier and simpler. It is a full-time job to collect all of the information, knowledge, and experiences necessary to come up with the truth.
As long as we have gotten this far, there are a couple of relevant and important events in my life that I will relate. One was when I spent the summer of 1966 doing geological field mapping of Antigua, British West Indies and that involved hiking all over the island and around the beaches and circumnavigating it by small boat to look at the erosion of fossil reefs by wave action. The land and hills were formed during the Oligocene-Miocene geological period. Most of the surrounding islands to Antigua—St. Kitts & Nevis, Montserrat, Guadeloupe, and Dominica, were formed by volcanic activity. Antigua had enough volcanic activity to bring some land above sea level such that coral reefs formed around it. Most of the hills on the island were fossil coral reefs and it is the cross sections of them that were exposed by wave action along the shore. Coral reefs had a precise form with the coarser corals growing on the seaward side to break up the waves and the smaller denser corals forming in the quieter back reef area. This was clearly shown in the geological record, including the corals being preserved in their living upright orientation—it was clearly an in situ situation.
Another big event experience was the study of pre-historic archaeology that included studying the economies of primitive societies. Thus, we learned about the domestication of grains, other food stuffs, and animals. As plants and animals were domesticated their bodies changed. It was clear from the geological and archaeological record when this happened. It was difficult to reconcile the length of time it took for a coral reef to grow a hundred feet with the Noachian Flood. It was also difficult to reconcile how domestic animals would be on the Ark when archaeology showed that a continuum of people were living in settlements during this domestication process. Therefore, my recommendation is that a person not attempt to go out in nature looking for an easy explanation, as one will not find one there, or anywhere close to there.
I think that I have given enough warnings, presented enough arguments, cited enough source material, and presented my viewpoint, which is that this subject is not easily resolved, and does not need to be resolved in everyone’s mind for them to be able to function in this life and to get wherever they want to go in the afterlife. All that I started out to do was to prepare the many different and varied personages in our community to be able to deal with the information presented in this CO2 book. And, to repeat, I think that this information is relevant in our modern world, and the information on the carbon cycle, the oxygen cycle, plant photosynthesis—the use of the sun’s energy to support all life on this earth by providing food (fuel) and a livable environment.
Here is another paper that I recommend and its title is: Contributions to Creationism by George McCready Price written by Kurt P. Wise whose B.A. in geology is from the University of Chicago and whose M.A. & Ph.D. in paleontology are from Harvard University and who is now the Professor of Natural Science and Director of the Creation Research Center at Truett McConnell University. I am not saying that he is right on everything—I am saying that he is intellectually honest and that he presents much good information, all relevant to this newspaper series.
This paper says: “Many current creationists are unaware of the contribution Price made to the modern creation model. The purpose of this paper is to expose modern young-age creationists to the ideas of Price, so as to restore the credit due Price and to partially explain the intellectual heritage of modern ideas and controversies in young-age creationism. What follows is an attempt to accurately summarize George McCready Price’s ideas in a brief space of a single paper.”
If I did not make myself clear earlier in this series, let me state that Price’s theory has led many people down a dead end resulting in much wasted time and effort. I will reference the Geo-Science Institute of the Seventh-day Adventist church that used to be located here on the Andrews Campus under the direction of Dick Ritland, whom I used to converse with regularly and who I have the greatest respect for. Ritland recruited Eddie Lugenbeal to go to the University of Wisconsin to get a PhD in Pleistocene Geology and Harry James to go to Yale to get a PhD in Sedimentation and Stratigraphy. The theory being that these two young, bright, and also recent graduates of the theological seminary here in town would thus have some credibility with the General Conference of the church.
And with this background and these caveats along with the usual waffling that one must do to get along, we are prepared to continue presenting the main ideas contained in this carbon dioxide book without apology or further excuses. It will be an interesting journey, and I hope we all survive.
