rcnaylor, I remember a lot of days like your photo when we lived in Plainview from 1974-1980. But then, it was the farmers and the plowing in the spring for the crops they planted. I grew up in Pampa and while the wind blew, we didn't have as much dust as Plainview and Lubbock because it was mostly wheat farming, cattle, and oil wells. Very little spring plowing. What I also remember from the Plainview days was that the farmers burned off their stubble in the fall and the town was covered with a layer of smoke then. We had whole house evaporative a/c and I hated to turn it on when on those dusty and smoky days. I remember driving to Lubbock once when the dirt was blowing so bad I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. Really scary. My mom, who has never really paid attention to water conservation, was here for the last few days, and I showed her all my native plants, mulching, and how I seldom water. She collected seeds and marked plants she wants me to pot up for her. Today, when she got off the plane in Amarillo, she went straight to a few nurseries and bought some native plants so she can start changing her landscape. I think the more we practice what we preach, the more it will influence others. And I totally agree that we need to do something about greenhouse gasses, and not just industry. We need to make some energy concessions easier and cheaper for ordinary people. It is great to say we need to quit driving, or quit driving as much. But how many people live within walking distance to work, shopping, or a bus stop? Sometimes I feel so powerless sometimes because I drive to town nearly every day, I keep the temperature cool enough to keep from sweating in the house, and I wash my clothes after wearing one time, at least in summer. I'd like to have solar panels, solar water heater, and a hybrid car, but I just can't afford them.

I've been interested in mycorrhizal associates of plants for decades now. Very generally speaking, most studies I've reviewed where an attempt to "inoculate" soils or media with specific strains of known mycorrhizal species have been disappointing. Notable exceptions were in cases of extremely depleted soils, mine tailings, and other essentially "sterile" media. Now this is not at all intended to cast doubt on the importance of mycorrhyzae. Just the opposite, they are indeed being proven to be everywhere, in every type of plant community, and in virtually every geographic region. What I am saying, is that so far, man-made attempts to duplicate what nature does every day in this regard have been decidedly unspectacular. It seems that two effects are in play: One, if the soil and associated plants have been in association with one another for a good length of time, very likely such mycorrhizal associates are already present. Adding more, in the form of supposedly viable propagules will not effect the balance. The other aspect is, nobody really knows exactly what species is associated with a given landscape plant. True, there is such knowledge in silvicultural studies, usually associated with coniferous species, but to simply extrapolate what is know there to your average garden situation is extremely unlikely to work. Additionally, we do not know what is happening when a soil already colonized by such organisms is having another strain, or an altogether different fungal species, introduced to it. Are we accidentally ruining a good thing? Are we just wasting money and effort? I find such matters of immense interest, and I don't think the book is closed, just that perhaps it needs to be set aside for a while and taken up again later when understanding has increased. This is complicated stuff, especially in a world where very large acreages of land are given over to just two plant species-corn and soybeans-where the parameters of nutrient requirements have been pinned down tightly. In other words, mankind's largest horticultural enterprises are vastly more simple than what is likely happening in that little wood lot that didn't get knocked down for more development near your home. We're rank beginners at this...may as well face it. +oM

becky said: What I think I understand is that OH- is often part of something and it can dissociate to be OH- by itself, until it meets up with H+ (H3O) to form plain water. Is that right? In a solution, there could be H20, H3O, OH-, in various combinations. If H3O and OH- are there in equal amounts, they will merge to plain H2O. Is that how it works? I can go over some basics. I'm not sure what you know and what you don't, so don't shoot me if I go too simple in my explanation. So in no particular order, addressing your comment above: OH- is called the hydroxyl group. It exists as part of many compounds, or molecules. Most any substance that ends in an "-ol" has a hydroxyl group in its structure. In fact alcohols are called alcohols because of this OH group (I'm going to leave off the negative sign unless needed for simplicity). Methanol, ethanol, propanol, butanol (butyl alcohol) are some examples. Classes of compounds like phenols and glycols also feature the hydroxyl group. In some cases the hydroxyl group in these molecules acts similarly to what we have been discussing, ie, the hydroxyl dissociates and can be replaced by another anion like chloride. (There are cases where the OH is present in a molecule, but actually sheds the H and acts like an acid, such as in acetic acid, or any acid containing a carboxyl group, but don't let this confuse you. There are always exceptions to the rules). In our discussion about soil chemistry we've been discussing inorganic chemistry and acid/base chemistry for the most part, and much of that kind of chemistry occurs in water, or usually termed "aqueous solution." The hydroxyl group in our situation is present in water and is also introduced to the soil from sources like NaOH, so we are talking about OH floating around free in solution. You say that if H and OH are present in equal amounts, that they will form water. Not necessarily, as follows: To make my point I have to briefly discuss the dissociation of water and pH. (As a side note, you should look up the term, "stoichiometric ratio." When you say you have equal amounts of something, or if you say "2 H's will combine with 1 O to make water," you are describing a stoichiometric ratio. It is the exact amount needed of each reactant). OK, so if I have a glass of pure water it WILL have equal amounts of H and OH floating around, even though you think they should combine to make H2O. It is an extremely small amount of each, just 1x10^-7 mol/liter. The water ionization constant Kw is derived from the concentrations of H and OH by multiplying the two concentrations together, 10^-7 x 10^-7 = 1x10^-14. This is where the pH scale comes from. The 14 is the max on the pH scale. So the important thing to know is that when you multiply the concentrations of H and OH in water together, they must equal 1x10^-14. Depending on what else is in the water, sometimes you will have excess H and vice versa. If you have 10^-4 mol/l of H ions, then you know through algebra that you must have 10^-10 OH ions. So to answer your question, H and OH will not always react to form water when they see each other. There will always be some of each in aqueous solution, and this is the basis for the pH scale. Even though pH below 7 is dominated by H, there is still a corresponding amount of OH floating around (remember that 1x10^14 ionization constant). But you could say, "Yeah but 10^-7 is so small it doesn't even matter." Well it is a small amount, but the whole pH scale from 1 to 14 still deals with very dilute solutions, so it does matter. I thought of another way to put it. Let's make it "Fisher Price" easy by thinking in terms of individual atoms. Lets say in a given hypothetical beaker I have 100 H ions and 100 OH ions floating around in water. Let's also say the ionization constant for water requires these 100 + 100 = 200 ions to coexist without combining to make water. What would happen if we then drop 20 molecules of HCl into the beaker? Well, you could say that the 20 H ions will try to react with the free OH ions to make 20 waters. OK, then we would have 100 original H and now only 80 OH, plus 20 Cl in solution. (Note: The solution always has to be electrically neutral and the 80 + 20 Cl anions balances the 100 H cations, like when morpheus said if grass soaks up a Ca2+ ion it has to kick out 2 H+ ions to remain neutral.) But now we only have 180 total free H and OH, and our Kw said we need 200 ions. So more water will ionize into H and OH until you have 200 of them again. That means 10 water molecules dissociate to make 10 H and 10 OH. That gives us a total of 110 H and 90 OH = 200. OK, so now our ionization constant is happy because we have 200 ions coexising again. The difference is that we have 20 more H than OH, causing the solution to become acidic. Hopefully this give some idea of how and why H and OH coexist in solution even though you think they should be reacting. Let me know if that makes sense, or confuses you more!

I spent the better part of yesterday, way into the night, reading everything I could find. The mistake I made was to move over to social media. It left me rather stunned to see postings by friends, neighbors and acquaintances on a face book page created to fight this wind project. It was worse than any of the political crap over the past year and kind of took the wind out of my sails, no pun intended. I'm disheartened by it all and decided to take a step back and enjoy the weekend. Next week I am going to take a ride over to the other site and check it out more thoroughly, but I do know that at this point I'm not going to sign the petition. But I am more interested in wind power than I realized.