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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| John D. Hamaker | 3/5 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Hamaker | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T04:06:25.991451+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Influence == John D. Hamaker's work inspired a growing movement of people to become involved in remineralization, including permaculturists, organic farmers, biodynamic farmers, gardeners, vegetarians, environmentalists, scientists, climatologists, journalists, religious groups, political groups, community organizations and ordinary citizens.
=== Remineralize the Earth === In the 1980s, Hamaker became a catalyst for the formation of Remineralize the Earth (RTE), set up by Joanna Campe, its president and Executive Director who produced the Soil Remineralization Newsletter in the 1980s and Remineralize the Earth magazine in the 1990s, before the non-profit organization's incorporation in 1994. Remineralize the Earth began promoting the regeneration of soils and forests worldwide with finely ground rock dust as a sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers and pesticides. As well as recycling and returning organic matter to the soil, the organization asserted that returning all of the mineral nutrients which create fertile soils and healthy crops and forests, was equally important. For RTE, remineralization was essential to restoring ecological balance and stabilizing the climate. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Bureau of Mines, National Stone Association and National Aggregates Association co-sponsored a symposium "Soil Remineralization and Sustainable Agriculture" at USDA headquarters in Washington DC. In 1995, Campe coordinated a two-year research project with the University of Massachusetts Amherst into remineralization. In Campe's letter to Newsweek magazine in October 2006, she warned that global warming could trigger an ice age and that soil remineralization and reforestation were the solutions. In the same period, major magazines expressed concern of a coming ice age including the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic, Discover Magazine, The Spectator and BBC Focus Magazine. Institutes in Northern Europe and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute shared the concern. Campe was invited by the U.S. State Department to speak at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference 2008. In 2009, the Global Coral Reef Alliance invited RTE to produce a chapter for the DVD ROM book The Green Disk: New Technologies for A New World, being distributed to all U.N. delegates at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen during December 2009. RTE's Real Food Campaign, directed by Dan Kittredge, is a project promoting nutrient rich food and creating a new standard for food quality. Award-winning ecological designer, John Todd, of Ocean Arks International directs RTE's Agroforestry Project in Costa Rica, a project intercropping commercial hardwoods, fruit trees and jatropha, which produces a sustainable biofuel while regenerating the soil.
=== Sustainable Ecological Earth Regeneration === Inspired by Hamaker, in the 1990s, Cameron and Moira Thomson set up the charitable trust Sustainable Ecological Earth Regeneration (SEER)[3] in Scotland, to develop the ideas which Hamaker founded. In Paul Kelbie's article Remineralization Might Save Us From Global Warming, in The Independent, he wrote that since the last ice age, three million years ago, the Earth has gone through 25 glaciations, each lasting about 90,000 years, and that we are now 10,800 years into an interglacial – a hiatus between ice–ages. Previous interglacials averaged 10 to 12,000 years in duration, with the most significant environmental change being interglacial soil demineralization and retrogressive vegetational succession. Since this meant modern soils were relatively barren, leading to the adoption of imbalanced and artificial fertilisers, it was SEER's belief that by "By spreading the dust, we are doing in minutes what the earth takes thousands of years to do – putting essential minerals in the rocks back into the earth." SEER won funding from the Scottish Executive to conduct the UK's first official rock dust trials, and maintained that rock dust could fight climate change because calcium and magnesium in the dust converts carbon in the air into carbonates, in addition to enhanced biosequestration by soil organisms and vegetation. The theory captured the attention of NASA who were researching the growing of plants on other planets. For SEER, as well as producing high yields, and re-balancing the Earth's ecology and geophysiology, rock dusting also brought nutritional benefits due to the enrichment of crops, and so benefits to human health. But the SEER centre has been frustrated in their hopes to provide scientific proof of their claims for higher yields and enriched crops, through the use of rock dust. Their 3-year flagship research programme with Glasgow University (2009) found that rock dust made no difference to crop yield or nutrient-content in the test conditions.
=== Regenerate The Earth === In 2002, 20 years after Hamaker's book was published, Donald Weaver produced To Love And Regenerate The Earth, an update on Hamaker's book, which was published by Remineralize The Earth and re-published in 2006 by Soiland Health.org. The new book clarified ideas raised in the original book whilst providing new evidence from the 1990s and 2000s to show the direction of climate and environmental change. Weaver considered Hamaker a broad synthesist in the fields of ecology and climate, who recognized how the forests and the trees integrated with the whole biological-tectonic-climatic Earth system. For Weaver and Hamaker, a new glacial period, one in a long series of glacial periods, was due in the geological and glacial-interglacial cycle timeframe. Weaver explained that Hamaker was convinced that humanity was rushing into the next glacial period due to carbon dioxide build-up after the normal interglacial soil demineralization and retrogressive vegetational succession, as summarized by Johannes Iversen and Svend Andersen, state geologists from Denmark in the book The Holocene by Neil Roberts.