Are we really sure excluding cattle from the Barmah Forest is a good idea?

Are we really sure excluding cattle from the Barmah Forest is a good idea?

I would argue we can't be sure, and that the exclusion was done so fast & unilaterally that it likely to have a number of unforeseen affects.

Earlier this month I saw "Out of the Scientist's Garden" by Richard Stirzaker, CSIRO Land & Water Australia Senior Research Fellow at Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Irrigation Futures, in a local bookshop. Did a quiet skim in the bookshop and borough it.

Got I home and after a few more minutes browsing, I realised I'ld seen him speak & been to his then home in the early '90 to see his back yards 'Clever Clover' plot. There are photos of that back yard in the book.

On further reading I found the following passage on pages 171 & 172, in Chapter 20: Simplicity.

A couple of notes first. Roan are a large antelope that can get to over 250 kgs. The park being talked about is the Kurger National Park in South Africa.

Roan tend to favour area growing taller, less palatable grasses. They wander over large areas of savannah, picking the few tender young leaves from the grassy tussocks. Zebras and wildebeest are more like lawn mowers. They concentrate in huge numbers on the more fertile soils which more palatable grasses, and by grazing patches of the savannah heavily, they ensure a continuous supply of nutritious young leaves.

Roan must cover large distances to select their diet, but they are also very dependent on water. There are large area of park with grazing suitable for roan, but without rivers for the roan to drink. So park managers put in windmills to pump ground water into troughs. The plan worked spectacularly well. The roan spread out over a much larger area around the new sources of water. The still occurred at low densities because the grasses in the region tended to be of lower quality, but their numbers steadily increased.

Over the years, the new water attracted other grazers, particularly zebra and wildebeest. Although the dominant grass was not ideal for these species, they changed some areas with their constant heavy grazing, producing lawn-like areas of young, more palatable grass. In doing so, the density of herbivores increased, and this did not escape the attention of the loins.

Since zebra and wildebeest are the favoured prey of loins, they get a lot of practice spotting predictors and running to safety. Not so the roan. Hunting had been an unprofitable business for loins in the area prior to the new watering points, because of the low densities of prey. Now the loins switched their attention from the ever vigilant zebras to the unsuspecting roan. Roan numbers started to go down alarmingly.

The solution of adding new watering points was put into reverse. The bores were closed and, as predicted, the zebras drifted back to more favourable areas. As always the loins followed them, but not all the loins. A few prides took up residence in the roan areas. They changed their hunting habits. No longer could they hang around the plentiful herds and ambush them at waterholes on the short-grass plains. They started wandering widely, and met up frequently enough with the meandering roan to virtually wipe them out.

It all begs the question of is this being done just to satisfy political needs in Melbourne. The Kruger reversal was done after a few year. The Barmah reversal is being done after well over a century. The lesson of Kruger is that it should be done using a phased approach with control area to compare with. I don't mean little 10 by 10 metre experiments. That scale of research is just preliminary for the real experiment of introducing a new system to the forest.

Is removing the cattle a diversion for not getting water right? My understanding is that the Red Gums aren't getting inundated often enough and that particularly the higher areas are missing out. That cattle are only grazing pressure after the fact?

Cattle grazing would be removing fire fuel load too. Sound like swing-and-round-a-bouts to me.

Given the about story I would think the safest way to proceed is to divide the forest into many zones and spell zones from any grazing for 10 or 20 years after inundation in a long term rotation. Keep the fuel loads low while allowing long periods from germination & establishment after inundations.

What do you think?

Water: Cities vs Environment.

On twitter a while back, comments where raised about legal dams in the Upper Darling part of the Murray Darling Basin. There where some city tweeters who thought this would fix their water problems.

They have a mind set that farming isn't part of the environment and takes water away from it and them. This forgets a couple of factors. On a lot of land, farming is the environment. The water that gets to the cities come from three places. The high wet areas of the land, where that is always an excess of water for part of the year, especially the melt in early spring. Big rain events. The last is degraded lands in the rest of the basin.

It's these degraded lands I want to comment on. These lands are degraded due to imported practices and over use. As farmers improve practices and adopt more natural methods, like native perennial pastures, the water yield will continue to fall (even assuming no global warning reductions) back to natural levels. So farming isn't a source of water for the cities, if it's allowed to evolve and improve it will reduce water availability.

Maintaining water yields for cities means retarding the improvement of the farming environment. Better that cities learn to not over tax their local environments too. Rain water tanks all-round!

Fee & Dividend and the trees.

Australia economist John Quiggin recently added a post dealing with the political machination of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

A LOT of debate ensued. In including some denialist noise making and some discussions on the merits of Cap & Trade vs Fee & Divided (F&D). It's part of that Fee & dividend stream I want to preserve here, as it has some of my 'back of the envelope' calculations on how F&D triggers more integrated farming practices.

Carbonsink's initial post.

How about we tax carbon at $20/tonne and repay the proceeds every quarter, split equally between all citizens?

Its simple. Its progressive. It compensates the poor, the old and the unemployed.

James Hansen is a smart cookie.

My first reply.

James Hansen doesn’t support a general carbon tax. He speciality supports a fossil fuel specific Fee & dividend system.

A fee-and-dividend system imposes a fee on the initial sale of a fossil fuel which is then redistributed to the public; the rising cost of carbon-intensive products would, it is hoped, encourage families to keep their carbon footprints low.

‘James Hansen rails against cap-and-trade plan in open letter‘ from the Guardian’s environment blog on 12 Jan ‘10

Carbonsink:

James Hansen doesn’t support a general carbon tax. He speciality supports a fossil fuel specific Fee & dividend system.

I know. That’s why he’s a smart cookie.

Wouldn’t it be funny if a non-economist came up with the best way to price carbon? I’d like to hear ProfQ’s thoughts on Hansen’s fee-and-dividend idea?

Governments must place a uniform rising price on carbon, collected at the fossil fuel source – the mine or port of entry. The fee should be given to the public in toto, as a uniform dividend, payroll tax deduction or both. Such a tax is progressive – the dividend exceeds added energy costs for 60% of the public.

Fee and dividend stimulates the economy, providing the public with the means to adjust lifestyles and energy infrastructure.

If global emissions trading is DOA, how about we give something else a try?

Me:

It’s not about taxing carbon, it’s about fossil fuels specially. ETSs miss the point in that carbon is not all the same. The natural carbon cycle is vast, it’s the relativity small ongoing injection of geologic carbon that’s throwing the whole biosphere/carbon cycle out of whack.

Back when the CPRS was being argured over in the press. A prosal was floated that becuase agriculture was too complex to figure out and that the ‘best approach’ was to simply include it by levying farmers on a per head (for livestock) or per acre (for crops) basis. Figures like $100/head for cattle were being banded about. That struck me as fundimentally ineffective as well as unfair, as it made no distinction between lot fed and grass fed cattle. It also had no way to take changes in farming method at the property level into account.

As a thought exercise I compare how you should treat a car, a lot fed animal & a grass fed animal to try to figure out a better way to include them. That when I realise that an ETS on carbon generally wouldn’t just work poorly, it won’t work at all!

Generally people will try to play with and bend the large natural flows of carbon to get the atmosphere CO2e figure down. Any thing but tackle the actual use of energy/fossil fuels & the problematic ‘new’ geologic carbon flows. Pushing carbon around in the biosphere is like pushing piss up hill. It ain’t going to stay where we put it long term.

The easy, knee jerk reaction is to try to ‘win’ by diverting big natural flows, rather than stopping the small problematic ones. An ETS in quantitative, a Fee & dividend is qualitative. Here is on example of how being quantitative gets it wrong. The cheap ETS reaction is to plant trees, lots of them, in large cheap monoculture forests. The qualitative and resilient approach is mixed forestry in a mosaic with other systems. An ETS here works away from a sustainable lower energy farming ecosystem that better suits local conditions.

Disclosure: I have family members involved in agriculture, including grass fed cattle production.

Carbonsink:

So how will fee-and-dividend discourage land clearing and encourage “mixed forestry in a mosaic with other systems” ?

Me:

Raising energy cost (Fee & Dividend) increases forestry & more diverse land use by a combination of product substitution and return on investment question/harvest frequency changes.

Cheap energy allows lots of product substitution. Steel and concrete for timber of every thing from houses to ships. Petrol & diesel fueled cars, trucks and trains for horses powered by hay. Synthetics for natural fibre. What this has done is remove a lot of demand to use our land surface for things other that food. In each case new fossil fuels replaced old solar based systems.

Cheap energy has also meant we’ve been able to substitute artificial fertility for natural fertility.

When the cost of energy is low, low return annual harvest systems make sense. When you dramatically raise the cost of energy, high return long rotation systems make more sense. We’ll always need a fair amount of annual harvest systems, our staple carbohydrate food stuffs are generally produced from them. If you harvest a system annually, the return is typically between 6% & 10%[1]. Plantation systems can return from 34% (over 6 years) to 310% (over 90 years). Harvest a natural system and you can get 1100% (over 300 years). If you have a cheap energy to drive an annual harvest, you can get more out of given area, over time. But the law of diminishing returns apply to the energy inputs.

Raise energy costs and some of these reverse. In construction I can easy see a time when steel and concrete are only used extensively in public building, where the engineering demands require them. Hoping we don’t have to go all the way down to riding and working horses, and building ships from oak again.

I’ve done some ‘back of the envelope’ calculations. They are based on EMERGY figures; Corn yielding at a 1.10 ratio and Radiate pine yielding at a 2.10 ratio, over 24 years. The figures also assume no cost to moving energy use between years and no yield from unused land.

Say it taken 1000 unit of energy to grow and harvest corn. The harvested corn yields 1100 units of energy. Over 24 years that’s a net gain of 2400 units of energy, for 24000 units in.

Now double the cost on energy. The farmer can now only afford 500 unit/year or 12000 in total.

If the farmer just plants corn, he can only use half the land. That 500 units of energy in and yields 550 units of energy. Over 24 years that’s a net gain of 1200 units of energy, for 12000 units in.

But if the farmer plants 47% to corn each year and plants 53% to Radiate pine in the first year, here’s what the farmer gets. 530 units are used to plant & harvest the pines plus 24 times 470 units to grow the corn each year. Total energy in is 11810 units (11280 units for corn + 530 unit for pines). The net gain over 24 years is 1711 unit (1128 from corn, 583 from pine).

By using a corn pine mix, the drop in production expected with a halving in energy usage can be reduced from a 50% drop to a 29% drop.

[1] David Holmgren, Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability, p 65-7

Ultimately what my 'back of the envelope' calculation show is the when you start taking energy out of a farming system, the Law of Diminishing Returns can be used to work with you.

As energy prices go up and usage falls, the more land goes to trees, all thing being equal. Don't you love that last phrase.

In the developed world, that 'all things being equal' included only 3% (or less) of the population being involved on Agriculture, Horticulture, Forestry & Fishing.

So in a really low energy system you could end up with 1ha of market garden & orchards, 9ha of grain & 490ha of mixed trees! How to boost the system? Add labour. Go to ten families, 10ha of market garden & orchards, 90ha of grain & 400ha of mixed trees.

Ten families farming 10ha of gardens & 90ha of grains. What does that tell us? It tells us that food as a percentage of earnings is not going to stay cheap. It's that standard of living thing again. If you can't have standard of living, you gotta work on quality of life. Be happy!

Global Warming: Why 'Go Veg' and cattle miss the point!

Yesterday, Cameron Reilly (@cameronreilly) posted a 'Go Veg' link on twitter. John Johnston (@jjprojects) and I commented on it. This is a topic where 140 character just isn't enough. Here are the relevant parts of the Twitter stream and me considered ramblings about the topic.

The stream

@cameronreilly: "Eat less meat and dairy: official recipe to help health of consumers – and the planet" ( http://bit.ly/68BdWt )

Me: @cameronreilly "Eat less meat" http://bit.ly/68BdWt still misses the point. Use no fossil fuel, end of cheap fuel will fix any meat problems

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly In Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never, he calls for farming practices to change dramatically, rather than going veg...

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly There seems to be a bit of a debate about what is sustainable in terms of eating meat or veg and how it's grown.

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly Great essay btw, if you haven't read. He got my attention, that's for sure.

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly That would be good. There's also a great chapter about his vision for Oz cleantech, including a new, sustainable city.

@jjprojects: @cameronreilly ...for Oz to lead cleantech on R&D and innovation and export the results. Bold vision. Well worth reading.

Me: @cameronreilly re cattle. The real issues is the source of the flow. 'Cattle carbon' is part of C cycle, in one end out the other.

Me: @cameronreilly natural flows of carbon dwarf the added fossil fuel flows, in size. But the 'new' carbon throws the whole system out of wack

Me: @cameronreilly Cattle don't eat fossil fuel and are natural. But cheap fossil fuel has lead to greatly increase number.

Me: @cameronreilly So cutting cattle numbers is treating a symptom of cheap fossil fuels, not the cause.

@cameronreilly: @gnoll110 so you're saying if we make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?

Me: @cameronreilly There are lots of fossil fuel input in beef. Transport is one, think about input to grain used in lot feeding...

Me: @cameronreilly ... and in supermarkets, in the home. Increased energy cost ripple across the whole economy...

Me: @cameronreilly ...everyone changes their ways, that how carbon taxes work too. Expect dearer beef that grass fed and produced closer to home

My ramblings

There are so many angle to this. Think I'll try a top down one.

People are talking about 'what the atmosphere sees' in regard to greenhouse gases. I think this is way to simplistic, where a holistic system view is what is really required.

Why is this too simplistic?

Firstly, the interchange between the atmosphere and the other major components (the oceans, soil and biomass) of the bioshere is both dynamic and large, to just measure and pay attention to the atmosphere alone. Of the extra carbon added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning each year, about half has moved to other components within a year.

Secondly, all the carbon is being treated the same regardless of whether it's part of a natural or artificial flows.

How can we view it more holistically?

I'm going for borrow an analogue from peak-oiler Richard Heinberg: a bottle of wine. How do you make wine. You put yeast in sugary water (grape juice) and let them do what come naturally. Reproduce, consuming their wonderful abundant source of easy energy. In the process, they produce a toxic pollutant, alcohol. What you end up with is water with most of the sugar gone, lots of alcohol and the detritus of the yeast population collapse at the bottom.

Lets do some substitution.
yeast = humans
sugary water = fossil fuels (both coal & oil)
alcohol = greenhouse gases

Now lets generalise in terms of the universal ecological dilemma.
Humans are population pressure
Fossil fuels use is resource depletion
Greenhouse gases are habitat destruction

We, as a species, have used the last 250 years of fossil fuel to grow our population, both in shear size and in consumption per capita. It looks like habitat destruction is going to be an issue before resource depletion, just.

How do we undo this habitat destruction,

Remove the input of 'new' fossil fuel carbon! That by itself is likely to be enough. Just hope we haven't triggered for run away feedback in the mean time.

Why is cutting cattle number just fiddling? There is an annual photosynthesis cycle. In the spring & summer plants remove net CO2 from the atmosphere and in the autumn & winter it's released back to the atmosphere in net term. Because most land is in the northern hemisphere, this annual cycle clearly shows up in atmospheric CO2 graphs. In the graph, note how the annual peak to trough movement is considerably larger that the annual peak to peak change of the underlying trend. This shows that the natural seasonal carbon flows are larger that the 'new' artificial flow that is the result of fossil fuel burning, as I noted in my twitter update above. Cattle carbon is part of this flow of carbon from biomass back to the atmosphere.

Cut cattle number and what happens? The vegetation will be eaten by other domestic animals (and back to the atmosphere), lamb anyone? In places where there is no domestic animal, a combination of two things can happen. It will be eaten be native and feral animal or it won't be. If it's eaten, back to the atmosphere. What happens to uneaten vegetation? In temperate climate it rots in a year or two, releasing the carbon back to the atmosphere. In dry climate, in a health ecology, its gets eaten (and back to the atmosphere). If the ecology is unhealthy (near death) and thus lacks the grazers, is just sits there. Occasionally fire might burn it (again releasing carbon back to the atmosphere), but without the stomach of the grazers to fore fill the role played be temperate rains, the ecology remains near death. Imagine the great savannahs of Africa without their great herds.

So in any healthy ecology, the grazers do their thing. Remove cattle and the carbon just flows back to the atmosphere via other species (or maybe fire).

Cattle are problematic for two reasons. Their emit a higher ratio of their carbon as methane, a shorter livid, but a 'hotter' gas. Modern cattle production has become fossil fuel intense, by maximising cheap inputs (fossil fuel) & minimising expensive inputs, especially labour. I haven't read Tim Flannery's latest essay, Now or Never. I suspect his call for farming practices to change dramatically will match mine.

I'm sure big oil & coal are delighted be this simplistic push to 'go veg'. Like simplistic carbon accounting, it's a distraction from the underlying fossil fuel cause.

I've already said the real solution is cutting fossil fuel use, preferably to only non energy uses like plastics. That means the end of cheap energy, that's a fundamental change to the whole economy. Doing it would create an inflationary period like that of the 1970's. That inflationary period was partly caused by the first oil shock. This inflation would not be constant across the economy, high energy application would be worst hit. This inflation would change how business is done and what people consume.

How to cause this inflation? An emission trading system (ETS) is just shifting deck chairs. A carbon tax would have an effect, but doesn't target fossil fuel specifically. I would incrementally raise petroleum fuel (liquid & gas) excises and coal royalties based on carbon content. That is what helps bank rolls the required restructuring both domestic & internationally.

Cattle production would move back to traditional grass feed systems and shirk as people cut their consumption to meet their reduced buying power. Transport & refrigeration costs would change the way beef is consumed. More local, less big box, more eat-the-day-you-buy for most of our food stuffs. Not just 'make transport more expensive, people will eat less meat?'. A fundamental change to business as usual.


Gnoll110

The corruption of research in Agriculture.

This week Cubbie Station was placed in voluntary administration. The news story blamed drought, but I say it's simply too much debt.

Below is a thread that developed in the comments.

Robert2:
30 Oct 2009 9:42:26am

Yes, I think the governments of the eastern states, south Australia, and federal government should combine financial resources and buy the property, then set in motion a plan to dismantle the disgusting symbol of damn you Jack, I'm alright.

Cubbie is described as an icon of farming, it is nothing more than an icon of gluttony and greed.

Irrigators, not only at the top end of the Murray Darling system, but further south in areas linked to and a part of the Liverpool Plains are continuing with the old farmers attitude of "what is yours is mine, and what is mine is my own", to the detriment of Australias long term welfare. The disadvantage of long term destruction of our river systems can never be outweighed by short term profits and serf type employment for unskilled locals.

Australia needs to adopt a cultural revolution, with regard to its long term farming practices, and the attitudes of the delusionary agrarian socialists benefitting from the rape of our country.

Gnoll110:
30 Oct 2009 10:32:46am

So are you saying all water should be reserved to the cities and none to the land (& people) on which the rain actually falls.

There is a sensible mild ground here some where. I suggest you read the Queensland water reg and see if the sound reasonable for farmers. I've read & done the calculations for one property. As they stand they are still draconian (but less draconian the the last version).

At one stage the law assumed droughts only lasted one year. One failed summer monsoon meant new dams were dry for February to November of the second year of a drought!

It needs to be remembered that Cubbie is one of a kind (in Queensland). These cowboys found a loop hole is the old laws. The law was immediately replaced and after 20 years still hasn't found a workable middle ground.

Robert2:
30 Oct 2009 11:04:57am

Not by a long shot Gnoll, the city dwellers need to realise water harvesting is an advantage too.

Cubbie as an example of gross misuse, for short term financial gain, should be utilised as an education tool on not what to do, with regard to farming practices in the fragile inland.

Organisations around my locality are advertising regularly of schools for farmers and irrigators to attend educational courses on land care, to become long term carers of their holdings, not rapacious floggers of the land, as has been past practice. The very fact these government sponsored advertisements solicit the farming community to attend indicates the failure of their past practices.

Like everything, it, our land and natural water resource, will evolve, revolve or dissolve. The attitude and past practices will only hasten our fertile fragile inland resources to the point of decimation.

I think Cubbie itself is a bad thing. Too much water taken out in one place.

But I will take exception to the general outlook about farmer as backward & the latest science is the answer. Sounds a little like Moa's re-education camps.

For starter you have just got to look at past advice to farmers to know that at least some of it is wrong. Some advice just plan contradicts other or past advice. As the Scientific American once said “today's scientific truth is tomorrow's earlier scientific dogma". Often research get applied way outside situations that the research is relevant to.

A problem with agricultural science in Australia is that it's become captive to vested interests.

General publicly funded bodies have had their funding largely diverted to global warming research. A good cause, but shouldn't it be additional research funding that doesn't steal from other environment and industry specific efforts.

In grower funded research, vested interest appear to have gained a controlling 'influence' on research budgets. Research that isn't in their interests doesn't get done. It appears that fertiliser companies are blocking research in non chemical approaches to maintaining and improving soils, for example.

Basically, at least some of the research that farmers want done, isn't getting done!

At the state level, governments have pulling resources out of real research and are selling asset like research station land & intellectual property rights as they can.

Farmers have to live with the real results of changes in technology and practice. It's an evolution process. There are many changes/mutations that could take place. Farmer have to select the ones to go with. Make a poor selection and the environment kills you, natural selection at work. People get cautious when real or economic death is involved. To openly accept advice from players who don't have skin in the game is to increase risk. Research needs to build a track record before it will be widely accepted.

Update:
I want to sight this ABC story about interference in scientific publishing as a example of vested interest (political or business) influence and the impact it can have on the quality of govt advice.


Gnoll110

Algae Farming and it's Carbon

A few days ago, David Rush, @EcoEngineering over at Twitter, tweeted about Aquentium buying a New Mexico site for an Algae farm.

I responded with a comment about one line in the press release that looked funny to me. Here our conversation.

@EcoEngineering: Aquentium Announces 475 Acre Algae BioFuel Production Project - World Stock Wire (press release) http://bit.ly/mQWf1

Me: @EcoEngineering "Aquentium’s algae-based fuels will emit approximately two-thirds less CO2..." ??? shouldn't an algae system be GHG neutral?

Me: @EcoEngineering CO2 in at pond = CO2 out when it's burnt to product power/motion?

@EcoEngineering: Thx @gnoll110 So your saying more efficient algea system=more fuels to burn=more GHG. Good point!

Me: @EcoEngineering No, that if they don't feed the algae with coal/oil & make the setup using algae fuel, how can it not be GHG neutral?

Me: @EcoEngineering that is, as long as the setup is made using algae fuel, how could if be GHG positive? (all C from the air to start with)

Me: @EcoEngineering isn't the Atlantic Conveyor sinking and depositing huge amount of C (dead algae) of ocean floor how bioshere get ride of C?

Me: Carbon accounting strike me as simplistic, quantitative (at the expense of qualitative) and proven to creative accounting. Very spinable.

@EcoEngineering: Sorry @gnoll110 I think we're on different pages.

@EcoEngineering: @gnoll110 Send me a little more info so I can formulate a response please.

The above comments where made in reference to on-going operations. In a reply I've included the 'build' carbon too. I think a working Algae farm should be greenhouse gas (GHG) negative to start with and over time become slightly GHG positive once all fossils fuel usage (as a fuel) is replaced.

My reply to David and anyone who's interested.

Second attempt at a response. First one was turning into Ben-Hur.

Here is how I see it.

All the carbon in algae come from the atmosphere in the first place, so any burning process no matter how efficient or inefficient should be neutral at worst. Indeed an inefficient burn that produced an algae-char replacement for bio-char (charcoal) could make the process helpfully GHG negative.

Now lets switch to the energy front.

I going to assume that the total energy production over the life of the algae farm & associated processing chain is greater than the total energy consumption involved in building and operation said algae farm & processing chain. (if this is not true what we really got is most likely a coal to oil plant, and a different ball game).

Given the algae farm is a net energy producer, I'm going to assume these guys eat their own dog food and this means:
* they built the farm & chain using energy from the last one they built and
* that operational energy will be drawn from the farm & chain's previous operations

If the above is true, the carbon footprint is the physical carbon embedded in making the steel and other manufactures (ie coking coal needed to make the steel).

In reality this is likely not to be true. I.e. the bio-mass oil produced is likely to be used for transport, while the chain is operated by gas fired electricity (or some other non transport grade energy source). I'm not including this in my logic because this factor is highly situational.

Back to the carbon front.

Assuming that the net energy produced is going to replace the 'worst carbon energy source'. Isn't this what emission trading systems (ETSs) do? Act as a pricing mechanism to transfer resources between players. (I'm not including net changes to total human energy demand, that shouldn't effect the carbon & energy budget of individual artefacts).

Shouldn't any carbon cost of building and operating the farm & chain be far less than the carbon cost of building/continued operation of the low cost 'worst carbon energy source' that it replaces.

Granted the shut down of the low cost 'worst carbon energy source' won't happen on the day the algae farm & processing chain go operational. But the low cost high carbon alternative won't start either. Over time (and assuming governments don't corrupt the working of an international ETS system that includes an escalating carbon cost) the 'worst carbon energy source' will get replaced.

*** A working International Climate Change Agreement that a working International ETS system would be based on is a PRE-CONDITION to successfully fighting Global Warming (what the Australian Labor Party (ALP) is pushing atm does not meet these conditions and thus is a waste of current effort and may have big opportunity costs) ***

If the above happens, isn't an algae farm going to be GHG negative. The better the gross energy production:gross energy cost ratio (for the total life cycle), the more GHG negative the algae farm should be.

At some future date.

Repeating the no build/closures of 'worst carbon energy source' cycle over time would get you to the situation where the next algae farm itself becomes a 'worst carbon energy source'. One would hope that the base carbon cost is building an algae farm without the 'worst carbon energy source' offsets (offset = 0), is low enough that at that mythical future date when the human world as run by algae farm, the carbon load will be well within the Earth's ability to absorb (on an annual basis).

Update: If you get metal recycle percentages increasing, the net energy production would drop. but fossil fuel usage (as a feed stock, not a fuel) would drop too. This would close the introduction of fossil fuel (new) carbon into the carbon cycle down even more. More new carbon now (before the peak carbon), less new carbon later (at and after peak carbon): a good thing.

The end.

David, peer review to you hearts content. This in just a thought experiment on my part. Hope people find it helpful.

Gnoll110

Does Queensland Government planning suck?

Yesterday on ABC radio there was an interview with a town planner. He was talking about the Draft South East Queensland plan.

Sounds like they want an Urban & empty green space plan. All high and medium density urban or empty green (forest and farmland) space for urbanites to look at on their Sunday arvo drive in the country.

He seemed to think it was a good idea. As someone who would raised on the land and is not a farmer, but wants some room this move sucks.

New development is all small blocks or high raise (urban consolidation etc). Access to larger block (say an ½ hectare to 100 hectares) seems a thing of the past, specifically locking out sea and tree changers. The country looks to be becoming a patch of larger commercial (family & company) farms and small blocks that can't support a family full time. These smaller blocks are effectively frozen, too big to be subdivided unlocking value for the seller, too big for new smallholder to acquire for niche operations.

It leaves the small towns in a limbo of slow death. As the broadacre operations consolidate, towns and districts loose their population base. This lead to the lose of services (teachers, nurses etc to begin with, then schools, hospitals, banks, post offices etc), the start of a downward spiral if left unchecked. The only way to stop this decline is to allow population increase and that is locked out by these new planning trends. People who want to live in country towns don't move there to live like sardines. They want bigger blocks, either serviced town blocks or unserviced smallholding.


Gnoll110

Beyond the Brink

Got Beyond the Brink by Peter Andrews for Christmas.

Only done a quick skim and read the first two chapters.

One point I've already pick up and agree with is the amount of climate change that is human induced but not due to greenhouse gases. Deforestation, particularly where the amount of tree cover drops below 10% is having a large affect on the local and regional scale that few city people understand and many farmers underestimate.

I think a lot of the lose of rainfall in the Eastern coast and internal of Australia is due to over clearing at the farm and shire level. The most stable rainfall is inevitably east of areas that are protected for some reason or where the country was so 'poor' that agriculture never got established.


Gnoll110

Australia's move to draconian law

I'm in the process of reading Volumes I and II of Brad Lancaster's 'Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond'. Volume I is Guiding Principles and Volume II is Water-Harvesting Earthworks. The yet to be published Volume III will covers roof catchments and cistern systems.

There is a very timely comment in the Introduction to Volume I, I want to share. The last two pages of the Introduction, pages 20 and 21, is a FAQ. What follows is one of the questions and the first paragraph of Brad's response.

Are there rainwater-harvesting building codes.

Surface water laws vary around the country (Brad is based in Arizona), so it's wise to check in with local authorities. In my area folks can harvest all the water that falls directly on their site, but there are restriction on harvesting runoff within established waterways that pass through their site. Some arid countries have draconian laws prohibiting the harvesting of rainwater runoff generated on site. In such instances, harvest the rain before it becomes runoff.

Over the last 30 years, the laws in Australia have gone from reasonably fair to draconian. Up until about 1980 water was tied to land title, it management and use was integrated into the landholders management practices for each individual farm. Due to changes in technology (bigger pumped and earth moving gear), some law reform was needed in the 80s. The states governments used these reforms to not tweak, but to grabbed water and make it a tradeable profit centre for their budgets.


Gnoll110

Can Capitalism save the Rain forests?

Tonight, ABC’s Foreign Correspondent is showing a programs entitled 'Amazon Rainforest - Can Money Grow on Trees?'. Without see the program, I going to say yes.

Why? For me it’s a matter of first principles of economics and ecology. The very words themselves point to the way forward. Both are derived from the Greek ‘eco’ (oikos), meaning 'house'.

I will argue the economics is the ecology of human societies. Money is a token measure of energy and materiel. Ecology is a study of the measure and flows of energy and materiel in the wider biosphere. Classical economics is the study competition between individual and organisation. There is cooperation and other behaviors that are seen in ecology. Lots of strategies and tactics are displayed by organisms. Taking these and applying them to economics problems and situation should be the main source for developing viable global warning measures.

Gnoll110

Queensland floodwater and where it went

Back in January it rain in southern Queensland. Four days after this post it rain at home. The heaviest falls in a short period in over 30 years. 770 points (192.5mm) overnight followed by enough in storms & showers to get over 1000 points/10 inches (250mm) in four days. Can't believe I didn't post about this then!

Anyway, I got home for a week in May. Talked to my father about what happened to the water, between the grapevine & news/current affairs (ABC generally), we worked out it all went to two places.

A majority of it end up in irrigation (public & private) storages in the Western Division of NSW. Bleed out of the Darling River both legally and illegally.

What got past the mouth of the Darling at Wentworth disappeared by/at Lock 1. That happens to be the point where Adelaide draw its water.

Nothing got to the lower lakes, the crisis there continues! The first thing to do is to stop transferring water out of the basin. That mean Adelaide and Melbourne!


Gnoll110

Quarantine, the balls in your court.

There are plans to bring the dead human body into Australia, as part of World Youth Day 08.

The said body belongs to the Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, an Italian Catholic activist, who died of polio at age 24, in 1925.

Have done searches at both Customs's & Quarantine's web sites and come up blank.

I want to know how is this cadaver being treated and handled. Is the cadaver being treated and sealed by Customs/Quarantine before is leaves for Australia. Where is it traveling to and how is it being held, while here.

I’m sure there is a camp that will simple say “It’s a blessed body, therefore there is no risk”. I’m afraid that not enough for me. God gave me a mind and I'm going to use it!

How can people in Australia’s farming, grazing, forestry and fisheries sectors, as well as the general public, be assured the nothing unwanted is being brought in during this visit?

Maybe we should cremate the cadaver. If it survives the flames, it’s blessed and they can bring it in. If not, then they can bring the ashes to World Youth Day instead.


Gnoll110

Cycle, it's all cycles!

We’ve all seen the Atmospherics CO2 graph for the last few decades. It’s an upward trending line with an annual fluctuation. The uptrend is largely the result of the burning of coal & petroleum over the last 250 years. The annual fluctuation is caused by the photosynthesis/respiration/decay cycle of vegetation, the bulk of which is in the northern hemisphere.

Mauna Loa Carbon Dioxide

Ok, to stop the up trend, it pretty obvious what we need to do. Stop burn coal & petroleum! We need to shoehorn ourselves back into the annuals solar/geothermal energy budgets of the planet.

For some reason that’s beyond me, the knee jerk reaction seem to be to try to ‘freeze’ carbon out of the atmosphere using whatever mean is available. To shoehorn ourselves back into the annuals energy budgets of the planet we need to work with the carbom cycle, even accelerate it, not freeze within parts of it. This topic will be an assay in its own right, for the future. Stay tuned.


Gnoll110

1 billion less for the Murray/Darling?

I'm on Twitter, also as Gnoll110

Someone commented about the polish of Sen. Penny Wong, on the Lateline interview last night. I saw that and jotted down the figures and programs that the money was to be spent on. Here is my twitter updates.

Did you notice that Tony had to correct her on the total combined cost of all of the programs.

... and that she omitted stating the cost of one of the programs, thus you couldn't cross check the maths.

... I went back to the papers (the Age in March) to get the missing figure.

If you add them up, they come to $100 million more that the total figure Tony used. 'Rounding' error? 12.9 billion vs 13 billion.

Personally I'm a substance over style person.

If you count up what is specifically eartagged for the Murray/Darling, it comes to 9 Billion (1 b. less than the old 10 b.)

I'm not saying any of the extra money (1 b., the Victorian sweetener, or the new 2.9/3.0 b.) won't be spent in the Murray/Darling, just that the detail is missing. 1.5 billion is ear-tagged for desal, so that defiantly won't be spent in the basin.

Personal I'm of the option that water brought off farmers shouldn't be used outside the basin. If you've got a better use for the water, you should be setting up in the basin and using it here. If you don't, you're just transferring more wealth and economic activity to the big state capitals. Repeating the mistakes of the last 200 years.

Gnoll110

Gnolls 2020 Summit dream team

On Sunday the new PM Kevin Rudd, the Kruddster, announced plans for the 2020 summit on the weekend of the 19 & 20 April.

The summit will deal with 10 critical areas:

1. Future directions for the Australian economy – including education, skills, training, science and innovation as part of the nation’s productivity agenda
   
2. Economic infrastructure, the digital economy and the future of our cities
   
3. Population, sustainability, climate change, and water
   
4. Future directions for rural industries and rural communities
   
5. A long-term national health strategy – including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population
   
6. Strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion
   
7. Options for the future of indigenous Australia
   
8. Towards a creative Australia: the future of the arts, film and design
   
9. The future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens
   
10. Australia’s future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world.
    

The summits has the following objectives:

• To harness the best ideas across the nation
  
• To apply those ideas to the 10 core challenges that the Government has identified for Australia – to secure our long-term future through to 2020
  
• To provide a forum for free and open public debate in which there are no predetermined right or wrong answers
  
• For each of the Summit’s 10 areas to produce following the Summit options for consideration by government
  
• For the Government to produce a public response to these options papers by the end of 2008 with a view to shaping the nation’s long-term direction from 2009 and beyond.
  

Over the last day I've come up with the following names. Initially I was going to pull one or two names for each area. But I found many being included in two or three areas. I also had a few generalists too.

A few names that came to mind are either recently deceased or internationals who have returned home.

Anyway here is my list.

• Mike Cannon-Brookes (Co-founder and CEO of Atlassian)
  
• Reverend Tim Costello (CEO of World Vision Australia)
  
• Harry Evans (Clerk of the Senate)
  
• Frank Fenner (Scientist)
  
• Ross Gittins (Political and economic journalist and author)
  
• David Holmgren (Permaculture co-originator)
  
• Father Bob Maguire (Co-founded Open Family)
  
• Joel Malcolm (Aquaponics originator)
  
• Warwick McKibbin (Economist, RBA board member)
  
• Laurel Papworth (Social Networks Strategist, Lecturer at University of Sydney)
  
• Mark Pesce (Inventor)
  
• Andrew Peters (Natural Sequence Farming originator)
  
• Cameron Reilly (CEO of The Podcast Network)
  
• Rory Robertson (Economist, Interest rate strategist at Macquarie Bank)
  

I'll be adding more manes as they come to mind.

Here are two places worth keeping an eye on.
2020Summit.org
bloggerati

Lets get this show on the road!


Gnoll110

Farming is gardening

Who said farming isn’t gardening

Farming is a lifestyle. Take Christmas day. Father, brother-in-law and I spent about an hour pulling a new weed.

This one is called Despina(sp?) Pea. It’s a short thing, 3 to 4 feet. Well I’m not sure how tall it gets, isn’t that the aim of weeding. You don’t get to see how tall it gets or what colour its flower is.

First time I saw it was last summer, my bother and I pull one patch (unrelated to this years patches).

As an invader, where did it come from? We think its seed was in some hay, brought onto the place as drought feed, 12 to 24 months ago. Given its spread and amount, it must have only been in one load of hay.

It’s also been spread a bit from one of our stock feeding spots. We’ve been cleaning up some re-growth, before the election. This appears to have spread some seed too.

We’ll either get it all or we won’t. If we don’t, we’ll keep hand pulling the stuff until it’s to big a job. Then we’ll move onto other strategies. Hand pulling will put this of for years. That’s good economically and ecologically.


Gnoll110

Permaculture: Lessons from the New England

On Sunday, 23 September 2007, ABC's Landline aired an report titled "Wool industry spreading tree message". The reporter was Pip Courtney.

The New England region of Australia has suffered some wear and tear over the last 150 or so years. This came to a head in the 1980s, with the death of large numbers of mature trees.

Research into the problem has shown that the cause of the problem was an environmental imbalance. Boosted pasture productivity lead to increased insect loads. Some of these species also used and eat tree foliage. Basically, these insect demands overwhelmed the surviving trees, killing them.

The show covered five operations from an in-detail survey of 10 leading landcare leaders from the New England.

The one the interested me the most was ‘Luna’. It’s using a cell grazing system. This system in the result of antidotal observation and research in the grazing impact of the migratory savanna herds of Africa. Basically, heavy graving for short period appeared to be a stable productive grazing pattern. The result is ‘cell grazing’.

Here is the relevant section of the transcript. There are also link to streaming video resources.

TIM WRIGHT, 'LANA', URALLA, NSW: We're sort of realising that it's important to look after the whole. You know, we have more to manage than just pastures and sheep or cattle. You know, there's everything we've got to start to think about.

PIP COURTNEY: The first thing he changed were the fence lines.

TIM WRIGHT: Well, we started in 1990 and we had about 35, 40 paddocks, which was probably a fair few paddocks for that year. And now, 17 years on, we have approximately 270 paddocks.

PIP COURTNEY: Each paddock is grazed lightly four times a year.

TIM WRIGHT: So, that works out roughly eight to 10 days of a year or 95 per cent of the year a paddock is rested, which might sound pretty amazing, but we've increased our carrying capacity, the cost of production has gone down, the soil is in much better shape.

Sadly, there were no figures for the kinds of productivity change that had been produced for this site, over the years.

Cell grazing looks very like tractor grazing of chickens and pigs in permaculture.


Gnoll110

technorati tags:
permaculture chicken+tractor cell+grazing new+england landline