Australia, when Europeans arrived, consisted of a series of biota highly adapted to what we now call hazard reduction burning. The reason is that this is what the aborigines had been practicing for 50,000 years or so.

They were greatly assisted in this by the existence in Australia of the “The Fire Tree”, the eucalypt. The eucalypt promotes fire and is resistant to fire, so that in a regime of constant burning, eucalypts have a higher survival rate and you tend to get the type of monoculture remarked on by many early scientists, including Charles Darwin.

Since the advent of European man in Australia, we have, by preventing the Aboriginal practice of Fire-stick Farming, changed the landscape.

More here by Peter Stitt: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/hazard-reduction-burning.pdf [PDF, 109 KB]

Cartoon Credit: Steve Hunter http://www.stevehunterillustrations.com.au/political-cartoons/

By Viv Forbes

Food depends on land access, farmers, fertilisers, tractors, carbon dioxide and carbon fuels.

Famine always follows global cooling, drought and silly politicians.

This article looks at the recent history of the things that have driven world food production since the days of horse drawn ploughs. It examines the large increase in food production caused when tractors replaced horses, and the way the introduction of modern fertilisers saved many farms from bankruptcy. Drawing on his own childhood experience of farming using green (horse) power and other stories from this era, the author exposes the key factors supporting world food production today. And mentions the abuses of some modern farming aids.

Farmers depend on fertilisers to replace the soil minerals shipped off to cities in farm produce. They need machinery such as tractors and trucks, carbon fuel to power these machines, and freedom to find the best ways of producing healthy food while maintaining the productivity and value of their land.

But most of all, our food supply depends on the magic plant food of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide. It is a sad commentary on the state of science education and the strength of alarmist propaganda that carbon dioxide, the gas that supports all life, is now widely thought to be a pollutant in the atmosphere.

Finally it looks at the possible threats to our food supply.

The biggest threat is political – the plan to use taxation, rationing and legislation to force farmers back to the days of the horse and buggy when 40% of farm produce was used to fuel horses. Only now they want the farms to produce all the ethanol and biofuel to fuel our much larger vehicle fleet. The continual closure and restrictions on land use by carbon credit forestry, vegetation clearing bans, ethanol production and other land restrictions is already reducing food supply.

The weather is indeed a threat to farmers and food supplies. But the threat is not global warming – ice, snow and cold weather are the main climate threats to farmers everywhere. Every past warm era has been a time of prosperity and growing population. The current generation of politicians and their bureaucracy has not studied science or history.

And warmer climates must produce increased evaporation from seas and lakes. This aerial moisture must cool, condense into clouds and fall somewhere as rain or snow. No farms are ever threatened by a warm moist era – it is the cold periods and the drought eras we need to fear. The whole climate alarm industry is focussed in the wrong direction, for the wrong reason, and their wrong policy prescriptions can only worsen any food shortages we may encounter.

For the full article with pictures and diagrams in a print-ready state see: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/feast-or-famine.pdf [PDF, 426 KB]

The human race advances by exploration, adventure, experiment and innovation – by looking forward. The Green Generation worships the past and would take us backwards.

Their promotion of “sustainable farming” yearns for a bucolic nirvana of self-sufficiency with no room for modern farming that has produced the food surpluses that sustain the cities. Their worship of the ‘precautionary principle” would have us cease innovating and experimenting “in case something goes wrong”. They scare our kids with never ending forecasts of doom. And they hobble our enterprising spirit with taxes and green tape. Their goal is to force the human race to retreat to the past, abandoning our mines, farms, forests and fishing grounds. This is a real model of doom for a large part of the human race.

The climate industry forges on with scant regard for science or logic. Water vapour in the atmosphere is by far the most effective “greenhouse gas”. Should we also have a tax on steam?

Finally, to the people who say “we have not noticed any effects from the carbon tax” – we say “They planned it that way”.

More:

• Sustainable Farming – the Impossible Dream
• Retreat to the Past
• Climatists not Fair Dinkum?
• Why have we not noticed effects of the carbon tax?
• How to Create an Intermittent and Costly Electricity Supply Industry

Read the full report: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/retreat-to-past.pdf [PDF, 184 KB]

Keywords: Sustainable farming.

“Australia, when Europeans arrived, consisted of a series of biota highly adapted to what we now call hazard reduction burning. The reason is that this is what the aborigines had been practicing for 50,000 years or so.

“They were greatly assisted in this by the existence in Australia of the “The Fire Tree”, the eucalypt. The eucalypt promotes fire and is resistant to fire, so that in a regime of constant burning, eucalypts have a higher survival rate and you tend to get the type of monoculture remarked on by many early scientists, including Charles Darwin.

“Early settlers repeatedly remarked on the constant burning carried out by the Aborigines and often described the Australian landscape as grasslands with widely spaced trees.”

Peter Stitt, Bushwaker and Environmentalist.

For a fascinating report on the condition of Australia when Europeans arrived see:
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/fire-and-landscape.pdf [PDF, 1.8 MB]

We acknowledge that this report was prepared for the Murrumbidgee Catchment Management Committee and was obtained from the library of the NSW Farmers Association.

Below are some comments received by “Carbon Sense” in 2011. Originals of all (with full names) are held in our files. Naturally we also get a few brickbats, some too abusive to reproduce, but they are vastly outnumbered by comments like those below. We appreciate all feedback, even critical ones. We learn most by being challenged by intelligent people.

Read here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/testimonials.pdf [PDF, 183 KB]

The Gillard-Green Coalition and their “independent” allies are in temporary control of the Australian Parliament. They are about to sign a death warrant for their parties and for many of their supporters by voting for the Carbon Tax package. It will take decades for their parties to recover from the electoral venom they have unleashed. Despite enormous opposition from the public, especially those outside the capital cities, and despite a specific election promise that “There will be no carbon tax”, we are about to get a carbon tax mess so complex it takes 19 bills and 1,100 pages to document it.

What do we do?

Read on: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/opposition-never-ends.pdf [PDF, 40 KB]

Some image of wind turbine failures.

More images here: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/wind-turbine-failure.ppt [PowerPoint file, 483KB]

It is not possible to achieve the government’s planned cuts to the production of carbon dioxide without significant shrinkage of our main industries.

There are only two ways to achieve their unrealistic emission reduction targets.

The destructive but honest way is to allow the shrinking targets and rising taxes to force closures or relocation for our backbone industries.

The dishonest way is to pay billions of dollars to overseas carbon shysters who, in return for our bribes, “promise” to make the reductions on our behalf. This will achieve nothing except pauperisation of Australians.

The tax apologists will claim – ‘but the tax only applies to the top 500 polluters’. Every company hit with the carbon tax must pass it on to all those who use their products. Soon every industry and consumer will feel the costs, even if they do not understand the sneaky mechanism.

People who think the cuts can occur painlessly have not looked at the hard facts of our industries.

It’s not possible to make steel without generating carbon dioxide. No carbon tax can change that.

It’s not possible to make cement or brew beer without generating carbon dioxide.

It’s not possible to generate electricity using brown coal, black coal, diesel or gas without generating carbon dioxide.

It’s is not possible to run a car, truck, train, tractor, ship or plane on oil, gas, diesel or petrol without generating carbon dioxide. Even electric cars, trains and elevators get their energy mainly from coal or gas. As for wind power, 70% of its “capacity” will be delivered by the backup gas facilities, all producing carbon dioxide.

Cattle, sheep, goats and pigs cannot live without generating carbon dioxide. (Even humans must exhale occasionally.)

The Australian government plans to reduce the production of harmless carbon dioxide by 5% (or maybe 25%) by 2050, despite increasing population.

Which industry will be first to cop the carbon chop? They should start by blocking all emissions from Parliament House.

Or is the carbon tax just about grabbing a new source of government revenue?

More, together with:

• How to Solve the Global Warming Crisis – Stop Breathin’
• The Greening of Australia
• Climate Change Reconsidered
• Anti-Carbon Tax Rally, Perth
• Will a Carbon Tax stop our Natural Disasters?

in the PDF: http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/copping-carbon-chop.pdf [PDF, 110 KB]

President Obama and a chorus of environmentalists, politicians, corporate executives and bureaucrats are perennially bullish on wind power as the bellwether of our “clean energy economy of the future.”

In reality, wind energy may well be the least sustainable and least eco-friendly of all electricity options. Its shortcomings are legion, but the biggest ones can be grouped into eight categories: land, raw materials, money, energy, health, environment, jobs, electricity cost and reliability.

Read the whole sad story by Paul Driessen at:

http://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2011/09/01/our_least_sustainable_energy_option/page/full/