COMMENTS ON WHAT'S HAPPENING IN OUR WORLD

Started this page July 25 2010

The Land, August 15th, 2010: Gillard's Carbon Farm

Ms Gillard says a Labor government will study the possibility of storing carbon in soil. How long would that take? How many academics could live on how many grants, for how many years, and still get nowhere?

My father and I did it with Keyline fifty years ago. Natural farmers, organic farmers have been doing it for a few thousand years. So let's all do it.

The Coalition have promised you farmers a carbon dioxide equivalent of $10 a tonne for all the humus you can add to your soil. That's about $20 a tonne for added humus. And there are no strings attached. You just figure the best, the easiest and the cheapest way of doing it. As long as the carbon levels go up you get your money. It's a win-win for all.

(read the article here)

In The Land August 12 2010; My comment on "Labor's empty Murray water buyback"

The Murray's lower lakes were always open to the sea before we blocked them to raise the levels of the river for water storage a hundred years ago. The lakes' water levels have been below sea level for some time now. So if the environmentalists were genuine, they should plug for reopening them to the sea. The other piece of nonsense is that keeping them as fresh water we have to contend with evaporation losses, and those losses are at least five times the water usage of Adelaide. It's insane.

(read original article here)

August 11, Queensland Country Life: Why can't agricultural academics get it right?

Things changed in the 1950s when my father P.A Yeomans and I brought out the Yeomans Chisel plough and our Keyline system ideas took off.

Academics read too much into what is happening in other countries and presume its happening here. They're wrong. Overseas the use of agrochemicals are promoted by the State and by their agricultural authorities much more so than here.

I few years ago I gave several talks at universities and colleges in the US. When describing a typical farm in Australia and how it was managed students would ask was I talking about an organic farm. That's how different and advanced most farmers are in Australia in managing soil. Sustainable carrying capacity has improved all over Australia and that means soils have had to improve.

I simple say pay our farmers $10 dollars a tonne to sequester CO2 into soil by enhancing fertility. It becomes a double bonus. We both stop global warming and massively increase food and biofuel production. The Coalition have adopted the concept, and agreed to paying the $10 dollars. It's now in their “Direct Action Plan”. So let's hope they get in.

(read original article here)

Soil carbon sequestration to be locked up in time wasting research. Queensland Country Life, August 9th 2010

Organic farmers and biodynamic farmers have been increasing the humus content of their soils to amazing levels and in amazingly short times for donkeys' years. So it's easy to do and organic farmers usually do better in bad times as well as good.

But if your job is to sell agrochemicals then my Soil Carbon Solution at www.Yeom ansconcepts.com.au is their worst nightmare. So they fund research, demand validation, claim lower production. Say testing is difficult and needs study. Back studies that flatter chemical use. Study cigarette company strategies. And always remember the rules: foster doubt, create delays, and constantly discredit the opposition. And spread the money around, thick and fast.

I say it's sickening.

I say just pay the farmers $10 a tonne for CO2 equivalent into soil humus.
All those thousands of farmers out there will soon figure the best way of doing it. We pay only on results. No sequestration no money. It's a win win.

The Coalition have now taken this concept on board and it will be the best thing to ever happen to beat global warming. Apart from China, Australia has the biggest agricultural land area of any nation, so we must lead.

(read the original article here)

GM Holden in Australia nearly got it right. The Land, August 9 2010.

Ethanol has slightly less energy per litre but is also slightly lighter so at least for aircraft, range is unaltered. Plus with ethanol we can go back to the higher compression engines that needed lead and had better efficiency and so used less fuel. But really global warming is the big issue here, that is unless you are one of those petroleum programmed global warming sceptics. And yes maybe the Earth is flat.

I did write to Holden some time back and suggested they include an extra tank and set up the engine to also run on straight hydrous ethanol. It's expensive to remove the last drops of water to produce anhydrous ethanol. So hydrous ethanol is much cheaper. E85 engines suit the oil companies. Most US cars are now E85 compatible but the owners often don't know. So E85 sales have been kept down. Oil interests are happy, and people will eventually forgive and forget the Gulf of Mexico (with suitable PR) .

Engines that can run on straight hydrous ethanol are the real threat to the petroleum companies and the Middle East states.

(read the original article here)

In Queensland Country Life July 27 2010; My comment to a report on a farmer with common sense (that's really not that common.)

A great example in Western Australia of how our farmers are improving the land and not destroying it as is constantly claimed by those with university degrees who are consistently taught the opposite.

Yes, if we pay our farmers everywhere just $10 for carbon dioxide sequestration into soils global warming ends.

How sequestration actually works is on YouTube at ”Climate Change Terminated”. And congratulations to the Pensini family of WA for again proving that fertility and carrying capacity can both be enhanced for the betterment of all.

(read the original article here)

My comment to Queensland Country Life. Tuesday July 27

A good shower of rain and the grass is there in greater abundance than ever before. Long term carrying capacity has doubled. Erosion is less than pre-farming natural erosion. The land is no longer burnt off every few months. I wish these people in their ivory towers would wake up and look out the window. Australian farmers aren't just sustaining the land they're improving it. Imagine the mess the country would be in if government, environmentalist and university types took over from our farmers?

And yes pay our farmers for the mass of extra carbon they could put in their soils, with very little effort, and global warming would be history. Google Yeomans Concepts and go to the Soil Carbon Solution and see how easy it can be.

(read the original article here)

Queensland Country Life reported today July 26, 2010 that the Energy Supply Association of Australia was complaining that both Liberal Party and Labor Party policies on climate change were creating uncertainty and had “already caused power companies to slash $10 billion off their spending plans for the next five years”

I said in their “Readers Comments”

Billions of dollars to be spent on coal fired power stations frozen; that's good news, not bad. The uncertainty complaints all come from the gas and coal power industries and their lobby groups, Google who's complaining. It's sickening. They're so “noble” so happily support solar, wind, wave and tidal energy projects because they know they're no threat. It's nuclear energy that's cheap and safe and totally greenhouse gas free. And that scares them. So their antinuclear public relations campaigns power on. Their funds and lies flow freely to the “green” parties and “environmental” groups. I say; why don't we put just 2 cents a kilowatt loading on fossil fuel power production and give it to any non fossil fuel power system for say twenty years. Carbon dioxide power emissions would drop to zilch. Gillard's idea that you can build as many coal plants as you want just so long as the chimney has a coupling to hook it to some future magic carbon dioxide collector is a giant joke. So make them pay the 2 cents and let them have it all back when they get their “Carbon Capture and Storage” up and running. They claim it's all feasible. So fine; let's call their bluff.

(link to the original Queensland Country Life article)

July 25, 2010 Queensland Country Life reported that Minister for Natural Resources, Mines and Energy Stephen Robertson confirmed that his department employs 173 officers to monitor and enforce the Vegetation Management Act, but just 79 inspectors to cover the mining, gas and petroleum industries. So fossil fuels and global warming are to be ignored by the Queensland Labor Government. To me it makes them like George Orwell's thought please. The problem was that farmers didn't know what they could or couldn't do with their own land.

I said in their “Readers Comments”

  Trees are great for shade. They make good wind brakes. They are also handy for fence posts and fire wood. Good trees produce very useful timber. Apart from that they are useless.
  They don't stop erosion, they generally cause it. There are no trees on The Siberian steppes, just grass and there's just no erosion.

The Amazon is a nett producer of greenhouse gasses, not oxygen. Termites and rot generate methane. A carbon sink? No way. It's useless. It's already full. Otherwise the forest floor would be knee deep in carbon.

The VEGETATION MANAGEMENT ACT 1999 is supposed to protect “ endangered regional ecosystems”. Well they're 50,000 years too late. Nobody has a clue what Australia's “natural” look should be. It's long gone.

Protect biodiversity? Again too late. At the same time the many millions of years long giant marsupial era also vanished.

Australian farmers are fixing the mess despite incredible government stupidity. Carrying capacity has leaped. So obviously soil quality has massively improved. Kangaroos now outnumber people.

Best thing would be to rescind that dopy VEGETATION MANAGEMENT ACT entirely, and ASAP.

(link to the original Queensland Country Life article)

  July 25, 2010 PROPERTY Rights Australia chairman Ron Bahnisch reports in Queensland Country Life news paper that a contractor was fined $20,000 dollars for clearing 465 hectares of a farmers scrub land near the town of Dingo in central Queensland. The paper reported that

“The $20,000 penalty is the biggest fine handed to a contractor (non-landowner) under the Integrated Planning Act 1997 and Sustainable Planning Act 2009 for a vegetation-clearing offence.”

I don't think the farmer hasn't been charged as yet. I said in their “Readers Comments”

Land owners in general have more sense and more understanding if the land and more interest in its wellbeing and improvement than just about anybody in the Department of Environment and Resource Management. I know who I'd trust to care for Australia.

If the Department's motive is global warming then simply take an inventory of the carbon in the un-cleared land and let the farmers clear as much as they want. But with a proviso that the improved soil must have more carbon stored as was contained in the original scrub land. And it's all humus.

They'll actually store more carbon. The soils will be healthier, more fertile, more productive and almost immune to erosion. Australia will be a better place. See The Soil Carbon Solution at my web site Yeomans Concepts. Google Allan Yeomans or whatever and you'll find it.

I've been working with the Hon Greg Hunt MP the shadow minister for climate change and now the Coalition, if elected have given an undertaken in their DIRECT ACTION PLAN to pay farmers $10 a tonne CO2 equivalent for all the extra carbon they store.

So let them clear the land. It's a win win for everybody.

(link to the original Queensland Country Life article)