While there will be some impact from global warming, I highly doubt that it would result in the deaths of billions – no event in world history has resulted in the deaths of over two hundred million people, and while there will inevitably be such an event, global warming wouldn’t be it; it would be a war, an epidemic or a megalomanic dictator.

Of course, all these factors are sure to contribute. Global warming and the increased famine that results, will make each more likely. They shouldn’t looked at in isolation.

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Sounds like you should move to Australia john-ston.

Oh that’s right, climate change will mean that’s a barren waterless wasteland. Oops.

Actually, the latter isn’t the reason – it comes down to two things; the place is populated by snakes and Australians.

Apart from a barren Oz, the above scenario also includes a barren swathe across Africa, South America and Asia, as well as most of the current coasts and islands of the world under water. We’re talking billions dead and displaced. I wonder how many will decide to get on boats and come to empty and relatively pleasant Aotearoa?

Valis, I think you have watched The Day After Tomorrow one too many times (yes, I know it is about an Ice Age, but same idea essentially). While there will be some impact from global warming, I highly doubt that it would result in the deaths of billions – no event in world history has resulted in the deaths of over two hundred million people, and while there will inevitably be such an event, global warming wouldn’t be it; it would be a war, an epidemic or a megalomanic dictator.

In terms of people travelling to New Zealand, why not! It would solve the brain drain overnight.

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towaka

I too like oldlux’s approach, though I’m puzzled that you accept his call for a 40% target. Good for you!
My ‘rigid purity’ is also a target. I’m just trying to show where we should be aiming, if we are to be genuinely resiliant in our land use. I do support the movement of some elements, such as selenium, but would call for a closer look to be had at how to source them and how to apply them for maximum benefit. I also support the importation of seeds, if only as a one-off, so that land managers can get their system started. After all, we are starting from a degraded state.

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I prefer Oldlux`s approach to farming compared with the rigid purity of Greenfly.

I mean what can be wrong in gathering sea weed from the beach,or compost waste from some other industry to help soil fertility.

As ALL of NZ is low in Selenium we would have a lot of sick animals if most farmers were not adding this very important trace element to their soils every year.You can include the colbolt deficiency in the ash soils of the volcanic plateau and the fact that most NZ soils are low in P.Most farmers do soil and herbage tests to monitor trace elements and major elements for optimum animal health and soil health.

But to do this a lot of these ”missing parts” must be brought in from either locally or across borders to farm economically.

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After all my talk about land/population distribution I believe a 40% emmission reduction target is a great start and somewhere we must go in the interim to get people started. I see that as turning the process in a way that slows our excesses and allows room to look after survival essentials.

I also believe that it is not enough alone as people need education and support to change directions.
Public transport/car sharing – especially in rural areas
Organic gardens must be a better imperfect start than mowing lawns with motormowers. Maybe we need lots of tree growing and vege gardening contests to get people tuned in.
As the emmission reductions bite in we will notice discretionary spending will reduce so peoples habit of high tech toys will change. People will have idle hands so older trades and crafts become a huge social/economic/entertainment process.
This governmenmt is already trying to scrap night classes at schools.
Of course some pressure to keep the commons to the fore.
I think this illustrates a survival of the fittest approach of the present NAT/ACT government is still dreaming and will cause social breakdown. Who needs private enterprise taking over more of the functions that need to be more community involved.
Eg. the older skills we need to replace the plastic fix world are held generally by older people so they need to be involved in education: and if dryer times are coming – water.
Privitisation only helps the investor groups trying to salvage their funds that they have invested in the modern world of throwaway.
My generation that grew up through the extravegant golden years need to cut their losses and share their skills other ways.

My comments might seem extreme but so are the warnings from the scientists who say we have about 5 years to turn things around. Funny thing that their predictions to date have been conservative as the market politicians tried to save their unsustainability.

The great thing is the polling shows most people think not enough is being done. Watch out the NATS/ACT government

Farmers are harder to convince as they see they have a trump card in the food production, but take out fuel and those in the cities will be looking for resources to survive. How far away is that scenario? I think the Greens are the only answer but they are too nice and quite rightly focussing on the positives.

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SPC – you wanted to know if 40% was Green Party policy and I answered that I didn’t think it was.

You went on to say,

So if they advocate a 40% emission reduction target, including agriculture, I would be right?

Safe to say that they don’t and you aren’t, yes?

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towaka asked:

Greenfly,

Do you have a vegetable garden? If so I wonder how you get on with out using outside inputs.

I do. I get on well and so does my garden. Without importing anything, I get inputs. Rain, for starters. When it hails or snows, I get free phosphorus. Winds from the south bring salts from the nearby ocean. Birds fly in and deposit their guano (for which I’m grateful). Earthworms pull leaf little down into the soil, pass it through their gut and produce a product that is richer than what went in, thanks to the addition of the enzymes they add. Sunlight powers the system – energy in, captured and stored. Deep rooted perennial herbs like comfrey ‘mine’ the subsoil and bring leached nutrients up to their leaves then onto the soil surface for the worms and microorganisms to feed on and convert to humus. Those small ‘livestock units’ eat, breed and die, adding their bodies to the biomass. Don’t underestimate the contribution that makes. The vegetables we grow, we eat and return to the soil as processed humanure, having composted the raw material, added saw dust from our own trees (I prune) and made the resulting material available to soil organisms. Visitors are welcomed to add to the process We grown a lot of legumes, some annual, some perennial (kowhai for example) and you know about the nitrogen capturing power of those. We cultivate very carefully and generally only once when new land is being ‘started’ on it’s cycle of production. Vetch, clover, pea, bean and grains, especially oat and rye, are used to build carbon and nitrogen. We collect sink water in a swale reed bed as it exits the house and grow papyrus, raupo and other bulky plants for mulch production.

I’m guessing this was the kind of thing you were wondering about.
* We use hand tools (we fell trees with a two person saw) We have wandering ducks.

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My own viewpoint on what we should do is that we should exclude agriculture for now (say 2010-2015 and review that for the final period to 2020). In the meantime requiring farmers to adopt best practice – in the first instance clean waterways, and as research comes in – farm management in the 2015-2020 period.

We can stonewall foreign critics by saying we will move as they do – if they have fair free trade in agriculture including emissions tax,then we will, but if they don’t … (they won’t give us free trade in agriculture)

We minimise harm to our export competitiveness while improving (more sustainable) farm practice for our own future well being.

“SPC – to make clear your claim that the Green Party is advocating a 40% target for emission reduction, could you please provide a link so that I can see for myself. Perhaps you’ve seen it on their website, who knows.”

I never claimed that, I simply asked you if that was Green policy.

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i also grow oyster mushroom at home here and always have plenty spare if you would like some

cheers

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towaka

I have a vegetable garden, I use a little bit of dolomite and sometimes blood and bone from the waste of others. I collect a bit of seaweed at the beach when there and compost all my waste including vege wastes from purchases of food. I give quite a bit of my produce away, but I cannot grow enough in the space I have to be self sufficient. When I was living in the bush the surrouinding forest was nearly enough to be self sufficient. Over a longer period in one place I believe I would have become more so. My biggest problem has been that in our present social structuring I was isolating myself without enough contact.

I believe, however, that with the shellfish shells I add for long term liming I have left the soil better than when I left it.

If I tried to buy a place and grow organically to pay a banker as well as live I would probably not be able to claim sustainability, as I have to carry the work load of the investor and his unsustainable living.

This process maybe the source of the unsustainability?

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Bucolic old sir henry

at close inspection i recongise the face they are both great dogs and its so much FUN!!! i would love to try porcini have you tried peg on the hagley boletus ? i was told today they where around so i started looking it brought me here

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i have the no1 truffle dog in nz she just won nz truffle dog of the year

Very true, and Chloe’s a fine dog, but mine found the best truffle of the day…

If you want to find some porcini in ChCh, just let me know.

Cheers

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Greenfly,

Do you have a vegetable garden?If so I wonder how you get on with out using outside inputs.

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I seem to recall a comment that suggested that global warming would result in Auckland having a climate similar to Suva, and Dunedin having a climate similar to Auckland. If that is what global warming results in, then I don’t have any issue with it.

Apart from a barren Oz, the above scenario also includes a barren swathe across Africa, South America and Asia, as well as most of the current coasts and islands of the world under water. We’re talking billions dead and displaced. I wonder how many will decide to get on boats and come to empty and relatively pleasant Aotearoa?

Is there such a thing as criminal myopia? If so, john-ston should be arrested.

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hi greenfly
i would love to sample some king boletus and had heard they where in the park i have been finding black truffle in nelson and chch for the last 6 years are you in chch ? i have the no1 truffle dog in nz she just won nz truffle dog of the year . she would find them with ease

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Sounds like you should move to Australia john-ston.

Oh that’s right, climate change will mean that’s a barren waterless wasteland. Oops.

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The early predictions about the climate effects were often not well formed as now we are improving the understanding. The predictions I first took seriously talked of greater fluctuation of various conditions. My explanation is that the air currents that cause all these patterns will be moving faster as that is what heat does to gases. The dry hot zones we have been familiar with are created by the warm air at the equator rising and coming down in zones further north or south depending on the hemisphere. For us these have been in Australia and our Northland has had very dry summers, the traditional dairy season started early and ended early because of the dry.
The edge of this dry zone is temperate and full of moisture so for us this is moving south.
I would imagine that the warmth rising faster in our winters will draw more cool air from the antartic patterns.
So we are looking at colder winters and dryer summers with shorter growing periods. Last year I saw the Mangakino area acting more like the Waikato a decade back, and the Waikato acting more like Northland. If this becomes a pattern then all the present investments and capital values will alter.

Many years ago a friend showed me the translation of a diary written by an Austrian Museum scientist (can’t recall the name)who came to Aotearoa before much colonisation. He walked the country painting and writing. His comment that amazed me was that the bush was so intact the leaf mould was 1m deep in most places – thus the kiwi habitat – but he talked about the temperate air this created and even in the winter there was no frosts.
The so-called Maori savages lived in an harvested this temperate zone and respected the balances – most of the time, I guess different migrations and those who were influenced by European thinking began changing this, and then the disaster of sending all the trees overseas and the pure devastation. Now we have to cut down trees or pay for eletricity to stay warm.

And we think all our technical knowledge has created huge progress. Captain Cook wrote of 20,000 Maori living in Mercury Bay (Coromandel) when he first anchored there, now the area is lucky to economically support third to half that number.

We need to get away from the crap that our economic system is superior to everything. I think it was the myth told to the early colonists so they would keep supporting Europes unsustainable lifestyle. We still haven’t learnt this. It is great that more younger people are waking up and I hope they don’t get more angry instead of disillusioned.

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john-ston

Further to that, the plants, insects, birds, fishes and the rest of the expendibles have all adapted to changing climates over time, so that is really not an issue.

Funny! Have you read anything at all about the effects of rapid changes in climate on such life forms? It aint pretty. Expect extinctions.

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towaka

I was angling to find out whether the system you described was propped up by importing and you show now that it is. Without the inputs of maize and soy, the soils in his fields would be in deficit. That is my point. If a farm needs outside inputs of that kind, it’s not a ‘sustainable’ operation (that is, it takes from elsewhere, just to be balanced)
Your ‘by the end of the day’ is not correct, though widely accepted by farmers here in New Zealand. The farming practice that requires inputs to the extent that it commonly does now, is wrong. Oldlux (above) has a lot of very sound ideas that better describe what it is I’m pointing at.
Yes, I am opposed to that system.
To explain more fully what I meant when I said, ” I don’t agree with your statement etc..”
Taken as a whole, over all, with all examples included, pastoral farming in New Zealand isn’t building up soil to any degree that we should be proud of. The losses we have suffered and continue to suffer from the agricultural practices in New Zealand are serious. Where soil depth can be shown to have increased, it is likely to be the result of imported energy, applied wastefully and with no regard to the location it was taken from, nor the true cost of moving it to the farm. It’s a smoke and mirrors trick, building up soil with energy from somewhere else. Looks green and verdant, but it is illusory. True soil building occurs on site, using plants and sunlight. Animals, insects, micro organisms, fungi and so on are part of that process, but the ‘ungulate plus pumped up grass’ combination doesn’t cut it for the real soil steward.

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That’s right john-ston, the important thing is that people get to choose the climate. B*gger the plants, insects, birds, fishes and the rest of the expendibles.

So you like suffering through the cold of winter? I absolutely hate it, and I absolutely hate the patheticness of our summers as well. I seem to recall a comment that suggested that global warming would result in Auckland having a climate similar to Suva, and Dunedin having a climate similar to Auckland. If that is what global warming results in, then I don’t have any issue with it.

Further to that, the plants, insects, birds, fishes and the rest of the expendibles have all adapted to changing climates over time, so that is really not an issue.

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