No point in petty bickering ... we're all in this boat together

Now - I was always a bit of a "climate change" yeah yeah whatever ...

Went to a seminar on the weekend, part of which was to learn about soil health. The key speaker was Graeme Sait, a well renowned and proven expert, only to have a "side topic" grasp my attention.

No point in nit picking about census or racism ... methane is the bad boy on the block if we don't pull our act together in the next 2-3 years. New Scientist has more recent data and is publishing the warnings, but I can't share if you don't have a subscription:

Seven facts you need to know about the Arctic methane timebomb | Nafeez Ahmed

Arctic News

This makes all of human carbon polluting look like a spit in the ocean. Around 40 governments around the world are taking the threat seriously - wish ours would too.

The solution? Rebuilding soil humus (the top juicy layer that has depleted worldwide by 50% in the last 100 years). And it's easier than you think

 

More scare tactics to bolster his profile... and ultimately sell his Nutri-Tech products/services.

I'm still not convinced that man-made climate change is a "thing". I'm sure the climate is changing, it probably always has, I'm sure the atmospheric composition changes over time too.

I'll be interested to see what the next 10-years of alarmism will bring.

 

I'm not convinced you have a clue about science.

 

By the way, the arctic methane issue is a major concern, but if the clathrate gun fires, we all die. Interestingly, Japanese scientists are mining clathrates to see if they are a viable energy source.

Clathrate gun hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Actually - at the seminar he didn't promote his products at all ... he told us how to make them ourselves from readily available, natural products.

It was all the other legitimate scientific sources that are the "scare tactic" if you care to read the two I posted and then research yourself further - and Graeme was providing a solution - that is now being followed by 44 governments, but sadly not Australia or the USA.

 

I am hoping to live long enough to see whom amongst all the various doomsday brigade turn out to actually be right !


(if I took all of the vitamins that I am supposed to, to prevent/extend/supplement then I would be too full to eat! )

 

I'm not convinced you understand the difference between causation and correlation. Or the fact that we're short on about 4.5billion-years worth of climate data and solar activity to make any statistically meaningful representation of "man-made" climate change.

 

That's the beauty of it... he doesn't have to promote anything.

 

I'm not a climate change skeptic however as Austrialia happens to be of the highest/capita contributors to GH gases (the argument used by larger polluters with high population but lower/capita contributions), we, as a nation, only contribute about 1% of the total. So unless we become a net negative contributor ie take out gh gases from the atmosphere, we will achieve zip/have a negligible effect.

 

Interesting hypothesis. Can you please show a link to your published paper. I bet many many other scientists have cited your paper.

 

Scott - apparently the human output (pollution) is minimal compared to the carbon increase in the atmosphere from the "airbourne" loss of topsoil.

Topsoil is the greatest container of carbon, not trees, but apparently over 50% of topsoil has ended up in the atmosphere, caused by poor farming and land clearing practices - and now, with the atmosphere 1 degree warmer, the real risk is the methane "burp" from the melting frozen tundra and loss of arctic ice that previous covered decomposed mountains of ancient soils ...

The solution is quite simple and - as intelligent people - we need to see the logic (aha moment) of what we have done to the soils and repair them.

 

Isn't it funny that those miners cop all the flack for digging their dirty holes and making a mess, when meanwhile the cockies are plodding along being loved cause they grow some weet bix and it's pretty but in actual fact farming is doing lots of damage to.

The wheatbelt in WA has big problems with salinity but they likely won't address because 1 it's to hard 2 haven't heard of bush regeneration yet 3 they need all the money their can get atm

 

No one can publish a meaningful paper without the data to support it and neither "side" have enough data either way.

The trend we're shown as 'evidence' is over the past 250 years, which is about 0.0000056% of the Earth's supposed life to date. That's like taking a 3min snapshot of a person's life and predicting what will happen next week.

Neither 'side' has a convincing argument either way and I don't lose sleep over this stuff..

 

That is in your paper? Post the link please. I want to read it.

 

If there is a lack of evidence, that can be discussed and a paper published. That paper could then be cited by others. In this paper I assume you disprove the science of ice cores which show past atmospheric conditions and the ratios of oxygen isotopes in sediment cores which show past temperatures.

I won't post anymore. You are beyond logic and reason.

 

During his 4 hour presentation (thankfully split into 2 hour lots due to audience brain overload) Graeme cited paper after paper after paper to back up his conclusion.

I personally was a climate change skeptic, because I couldn't understand how humans could be "polluting" enough to make a dramatic change ... but being on the farm, and seeing cringeworthy farming practices, what he is saying makes absolute and compete sense.

Only have to look at the change in the climate around Broken Hill once they cut all the trees down for miles around to feed the iron smelter (way back) ... 100 years ago it was a lush and green area - now it's a desert. LibGS's example is another. The American dust bowl is another ...

12 million hectares of farmable land is lost every year due to desertification (poor land management) according to the UN

Background Information on Desertification and Land Degradation for World Day to Combat Desertification - 17 June

 

Neither will I. We've kinda strayed off-topic onto stuff that I'm pretty tired of going over and over..

 

Absolutely agree that land degradation, with topsoil erosion and clearing in general is not good. Something does need to be done to fix problems in these areas.

What I'm not convinced about is that the Tundra will keep thawing and that vast reserves of methane will be released with catastrophic consequences. It might, but it might not. In any case it certainly puts the fear-factor into the case for doing something, and creates a "point-of-difference" about the speaker, that is memorable for his audience. It's a very old and very effective persuasion tactic.

 

I guess the reply to the "might or might not" statement is ... do we, as humans, want to take the risk that it "might not", when it is so simple to take action to try and prevent the "might"

 

No. We take the simple action because there's a host of other good reasons to. We have no idea whether our actions will impact the arctic tundra or not.