LAST week the International Whaling Commission (IWC) met on the Portuguese island of Madeira and agreed that climate change is a threat to whales.   A decision on the Danish proposal for Greenland to hunt 10 humpback whales a year was postponed.  Australia’s Environment Minister was there and told the meeting that whale-watching is a growing industry worth more than whale hunting.  Ian Mott disagrees:

“THE claim, by Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett, that whales are worth more alive than dead betrays a breathtaking level of economic ignorance and a dangerous penchant for simplistic, “Cargo Cult” panaceas.

 Garrett’s message,  “That whale-watching is an industry which is growing right around the world and that the potential for communities to generate sustainable livelihood from watching whales – not killing them, but watching them – is significant.”
 
For central to his claim is an assumption that whale watching and whale harvesting are mutually exclusive activities. As if the entire whale watching industry would disappear if a single humpback whale was hunted for food. Clearly, the 1000 Minke whales already taken each year, for a decade or two, have had no adverse impact on the whale molesting industry. Indeed, the industry has a very obvious inclination to maximise the flow-on effects of the media attention provided by the anti-whaling protesters. If the Japanese were not involved in whaling then the whale watching industry would be much smaller than it is today.
 
We need to be very careful about lending credibility to people who are incapable of incorporating any sort of “grey” in their consideration of “black and white”.  There are between 50,000 and 100,000 humpback whales world wide and more than 1 million Minke’s and any suggestion that the further expansion of the whale watching industry is being constrained by inadequate whale numbers, or infrequent sightings, is pure bollocks. As with all tourist related industries, the limit to growth is defined by the supply of customers willing to pay, not by the number of boats, not by the number of operators, and not by the number of whales. Just double the number of operators and we will soon find out how relevant actual whale numbers really are to the viability of the industry.
 
In fact, we have the curious circumstance where the key ingredient in the product mix (the whale population) is in robust good health and expanding while a key element of the marketing message is the claimed threat posed to whales and their supposed rarity. It is marketing of a product using messages that are in direct variance with the facts. Funny, I thought we had a Trade Practices Act that specifically outlawed this kind of marketing.
 
And one really must take a very hard critical look at this $3 billion that is being bandied about as the annual value of the industry. The standard MO of the industry advocate is to throw in the accommodation, meals and all other activities that the whale watcher might engage in during the visit in which they also spent a morning watching whales. So a whole weeks worth of accommodation and entertainment is claimed under the whale watching banner even though it might only occupy a small fraction of the tourists vacation time. If the operators pulled that sort of stunt in a share prospectus they would cop a good long stretch in jail.
 
But these claims also betray a woeful grasp of business costing on the part of Garrett and the industry. Even if we accept the bogus $3 billion value of the whale watching industry world wide we must still spread that value over the entire world population of whales. They cannot have it both ways. The industry does not watch many Minke Whales at all but they insist that the harvesting of Minke’s poses a threat to their industry.  So if this industry is claiming that the survival of every whale on the planet is a prerequisite for the survival of their industry then they must include the capital value of every whale in their costing and pay a commensurate economic rent for their exclusive use of that resource.
 
That economic rent must be determined from existing markets. And in Japan, whale meat retails at 2060 yen/kg or AU $27/kg. So a typical 7.0 tonne Minke whale might produce 3.7 tonnes of dressed meat at $27,000/tonne or $99,900 each.  A 45 tonne Humpback might produce 23 tonnes of dressed meat worth $620,000 each. So if we ignore all the other whale species we can see that the 1 million Minke whales, that the whale watching industry demands exclusive use of, has a capital value of $100 billion. And the 100,000 Humpbacks has a capital value of $62 billion. Add in the other species like Fin whales etc and a total value of the whale resource is easily in the order of $200 billion. And in that light, the $3 billion whale watching industry represents a rate of return of only 1.5% per annum.
 
Or to put it another way, $3 billion divided by 1.5 million whales amounts to only $2000 per whale. It is akin to taking the whole 7 tonne whale and only using 74kg of it.
 
But wait, the whale watching industry currently makes no payment for its current shared use of the whale resource and it has given no indication of a willingness to pay any premium for exclusive use. And to be fair, the whale hunting nations have also given no indication of a willingness to pay for the portion that they use. But unlike the whale watchers, they certainly don’t demand exclusive use of the entire resource either.
 
So where does that leave us? Well, one thing is certain, if the whale watching industry had to pay the full annual cost for each whale that it “uses” based on a normal rate of return on the capital value of the whale then they would very quickly work out exactly how many whales they really needed each year. A modest 5% annual interest on a $620,000 Humpback would amount to $31,000 each year, for each animal they engage with. They could view each whale on its way north and again on its way back south. And they might even spread these costs between other whale watching businesses along the coast who could also view the same whale.  Add some standard tracking devices and the entire industry could offer a guarantee of sightings while actually engaging with a very small number of animals. But the price of a viewing would be unlikely to drop below $3,000 a pop.
 
But no. As is so often the case, the whale watching industry demonstrates how a natural resource that has no value attached to it will ensure the grossest inefficient use of that resource. They seriously believe that they need exclusive use of every whale on the planet to satisfy a market comprised of people who, in all probability, will only pay for the experience once, or maybe twice, in their whole life.
 
The fact is that neither the whale watching industry or the whale eating industry are operating in a way that will optimise this natural resource. One of the two seeks only to use a sustainable portion of the resource while the other demands exclusive use of the entire resource for which it has no intention, nor capacity to pay for.

Ian Mott
Byron Hinterland, NSW, Australia

***********************
 
Notes and Links

MSM mention of Environment Minister at the meeting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/24/2607050.htm?section=australia

USA hijacks IWC in an unprecedented move: Denmark’s humpback proposal postponed to special meeting
http://www.wdcs.org/news_stop.php?select=402

Ian Mott is a third generation native forest owner, miller and regenerator from the Byron hinterland.  A former Sydney and Brisbane Executive Recruiter with his own agency, his interest in the family property has seen him evolve, over the past decade, into a property rights activist and consultant. He is secretary of the Landholders Institute Inc and has held a number of positions on national, state and regional level policy and planning bodies.  Mr Mott has a blog at http://ianmott.blogspot.com/

The photograph shows a reader of this blog, known as David, and Jennifer Marohasy eating whale in a restaurant in Tokyo in September 2008.  More here:  http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/09/eating-whale-in-tokyo/

According to Ian Mott, a third generation landholder, they modify parts of the landscape but they do not destroy it.  In the following note, Mr Mott suggests modifications to government advice on the management of livestock in riparian zones. 

 ”PICTURES at a Catchment Management Authority website have been provided as “evidence” of the degraded condition of “our” environment due to grazing of stock in riparian zones. But in reality, the site provides a very good example of how a few pictures and sloppy captioning can tell a thousand lies.

The introductory text claims: “Inappropriate livestock grazing is one of the most significant causes of degradation to the land-water interface in Australia. Livestock have long been part of the Australian landscape. Cattle, sheep, horses, goats and pigs arrived with the first settlers in the 1780s and moved with them across NSW into the Central West. Settlements sprang up along river systems supported by clean water and fertile floodplain soils.  Since that time, livestock have caused damage to the most sensitive part of the landscape – our riparian lands.”

We see cattle by a creek and some exposed soil, in the above photograph from the website, which would lead most urban punters to conclude that this picture is representative of the entire length of the creek on that farm and representative of the situation on all grazed creek banks on all farms.

But we can be quite certain, given the proven MO of CMA’s and their staff, that the picture shows worse than average impacts?

A random inspection of the first, second and third  order farm streams that account for most of the riparian interface in the landscape is unlikely to provide a single example of conditions like those shown. It is also highly improbable that anything like those conditions would be replicated over the entire length of that particular stream. Indeed, there may be only one or two such examples on the entire property.

It is also quite certain that the conditions produced in the photo represent the sum of all cattle damage over a period of more than 100 years. Once the landform modification has been made by the stock to match their normal level of traffic, the rate of change (called degradation) will reduce to a minimum. Most of the modification shown in the photo would have been done in the first decade after settlement. 

Stock can produce physical modifications to a small portion of a riparian zone when they are first introduced to a landscape or when a major increase in animal traffic at a particular point takes place.  If the stocking rate has essentially remained the same and the number of access points is not reduced in a way that increases traffic on the remaining access points then there is minimal on-going impact. But the CMA text merely indicates that this “significant” damage has taken place “since that time” (ie on a continuous basis, in the past and in future).  It converts an historical event as evidence of a future threat.

And it begs the question, do we regard a road culvert as evidence of land degradation? Or do we regard it as a piece of infrastructure that is a normal and necessary part of the prevailing use of the land as a road?

Clearly, we view it as the latter.

So why do we regard customary tracks (roads) made by cattle for their own continuing use as anything different to our own road culverts?

Both involve an initial excavation that exposes soil and both then involve only minimal soil disturbance for many decades after.  And just like our road system, the more traffic cattle tracks have, the greater the visual impact.   Do we begrudge Elephants or Caribou their right to shape creek crossings? No, only domestic stock.
 
To its credit, the site does include some helpful tools for minimising on-going soil movement. And just as for our own road culverts, this involves paving the  most prone parts of the road with rock and concrete. The irony is that this simple, logical solution can only be carried out with the approval of DPI and the additional cost and effort that involves. And it is also fairly obvious that any approval for such works would only come with very significant and expensive conditions like fencing off the entire riparian zone and installing unnecessary watering points and piping.

Don’t get me wrong, additional watering points away from streams and dams make very good sense as they spread the grazing intensity more evenly over the entire area. But when faced with baseless, ideologically driven demands to render existing in-stream watering points redundant as a condition of approval for your voluntary good works, most farmers, justifiably, opt to let the authorities continue abusing themselves.

The second photo shows a fairly normal steep bank of a deep riverine cross section. Yes, there are sheep in the picture but one is left to wonder what, exactly, is the impact of those, or the past century of previous sheep, on the steepness of the river bank? 

Sure, they graze on the grass and may also graze on any tree seedlings that might germinate there. But the chances of such stems surviving the first flood event are quite low as they are more rigid than grass and much more likely to get tangled with passing debris.

Are we to seriously believe that without the sheep this river bank would be steeper?

No.

Is there any evidence that the bank is not maintaining its form?

No.

Would the bank structure be any different if there were trees atop the bank?

No

In fact, if trees were present we would probably observe exposed roots as evidence that additional erosion had taken place.  The area of exposed soil would be greater because the grasses would be competing for moisture with the trees and this would present a more erodible face to flood waters with greater potential for snags.  

The third photo is just as misleading.  
We are told that: “This creek was severely polluted with sediment and animal waste laden run-off.
The rapid increase in nutrient levels caused a massive toxic blue-green algae bloom, rendering the creek water unusable for stock or domestic consumption.”

But what they do not tell us is that this is a temporary condition that starts at the beginning of a dry season and will only last until the pool dries up later in the season. More importantly, they do not mention that most high faecal E. coli counts and algal blooms are the result of self reproduction in the warm stagnant water.  As was found to be the case with Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin,  most algae in a bloom is of a secondary or “regrowth” nature.

The severity of an algal bloom or the ultimate concentration of faecal E . coli, is not a function of the initial volume of coli being supplied to the pools in runoff. Rather, the longer the dry season, the warmer the temperature, the shallower the pools and the less frequent the intermittent runoff events take place, the greater the exponential rate of bacterial and algal growth becomes. 

Algae reproduce faster and more often in favourable conditions, get used to it, folks. 

So we need to add a few comments in italics to the official CMA summary in black, below, to give a true and fair view of the impacts of grazing on riparian zones:

Impacts of riparian grazing (Modified version)

On-site:
• isolated, once-off loss of vegetation cover in the first few years of exposure to grazing
• once-off soil compaction at a few specific points and initial erosion
• once-off bank instability followed by long term stability of the modified landforms
• isolated instances of reduced water quality
• no evidence of reduced property values from the presence of stock modifications
• enhanced germination of native tree species in hoof depressions etc

Off-site:
• localised instances of poor water quality (increased turbidity, nutrients and salinity)
• very localised loss of in-stream habitat
• isolated, once-off changes to river channel shape of minor consequence
• minor silting of rivers and creeks compared to that produced by unsealed roads
• enhanced natural regeneration of native trees along previously cleared creek banks

Clearly, a picture can, indeed, tell a thousand lies. And government and green pictures seem to tell the most lies of all.

Ian Mott
Byron Hinterland, NSW, Australia

***********************

Notes and Links

Ian Mott is a third generation native forest owner, miller and regenerator from the Byron hinterland.  A former Sydney and Brisbane Executive Recruiter with his own agency, his interest in the family property has seen him evolve, over the past decade, into a property rights activist and consultant. He is secretary of the Landholders Institute Inc and has held a number of positions on national, state and regional level policy and planning bodies.

Mr Mott has a blog at http://ianmott.blogspot.com/

The offending website can be found at: http://www.cw.cma.nsw.gov.au/pdf/Information/BMPs/CWCMA_Information_BMP_0288_ripariansheet_livestockmanagement.pdf

Indeed I have lost count of the number of published images of the Victorian fires that provide clear and damning evidence of our legislator’s role in the manslaughter of so many innocent Australians. Almost every image of a burned out home also exhibits the unmistakable signature of ill-informed social engineers who have abused their legislative powers to compel, what is now clearly proven to be, one of the most destructive social changes ever forced upon a minority community.

The facts clearly establish the case that the Victorian and other state governments around the country have made a direct contribution to the character, scale and intensity of the wildfires, and the death and destruction they have caused. They made critical choices as to the form and content of seemingly unrelated legislation which has banned the use of some of our most readily available and effective fire risk management tools.

And they have not just implemented that legislation in a manner that has prevented efforts to improve fire management and lower the associated risks. These people have established a policy architecture that has actively discouraged, on pain of penalty, rural people from preventing the state sponsored deterioration of fire management conditions and all the increase in risks associated with it.

In the days when large fires were fought and defeated by men and women without machinery, pumps, water bombers or GPS, the axe was an essential tool for reducing the height of the fire face at key defensive positions. My own father, the late T.R. Mott, spent most of the 50 years of volunteer firefighting, that earned him an Australia Medal, carrying the day with axe and hoe.

The proper exercise of legislative power has always demanded the full consideration of all relevant matters, especially matters of entirely foreseeable risk or detriment. But our vegetation management laws all ignore the fact that any tree, let alone a number of them, within 100 metres of a house, in extreme fire weather, is a very dangerous thing. Any tree is most dangerous when all its leaves and branches remain on top of the trunk where they raise the height of the fire front, greatly extend its zone of radiation and assist in projecting embers far and wide.

Yet, almost every image of a burned out house has a backdrop of young trees, also charred, right next to the smouldering heap. Most of the trees are a long way short of “pristine old growth”, as the greens would have us believe. They are rarely more than 20cm in trunk diameter with most of them only 6 to 10cm thick, less than 10 metres high, and easily dispatched with an axe, let alone a chainsaw. They are usually close together which means they have been in fierce competition for soil moisture and with much drier leaves than would be the case with more widely spaced stems. This renders these trees even more dangerously combustible than normal.

The simple, dare I say it, inconvenient truth is that any tree poses the least risk of all when it is not there at all. But unbeknown to the greens and the legislators, there are numerous options between these two extremes, of no trees and too many trees, that the metrocentric policy processes have completely ignored.

Any tree will present a smaller portion of its maximum fire risk when it is not in fierce competition for soil moisture with closely spaced neighbours. A broader root area means a larger volume of available moisture, and this means that moisture is available for a longer portion of the interval between rainfall events. And that means that the leaves retain their moisture for a longer portion of that interval, thereby making the tree less combustible for a greater part of the year. It also reduces the amount of leaf fall in dry times. And in most of the photos of burned out houses, the amenity of the site would not have been reduced in any way if half of those trees had been removed long ago. But in fact, all of them should have been removed, some of them long ago and others just before the fire came.

It is trite but true that any tree presents only a fraction of its maximum fire risk when it is on the ground, or when all or part of the trunk remains standing but all the branches and leaves are on the ground. The height of the fire face is substantially reduced, the exposed surface area is reduced, the zone of radiation is seriously diminished and the height and distance of ember projection is reduced. More importantly, the fuel in the branches and leaves can then be moved to a safer place, preferably down wind, or concentrated in one place where the resulting fire can be contained. Indeed, if action is taken early enough then this fuel can be eliminated with a bonfire, buried, or completely removed from the site long before the fire season.

Yet, as far as the vegetation management legislation is concerned, the moment any single native tree, even a sapling that has only grown this past year, is cut, topped, lopped or otherwise damaged, it is classified as “broadscale clearing” which, apart from a few exceptions, can only take place with the consent of the relevant authority. Eskimos have numerous words for snow but here in Australia our legislation has only one word for tree management, “clearing”. And this consent to clear, of course, has absolute “Buckley’s Chance” of being obtained in the short interval between a wind change and an ember storm. And even if a determination was given in time, in most cases the proposed action would be rejected.

Governments have gone out of their way to completely eliminate this highly contributive fire management option from the community’s collective wit. So even when it is absolutely certain that every tree in the path of a megafire has less than half an hour of life remaining, the legislation persists in defining any person who cuts down or lops just one of those trees as a criminal.

Even when the trees have grown in a paddock or roadside verge long after a house was built in good faith, in a safe, open paddock, the legislation has actively prevented the homeowner from removing that regrowth to maintain the conditions of fire safety that were present when the house was built. And we then get assorted “experts” who assume that all trees were always there and that it is the home owner who has been at fault for building in a silly place.

Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that even diseased trees will resprout with vigorous coppice growth after they have been either burned to the ground or cut down, the legislation persists with this incredibly ignorant urban green delusion that the whole tree, roots and all, has been destroyed, never to regenerate or be replaced. But this is clearly not the case. In fact most lignotuberous eucalypt species have specifically evolved to do this naturally.
 
The vegetation policy milieu also has an overwhelming fetish, if not monomania, for connecting gaps in forested vegetation in some ignorant belief that it somehow enhances habitat value. Despite uncontested historical evidence that most of our forests were widely spaced grassy woodlands for 50 millennia prior to European settlement, the legislation has imposed the closed canopy as the key attribute that must be “preserved” and encouraged under all forest management regimes.

Despite clear evidence that the majority of forest dwelling species are dependent on the grassland-tree interface, the legislation imposes arboreal dominance. Birds dependent on grass seeds or grass eating insects for survival are allowed to starve as closer and closer canopy cover provides a dubious visual reward to our remote “eyes in the sky” while understorey diversity crashes.

Despite clear evidence that species like Koalas will cross pastured gaps more than a kilometre wide, and forest dwelling birds that have no problem with a 10 or 20km gap, a home owner who maintains a 50 metre gap between forested clusters for fire management purposes is regarded with a certain suspicion as to his ecological bona fides. And anyone who would like to create such a gap, that would present absolutely zero barrier to the movement of dependent species, is closely monitored after his application is rejected and prosecuted if he does so without seeking a consent that would never be provided anyway.

It is about this point in the narrative that all those who are most culpable will seek to divert attention from what they dismiss as “the blame game”. The most culpable will maximise the coverage of themselves as sympathisers and mourners to produce maximum perceptual distance between themselves and their guilt. Others will whip up some serious public fury at arsonists. But make no mistake, the responsible legislators and their green masters had a choice as to what sort of regulatory approach they would take. And they must accept full responsibility for the entirely foreseeable consequences of the poor choices they have made.

Put briefly, any vegetation management legislation option was required to interface with the planning legislation. The primary architecture of this legislation is based on the concept of “development” and the powers only extend to controlling of development. There is no power to compel changes to, or require consent for, existing lawful uses. This term “development” means new uses of land or premises or “material changes” to existing uses.

As far as the cutting of trees is concerned, this could constitute a new use of land, as with clearing of untouched forest for cultivating crops. Or it could constitute a normal and necessary part of an existing lawful use, such as the removal of a few trees to supply replacement fence posts from a woodlot that had been set aside for that very purpose. In the latter case the tree cutting could not be classed as development because the action did not amount to a “material change” in the nature of the use.

If the farm was sold to a housing developer, and the entire woodlot was removed to make more room for houses, then this would amount to both a new use of the land and a material change in the use of the woodlot. The planning legislation already picked up and required consent for this change and with it came the power to impose conditions on the new use, such as retaining the woodlot, or a reasonable portion of it if it covered a large part of the property.

But if the farmer had cut down and sold all the trees in the woodlot but had earlier completely renounced any option of selling some or all of the wood, even in a financial emergency, or major contingency like medical expenses or Uni fees etc, then this might constitute a material change in use. But in most cases landowners wisely do not limit their options in this way.

In fact, such were the climatic and economic vagaries of past times that just about every piece of forested land on private property was set aside for just such a circumstance. Woodlots were never left purely for habitat purposes as numerous departmental spivs would encourage people to do today. Yes, the farmers enjoyed the improved amenity and habitat value of their forested portions but, in the absence of a welfare system, the woodlot was also the reserve of last resort, to be exercised when re-stocking after drought or just before the bailiffs came a-calling.

And when the mostly urban based legislators tried, briefly, to get their distracted brains around the problem of defining material change to such a broad range of lawful uses they simply gave up. Just and equitable legislation that was consistent with established principles of the overriding planning framework was all too hard. They took the cop-out instead, the easy way out, and opted for a blunt instrument wielded by the myopic, or the downright malicious. They declared that the cutting or even pruning of any single tree to be “development” and deluded themselves that by providing certain stated exemptions they would avoid most of the adverse consequences for most of the time.

The problem is that bushfires don’t occur “most of the time” but preparation for them is best done during that “most of the time”. And trees produce seeds during that “most of the time” and the wind blows those seeds onto adjoining land most of the time. And birds eat seeds most of the time and deposit those seeds all over the place most of the time so that young trees grow where they are not intended, most of the time. The complete failure to recognise this fact meant that the legislation was slowly imposing a material change of use, by way of additional tree cover, on just about every piece of land that was not ploughed or mown on a regular basis.

And as with all regulatory regimes based on compulsion rather than incentives, the framework has acquired a completely debilitating, counterproductive, and clearly destructive focus on the detection of breaches and the prevention of loopholes. So even when the use of the humble chainsaw will make no material change and actually improve the survival prospects of both the tree itself and its owner, the legislation continues to criminalise reasonable men and women seeking nothing more sinister than their own survival and the protection of their core assets in a circumstance of extreme emergency. And they have done such a thorough job of it that none of the people that were victim to the fire appeared to have given the slightest consideration to the tree lopping or dropping option.

At a time when more than 500,000 hectares has been burned to ash, with almost every one of the resident wildlife incinerated with it, the regulators are apparently concerned that someone, somewhere, might take advantage of a bushfire management loophole to get rid of a tree that he just doesn’t like. And to top it all off, Premier Brumby still has the gall to make reference to those “pristine” native forests.

If Brumby is serious about putting all the cards on the table in the review of this disaster then he and his advisors need to get right back to core principles based on real and relevant material change in vegetation management and apply proportionate responses, justly and equitably. And by their deeds (and their omissions) shall we know them.

*************

Ian Mott is a third generation native forest owner, miller and regenerator from the Byron hinterland.  

Images of the Victorian  Fires:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow_ajax.aspx?sectionid=9016&sectionname=slideshowajax&subsectionid=150966&subsectionname=bigfires
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow_ajax.aspx?sectionid=9016&sectionname=slideshowajax&subsectionid=150966&subsectionname=bigfires
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow_ajax.aspx?sectionid=9016&sectionname=slideshowajax&subsectionid=150966&subsectionname=bigfires

Humans have developed some curious rationales for various food taboos.  Now a Swiss restaurateur has been banned from serving dishes prepared with human breast milk.  This ban would seem to be the most convoluted and lacking in underlying principle. 

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/634151/breast-milk-delicacies-off-the-menu

On one hand we have most humans on the planet having consumed this product at some time in their life. And the medical evidence is quite clear on the fact that children who do consume this product have higher immunity levels and are likely to perform better on a number of cognitive and behavioural tests.  And the overwhelming view of child health professionals is that, ”the longer children consume this product the better it is for them”.

It is also a fact that there is no restriction on the source of this product. So-called “wet nurses” have been part of human culture for millennia and this supply has nearly always been associated with some sort of exchange of money or kind. So there is clearly no cultural objection to the commercial sale of human breast milk for consumption by other humans.

There is also no hint of exploitation or coercion associated with the trade as it is entirely within a context of informed consent and conscionable conduct.

It is also the case that devices to assist with the mechanical extraction of human breastmilk are freely available for sale and have been extensively tested and trialled to the extent that there are no issues in respect of health or safety of either supplier or consumer.  Any other issues, in respect of the passing on of communicable diseases etc, are already well catered for (sic) by existing food standards and legislation.

So what we are left with is a taboo that is not based on the product itself, not based on the source of supply of that product, not based on the human-to-human dimension of the transaction and not based on the commercial nature of the transaction. It is also the case that there is no prohibition on the non-commercial use of human breast milk, for example, where a woman could use her own milk in a dish prepared for her family.  Indeed, some could argue that this would represent the ultimate act of nurturing by a loving mother or wife.

No, this taboo is solely based on the age of the human consumer and the arms length nature of the transaction. Neither of which appear to have any relationship to the actual participants. It is a taboo that is entirely within the mind of non-participants with no identifiable adverse social consequences.

And as duly elected “Chief Glutton” of a group of culinary wanderers called “The Restless Palates”, I don’t think I will ever look upon a fine buxom lass in the same light, ever again. It puts an entirely new meaning to the term, “guess who is coming to dinner?”

Regards

Ian Mott

———————————-

Breast milk delicacies off the menu

September, 19, 2008. NineMSN

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/634151/breast-milk-delicacies-off-the-menu

Cotton farmers routinely add 200kg of nitrogen/ hectare but the growing and ploughing-in of Vetch in rotation has been found to add 140kg in a more balanced application that is safer for the following cotton crop in dry times. It substantially reduces cash outflows, leaving the synthetic form of this fertiliser as an ‘opportunity outlay’ to boost production in a good year. It seems the humble Fava Bean is almost as good for this purpose, with the advantage of producing a cash crop as well.

The implications of this, not just for farmers in less developed nations, is that they have the means to boost production in response to higher world food prices without placing additional demands on world oil/fertiliser supplies. In poorer countries the input cost is no more than the price of seeds and the farm family’s own labour.

Regards
Ian Mott

Just be sure to take it all with a grain of salt because that is a narrow minority urban view. Afterall, the majority of the world’s population are still farmers and fisher folk. And under the principles of universal sufferage and one vote one value, it is the farmers perspective of high food prices that should, but rarely does, prevail over the bleatings of minority urban panic merchants.

It should not be forgotten that in the entire sweep of human history prior to 90 years ago, almost all non-railway transport fuel was grown on farms and the trade-off between the use of grain for food or transport was a central element of all human commerce. A part of every farm was set aside as the “horse paddock” and part of every oat or corn crop was set aside for both family consumption and horse transport and traction purposes. The family’s ride into town was fueled by a stomach full of grass but it was the bag of oats, that was contentedly munched on while the shopping was done, that fueled the ride back home. Every farmer also knew that if they wanted the ploughing done on schedule then they would need a few more bags of supplemental grain to maintain the effort. And all the products the family had bought had been transported by animals whose sole source of fuel was grain that had been bought in the same market where the same grains (of slightly different quality) were sold as food for humans.

In fact, the traditional Amish communities are still doing it to this very day. And somehow, lumping them in with the likes of Pol Pot, Adolf and uncle Jo Stalin seems just a wee bit over the top, don’t you think? Especially when you look at their CO2 emissions per capita. And if the Amish are committing crimes against humanity for diverting human food for transport purposes then what does that say about Hindu farmers who, for religious reasons, allow perfectly good cows to die of old age, un-eaten by anyone?

More to the point, there is not the slightest doubt that the presence of this competing demand for agricultural output played a major role in maintaining food prices at levels much higher than these recent “record levels” that have been attributed to rising oil prices. And it was these very same high prices for agricultural produce that ensured that small scale family farming remained as a profitable occupation. It is what maintained most of the population, and the jobs, in rural and regional settlements where their ecological footprint was incapable of producing excess CO2. It took cheap oil, cheap food and the urban megopolis to pull off that stunt.

It was also these higher food and transport prices that played a major role in curbing mankinds propensity for the kind of conspicuous consumption that is having a major impact on the ecology of the planet. These higher prices ensured that houses remained at sensible sizes, used less resources, were easier to heat, cheaper to maintain and were built closer together. People could afford to buy them with just one income. This produced denser housing in more compact towns and cities where walking, bicycling and public transport were more viable. They formed stable, safe neighbourhoods where kids could walk to school and be monitored by a careing community. And despite the past lack of medical advances, people were fit, active and rarely obese.

The drift of population to the cities was much slower under high food prices and this slower pace of development was at a rate that planners could cope with. These smaller cities enjoyed greater utilisation of infrastructure, lower maintenance costs and fewer diseconomies of scale. It was, dare I say it, a much more ecologically sustainable pace of change.

So we need to be cautious about the underlying perspectives of those predicting catastrophic outcomes from high food prices. For it may well be the case that the simple lifestyle and market induced responses of ordinary folk to higher food and transport costs will do more to cut CO2 emissions than all the climate wallies combined.

Yet, many would agree that it is not good sense to be starving poor people all over the world for the sake of a target set by uncertain science and rampant green whimsy. But it must also be remembered that most of the worlds poor are rural poor, not urban poor. And it is only the minority urban poor who will be in serious trouble from higher prices.

For the rural poor this doubling and trebling of food prices is the good economic news that well informed development economists have been calling for for decades. The major cause of their poverty was the low cost of energy and the resulting artificially low break even price of industrially farmed commodities. These low priced industrial food stocks undermined the prices of third world farming produce to the point where the results of a days labour were insufficient to feed the farmers family for that day. This was further exacerbated by the dumping of subsidised food as “aid” to the expanding urbanised populations that needed to be placated to maintain any semblance of order.

In contrast, the major increase in energy costs has produced a major increase in the price of fertiliser which is obviously not good for those users. But in the third world this also means that the nitrogen in a cows turd has also undergone a major increase in value to a point where the effort expended in collecting that turd will be properly rewarded by the additional food it will grow and the major increase in price that food will command.

And while the increase in energy costs has raised the price of weedicide for the developed world, for most of the worlds farmers it has re-created the circumstances in which a day spent chipping weeds with a hoe will be rewarded with more than enough food to make it worth his while. The improved weed control improves the water use efficiency of their limited rainfall supplies. It can have the same effect on farm output as a 30% increase in rainfall.

The problem in third world agriculture was never one of lack of underlying capacity. Cheap commodities from cheap oil simply undermined the structure of their local economy to a point where the effort required to produce a surplus of food over their own needs was more than the extra food was worth and the people who might have bought that surplus were all in the city, too far away.

Those days are now gone. These farmers have been sent a very powerful price signal from the market place that their efforts are now valued more highly and are prepared to pay a much fairer price for what they produce. The additional spring in their step that this will produce will be akin to giving them an extra acre of land each and an extra 100mm of rain.

And those members of the starving, rioting urban poor who still retain their links to the rural community will soon discover that there are new, secure jobs back home providing services to those who, some for the first time in their lives, are enjoying an investable surplus and economic security based on their own effort, under their own control.

And after all they have endured under the tyranny of cheap oil and cheap food, who of us would not wish them all the very best in their endeavours. As Candide said to Pangloss after a lifetime of catastrophe, “that is all very well, but there is work to be done in the garden”.

Ian Mott

The Center for Biological Diversity contends that staghorn coral and elkhorn coral are “the first, and to date only, species listed under the Endangered Species Act due to threats from global warming.” Kieran Suckling, the policy
director of the Center, “We think this victory on coral critical habitat actually moves the entire Endangered Species Act onto a firm legal foundation for challenging global-warming pollution.”

The Center for Science & Public Policy has published a report taking a closer look at the scientific evidence, which reveals that the impact of global warming on the overall health of coral species is likely to be positive–towards increased species diversity and richness and habitat expansion–and there is evidence that these changes are already underway.

The hope that this endangered species designation will somehow become a tool for global warming legislation is grossly misplaced. Global warming will likely be a benefit to elkhorn and staghorn corals, especially along the
Florida coast where increasing ocean temperatures should encourage coral reef development further and further northward.

The report is available at http://ff.org/images/stories/sciencecenter/coral_reefs_and_global_warming.pdf

Paul Georgia, Ph.D.
Center for Science & Public Policy
Frontiers of Freedom

The annual average area cleared in the period was 351,000ha of which 172,000ha (49%) was remnant vegetation with the remaining 179,000ha (51%) being non-remnant woody regrowth. When this was broken down into Carnahan vegetation classes some 193,000ha (55%) was of a type that would not be included within the meaning of forest under the National Forest Inventory. That is, it was “Tussocky or Tufted Grasses” and other vegetation types that have less than 10% foliage cover and are less than 2 metres tall. This presentation still does not allow us to determine what proportion of the 158,000ha (44.7%) cleared remnant vegetation was actually non-forest vegetation types that may actually benefit from tree removal to restore the grassland/shrub ecosystems.

The report has fine tuned a previous practice of breaking the data into relevant grid squares with a colour code to indicate the area of land cleared in each square. Previous reports have used 30′ X 30′ (Lat/Long) grid cells that covered an area of approximately 280,000 hectares with codes indicating cleared area from <100ha to >5000ha for each cell. This produced a map with numerous lurid dark tones but which told us very little, other than the fact that somewhere within a square measuring 53km by 53km was somewhere between 0.01km2 and 50km2 of clearing.

This has now been broken up into 7’30″ X 7’30″ (Lat/Long) grid cells that cover approximately 17,500 hectares but these still retain the same colour codes for the same cleared area categories and produce a map with lots of little coloured squares that give the appearance of widespread clearing activity. These can be seen at Figure 8 P18 of the current report.

But the most interesting aspect of this presentation is what it does not tell us about the clearing. The graphic below is an enlargement of a 700,000 hectare scene to the west of Charleville which is recorded as one of the hotbeds of clearing in 2004-2005.

The lower presentation is an enlargement of the SLATS Report while the upper presentation indicates the information that is readily available and could be incorporated into the presentation if the political masters were willing to provide a budget for the truth.

Each of the grid squares has been broken up into 700 smaller squares of 25 hectares each (25 across and 28 down) so we are able to show the actual area of pasture, remnant, and woody regrowth in each grid cell. This then enables one to show each years clearing activity in the respective proportions of regrowth and remnant clearing. More importantly, it allows the viewer to gain an understanding of the relevance of that clearing in relation to the local landscape. Obviously, a large amount of clearing in a cell with a low level of remnant (eg. at E2 below) is of more concern than a cleared fence line in a cell with 75% woody remnant vegetation cover.

When the actual clearing is presented in direct spatial proportion to the area of the grid cell and the area of woody vegetation, we get a much more honest appreciation of what is taking place.

Of the approximately 3,450 grid cells indicating clearing activity in the report, more than 3,300 of them were in the two least cleared categories, showing cleared areas from 0 <100ha and 100 <500ha in each cell. The remaining 147 cells were easier to count and, after allocating a modal value in each class, we were able to determine that approximately half of all clearing, some 175,000ha, was cleared from these few cells. After allowing for a modal value of 300ha in the second lowest category and a roughly estimated proportion of 9% (or 300) of the 3300 remaining cells being in the second lowest category this indicated that another 90,000ha of clearing took place in the second lowest category. And this left only about 86,000ha of clearing taking place on the remaining 3000 cells at an average area of only 28 hectares per cell.

When that 28ha of clearing is proportionately represented on our improved data presentation below it would occupy just one of the 700 small squares in the cell. And when viewed in proper proportion it then becomes clear that the overwhelming majority of the scenes where some clearing has taken place, that clearing is of extremely marginal ecological impact. Indeed, it is at a level that would be barely detectable with the naked eye.

But it is in the allocation of this clearing (or current absence of it) between remnant and non-remnant at the grid cell level that provides the real “smoking gun” of systematic institutional deception. This is because a 28ha clearing event on an inland property is more than likely to be either fodder harvesting for stock or clearing for a fence line etc. And we know that mulga pulling for stockfeed is done on a long term rotational basis of 15 to 25 years. And that interval is more than sufficient for past regrowth to return to remnant status, being more than 70% of “normal” height. This provides grounds for informed speculation as to what proportion of remnant clearing, the assumed worst impact, is actually concentrated in small events of minimal consequence while the major events are primarily of non-remnant woody weeds.

We won’t actually know for sure unless we demand that this information, that is already at hand, be presented in a manner that properly informs the community. Anything less is serious misrepresentation by omission.

Ian Mott

Further to recent posts on the need for new perspectives on Global Warming that can only come from revised graphical treatment, I enclose two graphs that provide us with valuable information on the exact nature and threat potential of Global Warming.

The decadal change in the UK between the 1980′s and 1990′s produces a mean change in the order of 0.58C which exceeds the change in global mean temperatures for the past half century.

The mean temperature for 1980-89 was 9.52C while the mean for 1990-99 was 10.10C.

The global mean is made up of a number of such station records and it is important that we examine a station that exceeds the global mean so we can get a better understanding of how and when the actual warming has taken place.

In each decade the monthly maxima and minima are plotted with a decadal mean, maxima and minima value.

[graph changed 29th June 2007 - following discussion and for ease of interpretation - data the same]

The most important thing to note is that most of the temperature increase is observed in the higher minimum monthly values rather than higher monthly maximums. And most of that has been in the winter months. For example, the lowest monthly mean for a February in the 1980′s was -1.1C while the lowest February in the 1990′s was +1.5C, the lowest mean for a December in the 1980′s was 0.3C while the lowest mean for a December in the 1990′s was 2.3C, and the lowest monthly mean for a January in the 1980′s was 0.8C while the lowest mean for a January in the 1990′s was 2.5C. These three months account for 0.525C of the decadal change of 0.58C.

But comparing the two graphs also makes three things very clear. They are;

1. An increase in an annual mean temperature is sourced from changes that take place throughout the year, not just in the form of extreme mid summer temperatures as the climate mafia has encouraged the world to think.

2. Most of the temperature increases that contribute to a higher annual mean temperature are entirely within the normal range, in this case in the UK that is between -1.0C and +19C.

3. Of the 12 monthly maximums and 12 monthly minimums that make up an annual mean temperature figure, only two, the midsummer months, pose any sort of risk of exceeding the values that the full suite of flora and fauna at any given location have already proven they can cope with.

This latter point is critical in the light of the Climate Mafia’s continually repeated claim that small changes to the global mean temperature can have far reaching implications for the biosphere. As can be observed in the UK data sets, the rise in Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer minimum temperatures, and the rise in Autumn, Winter and Spring maximum temperatures, poses zero to minimal threat to any of the flora and fauna species that have experienced those conditions. Indeed, in most cases this is an unambiguous benefit.

And even the threat from the higher midsummer maximums has been overstated for most of the planet. In the case of plant species there is no particular temperature at which an entire forest, species or genotype will suddenly collapse and die. The weaker individuals will die off first and their death will free up soil moisture and nutrients for the remaining ones. The end result will be a slightly lower density of vegetation cover with a slight compositional change in favour of grasses rather than trees in much the same way that composition changes with latitude and rainfall at present.

The same will apply with fauna. The weak will die off first as they already do in drought with a smaller core population that will then breed vigorously in response to the next cyclical change, as they have done for millennia. So next time you hear about “major implications” from minor changes in global mean temperatures, just walk the poor dears slowly through the monthly minimums and maximums that make up an annual mean temperature and ask them which species are put at risk by suffering through a mild winter.

Ian Mott
Australia

It has been obvious for some time now that the world has been encouraged to regard temperature changes as being overly significant by the use of anomaly graphs that use the entire vertical scale to portray the extent of the temperature change.

This has denied the public the opportunity to view the changes in relation to their relevance to normal temperatures. So I thought readers might be interested in seeing the familiar data in a new perspective.

Regards,
Ian Mott