Agmates

SE QLD Farmer and Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition Viv Forbes writes:

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Viv Forbes

Australian farmers pay livestock levies, research levies, marketing levies and taxes on every product they sell. These support an army of officials supposedly representing their interests, the Meat and Livestock Corporation, the Wool Corporation, CSIRO and the numerous state and federal agriculture departments and politicians.

But not one of these has defended the industry from the obviously fraudulent claim that animal emissions play a significant part in causing global warming.

It does not take even high school science to understand that all animals are part of the natural carbon cycle that uses plants to take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and then uses solar energy to convert this to plant sugars and proteins. The carbon is then taken up by animals that live on plants, and finally returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane as these animals exhale, excrete or expire.

Carbon dioxide is a harmless natural plant food. Methane is another harmless natural gas which is oxidised in the atmosphere to carbon dioxide and water. Then whole cycle starts again with no net addition to so-called greenhouse gases.

The phrase ‘ashes to ashes and dust to dust’ expresses more understanding of the carbon cycle than all the failed computerised climate models that rate animal emissions as significant factors in climate change.

Animals and plants have always been cycling carbon dioxide and methane with no long term or permanent effect on climate. The wild herds of mammoths, aurochs, reindeer, wildebeest, zebra, bison, antelope, wild sheep, warthogs, horses, camels, rabbits and kangaroos have just been partially replaced by domesticated cattle, sheep, goats, buffalo and pigs.

All are part of the natural world and none of them have any long term effect on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

To threaten a carbon tax on animal emissions without recognising an equal credit for the carbon dioxide extracted by them from the atmosphere is shoddy science and shoddy accounting. Surely for all the taxes and levies they pay, farmers can get at least one government scientist, official or carbon accountant willing to state the obvious:

‘Cattle and sheep are as green as grass and trees and should not be penalised by any future carbon tax on their emissions’.

Governments should state this clearly now and stop including animal emissions in their spurious carbon accounting.

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Federal Shadow Minister for Agriculture, John Cobb writes:

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The Rudd Government is compromising our farmers’ ability to feed and clothe the nation after admitting it would be slashing research jobs and funding in next weeks budget.

I hope the Governments decision to cut the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC) by 25% was not linked to a recent report by RIRDC which highlighted the heavy burden the Rudd Government emissions trading scheme would have on the profitability and productivity of Australia’s agricultural industries.

If the Prime Minister can lose the plot and reduce a RAAF VIP jet hostess to tears because he didn’t get a hot meal, I shudder to think what he would do to an taxpayer funded organisation which broke his governments tightly scripted spin and highlighted the extremely negative consequences of his ETS on agriculture.

Farmers are already being forced to produce more with less, in particular less water and less arable land, and without increasing public expenditure to dramatically increase productivity there was the very real possibility of Australia becoming a net importer of food at a time the worlds population is set to double within the next thirty years.

Without real increases in funding for agriculture research and development the cheap, high quality, clean and green food we take for granted in Australia will be relegated to the history books.

Similarly the only way we are going to tackle the worst affects of climate change is to produce new plant varieties that can cope with droughts, new disease and fungus strains (such as Rust in wheat) and increase yields.

The Prime Minister has already made cuts to vital agriculture R & D when he slashed $63 million from the CSIRO’s budget with the majority of those cuts coming out of the agriculture research leading to the decision to close the Merbein Laboratory in North West Victoria and the JM Rendel Laboratory at Rockhampton in Queensland.

This has been compounded by State Labor Government’s in NSW and Victoria also slashing their agriculture R & D budgets and closing down research institutes.

It is the height of hypocrisy for the Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke to be swanning around Europe as an observer to the G8 Agriculture Minister’s meeting two weeks ago where he claimed in a media release;

“Australia has a major role to play in meeting the global food shortage and boosting global food security … We believe investment in agricultural research will be essential.”

I can only hope the Minister for Agriculture hasn’t ratted out his constituents completely and we still have a functioning Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry after Tuesday night’s budget .

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Shadow Minister For Agriculture and Federal Member for Calare John Cobb writes:

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John Cobb

The Rudd Government plan asks the Parliament’s permission to take the nation $200 billion into deficit – $9,500 debt for every man, woman and child in my Federal Seat of  Calare.

The Coalition will oppose the Rudd Government’s latest $42 billion expenditure package because it is not a responsible or sustainable way to run the national economy.

I know this decision will not be popular, but it is the right decision.

The objective of any package must be to protect and create jobs, support small business and strengthen our economy. This package will not achieve this.

There is no evidence the Government’s $10.4 billion spending package before Christmas created the 75,000 jobs Mr Rudd promised.

What we need is investment in infrastructure that will be able to pay off the deficit in the future.

Almost all economists agree that the recession has a long way to go. And yet the Rudd Labour Government is panicking, firing all its bullets at the first engagement.

It is inexcusable that health of regional Australian’s has been ignored in Rudd Government’s $42 billion economic stimulus.

The health crisis in regional Australia has been ignored, despite the very real need for additional funding for hospitals and health services in western NSW.

It is a National scandal that water and infrastructure spending has been ignored in the $42 billion stimulus package.

In my electorate of Calare there are over 1000 miners who have been laid off in the last four months. They are highly skilled and many of them could be employed to immediately start laying pipes and improving irrigation systems both on and off farm, particularly in the Macquarie Valley where we could save up to 60,000 megalitres, increase production and opportunities by modernising irrigations systems.

Similarly towns and cities in regional Australia need water and sewerage infrastructure upgrades. Prior to the election the Labor Party promised to spend over $400 million on the Menindee Lakes and $12 million piping the Albert Priest Channel between Nyngan and Cobar. Both these projects have disappeared, yet they would provide jobs, improve productivity and have environmental benefits.

I am also concerned that up to 20 percent of the $14.7 billion earmarked for eduction infrastructure will be taken by the State Government’s in ‘administration and management fees’. This will result in almost $3 billion never making it into bricks and mortar and disappearing into incompetent State Labor Government coffers.

I find it inconceivable that the Government can claim it is spending $88 billion to stimulate the Australian economy, yet it can not find any money to replace the $63 million it cut from the CSRIO agriculture research budget that has led to the closure or CSRIO laboratory and research stations. As a general rule of thumb research takes roughly 15 years to go from conception to being workable.

The Rudd Government’s cuts to agriculture research and development come at a time when farmers will be forced to do more with less. Improving research and development is vital to guarantee jobs both now and into the future.

Where is the national broadband network? The Government cut over $2.7 billion from the Coalition Government’s telecommunications fund and scrapped the $2 billion OPEL broadband roll out. The Government made much of the need for a fast modern broadband network to improve productivity and increase jobs prior to the election.

The OPEL plan would have been already rolling out on the ground and providing jobs and productivity increases, however all we have is vague promises of a broadband network that will exclude almost all regional Australia.

It is my duty to hold the government to account because it is taxpayer’s money that they are spending, putting not just us but our children into $200 billion in debt which will have to be repaid.

If we have to have a deficit then it is vital that we the money being spent is spent on projects that give us the maximum benefit, not just a short term jump in the polls.

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The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has been instrumental in working with CSIRO to build climate models to predict what our climate will be like in 50-100 years time.

It is these predictions on which Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has based his decision to fight climate change with an emissions trading scheme aka. carbon tax.

Back on the 26th of September we ran an article that showed the BOM’s prediction for rainfall and temperature for just the next 3 months (not 50 years).

Lets have a look how accurate they were.

The first was the probability of exceeding mediam rainfall  (1961-1990) between October and December 2008.

Map Source: Bureau Meteorology.

Now here is the Map of where the rain actually fell for that 3 month period.

Map Source: Bureau Meteorology

You’d have to say, they were not even close.

Now for the temperature prediction. The probability of exceeding average maximum temperatures ( again based on the average maximum from 1961-1990) between October and December.

And bloody hell they were predicting it would be hot.

Map Source: Bureau Meteorology

Now the results for the 3 months have not been posted yet, but here is the first month of Summer – December.

Map Source: Bureau Meteorology.

See the Green, that’s 1-3 degrees Celsius below the average. Thank God for Global warming or we’d be freezing to death – in summer.

The BOM can’t get anywhere near right with their 3 month predictions, but we’ll wreck our economy with an emissions trading scheme based on the Bureau’s 50-100 year predictions.

Apparently we are to believe that while they are hopeless at knowing what the weather will do right now, they are reliable with predictions that are 50-100 years into the future.

It would be ridiculous for anybody to believe that,  except if your Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd who obviously finds it perfectly plausible.

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A terrific editorial today in the Nations most influential Newspaper – The Australian:

Science must always be contested – even climate change

IF climate change is real — and “if” is the operative word — every aspect of the phenomenon needs to be picked over and analysed with the utmost rigour. It is too important for anything less. But in parts of the community, rigour and climate change have become mutually exclusive terms.

Distressingly large numbers of people have elevated climate change to something verging on a fundamentalist religion. True believers draw comfort from endlessly repeating the dogma to each other. Those who demand proof are shunned as heretics.

This approach might be fashionable, but it is dangerous. It is a reversion to a pre-enlightenment mindset that rejects the essence of the scientific method. And without the mental toughness of science, any public policy on climate change will have all the effectiveness of burnt offerings.

The Editor delivers a stinging criticism of the Fairfax Media’s Sydney Morning Herald:

The Sydney Morning Herald gave prominence in May last year to a scientific study that said climate change had led to high winds over the Southern Ocean, which reduced its ability to soak up carbon dioxide. It was an important story that deserved prominence, because it looked like one of the world’s great carbon sinks was in trouble.

And if that were true, it meant the only way to compensate would be to reduce carbon emissions, according to a scientist quoted by the Herald.

Unfortunately, “bad” facts have now emerged. But you would never know it if you relied on the Herald to keep you informed about the climate change issue. A scientific study published this week challenged the notion that the Southern Ocean carbon sink was in trouble. This study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, was judged so important that the CSIRO issued a media release that summarised its findings.

It’s great to see the respected media starting to call the rest of the mainstream media to task over the scandalous global warming propaganda campaign that has been shamelessly waged by the likes of the ABC, Fairfax Media and the Courier Mail over the last few years.

One wonders if it wasn’t for internet communities like Agmates (yes all of you) if we would have ever got to the stage where respectable Media like the Australian, that values Journalistic standards is now calling for ethical and balanced reporting on the issue?

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Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is convinced the science on man made global warming is settled. In fact he’s so convinced that the science of the IPCC and NASA’s James Hansen is correct that his number 1 political priority is the introduction of an Emissions Trading Scheme by mid 2010.

The latest science shows that the IPCC’s Climate Change Modelling is grossly overstated..

Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%.

The view, reported in the latest Nature Geoscience journal, is based on a study of Australian soils that finds the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by Australian soils is much lower than previously believed.

The finding has major implications for climate change predictions as annual carbon emissions from soils are estimated to be more than all human-made CO2 emissions combined.

The incredibly ironic thing is that one of the reports Co_Authors Dr Evelyn Krull [pictured] , is a scientist at the Australian governments own CSIRO Land and Water. Dr Krull goes on to say:

For Australia, a proportion of 20% charcoal in soils would lead to a 135 teragram (135 billion kilograms) overestimation on a continental scale.

“On an annual basis, an inflated prediction from topsoils alone equates to … 84% of CO2 emissions associated with aviation for Australia using values obtained for 2006,” the paper says.

Surprise, Surprise the research has found that climate change modelling is grossly overstated.

…this means that current scenarios predicted by climate change modeling “are making it look worse than it actually would be”.

This highlights the need for a global initiative to analyse soils worldwide for charcoal content so that modeling can be more accurate, she says.

Beautiful – the climate models are overstated. All the while Rajendra Pachauri, James Hansen, Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Don Henry , Barry Brook & Clive Hamilton of the alarmist cause try to tell us Global Warming is happening faster than the models actually predicted.

The science on man made global warming is settled. Yes right.

Also published On Crikey’s Enviro Blog “Rooted”

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Our current Australian anti-farmer policies coupled with a population that grows by 1 person net each 1.3 seconds will lead us to a point within 40 years where we will be a net importer of food. As the world population grows by another 2.3 billion people, food in Australia will indeed become a scarce resource.

During the past 8 years just on 11,000 Australian farmers have left the land. Today just 130,000 farmers or 0.6% of the population not only feed 21.5 million Australians but export enough food to feed double that number.

Australia is one of the world’s major agriculture exporters not because we are a major producer on a world scale, but because we have a small population. Our population is exploding whilst each day our policy makers work hard at reducing the number of farmers and their capacity to produce, in the name of ‘free trade’ and the environment.

As the Australian anti-farmer Federal and State Labour governments continue with policies that shrink our farming sector, world experts are urging them to pour money into ag & water research to avoid world wide food shortages and civil unrest.

THE director-general of the International Water Management Institute, Colin Chartres, has warned that Australia, along with the other developed nations, needs to invest more in research into agriculture and water management and in international aid.

The Rudd government is doing the exact opposite with huge cuts to CSIRO ag research funding including the closing of a number of world renown research facilities.

One of the first things the new Ag Minister Tony Burke did in coming to power 12 months ago was to scrap the very successful Farmbiz program which subsidized training and ongoing resource management education for farmers.

The QLD Labor government has followed up with an announcement it will close more Department of Primary Industry research facilities in that state.

Chartres says the food crisis of the past year was an important warning sign. “We have to heed the warning. Otherwise the ultimate outcome is, if we have millions of people starving in the developing world, much more social unrest, much more fertile ground for terrorists and extremists and the whole world becomes a lot less safe.

There is whole lot standing on it in terms of social security, as well as food security.”

(more…)

Senator Cristine Milne asking some probing questions of Australian Wool Innovations chairman Brian von Rooyen in the Senate standing committee.

Senator MILNE» – I want to ask some questions about innovation and the accusation that Australian Wool Innovation has changed its priorities from R&D to promotion.

In terms of dollar figures, is it true that, from spending $60 million in the early 1990s on R&D, we are now down to Australian Wool Innovation giving about $800,000 only to CSIRO and others for R&D of new product?

Just as the Rudd Labor government announces that it was pressing ahead with its Carbon Reduction Scheme two US Scientists have released a paper that contradicts the whole man made global warming theory.

Stunningly their research is from data collected by Australia’s own CSIRO.

Boston (MA) – Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas.

According to the Man made Global warming theory thats not supposed to happen.

One thing does seem very clear, however; science is only beginning to get a handle on the big picture of global warming. Findings like these tell us it’s too early to know for sure if man’s impact is affecting things at the political cry of “alarming rates.”

We may simply be going through another natural cycle of warmer and colder times – one that’s been observed through a scientific analysis of the Earth to be naturally occuring for hundreds of thousands of years.

It is beyond comprehension that the Rudd Labor government is planning to plunge Australia into a Carbon Constrained future while current events and science is casting doubts over whether rising CO2 levels are actually causing climate change.

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Australian Scientists have made a major break through in unlocking the genetic code of wheat.

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The break through will allow the development of drought tolerant and disease resistant varieties of the plant that forms the staple diet of over 2.5 billion people.

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CSIRO plant geneticist Richard Richards .. said that by “mapping” the location of potentially important genes, the work would enable researchers to home in on the “enormous diversity” of wheat, a plant that has evolved over millions of years.

Desirable traits could be genetically engineered or enhanced through faster conventional breeding programs.

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Well done to the CSIRO.

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