Greta Thunberg

Granite Farmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
A good and worthy post JP, and it's a relief to see other folk are at last waking up to this great green movement which has far more to do with preserving and multiplying the profits of big business than it has to do with saving the planet.

I have been banging on about the futility of electric vehicles for long enough now. They are another obvious sign that it's not about the environment at all, we are being conned into cars that are likely to have just as large a carbon footprint as conventional vehicles without a minute's thought as to alternatives to fossil fuels or highly damaging batteries. They are out there as I have repeatedly shown, but nope, it doesn't accord with the agenda of big money and big technology, which are pretty much one and the same thing.

Politicians are a lost cause, totally hopeless when it comes to assessing and and evaluating the conflicting interests within society. Their major skill set is in getting elected and progressing their careers rather than serving the interests of those who vote and pay for them.

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to talk to Sean Kelly, an Irish MEP, at a farm open day where the main item of interest was the use of forestry thinnings as a bio-fuel. He was rather boastful of the fact that he wants to see home heating oil outlawed, but when I put it to him that carbon can be recycled as a liquid fuel as much as it can a solid fuel he, for a brief second, looked stunned, the thought had obviously never crossed his mind, nor, presumably had it been discussed in the corridors of Brussels or pushed by the various lobbyists. The following day I put this all into a polite email along with one or two other concerns and have yet to receive a reply.

As you say, the west faffing about with windmills and batteries will have no effect other than to line the pockets of big business. Every protocol has failed, if we are serious about anthropogenic climate change then we need to start extracting carbon, I'd go further and say we can recycle some of that carbon as fuel, it's how nature has managed energy for billions of years, why should we know any better?
It should be noted of course that if wood became a commonly used fuel again we will see the soils in wooded areas become chronically depleted of nutrients as people wont think to put back what they take.
 
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Scribus

Member
Location
Central Atlantic
It should be noted of course that if would became a commonly used fuel again we will see the soils in wooded areas become chronically depleted of nutrients as people wont think to put back what they take.

Just as an aside there was a wildlife doc on a while ago which examined the fertitity of west Canada's coastal forests. It seems that when the salmon return to spawn the bears are waiting for them and having had their fill they retire to the woods to do what bears have always done in the woods. The nutrients thus released are taken up by plants to which other animals are partial and so by the act of carrying the seed and fruit further inland the fertility spreads up the mountains and beyond the salmon streams.
 
@Scribus I remember seeing either that or a similar documentary more than a few years ago, and was surprised that it came as a surprise to anyone that that is the way seeds and nutrients are transferred to other areas. It is "farming" in its simplest sense. The bears harvest the salmon and fertilise the land upon which they live, which in turn is harvested by other species, which fertilise the area in which they live and so on. A wee bit like those who farm trees (olives, other fruit, nuts) running small ruminants in amongst them to eat the weeds which grow and then utilise the muck elsewhere. In some countries such as this it is essential to house small livestock overnight otherwise they will be eaten - usually by local dogs left to roam at night.
 

saltyduck

New Member
@Scribus I remember seeing either that or a similar documentary more than a few years ago, and was surprised that it came as a surprise to anyone that that is the way seeds and nutrients are transferred to other areas. It is "farming" in its simplest sense. The bears harvest the salmon and fertilise the land upon which they live, which in turn is harvested by other species, which fertilise the area in which they live and so on. A wee bit like those who farm trees (olives, other fruit, nuts) running small ruminants in amongst them to eat the weeds which grow and then utilise the muck elsewhere. In some countries such as this it is essential to house small livestock overnight otherwise they will be eaten - usually by local dogs left to roam at night.

You mean live like African villagers? They have a dream life if there is rain and no disease but unfortunately they are often starving.
 
You mean live like African villagers? They have a dream life if there is rain and no disease but unfortunately they are often starving.

No. I meant as in Portugal and other countries around the Med. Dry summers, but not what I would call a drought - I used to farm in Australia; and enough rain from about the end of this month through to April/May to provide for most plants, and enough warmish sunny days in mid winter to keep everybody happy. Summer irrigation is useful for better crops. It is indeed a good life. Like everywhere not a means to become mega rich, but good enough for me.
 

Scribus

Member
Location
Central Atlantic
All this hoo ha about action on climate change is exposed as nothing more than empty rhetoric in this anaylsis on the Wrong Kind of Green website

Therein lies the problem with the Paris Agreement; it is a fantasy which lacks any actual plan of how to achieve the targets for emissions reductions. There are no mentions of GHG sources, not a single comment on fossil fuel use, nothing about how to stop the expansion of fracking, shale oil or explorations for oil and gas in the Arctic and Antarctic. Similarly, there are no means for enforcement. Article 15 on implementation and compliance establishes an expert committee that will be ‘non-adversarial and non-punitive’, which means that it has no teeth and can do nothing about non-compliance. Then, there is Article 28, which offers the withdrawal option without any sanctions. Everyone seems to have already conveniently forgotten how Canada backed out of the Kyoto Protocol in order to frack on a massive and environmentally catastrophic industrial scale.

I've often wondered about all these great agreements and protocols, what are they all about? Lots of noise and ringing pronouncements but where's the beef? Worryingly, the only result we can see is a grand push to replace oil with electricity as an energy management system in the countries that can afford it, or think they can. The environmental issues involved in doing so are never aired, instead we have an unholy alliance of governments, big business and NGO's pushing us in a direction that suit's their various agendas rather than any public discussion or debate on the tremendous changes being foisted on society.

And the CO2 level? That just keeps on rising.

 
The environmental issues involved in doing so are never aired, instead we have an unholy alliance of governments, big business and NGO's pushing us in a direction that suit's their various agendas rather than any public discussion or debate on the tremendous changes being foisted on society.

I tend to agree with you on that, and it sounds the same as the little I have heard about seances and folks pushing the glass in a certain direction. A seance would probably do more good than these interminable conference and meetings about it all, where, usually by necessity because of the time involved, almost everybody has to fly there.
 

bluegreen

Member
Someone should point out to all these worrywarts that one large Volcanic eruption blasts out more Carbon into the atmosphere than the entire history of the automobile. Given that volcanic activity is currently 3x higher than normal perhaps people should be more concerned about what mother natures doing rather than the consequences of man made pollution.
 
Someone should point out to all these worrywarts that one large Volcanic eruption blasts out more Carbon into the atmosphere than the entire history of the automobile. Given that volcanic activity is currently 3x higher than normal perhaps people should be more concerned about what mother natures doing rather than the consequences of man made pollution.

Surely you have come across information that shows your statement to be hopelessly wrong?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-much-co2-does-a-single-volcano-emit/

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-produce-100x-more-co2-than-all-volcanoes-combined

https://skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-10/tca-sqg092419.php

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/

I can give you many more links if you really want them.
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
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renewablejohn

Member
Location
lancs
She should consider spending a month to six weeks, living and working alongside the Amish community in Pennsylvania. Give her 72hrs max, and the need for a smartphone, twitter/facebook, almond milk cravings will soon kick in.

The Amish do have some good technology. Wind turbines connected to air compressors to provide stored energy to operate tools and equipment.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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