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Mycorrhiza helps root growth | Photo CAES
Amazing how the Agricultural Revolution started 10,000 years ago, yet we still know so little about plant growth. We’ve been tossing bulk carrier loads of fertilizer at plants all over the world, but wasting some of it, and putting up with poorer yields and slower growth by not paying enough attention to the microbiology under the surface.
Obviously good scientific research, real science, can still deliver big improvements. Here’s a study showing that fruit trees, which normally take six years to reach maturity, can get there in three or four with the help of the right bacteria and fungi. This would help us adapt to climate change (of whatever kind is coming), help with reforestation, help feed the starving and improve the ability of these trees to survive during drought conditions too.
It applies to not just one or two species but to many kinds of trees: oaks, pines, mesquites, acacias, citrus and guava. Presumably this would help the “direct action” plan store more carbon in our soils too, not that that will change the weather, but it will help improve our soils:
“…the beneficial bacteria are located in the immediate area […]
The clean up begins. I am beaming.
Just enjoy with me the small sweet pleasure of a day when government waste shrinks. There is no joy in axing jobs of workers, albeit ones who should never have been employed in the first place. But there is satisfaction in knowing that hundreds of pointless reports and press releases will not have to be debunked, and millions of dollars in taxes can be put to some other use (or returned to taxpayers – I can dream).
[The Australian] PUBLIC servants are drawing up plans to collapse 33 climate change schemes run by seven departments and eight agencies into just three bodies run by two departments under a substantial rewrite of the administration of carbon abatement schemes under the Coalition.
Looks like DIICCSRTE the Department of Everything is gone forever. (That’s the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education). Now the climate change programs will run under the Department of Environment and the Department of Resources and Energy. We are back to sensible acronyms.
The move is forecast to save the government tens of millions of dollars. The Coalition budgeted for savings of $7 […]
Unleash the Sanctimony! Practically everyone on all sides of mainstream politics is not pleased. For goodness sake, the car loving land of Australia has elected a car-loving Senator, and the sport-crazy nation will have a sports-mad Senator too. Is that so bad?
Wayne Dropulich, possible new Senator
You’d think so. The not-quite-elected-yet souls have barely uttered a word in public, but apparently this is such a disaster we need to remake the Senate voting system. I was amazed at how media commentators were using the term “representative democracy” as if these new members were somehow not representative, and as if only first preferences count in a preferential voting system where some of us had to write in 110 preferences. How arrogant. Blame the voter.
A guy that rebuilds cars for a hobby is probably better connected to reality than a Monash graduate in Marx and Pashukanis.
Those with God-like insight say ignorant voters “accidentally” voted them in, assuming those people are too stupid to know how preferences work, and that those voters are not happy with the result. Commentators raved about the mere 0.22% of the vote that one new Senator got in first preferences, but they ignored […]
Tony Abbott announces Australia is open for business again.
Finally Australia steps back from a porkbarrelling party that stood for nothing more than being in power.
They broke promises to anyone and everyone with Olympian success. And it was not just the usual politician broken promise of failing to solve a problem they promised to solve: they brought in The Carbon Tax after dishonestly guaranteeing they would not. Would they have won the 2010 election if they hadn’t made that promise? (It would only have taken 400 voters in Corangamite to rewrite history.) They’ve taken broken promises to an all new level, where nothing they say can be trusted. It was not a question of them trying and failing, it was a question of being elected through deception. Every single Labor member chose to break that promise; any one of them could have stopped it. This is not a “leadership” question. It’s a question of integrity, and it applies to every member of the party.
The Labor Party also told us Tony Abbott was a misogynist, relentlessly negative, and a denier, and in return the Labor Party received one of the lowest primary votes in history.
I […]
Yes I’m having a party. : -)
The total seats in the house of Representatives is 150, so when a party gets 76, they win.
UPDATE: 7:28 pm Eastern Time (5:28pm in the West, polls are still open): ABC giving 42 seats for Labor, 72 to the Liberals.
This election will be called soon.
UPDATE: 7:41pm Eastern Time. 43 Labor, 73 Liberal.
Treasurer Wayne Swan looks like holding his seat. 30% counted. Swing against him is 2.5%. The Worlds Greatest Treasurer, who proved so adept at spending other people’s money on things like $800,000 tin sheds will keep his seat. Anyone in charge of the national cheque book can accrue $250bn of debt… spending money is the easy part. Paying it back is another thing entirely.
UPDATE: 7:56pm Labor doing better. Greens get their man.
Labor 48; Liberal 73; Green 1: Other 2
Adam Bandt, sole Green member of the house of Reps elected? again (or as good as) in Melbourne
The ALP / ABC have set expectations so low that Labor will claim anything over 50 seats as a “win”. It helps them put a good spin on a bad loss.
UPDATE 8:20pm: Done deal. […]
This election everyone is talking preferences. The Senate is a wild-card and no one is game to say how things will pan out. (Antony Green is scathing about our current system). The preference deals were subject to a major networking gambits with much wheeling and dealing behind the scenes.
Leon Ashby, president of the Climate Sceptics has been working very hard in South Australia, and convincingly makes a case that he has a very good chance. I wish him the best of luck. It would be something to see him beat Sarah Hansen Young of The Greens for the last senate seat position in South Australia. (The Shooters and Fishers Party took out the local Green Senator here in the West Australian State election last March. It happens).
Instead of accepting the preference deals, you may prefer to vote below the line but it means numbering up to 110 candidates. (Hints below for foreigners to follow the lingo*) Is it worth the effort? Above the line voting means preferences will flow as per these lists at the links below. It may be more effort to follow these lists than to number 1 – 110.
Australian Electoral Commission Links
[…]
Christopher Monckton is very popular in outback Australia isn’t he? For the sake of the farmers I’ve met, it seems only fair to spread a voice telling some more of their stories. (The ABC certainly weren’t too willing to inform Australians about the Thompsons plight or Maxwell Schulz either.)
The inner city and rural producers have become so disconnected, it is like a visit from aliens — Jo
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The bull and the Borg
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley
Captain’s Log, Stardate 2013.67: Antipodean climate extremists are going to have a field day with this one. In Australia (where else?) a pedigree Hereford bull has been named “Lord Monckton”. And the Prime Directive forbids me to intervene.
Peter Manuel, who farms many thousands of acres in the Lofty Ranges, became so exasperated with the Natural Resources Management Board of South Australia for interfering with farming that he arranged for Lord Monckton (the real one, that is) to visit the state and give a series of talks to farmers.
Lord Monckton’s semen is now available at premium prices
Peter is chief executive of Farmers’ and Landowners’ Group Australia (FLAG), which campaigns to defend […]
Cut those waste-of-time academic projects? Not a moment too soon.
If the Coalition wins the election they want to refocus the Australian Research Council (ARC). The first “wasteful” project mentioned is about adapting to climate change through public art. What a good omen…
Some ARC funds appear to be nothing more than disguised government advertising. That has to stop.
MILLIONS of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants for obscure research projects – such as the role of public art in climate change – will be scrapped or redirected to find cures for dementia and other diseases as part of a Coalition crackdown on government waste.
And a further $1.1 billion is expected to be returned to the budget bottom line from the scrapping of the carbon tax, under the Coalition election promises costings to be released today.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal that as part of the Coalition’s budget savings measures, a dedicated team will be formed under its proposed Commission of Audit to re-prioritise about $900 million in annual Australian Research Council grants.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal that a list of the types of grants that would no longer be funded under new and more stringent guidelines for […]
Don’t think the carbon dioxide wars are over in Australia.
What turmoil lies ahead. The Coalition looks like easily winning the election on Saturday (though Jeff Kennett points out he lost an election people thought he would win). If they win, they’ve promised to wipe out the Labor Party’s carbon tax. (Not a moment too soon.) Abbott was made leader on this issue in December 2009, and has vowed “in blood” to remove it.
But after this election the Senate will still be in the grip of a Labor Green majority until July next year, when the new senators (whoever they may be) take over half the Senate. Yesterday Tony Abbott renewed his pledge that this election is about “the carbon tax”. If he wins, and the Senate won’t pass his climate change legislation, he says he’s determined to pull the ultimate political trigger and call a double dissolution election.
The stakes are high. For the sake of foreign readers, the double dissolution is a rare event that, unlike a normal election, means every senator is suddenly out of a job and up for reelection (not just the usual half a Senate at a time). We could, in theory, have […]
USS Pennsylvania leads convoy to reduce Japanese carbon emissions
Tom Quirk sends me thought provoking news.
File this in the Semi-Satirical Times
Since 1920, ice cores from Law Dome show only one significant pause in an otherwise relentless rise in CO2. Ominously, that sole plateau occurs from 1940 to 1950. If human activity drives changes in global CO2, there is no mistaking that the pause was during the only decade that war went global.
The question has to be asked: Is war an alternative to wind-farms?
Who would have thought all the tanks, bullets and bombs, and all the men in green uniforms, could be so good for the planet? World War II must have been a low electricity use time.
Or was it the mass burials – a form of carbon sequestration? (Though, cremation, after all, undoes the benefits. Does anyone have stats on the ratio of burning versus burial? Can we get a grant?)
In World War 2, direct action against the evil large fossil fuel polluters took on a new meaning. Don’t just tax those factories, bomb them!
Ahem… (all […]
No one does this quite like Topher :- ) Emails have been arriving all afternoon. Project website is here.
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How do we fund science?
So far, conservative politicians don’t get it…
Most conservative governments have bowed to the name-calling bullies for far too long. They are either fooled by the names (do they think “denier” is a scientific term?), or they are so afraid of being called “deniers” themselves that they adopt the bullies meme, too scared to ask the most basic and substantial questions of it. They have stayed out of science, while big-government players have milked the good brand-name shamelessly. Science needs to be set straight.
Above all else, those who care about the environment and the people should grab the moral high ground and the sensible-middle-road at the same time, and get serious about getting the science correct— which means the most rigorous investigation, the best practice, and a real ongoing public debate (no, there hasn’t been one yet). The environment and citizens deserve nothing less. And paying for better studies costs a fraction of global trading schemes, along with tens of thousands of bird-killing turbines and solar industrial plants.
Before we spend anything on mitigating a problem based on models, we need to know what empirical evidence supports the assumptions in the models. (Make […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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