Protecting wild things

Thinking people of all political persuasions are right to identify humanities widespread  failure to look after the place of wild things in our world as a big issue . Some say we protect wild things by not designing at all for them , but I think that's too simple and wrong. The very failure of human beings to both see and to care  is complex, but only human beings can really improve the situation - and they can do a lot to do that .  For a bit of an overview and some more ideas click here.( still under construction )

Harvesting is not a dirty word

I will start taking the Greens seriously when they start using several critical eco words such as "harvest, production and sequestration " in their proper scientific and ecological context .(You will note that I am a professional green -A small g green ; a bit like , I might be a  small l " liberal" too !)
At the moment " harvesting" talk is forbotten ( at least in Australia)  ;its a swear word which churchgoers and Brown devotees can expect to receive a feeling of guilt for if they should use it or  ask more questions about it( say in relation to native timber harvesting )   The worshippers cherry pick their current favoured form of sequestration and reject , on theological grounds alone , the environmentally sound choices that work . Scientists amongst the audience will note that I am not spelling it  all out in words because for many Greens the game is about using the right words - not the right science - the science that is, in substance,  a process. So much for the brilliance of their theology;  so much for the Green's commitment to understanding,  and understanding the process of ecological sustainability.

Greenlabor are so out of touch that they promote carbon dioxide production when they claim its critical to reduce it . Make up your minds people, or you become totally politically and scientifically irrelevant. The Greens do confusion and religion by playing with sequestration subjects that suit their simple theories but ignore key subjects which would in fact sequester carbon. Green theology is ideologically constrained irrelevance
and useless as a result .
Minister Burke  is such a dummy to fall again in late 2011 for the easy "lock up idea" that has left the religious Greens  in the doldrums for decades  ( All the hype on the abcnews and by Burke on proposed Coral sea exclusion zone proposals)
Clearly Greenlabor are unable to address the complex questions of management ( what most of do at work well )so  they opt to opt out of management altogether .Clearly not many of these wannabes  would survive in business.
Sadly the opposition haven't responded by advocating a reasoned way to define and protect wilderness and wild things.
Some Terms:
--Harvesting/ production  - what one trophic level does with another
--Sequestration - what  prevents decomposition; something that they favor for forests
I won't say any more . This stupidity is seriously stupid,  but unfortunately few know why . Those of U who KNOW the cycles and what U are talking about need no more information .
If on the other hand you just don't know  and you are serious about the truth, follow professional practical big picture here .

Toilet models tend to lower the tone

The Greens and the ACF are not happy with the new Murray Darling Plan ; they want a flushing; a really decent flushing. Perhaps they want the sort that only a really big dam and a really big opening can provide ?  It seems to me that what they want is only something God can provide, but they don't believe in God  so its  back to the drawing board.. Seems to me their drawing board is missing some key components  - like the fact that "the quiet achiever"  has filled our dams and made a farce of the drips we sought from desal . The half baked's  don't believe in dams and fiddling  so they resort to piddling . They think everything has to be flushed to be better when nature leaves things around to rot and fester .They mix nature with technology in ways that don't work because they understand neither.  
The Greens can't be taken seriously as representatives of the big picture. Like many marginal parties they are often disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable .They come in on a point of order they perceive to be important , when its just a distraction from the big picture. Unlike the farmers ,  they can't talk to the details of the Murray Darling plan , which makes them largely just noise; Noise about things they call "toxic things". 
They camp at the end of the process waiting for a door to open , expecting only toxic stuff to come forth.  Not very deep as even salt has its place ( see below) . Somehow , almost miraculously,  once it got past them and entered Bass strait , it would all be cleaned up .
Point of order - 9 years out of 10 "the sea will get what it needs" ;Its clear they missed the point of river process completely ; the  bits upstream  will miss out.
If all the noisemakers and worriers  want is a say , they have had it . 
All the Greens  can do on THE MDP is camp at one of the doors and cry foul about what's going inside a box they try to call their own . If they had more ownership of the complex issues of salinity, soil , floods and food they would move inland . Busy today  at Lake Alexandrina they think the end product is no good when in the cycle of life ( that they seldom address) "it's all good"  .
The Greens don't know what they want and neither does Burkes' and the Kingsford group .They know the numbers simplicity of allocations was too simple but they continue to play the same simple game of numbers because Greenlabor likes to make environmental choices simple.
Salt lakes are OK and if excessive saltiness is a current problem ,the people above are mistargeting it .  We also won't solve anything  long term by cutting our collection in dams  Number stuff is largely nothing stuff . 4 numbers  - can you believe it should come to this ? Bigger more important natural forces need to be taken seriously.  Is a process discussion too hard .The States did a better job , before this , in talking process. Why do the Feds think they are so much more able ? 
The newcomers  tell us the river and the lake need to flush - fair enough,  but is the only analogy a closet and piddling and pipe paradigms ( suits those who like to confine the problem to simple conduits ) . A 2075 mega litre flush is a piddle. The river doesn't need us .Calculated to flush but is Lake Alex the only toilet in the system?.  Burke, the Green, s ACF and Knowles don't understand or accept the role of the sea in keeping the mouth open .A sea that they think is rising .Get real , get organised or get off the blower . 
More science than Prof Kingsford is covering would be good . His word "Luck"  doesn't come into risk analysis,  but to hype talk. 
Geomorphologists stand here with our mouths open- we are supposed to think the Green wooriers know what they are doing. No way

Whatever happened to Appropriate Technology?

Some one asked me about the place of wind power recently.
We western Victorians  have been using wind power ever since western settlement ( son counted 80 windmills between here and Geelong along the main road - 1hour drive ) Our town is the famous source of our own brand called" Bryan Mills " which have a hefty gearbox to "torque up" the huge lifts necessary in our steep country . Windmills are the most common means , even today, for supplying water to our dairy herds of about 200 cows.

As for the wind generated electricity - similiar story to solar - the idea is oversold and the big things are dumped in places where it suits business but not always landscape . They don't work reliably early in the morning ( when they are needed ). Governments in Victoria are illadvised having cloned their own for too long  and alienated the competent by their own stupidity
Small windpower units in remote areas of the Otways have often been abandoned because power source is unreliable and  batteries cost too much ( seems same is true of many electric cars).
Appropriate technology is the way to view technology(ie positively) but you  need wisdom and science , not political slogans and political ignorance and stupidity in conservation  to do that. .

Cooperation rather than Competition is the best policy

Thiopedia rosea ( Copyright below)
Always resist non scientists when they promote human prehensions ( Whiteheads word)  because they are so often blinkered in nature . Sure , competition is a component  of real world ecomia , but its not framing the big picture stuff.  Stultifyingly,  competition policy has become the dominant preoccupation of major political parties,  when its not what makes the world go around .
Take bacteria and fungi , the things we really compete with in nature . Even procaryotes and archaic microbes take turns in turning composition and decomposition on their heads . As 8 million Irish found out in 1850's , one mere fungi can eat us out of house and home within months ,undoing all our good work in sequestration in moments ( remember you heard it first May 12th  2011 and Julia's blinkered team don't even factor it in to their wasted trip down carbon tax lane YET ) .
The best thing is not that Fun guys  are not furry enough to be fascinating , but that 150 years later we know how to work together whereas , in 1850 we didn't . The same applies to bacteria .  We are now friends and those of us who study these things properly are not in a panic.  Our wine, bread and cheese are all the better for studying stuff .
150 years after a disease that caused real worry because noone understood what they were facing , do we still have people worrying because they don't understand ??? -
You bet , especially if they think the aim of life is to store up treasures here for themselves  when the earth was created for very small unseen forces to return things to their proper homes for someone else to use ( maybe that's why some call her mother earth ? ) .Methinks there is more to knowing than our knowledge will ever know and some things are clearly blocking the path in some people's minds ( like denial ,selfcentredness, guilt and prejudice )   Copyright EA

Grazing sores will not go away

While governments fail to govern

No poor land use better illustrates the footprint issue than grazing .This is world wide . It appears though that Mr Walsh doesn't get it .
If only Asia and North Africa had help to grab the nettle and say . Yes but only safely " here and here and here " . lets invest in something else " here and here and here " as we have done in Australia.

While the greens will label all grazing as "bad" ( and not help us resolve the real issue of balance )they ignore( as usual ?) half the natural biosystems  in the world where grazing provides and important feedback loop in the carbon cycle . Brilliant simplifications .
If only the conservatives believed in conservation like they believe in the market they would make progress  

Welcome mention of Resilience

Most people in the media worry to much ;  and they worry the people too much . I think this process , when it goes to excess,  is wrong because it reduces our children's faith in science and technology and our ability to manage risk .
Its wrong too , when people who are not scientists in the area try to speak for those that are .
Now both of the above processes happen far too much in the media .

Positively though,  there is a lot of talk of resilience of people at the moment . Resilience of earth processes is even more predictable and a sound focus  for young people  to rebuild hope and a career in a world of heavy , but not unsustainable,   population pressures .
eg The profound damage to nuclear reactors in Japan this week
One hopes that even with the real tragedies associated with recent plate activity there will be a recognition that the very worst case scenario of nuclear power plants on fault lines and subject to tsunamis will not create unmanageable damage to the environment .A sound knowledge of chemistry and geology will limit the extent to which you worry about such real disasters and work towards preventing another .