Monday, January 13, 2020

Feeling a bit glum

I need some news to cheer me up.

Any ideas?

Update:  here's one reason to be slightly cheerful - I do not live in this country:


(The caption, from The Guardian :  People travel on overcrowded trains after attending the final prayer of Bishwa Ijtema, considered the world’s second largest Muslim gathering after the hajj.)

Update 2:    more good news (kinda):  this was a false alarm -

Canadian officials accidentally push nuclear alert to millions, warning of 'incident' at Ontario plant

Not a good thing for people who think nuclear for Australia is the only way forward, though.  No other power station comes with this sort of need.

13 comments:

Jason Soon said...

Hey Bird is right about the goats! https://www.ecowatch.com/california-wildfires-goats-2644401381.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1

Steve said...

I look forward to his appearing as an expert witness at the coming bushfire royal commission. (Before Justice Weinberg, I hope.)

Anonymous said...

Dellingpole. Right on.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/01/12/delingpole-australian-climate-fires-are-pure-fake-news-propaganda/

GMB said...

At Joanne's place someone posted a really old study showing that burning had longer lasting results with regards to fires than grazing does. But I pointed out that this was simply because burning degraded the soil whereas grazing improved it. So it was a kind of perverse way to handle things.

But in the longer run grazing would do better. It was only a short study. And the key is that the animal manure will lead to a more carbon rich, spongy and ultimately a damper soil. Such that if the study had gone on a for a couple of decades the grazing would have come out on top.

GMB said...

Justice Weinberg could not be more corrupt. He can be guaranteed to betray our country again if he is running the inquiry

Steve said...

Oh yeah, Delingpole. The weedy arts grad with an imaginary disease? I always find his opinions completely compelling, anon.

GMB said...

I have two words to cheer you up:

Malcolm Gladwell. He might be someone we can both agree is pretty cool. "Persian Empire" kind of cheers me up these days. But its likely to make you and the others turn green.

GMB said...

Yeah so beefing up our burning for the next few years is the shot. But any country that aspires to excellence in soil needs to slowly slowly substitute across to grazing and land hydration, rather than burning.

A civilisation is only as good as its soils. Our days are numbered if we cannot get that right. Look at where all the action was 5000 years ago? The fertile crescent right? Now its a sandpit.

The Chinese have escaped this bad soil trap for two reasons. They have shaped the hillsides for excellence in soil maintenance. And also they get a soils benefit because they are down-river from catchment areas like Tibet so the rivers and the winds tend to give them a bit of a soil subsidy. But the quality of the effective gene pool and the resilience of the societies will come down to their soils as a main factor.

There has been a lot of talk boosting aboriginal practices recently on the right. Its been factual but we can take it too far. Had the aboriginals had portable electric fences and pigs and goats, that would have been better than burning and they would be probably getting around with pHd's and lots and lots of gold medals by now if they had that good soil uncontested even after we drove them inland.

GMB said...

Also Steve if you are really serious about hot weather, having hydrated soils, and plant transpiration is the only cost-effective air-conditioning that we know of. It can be expected to work everywhere outside the tropics. It won't necessarily work in the tropics since a water saturated parcel of hot air doesn't necessarily rise, so greenhouse effects can have some effect near the ground. Everywhere else this plant transpiration becomes powerfully effective air-conditioning.

Interested in cooler summer afternoons, yes or no? I hear some of your type consider hot summer afternoons a bit of a problem.

Anonymous said...

Stepford

Let's not get personal here. The piece is excellent in dispelling the myth the fires are connected to gerbil warming.

GMB said...
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GMB said...
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Not Trampis said...

that piece is absolute garbage.
what do denialists allege.
first it is arsonists at work despite the complete lack of e evidence.
then it alleges greenies are stopping hazard reduction. umm it is the State government responsible for hazard reduction.
Who is the qualified person quoted.
Tim Blair. no stop laughing.
Now we had record hazard reduction. It doesn't matter when it is the driest ever and you have fierce winds.
Hazard reduction needs a large budget, a lot of people, humid conditions otherwise you could end up destroying houses as has happened in the past and of course you have poisonous smoke from such large hazard reduction.

finally this is the first bushfire season which has gone pear shaped when El Nino isn't anywhere to be seen.
Only a person as stupid and gullible as JC would swallow such garbage.