Stupidity on environment is no joke in the bush

The people in the Murray Darling Irrigation areas are no dumber than the rest of Australia --yet they get treated so by the cynical shells of men like David Maher. Barry Cassidy too, like most journos, is running around when he should sit still for awhile . Its Scoop mode ( Evelyn Waugh)-- chasing the noise but missing the scoop right before his very eyes . His panel would never see that Tony Burke  is out of his depth on water issues resorting to completely offbeat catchphrases like algal blooms and acid sulphate soils ( Sure they exist - but only in great proportions in the panic minds of the easily led and the many bureaubrats hanging on in the service through the drip feed  )

For the Burkes of this world,  there is always another disaster to draw attention to - next week it will be the floods . Barry - worry when a politician smiles at you . It means he's leading and you are following !

Its all very well for city people  and the  ignorant on ABC Insiders to patronise , ( Maher in particular)  but none who got past kindergarten in complex ecological study  would come out with these clangers on the Murray Darling Plan   ( the italics are the big picture plan conservation constraints)
- "the plants will  adjust" ( green spokesman ) basic physiology means plants need a fixed amount of water it you starve plants they will weigh less and more farmers will give them away at below cost price( cauliflowers of late) as they do so often.   Trust the greens to think that one fact will make them experts in ecological matters.
-"Over allocation"  is not a dirty word .  the whole focus on numbers (overallocation ) by polys and the media is understandable- they want to make what's complex simple.
--the whole focus on numbers by polys and the media is understandable- they want to make what's complex simple .

You ask  the farmer to live by  a number.   How about you hold the crap artists in government for a number -- what is an environmental flow ---go on , ask the river health people 
- why does Michael  Taylor's crew  have to spend another few years trying to make sense - don't they know what they are doing?;  after all , who else would send people broke over water conservation when OVER allocations is ONLY applicable as a proportion of the supply system .

And if we have to do this to save the river - who cares; the people of austarial( according to the polys )  want the river to be saved .You can't have it both ways .  Make up your mind - if you only  half do the job you might as well do nothing . Overallocation allows you to store and be a conservationist  to do it when there lots around - its true conservation.

The meddling by the river worriers will only ever add a little el to the largely ecologically irrelevant mid peak flows ( in a dry land ) Any who ever studied water conservation on land knows that the seed is specifically placed to grow at the edges of the resilience cycle - not in the mish mash middle where more water would do nothing for the life of the riverine system

-- Burke wants to spend our taxes to try and stop farmers from using water when its there . If he  keeps cutting allocations the storage of the current flood water would be forbotten . The dumb focus on overallocation ignores that fact that States have always reviewed how much water a land holder can get in a dry period - Tony Burke is trying to riding a camel in a world that  can sometime best support buffalo.   The dummmy thinks that its cost effective to lower exepecetations by lowering a few estimates . The people who he takes seriously are more accountant like than ecology accountable

Why do Polys resort to taxes to try and do" conservation" ?

1. Because we let them,  and because the logic is simple . 
If you think about that ; It suits them and too many of us 

The public don't really want to do something about conservation .They don't want to give up anything .  They want the government to do everything . So the government tax our water and power on the logic that we will use less because it costs more - its brilliant logic and it suits everyone . 
Everyone that is , who doesn't think deeply about these things or those who are trained to do the hard vigilance planning and disciplined stuff that keeps conservation culture and our caring culture alive - 
All this latest move will do is drive is a reaction against conservation . 

The trouble with tax driven change of this type  is , amongst other things  is it gives a licence to our polys to spend our money telling us what to do .

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2.Because money can motivate and governments have no other tools in the toolbox( at the moment )see the vehicles below)  . Mind you the lack of a method   won't stop them trying to find a few,,  and wasting money on that effort .  

 3 . Because the real stuff of conservation is much tougher-- and therefore even the tax money probably won't be used well . They like simple things 

.3 Because the real stuff of conservation is much tougher and you require competencies they increasingly don't have 

The consequences of this crass coercion is that conservation no longer remains a choice , that only tokens and changing objects of worship will be bought ( dying trees instead of biodiversity sprees) .

Even a lot of noise from the Greens won't be able to stop this unsustainable move into the dark of government directed nannyism and speculation.

The greatest evil is being done in the name of the best of intentions . Will the real conservationists please stand up ! 

The Carbon vehicle - no wheels yet in sight

Its August 25th 2010

Where are we with this machine -

 put together by a committee .

The scientists who are supposed to support it do not appear - to give the answers to same old same old questions that have been on everyone's lips for years.Who do the polys think we are - dumb ?
Robert Oakeshott is the only independent at today's meeting to tentatively support the vehicle with no wheels that has been talked about for years in dealing with .. whatever it is ...a warming thing or a really wobbling thing - change threat thing  (change your story every week and its surprising how you will survive with the slow press in tow)   .
Laugh at Katter if you will , but he put the science position well . Some solar is good and much carbon tax is crap . Horses for Courses - representation is representing the proper place. Why trust anyone who can't explain themselves -  no problem in the deep north there
Warming went out the window a few years ago and change while it covers all the bases ( in a pedantic and misplaced concreteness way ) will not last much longer either - Can't argue that science is one day supporting warming and the next some sort of new atmospheric abnormality )
The uncertainty of Oakeshott symbolises the confusion of many. But lets remember its a confusion the party system and the media created - where is the independent science forum to explain the shift from "warming to wobbling "
Today's truth telling was so refreshing. The NPC  debate today highlights the need to stand back for a week and think about what the party system has done to clarity about the truth - how many silent witnesses, blatant power grabbers and liars do we have there?

Push and Pull views on Population

Malthus,  like many on Quandary last night,  are right to worry . Man doesn't seem to care about how he uses resources .(And it good that some care enough to talk about it )

But to shift the debate away from man to mere mechanism is to miss the point .

Malthus's idea and observation is an important one 

the increase of population is necessarily limited by the means of subsistence,

That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and,

That the superior power of population it repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."^[9]

The drivers  we find easiest to latch onto are NOT deterministic,  just drivers . 

The  choices we make are the critical things.  Because the choice to limit the population of the earth is already being made and reinforced by education there is still some resilience left to plan with .Who on the panel really cared about our great heritage in planning ? the full growth curve contains a few things other than steep lines dummies! 

The problem is always the same with the students of mere description they name a few variables and may even have an equation or two together 

BUT they don't want to know about feedback looks inside the organism ( Whitehead) the job of sorting this stuff is not for the wannabes but for those who study and show themselves approved ( one area where Flannery and brown are right - but when would they ever put their minds where there mouths are and Listen to production ecologists AND psychologists and sociologists working together ) 

Misery and vice must not be linked to the mechanism or we will be ack to some socialistic soap opera handing out all our savings to the poor . 

So what does Quandary feed ? The road to panic rather than the road to planning . 

The inspiration that Perara gave by reminding us about attitude was great . The source of  a  balance between optimisms and pessimism is hidden to those who skim over the people problems like Flannery , Brown and Malthus . 

Big topic for another  day - what resources will we really running out of ? We are running out of optimism at the moment? 

Expecting too much of price controls

"Lateline business" on Monday let the water industry get away with murder .The spokesman was all smiles and no wonder. The doctrine of price controls as a means of driving sound conservation behaviour( and we sure need them ) is a valuable idea in the right hands . Its a very dangerous idea in the wrong hands, sending price signals that are blunt , inefficient and unfair for starters .
The biggest danger of all is that it that suits the taxing side of government -
The love affair with anything that works in cuttingedgeconservation  has blinded many to its limits . Its too easy with conservation issues to let industry decide - esp. when they have the ultimate god of their own revenue stream , and let's face it--- there is no stream better than the one that the water industry have been living off for eons .
The price of water is so cheap that the windfall profits from trying to limit consumption by pricing ( a really stupid idea because farmers use most of our water  (and because its not a finite resource unless you have accountants  and simpletons trying to manage it ) would keep the employees in gold armchairs forever -- beating anything Rudd will get out of the miners . The spokesmen on Lateline were smiling, but no taxpayer poly or farmer should be, when these people are more powerful than all of us are- and they want more .Point is, the water industry are on TV because they are well funded . Science is not,

Watch this carelessness breed yet another water industry infrastructure idea that is not worthy of public investment;
You think misinvestment ( fire fighting ) is not a risk ? Look at the list of go nowhere failures ( esp during the drought) we have seen in the last few years alone -desalination , dam watching ,water meters , granny bucket brigades , pipelines to nowhere , pumping aquifers because you can't see the damage ( Barwon water in The Otways )
Why did the damming business in Tasmania get so far out of perspective?

No, rather than fund the water industry ( or agree to giving them more ) we need to tax them and harness them . Vic government has no such restraint apart from Premier in wet behind the ears Holding who has let them lose in catchment management and all manner of conservation areas where they are not even qualified .
They , unlike genuine conservation and protection planners, have always had time and money to go and annoy politicians . Now they use the suspect and very limited argument of price controls to argue for nirvana for their already huge empires becasue polys like Holding and others fall for it .

The water industry doesn't need more money - it needs something ( and has done for decades since dams went out of fashion ) ) to spend its already huge taxes money on (can't do dams easily so they do pipleines and desalination plants etc)
The point is, the water industry is ALREADY well funded and in danger of taking over the advisory system on water and therefore a wide range of conservation areas -During the drought they already have enough runs OFF the board to make them look like the Kindergarten class they are when they are away from their excel charts and out amongst ecosystems.

When it comes down to it, polys have to think and get expert advice on conservation - otherwise its just a BIG game driven by empire builders, wannabes and polys avoiding the too hard basket for the other big risk for Australia's democratic and balanced future ( assuming government is actually a clone of business) Do you know how much engineering the environment could cost the country? - well think about what they feed on now .It ain't conservation and let the people say so !

Expecting too much of science

Nothing seem to have clouded the boundaries of real knowledge than the very high opinion the public have of what science is seen to achieve. Media attention is not everything its cracked up to be . In fact, if politicians/public think they know something about the value of your work and its controversial in other ways , they may well meddle with it.
My treasured profession is an interesting case in point.One of the best jobs in environmnetal risk assessment has been lost because of political game playing . " The greens know ;No we know : no ,we know" . While my role was one of the frontier applied science areas 20 years ago , I know of noone still doing it. Environmental science has become so popular that its now a political football - and no party or particular research group is able , or even it seems willing , to stop the silly game that is risking its effectiveness and place of respect .
I share many of Robyn Williams ( ABC science show) concerns about the ways scientists seem to be taken less and less seriously, but I disagree with what seems to be driving it. Recently he's been taking to skeptics with a whip - when it' s not them he should be hard on . What about all those dummies in parliament and readers of papers who say the environment is a serious issue, but would rather play the game themselves, than have it properly umpired.Christopher Koch would not be surprised - why are so many "science advocates".

For example , on May 1st program Robyn Williams guests talked about geoengineerng the climate and another guest talked about algae . Both interests reflect the shifting sands of focus away from the "climate change imperatives" of only a few months ago .
The guests were only saying what us skeptics have been saying for years . That to promote a solution you must FIRST understand the ecosystems; That, in itself when it comes to the gas equations, is a big ask .
You must first understand the problem, and it has to be said many of his guests of recent times , not only don't know much, but they are not always willing to admit just how little they know on this grand design of a subject ....and when it comes to scientists changing practice ...more big gaps ( career scientists are the important ones, but they may never in their lifetime , hit the headlines) . The attempt to do popular science is, it seems, risky to sound science .

If any one of us should be so lucky as to understand and then see a solution , the stage should ONLY be open to them and their team - otherwise convincing the rest of us is impossible ( the task the media wannabes have set themselves)
Time for others to comment.