Re: I want to believe....... Hamish, in his post relating to this question, has split "self sustaining" into sustainability and self-sufficiency, and answered appropriately. However this is not quite my take on it, nor was it what my original question related to. Using a slightly different definition, being self sufficent does not mean you need to make your own clothes, or even that you need to grow all your own food. It means you need to be able to live by your own means. My family is self sufficient, because between us we earn enough money to buy what we need and can therefore survive. This is touched on by Hamish, in his comments about growing a portion of your own food. My concern is that all the "big" examples of PC that I have seen do not appear to meet this criteria. In the case of an individual or family, if producing 20% of your own food requires 5 hours labour a week, that is easy to accomodate at weekends, leaving the remainder of the week available for a job to earn the money to buy the other 80% of the food and everything else that is required. If, however, producing 90% of the family food requires both (?!) adults to labour full time in the garden, there is no time to earn the money to pay for the other 10%, or anything else required. This was the basis of my original question, if a couple need to work full time on their PC project, then that PC project must produce all their "income" which in turn must be large enough to support them including servicing debts, and buying anything that cannot be produced on site. If this is not the case, then the project (no matter how good it might be environmentally, or from any other view) cannot be called self-sustaining. Every project I have seen had been massively subsidised or externally funded, therefore by definition is not self-sustaining. By extrapolation, it is therefore not sustainable - a project might have improved the soil enormously, but if it did so on the strength of constant external funding then it surely failed. It's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. If we call the external finances "inputs" and look at the process objectively, surely we get: Take required inputs from area A, transport them, install them in area B. Claim area B has vastly improved, ignoring the depletion that happened at area A. To put it another way, if you give me the cash to buy a couple of truckloads of ultra-fertile topsoil every week I will improve any area of land that you choose, with or without permaculture.
Re: I want to believe....... Hi zzsstt and everyone, to clarify the argument further would it be fair to say that broad acre farming works because it has cheap oil, fertiliser, labour (tractors etc - a half million dollar tractor has gotta be cheaper than 100s of workers) and is unsustainable because these resources are finite (more or less). However self sustaining permaculture gardens often rely on donated land, lots of cash or a small army of people to help with the initial start up, etc and therefore is not particularly sustainable either - you swap some external inputs for others. Yes? On the other hand the inputs that permaculture gardens generally use are not "infinate" but still "less finite" than oil - i have a few friends that will work for sausages and alcohol, i can earn more money as needed and i have to live somewhere on some land so it can be a little further out on a larger block - i don't like cities much anyway. So on a small scale or in neiche commercial markets where people will pay higher than normal prices this works great. I think that to apply all permaculture practices on a broad acre scale at present would not be economically viable at present but using "Sydney poo" to replace some fertilisers, bio-char instead of more top soil and wetting agents - etc, biodiesel is a bit better (depending on how you get the oil), alternative energies to power the processing gear, etc. Things are slowly getting better - they are evolving. We are finding more sustainable inputs as others become more expensive and rare. We will and are paying more at the markets though so backyard farming is getting more attractive so to spend 5 hours a week or (so in) the garden to save $50 (and rising) at the shops is great. I don't think there is a complete closed loop system in existance - except for this planet with us on it.
Re: I want to believe....... To All: Isn't one of PC's major motives the end of the professional farmer and their system. If everyone contributes and gets food, would some 5$ pomergrantes be needed, wouldn't that saved money be used for something else? Also as times get tougher and people loss jobs, won't folks be looking for ways to get food without buying it? i.e. working in community farms and gardens, investing labour and caretaking in exchange for food. Not only would it "employ" people in a sense, it gives them something more important then some paper with numbers; food (because you can't live by eating money). The whole point of PC is local economy which means shipping long distance isn't even apart of the system (From what I understand from the designers manual). (I know I never post, mostly because I never seem to think and log in but I just wanted to give my .02$ )
Re: I want to believe....... Hi zzsstt, "Whilst it is fair that you doubt that what we have done for the last 50 years can continue to be done for the next 1000, it is also utterly irrelevant, because what we are doing today is a far cry from what we were doing 20 years ago, and what we will be doing in 20 years time." Well, this is the rub. Your assumption is that any damage done can be adapted to or corrected in time to avert catastrophe. According to GL the conventional practices used in Jordan to desalinate the soil wash the salt down to the the aquifer and keep it salted for a thousand years. Even if we converted to some sustainable farming system our irrigation water would be too salted to use, and rainfall insufficient. This is just a single example. Strategies can work in the short term, but the consequences can be latent and relatively permanent. You said it yourself regarding superphosphate. "with no ongoing results, as sufficient evidence to remodel our entire farming system, or even our entire society" So a 2000 year old food forest doesn't qualify? Have you looked into it? What about https://www.permaculture.biz, have you contacted them? Their page says "Since 1993 we have been involved with the design & development of over 1100 properties including apartment balconies to 110 000 acre ranches using permaculture design." Perhaps they have some insightful data you can glean. What about all the indigenous agriculture that exercises permaculture techniques, but not under that name [1]. Of course you are free to deliberate or ignore it as long as you like, but you might find it difficult to continue with the current model. Nature tends to cycle matter and energy, but industrial agriculture is roughly linear, taking entropy into account. Extract raw and limited materials from far away: methane, oil, coal, guano, phosphorus, sulphur, metal ores, rubber, silicon, water, etc. Require a large amount of credit (wealth and trust from somewhere else) and maybe some government subsidy, in the process. Convert to food and a great deal of pollution. Have 30-50% of the food wasted in thousands of miles of transit or not consumed [2]. Grow an overweight and under nourished population. You can tweak it a little, but let's face it, the model depends on a small proportion of the population working a large amount of land, depending on long supply chains, and transporting produce vast distances. All that requires resources that will scatter and deplete. While waiting for someone else to provide you with proof that this system is fundamentally flawed you may go out of business and industrial civilisation may crumble. Either way you take a chance. Your discussion of the wine industry highlighted another problem with industrial agriculture. Because of the disconnection between producers and consumers (and between producers themselves), price being a blunt tool and large scale capital deployment rather clumsy, it is easy for over capacity to develop and resources subsequently wasted. Using permaculture principles this wouldn't be so much of a problem. People will naturally grow a variety of foods, and if they decide to main crop and market their produce, they'll be able to talk with other producers and consumers in the area to see what's worth going for. Even if it doesn't turn out, the scale of the waste is likely to be small and can be used for something else, such as feeding animals or making alcoholic beverages. You're not wrong to ask for evidence. As I've repeatedly said I'm interested in it myself. I'm trying to provide as much as I can to you (without any thanks I might add), but you seem intent on shooting everything down on financial grounds. Perhaps I've been as useful as I can be and you should ask someone with real world experience. Shoot an email to Geoff and see what he says. I would love to read the response. Cheers, Tim [1] https://permaculture.org.au/2009/02/06/c ... in-ladakh/ [2] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 90318.html
Re: I want to believe....... It's called stealing, and they do it already! Actually I think it would require another large social change, that of the removal of social security payments/dole/welfare or whatever. Whilst it is very politically incorrect to say it, most people around here would rather sit on their arses and be given stale bread than work for an hour and eat steak. Sad but true. The father of a good friend of mine once recounted the following to me: "When I was younger, if I saw a nice car it would inspire me to work harder so that one day I could have a car like it. These days, when a teenager sees a nice car they drag a key along the side of it to punish the rich b*stard who owns it". I don't think this is true across the board, but I know exactly what he meant. It's also one of my concerns with many of the concepts that form much of the core of the permaculture system - in it's full implementation it relies, much like true socialism, on everybody sharing both the work and the produce. My own experience would suggest that this is not realistic. There are simply too many people who are work-shy. This may, in turn, be a result of the current society, or because social security means people know they will not starve, or simply that some people are genetically inclined to beg and steal rather than work. Around here we have to "import" foreign workers whilst the local unemployed people sit and watch, then break-in at night and steal tools and fuel.
Re: I want to believe....... Let me just add to that first point that you are also discounting opportunity cost. It's all well and good to say if we make a mistake we'll just change our ways later. In the meanwhile, you are using resources that could be used for some other purpose. All that methane, oil, coal, metal, etc., could be used for cooking, vital transport, plastics, durable tools, emergency response, sanitation, and so on, now or in the future. These uses may be far more important than the marginal benefit achieved at the moment by industrial agriculture. Of course permaculture is not immune to this, but the specific techniques and scale of activity mean the misallocation of resources is likely to be much smaller in magnitude. Cheers, Tim
Re: I want to believe....... What I said was that it had taken a very long time for the problems associated with superphosphate to become apparent. When it was first invented it was thought to be the "answer to all our problems". Currently, you (and it's inventors) believe PC is the "answer to all our problems". Give it time...... I have done a fair amount of research into permaculture, along with biodynamics, biological farming, conventional farming, hydroponics, permacropping and several other systems. They all have web sites claiming fabulous results - even the fertiliser companies! On closer inspection, most of them start to show cracks, though perhaps I am simply too suspicious! for example, I have just looked at this website, on your suggestion. I decided to look at the "portfolio" of designs they had done, and (although I have not contacted them for further details) I notice several things. Firstly, and admittedly it is a portfolio of designs, it contains no photos of implementations that I can see - but then neither does the "photos" section. I have enough exposure to marketing to realise that a bunch of pictures of plans and a comment like "I designed a series of treatments for the various land components of the site. This worked out really well and dealt with this clients particular requirements" does not mean that anything was ever actually done beyond the planning stage. Then I picked, completely at random, one of the designs from the design portfolio that showed a GE image with co-ordinates - just to check if GE showed an up to date photo to demonstrate whether it had ever been implemented. The answer was no, but more interestingly when I reached the site I suddenly realised that it was a design that I have previously been told was done by someone else. Actually much of the above is true, and explains why I am spending time investigating alternative farming processes. Unlike you I do not believe that our entire economic system will crumble next week, but I do suspect that over time things will change. Farming will evolve the same way, as it always has, to make the best of the situation. I may be proved wrong, but I don't think anything too radical (in terms of the abandonment of cities and so forth) will happen in my lifetime. I agree entirely, though it is interesting that before we have even got to a PC based community you already have hypothesised people deciding to "main crop and market". Could I in turn hypothosise that this is because a small part of you realises that, from a production viewpoint, it is far more efficient to do a single thing and do it very well and cheaply with all the required skills and equipment, than it is to attempt to be a jack-of-all-trades? At which point we have already proposed the evolution of permaculture towards a bunch of monoculture farms grouped together. And of course once you have all the specialist skills and equipment to produce your chosen product better and cheaper than anyone else, you become the supplier for the local area. And you could always produce a bit more, because once a week you could cart it to the next village and supply them as well. And if you had a bigger cart, the next village is only a little way further. Damn, I just can't help it can I? I tend to investigate things beyond the surface, usually beyond the level at which most people stop, and often beyond the level to which the proposers have themselves investigated. In fact it was my job, for many years, to walk in to situations that I knew nothing about and fix issues that could not be fixed by the people who knew the situation inside out. I was expected, with little or no backgrounding, to be able to walk in, figure out what people were talking about and ideally give them a solution before they realised that I was not actually an expert in that subject. People's brains work in different ways - I can remember the details of a system that I spent a couple of hours fixing several years ago, but names and faces elude me completely! Actually I have talked with Geoff at some length. His knowledge and abilities in the design of permaculture food production systems is indeed impressive, and I learnt a great deal from him. However it is when we move beyond the "permaculture as a system for sustainable family food production" point and head towards permaculture in a commercial production system in our current economy, or in fact permaculture as a replacement for our current way of life that things start to fall apart. There is too much speculation. Too much reliance on everyone doing the right thing - against all evidence of human nature. If you like, and without intending to be rude, too much naivete. It's like your scenario of land redistribution and the fall of the banks etc. I would love to believe that such a thing would happen, or even be possible. But I just can't see it. There are far too many people with too much to lose for such a transition to be allowed. The man in the streets generally believes what the media tells him, and guess who controls the media? At present the media are full of the "credit crunch", largely a beat-up set to scare people. Climate change is still quite popular, though noticeably less so than a while ago, presumably as the need to "save the planet" is less than the need to make a profit (though this is obvious if one looks at any of the products involved in saving the planet - they are almost all simply an excuse to extract money from people and rarely stand up to investigation). If such a change does happen, I would suggest it will be against the wishes of those in charge (clearly), which would indicate something less controlled. Sadly, given the nature of humans, I would suggest this would result in more "Mad Max" than "PC Garden of Eden". It is my hope that we move in a controlled and evolutionary way towards a more "sensible" society. To do this we need systems that work in and with our current society, with evidence to show they do. Then they can become more mainstream, and a controlled evolutionary change will occur. A system with no proof, no history, and seemingly a reliance on a bunch of unlikely changes in society will struggle.......
Re: I want to believe....... Hey guys 'n' gals, I think this discussion is getting a bit polarised and personal, and thus in danger of becoming too attack/rebut in nature, which ensures a complete loss of focus and dispassionate examination of the problems and questions. Zzsstt has shared that he's a farmer. He didn't have to. He's not the spokesperson for the whole worldwide agribusiness because of it. I have no idea about the extent to which (s)he relies on mechanisation and fertilisers, or the extent to which his methods try and maintain local biodiversity. I have no idea about the extent to which all contributors have resolved to give up that resource hungry, polluting, high embodied energy beast of a car outside in favour of a bicycle or donkey and cart. Nor do I wish to know this. The great thing about forumz on da internets is that it is possible to discuss issues with complete strangers in relative anonymity, without being saddled with preconceptions of looks/background/job etc. Now I'll just jump in my Hummer to go & check and adjust the pesticide spray rate on the wheat crop... Anyway, a few further thoughts to clarify or muddy things further. 1) After rereading PC's definition, ethics and principles it seems apparent that PC is never promoted as a better economic alternative. This claim is not made. Indeed, if a true "closed loop" sustainable state is not reached, it may be more expensive, in monetary terms. People care, earth care, fair share...nothing about cheaper than conventional here. Nothing here either. A main priority for a farmer supplying a distant population with food is economic return. This feature is not top of the list for PC smallholdings. 2) So is it sustainable? Well I think more evidence is needed, particularly on the scale side of things. Can one man produce on ten hectares enough food and material to provide for the food and material needs (firewood, biogas, animal fodder) of that one man in a sustainable way? Probably, to a large extent. What about one man on one hectare? Hmm, possibly. What about one man on 100 hectares, but he needs to cater for 200 people? Well, not without mechanisation to help. Or fertilisers to increase yield. Or swales to reduce irrigation requirements. And so on. We need to test the limits of biological systems to see what yields we can get, sustainably, and what labour is required to achieve this. Honestly, I don't see how delegating our food production to small numbers of people on large areas of land is possible in a sustainable manner using PC principles, let alone at a cheaper cost. I'd like to be proved wrong, but I think all will have to sacrifice time and effort, and then we meet the barriers of laziness etc as discussed. 3) Cost is not the same as value. Value means different things to different people, and changes according to circumstances. The value of a year's supply of spuds for one person to a farmer is likely the monetary value, lets say $100, just for arguments sake. So I could buy direct from him for $100. But I grow my own. I may have spare time, I may need to take time off work. I may have saved seed potatoes, I may buy them in. The value to me is much higher than the $100 I could have got them for, or I could sell them for. It includes intangibles like enjoyment and satisfaction, "freshly-dug" factor, sustainability dividend etc. At one extreme a hungry person with no money doesn't care where the spud came from, it's value is in the calories. A very wealthy person likewise may not care whether they cost $3/kilo or $6/kilo, the value is in the taste & calories. The majority of us sit in the middle somewhere. I suppose there are two points I'm trying to make, albeit badly. Firstly, farm yield is a surplus which is converted into money, small block yield is not, generally. This makes it hard to compare the two methods of production in monetary terms. Secondly, many may value a sustainably produced spud more highly, and thus be prepared to pay more, ie branding. Look at the organic food movement as a branding example (not a sustainability example). Why will some people pay more for organic cherries shipped half-way round the world from Chile? Does this potential opportunity for increased monetary return need taken into account when calculating the economics? 4) Depending on your method of accounting, or view of things, lecturing, teaching or writing about PC, or giving property tours, all in exchange for cash, could be viewed as an on-property yield which is a surplus to be sold, and thus not an external input. If I spend x years establishing my PC property, observing, experimenting and learning in the process, is my knowledge not a direct yield of this system? Companies who make money from tours of their "factories" like Cadbury's, Buderim Ginger, and various mines book this income as a part of their normal activities. This one is a bit dodgy and I might be prepared to conceed it. What do you all think? The original question: No I can't. Not yet anyway. And I don't think I ever will be able to with regards to large properties growing food for distant populations. Hamish
Re: I want to believe....... Thanks Hamish, None of what I've written is intended to be a personal attack on zzsstt. We're all actors in this great play, with our own roles to play, and I am grateful that he has shared his point of view. It is indeed a danger that we are building castles in the sky and do not test our theories 'in the real world'. Any honest and civil debate can only make us stronger, if we are willing to accept that we might be wrong. To zzsstt (and sorry, off topic) - Perhaps the collapse of large scale banking sounds unlikely, but I think it is inevitable. The banks have created money out of thin air and lent it out, expecting growth to continue indefinitely. Now that a lot of these loans are turning bad (the economy has reached natural limits), there are more claims on deposits than there exists in reserve. Many banks are insolvent, and they are only being propped up by tax payers. Many governments are also in deep debt and I believe we will see many bond auctions fail soon (there are already inklings). That may spark a crisis of confidence, and a run on banks and currencies. Government legitimacy may falter, and then... revolution? Collapse? If peak oil were some way off perhaps we could rebuild the existing system in time, but indications are that we are now on the down slope. I recommend the following as starting points - https://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse https://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/ https://energybulletin.net/ Cheers, Tim
Re: I want to believe....... As Tim said, I too have intended no insult, indeed I am quite enjoying the debate! Tim, The websites you supply are interesting, but as with all information are biased by the views of the author (obviously). In the same way that Incitec Pivot's website suggests that artificial fertilisers are wonderful, the Ferrari website suggests that Ferraris are wonderful, and a magnetic water treatment manufacturers website suggest their product is wonderful, so a website written by a believer in the decline of the banks will of course be able to justify claims that the banks will fall. This, by the way, does not mean that the information or even the concept is not true - Ferraris ARE wonderful....... The trick is to read as many varied sources of information as possible, and (with a smattering of logic and reasoning) reach an opinion. I do, in fact, agree with some of what you say. Our current economy has been built, guided and abused based on the unachievable goal of not only constant growth, but constant growth of growth - i.e. if my company grew 5% last year it must grow 8% this year. This is clearly unsustainable - all markets must reach saturation eventually. However this does not neccesarily mean that the system will collapse. Collapse will only happen if the system does not modify itself just quickly enough to keep going. The current "credit crunch" is, in my opinion, largely fake anyway. The majority of the companies having "difficulties" are doing so largely on paper. Have you not noticed that few companies are actually posting "losses" in the raditional sense? Most of the banks have in fact (in Australia) posted very healthy profits. As another example, I think it was News Corp that recently posted a loss of (from memory, so these are approximations) US$7bn after a "down turn in advertising". But this (in the fine print) was after a write-off of US$9bn (asset losses, bad debts, whatever). So in actual fact they INCREASED their trading profit by US$2bn. What we have currently is a situation where increases in asset values have been "faked" in to accounting systems to increase apparent profits. Hence a company that makes a product reports a profit comprising not only it's trading profit, but also "profit" due to an increase in the value of it's buildings, "profit" from interest on cash, "profit" from increase in share value (both it's own, and holdings it may have of other tradeable shares). The reality is that "profit" from increase in the value of an asset is only realised when that asset is sold, but our accountant friends have ignored this in order to make the figures look better during a time of growth. This is made worse, as "profitablility" calculations are distorted by things like numbers of employees. Recently, as in the News example above, many such assets have failed to increase in value, or dropped. Unfortunately this results in a "paper" fall in profit. As the share market reacts to this fall, so the "profit" further decreases becauase the company's holding of it's own shares decreases in value which is calculated as a "loss". In order to try to recoup its "profitability" the company starts shedding staff, thus savings costs and also increasing "profitability" because the number of staff are on the bottom of the equation. Through all of this, the "real" trading profit of the company may not have changed at all. On top of this, other companies will use the "credit crunch" as an excuse to write off their bad debts, or those "cock-ups" that many companies have hidden in their accounts (failed projects, old hardware, unsellable stock, directors swimming pools etc.), or over staff situations that are otherwise tricky to resolve. After all, it's a pretty good time to get rid of all those paper "losses", it doesn't stand out because everybody is "struggling". Even better if there is a chance of some free money from the government - Larry Flynt has even asked for money to support the US "adult" industry! From the above, it would seem that what threatens the majority of companies therefore is the stock market itself, rather than any change in trading conditions. This in turn means that some relatively minor modifications to the laws of accounting, rules of the share market etc. would fairly rapidly remove much of the problem (or a least the "apparent" problem). We won't do it yet, however, becuase we have such a vast financial sector that depends on this very instability and fluctuation in shares prices to survive, but perhaps we see some first steps in the capping of Wall street salaries (I'm sure they'll find a way around that!). I could, of course, flesh out the above, include some statistics, credit myself as Dr. zzsstt PHD, BA, AZSE (associate of the zzsstt school of economics!) and create a website called whythebankswillfall.org but it's still just an opinion. The only reality is, and I must stress this even at risk of repeating myself, that Ferraris ARE wonderful. Oh, and Linux is not...... So, whilst I agree that the current economy is fake, and unsustainable, I do not think we have seen the end of it. In fact I sincerely hope we have not, because honestly can you see revolution and collapse as a good thing? I will assume (without malice) that if you genuinely believe such a fall is inevitable you have a large stash of firearms and ammunition, because I honestly believe you will need them! If all the people living in cities suddenly have to support themselves, with no skills or equipment, no local land and (most importantly) start doing it very rapidly - plant some seeds and try to eat the produce later that day? - I don't think it will be pretty! I envisage two classes of people surviving for the first year. One will be the well armed vicious people who will simply take what they need, and the other will be those who are already set up to provide their own food, in a place where the first group will not find them!
Re: I want to believe....... Hi zzsstt, They are just some of my favourite sites. Here's a list of other sites I frequent: https://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/ - Acknowledges peak oil but doesn't think the effects will be all that bad (has attacked local agriculture) https://peakenergy.blogspot.com/ - The same, and believes that renewable energy, smart grids and electrified transport will save the day https://www.greencarcongress.com/ - Covers cutting edge developments in motorised transport https://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/ - Bearish financial analysis, but optimistic in the long term https://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/ - Cheer leader for mining and energy stocks and the free market, demonising government https://climatescience.blogspot.com/ - Denial of climate change (and every other problem we might have to do something about) I'm also careful to read comments on articles to get an idea of opposing view points, and often put forward my own point of view for criticism. As a software engineer, I've got some practice in spotting faulty logic. Even my own I don't doubt that many companies will fudge the numbers and use the crisis to cover dubious deeds, but the effects of this 'fake' crisis are very much real. Just ask the millions going unemployed and being evicted around the world. Many of the greatest crises are due to group psychology - herd behaviour. So it's not clear to me that fiddling with regulations is going to solve much, even if someone knew exactly how to fix them. Another must read article is Dmitry Orlov's 'Closing the Collapse Gap'. He compares the former Soviet Union with the US now: https://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259 Got no guns. I guess I'll die Cheers, Tim P.S. I've heard Ferraris are wonderful, but I don't drive much any more.
Re: I want to believe....... Dead man walking! But honestly, no guns and don't drive much? You're part of the problem. Now get with the program and become part of the solution. Do what Mr Rudd suggests, go out and spend, spend, spend. I'll check out those sites at some point. Have you investigated to see who funds any of them? I have found it quite interesting to see who is behind many of the current sources of information. Many have "sponsorship" from big business, which is almost always reflected in the information they present, though if one didn't know about the sponsorship (and it's not normally declared) it would be easy to think it was an "unbiased" analysis. I suppose however that this is fairly true in all circumstances, as I said earlier people tend to extract the facts that suit their viewpoint and (at best) present only the edited truth. I suppose if a person or organisation has an agenda, they will take any measures they see fit to push it forward? It makes it very hard sometimes to reach the truth. It's interesting that one of the sites you mention does not accept climate change. Climate change is a huge business at the moment, and anyone who does not believe it is ridiculed. But that doesn't make it real (or, for that matter, unreal). Many people are making a good living out of it, in fact it is hard to get funding for research not involving it, and impossible to get research for anything attempting to disprove it. Before I go any further, let me say I am not really sure about it either way. Much of the data presented is questionable or contradictory, and for every piece of evidence suggesting warming, there is another that suggests cooling. Almost all of the "evidence" for mans involvement, and the entire set of "predictions", comes from computer simulations, and as a software engineer you know as well as anyone that a computer program (ignoring bugs) does only what the designer/programmer wanted it to. I have no doubt that either of us could create a computer simulation that showed absolutely that trout live in trees. I have seen, first hand, companies that employ legions of statisticians to analyse data and get the results they want to show, whether by designing the experiment, selecting the subjects, or massaging the data. Many of the scientists credited as authors on the IPPC review have resigned from the panel, indeed some claim the report does not reflect what they said at all. The UN/IPCC have largely, if not totally, stopped producing quantitive predictions (ie temp rise of x degree in y years) and replaced them with non-specific statements warning of the horrors to come - and I guess by now you are aware of my view of non-specific claims and specualtion!. I know one very well respected scientist and meteorologist who has retired without the customary university professor position that would normally be expected. When asked why (in a private conversation) he answered "I would have to believe in climate change to get it". So is anthropomorphic climate change real? No idea!
Re: I want to believe....... Hey there, You really want to admit that you were an evil scientist for Big Pharma too! :shock: Largely concur with the climate change proof. The evidence that the earth is warming has been shown to me in a form I can understand by groups or institutions that I kind of trust. The evidence or proof that man has caused it may well be there, but I'd like to see it presented to me in an unbiased format, by a group without an agenda, in a form I can understand. Lots of pretty pictures, and admissions of the strengths of the evidence and possible flaws in the studies. I'd also appreciate unbiased opinions of how the scenario changes if we need to adapt to a lower oil use future. If we are intent on burning most of the remaining oil in the next 50 years, does that mean that after that the earth will get a bit of a break, or will we all have moved on to the last 200 years worth of coal? Or nookie power? Or even cow dung... Heard in a Saudi cafe... Hamish
Re: I want to believe....... Don't tell Rudd, but my piece of his "stimulus" is going straight to my mortgage Yes, I do consider sponsorship and vested interests. I've questioned permaculture as just another cult seeking to fleece the naive, but have found no malicious intent. Most permies I know are not materially wealthy, do not charge excessively for their consultation, material and courses, tend to live by their stated principles (as opposed to, say, Al Gore, rock stars and actors), have little interest in control and power, and their claims are independently verifiable, falsifiable and consistent with my observation of the world. It's incredibly pragmatic. Any comparison to religion is ill-founded. There may be bad apples (e.g. misleading images on business web sites), but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. We're all human. I'm of a similar opinion on climate change. The atmosphere and interaction with the biosphere is so complex and history so fuzzy that it's easy to present data or simulations to support any desired course of action. It ends up being something of a distraction. Peak oil and other resource constraints are much less ambiguous, and makes our response to climate change somewhat academic. If I were a gambling man though, I'd say there's something to it. We've changed the biosphere so much, deforested a great amount of land, and changed the chemical and particulate composition of the atmosphere, oceans and soil. Most of what we do has ill side effects. Who's to say there's a limit on their magnitude? I'd also rate the quality of argument from climate scientists far above that of the sceptics, even if they do have a financial incentive. Cheers, Tim
Re: I want to believe....... Actually I wasn't, but you're half right! I've had several careers, changing when I started to tire of whatever I was doing or got interested in something else. As an industrial chemist (not in pharma) I watched the same chemical undergo safety testing numerous times until it happened upon a bunch of particularly hardy rats and scraped an "acceptable" LD50, at which point it was incorporated into a product that (I gaurantee) almost everyone reading this is exposed to almost every day. (And people wonder why I think fear of RoundUp is stupid - we all handle far nastier things every day, but most of us don't know it!). By the time I got to pharma I was no longer a chemist...... As a consultant, Pharma is a great industry to extract cash from. Many countries have special rules for pharma, (as you may well know) with regard to taxation etc. As long as they can get an expense to have some connection to R&D (rather than marketing, accounts etc.) many pharma companies can spend almost as they please. New coffee machine? No way! Oh, it's for the development meeting room, well that's different. Presumably the commercial 4 groupset Italian Espresso machine will be OK for? And you may as well buy a few hundred kg's of Blue Mountain to go along with it (no thanks, I'm not Japanese - I'll get some good coffee rather than some popular and expensive rubbish!). Ah, the joys of an open cheque book! I'm not entirely convinced about anthropomorphic climate change. I do, however, believe we're being stupid with our consumption for no good reason and should adjust our habits to suit - which is what I'm trying to do, though without returning to the stone age! Unfortunately, one look at the tobacco counter in the newsagent should be enough to convince people that just because we (as individuals and as a species) know something is bad for us doesn't mean we'll stop doing it. Or, in fact, even have the good taste not to complain when we find out that what we have done, in full knowledge of the risks, has indeed caused us serious harm. Tim, I have found much the same with regard to the permaculture movement. No-one has tried to sell me much, the worst I can say is that some of the training courses are expensive for what they are (or perhaps "for what they cost to give" is more accrurate). I must also say that I get slightly suspicious when I find out that the person offering or running a course has only recently been trained themselves. There's a comfort, I find, in knowing that the guy training you (in anything) really knows the subject inside out, is telling you what works based on experience, and can answer any question you ask. I don't get the same feeling when someone is basically simply quoting sections from a book with no personal experience. But overall the practical aspects of permaculture do make sense to me. WRT climate change, again I largely agree, though I have read some convincing arguments from both sides (and some utter nonsense from both!). Keep in mind (as you clearly do) when you read the pro and con arguments, that the pro climate change "papers" have large resources behind them to produce the work. The anti's (if they actually manage to get published at all) have few resources and spend most of their time trying to get heard. That makes it much harder to present a convincing argument. I would state my current position as "unconvinced, but why take the risk if we don't have to". That justifies my refusal to jack it all in and live in a cave, but at the same time provides incentive to make small, incremental changes where I can. Well, it does to me!
Re: I want to believe....... Hello Your questions almost relate to subsistence organic gardening. How does everyone define permaculture? My definition is something like this: Good design, with lots of co-benefits. If I were you, I'd be seeing my cash crops as necessary to get an income and try to design them well into your system ie. where placed, relative to machinery, home etc. also, which species - least work, most return? I would then look to slowly develop things like water supplies, fire resiliance, a 'zone 1' close to the house, because who doesn't want fresh herbs and vegies that taste so much better than in the shops?? Then an orchard with benefits, like rotating grazing chickens on an understorey of useful grasses and shrubs. Perhaps your windbreaks could provide fodder for your sheep, providing that they are planted on the right side of the fence or protected in some way. Your good design can include traditional agriculture... you might eventually decide you want to do away with fossil fuels and use methane or some sort of biofuel to power your tractors, but it doesn't mean that your design can't include grains etc. :lol: You can make it up as you go along! So, all up, I'd love to see you take what works, reject what doesn't and in this way redefine your idea of what permaculture is. I find it exciting, but I admit that I get really annoyed when people think that permaculture equals herb spirals, frog ponds and gardens started with newspaper mulch... I mean... it could mean anything!! :notworthy:
Re: I want to believe....... Well of course you've heard the opposite. That's because the green movement see it (probably rightly) as a strong card to play; "we're fighting a desperate battle against the massively powerful forces arrayed against us". Such a stance will suck people in. Have you not noticed that every sports team wants to be the underdog? The reality may well be different. When was the last time you saw an article in the media reporting (as genuine, not just poking fun) that climate change is not real, or global warming is not real, or that an ice age is coming? Yet the king tide from a few weeks ago, that was supposed to be the largest ever and demonstrate how terrible things are, was still being reported and hyped on the ABC news at 7.00pm, 9 hours after it completely failed to reach the levels "predicted" and in fact was a total non-event. Even the small number of media mentions of the "failure" were hurriedly explained away because of the off-shore wind, or a passing ship, whale farting or whatever. Nobody in the mainstream media, or research (other than directly funded by industry) has the guts to question it - yet the reality is that it IS speculation. Might be true, might not. You've probably also heard lots of other untruths, half-truths and marketing spin about the environment. A water saving tap will save 15,000L of water a year, for example. Most of it is nonsense, but easy to take on face value if you don't actually think about the claims.
Re: I want to believe....... Noz brings up a point I've been meaning to. It's not all or nothing Of course it means diverting some resources (land, time, money), but the investment and risk is reasonably low, with potentially great payoff. GL talks about Tagari Farm in Establishing a Food Forest, that they grew 20,000 fish in their ponds (plus other yields) that used to support only 50 cattle. That sounds like it could generate a good income. They also filled dams and had constant running water during a drought. If you do anything serious be sure to keep notes and share them! Climate sceptics definitely have fewer resources and therefore don't have the depth of research, but still, their material and methods make me suspicious. Instead of drawing a comprehensive and consistent view of how the world works that happens to explain effects of CC, they tend to use a spit ball approach at debunking ACC. That is, they'll throw something, almost anything, and see if it sticks. Even after an argument has been discredited they'll keep throwing it around. Fair enough, peer review is a corner stone of the scientific process, but it feels like a FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) campaign, preventing the discussion from moving on and delaying action. It doesn't help when sceptics such as the Heartland Institute, also known for their quality work for the tobacco industry, are alleged to have been funded by ExxonMobil. I try not to factor these things in when reading their material, but in seems to me that credibility is everything because I'm unable to understand or research everything they say. As an example of their weak arguments, they love to talk about how carbon dioxide levels lag temperature in the historic record. Their supposition is that carbon dioxide can't be a warming agent because it would form a positive feedback loop and there would have been runaway CC already. But wait a minute.. during recent history we have done a damn good job of clearing the vegetation that happens to sequester carbon dioxide and filled the sky with particles. Both modify rainfall patterns that affect further vegetation growth. Interestingly, this vegetation tends to increase in performance in the presence of warmth, moisture and carbon dioxide! Could this be the pressure release valve that we've just plugged? Not a whisper about it... Another bug bear is the insinuation that tackling climate change is necessarily going to cost money and jobs, and increase costs. As if that isn't happening anyway. Well, maybe it will if you go about it in an idiotic fashion. Lost on them, and not emphasised enough by proponents, is that if we consume less and stop reproducing so much, there will be more to go around for necessary use, for longer. We might also get some important ancillary benefits. Unfortunately it comes back to vested interests and politics. The sacred cow of the growth economy will have to die of starvation -in agony- instead of being slaughtered humanely.
Re: I want to believe....... YESYESYESYES!!!!!! Exactly the problem. But, and in a weird way I guess this almost supports my argument about the hype in the media and the government (around the world) CC "measures" being no more than pandering and pretence, when was the last time you saw this stated in the media? When did Mr "I signed Kyoto" Rudd stand up and say "'fer Crissake stop having babies"? I don't even think Bob "whatever it is, I'm against it" Brown has said it. [rant]Another strange thing, to me, is the need to avoid, as far as possible, impacting voters. If CC is real, and if Mr Rudd really wants to address it, why is he starting by taking measures that will impact industry directly? Logic would suggest that reducing the non-productive use of resources was the place to start, so why "remove" a meg of water that would be used to produce food, and do nothing about the meg that is used to water lawns or wash cars in Sydney? If we simply provided the current cheap water and power to each house in a quantity sufficient for a reasonable life, then put ENORMOUS punitive charges on any usage above this, we would not impact our food supply, reduce consumption of power and water, encourage "voluntary" adoption of resource saving measures and product and reduce the purchase of inefficient items (and thus, through a knock-on effect, push industry to manufacture devices that are genuinely good, rather than just hype)? Both water and power are currently metered, so there would be no additional work to do this (unlike a stupid ETS). Unmetered sources (water tanks, solar panels) would not be charged, so this would automatically encourage their adoption. But no, we b*gger about with schemes that cost money and achieve little except put our locally produced items at a cost disadvantage to imports...... which stuffs Australian companies and burns fossil fuels bringing in cheap imports.[/rant] From you comment about keeping notes, I guess you have read https://www.pacific-edge.info/journalism/travel/pri.html, but for the sake of my original question, I'll quote from it; "Tagari is not a farm in the ordinary sense of the word, more a rural training centre. People come to do two week residential courses in Permaculture design, a few staying on to spend additional weeks developing their skills. The practice has been formalised through a system of internships which provides the opportunity to trial designs of their own. The internships have succeeding in attracting people, however one ex-intern said that they were little more than a way to raise money and provide farm labour" and "I acknowledge that Tagari Farm residents might dispute this, but the impression I gained over a number of visits through the 1990s was that people living there struggled just to maintain the land, to keep the grass down, the chickens fed, the gardens cultivated. Others who visited Tagari agree." I know that the place was for sale a couple of years ago, but have no idea whether it sold, is still a PC environment, was returned to traditional agriculture or anything else. However, as I originally said, this would seem to support the view that PC on a large scale is so massively labour intensive that it becomes "unsustainable" - perhaps financially (insufficient income to hire workers), perhaps culturally (most people do not want to work hard, paid or not). And all this, by the way, on land that was (as far as I know) effectively "free", having been been financed by BM's wife. At the end of the day, supporting 50 cattle would perhaps seems as sustainble - from some viewpoints - as a PC farm? Noz's comments are indeed interesting. We are in fact adopting that very attitude, using ideas from many alternative farming systems as they seem appropriate and/or useful to us - except that Noz thinks we should have sheep, which are the most stupid and useless animal on the face of the planet. (If anyone wants a small flock of 20 or so Wiltshire Horns, please let me know!). The difficulty is (and I know I keep coming back to this) that current agricultural techniques are where we have got following this same line. The system has been developed to do the "best" all-round job of producing massive amounts of cheap food. It may not be the best in an environmental sense, there may be better options from a social or community perspective, it may not be the most pleasing to the eye, it may not even actually be the all-round best theoretical system based on current knowledge (it is not possible to be cutting edge all the time, the cost and effort of updating to adopt the latest research prevents this), but it is the best we can do to as fully meet the requirements as possible. By the way, and just in conversation, we have seen mention of a 2000 year old food forest. It came to mind earlier this morning that before man came along and stuffed it up, much of the plains of North America were (history tells us) open grasslands, grazed by large herds of migrating bison in a self sustaining system that the Native Amercians harvested. Does that count, rather than a "food forest", as a "meat tray" - and if so, does my rotational grazing system that attempts to emulate it qualify as permaculture? Any thoughts would be appreicated!
