Hats

;Hats

 

Through the years you get to wear a few hats, not all of them comfortable, but that’s life I guess; the valleys and the hills. During the early days of my forestry career, I was responsible for the production of fence posts, which wasn’t all that onerous, but we did have to keep up with the demand because quite suddenly there was a change in land husbandry in our neck of the woods. It was the end of gorse hedges.

 

For those who don’t know it, gorse is a prickly shrub that has masses of yellow flowers during late winter and through spring. The flowers develop black pods that rely on the summer sun to dry them, they twist in the heat to open with an audible crack, firing seed in all directions. The hard-coated seed can remain dormant in the soil for seventy years, which is why, here in New Zealand gorse has become an invasive, hard to kill weed. However, if cared for, by trimming the hedges while they are flowering, gorse makes a tidy, stockproof hedge. There was pride in the ability to use a hedge-knife for trimming, and when times were tough and swaggers roamed the countryside, they could earn a meal by trimming sections of a farmer’s hedge. The hedge provided shelter from both storms and sun, because most paddocks were square. If the hedge wasn’t tended properly, they weren’t entirely stock proof. I remember old Dave telling me that as a child he and his father bought gorse plants from a nursery in Trotter’s gorge… the area that I was much later responsible to establish a pine forest.  Dave told me that he had to regularly water the gorse plants through the summer months to ensure their survival… which to us seems incredible because wild gorse is difficult to control… but at least it is nitrogen fixing. One of my hats was the fight to control the invasive weed, but nature is a wily foe and has a habit of winning such battles… turn a sod of soil and bingo, half a dozen or more seeds are exposed.

 

Farmers decided that the gorse hedges needed to be removed… it wasn’t a government decree but the Catchment Board recommended it. The expert hedge knife wielders had gone and mechanical cutters left a mess behind that had to be cleaned up… another reason being the escapee nature of gorse from its hedge-prison… and it helped that the farmers were doing nicely with buoyant prices. So, the hedges were bulldozed out and post and wire fences replaced them. We cut posts from thinnings of radiata pine, and by clearfelling two slower-growing species of pine… Scotch pine and Corsican pine. Much of the topography was on the steep side, so we had to develop techniques for the harvest process, which were amateur compared to today’s methods. We produced posts, strainers and stays all of which were peeled on site and sent off to the two pressure treatment plants that used tanalith as a preservative. Wearing another hat, that of erecting fences… the foundation of a seven-wire fence is the strainer/stay combination… on each wire there is a four tonne pull so I preferred an eight-foot strainer post, and I’d never use one of our stays. They were skinny and taken from the top of the trees, so didn’t have much guts. Instead, I used a stout post. When using a stay, even though the fence is strained well, the stay might hold for a while, but the pressure will inevitably cause the stay to bend slightly and the steady pull will move the strainer over allowing the wire to slacken, so stock will push through it.

 

Once I embarked on my tree nursery career, I wore another hat. The Catchment Board gave out loans to encourage farmers to plant shelter trees for their livestock… but what tree species were we to grow for the farmers? The Catchment Board had some ideas, not all of them sound and some of the farmers didn’t want the same species as their neighbour. There are some basic rules when it comes to shelter. The fodder tree, tree lucerne, seemed a good idea, but it was frost-tender when young… and I’d noticed in some locations in became invasive. The distance sheltered is seven times the height of the shelter, but a block shelter like a hedge isn’t ideal because at the distance of seven times the height, the wind ‘thumps’ down, therefore semi permeable shelter is best. The ends and gaps in block shelter cause an increase of wind turbulence too. An extra fence was needed to protect the tree plantings… a proper fence, because a three-wire electric fence is a nurseryman’s gift, sooner or later the electricity stops flowing, stock enter, so the area needs replanting… or the farmer loses heart and gives up the idea of planting. Weed control is necessary to ensure quick tree establishment and the grass, cocksfoot, is one of the worst; it grows in a clump and sucks the moisture from the soil. So, I had to be up with my chemicals; one might not kill one tree species, but it will kill another.  The Catchment Board rightly recommended a two-tier shelter, one species that grows to a good height and the other for low shelter, but there’s not much point discussing the various species here because trees have specific requirements for the site they are planted in. We had to contend with coastal conditions, which was mostly salt tolerance, to the high country where frost tolerance was the most important factor.

 

The other hat to don was species recommendation, and one of the species I tried to avoid were the Eucalyptus although they do have their uses. One is fuelwood and Euc. nitens was selected for its vigour… but it didn’t coppice well, which was the very reason for planting the species! Other Eucalyptus species are goof coppicers though.  Growing Eucalyptus on a coppice regime, you allow the trees to put on roughly six inches of diameter (so the wood doesn’t need splitting) and the stump is let high, there will be regrowth and you thin those to three or four stems and harvest them when they are up to size... for sustainable fuelwood. People planted the trees but coppicing never happened, they waited until the trees has some size and used a mechanical log splitter, which was far better use of the land. Anyway, the firewood dried better when it was split. But Eucalyptus species tend to dry out the soils and farmers wanted most for their grass to grow with vigour, and the lack of moisture also compromised the vigour of the low shelter species. Eucalyptus ‘self-prunes’ or grows large limbs and the leaves are inedible for stock so create a fire risk and the oils are toxic to grass, so in a word, they are messy on a farm.

 

I much prefer poplar species for tall shelter or as a ‘conservation’ tree, because they hold the soil in place well. If they dry out the soil during summer, because they are deciduous, the soil has a chance to rehydrate during the winter. In the early 1970’s poplar rust was detected in New Zealand and we were told it would wipe out all of our poplars. I recall accompanying the forestry tree heath scientist to visit the tree nursery I was to later manage, to inspect their poplar stools… stools are trees cut back so cutting material can be taken from them for vegetative propagation. It was spring and sure enough there was rust… but I disagreed. There were radiata pine trees across the road from the nursery and the poplar leaves were just emerging from their buds so they had a waxy coating… I suggested the rust was pollen from the pine trees! I was right. However, by February (midsummer here), the iconic Lombardy poplars had a good dose of rust. This spurred the authorities to propagate rust resistant poplar species which we grew at the nursery. But the rust never came to much, it overwintered on Larch but didn’t overwinter well and Lombardy was unaffected during dry years but in wet years, they became yellow/golden with rust in February and leaf drop is early. Anyway, the scientist again made a mountain out of a molehill.

 

Despite the occasional defoliation, I still like Lombardy poplar, for their conical shape. For myself I planted Trichocarpa poplar, black cottonwood and encouraged its use for shelter, and its timber makes the best bee boxes (there’s another hat). I also used Androscoggin poplar to drain some wet areas on my property and fifty years later, three people are needed to wrap arms around them. Androscoggin is a cross between Trichocarpa and Maximowiczii (a bit of a mouthful), it has a strong root system, but grass can grow up to the trunk of both species, which is what farmers like. I simply cut 2 metre poles, two to three inches in diameter, and soaked them for three or four weeks, before planting using a crowbar and away they go. My sheep used to like the fallen male flowers and the fallen leaves when there was some green still in them, but at the end of the day, watching them grow brings satisfaction.

 

Another shift in farming has occurred, the change from sheep grazing to dairy farming. It is the best income stream for farmers at the present time, but they use far more water than sheep farmers. To irrigate, the trend is large booms that pivot from a central point and central pivots do not perform well with trees in way, so the majority of the shelter plantings have been removed! All farmers care for their stock and yes, regularly talk to them, but the cows can’t tell the farmer if they miss having shelter or not… the only indication farmers have is that their cattle are thriving and their milk output is good, so maybe shelter isn’t all that necessary. As for the water usage sheep farming versus dairying, well there’s the water cycle and evaporated water comes back down somewhere, at some time… the cost to the farmer is the reticulation.

 

But hang on, there is a problem… the water comes from underground aquifers and those aquifers take a thousand years to recharge. Well, I don’t know about that… alluvial gravels like the Canterbury Plains and the Waitaki Valley will recharge quicker because the gravels are porous… nevertheless we should know how much is going in before was take any out, and we don’t know the answer to that. But look around the world! Climate alarmists tell us the sea level is rising but there are many cities and other areas that are sinking… part of the reason is the weight of the cities, but mostly it is by emptying aquifers to fulfil the water usage needs. Parts of the San Joaquin Valley for example have sunk thirty feet! And maybe with the water from all the aquifers now in the atmosphere, perhaps there is extra rainfall.

 

So, my latest hat is to point out where climate change is being blamed when there are other, more logical explanations.

 

 

Correlation CO2/Temperature

Correlation

I used to add sawdust to my potting mix to allow water to percolate through the mix, which helps produce a sturdier plant. By making 25% of the mix sawdust, we didn’t need to excavate so much topsoil, so it was economical for us. There were a few portable sawmills operating in and around Arusha, so I used to buy a ute-load every now and then from a couple of guys I came to know. They were surprised that anyone would want to buy their sawdust, so they asked why I needed it. I told them I was adding it to my potting mix for our tree nursery… so they assumed it must be some form of fertilizer. So as entrepreneurial as those young guys were, the next time I visited, they had a sign which said Mbolea, advertising their sawdust as fertilizer and for half the price of urea! They were disappointed when I explained further how their sawdust worked in my potting mix.

 

It isn’t unusual for people to see a correlation of events and come to a random, mistaken conclusion. For instance the ancients thought that sacrificing a few children would please the gods thereby ensuring a plentiful harvest, and it worked! But not always, so they simply increased the number of sacrifices. The basis of the theory that greenhouse emissions, in particular carbon dioxide, being the cause of global warming springs from a correlation between the historical atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperature records over the last 1000 years. One Michael Mann produced the now famous graph showing temperature closely following atmospheric carbon dioxide levels… and his graph ends with an alarming ‘hockey stick’, which shows the planet is going to heat up.

 

There are however a few scientists who believe that Mann’s hypothesis is arse about face, they say carbon dioxide levels follow temperature. The ocean is a large store of carbon dioxide and when the ocean is cold, it can hold more carbon dioxide than when it’s warm. So as the oceans warm, carbon dioxide is released… and that makes sense. But the thing is with a hypothesis, if you have to fudge the data to prove it, there has to be something wrong with the hypothesis, yet that’s exactly what some alarmist scientists are doing. In the ‘climate gate’ email, they discussed altering empirical data so their climate models would appear more logical… ok, so they were exonerated, but on what basis? And we’ve read the emails so isn’t it… fact? There have been other modifications to data as well, one of them was caught altering Wikipedia! Climate realists are accused of spreading misinformation, but there are bright people who show how data has been manipulated… and what they’ve dug up is convincing… however, ‘the powers that be’, don’t acknowledge any of it, and anyway alarmists won’t debate the issue… because ‘the science is settled’.

 

So here’s the elephant in the room… we’re told that the climate debate is settled, that 97% of scientists say so, and we must trust the science. Well, hang on… remember Wuhan and what World Health Organisation said at the start of the Covid 19 outbreak… and the deviousness picked up in the investigation about how the virus originated? And there’s a list of scientists who have been tripped up on misconduct, the list is as long as your arm!  And those are just the scientists that have been caught out. So in fact we’ve no reason to believe that the science is settled… especially just because politicians say so. There’s an obvious tendency to create alarm about climate change going back in newspapers as early as 1903, but prophesied far back into history. Why do certain people want to be prophets of doom? Maybe The Book of Revelation started it in earnest… but why? As a genuine warning, or to manipulate the minds of the masses so preachers could promise salvation if their followers behaved in a certain way. Back then, doom was the result of sin… blasphemy and illicit sex were high on the list of sins back then, and what do you know, nowadays blasphemy is speaking out against the climate narrative and now it’s carbon that’s illicit… but doom is still the promised punishment.

 

The climate narrative began with global warming, and when the data didn’t quite plat ball it became climate change and now it seems we’re back to global warming! The term doesn’t matter, the IPCC and COP26 as well as their previous thirty or so meetings have set a temperature goal that we must stay under to prevent doom. So temperature must be the most important factor of climate. My geography teacher taught us the difference between a continental climate and a maritime climate, which basically meant continents have extremes of temperature, especially in the interior while maritime areas are cooled by sea breezes and are influenced by ocean, so don’t have wide extremes of temperature… it’s more complicated, but that’s the gist. Most of the information that goes into the climate models is from a continental climate. The actual measurement of a world temperature is a can of worms, data from reading a thermometer becomes empirical data, and over time there’s a record, which is important if we’re going to discuss trends, but in reality, the data record doesn’t go back very far. Of the four billon years of the planet’s existence, we’ve only had 150 years of accurate measurement… yes, ice core and trees rings provide information too, which is a skilful process but while the interpretation might be genuine, bias is always a possibility. The United States have by far the most weather data, in comparison, the Southern Hemisphere has scant data that only goes back to about 1930, and even now the coverage is thin. All of which makes a world average to be a matter juggling the data available, where best estimates are used, and best estimates might depend on personal points of view. To add to the confusion, ground thermometers have considerable bias, because of their location… it’s difficult to get away from concrete, asphalt, lighting and motor vehicles. The former two store heat and increase local temperature readings, they also artificially hold heat into the night, while motor vehicles have hot engines and their bodies radiate heat. When weather stations were/are set up, there is certain criteria, first they needed to be where someone can take daily readings, and then the location becomes modified over time. A recent survey of US thermometers reveals 80% are corrupted, showing higher temperature than would be in natural surroundings. The weather organisations seem focused on the longevity of the record, rather than the accuracy of the temperature reading. However there’s the Climate Reference Network who have thermometers that are isolated and give a true reading. Those thermometers show there has been no warming since 2014!

 

Nowadays they have satellite temperature data… clever as that is, accuracy depends on computer programming. As well there are accurate measurements taken by balloons that relay data back to the scientist. It’s known that temperature loses 1⁰C for every 100 metres of elevation. Just how and why alarmism gets generated by the climate computer models is probably down to the media… the models are essentially estimates of what the temperature is going to be doing in the future and to find a result there has to be an estimate of the atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases. The models have been going for a while, and show far more warming than is actually happening… woefully so. Even the new CMIP-6 model, constructed for the COP26 conference is running far too hot. The model that’s nearest to actual is a Russian one… and you won’t get acknowledgement of that from US scientists. We have to understand that computers can’t just produce a model out of the blue, data and methodology has to be imputed… therefore if the models are running too hot, so either the data is wrong, or the methodology is wrong, or there is bias in the imputation of data. The models can’t cope with the medieval warm period, nor the little ice age, and they can’t cope with the ‘true readings’ of the Climate Reference Network thermometers. When there’s been a cooling trend for a few years, they call it a hiatus. From about 1940 there was a cooling trend, and by the late 1970’s scientists speculated an ice age was on the cards, Time Magazine even wrote about it. That cooling period mucked things up for the alarmist scientists. So to cover that up, graphs showing a modern warming trend starts at 1980, the lowest point of the cold period… so as the cooling ended 1979-80, of course there will be a warming trend since! Looking at a graph comparison, of all the models the calculated average has a trajectory of nearly 45⁰ which shows considerable warming, whereas the satellite temperature data shows a trajectory that’s almost flat or at the most 5⁰… which is confirmed by the non-corrupted thermometers - so why are the models being taken notice of?

 

Mann says carbon dioxide has impacted temperature since the start of the industrial revolution 1760, but surely it can’t have been a global phenomenon back then, coal-fire carbon dioxide at that time occurred in small pockets dotted around the northern hemisphere, hardly a global trend. So let’s start at 1840, for no other reason than there’s some significance for my country. Other than atmospheric carbon dioxide, what else might show a correlation that could cause climate change to occur since 1840? First up would be deforestation. Imagine standing in the Sahara desert at midday compared to the Burmese (Myanmar) rainforest forest - both are approximately the same latitude – straight away you see what forests do. Basically, forests (trees and all vegetation) cool the surface of the planet and since 1840 vast areas have been modified. So, tick, a change in climate correlates with forest removal. Second, cities and towns have expanded, suburban sprawl. Huge areas of concrete and steel buildings as well as asphalt  and railway lines store heat causing warmer nights, iron roofs radiate heat back into the atmosphere and at least in this country, people are painting their roofs and walls black… what are they thinking? So, tick, urbanisation also correlates with the perceived climate change. Third. Agriculture… since 1840 the increased population requires more food, so more land has to be cultivated. Bare soil warms much faster than soil with a cover of vegetation… any vegetation, just look at the Sahara. So, tick, the increased cultivated land area correlates with alleged climate change. Number four. The huge vehicle fleet on the planet is an extra source of heat their working engines, and steel bodies, depending on their colour, reflect heat just like bare soil… so why are black cars not banned? Anyway, tick, there’s a correlation between the world vehicle fleet and the wild weather that changing climate brings. Fifth. The human population has exploded since 1840, with normal body heat at 37⁰C, our bodies begin to lose heat when air temperature goes below 21⁰C… So, tick, there’s a correlation with population body heat and wildfires induced by climate change. All of these things might seem insignificant, but together make more sense than an insignificant amount of extra atmospheric carbon dioxide making changes to the planet.

 

It’s also possible to draw a correlation between weather extremes and sunspots! Scientists have long held the opinion… 1935 a great number of sunspots caused drought, floods and earthquakes… 1925 Sunspots caused tropical lake levels to rise… 1925 reduced sunspot activity caused temperatures to fall – poor summers, severe winters. There are many reports like those. The past 70 years has seen the longest and most intense solar activity for the last 80 000 years… 2014 marked the end of a very active 11 year cycle and, NASA said 2020 was the lowest solar activity for 200 years. Remember those uncorrupted thermometers recording no increased temperature trend since 2014?

 

There’s one other correlation… alarmism and the role media plays. It’s called click-bait, and there’s no doubt about it, forecasting doom is a big seller for media. In 1840, the only media was print… and in 1840 Europe was cold, because it would be another 20 years until the Little Ice Age finally died out. Nowadays every extreme weather event is emblazoned on TV and other media, each event is described as ‘unprecedented’. But if you look at the written record, old newspapers, there’s ample evidence that none of the recent events are unprecedented. All of those events happened in the past when carbon dioxide levels were low… the alarmist can’t dispute that the highest ever recorded temperature was as far back as1913.

 

Nobody’s denying that the planet needs careful nurturing, but the cost of mitigating carbon dioxide, as we’ve already seen, is detrimental to the economy… there’s another correlation. If there’s a choice between warmth and cold, more people die of the cold, so if the economy is depressed and energy is short, there’s less ability to assist the vulnerable. But what everyone needs to understand is, the goal of all the mitigation philosophy are to stop wild weather and the other consequences of climate change. Even the IPCC agree an improvement won’t happen for at least 100 years! So anyone thinking there will be fewer wildfires and extreme weather events just because we’ve changed to generating electricity with windmills and solar panels, and using electricity-powered transportation… and if we’re all eating plant-based food or insects… they will also believe that warthogs might sprout wings and fly.