Difference

Difference

 

Sometimes one generation will blame another generation for their own particular problems or and the older generation (if they survive) will recall that their time was either the hardest or best of days. Looking at today’s society and governance, all should be doing well because life expectancy is longer than ever, food production is up, people have more discretionary money than ever, we are entertained far more than ever and there are all those modern, labour-saving conveniences. Tou’d think these are reasons to be proud of our forebears’ achievements, yet happiness, as always is elusive… but has happiness ever been the goal?

 Animals accept their lot… they will adapt as best they can, but generally accept whatever happens to them. Take a possum with its leg caught in a gin trap. Surprise and pain, but it soon realises movement increases the pain, so it will sleep and maybe sleep deadens pain. The hunter comes along and the possum will fight for its life… given the opportunity it would run, but if cornered, it will put up a fight. But if not being threatened in its daily life, it eats and sleeps, conserves energy, mates from time to time neither happy or sad, yet content.

 My personal memory goes back to about 1950, when during summer, I wore sandshoes… white canvas with a rubber soles to school, and during winter I wore gumboots (English Wellies) with turned-down tops. My sweaters were woollen, hand knitted by my mother, my shirts were second hand from my older brother. My shorts had been his too. My socks were new, and for winter, my grandmother knitted socks on three needles. 1950 was just five years after the austerity of the war years, so the culture on minimising waste and making do was prevalent. In the way of new goods, there wasn’t much choice, from a meagre availability. Perhaps the reason I’m not clothes-conscious to this day.  

 We were among the families who had a vegetable garden, some of our produce went to customers on my father’s milk round who had difficulty paying for their milk but in general, spare was shared. The country’s social welfare department handed out subsidies for family milk and bread, and there was the family benefit, an allowance paid for each child up to the age of sixteen. It was little more than financial help, which was why poverty was noticeable at school and while the reasons were many, my parents often mentioned the ‘six o’clock swill’, which was when pubs closed at six o’clock in the evening. Working men filled up as quickly as they could after work on empty stomachs, which created ‘social ills.’ There was smoking too and gambling where a man’s pay-packet could be lost before he reached home.

 We weren’t likely to forget the war years, the sacrifices and the austerity, and while treaties might have been signed, there was still a perceived need for a ready military. Indeed. our nation participated in the Korean War, 1950 – 53 and in the occupying forces in Germany and Japan. There was still compulsory military training for eighteen-year-olds, and ‘cadet week’ the first few weeks of the secondary school new year, plus the first week of each term. I went through the scouting movement stages, and others served in similar groups, all of which gave us a level of discipline, and of respect outside the home. In primary school, corporal punishment was the leather strap to the hand and at secondary school was the cane across the buttocks… all banned today, but actually, we looked upon it as a badge of honour. There was another type of honour, which meant truth-telling and owning up to misdeeds when caught out… doing what we considered was the right thing. For that peer pressure worked. We stood to attention and removed our caps as a funeral procession passed by. Of course there were exceptions, and none of us were perfect. But at least for boys and youth, there was plenty of opportunity to test ourselves.

 Because of the wars’ effect on us, we were patriotic. God, King and Country! We saluted the flag each morning at school, and stood up when the national anthem was played at the movies while a short clip of the King or Queen was shown. Tied somehow to patriotism, religion played a large part of life… Christian religion was important for opportunities and some jobs, distinguishing between Roman Catholic and Protestant, but not so at school. However, the Scouting and Guide troops used church halls as venues, so as a quid pro quo, members usually attended the church, and performed a parade on certain, formal occasions.

 Mothers worried about their kids because there were ever-present dangers. Polio was leaving some kids paralysed, tuberculosis took lives or caused long stays at sanatoriums, hydatids caused tumours as big as footballs, rabbits were plentiful and household cats caught them or were fed on them… the rabbits carried worms, which spread to cats and they handed worms onto kids, so of course, kids had to be dosed regularly… for us it was Sunday nights. Similar dosing of syrup of figs or senna was carried out to make sure ‘bowel movements were soft and regular’. There were inoculations for measles, diphtheria and whooping cough, but we all caught mumps and chicken pox, which was deemed to be important for our immunity.

 Those were concerns of mothers, but were far from the only causes of disquiet. My parents had concerns about space, maybe War of the Worlds had an impact but they remembered their parents’ anxiety emanating from Haley’s comet in 1901 when Earth’s orbit was going to pass through the debris of the comet’s tail. There were even comet pills on sale! That scare was topped in 1947 by the alien incident at Roswell. In our territory in 1949 Australia was ‘overrun’ with communist sympathisers… ‘overrun’ because of the Cold War and what was going on in the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republic) and 1951 saw New Zealand facing a waterfront dispute, where our wharves were tied up for 151 days. The union leaders were from the United Kingdom, ‘Pommie stirrers’ to the rest of us. The strikers were unpopular, which brought about the name-calling, ‘Nazi, Commie, traitor and terrorist’. ‘Reds under the bed’ fearmongering was still going on in the election of 1975. There was the morality of the Vietnam War 1955 – 1975 to consider and the other morality of napalm use together with the use of Agent Orange (or even its manufacture).  During the 1950’s there was moral panic about the dangers of rock and roll music to the young and impressionable… and a bit later there was satanic music in recordings when played backwards ‘odd messages’ could be heard. French nuclear testing 1972 – 73 on Mururoa, an island in the Pacific had us worried about nuclear fallout and changes they had on our local climate. France tried to show us who was boss, buy using their spies to bomb the Rainbow Warrior moored at Auckland… we’d a Frigate to embarrass the French. The fear of nuclear weapons culminated with the Cuban missile crisis of 1975 when the world held its breath, and in our prime minister, David Lange banned nuclear powered or armed vessels in New Zealand waters, which our allies saw as an unfriendly act. During the late 1970’s the planet began cooling and scientists suggested spreading coal dust over the Arctic. There was the oil shock of 1973 and the ‘peak oil’ scam. More fear was generated about the world being overpopulated and the inability to grow enough food. The year of the new millennium, computer scientists expected computers to fizzle out and in 2012, the alignment of the solar system planets meant the gravitational pull would see the end of times. Seeing the trends happening these days, it’s fair to wonder if the instilling of fear was just some gigantic ploy.  

 There was a level of freedom, freedom from government and council interference, which kept costs down and made the building of infrastructure that much easier… the use of common sense was recognised in problem solving. There was a sense of fair play and humility… a rugby player, after scoring a try, humbly ran back to wait for the kick-off, hardly cracking a smile. There was no fear of speaking one’s mind as long it was said with honesty; and feelings could be deservedly hurt. Technology came slowly, so logic, critical thinking and innovation is how the country grew. Farming was where most of our overseas funds came from, and the Pound Stirling was the sought-after currency of choice. The ‘home countries’, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland were our trading partners along with other Commonwealth countries, and we thought it a tractorist act when the United Kingdom joined the European Common Market.

 Nowadays it’s difficult to recognise the spirit of this country, and no doubt the same could be said about all Western countries, there’s no need to highlight the differences, they are well-recognised… by looking on without a political bent. In short what was good and accepted has been pulled down. And yes, there’s no doubt, it is all a huge, sad ploy, with the media, politicians, bureaucracy and academia leading us down the garden path.

   

 

Cycles

 

Cycles

I’m not sure it could be called a silver lining, but the Korean war created a wool boom in this country, it was a time when farmers moved away from actual horsepower to mechanical horse power, which for petrol-heads might seem romantic, but an old mate of mine walked a six-horse team of Clydesdales on a two-day trek for them to be used as dog tucker. To fed the dogs that mustered the sheep. It was a time when kids collected pulled wool that had been caught on the fences. Nowadays though. crossbred wool doesn’t pay for the shearing!

 Another cycle has eventuated; pine trees are being planted on productive farmland ‘to save the planet’ or rather, to cash in on carbon credits. As a forester and forest tree nurseryman, you might think I’d be delighted to see more forested areas, and I am… but not on good farmland! On an accountant’s balance sheet, the margin of growing carbon credits stands up well against present-day sheep farming, but even Greenies don’t like the idea because they have a long-standing dislike for pine trees… but on the other hand, they are happy to see farmers booted off the land because of the ‘climate crisis’.

 Pines are an exotic (introduced) species here, and the Greenies prefer our indigenous species, which is fair enough, I too encouraged the planting of indigenous species. However, indigenous species are far more difficult to husband in their establishment phase because of frost or scorching sun, weed growth and browsing animals. The use of pines is a good move, if there’s a desire to establish widespread areas indigenous species. The pines are easy to establish and quickly qualify for carbon credits, by about age twenty, the duff layer they create will host seedlings of indigenous species that are shade tolerant, and by age fifty, the pines begin to die, leaving gaps for a growth spurt by indigenous seedlings, and eventually you have your indigenous forest. Except… birds don’t know the difference between exotic and indigenous plants, so they carry seeds of both and unless there is a good seed source, the desirable trees that have a thousand-year lifespan can’t be introduced unless by man. One of the ‘ifs’ is that pine forests burn rather easily but indigenous forest is less so inclined.  However, should the forest burn at age twenty or thirty, then it is back to square one. The other ‘if’ is, should the carbon price fall, converting the forest back into farmland is extremely expensive.

 The main reason for the fall in wool prices is because there are cheaper, oil-based alternatives to warm, woollen clothing, blankets and floor covering. Cycles… there will come a time when a forced halt to oil-based materials will be imposed, so then what will be the alternative? Sure, it is possible to manufacture cloth from wood fibre, but then there is the cost of logging and processing. But what if the climate cools as against warming? We’ve been told over and over again that atmospheric carbon dioxide will warm the planet, which in turn will cause extreme weather events. The idea doesn’t stand up to scrutiny and to best show why, compare how increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide is climbing steadily, but the mean average temperature is erratic to say the least. Our climate is so complex it is plain silly to suppose carbon dioxide is the driver… but the propaganda saying so has been effective, therefore the populous allows politicians to have their way.

 The oceans are one of the drivers of the climate the cycles we experience, the Atlantic and Pacific multi-decadal oscillations control the ocean temperature… they have been warm but are gradually moving into a cooling phase. The el nino and la nina phases are generated in the oceans and they too effect our weather patterns. They used to be known as trade winds in the days of sailing ships. And while the IPCC and ‘climate scientists’ discount the sun as a driver of climate… it just has to be. Professor Valentina Zharkova has made a study of the sun’s radiation, her research indicates that the sun isn’t exactly what the planets orbit around, but because of gravity, the larger planets have an influence which pulls slightly on the sun. She has graphed the gravitational influence, which she says is a major driver of warmer and cooler periods which are cyclical (with the orbits). Professor Zharkova predicts a cooling phase, which has already started. Of course, Professor Zharkova’s work has been discredited by certain scientist who rely on the carbon dioxide narrative for their bread and butter, but there appears to be logic in her assertion. When I think about her theory, I look at how the moon influences tides, which means the Earth’s centre of gravity shifts ever so slightly as the moon circles the Earth.

The carbon dioxide narrative and its associated gravy train is so entrenched nowadays, making it difficult for ‘the experts’ to even consider they might be wrong, but in the last IPCC report, at the bottom of table 12, chapter 12, they say, IPCC have concluded that a signal of climate change has not yet emerged beyond natural variability for the following phenomenon: River floods, heavy precipitation and pluvial floods, landslides, drought (all types), severe wind storms, tropical cyclones, sand and dust storms, heavy snowfall and ice storms, hail, snow avalanche, and coastal flooding.

 So, despite Antonio Guterres, alarmist (gravy-train) scientist, most politicians and all the others saying we have a climate emergency, according to the IPCC, we have not.