It turns out an article I stumbled upon this last week is based on a three year old paper from the 2019 March edition of Quaternary Science Reviews entitled: Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492. There’s a link in the show notes to the original paper. Continue reading →
There’s going to be a tsunami of “I told you so”s.
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Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised in his 2019 election campaign to transition the country’s farmers to organic agriculture over a period of 10 years. Last April, Rajapaksa’s government made good on that promise, imposing a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.
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From RTE in Ireland, Quote:
World food prices jumped nearly 13% in March to a new record high as the war in Ukraine caused turmoil in markets for staple grains and edible oils, the UN food agency said today.
The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food price index, which tracks the most globally traded food commodities ,averaged 159.3 points last month from an upwardly revised 141.4 for February.
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Given all the who-ha going on in the world at present and the fact we are on a seasonal change or just through it depending upon your location, I thought a look at quick return veggies and herbs would be useful. I’ll then follow that with a few longer term foods. Every major economic recession since 1970 has been preceded by a jump in energy costs. Some bigger than others but they highlighted structural problems within economies and made them worse. Continue reading →
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Record-breaking heatwaves hit both Antarctica and the Arctic simultaneously this week, with temperatures reaching 47℃ and 30℃ higher than normal.
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From Record-smashing heatwaves are hitting Antarctica and the Arctic simultaneously. Here’s what’s driving them, and how they’ll impact wildlife on the Conversation website.
So let’s just look at those numbers again: 47 and 30℃, that’s 116 and 86F. Those are mind boggling numbers. Continue reading →
There’s a link in the show notes and an embedded version over on the website transcript of this episode that I would urge everyone to look at. It shows millions of tonnes of topsoil pouring from the Tweed River, the border between Qld and NSW on Australia’s east coast. This is following the recent flooding. It is worth remembering the Tweed is one of more than fifteen rivers in such a state. Continue reading →
As you can imagine, with the levels of violence in this world, there are many individuals going hungry. The UNHCR does stellar work, they are hamstrung with bureaucracy despite the very best of intentions. Long established charities have had poor press of late. The major charities raising funds during the Bushfire Black Summer here in Australia, 2019-2020 were found to be hoarding funds for the next disaster which went against the grain for many people who donated for that particular emergency. Continue reading →
Time displaced rewards. Those three words defined the human ability that separated us from the rest of the biological world. Clearly there are exceptions, squirrels burying acorns for later and so but as a general rule it is a good working hypothesis.
While time displaced rewards are, let’s call it, one of our evolutionary advantages, the concept does not separate us from Nature. Now while I’m on an extreme generalisation roll I’m going to define a salient feature of Nature in a few words: Redundancy not efficiency. There’s no better place to explore this than our own bodies. Two lungs, eyes, ears, ovaries/testicles, kidneys, arms and legs when clearly we could make do with only one of each. The view of an economist would suggest we could lease out, say, a lung and be fine with the other. The lunacy of this is obvious. To whom would we lease our “spare” lung? It is also worth remembering that words become twisted. In an economic sense “being made redundant” means being removed from the economic system, maybe with a payout, maybe not. “You’re redundant, the business no longer needs you.” It is a truly barbaric twisting of the word. Back to our body analogy from a “Redundancy not efficiency” point of view having a spare keeps us alive and, as far as it pertains to Nature, able to reproduce, to pass on our genes for as long as possible. Yes, I understand the menopause sort of belies this but actually it contributes to care and development of those who carry grandma’s genes. A different sort of investment but another difference in humans that has survived the tests of the evolutionary process. Continue reading →
Way back on the 2nd of October 2017 in episode 84, I first reported on the Great Green Wall. From that episode:
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So this green wall is fifteen kilometer deep reafforestation program along the southern boundary of the Sahara desert. It will eventually stretch from the Atlantic to the Indian Oceans. The idea to build a barrier against the southern movement of the Sahara.
So that’s the what and the why but what about does it work?
So far Senegal is by far the most advanced with the planting and maintaining of the Green Wall. They have planted 11 million trees. The effect has been to reduce wind erosion, provided shade and increased microclimate humidity. But more than, formerly dry wells have re-filled, this has allowed gardens to be planted again, people to be fed and communities to flourish.
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An interesting paper has been produced by Meat and Livestock Australia entitled: Asparagopsis feedlot feeding trial. Now if we put aside the feedlot portion of the trial, the seaweed effect is quite remarkable. Asparagopsis is a red seaweed. The results are spectacular. Continue reading →