Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Keir Leslie,
massive speculative R&D project to benefit dairy farmers!
Oh and try reading. The point is not to benefit NZ farmers. The point of doing the research is that it could help ALL farmers on the WHOLE planet. And that is a shit load more cows and sheep than we have in NZ.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Keir Leslie,
blatant externalities directly threatening humanity’s future
Hey Kier, here's a question. How much do NZs cows and sheep contribute to the total greenhouse gas production of the planet? Not per capita, just the absolute amount.
When you have an answer to that how about you rewrite you hyperbolic statement.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Lilith __,
We still had schools and hospitals and TVs in 1992
But in 1992 dairying wasn't a quarter of our income and it is now. I genuinely don't understand how you expect to have the same standard of living if you cause our export earnings to drop significantly. And because dairying is such a large proportion of our economy then reducing the national must have a direct effect.
No I don't think you're idiots, if I did, I'd stop.
But what I can't see is how taxing cow burps can do anything other than harm NZ. The farmers can't change the cows to ones that don't burp, they can't change the feed to stop the burping. And the tax is meant to help stop climate change but it can't do that.
If you want to tax farmers on fertiliser runoff, fine by me. Or tax them on water pollution, fine by me. Or tax them for water use, fine by me.
But just don't do this carbon tax thing because then you are using a false argument (that our cows will alter climate change) to address a totally different problem (environmental pollution) from dirty (badly managed) farms.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Lilith __,
Reducing herd numbers is a good outcome.
How are you planning to make up for that loss? Which service are you going to cut? Which school are you going to close? Are you going to put a duty on big screen TVs? or smartphones? or cars?
About 12 billion dollars last year. How much can we spare? A billion? Two?
This is not a simple thought game that has no direct consequence. This is actually a real situation in NZ.
Is it good that we are in this situation? Hell no. But ignoring the reality of our shitty economy doesn't help.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Keir Leslie,
you really are subsidising dirty dairying
BULLCRAP
And stop pretending that's what I said.
What I said is that it should be possible to make cows not produce methane which would make dairying significantly cleaner. But that would require research which, yes would require money.
Cleaner dairying.
More importantly cleaner dairying that could be applied to countries that actually do produce a significant amount of greenhouse gas and where is might actually make a difference to the planet.
What you propose is a tax on farmers that they cannot avoid by doing anything other than reducing their herd that will in turn reduce NZ export earnings. Are you volunteering to give up your imported luxurys? Because that is the only consequence.
A consequence that does NOTHING for the planet.
You propose taxing our major export earner in a way that can only reduce the financial viability of our major export earner for NO measurable gain to the planet.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Lilith __,
But you completely fail to address my point about water.
But isn't this thread about carbon?
Water quality is a whole other issue and unlike burps farmers can do something about water so it make sense to incentivize them to actually do it (aka massive fines).
FWIW my opinion about using one of the few bits of land in NZ that is actually dry to farm grass which likes water is that it is kind of stupid. But the problem is none of the crops that like being dry (eg maize and wheat) are getting the same subsidies as cows. But the Sth Island still votes National, what can you do?
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Keir Leslie,
large spend up on research
Of course. Because that's one area where I know it can do some good. But feel free to suggest other options.
polluter-pays market based system
Sorry Kier but I am unconvinced that this will do anything other than make it more expensive to farm. Note at present there is simply nothing (absolutely nothing) a farmer can do to reduce sheep and cow burps other than reduce the number of sheep and cows. Essentially this isn't an incentive to do anything other than reduce the national herd. And to do that in the industry that is one quarter of our export economy is not something I would choose to do lightly.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Lilith __,
beyond the carrying capacity of the land
Most of my colleagues and I would argue that if we can improve efficiencies we can get the same yield from less land with less environmental harm. That is certainly my aim in life and work and I haven't met any genetic engineers with any other aim.
Every cow burp is wasted energy. Complex carbohydrates in grasses can't be digested and get broken down by bacteria in the rumin. But the process is wasteful and releases methane which is incredibly high in energy. If a different process could be developed then maybe those carbohydrates could be converted into more sugars that could be absorbed by the cow and make it into milk. Or if grasses had different carbohydrates that didn't need rumin digestion ...
It should increase the efficiency of the cow and reduce the amount of grass needed.
We are forced to phrase all these ideas in terms of financial benefit to NZ, and NZ businesses, by the funding systems, but actually talk to the scientists and all they care about is making more and better food with fewer resources.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Sacha,
I’m talking about the business/marketing consequences of NZ being seen to be doing nothing much to address climate change.
Ok I see. But since most of our biggest export earners go to China I'm not certain that it's true.
But somehow I have come across as suggesting we do nothing. That isn't what I think or what I meant to convey. There are numerous things we can do to reduce emissions that are simply good by every measure and we should just do them. Even provide subsidies to encourage them if necessary.
Nor am I suggesting, as has been implied, that we should increase our dairy herd.
Nor am I suggesting that the dairy industry should be further subsidised to increase the herd.
I believe we must diversify our export base. But diversify does not mean make dairying smaller it means make other things bigger.
But I also think that applying the ETS to farming is not our best option for proving we are serious about climate change. It is the simplest political option (if you are left leaning) but that does not make it the best option.
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Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Rochelle,
Here we go then
Re GMOs: this 1. is not needed: genetic knowledge means that choosing varieties of grasses that are drought reisistant, or better suited for cattle digestive systems so they don’t burp so much is now quite quick.. and is using nature, not disregarding or corrupting it.
This is not true. In the same way the Hide made up "facts" this is simply not true.
I work in this field, it is my area of expertise and I will say now that people who tell you breeding can do everything we need are simply not telling you the truth.
"quite quick" in breeding terms means around two decades even with every molecular tool we have now to speed the process up and a crop that can be crossed once or twice a year. In addition there is no truth to the statement that we can get all the traits we need from existing breeding stocks.
Sorry if those comments come across as harsh, but you are doing exactly what Rodney Hide did in his original column, using falsehoods to justify an ideological position.
You are of course welcome to hold any position you wish but spreading falsehoods is unreasonable.
2. GMOs produce grasses etc that have never been found in nature, and all creatures cells do not know how to handle them.. they are synthetic, and synthetic foods, vitamins etc are toxic.
There is this idea that things that occur in nature are good and things that are man made are bad. It is strange. In the first place most of the plants in nature will either kill you or make you very very sick if you eat them. Our food crops are a tiny fraction of the plant kingdom and most of them have been bred for a couple of thousand years to make the toxins in those safer. Even so Cassava (A major calorie source in Africa) is cooked for many hours to remove the cyanide it produces.
And the second part that synthetic things are bad is equally weird since you wrote that sentence on a computer. Antibiotics are all synthetic, anti-cancer drugs, anesthetics, the pill, condoms, ...
By all means test every food to make sure it is as safe as can be but rejecting something because it is synthetic is just a random arbitrary distinction. It would make as much sense as rejecting all organic foods because they might contain toxic fungal contaminations or because most of them were farmed by big multi-national companies.