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A series of opinion pieces on, mostly climate change and related subjects to do with New Zealand.

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Carbon Capture in New Zealand.

15/4/2017

3 Comments

 
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CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing at an accelerating rate despite the knowledge and advise to governments that this is a ruinous policy. At over 405 parts per million we are faced with sea level rise of 12 metres and a temperature rise of 2C or more and when this starts to hurt the population hard decisions will have to be made.
The and IPCC have already set out some suggestions which are, cease burning fossil fuels, adopt a human diet and farming regime with minimum cattle and start to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Statements that are easily made but politically difficult and yet this is what we will have to do eventually.
In New Zealand, we burn hardly any coal for making electricity but our two big greenhouse gas emitting areas are transport and farming. If we accept that electric transport is imminent and will replace oil powered cars in ten or twenty years’ time then we have to look at our farming activities and also try to work out how to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Both very difficult decisions for different reasons, cattle and sheep farming are central to the New Zealand economy and we do not currently have the technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and will have to rely on natural solutions.
While driving in remote farming regions near Taranaki and Whanganui I was struck by the way that our early farmers denuded the countryside of trees by logging and burning to convert the bush into land suitable for sheep and cattle.

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This is a fairly typical country scene and shows the lack of trees and the soil erosion. Sheep (and cattle) eat every green plant and trees can not grow back while they are on the land.
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This shows areas where sheep are not on the land and the trees have grown back to restore the natural bush.
My argument is that many areas of sheep farming are barely economic and it would make sense to put that land into retirement, as they do in Europe, by paying the farmers not to farm and regenerating the land with native trees that are not going to be felled.
This is not a modest undertaking and we will be desperate when we start it. We are burning 3,800 million tonnes of coal A YEAR, and it is 80% carbon so you can imagine how much CO2 is in the atmosphere (oil is additionally a similar figure).
It takes 40 trees to absorb a tonne of carbon so the scale of it is immense but as we are already in a dire situation, which is quickly getting worse and natural disasters, caused by the planets rising temperatures, will force the politicians to start listening to the scientists and the people and not vested interests who want to continue with ‘business as usual’


3 Comments
Bob Bristow
15/4/2017 09:49:17 pm

Bob - Thanks for a great article and advise for N.Z. Both NASA and the Japanese Meteorological Agency released their March 2017 temperature anomaly figures today and found that March 2017 was the second warmest since their records began (globally and in the North). In our Southern hemisphere the figures show 2017 March was the hottest since records began. We are not even in an El Nino year, so it is truly time to get moving. No one has invented a large scale artificial method of pulling CO2 out of the air. Trees are our best bet, and your observations and advise make great sense. Trouble is in a democracy governments can flip flop, so hopefully we can look to businesses (without vested interests), local authorities, people and common sense to progress with getting our carbon balance restored. This great short video sums it up in 90 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85TQHzS88L4&feature=youtu.be

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Bob Bingham
18/4/2017 02:01:37 pm

A good video from NASA which I have put on my Bob Bingham climate outcome Facebook page. Bob.

Reply
Dennis Janicek link
18/4/2017 03:56:08 pm

Bob - Thanks for a great article. It is just a bit out-of-date:

*Cattle Fight Desertification*
#global_warming #animal_husbadry #ecology

Alan Savory discovered that «planned grazing is needed to fight desertification and global warming. One desert had 14 mm/(m² × yr), which is enough for grazing but typically 200 mm/(m² × yr) is needed for rain-fed agriculture.

See for pictures
*Cattle Fight Desertification*
https://plus.google.com/109826290307918810462/posts/JscZC2V7711

Figure 1 shows that 2/3 of the Earth's land area is dry or desert. After Allan Savory's Holistic Management (Planned Grazing), Figure 2 shows how the grass is trampled down by cattle, who also cover it with dung and urine. Figure 3 shows water after the dry season, whereas the video shows the control land that is turned into a desert. Furthermore in dry and desert regions, people can only subsist on animals — rain-fed agriculture needs 200 mm/(m² × yr). All figures are from the TED video.

He initially thought that removing grazing would prevent desertification, but after seeing US Federal land turned into desert by what was called «unknown processes», he realized that he was wrong. Lesson learned is we must restore ecological systems and not just grasses.

*Allan Savory: How to fight desertification and reverse climate change*
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_green_the_world_s_deserts_and_reverse_climate_change

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    Bob Bingham 

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