By Viv Forbes, Albrecht Glatzle and others
Grasslands and arable land cover just 10% of Earth’s surface but (with the oceans) they produce all of our food and fibre. But the productivity and health of our grasslands, farms and livestock are under threat from global warming alarmists and green preservationists.
We are afflicted by climate crazies and methane madness. It is poor public policy that condones restrictions on grazing operations, or taxes on grazing animals, based on disputed theories that claim that bodily emissions from farm animals will cause dangerous global warming.
New Zealand was the first cattle country to propose a “livestock fart tax”. Four hundred farmers then drove 20 tractors to the Parliament in Wellington waving placards and banners saying “STOP THE FART TAX”. The proposal was laughed out of Parliament. But the war on farmers and livestock continues.
Permission is given to reproduce this cartoon providing the source (www.clexit.net) is credited.
Ruminants such as sheep, cattle and goats cannot make long-term additions to the gases in the atmosphere – they just recycle atmospheric carbon and nitrogen nutrients in a cycle-of-life that has operated for millennia.
Grazing ruminant animals with their emission products have always been part of healthy grasslands. Only when large numbers of animals are fed artificially and confined on the one patch of land do pollution problems appear.
Many otherwise genuine environmentalists are assisting the destruction of grasslands with their native pastures and endangered grass birds. Blinded by their love for the trees, they neglect the grasses, legumes, herbs and livestock that provide their food. In Australia they pass laws to protect weedy eucalypts invading the grasslands but ignore the valuable and declining Mitchell grass that once dominated Australia’s treeless plains.
Grasslands are also under threat from cultivation for biofuel crops, from subsidised carbon credit forests and from the remorseless encroachment of fire-prone government reserves and pest havens.
Trying to control atmospheric carbon-bearing gases with taxes is futile and anti-life. Even if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere doubled, or more, the climate effect if any, is probably beneficial (warmer at night and near the poles and with more moisture in the atmosphere). More importantly, all life on Earth already benefits from the additional CO2 plant nutrient in the atmosphere, and would benefit even more were CO2 levels to double.
Nitrogen is the most abundant natural gas in the atmosphere, inhaled in every breath and an essential component of all protein. Grazing livestock merely recycle a few compounds of nitrogen, all of which either return to the atmosphere or provide valuable nitrogen fertilisers for the plants they graze on.
We also have the modern methane madness. Mobs of grazing ruminants have been roaming the grasslands since cave-man days. Methane has also been seeping from marshes, bubbling out of oceans, leaking from coal seams and oil seeps and being released in huge quantities from volcanoes. So what more can a few domestic cows and sheep do to affect this? Methane from domestic ruminants is a non-problem.
It is a foolish and costly fantasy to believe that Earth’s climate can be controlled by passing laws, imposing taxes, attempting to manipulate the bodily emissions of farm animals or trying to prevent farmers from clearing woody weeds invading their pastures.
The Clexit (ClimateExit) Coalition, comprising over 190 representatives from 26 countries, has formed the Clexit Grassland Protection Group with eleven representatives from six big grazing countries.
The Clexit Grassland Protection Group is represented and supported by:
| Viv & Judy Forbes | Sheep and cattle breeders, Qld, Australia |
| Albrecht & Eva-Maria Glatzle | Cattle graziers, Paraguay, South America |
| Howard Crozier | Former Exec Councillor NSW Farmers Assoc |
| Robin Grieve | Chairman, Pastural Farming Climate Research, New Zealand, http://www.farmcarbon.co.nz/ |
| Neil & Esther Henderson | Sheep and cattle farmers, New Zealand |
| Jim and Nancy Lents | Anxiety Herefords, Oklahoma, USA |
| Geoff Maynard | Stud Senepol Cattle Breeder, Qld, Australia |
| Don Nicolson | Former President Federated Farmers of New Zealand. |
| Pownall Family | Fifth generations graziers on Carfax Cattle Co, Australia. |
| Petra Scholtz | Wildlife breeder, South Africa |
| Phil Stocker | Chief Executive, National Sheep Association, UK |
Read more:
In pdf format:
http://clexit.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/grasslands.pdf
Or doc format:
http://clexit.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/grasslands.doc
To view all Clexit Members see:
http://clexit.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/clexit-members.pdf
Viv Forbes
28th October 2016
www.clexit.net
vforbes@clexit.net
Rosevale Qld Australia 4340
Phone +61 754 640 533
We live in a world where propaganda has replaced logic and evidence, and the majority believe absolutely theories which cannot be proved.
The evidence shows “that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does far more good than harm. To any unprejudiced person reading this account, the facts should be obvious: that the non-climatic effects of carbon dioxide as a sustainer of wildlife and crop plants are enormously beneficial, that the possibly harmful climatic effects of carbon dioxide have been greatly exaggerated. The benefits clearly outweigh the possible damage.
I consider myself an unprejudiced person and to me these facts are obvious. But the same facts are not obvious to the majority of scientists and politicians who consider carbon dioxide to be evil and dangerous. The people who are supposed to be experts and who claim to understand the science are precisely the people who are blind to the evidence. Those of my scientific colleagues who believe the prevailing dogma about carbon dioxide will not find the evidence convincing. I hope that a few of them will make the effort to examine the evidence in detail and see how it contradicts the prevailing dogma, but I know that the majority will remain blind.
That is to me the central mystery of climate science. It is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery. How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?”
~Freeman Dyson
http://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf
After spending ninety-one years (all but 14 days) on this wonderful and amazing planet, as a farmer, being given the pleasing opportunity of growing and harvesting grain, that when milled, bake 233,000,000 loaves of bread for the mouths of earthlings, knowing for sixty of those years the task was only achievable with the abundant-aid of warmth and photosynthesis phenomena of Carbon Dioxide, by the cosmic star early man worshiped as the SUN.
SUN WORSHIPER