The Issue of Carbon Dioxide

The Issue of Carbon Dioxide

During the halcyon days of forestry in New Zealand our tree nursery’s annual production was around eight million Radiata pine and six million Douglas fir seedlings. These numbers were static up until shortly after the closure of state-run forestry when private forestry companies and farmers were expected to fill the gap where state forestry left off. However the popularity of forestry as an investment quickly changed due solely to further political interference. First, the government changed the building rules, imposing mandatory chemical treatment for Douglas fir timber when used in house building. This made the longer growing rotation of the species to have no financial benefit over Radiata pine, so plantings of Douglas fir ceased overnight. Tree nurseries were left with unsaleable seedlings, redundant infrastructure and redundant workers. A few years later the government saw the light and reversed the rules for Douglas fir timber but the damage to the nursery industry was already done.

Around the same time, a new world theory was being expounded called ‘global warming’, these days edited to ‘climate change’. A theory that blamed carbon dioxide and created a new international commodity called, ‘carbon credits’. Tree growers found that the trees they were growing happened to be sequestering this carbon stuff as they grew, because wood is about fifty percent carbon. So this airy-fairy idea of carbon credits had the illusion of suddenly having a certain value. The UN began taxing participating counties according to the amount of carbon they released into the atmosphere by way of carbon dioxide. Now who in their right mind would sign up to voluntary taxes? Anyway, little old New Zealand with its farting and belching livestock did, so was up to pay an annual fortune as carbon tax! The government, scratching around for funds, announced they intended to nationalise, or a better word, rob, tree growers of their carbon credits! The immediate response was that everyone stopped planting trees. The result was tree nurseries couldn’t sell product and we were lucky if we sold one million seedlings per year. The outcome was that after nearly a decade of lean planting years, the government backed down, but the idea was carnage to the whole local forestry industry, and created a gap in our managed, rotational forest resource. Now, nearly three decades on, the government has decided to fund the planting of a billion trees to create jobs and carbon credits, but failing to fully understand that for successful forest establishment, proper planning and preparation is required.   

We all know government stuff-ups are nothing new and often lead populations in unwanted and uncalled-for directions, which is why the polls aren’t well-attended and why there’s mistrust of politicians and government institutions. I for one, mistrust the notion that carbon dioxide is the cause of climate change and further, I mistrust where the huge amounts of carbon-taxed money goes. There’s been a climate change summit recently where two hundred countries were represented. You can bet none of those free-lunch, bums-on-seats will be on mere labourer wages! Yet another expensive talk-fest shows how the UN has become a financial sink-hole. There’s little evidence of carbon tax monies being spent on third world ‘climate-effected communities’ or indeed for building one seawall. Maybe that’s because there isn’t a need.

While being no scientist, my forestry career dabbled in many sciences related to the business of converting unproductive land into managed and sustainable production forests; so I’m backed by a smattering of experience. Secondary school science taught me that the process of photosynthesis, utilizes carbon dioxide in a process essential for all vegetation. Also that the world’s vast fossil fuels originated as vegetation that was lush and larger than our present vegetation, because of abundant carbon dioxide that was in the then atmosphere. So if there is increasing carbon dioxide these days, why is there not more corresponding vegetation growth? Over my fifty-odd year career, I’ve see no sign of trees growing larger than in the recent past. Anyway, a little reminder for the anti-carbon dioxiders: if it wasn’t for carbon dioxide, how would we grow our plant-based foods – correction any food?

When I was a lad, a man down the road gassed himself with his car fumes. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning. I was warned over and over not to start a lawnmower or chainsaw in an enclosed area because of the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. So how come vehicles and machinery are suddenly giving off carbon dioxide?  An error at the start of an equation is enough to cause doubt about the rest put forward by human-caused climate change advocates. Animals produce carbon dioxide and in the past, maybe there weren’t so many humans, but imagine the lung capacity of a T-rex! Pre-human there were massive herds of wildlife! Worrying about our belching and farting livestock may be legitimate, but wait a tick – we’re paying carbon tax, but aren’t farts methane?  Anyway, our livestock hardly compare to the gases that the world’s insect population let off! And we have to remember, there’s a natural carbon dioxide cycle linked to the sea that’s been going on for as long as there’s been sea. How do climate change advocates propose mitigating that?

There have always been atmospheric pollutants, well we call them that, but they are process that made the atmosphere the way it is, and it happened to support life. These are the volcanic explosions. Think of the gases given off during that single event over eight months known as the Laki eruption and the resulting haze. Some eighty four cubic kilometres of lava bubbled up. That’s a big limp of rock! What about the awful fires in Portugal, California and Australia? They’re nothing new, vast amounts of material billowed into the atmosphere. How do governments viz the UN propose levying a carbon tax on wildfires? Those events produce more ‘pollutants’ that any number of motor vehicles.

I’m not denying climate change at all! Climate changes happen, always have and always will, it’s part of Earth’s lifecycle. But left-handed logic, (righties don’t quite understand it because there’s no science for it) left-handed logic suggest we look up at that big, golden globe in the sky! She has to be the driver of our climate, because just as the Earth has its cycles, so it logical that the sun has her cycles. She doesn’t belt out a constant radiation level year upon year, it is logical that the sun must vary, which in turn causes Earth’s climate to vary. How inconvenient! When the climate change faithful say the Earth temperature will rise one and a half degrees, how can so-called experts predict when the sun is going to vary? How would one percent of fifteen million degrees Celsius affect the temperature of our planet? Forecasters can’t accurately predict the weather more than a week out! To go back to the Laki episode, if you read Gilbert White’s diary, the eight months’ worth of gases caused significant northern hemisphere climate change, at least for a few years, the summers became much hotter and winters severely colder. There can be no prediction when the next eruption or rock from outer space will impact out climate, but such events will occur.

Here’s another bit of left-handed logic. What we’ve been told about continental drift doesn’t quite cut it for me. If the present shape of continents fit into each other so well, how do we rationalise natural coastal erosion over billions of years? My forestry geology lessons taught me that mountains erode forming alluvial plains over a similar same time span. Of course the plates move, some are forced under others to be recycled into magma, while other pressures cause mountains to rise up. Question:  Have you ever experienced your car’s front wheel being out of balance? And have you ever seen the tiny piece of lead that corrects it? Well to spin as fast and evenly as Earth does, the planet must be well balanced, so it’s logical that all the time it is self-balancing, which makes it logical that there must be a number of the tools in Earth’s toolbox, climate being but one of them, to keep equilibrium.  

So, carbon dioxide is being used to represent the dodgy man-made climate change theory, for the simple reason it’s measurable for the purpose of raising tax revenues. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt in my mind that humans have impacted on the world’s climate. Deforestation is the major impact! Forests manufacture cooler, moist-laden, oxygenated air. Forests contribute to the water cycle, they host fauna and other flora. They represent biodiversity. Yet worldwide, indigenous forests have been and are being harvested in a non-sustainable way over vast tracts of land. The worst examples are in the Amazon and Congo, but Russia, Indonesia and the USA are among the culprits too. Of course, especially in the case of the Congo and Amazon, harvesting trees generates much needed revenue, which is why carbon tax should be dumped and instead a levy should be put on indigenous timbers used in western upmarket buildings to discourage their use. Aid should be directed to the Congo, Amazon and the rest to restore forests and protect them, thus creating employment and internal taxes for the country concerned, while maintaining a climate equilibrium.

Important as our climate may be, our environment is more so, and yet as a species, we have been shitting our nest! A successful economy is reckoned to be a growing one where profits outweigh any consideration for quality of life or ethics. There’s a tie-up between automation, artificial intelligence and the evaporation of jobs. Yes, workers cost a lot and can be difficult to manage but is it not important that people have jobs? In the name of cost-efficiency, packaging plastics replaced biodegradable materials such as paper and natural fibres, but at an awful cost to the environment. The throw-away society leaves behind uncountable tonnes of waste that rich countries ship off to pollute poorer countries. The wealthy have the maxim: I can afford it, so I’ll have it. With no regard for the resources ‘it’ may consume.

I’m happy to swim against the tide, prattling on about environmental degradation and how flora in all its forms is one of the keys to our continued existence. We can’t rely on political acumen, politicians dance to tunes that get them re-elected, seldom transparent, yet most can see through them! Carbon dioxide isn’t our enemy, false prophets are. The most important renewable and sustainable resource we have available is forests and they need to be planted. Tomorrow is a good day to start.

Little Thrush

 Little Thrush

Hey look! There’s a bird’s nest in that tree, d’you want to see the three pretty blue eggs in it? Where’s the mother bird? Oh there she is, on a branch and look, she’s watching us! She must have felt her eggs vibrating, and has hopped off them while they hatch. But she’s careful not to let them get cold because the chicks inside the eggs still need her body-heat to keep them alive. See, sometimes she hops back on them to warm them up. They’re song thrushes you know, and the mother bird has to sit on her eggs for about twelve days before they’ll hatch.

Now, while we were talking, look, with a special little hook-thing, called an egg tooth, on the end of its beak the chick cuts the eggshell from the inside, in a little line across the end of the shell. The chick isn’t very strong and can’t even see, because there’s still skin over its eyes. Its feathers haven’t grown yet either, doesn’t he look scrawny? How does he know where to peck at the shell? It must be dark inside the shell but even if there was a light in there, the chick can’t see what he’s doing! Even though he hasn’t got much strength, by wiggling and squirming, he eventually breaks free from the shell. Ha, look at that, the piece of shell is sitting on his head! It looks like a funny hat!

Well, that was a fight to get out of the shell, wasn’t it? Now look, the other two chicks are nearly out of theirs too! They can hardly hold their heads up but see, they hear movement, and when they hear movement, they open their mouths! Oh not mouths, what are they? Beaks, yeah, beaks with edges of bright yellow and yellow inside, which makes it a good target for their mother to pop worms into it. Look over there… the father thrush is catching worms on the lawn for the babies too. It’s a hectic time for both parents and the faster they feed their chicks the quicker they grow but the more they want!

Ok, now it’s seven days later and the chicks have opened their eyes so they can see! They know when their parents are near because they have very good hearing, the chicks make a lot of noise to attract their parent’s attention and open their beaks like little yellow trapdoors! Mum and dad try to give each an equal share but there is always a greedy one, the male, he’s the one we’ve been watching the most. Notice, his feathers are growing, at first they were stubby and didn’t look like feathers at all.

They’ve reached day thirteen since they hatched, so it’s time for them to leave the nest. Watch them as they go! Their wings aren’t even properly developed yet, but one by one, starting with the big male, they just flop out of the nest and tumble to the ground. We can only follow our big one, but, uh oh, one of the chicks hasn’t make it, the last one out! Did you see? When it landed, a stoat took it away to feed her babies. No, don’t be sad, that’s the way of nature, even though it seems cruel to us. Luckily, our wee guy landed on his feet and is already calling, ‘Peep, peep, peep!’ to his mother for food. She responds with a fat worm and look how the chick gobbles it down, immediately calling, ‘Peep, peep, peep!’ for another  .

Our little thrush chick might not be able to fly, but he can hop, and hop really fast!  Look at him go! He tries to keep up with his mother to be close to food, but he doesn’t understand that there’s danger waiting everywhere! Look out! The man’s mowing his lawn, and the chick’s standing right in the way of the mower! Look out, run little chick run! The man isn’t watching where he’s going, and the chick’s just standing like a dumb cluck, right in the mower’s path! Oh dear, chopped thrush! No! Whew! The man’s noticed the chick just in time, stops, and shoos him away. There, our baby thrush has learned a valuable lesson.

Mother thrush is gathering worms, but as fast as she catches one, the chick, with persistent peep, peep, peeps, demands it with his open beak, which, if you look closely is beginning to lose it’s yellow edging! He receives his reward, but here comes the other chick too so the mother’s even busier, hardly having time to gobble one down herself! And where’s the dad, he’s done a bunk! She doesn’t seem to worry about feeding in turns now, it’s the first one to be there when she catches food. But hey, look up there, see the danger? A hawk’s circling way up there above them, slowly circling, eyes sharp! Mother sees the danger and tries to lure her babies to safety among the bushes. Quick! But the second chick is too slow! What’s she looking at? A brown beetle moving in the grass! Oh, she’s too late! She’s lost sight of her mother and look at that! In a split second, the fast-flying hawk has swooped down, caught the chick and is taking it back to feed her baby!

Our little thrush chick was quicker and is safe, learning more of the skills he needs for survival! Now that he’s the only one left, the mother is focusing on him, feeding him well, and just five days after falling from the nest, see how strong he is and his feathers are filling out. His wings are developed too so now watch, after feeding him, his mother flies off some distance before she hunts for another. This tricks him into trying his wings, because he’s in a hurry for more food. See, sometimes he has lift-off and sometimes he falls headfirst on landing! Ouch. But now he can fly away from danger and from that pesky striped cat of yours!

Ok, here we are, nine days after falling-time from the nest, and our little thrush can fly quite well, and look at him chase after his mother! He can find half of his own food now and he constantly looks around, checking for danger. And, he’s nearly as big as his mother, so it looks funny when she feeds him, doesn’t it? He can fly pretty well, even following his mother high into that lemonwood tree!

How many days is it now since he flopped out of the nest? Thirteen, that’s right. Is there any sign of the mother and the chick together? No, the mother has abandoned her chick, but that’s cool, he’ll survive on his own if he’s careful! Hey, what’s that I hear up in the tree? Why, it’s the grown-up thrush chick, and he’s singing his heart out! He’s doing just fine.

C’mon, I’ll beat you out to the mailbox!

Harry's Armistice

Harry’s Armistice

The morning after the signing of the Armistice, the news finally reached New Zealand. The Armistice was signed 11:00am on November 11 1918, the end of four years of slaughter that became known as World War One, the Great War! Harry’s father left home in January 1917, was wounded at Passchendaele, evacuated to Brockenhurst Hospital where he died of his wounds a month later. For a nine year old boy the loss was traumatic enough, but his mother never recovered from the loss, leaving young Harry to quickly learn the ways of making do, scrounging and trying to keep his mother from, as she so often threated,  ‘topping herself’.

Harry’s little brother, his only sibling, died before the war started. He was trampled by a runaway horse, his small chest caved in under the weight of the animal! Harry’s fight to keep his mother alive was therefore a lonely, worrying one. He had no grandparents, at least none living, his Uncle Cecil was declared missing in Gallipoli with no further news of him. Harry’s aunt, his mother’s sister was in a tuberculosis sanatorium somewhere in up north.

Of necessity, Harry’s father had kept a productive vegetable garden which Harry tried his best to keep up, and it did provide for mother and son. He was successful with potatoes, carrots and a type of spinach that self-seeded and didn’t frost through the winter months. He knew where the apple trees were, and made night-time raids. He only ever stole apples, even though there were opportunities to pilfer other commodities. They might have been poor, but were never branded as thieves. Although he never saw any of   it, the government provided small payments to his mother, which she used to buy tea, sugar, soap and second hand clothing. Harry had no idea where the clothing came from, certainly it wasn’t new, nor did he care.

The charity clothing shop! That’s where she picked it up! November 4 was the first admission to hospital of someone who had been diagnosed with Spanish flu. It was a virulent bloody thing that swept through the nation like a July Sou’wester! Within a week schools were closed, as were picture theatres, the trams stopped running, and the city ground to an absolute standstill. Hospitals couldn’t cope and even nurses and doctors succumbed. Towards the end of the first week of the epidemic, Harry noticed his mother was drinking more water than usual and wincing at the pain in her back. He’d heard about the symptoms and although she’d been lethargic for months he knew he would have to keep a close watch over her.

She refused to go the bed at first, but Harry coaxed her, deep down they both knew her symptoms would only get worse and they were right! He prepared a bucket with disinfectant after she vomited the first time and tried to keep her clean. Just three hours later, diarrhoea set in but she never made it! Harry cleaned it up, as best he could and because she was so weak, he had to rip his mother’s nightgown off and dump it! That was day news of the Armistice came through. Harry didn’t notice, joyous as the news should have been, his world was bleak, his young face creased with worry!

Despite his diligence, he knew at the first appearance of those black spots on her face that she was going to die. With diminished hope, he tried to wash them off. Nobody was on the streets because everyone was afraid of catching the disease, so Harry remained alone with his ailing mum. He knew there were rough-sawn coffins at the end of the street but avoided going there until he was sure. The disease filled her lungs with blood and fluid, making breathing all but impossible. He held his mother’s hand that night until it became cold, and then he was sure.

In a little over one month since the first death, the epidemic was over. Out of a population of just over one and a half million, some nine thousand had perished, roughly half the number of brave souls lost during four years of bloody, filthy, uncompromising war. The disease had been totally indiscriminate in its choice of victims, unlike the war which took mainly the nation’s younger men and women. None of this mattered to Harry, he was alone and numb, unsure of the future and very afraid. For almost three months he hardly left the house, often wishing the disease had taken him along with his mother.

One afternoon, a uniformed man came through the gate and walked slowly up the path. Harry was immediately alert! He had difficulty picturing his father in his mind’s eye, but this man seemed of similar build wearing the same ANZAC uniform, it must be him! Had to be him! Hope sprung in his chest! The telegram must have been wrong! Doubt filled Harry’s heart just as quickly, when the man knocked on the door instead of walking in as his father would naturally have done. Harry cautiously opened the door a crack.

‘You must be Harry.’ The face said brightly. ‘Is your mother in?’

‘Me mam’s dead with the flu.’ Replied Harry flatly.

Misfortune seldom dwells on a shoulder forever and without ceremony, out of the blue, it left Harry! This man had joined up on the same day as Harry’s father, and they served in the same platoon. He was one of only three survivors from that old platoon!  Before that fateful, final push, the men of the platoon made a pledge. Should there be any survivors, and when victory was won, they would call on the families of the fallen, and perhaps help out where they could. This was the reason was the reason for the man’s visit. The soldier, who Harry came to know as Edward, was the son of a patriotic farmer in Central Otago, and when he heard about Harry’s plight, decided to take the lad in.

Harry never really healed, but his considerable progress was because of the honest care of Ma Crawford. She understood what Harry had gone through, she too had lost a son at Gallipoli and a daughter, a nurse, lost when the Marquette was torpedoed by the Germans. Harry never attended the annual commemoration of the Armistice, but he remembered! He went on to lead an ordinary farming life, but ordinary was just fine with him.

‘Lest we forget.’