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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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Posted: 28 Aug 2016 at 4:09pm |
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Mind blowing discovery, to me anyway
http://theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/tree-mothers-are-a-lot-like-human-mothers-research-shows/70703 There's an 18 min video in case anyone's interested. Saturday, July 30, 2016, 7:03 PM - "A forest is much more than what you see." These are the words of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, whose recent talk at TEDSummit 2016 revealed some astounding discoveries from her 30 years of research in Canadian forests. "You see, underground there is this other world. A world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate, and allow the forest to behave as if it's a single organism," Simard explains. But their communication and comprehension skills go much deeper than that -- trees can also recognize their offspring, and nurture them both below and above the ground. "Now, we know we all favor our own children, and I wondered, could Douglas fir recognize its own kin, like mama grizzly and her cub? So we set about an experiment, and we grew mother trees with kin and stranger's seedlings. And it turns out they do recognize their kin. Mother trees colonize their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. When mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages of wisdom on to the next generation of seedlings. So we've used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighboring seedlings, not only carbon but also defense signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those seedlings to future stresses. So trees talk." |
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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Fiddlesticks
Champion Joined: 31 Dec 2012 Status: Offline Points: 49975 |
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it would help humanity in general if we all understood this and were all taught this stuff at the same time in life, it really does my head in that people can go all through life and never understand the natural world/environment around them...it actually makes me really sad.
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Panspermia.
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Flight
Champion Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Nambucca Valley Status: Offline Points: 3897 |
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I wouldn't go as far as saying that trees talk however, these trees have spent thousands upon thousands of years evolving in their particular space and have taken on the attributes to suit their particular patch of soil. Introduced seedlings may well be looking for a very, very slight variation to the nutrients present at their new site.
The established trees will, by definition, be more dominant. IMO |
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“The probability of a certain set of circumstances coming together in a meaningful (or tragic) way is so low that it simply cannot be considered mere coincidence. ”
― V.C. King |
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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/world/europe/german-forest-ranger-finds-that-trees-have-social-networks-too.html?_r=0
German Forest Ranger Finds That Trees Have Social Networks, TooHÜMMEL, Germany — IN the deep stillness of a forest in winter, the sound of footsteps on a carpet of leaves died away. Peter Wohlleben had found what he was looking for: a pair of towering beeches. “These trees are friends,” he said, craning his neck to look at the leafless crowns, black against a gray sky. “You see how the thick branches point away from each other? That’s so they don’t block their buddy’s light.” Before moving on to an elderly beech to show how trees, like people, wrinkle as they age, he added, “Sometimes, pairs like this are so interconnected at the roots that when one tree dies, the other one dies, too.” Mr. Wohlleben, 51, is a very tall career forest ranger who, with his ramrod posture and muted green uniform, looks a little like one of the sturdy beeches in the woods he cares for. Yet he is lately something of a sensation as a writer in Germany, a place where the forest has long played an outsize role in the cultural consciousness, in places like fairy tales, 20th-century philosophy, Nazi ideology and the birth of the modern environmental movement. After the publication in May of Mr. Wohlleben’s book, a surprise hit titled “The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate — Discoveries From a Secret World,” the German forest is back in the spotlight. Since it first topped best-seller lists last year, Mr. Wohlleben has been spending more time on the media trail and less on the forest variety, making the case for a popular reimagination of trees, which, he says, contemporary society tends to look at as “organic robots” designed to produce oxygen and wood. PRESENTING scientific research and his own observations in highly anthropomorphic terms, the matter-of-fact Mr. Wohlleben has delighted readers and talk-show audiences alike with the news — long known to biologists — that trees in the forest are social beings. They can count, learn and remember; nurse sick neighbors; warn each other of danger by sending electrical signals across a fungal network known as the “Wood Wide Web”; and, for reasons unknown, keep the ancient stumps of long-felled companions alive for centuries by feeding them a sugar solution through their roots. “With his book, he changed the way I look at the forest forever,” Markus Lanz, a popular talk show host, said in an email. “Every time I walk through a beautiful woods, I think about it.” Though duly impressed with Mr. Wohlleben’s ability to capture the public’s attention, some German biologists question his use of words, like “talk” rather than the more standard “communicate,” to describe what goes on between trees in the forest. But this, says Mr. Wohlleben, who invites readers to imagine what a tree might feel when its bark tears (“Ouch!”), is exactly the point. “I use a very human language,” he explained. “Scientific language removes all the emotion, and people don’t understand it anymore. When I say, ‘Trees suckle their children,’ everyone knows immediately what I mean.” Still No. 1 on the Spiegel best-seller list for nonfiction, “Hidden Life” has sold 320,000 copies and has been optioned for translation in 19 countries (Canada’s Greystone Books will publish an English version in September). “It’s one of the biggest successes of the year,” said Denis Scheck, a German literary critic who praised the humble narrative style and the book’s ability to awaken in readers an intense, childlike curiosity about the workings of the world. The popularity of “The Hidden Life of Trees,” Mr. Scheck added, says less about Germany than it does about modern life. People who spend most of their time in front of computers want to read about nature. “Germans are reputed to have a special relationship with the forest, but it’s kind of a cliché,” Mr. Scheck said. “Yes, there’s Hansel and Gretel, and, sure, if your marriage fails, you go for a long hike in the woods. But I don’t think Germans love their forest more than Swedes or Norwegians or Finns.” MR. WOHLLEBEN traces his own love of the forest to his early childhood. Growing up in the 1960s and ’70s in Bonn, then the West German capital, he raised spiders and turtles, and liked playing outside more than any of his three siblings did. In high school, a generation of young, left-leaning teachers painted a dire picture of the world’s ecological future, and he decided it was his mission to help. He studied forestry, and began working for the state forestry administration in Rhineland-Palatinate in 1987. Later, as a young forester in charge of a 3,000-odd acre woodlot in the Eifel region, about an hour outside Cologne, he felled old trees and sprayed logs with insecticides. But he did not feel good about it: “I thought, ‘What am I doing? I’m making everything kaput.’ ” Reading up on the behavior of trees — a topic he learned little about in forestry school — he found that, in nature, trees operate less like individuals and more as communal beings. Working together in networks and sharing resources, they increase their resistance. By artificially spacing out trees, the plantation forests that make up most of Germany’s woods ensure that trees get more sunlight and grow faster. But, naturalists say, creating too much space between trees can disconnect them from their networks, stymieing some of their inborn resilience mechanisms. Intrigued, Mr. Wohlleben began investigating alternate approaches to forestry. Visiting a handful of private forests in Switzerland and Germany, he was impressed. “They had really thick, old trees,” he said. “They treated their forest much more lovingly, and the wood they produced was more valuable. In one forest, they said, when they wanted to buy a car, they cut two trees. For us, at the time, two trees would buy you a pizza.” Back in the Eifel in 2002, Mr. Wohlleben set aside a section of “burial woods,” where people could bury cremated loved ones under 200-year-old trees with a plaque bearing their names, bringing in revenue without harvesting any wood. The project was financially successful. But, Mr. Wohlleben said, his bosses were unhappy with his unorthodox activities. He wanted to go further — for example, replacing heavy logging machinery, which damages forest soil, with horses — but could not get permission. After a decade of struggling with his higher-ups, he decided to quit. “I consulted with my family first,” said Mr. Wohlleben, who is married and has two children. Though it meant giving up the ironclad security of employment as a German civil servant, “I just thought, ‘I cannot do this the rest of my life.’” The family planned to emigrate to Sweden. But it turned out that Mr. Wohlleben had won over the forest’s municipal owners. So, 10 years ago, the municipality took a chance. It ended its contract with the state forestry administration, and hired Mr. Wohlleben directly. He brought in horses, eliminated insecticides and began experimenting with letting the woods grow wilder. Within two years, the forest went from loss to profit, in part by eliminating expensive machinery and chemicals. Despite his successes, in 2009 Mr. Wohlleben started having panic attacks. “I kept thinking, ‘Ah! You only have 20 years, and you still have to accomplish this, and this, and that.’” He began therapy, to treat burnout and depression. It helped. “I learned to be happy about what I’ve done so far,” he said. “With a forest, you have to think in terms of 200 or 300 years. I learned to accept that I can’t do everything. Nobody can.” He wanted to write “The Hidden Life of Trees” to show laypeople how great trees are. Stopping to consider a tree that rose up straight then curved like a question mark, Mr. Wohlleben said, however, that it was the untrained perspective of visitors he took on forest tours years ago to which he owed much insight. “For a forester, this tree is ugly, because it is crooked, which means you can’t get very much money for the wood,” he said. “It really surprised me, walking through the forest, when people called a tree like this one beautiful. They said, ‘My life hasn’t always run in a straight line, either.’ And I began to see things with new eyes.” Edited by Gay3 - 28 Aug 2016 at 6:21pm |
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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Phazeal
Champion Joined: 05 Mar 2007 Status: Offline Points: 847 |
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There's a good reason there hasn't been enough research done into the intellect of plantlife. We humans have to treat several things as effectively inanimate in order to avoid severe syntax errors in our conditioned reasoning, such as 'what do we eat if everything has feelings', and 'Oh my god I think this sultana just looked at me!'. It would throw us a wobbly if your local bag of carrots was actually discussing the preferred method of their demise as you throw them willy nilly into your burgeoning trolley:
- short and swift via the local steaming pot. Go out in style. The post-mortem pics would be your best angles, etc, bright orange, maybe even a crinkle cut if you've been prepared in a Leagues Club kitchen. - boiled madly in a pot of water. Grandma's way. Most carrots that find themselves in this position actually dive to the bottom of the pot to at least get a few floating bubble rides up to the surface of the scolding water before they are murdered. - carefully and thinly sliced to be eaten raw with soft dip or sour cream. Not a preferred method of slaying for a carrot, as they feel both every slice with the blade in preparation as well as every bite right up until the masticated end. - julienned or carved carrot bouquet making up the centrepiece of an otherwise edible salad in an environment where very few people eat vegetables and garnish (cheap weddings, sandwich trays for old people, etc). If Salim Mehajer could choose to be a vegetable this would be how he would want to go out. In the most stylish way possible, and after you've served your decorative purpose you get to slowly decompose in the landfill of the local tip. I'm reminded of a scene out of maybe Notting Hill (?) where Hugh Grant is slogging through another blind date set-up with a girl who is - I can't remember the term - but she doesn't eat anything, at all, except plantlife and even then only after it has been jettisoned by its owner. 'fallen fruit'. Quite a few wines in that, but still......
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stayer
Champion Joined: 10 Aug 2010 Status: Offline Points: 21914 |
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Deary me. Flight may be right, but I've had just about enough of this enviro religion rubbish. Trees with comprehension skills who talk and love their kids, according to an eco-warrior who has studied canadian forests for 30 years...
Is this a joke? Unfortunately, probably not. Crazy times. |
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Phazeal
Champion Joined: 05 Mar 2007 Status: Offline Points: 847 |
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I think the point of this story - in terms of trying to walk away with something usable - is that there are more considered alternatives to looking at a forest and bulldozing it to the ground to make 50 tables and 5000 pamphlets, then replacing it with high-input intensive cattle grazing.
A third of my property has 40-60 feet of topsoil and I don't even break the surface unless I'm pulling a Fireweed out by hand. I have a rainforest 10 metres from my kitchen window and I have placed my compost heaps topside of the hill, so that the chooks scratch it all down through that closed ecosystem over the course of maybe 2 years. There is so much going on underneath the surface of any given plot of soil.........if people realised how important it was they'd probably drop one of their carrot slices at the base of a local sapling every time they bought takeaway. It's a mega-highway down there, and doesn't react well to violent upheaval or over-taxing. |
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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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One thing I do know is that natives throughout the world traditionally gave thanks prior to cutting down anything & killing animals, birds etc., again before eating & afterwards. They took only what they needed & used every part.
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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stayer
Champion Joined: 10 Aug 2010 Status: Offline Points: 21914 |
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That's all good, but let's not get nutty about it.
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maccamax
Champion Joined: 18 Jun 2010 Status: Offline Points: 41473 |
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I must repeat .
Insanity is a growth industry and those stricken with such illness breed like rabbits . Funded by Government by the way.
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Dr E
Champion Joined: 05 Feb 2013 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 28563 |
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Avatar - love science fiction!
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In reference to every post in the Trump thread ... "There may have been a tiny bit of license taken there" ... Ok, Thanks for the "heads up" PT!
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JudgeHolden
Champion Joined: 16 Apr 2011 Status: Online Points: 11731 |
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The extent to which bacteria and viruses have been controlling ecosystems on this planet for a couple of billion years is remarkable. Viruses might be increasingly important in our fight against infectious diseases, seeing as they're becoming more and more resistant to our antibiotics, and not going quietly into the night like we predicted they would a half a century ago. There's also now increasing evidence to suggest that micro-bacteria in our guts can influence mood and behaviour. We're just sometimes convenient johnny-come-latelys who they can use and discard as they wish. Whatever happens, it'll be business as usual for them long after we've gone. |
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Fiddlesticks
Champion Joined: 31 Dec 2012 Status: Offline Points: 49975 |
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actually trees do communicate with each other, in some cases we have finally found out how they do it, there is a species of acacia in Africa that releases a chemical when it is being eaten by animals to alert it's neighboring trees to rapidly pump a toxin into the leaves so that when the animals move from the first tree to them they, they taste the toxin and stop eating it...or in some cases keep eating it and die, the ones that die are how we found about this.. |
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Panspermia.
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Fiddlesticks
Champion Joined: 31 Dec 2012 Status: Offline Points: 49975 |
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you're anti environment stance is duly noted.. |
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Panspermia.
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Passing Through
Champion Joined: 09 Jan 2013 Location: At home Status: Offline Points: 79532 |
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Intelligent Design V Evolution
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Fiddlesticks
Champion Joined: 31 Dec 2012 Status: Offline Points: 49975 |
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you have no reason to concern yourself with anything in the future macca, so why bother, just get your nose down on some coke and live it up those few creaking years you might have left.. |
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Panspermia.
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Fiddlesticks
Champion Joined: 31 Dec 2012 Status: Offline Points: 49975 |
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again it's all there in the code of nature, everything we ever need to know about survival and propagation is already there pre written for us, unfortunately there are many millions of ignorant pig headed folk who chose not to awaken themselves and listen and look a bit closer to whats actually going on around us, it's all quite subtle and seemingly immeasurable but I can assure it's all there going on whether we like it or not.. |
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Panspermia.
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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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Revenge of the Whales
http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/japanese-whaling-crew-eaten-alive-by-killer-whales-16-dead/ A Japanese whaling crew has fallen victim to a dramatic full on assault by a school of killer whales, killing no less than 16 crew members and injuring 12, has reported the Japanese Government this morning.The crew of the MV Nisshin Maru (日新丸), Japan’s primary whaling vessel and the world’s only whaler factory ship, was forced to leave the deck temporarily as a gas leak was detected within the ship’s processing factory that resulted in the ship being temporarily disabled all while continuing to carry approximately 1,000 tons of oil. The resulting panic lead members of the ship to jump off the boat before proper emergency procedures were taken and lifeboats had been set to sea. The swimming crew members were then ferociously attacked by a school of killer whales, that decimated a large number of the crew within moments. “It was horrific” claims Asuka Kumara, a mechanical engineer who witnessed the gruesome scene. “The water was red with blood, there were bodies everywhere” he recalls in tears.
The incident occurred in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, near the South Eastern Coast of South Africa, a controversial area to be whaling as a recent international court ruling has ordered the country to ends its whale hunt in the Antarctic. The East Asian nation halted its annual Antarctic whaling mission after the U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled last march the hunt violated an international moratorium on commercial whaling. “It seems Japan just doesn’t give a damn about international law” explains environmental activist and spokesman for Greenpeace Canada, James Ben Shahali, based in Vancouver. “The waste of life is always a shame, but the whales are not to blame here, they were only doing what they are born to do: kill for food” he adds. Japan has slaughtered over 6,000 whales since commercial whaling was made illegal by the International Whaling Commission (IWC) moratorium passed in 1986 |
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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Whale
Champion Joined: 01 Jun 2009 Location: St Kilda Beach Status: Offline Points: 38719 |
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just saw this comment, low even by Fiddle's standards, no wonder he isn't missed |
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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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Glad I posted pretty bloody low act by anyones' standards
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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acacia alba
Champion Joined: 30 Oct 2010 Location: Hunter Valley Status: Offline Points: 41547 |
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If true, isnt karma a wonderful thing ??
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animals before people.
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Passing Through
Champion Joined: 09 Jan 2013 Location: At home Status: Offline Points: 79532 |
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If it is true, these next few stories on their site could well be too INDIA: SACRED COW SAVAGELY RAPED BY 27 MEN IN MUMBAI SUBWAY |
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acacia alba
Champion Joined: 30 Oct 2010 Location: Hunter Valley Status: Offline Points: 41547 |
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Well , dont you think that story about The Don is true, PT ? You believe every other horror story about him so why do you doubt that one
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animals before people.
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Passing Through
Champion Joined: 09 Jan 2013 Location: At home Status: Offline Points: 79532 |
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Only the ones that are true, which is most of them.
Not sure I want to see him with a woody to prove or disprove that willy one though
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horlicks
Champion Joined: 26 Feb 2010 Status: Offline Points: 8417 |
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One amusing thing I saw in the story was that although it was posted a couple of days ago the comments were from 2014. They must recycle their "news" every so often.
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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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Well spotted horlicks
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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If you want to save the world, veganism isn’t the answerIsabella TreeIntensively farmed meat and dairy are a blight, but so are fields of soya and maize. There is another way Veganism has rocketed in the UK over the past couple of years – from an estimated half a million people in 2016 to more than 3.5 million – 5% of our population – today. Influential documentaries such as Cowspiracy and What the Health have thrown a spotlight on the intensive meat and dairy industry, exposing the impacts on animal and human health and the wider environment. But calls for us all to switch entirely to plant-based foods ignore one of the most powerful tools we have to mitigate these ills: grazing and browsing animals.Rather than being seduced by exhortations to eat more products made from industrially grown soya, maize and grains, we should be encouraging sustainable forms of meat and dairy production based on traditional rotational systems, permanent pasture and conservation grazing. We should, at the very least, question the ethics of driving up demand for crops that require high inputs of fertiliser, fungicides, pesticides and herbicides, while demonising sustainable forms of livestock farming that can restore soils and biodiversity, and sequester carbon. In 2000, my husband and I turned our 1,400-hectare (3,500-acre) farm in West Sussex over to extensive grazing using free-roaming herds of old English longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs, Exmoor ponies and red and fallow deer as part of a rewilding project. For 17 years we had struggled to make our conventional arable and dairy business profitable, but on heavy Low Weald clay, we could never compete with farms on lighter soils. The decision turned our fortunes around. Now eco-tourism, rental of post-agricultural buildings, and 75 tonnes a year of organic, pasture-fed meat contribute to a profitable business. And since the animals live outside all year round, with plenty to eat, they do not require supplementary feeding and rarely need to see the vet. The animals live in natural herds and wander wherever they please. They wallow in streams and water-meadows. They rest where they like (they disdain the open barns left for them as shelter) and eat what they like. The cattle and deer graze on wildflowers and grasses but they also browse among shrubs and trees. The pigs rootle for rhizomes and even dive for swan mussels in ponds. The way they graze, puddle and trample stimulates vegetation in different ways, which in turn creates opportunities for other species, including small mammals and birds. Crucially, because we don’t dose them with avermectins (the anti-worming agents routinely fed to livestock in intensive systems) or antibiotics, their dung feeds earthworms, bacteria, fungi and invertebrates such as dung beetles, which pull the manure down into the earth. This is a vital process of ecosystem restoration, returning nutrients and structure to the soil. Soil loss is one of the greatest catastrophes facing the world today. A 2015 report from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization states that, globally, 25 to 40bn tonnes of topsoil are lost annually to erosion, thanks mainly to ploughing and intensive cropping. In the UK topsoil depletion is so severe that in 2014 the trade magazine Farmers Weekly announced we may have only 100 harvests left. Letting arable land lie fallow and returning it to grazed pasture for a period – as farmers used to, before artificial fertilisers and mechanisation made continuous cropping possible – is the only way to reverse that process, halt erosion and rebuild soil, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The grazing livestock not only provide farmers with an income, but the animals’ dung, urine and even the way they graze, accelerates soil restoration. The key is to be organic, and keep livestock numbers low to prevent over-grazing. Twenty years ago, our soils at the farm – severely degraded after decades of ploughing and chemical inputs – were almost biologically dead. Now we have fruiting fungi and orchids appearing in our former arable fields: an indication that subterranean networks of mycorrhizal fungi are spreading. We have 19 types of earthworm – keystone species responsible for aerating, rotavating, fertilising, hydrating and even detoxifying the soil. We’ve found 23 species of dung beetle in a single cowpat, one of which – the violet dor beetle – hasn’t been seen in Sussex for 50 years. Birds that feed on insects attracted by this nutritious dung are rocketing. The rootling of the pigs provides opportunities for native flora and shrubs to germinate, including sallow, and this has given rise to the biggest colony of purple emperors in Britain, one of our rarest butterflies, which lays its eggs on sallow leaves. Not only does this system of natural grazing aid the environment in terms of soil restoration, biodiversity, pollinating insects, water quality and flood mitigation – but it also it guarantees healthy lives for the animals, and they in turn produce meat that is healthy for us. In direct contrast to grain-fed and grain-finished meat from intensive systems, wholly pasture-fed meat is high in beta carotene, calcium, selenium, magnesium and potassium and vitamins E and B, and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) – a powerful anti-carcinogen. It is also high in the long-chain omega-3 fatty acid DHA, which is vital for human brain development but extremely difficult for vegans to obtain. Much has been made of the methane emissions of livestock, but these are lower in biodiverse pasture systems that include wild plants such as angelica, common fumitory, shepherd’s purse and bird’s-foot trefoil because they contain fumaric acid – a compound that, when added to the diet of lambs at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, reduced emissions of methane by 70%. In the vegan equation, by contrast, the carbon cost of ploughing is rarely considered. Since the industrial revolution, according to a 2017 report in the science journal Nature, up to 70% of the carbon in our cultivated soils has been lost to the atmosphere. So there’s a huge responsibility here: unless you’re sourcing your vegan products specifically from organic, “no-dig” systems, you are actively participating in the destruction of soil biota, promoting a system that deprives other species, including small mammals, birds and reptiles, of the conditions for life, and significantly contributing to climate change. Our ecology evolved with large herbivores – with free-roaming herds of aurochs (the ancestral cow), tarpan (the original horse), elk, bear, bison, red deer, roe deer, wild boar and millions of beavers. They are species whose interactions with the environment sustain and promote life. Using herbivores as part of the farming cycle can go a long way towards making agriculture sustainable. There’s no question we should all be eating far less meat, and calls for an end to high-carbon, polluting, unethical, intensive forms of grain-fed meat production are commendable. But if your concerns as a vegan are the environment, animal welfare and your own health, then it’s no longer possible to pretend that these are all met simply by giving up meat and dairy. Counterintuitive as it may seem, adding the occasional organic, pasture-fed steak to your diet could be the right way to square the circle. • Isabella Tree runs Knepp Castle Estate with her husband, the conservationist Charlie Burrell, and is the author of Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm |
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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Gay3
Moderator Group Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Location: Miners Rest Status: Offline Points: 52023 |
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Humanity 'Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff': 60% of Earth's Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970By Julia Conley Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth's declining biodiversity, which shows that about 60 percent of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been wiped out by human activity since 1970. The World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Index details how human's uncontrolled overconsumption of land, food and natural resources has eliminated a majority of the wildlife on the planet—threatening human civilization as well as the world's animals. "We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff," Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF, told the Guardian. "If there was a 60 percent decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done." Killer whales were named as one species that is in grave danger of
extinction due to exposure to chemicals used by humans, and the Living
Index Report highlighted freshwater species and animal populations in
Central and South America as being especially affected by human activity
in the past five decades. "Species population declines are especially pronounced in the tropics, with South and Central America suffering the most dramatic decline, an 89 percent loss compared to 1970," reads the report. "Freshwater species numbers have also declined dramatically, with the Freshwater Index showing an 83% decline since 1970." Destruction of wildlife habitats is the leading human-related cause of extinction, as people around the world are now using about three-quarters of all land on the planet for agriculture, industry and other purposes, according to the report. Mass killing of animals for food is the second-largest cause of extinction, according to the report, with 300 mammal species being "eaten into extinction." "It is a classic example of where the disappearance is the result of our own consumption," Barrett told the Guardian. The report stresses a need to that shift away from the notion that wildlife must be protected simply for the sake of ensuring that future generations can see species like elephants, polar bears and other endangered animals in the wild. Rather, the survival of the planet's ecosystems is now a matter of
life and death for the human population, according to the WWF. "Nature contributes to human wellbeing culturally and spiritually, as well as through the critical production of food, clean water, and energy, and through regulating the Earth's climate, pollution, pollination and floods," Professor Robert Watson, who contributed to the report, told the Guardian. "The Living Planet report clearly demonstrates that human activities are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate, threatening the wellbeing of current and future generations." "Nature is not a 'nice to have'—it is our life-support system," added Barrett. Many scientists believe that studies like that of the WWF demonstrate that a sixth mass extinction is now underway—a theory that would mean the Earth could experience its first mass extinction event caused by a single species inhabiting the planet. The loss of all life on Earth could come about due to a combination of human-caused effects, including a rapidly warming planet as well as the loss of biodiversity. "The Great Acceleration, and the rapid and immense social, economic and ecological changes it has spurred, show us that we are in a period of great upheaval," reads the study. "Some of these changes have been positive, some negative, and all of them are interconnected. What is increasingly clear is that human development and wellbeing are reliant on healthy natural systems, and we cannot continue to enjoy the former without the latter." |
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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oneonesit
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Some funny comments above on this thread. Esp The Fiddlers - sorry Macca - obviously back in the days when Whale was in your good books !
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Refer ALP Election Promises
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Gay3
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Cotton growers and conservationists butt heads online over Menindee fish killsLara Webster and Amy McCosker, Wednesday January 30, 2019 - 14:05 EDThave died in the third kill in less than two months at the town of Menindee in far-west New South Wales. Agriculture Minister David Littleproud . People in Menindee blame the crisis on cotton irrigators' water use and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority's [MDBA] decision to empty the Menindee Lakes in 2014 and 2017. Experts say irrigators are taking too much water from the system, and the MDBA has mismanaged water flows which has contributed to the fish deaths. Cotton Australia said all major cotton growing valleys in north-west NSW had no water allocated to them this harvest season. Cotton grower Andrew Watson, from north-west New South Wales, said farmers were fielding abuse in debates online, which he said were based on incorrect information. "People actually don't know the facts and you know there are plenty of cotton growers who are willing to engage [and] talk about what we do," he said. "Water is taken under the rules that have been put in place over many years and that's been the frustrating thing. "We're only following the rules but people are posting on social media that they want to kill us." Cotton Australia chief executive Adam Kay said growers felt under attack. "Some of our growers are withdrawing from social media," he said. "There's so much emotion there and so much ill-informed opinion. "The growers are feeling quite distressed at the attacks on them when they know they are baseless." 'People are right to be angry': MP New South Wales independent MP Jeremy Buckingham has used social media to point the finger at the cotton industry. He said while it was unfortunate that growers were being targeted online, he understood why people who cared about the Darling River were upset. He said social media could be controversial. "People get on there, they get fired up about an issue and they feel like they can lash out but it's important that we build understanding about what's going on." Mr Buckingham said while people's anger could be misdirected, he still believed the buck stopped with the largest irrigators. "The biggest water users in the system in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland are the corporate irrigators. We're not talking about 'mum and dad' farms here. "People are right to be angry, there are a lot of people in southern and western New South Wales who are going to miss out on irrigation because the river has been over allocated in the north." In , the owners of Cubbie Station near Dirranbandi have defended the property's water usage. It said that despite having 22,000 hectares of irrigated cropping fields, no summer crops would be planted this year as there was no water available. According to the statement, the last time the station diverted water was in April 2017, when 14 gigalitres was redirected. Concerns for farmers' mental health Mary O'Brien, founder of the mental health awareness program Are You Bogged Mate?, said many farmers, in cotton and other industries, were being targeted online. She said she had talked with many farmers who were already struggling with the pressures of drought and were now feeling disheartened by online bullying. "It is just saddening. I am gobsmacked at some of the crazy comments, the ridiculous comments "¦ it's completely out of control," Ms O'Brien said. "These guys are struggling already emotionally and financially and this is just the last thing we need. "The farmers in Australia are just getting absolutely slammed from people with a skewed view." |
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Wisdom has been chasing me but I've always outrun it!
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