This short personal essay from “farmer Steve” in North Dakota appeared as a comment on WUWT here. I thought it was a succinct and clear message based on personal experience and values, and thus worth sharing. I’ve made some formatting changes to make it easier to read, otherwise it is exactly as he posted his comment. For background on the North Dakota carbon credit program extended to farmers and ranchers, see this, this, and the program home page. Anyone who wishes to repost this essay has my permission to do so. – Anthony
Carbon Credits
I have changed my mind about participating in the carbon credit program. And have resolved to give the money I received to St Jude’s Children’s Hospital.
Here is why.
Recently I sat in the fire hall with a few dozen farmers. We had been invited to hear how we can get paid for carbon credits.
The speaker explained how their satellites can measure the carbon in our land individually and how much money we could get. Then asked for questions.
I asked “what is the source of this money”?
The presenter said it comes from big companies that pollute.
I asked “where do they get this money”? He had no answer.
So I answered for him, asking, “won’t it come from everyone who pays their power bill”? He then agreed and said “that could be”.
I then said isn’t this about the theory of man made global warming? he said “we are not going to talk about that”. Here they are on the prairie soliciting land for carbon credits tempting us with free money.
I believe that agreeing to take their money means you agree with taxing cattle gas also, because methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon. I believe taking this money without considering its source makes us no better than the bankers who lent money to people, knowing they could not pay it back. Collecting their fees then selling the bad loans in bundles to someone else. They did not care where the money came from either.
Let’s be clear.
Carbon is not a new commodity! No new wealth is being created here! Is this the way we want to make a living? Let me ask you, what if their satellites determine that your land has lost carbon? You will get a bill, not a check, right? If you make a tillage pass you will get a bill for emitting carbon, is this not correct?
It is also a fact that this income will, in short order, get built into your land cost. You will keep very little and be left with the burden of another bureaucratic program.
Let’s be honest, we feel compelled to take this money because of the need to be competitive, however we also need to hold true to our values and lead by example that means placing our principals ahead of money.
No good citizen is opposed to using the earth’s resources wisely, however, wisdom means a person who has both intelligence and humility. In my view many of the proponents of man made global warming have the first and lack the second. We are able to exercise our freedom in this country because we have abundant, reliable and affordable power. It is ironic that we sat in front of the flag in that fire hall and considered trading our liberty for money.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Roy Disney:
“Decision making becomes easier when your values are clear to you”
I read the links that Anthony provided.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Some farm state legislators in order to garner support for the cap and trade legislation are trying to come up with a plan that allows their farming constituents to sell carbon offsets of their own. They merely have to do ‘eco-friendly’ things like plant trees and the money comes rolling in. Something for everybody! Except the little guy who has to pay for the inevitable increase in energy costs.
Then I read about a farmer who’d already been using no-till and just got his big check for something he was doing anyway. Something for nothing.
” . . .he made about $1,500 last year from carbon credits.
‘I’m getting that for doing nothing out of the ordinary,’ Niederman said. ”
Can you blame these farmers for taking the money? If everyone else is lining up – you’d be a fool not to.
I keep thinking I’m going to wake up.
I pray this great nation will.
So Farmer Steve and Anthony have to provide “proof” for their statements, but AGW fanatics can say anything they want, true or not? That should give you cause for concern.
This has to be one of the most poignant posts on WUWT and I hope it is read and circulated widely. Thank you Farmer Steve (and Anthony for giving this prominence).
Ironically no till farming can have negative consequences which more than off-set the carbon savings. This is particularly so on heavier soils where nitrogen is more likely to be lost as nitrous oxide (N2O). N20 has 300 times the greenhouse effect of CO2. I’ve seen/heard this discussed many times recently, but there was a high profile paper in October of last year – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081022135622.htm
Graphs here: http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee274/biopact3/1363fig6.jpg
Just wait until they start measuring N2O emissions from farms.
Now you know why I no longer participate in the agricultural census, register my livestock, or have anything to do with the Department of Agriculture. If the government doesn’t know what I’m doing, they can’t impose fees. Agriculture is not my vocation but my avocation, anyway.
My excess livestock goes to immigrants that pay cash and don’t want to have anything to do with the government, either.
About that no-tillage – I’ve been on a conference about African agriculture and a guy from the USA talked about the biology of a certain weed named Striga, that attachs itself to the roots of sorghum and literally sucks it to death. During the coffee break I asked him if there may be an introduction of this unpleasant parasitic weed to the USA or Australia.
He said that there’s no way Striga can survive the tillage done in these countries, but in Africa, they don’t or can’t make tillage so deep to destroy the parasite. So maybe Striga has a chance now…
Of course it’s a scam!
Company A pays money to continue doing what they have been doing all along.
Farmer continues what he has been doing all along.
CO2: no net change.
Wealth: relocation from all segments of society including the poor (all of Company A’s customers) to the wealthiest (Al Gore)
Smokey (12:43:44) :
I wonder if farmer Steve would agree with this: click
I grew up in corn country, and in hot weather you can hear the cornstalks growing.
Smokey when the corn is growing that fast you can also smell it. It is so wonderful.
To comment on your article it must be nice to draw wide ranging conclusions and not show the caculations that got you there.
Jeepers folks, don’t go crazy just because someone put’s farmer in front of his name. I am sure this guy has participated in government farm programs all his life. It just a fact of life for farmers. I’m sure this guy understands the resentments of participating in programs, but if he’s really a farmer he’s very likely already collecting program payments. If he said his name we could look him up. http://farm.ewg.org/farm/index.php?key=nosign
The farmers are being lured into a trap. When the carbon bubble busts, as all trading schemes end in bubbles that pop, the small farmer will be bust, and big boys (banksters and carbon traders) who pop the bubbles take the farms.
Also, at what point does it become more profitable to just not grow crops and just grow trees and collect carbon credits during the bubble phase. This will eventually send food prices through the roof.
In addition, no-till farming reduces crop yields in the short term during transition, and during global cooling, shortens the growing season, requires the use of more herbicides and insecticides (Mosnato has a solution for you) and is not suitable for certain crops like corn. And when the herbicides no longer kill your weeds as they become resistant to the various herbicides and Monsanto runs out of solutions, forcing you to till, presumably you will be taxed for your land use change. Those who can not pay the tax lose the farm, and Monsantos partners in crime jump in and take it over.
Farmers going for this scheme tread on a dangerous slope.
Another Green Scam
At Woodend in Central Victoria, Australia we have a Sustainability Group with the acronym WISE who have come up with an incredible and deceptive scheme to sell green electricity. The Mayor of Macedon Ranges has already subscribed to buy 100% of his home power for the next 12 months from the Challicum Hills Wind Farm. The deceptive and absurd part of this is that inland wind turbines at best operate only 23% of the time and their hours of operation might occur during the night or at a time when the Mayor household is not using electricity. This scam is designed to support community wind farms one of which WISE hopes to establish so that they can sell 100% of their rated power even though they will produce less than a quarter of that.
A dangerous Global Warming Law:
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2009/04/dangerous-new-global-warming-law.html
This is all beginning to sound like the rules, regulations and petty bureaucracy that bedevilled us in the UK during WWII. Can’t answer for how it was done in the US.
The whole business is starting to get more than bit frightening!
I always found it ironic that Rand the capitalist and Orwell the socialist both saw the danger from collectivist control.
Orwell’s brand of socialism wasn’t very collective in the first place and had nothing to do with equality of pay, etc. It had more to do with higher taxes for the rich and for nations like India, the country of his birth, to acquire independence from the injustices he saw. In that context one can understand and sympathise with his words in ‘Why I Write’. He also found India’s caste system despicable and though socialism was the only way for India to rid itself of it. It didn’t quite work out that way though. India’s 40 year experiment with socialism resulted in an elitist bureaucracy who allowed poverty to grow faster than ever in India’s 5000 year history. Ever since the free market reforms of the 90s India’s quality of life has improved drastically and birth rates and death rates have dropped. Socialism talk the talk, libetarian capitalism talk the talk. India is proof that free trade and less regulation creates a more just society.
As time went on Orwell disagreed more and more with socialism. You can see in his essays and novels that he was challenging himself. He didn’t stick to one point of view and stay there like so many well known public figures do, because they are too vain to challenge themselves like he did.
Standing ovation..
It is interesting to sit here outside of America -shaking my head in disbelief-whilst watching the decline and fall by its own hand. Nearby are two contestants for the title -India and China. The results should be in soon.
Alexis de Tocqueville is frequently quoted. Here are two that seem appropriate for this thread:
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
I’m with Albert and the other skeptics of Steve…I don’t buy any of this unless I see a video of the meeting posted, or the offical meeting minutes.
Note that he didn’t say “No,thanks, keep the money,” instead he said “I’ll give it to someone else.” It’s still a regulated transfer of wealth…in fact, he’s now another layer in that process.
We need entire towns, villages, counties, areas and states standing up for this. More action and less “feel good,” if ya know what I mean. The “feel good” part kind of feels like the AGW crowd’s tactics.
Nice Anthony, this is definitely Air Vent material,I’ll gladly put it up. America has nearly lost its common sense. People who know the difference need to be heard.
I’ve got a new post by Jonathan Drake up now describing sea ice data as well.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/how-fast-is-arctic-sea-ice-declining/
This is really the most ridiculous part of the cap and trade system, as I see it.
I’m from New Zealand and we are, in large part, an agricultural nation. Most of our “carbon” emissions come from our beef and dairy herds, not from burning fossil fuels (not that we are large emitters in the first place).
In 2008 our previous government (the one that just got voted out) passed an emissions trading scheme. Effectively a cap and trade system. They included agricultural emissions (mostly methane) in the scheme. Now, I have only a basic understanding of chemistry but as I remember, methane is just C-H4. i.e. one carbon molecule four hydrogen. I’m also vaugely aware of the law of conservation of mass/energy. Now unless our dairy herds have some bulit in fission or fusion capabilities they are not synthesizing the carbon. This leaves me wondering where do our politicians think this carbon is coming from and do they think reducing the size of our dairy herds will actually reduce the amount of “carbon” in the atmosphere?
As far as the AR4 was concerned methane levels were not increasing, which makes me wonder why they want to limit their emissions in the first place. I have heard recently that some scientists have found a spike in the concentration of methane, yet that makes regulation even more pointless. It then becomes obvious that if there hasn’t been a huge agricultural spike, it could only be due to other causes.
All this green economic restructuring will cause a downturn in the economy at the end of which most people will be poorer, as opposed to the normal course of economic restructuring that results in most people being better off eventually.
I like this:
“It is ironic that we sat in front of the flag in that fire hall and considered trading our liberty for money.”
On a related note:
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/10/climate-bill-could-trigger-lawsuit-landslide/
Has anyone brought this up yet?
Imagine that … you can now sue if you “expect” damage to happen, not if you have actually suffered any damage.
There is a moronic convergence going on in Washington DC. I am simply stunned.
Gerard (14:32:03) :
“Another Green Scam
At Woodend in Central Victoria, Australia we have a Sustainability Group with the acronym WISE who have come up with an incredible and deceptive scheme to sell green electricity. The Mayor of Macedon Ranges has already subscribed to buy 100% of his home power for the next 12 months from the Challicum Hills Wind Farm. The deceptive and absurd part of this is that inland wind turbines at best operate only 23% of the time and their hours of operation might occur during the night or at a time when the Mayor household is not using electricity. This scam is designed to support community wind farms one of which WISE hopes to establish so that they can sell 100% of their rated power even though they will produce less than a quarter of that.”
Gerard,
The same happens in Europe.
The Swiss buy up cheap electricity from German Coal Power plants.
They use it to pump water up into a mountain lake.
During the day time this water is used to drive a turbine generating electricity which is sold as Green Electricity to…German families.
These Green Scams tell you three things.
1. Green is not really green.
2. It’s easy to scam people.
3. Government and consumer protection does not function.
If they would know how they were conned….!
Carbon credits, cap and trade – whatever you want to call it – is no different to any other Ponzi scheme. If it weren’t for the fact that it is the state sponsoring it, the state would declare it illegal. Either way, it’s destined to fail – like all Ponzi schemes.
There has been a lot of science done on zero-till and pastureland in terms of the Carbon that is sequestered. [With real measurements that have duplicated dozens of times unlike GISS’ with its theoritical measurements].
On average, each acre will sink about 0.3 tons of Carbon each year so going by the (fluctuating) market rate, that should be good for +$5 per acre per farmer/rancher.
The downside is that a big percentage of the Carbon returns to the atmosphere as CO2 as soon as it tilled again so it has to stay as zero-till or pastureland essentially for decades to make any difference.
Someone raised N2O, the third biggest GHG. It turns out that almost all the Nitrogen fertilizer used by a farmer ends up going up into the atmosphere as N20 after a year or two.
N2O numbers are rising just as fast as CO2 and, given we need to use Nitrogen fertilizer, it appears there is nothing that can be done about it (except using it only where and when needed).
And fertilizer usage is measured in the Kyoto Protocol and converted to N20 emissions for a given jurisdiction so it is measured.
[It is interesting that the Kyoto Protocol did not even make a dent in the CO2 numbers. It is rising at the same rate it always was (slightly exponential) so everyone should be able to call BS on the Kyoto Protocol].