From The Spectator-Australia
This is a tale of idiocy, full of facts and foreboding, signifying that the end times must be surely upon us. A bloke bought a sheep property of half a million acres in western Queensland for $2.0 million. Instead of running sheep on it, he now gets $350,000 per annum under the federal government’s Direct Action scheme for not using the grass on his property. The idea being that the grass locks up carbon and reduces Australia’s carbon emissions. A neighbouring property gets $600,000 per annum. Direct Action is a $1.7 billion per annum program funded from general taxation revenue.
Now people may be paid, from time to time, for not doing things and there may be a rational reason for that. But being paid for allowing grass to stand undisturbed? That grass is going to rot or be burnt within three years anyway. Not allowing the fuel load from dead grass to build up is so important in rangeland management that in northern Australia it is done from aircraft using capsules containing potassium permanganate and glycerine. Upon hitting the ground, the capsules shatter, mixing the components which spontaneously ignite. Burning grassland is important because otherwise the fuel load builds up and the resulting fire, which will come, kills everything. As Captain Cook and others have noted, when the Aborigines had the run of the country they would set fire to everything, all the time – because bad things happened if they didn’t.
Now the idiocy of Direct Action is founded on belief in global warming. Global warming in turn is a state-sponsored religion and those of us who do not follow that faith are forking out for those who do. From that perspective, it is a just a case of trying to keep the total spend on such religious observance under control. And beyond the direct spend; belief in global warming is now being used to destroy our power supply. But does the federal government have to insult our intelligence so egregiously by paying people not to use grass? Seemingly no member of parliament cares – about the waste or the idiotic science.
Something similar happened in the Department of Transport in mid-2014. The Minister for Transport at the time, Warren Truss, was a wheat farmer. Farmers are supposed to be practical, no-nonsense people. But the Department talked their minister into closing Darwin airport because a volcano 1,000 km away in Indonesia had erupted, releasing volcanic ash into the atmosphere. What do the Indonesians, the Filipinos, the Japanese do about their exploding volcanoes? They simply fly around them. At the time, nobody thought it strange that the Indonesians kept flying up and down their archipelago while Australia closed airports far away from the danger zone.
Now it is one thing for Canberra public servants to respond to natural events by going into hysterical schoolgirl mode, but our members of parliament, and especially the best of these, the ones chosen to be ministers, should be level-headed and have knowledge of the real world. But none of our federal parliamentarians thought it was strange that Darwin airport could be closed under clear blue skies. And they didn’t care about the lives of Australians being needlessly disrupted by such an inane directive.
It seems though that, as a nation, we will only stop doing very stupid things when we run out of money to do so. Surely a cathartic event is coming?
David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare
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“potassium permanganate and glycerine” … that’s what my 7th grade science teacher put in my model volcano, a memorable class project
I had terrible athlete’s foot as a kid. Potassium permanganate is what I soaked my feet in! If I remember correctly, it turned my feet a light purple-brown.
Perhaps you should be grateful no one was splashing glycerine containing stuff around!
Or you’d have been rushing hot foot to the doctor…
Yes, it does stain. But it works!
Also good for washing fruit.
I used air filtration through KMnO4 granules to remove lab fumes during my time as a facility operator.
Also a treatment for ringworm.
it was also used as full bath soak by a pommy GF i knew to “fake a tan” before such items were available.
nowdays you can NOT buy even a tiny 50grams of it to soak your infected nails etc
its “dangerous” and we could be tewwowists buying it for ???
sheesh!
My father used it to kill fungi on his goldfish. We kids mixed it with magnesium powder and blew stuff up.
My parents use to raise their own chickens. My mother would put a small amount of potassium permanganate in the baby chicks water to prevent disease. It had a nice purple color, like grape Kool Aid. One day she left a jar of the solution on the counter. My dad thinking it was Kool Aid took a swig. It didn’t take long for him to spit it out!
It’s entertaining in fountains and artificial waterfalls as well [at least to 15 year olds]
Me and my brother used to make Ammonium Tri-ide. Great little contact explosive. Put some on the feet of the toilet seat before our mothers coffee gang came over. Very amusing.
Also on door handles. The bang would make us laugh.
Yes, I know , we weren’t very nice but we grew up OK.
More amusement from QLD, an electric vehicle super-highway, for the 700 electric cars in the state, we are living through a period of high comedy/tragedy:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-27/free-charging-stations-to-boost-queensland-electric-car-numbers/8748246
If you happen upon a poor destitute politician walking barefoot down a stony road, with puncture vines sprouting everywhere, carrying a heavy gunny sack of all his worldly possessions, and you stop and pick him up with your horse drawn buggy; you may notice that he will keep that gunny sack hanging on his shoulders, instead of putting it on the buggy floor.
Don’t both telling him to put the damn sack down; he thinks he is giving your horse a bit of a rest !
G & g
Hmm. I fear that I would be faced with the question of who is the bigger fool? The politician – or myself, for interfering with Darwinian selection by picking him up.
george e. smith
HeHeHe………..Excellent.
And if you wife is lactating, the politician might say he’s hungry and grab a little nip – Grapes of Wrath style.
Great story G & g. Thanks!
See if you can make a story of this someday.
From the article:
“Global warming in turn is a state-sponsored religion and those of us who do not follow that faith are forking out for those who do.”
I thought of suing the government to force separation of church and state.
Surely you can do better.
L & L
I calculate nearly a 17.5% return on investment for that land purchase. The question I have to ask, is “where can I get me some”?
Pays for the original land purchase in under six years. Great deal there.
the other great payout for the farmers is the tree protection one
you either enclose some useless crap land with scrub n useless trees on it, or plant a native to the area section with free labour n subsidised or free seedlings
then its to be fenced off permanently no stock to graze the firehazards down
its ok to use chemicals though….hmm how UNecological is that!
and then enjoy the very high payoff for sacrificing your land
many thought it was a great deal and jumped in
however…the fine print?
its a 100yr agreement!
so future buyers or inheriting family are going to find it less than appealing as they have to maintain it BUT get nothing of the handout the original chap did.
and if i was a buyer hearing that id be looking elsewhere PDQ
@ozspeaksup
Port Jackson should do the trick. It grows here in the fynbos without any attention at all.
You have to be friendly with your local politicians to get a part of this kind of deal.
50,000 quid/yr in the pol’s pocket insures his “friendship”, and still leaves 15% ROI.
I thought the same… how do I cash in on this crap.
It beats playing the govt lottery games and govt casinos.
That land is worth much more than 2 million. Capital gain potential from selling it will be worth millions.
Its not so much the government, (although they must be idiots in this case I agree), but what the electorate or voters want them to do.
The Greens no doubt have been brain washing the electorate and this is possibly a succesful result.
Want to see an example of brain washing from my government via the NZ Dept of Education?
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/exemplar-3-2008-exam.pdf
Read more about it here.
https://thedemiseofchristchurch.com/2013/03/13/are-we-experiencing-a-communist-infiltration-sponsored-by-the-united-nations/
Cheers
Roger
Remember, it’s only a rort if you’re not getting any.
Liberalism will one day be seen as the archetype of self-inflicted ecological – along with all manner of other sorts of – damage. That title is I believe held at this time in Australia by the cane toad ‘experiment’ but will easily be taken over by liberalism. In the unlikely event Western civilisation survives the onslaught of the liberals the new survivalist zeitgeist will contain as its central axiom the absolute imperative that any individual displaying even the merest trace of liberalism must be immediately spayed and placed in a secure isolation unit.
Sadly, the money won’t run out any time soon because cheap weapons grade stupid is abundant.
“weapons grade stupid” – now that’s good!
“Weapons grade stupid.” That’s a good one!
Much better than the stock”can’t fix stupid”.
“…weapons grade stupid…” – brilliant.
For years now the Feds have been handing your taxpayer $$$ to some groups of Aborigines in the NT to burn grass. Quite a lot of money, started about 1993 IIRC. Again in the name of global warming.
They would have burned the grass anyhow. This way, though, some CSIRO folk are paid to tell them how to burn grass and some more folk are paid to administer it all and some polliesvare paid to read the reports and approve more funding. Strange times. Geoff.
So the Australian government is paying some to burn grass, and others not to? makes sense.
Global warming is no religion, catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is. I have enjoyed global warming for decades; in Iceland they say ” better enjoy it while it lasts”.
Turns out that the American Indians also practiced ‘burn management’ prior to the arrival of the Europeans. They would burn large swaths of prairie, just like the Australian Aborigines did.
They also burned out the Eastern forests, to encourage the populations of bear and deer.
Early European settlers described open parkland forests all along Eastern North America, wherein one could ride a horse freely under the trees..
And in the boreal forest of Canada, native peoples would set fires, because in burned areas, fresh young deciduous trees would spring up, and that’s favourite food for the moose, deer or caribou. Managing the meat supply, and keeping future fires away from communities.
Now, “we” spend a lot of time and money on putting fires out, so the forests tend to get over-mature, filled with dead wood, and when lightning sets off a fire in that stuff, it gets really big and hot and takes a lot more time and money to try and put it out.
Nothing to do with AGW or carbon capture/release, it’s been going on for long than that. It’s just us european settlers showing how much smarter we are than people who had no choice but to live off the land.
“we” also manage clear-cut areas by waiting a year or two for birch and poplar to start growing, then we spray them with a close relative of Agent Orange, so they won’t overshadow the jack pine that we plant. Keeping the forests safe for future logging. I could go on. Idiocy isn’t new, but AGW does take it to new heights of creative stupidity.
“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex… It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”
―Albert Einstein
Read more at http://izquotes.com/quote/56316
So true. True forest management would be to burn the forests in the fall after the first rains. The wet trees won’t burn but the dry underbrush will, removing the fireload. But instead we waste millions fighting fires which ensures each successive fire is bigger than the last until whole towns are destroyed.
And California, which has been suffering worse fires ever since the settlers and government suppressed burning. There are ironic bits of old diaries and journals that describe the “park-like” conditions experienced as travelers came down the west slope. By the end of the 19th century these had vanished.
And the sheep do not store carbon when they eat grass?
Carbon is a lethal pollutant and was fortunately banned in Australia long ago. Jumbucks are now a silicon-based hybrid offshoot of Artiodactyla.
Our local grocery store sells fruits and veggies certified “carbon free”.
Only a very inferior sort of carbon.
“And the sheep do not store carbon…..” Then you eat sheep, store carbon, past gas and the beat goes on.
they belch
theyre banned
Oh, wow, so many comments to make, so little time!
“The Stupidest Thing Federal Government Does”- are all Federal governments this stupid?
“The Stupidest Thing Federal Government Does”- is there a competition? Is it international? Is it like the Nobel Peace Prize?
“when the Aborigines had the run of the country they would set fire to everything, all the time – because bad things happened if they didn’t.”- our liberal friends would rather try to change reality than learn from it.
“Global warming in turn is a state-sponsored religion”- Ain’t that the truth, brother!
One of the richest people in the world, the emir of one of Persian gulf ‘so called’ states has a much smaller farm in the UK, for breeding racing horses (with the ultimate product gambling) subsidised by the taxpayers to the tune of about $US million/annum.
“But none of our federal parliamentarians thought it was strange that Darwin airport could be closed under clear blue skies. And they didn’t care about the lives of Australians being needlessly disrupted by such an inane directive.”
I wonder how many federal parliamentarians actually knew the airport was closed.
Almost certainly none as it would require them to pay attention to something other than their perks.
Here is a letter to David Miliband, who was the climate change minister who introduced the UK Climate Change Act.
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers/letter-to-times-about-grants-for-not-raising-pigs
You wouldn’t think you could make it up (government policy).
Tremendous.
I wonder if you can not raise pigs and sheep over the internet ?
Having the ultimate responsibility for tens to thousand of environmental lands I learned in early days that control burns were vital to maintain the ecosystem. I sent all my managers to fire school, not to stop fires (which they were also taught) but how to do control burns safely. Much of Australia like Florida is a fire driven ecosystem. “Joke” is that if you do not use control burning the fuel builds to a point that when it does burn you put out way, way more pollutants (e.g., dioxin) and carbon dioxide then if you burn on a regular schedule. Most of the states that have uncontrolled annual wildfires fail to properly use control burning. Why don’t states and land managers not properly use control burning? Because in most places they are required to hold public hearings and face the public. It also requires relatively detailed planning, not something most technocrats like to do.
I’m neither an Australian, nor engaged in agronomy, just interested in both.
It seems that a practice of frequent controlled burns selects for only those species which thrive in such conditions.
Wouldn’t proper grazing techniques reduce the necessity for such frequent burns? Thoughtful and controlled grazing not only helps enrich the soil, but also disturbs the soil, helping to bring hidden seeds out of dormancy.
Alan R
Find yourself a copy of Bill Gamage’s book “The Biggest Estate on Earth: how aboriginals made Australia”
Mosaic burning, burning in scattered patches, produces a mixture of forested areas and open areas of fresh [tasty?] pasture that attracts grazing animals. If your hunting tools are pointed sticks this is to your advantage as it concentrates your prey,
Aboriginal people in Australia have used this technique for tens of thousands of years.
In Africa perhaps near 100’s of thousands of years ?
In South Africa, the large Kruger National Park used to (and may still do) use controlled burning to encourage movement of the animals, so that parts of the park don’t get overgrazed. I don’t know if they still do, but our local ‘bunny-huggers’ are strongly against elephant culling (which is essential to prevent destruction of feed vegetation) and may very well have stopped the burn procedures.
At one point in the past, these burns were called “prescribed burns” because so many got out of control, the term “controlled” make the agency doing the burning look bad. I think California may still use that term.
whats worse?
they have now got prescribed volumes of area to burnoff
but
some of its a long way from the depot and hard to access
so?
theyve been reburning in as little as 3 to 5 yrs
which is pretty much killing trees that take min 5 and often 10yrs to revover n start flowering again
so the point here
a huge amount of burns are being done on beekeepers paid for leases in govt/crown land bush/parks
theyre now required to pay increased fees 10yrs in advance!
but cant make a single cent OFF the leases as the burn reburn makes any flowering a total NON event.
they also reduced areas by smart trick on the lines of from area to radius round hive
pay more get less.
no wonder with this utter stupidity(weapons grade indeed;-)
and some bad seasons honey is now scarce and premium prices
and wax is also skyhigh prices.
“Small fire now, small fire later. No fire now, big fire later!”
The Government
and farmers* of Queensland could study the techniques of American farmer, Joel Salatin. There’s some real carbon sequestration.*Doubtful if the farmers mentioned in this article could care less, with the profits they are making.
You idiots. What’s wrong with you?
It’s obvious there is more intrinsic humanity value in progressive notions and intentions than there is in measuring financial considerations.
Geez….
It’s the thought- the good intention, that counts, not the accounting.
Ps It’s the self- allocation of virtue, which measures the “good” of intentions
Intrinsic humanity value? Like? “Saving” the world at all cost, no matter how many people it kills though impoverishment.
Wasn’t that Bernie Madoff’s mantra?
Steve Oregon : “It’s obvious there is more intrinsic humanity value in progressive notions and intentions than there is in measuring financial considerations.”
To remedy the potential of losing tax dollars (financial considerations) and/or discouraging citizens from drinking mineral spirits during prohibition, the U.S. government ‘denatures’ mineral spirits. This renders it poisonous to consume. Citizens died or were blinded (intrinsic humanity value) because of this practice, it continues to this day.
You are describing denatured alcohol, not mineral spirits. Mineral spirits are a petroleum-based turpentine substitute.
I have watched raptors here in the US sit on idle drilling rigs hunt and kill prairie chickens which we are supposedly trying to protect to the extent that their habitat was being considered for off limits status by the US feds. The reason the rigs were idle was to protect the raptors nesting time. We have lots of raptors and few prairie chickens left. Hunting prairie chickens is still allowed, shooting raptors is not. Shutting down drilling in this situation qualifies, as the comment above states, is “weapons grade stupid”.
Don’t worry. The wind turbines will take out the raptors and if the prairie chickens can stand the tall towers and vibration, they will bounce back. If not, well……
(I always did think allowing hunting of prairie chickens was silly, but Game and Fish swears it doesn’t affect population. The grouse are usually some distance from town and the limits per day are very low. I’m still skeptical.)
Sheri, there “grouse” about which you write, these are the employees of the Fish Wildlife Services, yes? … or, am I missing something? I know many of them work at distances from town, but, I did not know there was a limit on them. Maybe that’s just in the coastal states.
[I remember my dad — too often — while working on the farm, yelling at me and siblings to stop “grousing about … and to get to work!”]
You and a dog can walk right past a prairie chicken and not know it, and they don’t taste very good, hence, very few people actually hunt them.
Very few people hunt them, because there are very few Prairie Chickens remaining and exceedingly limited hunting seasons.
They taste just fine. I know that, because the annual Prairie Chicken hunt when I was a boy, was a great big deal and everyone got in on the hunt.
Now, the gov’t has subsidized wind turbines, right where the Prairie Chickens used to live (they will not tolerate tall structures, nor much of anything man made.) There is no more hunting season and darn few Prairie Chickens, (or us old hunters) remain.
On the brighter side, the wind generators can kill 30 some Eagles a year and it’s open season on hawks (for the turbine operators,) thanks to Obama’s edicts. Won’t help the Prairie Chickens much, though and it ain’t workin’ out too well for the Red Tails, either.
RWTURNER I disagree both that your dog and you could walk past a prairie chicken (Sharp-tailed grouse) and that they don’t taste good. I used to hunt them (afternoons when ducks and geese from the Netley marsh in Manitoba weren’t flying). First, my friends didn’t believe I could smell them at a good distance when I was downwind (my explanation for why I got triple the number they did every time), second, these birds were easily spooked and you had to be able to knock them down at 60+yards. Thirdly, they tended to be grain fed and were tasty at least to me. Hungarian partridge I believe were introduced and these lovely round fatties with their pretty orange-tipped tail feathers were also a treat.
Mind you this was 60years ago before buffalo chicken wings with blue cheese dip, or duck-a-l’orange followed by tiramisu and caramel-chocolate latte with crispy crinkles. There is an old saying which doesn’t mean much today: “If you think a carrot is sweet, then you never taste one of them pinyapples.”
There are payments other than ‘not to use your grass’.
How about: hire your grassy areas out to windmill corporates. There’s money out there in your grass, folks and you can tap into it. Get with the ‘Free Taxpayer Grass Utilisation Profit Program’ coming to a farm near you.
http://www.windustry.org/how_much_do_farmers_get_paid_to_host_wind_turbines
It would be a good idea to read this: https://stopthesethings.com/experience/ before”hiring your grassy areas out to windmill corporates.”
There might be a down side, but hey, what’s important—as bunch of cash every year from the Feds or having a nice, quiet place to live but having to eek out a living?
(/sarc, in case anyone could not tell)
So true. Government handouts at their best.
The Great Tulip Market Crash is now replaced with grass
Market Crashes: The Tulip and Bulb Craze
http://www.investopedia.com/features/crashes/crashes2.asp
Reminds me of the Charles Schwab California rice fiasco from about 15 years ago…
Turns out California would pay billionaire Schwab subsidies to plant rice. No requirement that he harvest or sell it. Schwab used the money and turned it into a duck hunting paradise complete with flooded fields in a state desperate for water.
The gov’t mismanagement was epic. People were furious with Schwab but I think that was totally misplaced. He just followed the rules.
If only the Warmists understood the grade school science concept of decomposition. Have they heard of this important process in nature? Apparently not, according to their pseudo-scientific understanding of the carbon cycle, all ruminants disobey the 1st law of thermodynamics and literally create carbon.
They only understand this in the framework of CSI type programs. Bodies decompose until one finds them, hauls them into the morgue and later buries them. If you meant in the real world, that would be no.
Looks like a windmill on your farmland in Illinois will fetch you about 70k a year in rent.
http://renewableenergy.illinoisstate.edu/downloads/speaker_presentations/2011_landowner_forum_101_files/TranscriptMattLandownerCompensation.pdf
I would not allow one of those abominations on my land if they offered 10 times that. Seriously.
Yeah, and there are those here and elsewhere trying to convince us it’s about saving the planet, not money. Sure—IT’S ABOUT MONEY. Pure and simple.
(I once told a person I’d move immediately if those things got too close. I may have to leave my cabin yet—China and Venezuala are reporting taking over the area with hundreds of the monstrosities. I planned on retiring in Wyoming, but maybe not.)
I’m holding this sharp weapon up to a blade of grass. The price to back off is $10,000. Pay me. Now sucker!
Noooooooo!
Can I get paid to not drive a car? Not fly on a plane?
Yes—I would love to get paid to not fly on a plane, since I’m not doing that anyway!
I would love to get paid for not cutting my grass.
Just wondered, what is the subsidy payment for not moving to Australia? Deal? This is of course separate from the hundreds of millions spent on ad placements to get us to visit Australia.