Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Sometimes you encounter a mainstream media climate article which you just have to share.
Call of the wild: listen up, people, time is running out
For decades, humans have been ignoring Mother Nature’s warnings about the future of the planet. Exactly how loudly does she have to scream?
By David Leser MAY 29, 2020
Daughter: “Mummy, what’s that smell?”
Mother: “It’s nature, darling.”
Daughter: “It’s like all the birds are wearing perfume.”You notice these things when you’re young, or still capable of retaining a childlike sense of wonder, or you find yourself, as I do one day, in an enchanted forest while great stretches of the country are burning.
You notice nature’s perfume and all its physical, fairy-tale qualities. You see giant mountain ash soaring 70 metres up into the light, along with blackwoods, candlebarks, stringybarks and every kind of tree fern growing at right angles out of the wire grass and undergrowth. You smell a wet forest of needles and frass, of nutrient-rich soil, rotting wood and creeping moss, and as you smell and see all this, you feel – or, at least, I do – that you’re sensing it for the first time, perhaps even the last.
I happened to be in the Yarra State Forest in central Victoria when I heard that daughter’s question to her mother, although it sounded to me more like a supplication. Mummy, what’s that smell?
…
The electrical impulses that pass through the roots of trees, for example, move at the slow rate of one third of an inch per second. But why, you might ask, do trees pass electrical impulses through their tissues at all? The answer is that trees need to communicate, and electrical impulses are just one of their many means of communication.”
Flannery also argued that trees used their sense of smell and taste for communication. If a giraffe starts nibbling, say, an African acacia, the tree will release a chemical into the air that signals an imminent threat. As the chemical wafts through the air and reaches other trees, these trees “smell” it and are warned of the danger. Even before the giraffe reaches them, the trees have begun manufacturing toxic chemicals as a defence.
“But the most astonishing thing about trees,” Flannery wrote, “is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive.”
…
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/call-of-the-wild-listen-up-people-time-is-running-out-20200424-p54mzq.html
I’d love to get a Tim Flannery Climate Council tree root electric impulse translator so I can ask my citrus trees when they plan to produce more fruit, but sadly they don’t seem to stock them on Ebay.
African acacia trees. They killed off the unicorns. Bastards
‘S’not all bad, at least the cruciform plants keep the vampire numbers down.
Electricity from trees anyone? Who knew. I’m connecting up my light sockets to the pines outside. Wait, what happens when there is a lightning storm? I demand a recount! Always a colossal snag to anything involving green energy.
After years of serious studies I can now assert with authority that giraffes have long necks so they can reach the top of the tree leaves before the bottom leaves tell them they will be chewed to death.
“Mummy, what’s that smell?”
“Darling, in life, there are Great Truths, Regular Truths, and Mini-Truths. It is good to know at least the Great Truths first, such as: You live, and then you die. Make the best use you can of your time, because you don’t know how long you’ve got. That’s one, and another is “She who smelt it, dealt it.”
That is all for today.
I’d love to get a Tim Flannery Climate Council tree root electric impulse translator so I can ask my citrus trees when they plan to produce more fruit, but sadly they don’t seem to stock them on Ebay.
You don’t need one old chap,
You can communicate directly with them by peeing on them.
Results will be obvious.
Flannery is a ‘ratbag’ but I’m not laughing.
He’s made a very good living over the past few decades at the expense of Australian taxpayers and is partly responsible for consumers paying at least double the price for electricity than would be the case if a free market applied with a consequential fall in relative living standards.
I have read a copy of Tim Flannery’ Weather Makers …
Because I was interested in the story that was being told to the Left.
I would not recommend one page of it.
https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Makers-Changing-Climate-Means/dp/0802142923
Flannery is an opportunist and clueless about climate.
I would suspect that he is just repeating stuff (tree to tree communication) that others have discovered and because is it is cool.
It is interesting that fungi consume 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize.
It appears there is tree species to species communal support and communication.
As a kind of fee for services, the fungi consume about 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar is what fuels the fungi, as they scavenge the soil for nitrogen, phosphorus and other mineral nutrients, which are then absorbed and consumed by the trees.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/
Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
A controversial German forester says yes, and his ideas are shaking up the scientific world
It shows instead that trees of the same species are communal, and will often form alliances with trees of other species. Forest trees have evolved to live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication and a collective intelligence similar to an insect colony. These soaring columns of living wood draw the eye upward to their outspreading crowns, but the real action is taking place underground, just a few inches below our feet.
“Some are calling it the ‘wood-wide web,’” says Wohlleben in German-accented English. “All the trees here, and in every forest that is not too damaged, are connected to each other through underground fungal networks. Trees share water and nutrients through the networks, and also use them to communicate. They send distress signals about drought and disease, for example, or insect attacks, and other trees alter their behavior when they receive these messages.”
Scientists call these mycorrhizal networks. The fine, hairlike root tips of trees join together with microscopic fungal filaments to form the basic links of the network, which appears to operate as a symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, or perhaps an economic exchange.
As a kind of fee for services, the fungi consume about 30 percent of the sugar that trees photosynthesize from sunlight. The sugar is what fuels the fungi, as they scavenge the soil for nitrogen, phosphorus and other mineral nutrients, which are then absorbed and consumed by the trees.
As a none controversial forester in the UK I see today young trees stressed because of a lack of water, I see one tree within a meter of another tree that’s not stressed, are you tellIng me the tree that is not stressed is able to help the tree that is stressed? I dont see it no physical help the stressed tree is still wilting, perhaps this tree communication is in the form of sympathy for thier fellow trees, “cheer up mate it will have to rain soon.
Stressed applied to humans is a emotional response manifesting in many ways and can attract help and sympathy from fellow humans, stressed can also be applied to a piece of metal , or a timber beam a physical flaw from the foundary ,a two hundred year old oak ships rib ,when ripped jumps out of the saw blade,now that’s stress to behold!
Using the word stressed in context of Flannery’s article is emotive and designed to stir up emotions ,
We can use the same word catastrophic in global warming , or the phrase “we only have seven years left before AGW is irreversible “all emotive to cause a over reaction of emotions. That’s exactly what Flannery is doing ,hes pushing a agenda just like global warmests.
In my experience, all tree stumps eventually rot away in the US, left to die by their indifferent neighbors. In fact, I suspect that the craven misers actually relish the windfall of additional sun. (I have even seen trees with Trump signs attached, need I say more?)
As with your experience in the UK, this is undoubtedly due to the Anglo-Saxon influence which has eliminated all social solidarity. I’m sure that trees in Germany, not to mention France, must be far more likely to uphold their social contract, to help the down-fallen! There’s no reason to doubt the good doctor’s work, just because it can’t be replicated in backward societies.
Bad news for vegans
So when a vegerarian goes bush all the plants cower in terror, a murdering cannibal is in their vicinity.
Question to Tim;
If a tree produces chemicals in a forest, and one million plus Western Australians are around to smell it, is Perth still a Ghost Metropolis?
All of this business of trees “communicating” is just a matter of semantics. When my hibiscus are in need of some water, the leaves begin to droop. I give them water and an hour later they are all spruced up. Did they tell me they were in need of water? No, I noticed what lack of water does to their leaves and act accordingly. If I did not notice, they would suffer and eventually die. There is no communication here, none. Just more of Flannery making things up.
Who says, “Listen up,” when they expect people to read something?
Cocoa Puffs anyone?
When it comes to Flim Flam it’s the eyes that have it:
https://youtu.be/SqSPT16i8wg
“But the most astonishing thing about trees,” Flannery wrote, “is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive.”
What a load of nonsense. Two trees of the same species compete for everything. When roots grow in close proximity, they eventually graft together due to the pressure from the expansion of growth. That’s how the stump stays alive. It’s got nothing to do with ”caring”.
Suggest instead you read ‘The Weathermakers Re-examined” by Dr D Weston Allen
Published by Irenic Publications.
It takes apart all the wrong arguments and bad data in “The Weathermakers” and shows them up. A good read for scientific people, and the general reader.
Anthropomorphism: making science accessible to all.
Chatty electric trees.
Space tourists are on rampage again. Where’s X-Com?
“Fairy-tale qualities” is right. This f*ckwit lives in a fairy tale. A living, breathing cautionary tale about what can happen if you ignore the reality of nature and let ideology inform everything about your worldview. Less time in front of his computer and more time observing nature might be salutary, although given his ossified brain, maybe not.
Stupid, stupid hippie!