Category Archives: drought
Farmers work with climate change every day
Letter to the Editor
Changing Climate is the farmer’s work tool to produce your food.
The teacher who refused to turn on a school AC on a hot day to protect the environment (C -M, Nov 24), needs dismissing for low intelligence, my grandparents often spoke of extreme climatic conditions as told to them by their parents and during their lives. Australia has experienced about 24 major droughts since 1803 and a 23-year mega-drought between 1500 and 1522, and 7 lesser droughts. Clearly history should be a compulsory subject.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!
–Dorothea Mackellar
Climate changes did not just start in recent times (Noah’s flood, the Murray River dried up in 1915), climatic extremes recorded going back to 1AD are on the net. If you want to know about climate change talk to a farmer the changing climate are their tools of trade they work with to produce our food, If you want theoretical baloney talk to others.
Sincerely
G J May
Forestdale
Queensland burns while Minister is drying out?
by Robert J Lee
While Queensland burns, the Labor Minister for Fire and Emergency Services, Comrade Craig Crawford is nowhere to be seen. What has happened to the Minister?
The Premier, Comrade Annastacia Palaszczuk has been standing in for the Minister at media conferences issuing dire warnings for landowners to desert their properties, leaving homes to burn in the face of wildfires fuelled by Labor’s decades-long policies of no graders, dozers, firebreaks or fuel reduction burning in national parks and state-owned land.
Minister Craig Crawford’s office has refused to answer a query from Cairns News if he could confirm or deny he is undergoing alcohol rehabilitation somewhere in a facility unknown.
Wildfire destroyed this Yeppoon, Central Qld, home last week while the Fire and Emergency Services Minister Craig Crawford is missing in action, believed to undergoing alcohol rehabilitation
—–Original Message—–
From: cairnsnews [mailto:cairnsnews@protonmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, 14 November 2019 9:13 PM
Subject: Automatic reply: rehab
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Wednesday, November 13, 2019 11:24 PM, Barron River Electorate Office <Barron.River@parliament.qld.gov.au> wrote:
Thank you for your email to Craig Crawford MP, Member for Barron River.
This is an automatically-generated reply, to advise that we have received your email.
If your enquiry is urgent, please call the office on (07)4229 0100.
Mr Crawford appreciates the time you have taken to contact him, and if appropriate, your email will be responded to as soon as possible.
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Our office receives a high level of correspondence every day, and whilst each email is important, we cannot always reply immediately. If your email is part of an automatically-generated campaign, your views will be noted, but you may not receive an individual response.
Kind regards
Electorate Officer
Office of Hon. Craig Crawford MP
Member for Barron River
Minister for Fire and Emergency Services
Following the United Nations agreement Agenda 21, which was eagerly signed in 1992 by then Labor Attorney General Rod Welford, the ALP has, like good Fabians, stealthily enacted these draconian UN environmental policies ever since.
Now the pigeons have come home to roost. Fires have destroyed 17 homes and 67 have been damaged. And this tally is only for 2019. Remember the devastating wildfires north of Bundaberg last year?
These homeowners, albeit they chose to live in fire prone areas among the eucalyptus trees, should have a legitimate claim against the state government.
There has been almost no hazard reduction burning in state-owned land for decades-machinery is banned-no firebreaks and bugger the poor neighbours.
The build-up of detritus on the forest floor is up to half a metre in national parks. This happened after cattle grazing was removed and properties locked up. Not so in most forestry controlled old growth and plantation areas. The Forestry department, with what is left of the old brigade, religiously burn their areas of responsibility and stock grazing is allowed in some areas.
Chop down a tree on freehold land and the dreaded tree police will pounce and drag you off to a Queensland court, mostly filled with a Labor judiciary.
How will the stormtrooper tree police know you cut down a tree to save a house? They have been watching your every move by satellite and drones. The DNR know immediately if you have acted in self-defence against wildfire.
The numerous good officers of the overpopulated Queensland Fire and Emergency Services, at media conferences have never mentioned the lack of machinery or firebreaks and excessive forest floor fuel loads might be the predisposing cause of private property losses.
Resplendent in their UN designed black uniforms, with collar badges resembling a Gestapo SS symbol, these urbanites prattle on about ‘climate change’ or global warming starting fires and every other bit of nonsense imaginable.
It is far past the time to drain the Queensland swamp of the burgeoning bureaucracy costing an extra one billion dollars a year to tell voters bullshit.
Muslims, Pacific Islands and Indonesia gifted hundreds of millions from Liberals, but desperate farmers have to borrow to survive
Letter to the Editor
Dear Liberal Party friends
(1) sorry to say that this email below is worse than pathetic – – losing votes.
(2) Bridget Mackenzie, Agriculture Minister, on 2GB this morning was painfully inadequate to answering Alan Jones’s reasonable questions and facts.
Alan Jones (rightly in my view) demolished the stupidity of the proposed two-year interest-free loans to farmers that then roll over into loans at 3.1% after two years on money that the Govt can get from the Reserve Bank at 0.75%, thus making a profit from struggling farmers!
(3) LET ME SUM UP THIS ScoMo GOVT
- extra $1,000 million recently announced to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation – this is both unnecessary and crazy – the recent Aust Energy Market Operator report predicts blackouts for NSW and Victoria this summer – but there are NO PROPOSALS for reliable baseload nuclear or coal power stations!
- Our Foreign Affairs Minister gave $70million to Rohinga Moslems
- ScoMo promised $500 million to Pacific Islands to help them fight the mythical monster of climate change
- This federal Govt gives Islamic Indonesia $1million per day as a gift, of which how much ends up in Swiss Bank accounts of officials?!
- While it is a good thing to release some Murray-Darling Basin water to assist in growing fodder, may I point out that that will take TIME!
- BUT we don’t have time — it won’t help to stop Farmers’ cattle and sheep dying of starvation or being shot or sold tomorrow and next week.
- The claim of 21 water infrastructure projects is false and deceptive — no major dam has been built since 1983 – and NONE IS NOW BEING BUILT – of course there are various proposals and feasibility studies BUT NO ACTUAL DIGGING!! ZILCH. NIL ACTUAL CONSTRUCTION HAPPENING.
NSW water Minister Melinda Pavey recently admitted in a fit of frankness that the best we can hope for is to start digging in 3 years from now!
from Lex Stewart
Coffs Harbour
South East Qld wildfires caused by decades of dangerous Labor Party policies
If you want to live among the trees then expect more destruction
Thousands of hectares of wallum scrub and once open forest in the Sunshine and Gold Coast hinterlands and seaside suburbs were razed this week in what was a preventable inferno.
Many homes and the historic Binna Burra Lodge in the Gold Coast hinterland were lost to wildfire. Where were the fire breaks? Where was the back burning in the days or weeks before?
Historic Binna Burra lodge destroyed by wild fire in Gold Coast hinterland. Urban dwellers are unable to understand or cope with a state experiencing severe drought conditions, caused by on ongoing cyclic solar activities. They should switch of their televisions, stop listening to Greens propaganda Pics-ABC
The Labor state government’s poor management record of forest and national park reserves across the state will see more of these dangerous conflagrations especially during long periods of dry weather.
The Deputy Premier, comrade Jackie Trad, a Green tragic, was quick to blame ‘climate change’ but she is bereft of any intelligence to know the widespread hot ember storm was caused by her UN-inspired polices of no firebreaks, no heavy machinery, no hazard reduction burning and no cattle grazing on any land.
These fires simply are a repeat of the widespread destructive wildfires which burnt out nearly half a million hectares north of Bundaberg in 2018.
Until this state is rid of urban politicians who have no understanding of the garden bed next door let alone the vast uninhabited areas of Queensland we will continue to witness devastating environmental damage never before seen in the history of the ‘sunshine state.’
In the ample dramatic ‘never let the facts get in the way of a good story’ footage, televisions across the nation flashed bulletins of wildfires and ember storms which caused spot fires some 300 or more metres distant.
Water bombing by a 737, an extreme waste of taxpayers money in most circumstances. Fire prevention costs almost nothing and a change of Labor’s devastating UN-inspired policies would prevent wildfires destroying property.
Climate change is the culprit, say the hopeless Greens, but the climate changes every day so this stupidity carries no water. The state is in drought, a continuous cycle of weather patterns caused by differing solar activity.
Wet sclerophyll or rainforest encroaches on open forest, and a succession of wet years followed by a drought can allow so-called rain forest to burn if sufficient detritus is on the forest floor.
Witness the wanton waste of taxpayer money near Lockhart River Aboriginal community in the electorate of the state member of parliament Cynthia Lui from Yam Island.
A fire, presumably lit by Aborigines, which got into the Iron Range ‘rain forest’ is being water bombed by aircraft. This area of Cape York Peninsula has an annual rainfall during the wet season of more than a metre and a half.
Meanwhile bushfire-fighting practices in the south east corner under the direction of the urban fire department were doomed to fail before they began.
Where were the experienced incident control officers from northern Rural Fire Services?
Thee urban brigades with well-paid staff won’t allow battle toughened rural firies near the control base. They want unpaid volunteers at the fire front.
Urbane firefighters generally have little concept of fighting large bushfires. These firemen are virtually ‘pissing into the wind.’ It is obvious these flames cannot be doused but the fire has already been halted by the concrete carpark wall, so why waste water and endanger lives? Where are the fire breaks, back-burning and what happened to hazard reduction burning?
More importantly nowhere in urbanised TV bulletins was a bulldozer or grader to be seen or were any worthwhile fire breaks.
In hinterland grazing country, when composted, dry kikuyu pastures and cow pats burn the fire can only be contained by graded firebreaks.
Reports of nearly metre-high piles of dry litter on forest floors interwoven with a lantana jungle are a result of an absence of hazard reduction burning over many years.
Because the national park service and the Labor state government generally won’t allow firebreaks to be constructed in its millions of hectares of wasteful parks estates, then without hazard reduction burns we have just experienced the result.
The Liberal Party fares little better having lost its way decades ago.
Time to take back the reins people(sheeple?).
Prickly acacia thickening overtakes valuable grazing lands after record floods
State KAP Leader and Traeger MP Robbie Katter has labelled the State Government and the Queensland Greens hypocrites for posing as environmental champions while at the same time chronically ignoring of the wave of prickly acacia engulfing the state.
Mr Katter said it was outrageous that Labor, and the Greens who have so far been silent on the issue, were sitting idle and refusing to make more funds available while the African weed was destroying the north and mid-west plains.
The Traeger MP said he was at a loss to understand why the Palaszczuk State Government had refused to adhere to a supposed ‘agreement’ made with the Federal Government in March that would see a $10 million ‘war chest’ unlocked to fight the highly-invasive weed.
This introduced prickly tree is fast taking over north western Queensland downs country after record floods deposited seeds over millions of hectares of black soil grazing country affecting the carrying capacity of properties.
The funds were due to see action on the ground from last month, but the Palaszczuk Government has denied it agreed to provide the money.
It has made clear it will not allocate the $5 million share that a joint media release circulated by the two governments had promised it would.
Mr Katter said the anticipated $10 million in State and Federal funding was welcomed, but at the end of the day it was grossly insufficient to deal with the weeds crisis.
He said Queensland landholders desperately needed support in controlling prickly acacia on their properties, and there were many ways the State Government could assist with this.
This could include providing land rent rebates to those who proved they were successfully controlling the weed on their properties, Mr Katter said.
“The most current estimates we have say that prickly acacia is costing our agricultural industries more than $4 billion dollars a year in costs and lost productivity, with the most affected area the Mitchell Grass Downs region in central Queensland,” he said.
“You may not be able to see the problem from the cities, but believe me a large portion of our environment is in an unnatural and unhealthy state because of this weed.
“The problem is thrown into the laps of our graziers every year, and they fork our millions of dollars trying to contain prickly acacia with little assistance from government.
“Prickly acacia infestation has increased from around 6.6 million hectares 20 years ago to around 33 million hectares today – it’s a cancer in the bush.
“It is important also that we focus on the weed control activity in the Gulf where the problem is the worst.
“I have great concerns that the former Federal Minister for Agriculture wanted to pork barrel all the federal funds into just his electorate in the central west when the majority of the problem is in the Southern Gulf.
“Regardless, no one is interested in the particulars of what deal may or may not have been struck by the government, and this is not an issue that should be politicised by either levels of Government.”
Mr Katter said the north and mid-west was desperate to see some genuine leadership from the State Government on prickly acacia.
The Palaszczuk Government has only spent $2.7 million on dealing with the weed since it gained government in 2014.
In comparison, Labor has given $3.5 billion to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation for reef protection and preservation activities in the same amount of time.
Prickly acacia is a highly-invasive, thorny African weed that was brought to Australia as a shade and fodder tree.
It strips land productivity by causing erosion, decreasing pasture and out-competing other native vegetation for water, and is hugely problematic in that it can transform natural grasslands into desolate thorny scrub.
Get rid of foreign green snakes in the grass
by Viv Forbes science writer
Poor policies are taking Australia into tough times.
There are four priorities for the coming election.
Firstly: Decimate the Foreign Green Snakes in the Grass.
The climate/emissions obsession started with unelected foreigners in the UN and the IPCC who drafted deep green agendas to be imposed via elected Federal, State and Local governments. Australia must immediately withdraw from the Lima/Paris/Kyoto agreements, reject the 2030 Agenda, and repeal all the green tape they spawned. This costly mess creates no measurable climate or environmental benefits.
https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/four-priorities.pdf
Secondly: Build more Reliable Base-Load Power Stations.
Green extremists want to destroy the carbon energy that powers our industries, supports our life style, funds our welfare and provides our jobs. They want to take us back to primitive green energy that can never support modern civilised life.
We have played with weather-dependent wind-solar toys for too long. They will never power an advanced economy, nor will they lift poor nations from poverty. And they provide no demonstrated benefits for the climate, the landscape or consumers. All taxes, subsidies and energy targets that prop up unreliable intermittent energy must be abolished.
Thirdly: Build More Dams and Weirs.
Much of our continent cycles between droughts and floods. Both problems have the same solution – catch and store flood waters. The oceans are never short of water, but our land often is.
Finally: Fight Fire with Fire.
Every dry season we lose homes, properties, livestock, parks and wildlife to massive bushfires. There is only one solution – copy aboriginals and graziers and use small, managed, early-season fires to remove flammable ground litter. This will require landowners and local fire-fighters (not urban greenies) to manage fuel-reduction burns.
We must fix these four issues. Stop draining Australian money to support foreign agendas and the bloated UN bureaucracy. Let’s help Australians instead.
Radiant heat and gravity control our world, not CO2
The Saltbush Club today announced the formation of the “Saltbush Solar Activity Watch” led by Mr David Archibald.
The Executive Director of Saltbush, Mr Viv Forbes, said it was obvious to everyone except school teachers, the ABC and ALP, the Greens and the leaders of CSIRO that the sun is the main driver of weather and climate on Earth.
“This giant ball of nuclear power in the sky beams solar radiation and exerts gravitational force on everything on earth,” Mr Forbes said.
“These two solar forces, radiant heat and gravity, control our world.
“Radiant heat on an inclined rotating Earth drives the winds and the ocean currents, produces rain and snow, powers cyclones and storms, and affects the cloud-forming cosmic radiation that hits the earth.
“Gravitational forces from the sun, the moon and other planets create atmospheric tides that also affect weather. They also create tides in the oceans and ground waters as well as “Earth Tides” in crustal rocks that affect the timing of Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
“The ancient Greeks and Egyptians, South African water engineers and Australia’s most famous weather forecaster, Inigo Jones, all knew that the sun was a key factor in weather/rainfall cycles. Most of the world’s calendars are based on movements in the solar system, and ancient monuments from Stonehenge, to the Pyramids, to the Americas are testament to the pervasive influence of sun and planets in human history.
“Solar cycles have been observed for over 2,000 years and sunspots have been recorded in detail since the invention of the telescope in 1610. This record shows that cold periods like the Little Ice Age have coincided with periods of low sunspot numbers.
“David Archibald’s analysis of solar activity suggests that the sun has driven a warming phase since about 1900 but probably entered a new cooling phase about 2006.
“A new cooling era would play havoc with world food supply, and those who rely on unreliable wind/solar energy will regret their choices.
“With reckless bravado, foolish Western politicians and their minions have placed all of our bets on an old fading gelding called “Global Warming”. They have not noticed a vigorous white stallion, “Global Cooling” which is racing down the straight.
“Even a small cooling will reduce world food supply in three ways.
“Firstly, any reduction in surface temperature will reduce crop growth and growing season in all sub-polar regions.
“Secondly, reduced solar radiation will reduce evaporation from the oceans and must reduce precipitation on land.
“And, worst of all, cooling surface temperature on the oceans will cause oceans to absorb more carbon dioxide plant food, so plant/crop growth will be lower than in today’s warm well-fertilised atmosphere.
“Carbon dioxide has never driven world climate and will play an even smaller part in future.”
The first Saltbush “Solar Activity Watch” by David Archibald can be found here:
http://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/solar-activity.pdf
Cosmic Cycles, not carbon dioxide control climate:
https://carbon-sense.com/2016/02/14/cycles-control-climate/#more-1559
The Sunspot Cycle:
https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml
Sunspots and Rainfall Cycles:
https://carbon-sense.com/2008/05/26/alexander-2008/
NSW traffic cops prey on farmers’ drought misfortune
Cops hit hapless truck drivers with unlawful traffic fines
NSW Liberal Government just as bad as Labor when it comes to farmers and the transport industry
from The Land
Hay carriers are upset that they are being targetted for minor infringements on the Newell Highway as they try to bring relief to drought-hit farms.
Scores of hay trucks travel the Newell Highway each day, bringing hay up from Victoria, but according to one driver the Roads and Maritime Service inspectors were picking them off almost one by one.
One major place to stop trucks was in the park at Narrandera where Eugowra truck driver Peter Cox was hit with a $330 fine – but no infringement- for being over length. Ironically, if he had just one bale on the back of his truck he wouldn’t have copped a fine. But because he had 43 bales, his split-tray truck was classified as having two divisible loads.
He had to undergo a drugs test and face a log book inspection. He’d never been through a drugs test before. “Well, this is your first,” an officer said.
Peter Cox’s truck is pulled over at Narrandera and classified as overlength. He was drug tested, his log book was inspected and he was given a $330 fine for being overlength. If he had just one bale on the back he would have been legal.
He said the RMS was ruling the highway between Narrandera and West Wyalong, which he saw in most cases as just revenue raising. Mr Cox carries hay for the large Glenleigh Pastoral Company at Eugowra. He was bring hay from Boort in Victoria to feed sheep. Because of the drought, he is driving five or six semi-trailer loads of hay a week up from Victoria.
He said the NSW Government should show some concession to hay carters in the drought – as they had done on the Oxley Highway, where Triple-B hay loads were permitted.
“As far as I can see this is just revenue raising. I copped a fine but there was no infringement,” Mr Cox said. “I had 43 bales of hay on the back and I wasn’t over width, over weight, I was just over length. If you have two divisible loads you are illegal. Unbelievably, if I had just one bale of hay on the back it was a legal load.
“I told them that they were just targetting hay trucks. I said ‘We’re in the middle of a drought and you’re doing this’. I was told I could be legal, I just needed to go and get an exemption for being over 19 metres – but how many people know that. Then I had to go through a drug test that I’d never done before in my life and then they looked at my log book which doesn’t have one infringement. There are so many rules most farmers wouldn’t know about.”
Noel Pengilly, “Glenleigh Pastoral” who employs Mr Cox, said he also was pulled up at Parkes for a minor issue with brakes on a truck and was forced to drive all the way back to Forbes to get it fixed, which took just one quick turn of a spanner. “That was all time and money for nothing.” Mr Pengilly said.
“As far as I can see they are out to raise revenue, not protect the general public.” Glenleigh has over 60 registered trucks and vehicles. A comment was being sought from RMS and Roads Minister Melinda Pavey.
Late yesterday The Land received this response from Minister for Roads Melinda Pavey’s office:
“With large parts of NSW in drought and drought onset conditions, the NSW Government recognises the need for the increased movement of drought relief hay,” a spokesperson said.
“Operators transporting drought relief hay in NSW by heavy vehicles are encouraged to apply for high productivity vehicle access to the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) via the NHVR Portal.
“In order for the NHVR to prioritise drought relief access requests, operators are advised to list the word DROUGHT in the “Create a new application Reference”. The steps to do this can be found on the NHVR portal home page https://www.nhvr.gov.au/road-access/access-management/nhvr-portal in the News Feed section.
“The operator concerned may wish to submit representation for review and consideration by the Roads and Maritime Services Compliance Adjudication team, taking into account the circumstances and operator history.”
Comment from a former RTA road safety expert, Lex Stewart:
‘When I was Road Safety Manager of the RTA’s western region (Vic border to Qld border and SA border to Lithgow) 1990-97 I put the speed limit UP on the Newell Highway from 100 to 110kph.
I used to get extra police up from Sydney and would pay a small portion of their overtime wages from the RTA’s budget — that gave me the leverage to control the operational policies — Police under my directions from 1990-97 would never have done something so silly as this.
I can remember giving a speech to a roomful of Police officers. I was giving them a “briefing” for the largescale operation covering most of western NSW using Police plus RTA (now RMS) Heavy Vehicle Inspectors
I said what I used to say often — “The measure of our success is NOT the number of tickets we issue — it is in reducing crashes, deaths and injuries. You can achieve good road safety outcomes equally as well by issuing lots of cautions and lots of highly visible blue flashing lights, rather than issuing lots of tickets. Have some compassion on farmers struggling with drought. If it is a serious brake failure, be ruthless and book them, but for most issues, issue a warning not a ticket, or require a fix of the problem and presentation of the vehicle for safety inspection later.”
A Police Officer came into the back of the room and listened to my leadership speech. I met him after the meeting, and found out that he was the Assistant Police Commissioner! I felt a bit of a fool – but he agreed with me and commended me on my approach.
In my experience, most Police officers are good blokes, but a few behave like the Gestapo and seem to get sadistic kicks out of making others suffer – it’s only a few.
I was delighted when I heard during one of these large scale joint exercises that a senior Police officer from Wollongong area had departed early, because the other Police officers in the exercise had ‘told him off’ for being too harsh and petty in issuing tickets, and giving them a bad name!’
Cairns News 