| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Mitchell Jones" |
| Date: |
24 Apr 2007 01:48:59 PM |
| Object: |
Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
Here is an interesting link: go to
http://wwwa.accuweather.com/radar-local.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=
0&zipcode=&level=local&anim=1&site=ksjt and note the pattern of the
rainfall--to wit: it is situated in long, thin lines that are moving
with the wind, and not connected with any frontal passage. It is clear
from the radar trace that the wind at the level of the clouds is blowing
toward the northeast, and it looks like there are two big fires on the
ground in Val Verde and Crockett counties (this is in Texas, U.S.A for
you foreigners). As the particulates (smoke, etc.) rise into the levels
where the air is saturated with water vapor, they act as condensation
nuclei. Result: it rains along the path of the smoke. My guess is that
huge piles of cedar are being burned on some of the big ranches in the
area. (There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.)
Unfortunately, I have no way to confirm that smoke from cedar burning is
the source of this rain pattern. By the time I could drive down there,
this weather pattern will have dissipated. Is there anybody on the
ground in that area who has time to drive around and find the source of
the smoke? If so, I would appreciate hearing from you. Alternatively,
does anybody have a public link to a free, live satellite video feed?
With high resolution IR, it might be possible to actually see hot spots
on the ground in those areas.
This is of interest to me because these sorts of weather patterns
account for most of the rain in west and northwest Texas, and those
areas have been getting progressively drier in recent years, (a) due to
the proliferation of bans on outdoor burning, and (b) due to the EPA
requirement that particulates be removed from factory smokestacks. It is
uncommon, however, for the connection between smoke and rain to be as
obvious as it appears to be on the radar traces that we are seeing
today, and I think it merits further investigation.
Hopefully, this message will be posted before the pattern disappears,
but, unfortunately, it appears to be weakening already. :-(
--Mitchell Jones
*****************************************************************
If I seem to be ignoring you, consider the possibility
that you are in my killfile. --MJ
.
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| User: "Timo A. Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
26 Apr 2007 02:21:14 PM |
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On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.
Goats: Nature's own deforestation tool!
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "Mitchell Jones" |
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| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
26 Apr 2007 08:12:23 PM |
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In article <Pine.WNT.4.64.0704270520240.1408@serene.st>,
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.
Goats: Nature's own deforestation tool!
***{Goats will eat it, but only after they have consumed everything else
on the range down to bare topsoil--which means: they will destroy your
ranch first, and only then will they turn their attention to the object
of your ire. The cure, in short, is worse than the disease. --MJ}***
*****************************************************************
If I seem to be ignoring you, consider the possibility
that you are in my killfile. --MJ
.
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| User: "Timo Nieminen" |
|
| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
26 Apr 2007 09:57:44 PM |
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On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.
Goats: Nature's own deforestation tool!
***{Goats will eat it, but only after they have consumed everything else
on the range down to bare topsoil--which means: they will destroy your
ranch first, and only then will they turn their attention to the object
of your ire. The cure, in short, is worse than the disease. --MJ}***
Given that goats are used for Ashe juniper control, I doubt very much
that they'll only eat it after everything else is bare topsoil. Goats are
excellent for keeping areas clear of trees, as young trees are pretty much
their favourite food. They might prefer other tree species to J. ashei,
but I'd be suprised if they prefer grass over it.
Goat control is recommended for winter, when it's often the only green
forage plant around.
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "Mitchell Jones" |
|
| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
27 Apr 2007 03:17:29 AM |
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In article <Pine.LNX.4.50.0704271235020.16957-100000@localhost>,
Timo Nieminen <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.
Goats: Nature's own deforestation tool!
***{Goats will eat it, but only after they have consumed everything else
on the range down to bare topsoil--which means: they will destroy your
ranch first, and only then will they turn their attention to the object
of your ire. The cure, in short, is worse than the disease. --MJ}***
Given that goats are used for Ashe juniper control
***{Only by weekend ranchers whose main concern is keeping their
agricultural tax exemption, rather than making money. Such people tend
to be "environmentally concerned," and eager to follow the often silly
and politically correct advice emanating from university professors. In
the universities, "biological control" is in, and bulldozers are out.
But serious cattlemen use the bulldozers anyway, because: (a) they are
cattlemen, not goatmen, and (b) their goal is to actually control the
damn junipers, rather than to enhance their social standing among
environmentalists by applying measures that are fashionable albeit
ineffective. The whole idea, remember, is to have plant life on their
ranches that cattle, not goats, can eat. Thus even if goats controlled
juniper, which they don't (except in the wet dreams of university
professors), running them would not solve the problem that cattlemen are
trying to solve. --MJ}***
, I doubt very much
that they'll only eat it after everything else is bare topsoil. Goats are
excellent for keeping areas clear of trees, as young trees are pretty much
their favourite food. They might prefer other tree species to J. ashei,
but I'd be suprised if they prefer grass over it.
***{Then be surprised. If there is anything else available for them to
eat, including grass, goats will ignore junipers like they aren't even
there. I have seen land grazed down to bare rock by goats before the
junipers began to be eaten. Even worse, goats that are literally
starving can't make a dent in a stand of mature junipers, because the
things get 30 feet high. How do you think goats can deal with that? The
answer: they can't. Mr. Bulldozer, however, can deal with it very well
indeed. :-) --MJ}***
Goat control is recommended for winter, when it's often the only green
forage plant around.
***{Yup, even politically correct professors are aware that goats (and
deer, and antelope, and sheep, and any other critter with good sense)
won't eat juniper if there is any other source of nutrition available.
Why not? Because junipers are laced with so much turpentine that during
a drought you can actually smell the reek of it. Turpentine is poison,
and goats don't like the taste of it. And, I might add, it is also
extremely flammable. If you are in a stand of dry juniper and flip a
cigarette butt in the wrong place, it will flash burn faster than you
can run away from it. (In a drought, you'd best leave your Marlboros at
home. :-) --MJ}***
*****************************************************************
If I seem to be ignoring you, consider the possibility
that you are in my killfile. --MJ
.
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| User: "Timo A. Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
27 Apr 2007 06:54:00 AM |
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On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
Timo Nieminen <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.
Goats: Nature's own deforestation tool!
***{Goats will eat it, but only after they have consumed everything else
on the range down to bare topsoil--which means: they will destroy your
ranch first, and only then will they turn their attention to the object
of your ire. The cure, in short, is worse than the disease. --MJ}***
Given that goats are used for Ashe juniper control
***{Only by weekend ranchers whose main concern is keeping their
agricultural tax exemption, rather than making money. Such people tend
to be "environmentally concerned," and eager to follow the often silly
and politically correct advice emanating from university professors. In
the universities, "biological control" is in, and bulldozers are out.
Greenies support using goats? Over here, the greenies support culling of
wild goats, to try to reduce deforestation. Your environmentalists need
better education. Biological control is environmentally dangerous, and
needs great care before you release organism X, given how easily the
control agent can become worse than the orginal problem. The commercial
advantages of biological control are pretty clear (when it works), since
the control agents are self-replicating, and free after initial
introduction.
, I doubt very much
that they'll only eat it after everything else is bare topsoil. Goats are
excellent for keeping areas clear of trees, as young trees are pretty much
their favourite food. They might prefer other tree species to J. ashei,
but I'd be suprised if they prefer grass over it.
***{Then be surprised. If there is anything else available for them to
eat, including grass, goats will ignore junipers like they aren't even
there. I have seen land grazed down to bare rock by goats before the
junipers began to be eaten.
[moved]
***{Yup, even politically correct professors are aware that goats (and
deer, and antelope, and sheep, and any other critter with good sense)
won't eat juniper if there is any other source of nutrition available.
Why not? Because junipers are laced with so much turpentine that during
a drought you can actually smell the reek of it. Turpentine is poison,
and goats don't like the taste of it.
We don't have Ashe juniper over here (well, maybe we do, but nowhere that
I've lived or kept goats), so I'll just note:
(a) The literature says that goats find juniper more palatable than pretty
much any other tree/shrub browser.
(b) The literature says that goats are more tolerant of the toxins than
pretty much and other tree/shrub browsers.
(c) Goats that I've kept have preferred turpentineous trees to grass; the
difficulty is trying to keep the trees alive, even when the trees are just
where the goats pass by daily on their commute from night-time pen to
daytime enclosure. Just forget about keeping any trees alive in their
daytime enclosure, even when the grass is over a foot high.
(d) Of course sheep will avoid juniper. Sheep _like_ to eat grass. For
goats, grass is a food of last resort.
(e) The point is to have goats to eat new plants. Seedlings (apparently)
have a lower toxic content than mature plants, and a small amount of
eating kills them quite effectively - the end result is that, despite the
best efforts of the seedlings, goat 30, juniper 0 is quite feasible.
Have you ever kept/herded goats? From experience, and (a) and (b), your
claim that goats will kill the grass before starting on junipers is
incredible without supporting evidence. Let me know if you have such.
Even worse, goats that are literally
starving can't make a dent in a stand of mature junipers, because the
things get 30 feet high. How do you think goats can deal with that? The
answer: they can't. Mr. Bulldozer, however, can deal with it very well
indeed. :-) --MJ}***
The Proper Procedure is you use bulldozers to get rid of the mature trees,
then let the goats loose to stop regrowth.
Goats are OK at ringbarking medium-sized trees in preference to having to
eat grass, but they're not so reliable at getting rid of big ones.
Goats work - Sahara and Middle East deserts.
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
27 Apr 2007 06:50:08 AM |
|
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In article <Pine.WNT.4.64.0704272118540.296@serene.st>,
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
<snip>
Have you ever kept/herded goats? From experience, and (a) and (b), your
claim that goats will kill the grass before starting on junipers is
incredible without supporting evidence. Let me know if you have such.
Just a note: a lot of people who have never worked on farms think
that male sheep are goats.
/BAH
.
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| User: "Mitchell Jones" |
|
| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
27 Apr 2007 05:37:39 PM |
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In article <Pine.WNT.4.64.0704272118540.296@serene.st>,
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
Timo Nieminen <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.
Goats: Nature's own deforestation tool!
***{Goats will eat it, but only after they have consumed everything else
on the range down to bare topsoil--which means: they will destroy your
ranch first, and only then will they turn their attention to the object
of your ire. The cure, in short, is worse than the disease. --MJ}***
Given that goats are used for Ashe juniper control
***{Only by weekend ranchers whose main concern is keeping their
agricultural tax exemption, rather than making money. Such people tend
to be "environmentally concerned," and eager to follow the often silly
and politically correct advice emanating from university professors. In
the universities, "biological control" is in, and bulldozers are out.
Greenies support using goats? Over here, the greenies support culling of
wild goats, to try to reduce deforestation. Your environmentalists need
better education.
***{We don't have problems with wild goats in Texas for a very simple
reason: the land is privately owned, and fenced. There were wild goats
here at the time the state was settled by U.S. immigrants, back in the
early 1800's. Those goats had escaped from the Spanish, and had
continued to flourish under Mexican rule after the Spanish were driven
out. (That's why we call them Spanish goats.) However, during the time
of the Texas Republic and later, after Texas joined the U.S. (a big
mistake), the wild goats were returned to domestication. That happened
because goats, including Spanish goats, cannot jump fences, and all the
range land in Texas is fenced with either barbed wire or goat wire. (We
do have a problem with feral hogs, however. Russian wild boars, for
example, will run along a country road in front of a car for awhile,
respecting the fences along the sides of the road, but then, when they
get tired or, perhaps, panic, they will simply turn at full speed and
plow straight through the fences, breaking the wire and leaving a
hog-sized hole for the rancher to repair. The fence near the end of my
driveway has two hog holes in it that I'm going to have to repair pretty
soon, in fact.) --MJ}***
Biological control is environmentally dangerous, and
needs great care before you release organism X, given how easily the
control agent can become worse than the orginal problem. The commercial
advantages of biological control are pretty clear (when it works), since
the control agents are self-replicating, and free after initial
introduction.
***{The disadvantage of biological control is that it doesn't work. The
critters that are selected as the agent of control are not working for
the rancher, but for themselves, and for the reasons you listed above,
plus some other reasons not listed, the outcome tends to be different
from the intent. Nevertheless, the self-styled "environmentalists" in
this neck of the woods are enamored with that approach, because it seems
more "natural" to them. The alternatives favored by farmers and
ranchers--e.g., pesticides, herbicides, bulldozers, etc.--lead to
outcomes that are much more predictable precisely *because* they are
"artificial," "unnatural," etc.--which means: those sorts of agents are
working for us, rather than for themselves. (Yes, of course, things can
go wrong there as well. The probability of that happening, however, is
much less, especially when the people involved are experienced and
knowledgeable.) --MJ}***
, I doubt very much
that they'll only eat it after everything else is bare topsoil. Goats are
excellent for keeping areas clear of trees, as young trees are pretty much
their favourite food. They might prefer other tree species to J. ashei,
but I'd be suprised if they prefer grass over it.
***{Then be surprised. If there is anything else available for them to
eat, including grass, goats will ignore junipers like they aren't even
there. I have seen land grazed down to bare rock by goats before the
junipers began to be eaten.
[moved]
***{Yup, even politically correct professors are aware that goats (and
deer, and antelope, and sheep, and any other critter with good sense)
won't eat juniper if there is any other source of nutrition available.
Why not? Because junipers are laced with so much turpentine that during
a drought you can actually smell the reek of it. Turpentine is poison,
and goats don't like the taste of it.
We don't have Ashe juniper over here (well, maybe we do, but nowhere that
I've lived or kept goats), so I'll just note:
(a) The literature says that goats find juniper more palatable than pretty
much any other tree/shrub browser.
***{Goats are dumber than deer or antelope, so that may be the case. But
the point remains: they, like deer and antelope, won't eat it except as
a last resort. They will graze a place down to bare rock and prickly
pear before making significant inroads on juniper, in fact. --MJ}***
(b) The literature says that goats are more tolerant of the toxins than
pretty much and other tree/shrub browsers.
***{Whether they are more tolerant or simply dumber, the point remains:
they won't eat the stuff except as a last resort--which means: they will
destroy your place before they will "control" the juniper. (You might as
well "control" the juniper by using hydrogen bombs. :-) And, to
reiterate what I said earlier, even if we were to falsely assume that
goats would preferentially eat cedar/juniper, that doesn't address the
problem under consideration. The goal here, remember, is to have a ranch
on which you can run cattle. That problem, by its very nature, cannot be
solved by running goats. Real Texas ranchers--i.e., cattlemen--tend to
dislike goats. The reality is that most of the people who run goats are
the small time, weekend ranchers I mentioned earlier, who typically own
ten or twenty acres and choose goats because they are the easiest
livestock to run, if your purpose is merely to keep your ag exemption,
rather than to make money. --MJ}***
(c) Goats that I've kept have preferred turpentineous trees to grass; the
difficulty is trying to keep the trees alive, even when the trees are just
where the goats pass by daily on their commute from night-time pen to
daytime enclosure. Just forget about keeping any trees alive in their
daytime enclosure, even when the grass is over a foot high.
***{You are in Australia, right? Want to cause an ecological disaster?
Then travel to Texas--Austin, say--in the winter (December through
March) and stuff your pockets with juniper seeds (those little blue
berries lying on the ground under the "cedar" trees), fly back to
Australia, and sprinkle them around. Don't bury them. The idea is for
wild animals to eat them and carry them far and wide. Most will pass
through the feces unscathed, and will germinate where they are
deposited. Then just sit back for a few years and wait for the howling
and gnashing of teeth to begin.
Of course, I am not serious. Believe me, you do *not* want juniper
problems where you live. If they do get them started over there, you
will discover, to your surprise, that goats will be useless against
them. They will cover the ground with an impassable thicket 15 to 20
feet high, with extremes up to 30 feet or so, beneath which not a sprig
of grass can grow, and through which no animal larger than a raccoon can
comfortably pass.
Not a pretty picture, but a true one.
--Mitchell Jones}***
(d) Of course sheep will avoid juniper. Sheep _like_ to eat grass. For
goats, grass is a food of last resort.
***{See http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/05/14/offbeat.goats.reut/, for
an example to the contrary. Yeah, I know: you are going to tell me that
the goats will get wormy from eating grass, especially on swampy ground.
OK, you know that and I know that, but nobody ever explained it to any
goat I've ever seen. :-)
In any case, goats are classified as intermediate feeders, not as
browsers. When free to do so, they will eat a bit more grass than
browse, with forbs bringing up the rear at about 12% of their diet. Even
in winter, grass will still comprise 42% of their diet, if available.
(See
http://animalscience.tamu.edu/ansc/publications/sheeppubs/B6037-rangeherb
ivores.pdf.
--Mitchell Jones}***
(e) The point is to have goats to eat new plants. Seedlings (apparently)
have a lower toxic content than mature plants, and a small amount of
eating kills them quite effectively - the end result is that, despite the
best efforts of the seedlings, goat 30, juniper 0 is quite feasible.
***{Timo, with respect, I've spent my whole life in Texas, and I've seen
literally thousands of cases where goats stripped rangeland down to bare
earth and rock, before they began to make significant inroads on ash
juniper. I know there are places on the net where people talk about
goats eating "cedar," but I can tell you based on eyeball experience
that if there is a "cedar" that goats like to eat, ash juniper ain't it.
Yes, they will eat it; but, no, they do *not* prefer it to grass. If the
answer to the ashe juniper problem were as simple as you say, half of
Texas wouldn't be covered with the goddamned horrible stuff. --MJ}***
Have you ever kept/herded goats? From experience, and (a) and (b), your
claim that goats will kill the grass before starting on junipers is
incredible without supporting evidence. Let me know if you have such.
***{Check out the link cited above. In it, you will find that when goats
are free to choose what they eat, they will choose grass 45% of the
time, browse 43% of the time, and forbs (weeds and wildflowers) 12% of
the time. Factor in the fact that ashe juniper is just about the most
noxious, turpentine-laced, godawful browse imaginable, and it ought to
be extremely plausible to you that what I have seen with my own eyes is
true: goats will eat a place down to bare earth and rocks before they
will make significant inroads on the juniper. They really, really don't
like the stuff. Honest! :-) --MJ}***
Even worse, goats that are literally
starving can't make a dent in a stand of mature junipers, because the
things get 30 feet high. How do you think goats can deal with that? The
answer: they can't. Mr. Bulldozer, however, can deal with it very well
indeed. :-) --MJ}***
The Proper Procedure is you use bulldozers to get rid of the mature trees,
then let the goats loose to stop regrowth.
***{They won't. I have seen goats grazing on grass in fields where there
were hundreds of junipers less than four feet high, standing there
totally unscathed. Hell, there are deer all over Texas in vast numbers,
and they are, unarguably, true browsers. Therefore if browsers could
control juniper, it wouldn't be a problem anywhere. But it is. Even deer
won't touch the stuff if they have anything else, including grass, to
chew on. --MJ}***
Goats are OK at ringbarking medium-sized trees in preference to having to
eat grass, but they're not so reliable at getting rid of big ones.
Goats work - Sahara and Middle East deserts.
***{And if you want to turn a central Texas ranch into a desert, just
keep adding goats until they finally begin eating the juniper. :-)
Seriously, the only shot at controlling juniper with goats that I've
heard of doesn't even attempt to get goats to eat the juniper foliage.
(As I've already pointed out several times, it's very toxic, and they
don't like it.) Instead, the plan is to selectively breed goats with a
taste for the little blue berries, and put them on the range in the
winter, when the berries are dropped on the ground. The idea is that if
a goat eats the berries, he is going to do a much better job of
digesting them than, say, a bear or a raccoon. Result: when they exit
his rear end, they will not be viable. But at present this is just a
scheme by a professor to score some grant money. At best, it is
something that might work in the future, not anything that works now.
(See
http://www.countryworldnews.com/Editorial/CTX/2003/ct0918rangeland.htm
for some sketchy allusions to this concept.
--Mitchell Jones}***
*****************************************************************
If I seem to be ignoring you, consider the possibility
that you are in my killfile. --MJ
.
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| User: "Timo A. Nieminen" |
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| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
28 Apr 2007 03:54:19 PM |
|
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On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
***{We don't have problems with wild goats in Texas for a very simple
reason: the land is privately owned, and fenced.
[cut] There were wild goats
(We
do have a problem with feral hogs, however.
Over here, feral cats, pigs, water buffalo, camels, goats, rabbits, foxes.
Rats are an introduced problem too, but I haven't heard people talk about
"feral rats".
For a piece of stunning cinematography (and cheesy plot), look for the
classic Australian movie Razorback, basically Jaws on 4 legs. A very well
made piece of crap. IIRC, the cinematography people moved on and did
Dances with Wolves, which was also a very pretty movie.
Biological control is environmentally dangerous, and
needs great care before you release organism X, given how easily the
control agent can become worse than the orginal problem. The commercial
advantages of biological control are pretty clear (when it works), since
the control agents are self-replicating, and free after initial
introduction.
***{The disadvantage of biological control is that it doesn't work. The
critters that are selected as the agent of control are not working for
the rancher, but for themselves, and for the reasons you listed above,
plus some other reasons not listed, the outcome tends to be different
from the intent. Nevertheless, the self-styled "environmentalists" in
this neck of the woods are enamored with that approach, because it seems
more "natural" to them.
The success stories of biological control are spectacular, and there are
about 3 of them over here (myxomatosis, cactoblastis, and the bug that
eats water hyacinth). The failures can be spectacular, too (cane toads).
Given that biological control is often about introducing potentially
destructive alien species, your enviros need better education. Well, if
you want to call "don't shoot the predators that kill troublesome X"
biological control, then you can have green biological control, but that
certainly doesn't include deforestation-by-goat.
The alternatives favored by farmers and
ranchers--e.g., pesticides, herbicides, bulldozers, etc.--lead to
outcomes that are much more predictable precisely *because* they are
"artificial," "unnatural," etc.--which means: those sorts of agents are
working for us, rather than for themselves.
Of course. It's just that sometimes these methods are too expensive, or
too difficult. Bio is cheap, which is why it's tried despite being
uncertain and environmentally dangerous.
And, to
reiterate what I said earlier, even if we were to falsely assume that
goats would preferentially eat cedar/juniper, that doesn't address the
problem under consideration. The goal here, remember, is to have a ranch
on which you can run cattle. That problem, by its very nature, cannot be
solved by running goats.
No. Cattle eat grass. So, you don't want too many trees. Goats stop trees
from growing, and you don't need very many for that. Yes, they'll eat some
grass, but keeping the land clear means you have more grass. Put goats on
some land, and you end up with fewer plants that the goats like, and more
plants cattle like. Too many goats? A few too many, well, they taste good.
Lots too many, pet food, or recreational shooters.
Real Texas ranchers--i.e., cattlemen--tend to
dislike goats.
Maybe so. They probably dislike sheep, too. I knew a farmer who would
shoot the birds that came to eat the bugs that would eat the fruit from
his orchard. Dislike of goats is irrelevant to the effectiveness of goats
for deforestation. In my experience, the median farmer is no more
rational than the median non-farmer. The proportion of Australian sugar
farmers who own refractometers to measure sugar content before harvesting
is amazingly low. Effective, and so cheap that one successful use more
than breaks even, and yet ...
***{Timo, with respect, I've spent my whole life in Texas, and I've seen
literally thousands of cases where goats stripped rangeland down to bare
earth and rock, before they began to make significant inroads on ash
juniper.
If there are literally thousands of cases where the land is reduced to
bare earth and rock by goats, and "We don't have problems with wild goats
in Texas", then the goat farmers in Texas must be remarkably stupid.
***{Check out the link cited above. In it, you will find that when goats
are free to choose what they eat, they will choose grass 45% of the
time, browse 43% of the time, and forbs (weeds and wildflowers) 12% of
the time.
My goats were not free to choose - for them, almost 100% grass and the
stuff growing among the grass. Still, they killed all trees < 4m high that
they had regular access to. Very destructive.
They also kept the larger trees nicely flat-bottomed and easy to walk
under.
Regardless of whether or not goats will control juniper, if you want trees
other than juniper to survive, then avoid goats.
Well, if the juniper is so goat-resistant, then regular burning sounds
like a good idea. The aboriginal population here used to regularly burn
wide areas of the countryside; when the white farmers chased them off the
land/poisoned them/shot them/etc, the burning stopped, and what had been
prime open grassland turned into dense thickets of mulga.
Matches are cheaper than bulldozers.
--
Timo Nieminen - Home page: http://www.physics.uq.edu.au/people/nieminen/
E-prints: http://eprint.uq.edu.au/view/person/Nieminen,_Timo_A..html
Shrine to Spirits: http://www.users.bigpond.com/timo_nieminen/spirits.html
.
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| User: "Mitchell Jones" |
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| Title: Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers |
28 Apr 2007 07:41:42 PM |
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In article <Pine.WNT.4.64.0704290602440.1220@serene.st>,
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@physics.uq.edu.au> wrote:
***{We don't have problems with wild goats in Texas for a very simple
reason: the land is privately owned, and fenced.
[cut] There were wild goats
(We
do have a problem with feral hogs, however.
Over here, feral cats, pigs, water buffalo, camels, goats, rabbits, foxes.
Rats are an introduced problem too, but I haven't heard people talk about
"feral rats".
For a piece of stunning cinematography (and cheesy plot), look for the
classic Australian movie Razorback, basically Jaws on 4 legs. A very well
made piece of crap. IIRC, the cinematography people moved on and did
Dances with Wolves, which was also a very pretty movie.
Biological control is environmentally dangerous, and
needs great care before you release organism X, given how easily the
control agent can become worse than the orginal problem. The commercial
advantages of biological control are pretty clear (when it works), since
the control agents are self-replicating, and free after initial
introduction.
***{The disadvantage of biological control is that it doesn't work. The
critters that are selected as the agent of control are not working for
the rancher, but for themselves, and for the reasons you listed above,
plus some other reasons not listed, the outcome tends to be different
from the intent. Nevertheless, the self-styled "environmentalists" in
this neck of the woods are enamored with that approach, because it seems
more "natural" to them.
The success stories of biological control are spectacular, and there are
about 3 of them over here (myxomatosis
***{As I recall, a rancher--Thomas Austin, I think (it's in my book, but
I don't have a copy handy)--introduced the English rabbit into
Australia, after which it spread everywhere and denuded the countryside
of vegetation, producing an environmental disaster. (His idea was to
make rabbit hunting possible, but he didn't anticipate the downside.)
Myxomatosis, on the other hand, had been endemic in Brazilian rabbits,
which had long since acquired resistance to it by natural selection.
English rabbits, however, had not been exposed to it, and were very
susceptible. Result: when the virus was introduced into Australia, the
rabbit problem went away. (The fatality rate, if memory serves, was
99%.)
Nowadays, however, that has all changed: the virus wasn't working for
man, but for itself. Result: the less lethal strains (viruses mutate all
the time) were more prolific (as is always the case) and vaccinated the
surviving rabbits against the lethal strains. Result: an immune
population of rabbits has arisen in Australia, is rapidly proliferating
again, and will eventually become as large a threat as it was before.
Such outcomes are legion, and are due to the fact that none of the wild
critters we designate as our agents are really going to be acting for
us, and in the fullness of time that fact becomes unpleasantly apparent.
The problem is that the use of a wild species as a control agent leaves
its characteristics in the hands of Darwinian survival of the
fittest--which means: it leaves them out of our control. To keep them
under our control, we would have to make use of a species created by
selective breeding--which means: a species of domesticated animal or
plant created by man. Only domesticated animals really work for us, and
it is only by means of "biological controls" that involve their use that
we can avoid the usual downside associated with such measures.
In the case of the English rabbit, the historically demonstrated and
proven method of control is fully explored in my book, and it would work
in Australia today, just as it worked in England during the Industrial
Revolution. First, the land must be privately owned. Given that, you
simply breed up a population of small dogs to roust the rabbits from
their burrows (or kill them there, if they refuse to leave), and use
coursing greyhounds to run them down and kill them when they emerge.
The production of such dogs, however, requires *breeding trials*--which
means: competitive events designed to identify the dogs that are best at
the desired activity, so that they can be used as breeding stock.
Breeding trials for working dogs, however, are nowadays called "blood
sports," and are illegal. Humaniacs would scream their empty heads off
if coursing and badger drawing were legalized, as would be necessary if
this solution to the rabbit problem were to be implemented. Result: the
only method of control that has been proven to work will never be
considered, and when myxomatosis loses all of its effectiveness, the
previous disaster will revisit Australia in full force.
--Mitchell Jones}***
, cactoblastis, and the bug that
eats water hyacinth). The failures can be spectacular, too (cane toads).
Given that biological control is often about introducing potentially
destructive alien species, your enviros need better education. Well, if
you want to call "don't shoot the predators that kill troublesome X"
biological control, then you can have green biological control, but that
certainly doesn't include deforestation-by-goat.
The alternatives favored by farmers and
ranchers--e.g., pesticides, herbicides, bulldozers, etc.--lead to
outcomes that are much more predictable precisely *because* they are
"artificial," "unnatural," etc.--which means: those sorts of agents are
working for us, rather than for themselves.
Of course. It's just that sometimes these methods are too expensive, or
too difficult. Bio is cheap, which is why it's tried despite being
uncertain and environmentally dangerous.
And, to
reiterate what I said earlier, even if we were to falsely assume that
goats would preferentially eat cedar/juniper, that doesn't address the
problem under consideration. The goal here, remember, is to have a ranch
on which you can run cattle. That problem, by its very nature, cannot be
solved by running goats.
No. Cattle eat grass. So, you don't want too many trees. Goats stop trees
from growing, and you don't need very many for that. Yes, they'll eat some
grass, but keeping the land clear means you have more grass. Put goats on
some land, and you end up with fewer plants that the goats like, and more
plants cattle like. Too many goats? A few too many, well, they taste good.
Lots too many, pet food, or recreational shooters.
Real Texas ranchers--i.e., cattlemen--tend to
dislike goats.
Maybe so. They probably dislike sheep, too. I knew a farmer who would
shoot the birds that came to eat the bugs that would eat the fruit from
his orchard.
***{Probably because they were not merely eating the bugs, but also the
fruit. :-) --MJ}***
Dislike of goats is irrelevant to the effectiveness of goats
for deforestation. In my experience, the median farmer is no more
rational than the median non-farmer. The proportion of Australian sugar
farmers who own refractometers to measure sugar content before harvesting
is amazingly low. Effective, and so cheap that one successful use more
than breaks even, and yet ...
***{Timo, with respect, I've spent my whole life in Texas, and I've seen
literally thousands of cases where goats stripped rangeland down to bare
earth and rock, before they began to make significant inroads on ash
juniper.
If there are literally thousands of cases where the land is reduced to
bare earth and rock by goats, and "We don't have problems with wild goats
in Texas", then the goat farmers in Texas must be remarkably stupid.
***{There are lots of people here who own small ranches, sometimes
called "ranchettes," of 30 acres or less. Taxes on that much land would
eat them up, so they avoid 90% of the taxes by running livestock to
qualify for an agricultural exemption. Cattle are a lot of trouble, and
so most of these people run goats or, sometimes, sheep. Result: you can
drive down the secondary roads near the cities, and you will pass lots
of examples of grazed-down-to-the-bare-rock-by-goats real estate, where
the cedar is still doing just fine. Those are the kinds of examples I'm
talking about, and the situation doesn't arise out of stupidity per se,
but out of bad incentives. These people aren't really ranchers. They are
people who want to live in the country, to avoid the crime and noise of
the city, and who are making the legally mandated adjustments to their
behavior which that requires. --MJ}***
***{Check out the link cited above. In it, you will find that when goats
are free to choose what they eat, they will choose grass 45% of the
time, browse 43% of the time, and forbs (weeds and wildflowers) 12% of
the time.
My goats were not free to choose - for them, almost 100% grass and the
stuff growing among the grass. Still, they killed all trees < 4m high that
they had regular access to. Very destructive.
***{Yup. That's one reason why Texas cattlemen don't like goats. Mid-day
temperatures get well over 100 F for weeks at a time in the summer, and
cattle need trees for shade. If they have to walk very far to find it,
they lose weight, and go for less at auction. Thus you need the ability
to plant small trees at strategic locations, and protect them until they
are out of range of browsers. That can take years, and can be a major
pain in the ***** due to deer alone. Few are willing to accept the
additional headaches associated with protecting small trees from goats.
--MJ}***
They also kept the larger trees nicely flat-bottomed and easy to walk
under.
Regardless of whether or not goats will control juniper, if you want trees
other than juniper to survive, then avoid goats.
Well, if the juniper is so goat-resistant, then regular burning sounds
like a good idea. The aboriginal population here used to regularly burn
wide areas of the countryside; when the white farmers chased them off the
land/poisoned them/shot them/etc, the burning stopped, and what had been
prime open grassland turned into dense thickets of mulga.
Matches are cheaper than bulldozers.
***{Yup. And lightning is cheaper still. The problem in Texas is burn
bans and the policy of putting out all grass fires, whether they are a
threat to anything or not. A hundred and fifty years ago, cedar/juniper
was confined to the margins of creeks and rocky hillsides, because the
massive thickets that are everywhere today would have been destroyed by
fire. Present day cedar thickets were the grasslands of the 19th
century. Today, however, there are burn bans during the seasons when
grass is suited for burning, and fires started by lightning or by
lawbreakers are snuffed out before they can hardly get going, due to
immediate invasions of private property by trucks from local volunteer
fire departments, whenever so much as a whisp of smoke is detected.
Result: gigantic thickets of ashe juniper/cedar cover much of the state,
rendering immense tracts useless to and inaccessible by humans. And
worse: those thickets are a ticket to guaranteed disaster. They will
keep getting bigger and bigger so long as the present wrongheaded burn
policies are maintained, until ultimately, during an extreme drought,
the entire countryside will be covered with foliage that contains more
turpentine than water, and a fire will get started that is impossible to
stop. Whole communities will be wiped off the map as a consequence.
--MJ}***
*****************************************************************
If I seem to be ignoring you, consider the possibility
that you are in my killfile. --MJ
.
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