The report says almost 40 per cent of carbon stocks have been lost from cropping soils and cites expert advice that it is technically feasible for agricultural land in Australia to increase soil carbon levels by 2 per cent a year. Changed grazing and cropping practices that captured 15 per cent of this potential would be enough to offset all of the 14 per cent of total emissions now attributed to agriculture. That is, farming in Australia could become carbon neutral and the soils more productive.What was startling however was the vitriolic responses generated by this rather mild and logical argument with skeptics claiming that IPECC is a political not a scientific organization who found a way to inflate their salaries 10 fold by promoting global warming and that there are only 62 scientists in IPECC and…. well you have probably heard it all before  .   .

So rather than enter into continuing debate with skeptics who have a mandate to use exaggerated or false claims why not appeal to our common interests? They may not believe that CO2 can cause a green house effect but its much harder to deny that it causes a reduction in the oceans pH, i.e. its making it more acidic, which has serious ramifications for coral reefs and even the krill which forms the basis of the marine food chain.***

And it isn’t only CO2 that threatens our food chain, the combustion of coal releases a whole raft of toxic material, gases, particle matter and heavy metals like mercury that are extremely harmful.   Mercury levels are increasing by 1.5% per annum largely due to our use of coal and this has been absorbed by marine life so much that health officials have put limits on the consumption of certain types of fish.

Then there is the mining operations that play havoc with our water supplies and destroy agricultural land at a time when the world faces drastic food shortages. If you want to convince a skeptic there cannot be a more effective way than to  take him for a trip up to the Hunter valley and let him consider the man made moonscape that is modern mining practice.

And of course nobody wants to pay through the nose for electricity yet fossil based power is old technology with efficiency limited by thermodynamic constraints and one that will get incredibly expensive if the government doesn’t abandon its dream of clean coal technology and the massive “compensation” it plans for these polluters.  Put this way green energy should be the logic choice for all, skeptics included.

*** Ben McNeil, University of New South Wales and government research agency the CSIRO.

and the U.S. journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Don Owers