Adapting to climate change: From an email about living on the edge.
Jenny; I added a footnote for you.

The first problem for greater populations, product a warmer climate of recent times is our silly concept of fixed assets. Who actually owns the fresh water that falls on our land is about the last legal frame work to be put in place in Australia after Europeans fenced off much of the most fertile blocks of country all over. Let’s say these fences are quite arbitrary from any natural history point of view.

Bushfire mitigation both sides of a real-estate boundary has been the subject of much policy development over a decade or so but are we all satisfied? No, few folk are protected in reality in this sunburnt country by any modern administrative framework.

Some notes about my home region: Civilised people established their family cultures here some 30-40 thousand years ago and as far south as the ice caps and glaciers allowed in the Franklin River region of Tasmania. About 15,000 years ago the ice age extremities started to melt and for some time the sea level rose. Eventually the oceans flooded the great ancient rift valley that is now Bass Strait and drove the hapless local populations north and south. The sea lapped the cliffs and old volcanic plugs at the edge of the rift and created the Island of Tasmania as we know it.

But not everybody notices the double coast lines formed at the edge of the cliffs when the big rise of 80m ebbed. The polar caps had settled and the sea tides fell back a metre or so. Wind blown sands from the new bays accumulated at the margin. Aborigines concentrated south side recalled their rout and remained back in fresh caves on the high line. Gathering shell fish from the stripped landscape became their main occupation.

How fragile are the main dunes that protect our sea change lifestyle?

Adapting continued: When considering magnitudes, maximums and rates of change at their peaks I suspect that 8000 years ago was the time our eucalypts flourished and dominated the cool climate “rain” forests. Southern parts of Australia were still covered by dense eucalypt forests at the time Europeans discovered the continent. Tasmania in particular certainly was and aborigines were busy burning off scrub everywhere eucalypts did not have a foothold.
Open game country was limited to certain types of poorer soils but the early white settlers took a while to discover that their first choice of grazing country was in fact a bad one.
Timber millers eventually opened the bush and that process goes on today.

In summer the warmed shallow waters of Bass Strait become the heating for bizarre and furious atmospheric spin offs from the main events, regular patterns of highs and lows, anti cyclones and cyclones before the roaring forties. Recollections after witnessing some freak storms still defy my imagination. Bass Strait is littered with ship wrecks too. I was not the only one.

How cool is the next climate change? That is a question best answered in the short term by another question, how good is your real estate investment? Let’s put this question again to the same punters in say 25 years time.

A footnote added re another email today: See our Woolnorth Wind Farm here –

http://reslab.com.au/resfiles/wind/text.html

Your Kidding,

Doomsdayers at it beating the drum again.

How can you say that in a country with the vast land area we have, and with the marvels of modern engineering, we could not sustain growth as a nation.

By your reasoning, half the countries on this earth should already be starved to death, when in reality it is not this percentage.

It comes down to A. Need B. Solution C. Demand for that solution. As things crunch or look like crunching, governments can enact a myriad of solutions.

One such solution is pumping sea water from South Australia to the red centre, creating a micro climate and combined with global warming we will see marginal land improve to greater production levels. Crops can be grown hydroponically and by stopping evaporation and recycling water water required is singificantly less.

Once there is a real need, there will be enough money involved to find a solution. Humans have come a long way, we are in the golden age of medicine as one example, you must realise that we can adapt to an ever changing planet, thats what separates us from the Monkeys

We have been talking about this for years. While we have been talking, our population has continued growing – thanks to dumb, high-growth politicians. During this do-nothing period, we have created another problem for ourselves: not only have we continued with high immigration, but we have also taken on Third World immigration. The birth rate of educated, white Australians of European descent has reduced dramatically, but we are bringing in people who are culturally incompatible and who certainly do not understand what Jennie Goldie or Sustainable Population Australia are on about – if they have heard of them. And they never will. They will continue with the same practices inherent in the countries they came from, and eventually turn Australia into something similar, aided by cultural relativists and pathetic governments who see things only in terms of dollars.

I agree with Jennie Goldie. Anyone who advocates a lower, sustainable population for Australia is a friend of mine. But I’m afraid the complacency of Australians and the dangerous dimwits of all shades in Canberra have pretty much ensured that things will continue the way they are.

The ‘Death of the West’ is well under way.

"Thirty million? Forget it."

Yes we should be aiming for 50 or 60 at least.

I think discouraging green/left loonies from breeding is a very good idea and needs to be encouraged. And one would have to say that this forum is an excellent place to put such promotional material. And one should certainly hope that Ms Goldie has had the courage of her convictions and refrained from reproduction.

But as for the rest of us? A can't think of any real life problem, any bushfire, natural disaster, famine or flood, where those of us tasked with finding practical solutions have had pause to suggest, "what we really need now is a population cap, or maybe even a population nutter". Naagght! Just can't see it.