The Dutch People Are Rising Up To Protest "Destructive WEF Climate Law"

I lived on a farm for years.

Farmers are going to want what's good for them, not necessarily what's good for the atmosphere. I understand their position, but changes have to happen, or we go extinct. Sometimes I think our species is not intelligent enough to survive.

 

See #126.

Change can be painful, but changes have to happen where pollutants are concerned. I don't think the planet was meant to sustain so many. As far as I know, we're the only species that is breeding itself out of existence.

 

This has been pointed out as a problem in other threads. You can't demand tougher environmental regulations on your own country's products but not demand the same on products produced in foreign countries that your country is allowed to import. It will simply be unfair, and drive domestic producers out of business, due to the added costs and price differential.

At the very least you need to impose special tariffs to try to level the playing field.

Everyone knows if this law passes, Dutch consumers will continue paying the same price for food but it will all just be produced somewhere else instead. Somewhere that doesn't have these ridiculous regulations.

Farmers in the Netherlands already struggle to stay in business due to the high population density and expensive land costs. This policy would pretty much do them in.

I thought many on the Left supported "food independence" and locally grown food, but apparently not.

 

Is there a form I can fill out for permission to criticize you next time?

Just as a heads up, the topic will be 5 second Internet search subject matter experts.

 

Of course, change has been happening for a very long time. Better machinery, fertilizers, methods of conserving applications seed genetics, everything that could improve efficiency has been being pursued with great ambition- and substantial success. But you can't just arbitrarily declare that for example we will stop using fertilizer, without one of two things happening.

One- food production falls dramatically, prices of what is available rise dramatically-the standard of living falls, and some people starve.

Or, Two- We have to start planting twice the acreage to get the same production, assuming we can get it- which means the machinery costs and fuel costs double and we increase pollution on one hand trying to cut it on the other.

Problems need common sense answers that consider all the facts. That excludes most of the people driven by tunnel vision and radical solutions to problems they don't really understand. That's what happens when you start to think outrageous demands by people like AOC should be taken as solutions.

 

Regulators rarely have any idea how their regulations will impact the complex systems they intend to control.

What happens when you tell a highly efficient system it must make an arbitrary 95% increase in efficiency or else the government will hit the e-stop?

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/11/netherlands-dutch-farming-agriculture-sustainable/

The food system no less...

 

What happens is that tomatoes greenhouse guy I linked becomes the Amazon of food production and all the people currently screaming for his agriculture reforms now will be screaming at him for colluding with the government to push out his competition.

 

Unfortunately it isn’t all pie in the sky. It’s advertised as such but generally it’s only absentee land owners that end up happy.

You most certainly CAN NOT farm your land as before. Here is a short list of things that change.

1) Soils are compacted and mixed. Erection, base preparation and creation of access roads all create severe compaction of soils. Any excavation, even if attempts are made to replace topsoil, the result is almost always mixing of subsoil into topsoil layers and burying of topsoil below natural root zones. Both topsoil mixing and compaction severely reduce productivity by limiting root growth, limiting water infiltration from precipitation, and decreasing soil organic matter content and microbial activity.

2) Soil erosion and redeposition changes. Cattle activity around bases (shade seeking and grooming behaviors) leads to destruction of grass cover and leads to increased wind and water soil erosion. Also, in some areas burrow owls have been increasingly killed by turbines because they are attracted to these sites of erosion following burrowing wildlife being attracted there as well. This has led to producers having to cease burrowing pest control in other productive locations to draw owls away from turbines.

Water runoff from access roads and culverts leads to erosion and silt deposits in unnatural areas.

3) There is increasing evidence of stress on wild snd domesticated animals. Peer reviewed studies of domestic geese, badgers, and roe deer all point to increased stress levels when animals are close to wind turbines.

There are also metrics that are so far unreported on such as effects of decreased wind speed on cattle conception rates. We know from previous studies wind speed is positively correlated with conception rates and we know wind farms decrease wind speed. But you won’t hear about things like that from green bloggers.

4) Disruption of underground water management. In many Midwest states farm land is tiled to manage the water table. Construction of towered and access roads damage existing tiling and make installation of new or replacement systems more complex and less effective.


5) Limited or denied access to aerial application of pesticides. In pastures management of noxious weeds is accomplished in many cases by aerial applications of herbicides. Control of noxious weeds is required by law. Not being able to use aerial application greatly increases labor and overall cost, and decreased effectiveness of weed control.

In cropped areas applications of fungicide and insecticide is common. Unlike weed control in pasture there is no other option to apply fungicide to non irrigated corn for example. Not being able to apply fungicide in years with high prevalence of disease like grey leaf spot can have severe negative effects on yield. Same with high populations of western bean cutworm or spider mites—no option to treat can devastate yields and/or harvestability of crops.

These are a few of the reasons absentee landowners are more easily convinced to lease land for wind farms. They profit but do not have the added costs or decreased profitability the tenet they are leasing the ag land to have to deal with.

It’s easy for people with no knowledge of agriculture to assume there are no downsides to wind farms. Especially when they are told there aren’t by other misinformed folks or people with agendas.

To be clear I don’t oppose wind power. It has a place in our energy future. But if it’s going to be sustainable we must consider it’s downsides as well as the upsides.

 

Rectified? Farmers are bankrupt, spring crops there have already failed, and people are going to go hungry for many months to come. Possibly years.

You can’t bankrupt your ag producers and say things have been rectified because the moron who did this realized finally how stupid it was.

 

The way to change farming practices is to change your consumer behavior. That’s the inconvenient truth.

 

557, you're speaking realistically, and obviously with expertise. Like many other things, wind farms are sold focusing on benefits and quietly burying the many downsides. Soil changes are a significant one of them, like those you have described.

I once represented a farmer at an arbitration hearing over a gas pipeline easement. He's telling them that they will damage the soil productivity by the excavation process, and the opposition seemed to have no clue about the relevance of soil quality. He had first requested that the excavation be done in two levels; removal of topsoil to be stored on one side, then subsoil to the other and replaced the same way. They rejected that idea as "inconvenient", which led to the arbitration. That means the quality and crop potential of the soil in the work area would be greatly reduced and impact productivity for decades. Fortunately the arbitration judge was not so irrational, and the farmer wound up getting 6 times the compensation they first offered. Still, probably not enough.

Nature does a hell of a job maintaining the earth- it is humans who do most of the damage.

 

Whatever smokes yer shorts, Mr. Know-it-All.

 

Did you find that reply after a 5 second internet search?

All I'm saying is that it's funny to me that people try to support their opinions of complex systems by suggesting that people who disagree with them didn't think about it for 5 seconds (like they did).

The Dutch have a pretty advanced agriculture. Let's put this into simpler terms. Government says that to save the planet you need to eat 95% less. Are you heading to the streets in protest?

 

There is ZERO evidence that we are "producing" global warming. If you can't stand the heat then get out of Florida. Avoid the heat like you avoid debate.

 

Sorry, but you can't blast propaganda and then claim lack of interest in debate. As my grandfather used to say, that's like the guy who would vote the county dry and then move.

 

Where was I supporting my opinions? I was simply providing additional information that explains the Dutch government's position, and stating the obvious about how polluted our habitat has become. Is any of that in dispute? Your blatant pomposity is certainly obvious.

 

Our habitat is the cleanest it has ever been.

 

I did 5 seconds of research and found you expressing your opinions right here:

It is your opinion that the reasons to discontinue the use of nitrogen are good. It is your opinion that the farmers are simply resistant to change.

Apparently they have somehow managed to farm all this time prior without doing the 5 seconds of research that you have done.

 

As for self importance, I'm not the one telling farmers their business after asking Jeeves what I should think on the matter.

 

Wow, really? What planet are you living on? Because we've trashed this one.

If you reply, please include links to science backing your claim. Otherwise, do us both a favor and don't reply. I tested positive for COVID a few days ago and am self-isolating. I've plenty of time to refute that, and have studied the issue in some depth. Be careful what you take on. The science is on my side.

 

It is my opinion that the reasons are valid. I never said good. Try to read, not interpret.

 

Is someone posting using your account? Can you tell me who said the following?

"There are good reasons to discontinue the use of nitrogen."

 

I'm also super interested in hearing an example of a bad valid reason.

 

I doubt you “feel” the temperature change in Florida. Humans can perceive ambient air temp changes of over (not under) 5°C only if the rate of change is around 0.5°C per minute.

Since the average high of Tampa increased only 0.8°C over a 30 year period it’s highly unlikely you “feel” a difference. Without sophisticated thermometers and record keeping you would never notice any difference.

 

Amazing, isn't it!