A visit to the Eden Project August 15, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Environment, Food, Gardens, Peak Oil, Permaculture, climate change , 1 comment so farThe Eden Project in Cornwall was established 7 years ago and has become a world famous visitor attraction with its iconic huge bubble-wrap domes providing the closest you’ll get to an experience of the rain-forest this side of the Amazon.
I was visiting my sister this week, who lives nearby in Bodmin, and got the opportunity to visit, with my father. (more…)
Introduction to Permaculture Kildare September 6th-7th August 11, 2008
Posted by Graham in : General , add a comment
I will be teaching a second introduction to permaculture course at the Kildare Steiner School, near Castledermot, September 6th-7th.
This is a result of the tremendous interest shown in practical courses held at the school since my first permacultre course there in June, and the hard work of Kate Park of Transition Town Newbridge in promoting these courses.
Topics covered will include:
-Permacultre design principles
-Perennial food crops
-Forest gardens
-No-dig gardening
-Fruit tree establishment and aftercare
Practical work will involve continuing to develop the school garden.
Bookings and further details:
katepark1@eircom.net
Book Review: Climate Code Red-the case for Emergency Action August 10, 2008
Posted by Graham in : General , 3commentsClimate Code Red
The Case for Emergency Action
David Spratt and Philip Sutton
Scribe Publications 2008
Spratt and Sutton have written an important book that looks at the current state of climate science, compares the projections for likely catastrophic and irreversible climate change to the policy measures and government reactions so far, and finds the latter seriously lacking. If we carry on with our current targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, we will effectively guarantee climate disaster.
They are too little, too late and seem designed more to allow “business as usual” commerce and industry to continue with minimal pain rather than responding sufficiently to the extreme gravity of our situation; and as the authors continually stress, we have only one shot at solving the problem. The decisions we make now will determine the future of life on earth, and so far, there is little evidence that we are taking the threats to civilisation seriously enough.
It’s time, they argue, to face the reality that we are confronting a global climate emergency, and we had better start reacting with an appropriate sense of urgency.
The problem with the book I found is that despite the language of “emergency” -and we should know by now this is certainly what we should be talking about- the book doesnt go nearly far enough, confing itself to largely technological and economic methods of reducing carbon emissions and cooling the planet while ignoring the call from other authors- Ted Trainer for example- to change our lifestyle and revolutionize the ideology that underpins the growth economy. (more…)
Fruit and Nuts at Derryduff August 9, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Food, Gardens, Permaculture, Trees , 1 comment so farI am off to attend a Forest Gardening course with Martin Crawford at the Agroforestry Research Trust in Totnes, Devon, next weekend, so I thought it would be appropriate to tell you how some of my own fruit and nut trees are doing, seven years after moving to Derryduff.
Of greatest excitement, I have a walnut!
A single, solitary specimen, but a walnut nevertheless- on a grafted tree of the cultivar “Broadview”. It is only planted here two years and just 3ft high, but the fact that it has a nut at all so early in its life is hugely encouraging and shows that it is possible in this climate.
As a timber tree, walnuts and related varieties grow like the clappers in the moist warm Irish climate, and should be considered for that reason alone. (more…)
Permaculture at Derryduff August 6, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Gardens, Permaculture, water , 2commentsThe summer break from Kinsale College has givien me some time to spend on the site at Derryduff and I have been developing the gardens and landscaping here over the last couple of months.
In particular, a large extension to the small pond has now been created, with multiple potential uses:
-swimming hole- glorious to have!
-general large store of water in the landscape- not as high up as I would have liked as it is below the house but invaluable nevertheless;
-micro-climate creation- the edge around a large pond may serve as a protection against frost for early spring vegetable i could grow there, as a body of water can keep the immediate environment from freezing;
-added reflected sunlight to the northern terraces above the pond;
-potential for edible water plants
-potential even for small-scale fish-farming ( something I know little about, but many of my friends and neighbours around west Cork are also creating large ponds with this in mind).
-general wildlife habitat, especially good for frogs which may keep down the slugs
-adds tremendous beauty to any site (more…)
Zone5 Claims Victory in Science vs Religion Debate August 1, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Science and Rationaltiy , 2commentsIn her recent comment on the last post, Alanna Moore, Geomancer, Dowser and Animist Pagan, has confessed that her beliefs are religious in nature and therefore have no scientific credibility:
“Could you kindly remove all references to me plus my contact details from your blog. You are infringing my privacy as well as my religious freedom (I am an animist pagan, by the way - and there’s nothing new-age about paganism)…”
Now, this is very interesting because in an early email exchange with Maddy Harland, editor of Permaculture magazine, Maddy told me quite explicitly that she at least did not see belief in Geomancy as being religious or superstitious, but claimed they were backed up by evidence.
Below: Exuberant Zone5 supporters celebrate a dramatic victory for common sense
This welcome and brave admission that her Geomancy beliefs are religious can only mean that they should not be promoted as part of Permaculture.
It would be great now to see a letter in PM Magazine explaining this and putting the matter straight. (more…)
Alanna Moore Threatens Legal Action July 29, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Science and Rationaltiy , 16commentsAlanna Moore has posted a new comment on my post Woo Woo Everywhere which I reproduce here with my comments:
Alanna Moore here.
Interesting “debate”, a pity that most of the writers are awfully ill-informed on their subjects. (Hard to believe they have time to write this stuff, shouldnt they be out saving the world?). I’m not in my home office, otherwise I would pull out those missing references to investigations of dowsing using scientific instrumentation. But if you have access to a copy of Christopher Bird’s massive volume ‘Divining’ it’s all in there. If there wasnt a scientific aspect to dowsing there wouldnt be geologists in Russia being taught how to dowse and I wouldn’t have met the president of the Russian Scientific Dowsing Society, when I was a speaker at the International Dowsing Congress held in the UK in 2003.
As an international teacher of dowsing, as a qualified permaculture teacher, and as an author of critically acclaimed books on the application of dowsing to enhance life and gardening/farming - I have my reputation to defend here. I dont need ignorant people getting on my back. Especially when they obviously havent read my books (and seen the copious lists of references in them!) You can order my books from Counter Culture in the UK. (They are also published by Acres USA and elsewhere.)
Your credentials are irrelevant. The question is evidence. Dowsing and other paranormal abilities claimed the world over cannot pass the double-blind test- you are obviously aware of this in the comment on your website which I quoted in the post. (more…)
Climate Swindles July 22, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Science and Rationaltiy, climate change , 4commentsAl Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” seemed to bring to a close some of the misinformation about climate science. A small coterie of climate skeptics- not scientists themselves- had managed to hold the planet to ransom by claiming to represent a marginalised but legitimate climate-skeptic position within the scientific community. In fact, these people were in general paid by Big Oil and Big coal to spread this misinformation: there has been no significant dispute amongst climate scientists for more than 10 years. (more…)
Welcome to the Anthropocene June 28, 2008
Posted by Graham in : Environment, climate change , add a commentHuman’s effect on the planet has now reached geological proportions and as a species we are having a more significant effect on the Earth’s climate, geology, biodiversity and, hence, even evolution than any other single factor.
We are now officially in the Anthropocene, according to the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London. This is presumably the first time in the Earth’s 4-billion year history that a new geological epoch has begun while being marked and recorded by the species that is responsible.
Essential reading:
Living on the Ice Shelf- Humanity’s Meltdown By Mike Davis
To the question “Are we now living in the Anthropocene?” the 21 members of the Commission unanimously answer “yes.” They adduce robust evidence that the Holocene epoch — the interglacial span of unusually stable climate that has allowed the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization — has ended and that the Earth has entered “a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in the last several million years.” In addition to the buildup of greenhouse gases, the stratigraphers cite human landscape transformation which “now exceeds [annual] natural sediment production by an order of magnitude,” the ominous acidification of the oceans, and the relentless destruction of biota. This new age, they explain, is defined both by the heating trend (whose closest analogue may be the catastrophe known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago) and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In somber prose, they warn that “the combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks.” Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory.
And supporting evidence can be found in this report suggesting that the rate of arctic ice-melting is once again confounding even the worse-case predictions and the Arctic could be ice-free for the first time in human history this summer.
Reinventing Collapse June 27, 2008
Posted by Graham in : General, Overshoot, Peak Oil, Population, Powerdown, Yurts, book review, collapse, survivalism , 2commentsBook Review
Reinventing Collapse- The Soviet Example and American Prospects
New Society 2008
When I met Bill Mollison at the International Permaculture Convergence in Croatia three years ago, all he wanted to talk about it seemed was cannibalism. He had traveled in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union and told me that, in Moscow, the joke was, if you go to the provinces, be careful what they serve you up for meat.
There had been widespread hunger and general hardship, resulting in a dramatic decline in life expectancy, an underclass of the homeless and unemployed and those unable to care for themselves, and a loss of hope in the future.
Despite this, things could get much worse in an even more energy dependent USA.
“Reinventing Collapse” is perhaps the most important and disturbing- as well as amusing- peak oil book you will read. A Russian emigre who had the opportunity to observe the collapse of the former Soviet Union from the vantage point of someone living in America, Orlov sees a similar process unfolding in an America all but oblivious to how quickly things may change there. Peak oil will result very soon in the vast nation beginning to fall apart at the seams as the lifeblood of its economy drains away with no backup available. Big systems like agriculture are so energy intensive that they will quickly collapse and there is barely any resilient, self-reliant communities left. (more…)
