Tag Archives: #mrjonmoore

Episode 333. Volcanoes, Climate and Cows

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 17th of April 2023.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

Food and soil health are intricately linked and the health of one directly impacts the health of the other. Soil is the foundation of our food system. The top six inches of the landmass and the fact it rains semi-regularly is what keeps us alive. 

The key words there are “semi-regularly”. Since the Holocene, 12-10,000 years before present, there has been climate variability but within fairly, relatively speaking, narrow extremes. For most of that time, human population levels were such that our impact was far less than it is today.  Continue reading →

Episode 332. Pear Blossom & the 6th IPCC Report!

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 27th of March 2023.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

The 6th IPCC Report, link in the show notes, was released last Monday. A day after I’d published the last episode, of course, so I’ve had a week to get my head around it and hopefully, distil it down to a more manageable yet still accurate summary. Also today as I was setting up the chook run for winter, expanding the run area and calling in the semi-feral chooklings who are between 10 and 16 weeks old, I noticed and remember we’re at the end of the second month of Autumn in the southern hemisphere, I noticed one of the pear trees had a spray of open blossom. Actually what I first noticed was the sound of bees then the flowers but what is going on??? Continue reading →

Episode 330. The Newish Normal

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 13th of March 2023.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

La Niña/El Niño

Now here’s a headline to send chills down the spine: Australia can expect an El Niño weather pattern bringing extreme dry hot weather now La Niña is over.

That’s from the ABC News site, dated 11 March 2023. And like it says on the tin things are headed for drought, basically.

A quick refresher on the dreaded La Nina/El Nino phase swap. When the eastern Pacific equatorial waters are cooler than normal, the western side is warmer, this is La Nina and leads to droughts in Peru and Chile and rains in eastern Australia. The reverse holds for El Nino. For the past three years we’ve been under a La Nina event hence the three years of flooding in eastern Australia. The la Nina has been decaying for a few months now so areas have been receiving the last few flooding events and some areas have already started to dry out. In far north Queensland floods have destroyed townships and a bushfire has burnt out some 18,000 hectares near the gold mining settlement of Hill End. Indeed a land of droughts and flooding rains. Continue reading →

Episode 329. Rain!

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 6th of March 2023.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

Autumn

The long two months of dryness have passed, it would appear. The last two weekends we’ve had the first rains of Autumn and they are very welcome. The air was looking dirty. We have a Mediterranean climate here or we have had, patterns are changing and, in this region, becoming more extreme in their patterns. Whilst we haven’t had the 38+ degrees of the mainland we have had 26 here in the North West of Tassie and that’s been difficult. So for my USA listeners that’s over 100 and just under 80 for 38+ and 26. As it turns out not all of Australia is an oven. The tail end of the current La Nina event has seen more flooding across the top end of the continent and it has been heartbreaking to watch. Quite a number of indigenous communities, particularly the out lying ones, have suffered terribly. Indeed the weather has hit this place hard for a few years. There’s still people living in tents after the summer of 2019-2020 Black Summer fires, towns that have never flooded since white colonisation have flooded and others have been hit repeatedly. We know this is related to climate change and the warming planet even if we can’t attribute any one particular event to that. I have my doubts about that statement but it comes from climate specialists so I’ll go with it. Continue reading →

Episode 327. Change in the Air

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 13th of February 2023.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

A big shout out and even bigger thank you to Jeay Love for the coffee you sent me through the “Buy Me A Coffee” link on the website and in the show notes. The notification came through as I was queuing to purchase one such beverage so the timing was perfect, thanks again.

Autumn?

Late mid February and there’s a tinge on the paddocks around these parts that hints at an early Autumn. It could be the week or so on south west to southerly winds blowing over this part of the apple isle but it really does feel like an early Autumn. This is probably a good thing. I’ve come to terms with the mediterranean climate we have here by not growing much over summer other than perennials. Pears, apples, raspberries and some persistent blackberries.  Continue reading →

Episode 326. Into Year 8

This is The ChangeUnderground for the 6th of February 2023.

I’m your host, Jon Moore

Decarbonise the Air, Recarbonise the Soil!

Way back in the dim dark past of 2016 in those halcyon pre-covid days, on the first of that month, this feed first hit the interwebs in all my naive, open eyed wonder.  A full seven years, that number so beloved of Celtic heroes and their times in the wilderness, the time required to develop a given itch for those of us of a certain age. For the younger listeners, I have provided a link in the show notes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Year_Itch) In the interests of accuracy, it was released a full six years before I first burst upon this planet but still a part of my cultural milieu but I digress.  Continue reading →