Bootcamp, climate change and seeing the blogs arrive
For those of you who follow the LitFuse site, you would know that I helped run a “Bootcamp” on web2.0 technologies on Friday. As part of the Bootcamp, the participants are learning how to blog and respond to other blogs.
We have started a conversation about the future of farming in southern Australia given the likely climate shifts as a result of global warming. Mike Seyfang has pointed to these blogs here. (Note that I saw Mike’s blog-post come up in my Google Reader today)
I would like to refer the participants, especially in response to Michael’s blog, to the Lower Murray Landscape Futures project that investigated the impact of global warming on the landscape, economics and social impact in the lower murray region of Australia. You can click on the podcast link to listen to the key scientists talking about the project, or you can download the Executive Summary from the Publications page. If you really want to geek out, try installing Google Earth and looking at the different scenarios overlaid over an image of the region.
To summarise what the project found, climate change may in fact offer better economic opportunities for farmers in this region, assuming Australia adopts a carbon trading scheme which will make biomass fuels and biomass energy economic to produce. However, there may need to be some restoration of native habitat on land that will have a lower economic value and greater ecological value under the different climate change scenarios.
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