Some thoughts on Plague Locusts
There have been a some posts on the "Nature of Robertson" (links will follow) about the upcoming locust plague and proposals to aerial spray the swarms.
I watched the video attached to this post on this topic and read Eris O'Brien website (and a few other things). I then scored points for spraying and points against spraying. To continue the sporting metaphor, realising this might annoy a few folk, this came out 7:2 against spraying (Julie from the Mallee got a red card in the first minute.)
The major score 'for' spraying came about because Eris O'Brien didn't really have an alternative, other than 'do nothing': his options about heavy rollers etc are unrealistic in most cases and are not applicable to National Parks etc. He suggests:
In either case spending $43.5m is relatively trivial. It is:
I watched the video attached to this post on this topic and read Eris O'Brien website (and a few other things). I then scored points for spraying and points against spraying. To continue the sporting metaphor, realising this might annoy a few folk, this came out 7:2 against spraying (Julie from the Mallee got a red card in the first minute.)
The major score 'for' spraying came about because Eris O'Brien didn't really have an alternative, other than 'do nothing': his options about heavy rollers etc are unrealistic in most cases and are not applicable to National Parks etc. He suggests:
- the plague would only last a short time, which causes me to think "Yes, animals die when they run out of food."; and
- Ibises would eat the locusts - again unrealistic as there are not enough ibises for this task.
In either case spending $43.5m is relatively trivial. It is:
- slightly less than 0.1% of the Commonwealth Health Budget; or
- almost exactly 0.1% of the farm-gate value of Australian Agriculture.
Comments
Thanks for posting your opinions on Locust spraying.
Not quite sure how you got to 7:2 - but I can see you are against spraying.
Denis