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February 27, 2006

Al Gore, and Another Air Conditioner in the Wall

"How can anyone living through today's bizarre and mutable weather not be concerned about global warming?" wrote David Kirkpatrick in a recent issue of CNN Money.

Kirkpatrick then goes on to tell us that he heard the best speech from former US Vice President Al Gore about unprecedented change in the earth's climate seriously aggravated by human activity.

I was interested to know how much of the "unprecedented change" Al Gore attributed to "human aggravation", but instead he just listed the "evidence" that "climate is changing".

The following points are Kirkpatrick summary of Al Gore's evidence:

"1. Global CO2 levels are way outside what have been historical norms over several hundred thousand years.

2. All ten of the hottest years on record, globally, have occurred in the last 15 years.

3. Last summer, all-time heat records were set in both the U.S. West and East.

4. Global ocean temperatures are far outside of historical norms.

5. Even after last year's devastating Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent Hurricane Wilma was briefly the most severe hurricane ever recorded.

6. Last year Japan hit an all-time record for typhoons --10. The previous record was 7.

7. The largest downpour ever seen occurred last summer in India.

8. Thirty-five years ago there were an average of 225 days when Alaska's tundra was frozen enough for trucks to drive. Today there are only 75."

The first point doesn't actually tell us climate is changing. Points 2,3,5,6,7 and 8 read like a mumble jumble of 'cherry picked' anecdote - but I can see there are some interesting statistics here. Number 4 doesn't match. And I didn't know that global ocean temperatures were far outside of historical norms?

Not that I deny climate change - there has always been climate change and there will always be climate change. But how much is due to us?

A movie by Paramount Classics based on this sort of 'evidence' and Al Gore's personal journey of discovery titled 'The Inconvenient Truth' is due out in May. And there will be a book out by the same name, also by Al Gore. And, according to David Kirkpatrick, Gore is working with major environment groups in the US on a new consortium with the aim of running a "campaign of public persuasion" about global warming and its consequences.

I think the message is already out there - that it is getting warmer.

But no one really believes the world is about to end. Rather several of my friends, and lots of other people, have decided (as far as I can tell based at least in part on all the news reports about global warming) that they need to install an air conditioner, because it is going to get hotter.

The new air conditioners will be coal-powered, in so much as most of the electricity for Brisbane in south eastern Queensland, Australia, comes from coal-fired power stations.

Posted by jennifer at 07:49 PM | Comments (53) | TrackBack

Leatherback Turtles Facing Extinction

Marine ecologist Larry Crowder from Duke University in the US is reported at BBC News Online claiming that leatherback turtles face extinction within 30 years if there are not dramatic changes to fishing practices.

According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species there has been a 70 percent decline in the global population of female Leatherbacks in one generation.

The IUCN attributes the dramatic decline to poaching of the turtle's eggs as well as entanglement in fishing lines.

According to Professor Crowder:

"Globally, each day, there are around four million hooks in the world's oceans fishing for tuna and swordfish.

Turtles will eat the bait and get caught on the hooks, or simply get entangled in the lines.

Because the range of leatherbacks is so great, national legislation on long lines will not be sufficient to save the animals.

"If you tag one with a satellite tag in Monterey bay, it will shoot straight across to Indonesia," Professor Crowder explained.

"They are the most widely distributed sea turtle. They swim from 50 degrees south to 50 degrees north. Trying to regulate their interactions with fisheries out in international waters is really difficult."

Professor Crowder told delegates [at a conference in Denver] that there was much that could be done to minimise the impact of long line fishing, such as changing the shape of hooks."

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I have previously written that plastic bags can kill marine turtles particularly Leatherbacks, click here.

Posted by jennifer at 03:38 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

February 25, 2006

More Tall Tales from Jared Diamond

I would like to think that Australia's national broadcaster would take-to-task an American who writes a best selling book that is full of factual errors that denigrate Australia. But instead our ABC just keeps giving him more time on radio to tell his tall tales.

Professor Jared Diamond got a great run on ABC radio last June when he was over here promoting his new book 'Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive'. Then Robyn Williams ran him again on The Science Show a few months later and for a whole hour.

I complained and was given 15 minutes on Ockham's Razor last November.

I have reviewed his chapter on Australia and shown it to be full of factual errors, click here for the published paper and I list some of the errors at the end of this blog post.

Michael Duffy invited Professor Diamond to debate me on Duffy's ABC radio program Counterpoint a couple of weeks ago, but the professor declined.

So the ABC gave him a wad of time last Thursday night, again on a Robyn Williams program, In Conversation. Click here for the transcript.

While the program was billed as putting the professor on the spot - it was anything but a tough interview. Indeed Diamond was given more opportunity to tell more tall tales.

These included that unless we change our ways there won't be any tropical rainforests left in Australia in 30 years time. That's right - read the transcript!

He also thought it relevant to make the point that "Australia is the first-world country that has the smallest fraction of its land area covered by old-growth forest." I thought we were also the driest continent on earth after the Antarctic so how relevant is that statistic? Should we turn our coastal rivers inland so that we can grow forest were there is now desert?

He goes on to state that Japan has a much larger percentage of its land mass as old growth forest. I would guess - and perhaps a reader of this blog might do the relevant calculations - that we have a much larger total area of old growth forest than Japan?

And I can't believe the following claim but would like more information. He said in the interview last Thursday night that:

"Farmers are bringing pressure to bear on other farmers. Again on my last visit to Australia I had a very interesting time with a farmer in South Australia who was telling me that if a farmer who either leases land, or owns land outright is not taking good care of the land for example by over-stocking it, then local farmers put pressure on that farmer to change his or her practices. And in extreme cases my farmer-friend told me, if a farmer continues to abuse his or her land then even if you own it outright your land may be confiscated."

Can anybody tell me as a comment below, or by separate email, whether there could be any truth in this claim that freehold land can be confiscated in South Australia?

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Just a few of the errors:

In the book the professor gets the price of wood chip wrong suggesting we sell it to Japan for US$7 per ton when official statistics show it sells for A$151 per tonne.

He indicates Australian farmers produce less food on a tonnes per hectare basis than most of the rest of the world, but doesn't specify which crops. If we consider some of our major crops including cotton and rice - well Australian farmers harvest much more than the world average on a tonnes per hectare basis.

We produce on average 7 tonnes of rice per hectare in Australia while the world average is 4 tonnes/ha and Australian rice growers use 50 percent less water for every kilo of rice produced than the world average. In Australia the average yield for cotton is 1,672 tonnes/ha, while the world average is just 638 tonnes/ha - a lot less.

One of the reasons we manage to produce so more cotton per hectare is because our cotton is all irrigated. This is a reason why we don't produce so much wheat per hectare. We grow a lot of wheat in Australia, but it is not irrigated, so our yields are low relative to much of the rest of the world.

In the book published by Penguin, Professor Diamond claims that, "it is cheaper to grow oranges in Brazil and ship the resulting orange juice concentrate 8,000 miles to Australia than to buy orange juice produced from Australian citrus trees." Yet official statistics show Australia exports almost three times the quantity of citrus it imports. During the 2003/04 financial year Australian producers exported navel and valencia oranges worth A$107 million.

Indeed, contrary to the impression give by the professor, Australia exports most of the food it produces with crop exports valued at A$13,269 million in 2003/04.

In 'Collapse' Diamond states that Australians are cutting down too many trees and as a consequence Australia's forests will disappear long before our coal and iron reserves. Some forests have been clearfelled, some have been selectively logged, most have regrown. The area of forest is increasing, not reducing. The area of old growth forest protected nationally has increased from 1.2 million hectares to 3.8 millionh hectares since 1996. Tasmania has 43 percent of its total land are protected in reserves, including 82 percent of its rainforest.

Posted by jennifer at 02:08 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

Paying for No Water

There is nothing straight forward or logical about how water is allocated for irrigation in Australia. And every scheme and catchment has its own historical idiosyncrasies.

I am always amazed when I read that irrigators are paying for water they aren't getting when there is a drought. Payment for a percentage of an allocation even if the dam is dry is a condition of many irrigation licenses.

Just yesterday ABC Online reported that:

"The NSW Government is under pressure to waive fixed water charges for Lachlan Valley irrigators. Producers have started receiving bills for the 2004/5 financial year, despite not having a water allocation during that period.

Is it possible that some south east Queensland irrigators could one day have to pay for no water, because it has been sold to a power station?

A reader of this blog, Hasbeen, was extremely frustrated last week after attending the Community Reference Panel launch of the Logan Basin Draft Water Resource Plan. Logan is just south of Brisbane in south east Queensland, Australia.

Draft plans and reference panels are part of the jargon and process of resource planning in Australia. It has been my observation that they often reflect government's commitment to consult, while its policy officers dabble in central planning.

I have edited the following note from Hasbeen, written after he attended that meeting:

"What a joke. We got over an hour of an 'Environmental Investigations Report' which said it is more important that the river is a wildlife corridor, than we do anything to reduce/prevent erosion and the invertebrates in the sand are much more important than the people who live, and work, on the river.

Then the real crunch, what it means to the people who have lived on, and depended on the river for much of their lives.

For irrigators on supplemented streams there will be not much change. They will still pay for their water allocation, whether or not ther is water. But there is a likelihood that this water will also be sold to higher payers, e.g. power stations, in future.

For those on unsupplemented streams, where not one cent of taxpayer funds has been spent, the story is bad. These people are on area licenses, dictating that they may irrigate so many hectares. These are to be converted to volume licences, but at a very low rate, varying between 4 and 4.5 ML/ha.

Department of Primary Industry figures state that it takes 5.6 ML/ha per year to maintain pasture grass, about the lowest user of irrigation. For dairy farmers it takes 6 ML/ha to produce 4 months of winter rye grass, then a similar amount to run summer feed. Lucerne growers could not survive on this allocation, and neither could small crops growers.

We were told this conversion figure was chosen after a survey of irrigators, but none of the community reference panel had been surveyed.

To make matters worse, a volumetric cap will be put on water harvesting. Harvesting is only allowed when the river is in 'fresh', and hundreds of megaliters per day is rushing out to sea.

To tell a farmer that he must watch a river, 30 meters wide, and 6 meters deep rush past his pump, with out taking any is stupid. When that water will be in Morton Bay in 6 hours, it's criminal.

One of the water resource people I spoke to did not appear to understand our little river, it seemed as if we were talking about two different things.

Their thinking, and I suppose, training relates to our long, slow, inland rivers, where water can take weeks to meander down stream. He found it almost impossible to believe that if we all pumped, with all our pumps, we could not make a dent in the flow of our river during a fresh.

He would not believe that a rain drop, from our head water, would be in Morton Bay in 24 hours.

After EIGHT years of community input we have got a total 'stuff up'.

None of the pain this plan will impose on our community will, or can, have any benefit for anyone. We will pay for our water, even if there isn't any, and probably go broke doing it.

How can they get it so wrong, unless there is a hidden agenda, and this plan is to be used as a basis for other plans, which can advantage urban water supply."

End of note from Hasbeen.

Posted by jennifer at 11:02 AM | Comments (10)

February 24, 2006

On Boxer and Blogging

I've observed that comment threads following blog posts can be a bit like forests. When just a few people post lots of comments, they tend to crowd out others, and you end up with a less diverse thread.

There is an old fellow who comments every so often at this blog. He tends to make a useful remark or observation here and there.

Once he dominated a very long comment thread, but it was on a topic he knows so much about. Boxer knows a lot about forestry issues and how to grow a healthy native forest.

In the beginning Boxer used his real name at this blog, then he started signing off 'Boxer'. He has said that he can relate to Boxer the hard working old horse in George Orwell's classic novel Animal Farm.

But what a fate befell Orwell's Boxer. He was working hard trying to get the windmill build for the good of all the animals, but he slipped, and while he was down, the pigs had him carted off to the local glue factory. No state funeral.

Orwell's novel is about a revolution gone wrong.

Our Boxer has made the following comment about revolutions:

"I think revolutions are not my favourite events because they develop their own momentum and purpose which is not related to the original reason for change.

I don't trust myself either, when I latch onto an idea, because proving myself to be right very quickly becomes the object of the exercise.

I am interested in the choices we have to make to manage the state of the environment, where all the options, other than eliminate humans altogether, are compromises and we have to choose the least worst course of action.

I follow your blog because you have a tenacious way of pursuing the evidence, which I admire. Only by sticking to the evidence can we avoid the worst pitfalls of picking a side for emotive reasons and then defending that position at all costs, even if one of those costs is worsening environmental fallout somewhere else."

At this blog, and on the issue of a dead platypus Boxer once commented,

"At least he shot it and then boiled it; he could have brought it to the boil and then shot it.

And on the subject of climate change,

"As soon as someone says 'the evidence is all in, no further debate is necessary' I become confident their argument is too weak to survive rigorous analysis. This accusation can be levelled at both sides of this debate at times.

And on forestry,

"Most forest scientists are public sector people, and public servants are not encouraged to discuss their work in public forums. You may be aware that the principal function of the public servant is to NOT embarrass the Minister under ANY circumstances. My minister was part of the public campaign to crush the local forest industry. So I'm not likely to participate in this sort of debate in a more public place using my own name am I?

Somewhere in the public service act there is the power for my employer to put me in a corner to sharpen pencils for the next decade for writing this."

No. We don't want our Boxer carted off to the glue factory. We value his insights, appreciate his pen name and we look forward to his next insightful contribution.

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This post will be filed under a category titled 'people'. As a reader and/or commentator at this blog you may like to tell us something about yourself? Contributions encouraged please email to jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com.

Posted by jennifer at 05:08 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Advertising Our Environment

There has been some debate about whether the new advertisement for Australia as a tourism destination is offensive or not.

You can view the advertisement by clicking here.

Is it OK for the young woman/the sheila to use the words 'Where the bloody hell are you?'

Once upon a time there would have been more complaints about her lack of clothing?

And gee the Australian environment looks OK.

How do we reconcile images like this with the description of the Australian environment as ruin in Jared Diamond's new best seller, 'Collapse', or Ian Lowe's 'A big fix: radical solutions for Australia's environmental crisis'?

Posted by jennifer at 02:00 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 23, 2006

How Much Forest Should Be Saved?

Tasmanians will go to the polls on 18th March. Of course with an election in Australia or Tasmania comes the usual bagging of the forest industry and timber company Gunns Ltd. This time a proposed pulp mill is developing as the point of contention, but really it is all about the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of cutting down tall trees.

Stephen Mayne from Crikey.com was rather vicious yesterday, writing that:

"John Gay [Gunns Chairman] knows how to slaughter trees and export woodchips, but building a huge pulp mill is in another league and some in the market think this simple but aggressive man doesn't have the ability to deliver."

Interestingly according to the Wilderness Society website:

"Gunns is the biggest native-forest logging company in Australia and the biggest hardwood-chip company in the world.

Gunns receives the overwhelming majority of logs destined for sawmills and woodchip mills from Tasmania. It owns all four export-woodchip mills in Tasmania. It exports more woodchips from Tasmania than are exported from all mainland states combined. Gunns exports over four million tonnes of native-forest woodchips each year."

Gunns and Gay are survivors.

And with all the hype it is worth considering some statistics - like how much of Tasmania is logged? Barry Chipman from Timber Communities Australia sent me the following spreadsheet yesterday.

With 45 percent of Tasmanian forests not available for wood supply because this area is reserved, it could be concluded that relative to European countries, John Gay operates in an environment that affords a very high level of protection to its forests.

How does Europe compare to the rest of the world? What percentage of a country should be available for logging? What percentage of Tasmanian forests should be available for logging?

I live in a wooden house and I work off a wooden desk and I use paper everyday.

Posted by jennifer at 04:24 PM | Comments (50) | TrackBack

Environmental Priorities Wrong & Reef Not at Risk: Peter Ridd

Dr Peter Ridd from James Cook University gave a lecture in Townsville yesterday and it was reported in The Age. Not bad given that he wasn't pushing a doom and gloom message and doesn't believe the reef is at risk from global warming. He's some of what The Age reported:

Risks to the Great Barrier Reef have been overstated and Australians should be more worried about population growth and noxious weeds, a physicist says.

Dr Peter Ridd from Townsvilles James Cook University (JCU) today challenged the widely held view that one of the world's most important natural assets is in serious decline.

He said the reef, which other scientists predict could be wiped out within 30 years due to global climate change, was in "first rate condition".

"It's probably one of the best preserved ecosystems in the whole world," Dr Ridd, of JCU's Faculty of Science, Engineering and Information Technology, said.

"I think the only place that's probably better is Antarctica, and that is because it's a long way away from any significant population centre."

His comments came only weeks after scientists warned of a new coral bleaching threat following the discovery of blanched corals off the central Queensland coast.

Dr Ridd said although the reef suffered extensive bleaching in 1998 and 2002, most of it was unaffected and the parts that were damaged "completely recovered".

"I think some of it is a beat-up and I think we've got our priorities wrong," he said.

"We have around the country some serious environmental issues associated with weeds and indeed with things like population and the growing of our cities.

"We're not worried about all these other things which are potentially far more important and definitely there, whereas you can argue about the Great Barrier Reef being in jeopardy."

Dr Ridd, who formerly worked with the Australian Institute of Marine Science - a body which has long sounded warnings about threats to the reef - said coral bleaching was an "adaptation to changing environmental temperature".

Additionally, pollution from sediment and agricultural run-off was negligible given the reef's size and how rapidly it was flushed by tides, he said.

In a draft policy paper for new environment group the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF), Peter Ridd outlines and discusses the various environmental issues he sees confronting Australia. The paper can be accessed from the home page of the AEF, click here.

I have listed nine reasons why Peter Ridd doesn't consider the reef is at risk from global warming at an earlier blog post, click here.

Posted by jennifer at 08:24 AM | Comments (45) | TrackBack

February 22, 2006

More Intense Tropical Cyclones: Likely Impact of Global Warming

Meterologists from around the world gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, this week.

At the World Meterological Conference a report was tabled summarizing information on the impact of global warming on cyclones including hurricanes and typhoons.*

Titled Statement on Tropic Cyclones and Climate Change, two of the nine authors are from the Australian Bureau of Meterology.

Julian Heming from the United Kingdom Met office gave the following summary in a media release:

"The main conclusion we came to was that none of these high-impact tropical cyclones could be specifically attributed to global warming. Whilst there is no conclusive evidence that climate change is affecting the frequency of tropical cyclones worldwide, there is an ongoing debate as to whether it is affecting their intensity.

The report is unusual, in so much as these type of documents associate with climate conferences are often written in such a way that they exaggerate the likely impact of global warming. This report seems to represents a middle ground and acknowledges there is no consensus on the issue of increased intensity.** It does acknowledges a potential impact from global warming and the likely nature of this impact - more severe hurricanes.

The report also includes comment that:

1. While demographic trends [more people living in more hurricane prone coastal environmentals] are the dominant cause of increasing damage by tropical cyclones, any significant trends in storm activity would compound such trends in damage.

2. Projected rises in global sea level are a cause for concern in the context of society's vulnerability to tropical cyclones. In particular for the major cyclone disasters in history the primary cause of death has been salt-water flooding associated with storm surge.

3. A robust result in model simulations of tropical cyclones in a warmer climate is that there will be an increase in precipitation [rainfall] associated with these systems (for example, Knutson and Tuleya, 2004). The mechanism is simply that as the water vapor content of the tropical atmosphere increases, the moisture convergence for a given amount of dynamical convergence is enhanced. This should increase rainfall rates in systems (viz tropical cyclones) where moisture convergence is an important component of the water vapor budget. To date no observational evidence has been found to support this conclusion; so no quantitative estimate can be given for the anticipated rainfall increase without further research.

I interprete this last point to mean that as it gets warmer it is likely to get wetter?

The report includes the following summary of tropical cyclone activity during 2004 and 2005 and notes that a number of high-impact tropical cyclones events occurred during this period:

1. Ten fully developed tropical cyclones made landfall in Japan in 2004, causing widespread damage. 2. Southern China experienced much below-normal tropical cyclone landfalls and subsequently suffered a severe drought.

3. Four major hurricanes caused extensive damage and disruption to Florida communities in 2004.

4. In March 2004 southern Brazil suffered severe damage from a system that had hurricane characteristics, the first recorded cyclone of its type in the region.

5. Five fully developed cyclones passed through the Cook Islands in a five week period in February-March 2005.

6. The 2005 North Atlantic Hurricane Season broke several records including number of tropical cyclones, number of major hurricanes making landfall and number of category five hurricanes. In particular, the landfall of Hurricane Katrina at New Orleans and Mississippi caused unprecedented damage and more than 1300 deaths.

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*A hurricane is a cyclone in the Atlantic Basin and North Pacific east of the dateline. A typhoon is a cyclone in the Northwest Pacific west of the date line.

** This is what the report says on the issue of cyclone intensity:

"No single high impact tropical cyclone event of 2004 and 2005 can be directly attributed to global warming, though there may be an impact on the group as a whole;

- Emanuel (2005) has produced evidence for a substantial increase in the power of tropical cyclones (denoted by the integral of the cube of the maximum winds over time) during the last 50 years. This result is supported by the findings of Webster et al (2005) that there has been a substantial global increase (nearly 100%) in the proportion of the most severe tropical cyclones (category 4 and 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale), from the period from 1970 to 1995, which has been accompanied by a similar decrease in weaker systems.

- The research community is deeply divided over whether the results of these studies are due, at least in part, to problems in the tropical cyclone data base. Precisely, the historical record of tropical cyclone tracks and intensities is a byproduct of real-time operations. Thus it's accuracy and completeness changes continuously through the record as a result of the continuous changes and improvements in data density and quality, changes in satellite remote
sensing retrieval and dissemination, and changes in training. In particular a step-function change in methodologies for determination of satellite intensity occurred with the introduction of geosynchronous satellites in the mid to late 1970's.

- The division in the community on the Webster et al and on the Emanuel papers is not as to whether Global Warming can cause a trend in tropical cyclone intensities. Rather it is on whether such a signal can be detected in the historical data base. Also it can be difficult to isolate the forced response of the climate system in the presence of substantial decadal and multi-decadal natural variability, such as the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation.

- Whilst the existence of a large multi-decadal oscillation in Atlantic tropical cyclones is still generally accepted, some scientists believe that a trend towards more intense cyclones is emerging. This is a hotly debated area for which we can provide no definitive conclusion. It is agreed that there is no evidence for a decreasing trend in cyclone intensities."

Update

Following comment and advice from readers of this blog I added the word 'tropical' to the title of this blog post.

Jennifer, 8pm. 22nd Feb.

Posted by jennifer at 01:40 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

February 21, 2006

How Many Cricket Pitches Burnt?

Jim Hoggett milks goats at his farm west of Gloucester in northern eastern NSW, he is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, and he had the feature letter in last week's The Land (16th February). It read:

Last weekend we had the routine "alleged illegal land clearing" scare in the Sydney Morning Herald, fostered by the Wilderness Society. It was alleged that the equivalent of 6 Sydney Cricket Ground pitches were being illegally cleared in NSW every hour of every day.

The greatest threat to nature in NSW is not scrub clearing in the central West. It is fire, especially fire in the National Parks.

In the few weeks prior to the SMH report an area perhaps 10 times the area of alleged illegal clearing went up in wildfires across the eastern States. And the season is not over yet. To use the much loved
Green cricket pitch analogy, that is the equivalent of 60 Sydney Cricket Grounds every hour of every day. The difference is that the fires consume the pristine, national heritage, wilderness rather than Central-Western scrub.

And this is as nothing to the 2003 fires (900 cricket grounds per hour for NSW and the ACT alone) where the jewels in the crown were burned to the ground - if that is not too mixed a metaphor.

I have not heard a peep out of the Wilderness Society about all this. Nor has anyone to my knowledge ever attempted to measure this truly massive, recurring ecological damage. Not to mention the annual risk
to the lives of firefighters. No doubt there is a lot of silent hand wringing but I hear no solutions.

And we will no doubt find that much of the alleged illegal clearing was of regrowth. The interval between the two photos in the SMH report was only 3 years. So much of the area may well have been previously cleared. Perhaps we could direct the satellite to take a survey of reafforestation in NSW. We might well find that the total area and density of NSW native vegetation has actually increased with regrowth and forest thickening. Let's look at the stock as well as the flow.

What is the net gain/loss?

Even better, instead of spending millions of dollars on satellites to spy on its own citizens, government could divert the money to programs which would prevent the mass destruction of our fauna and flora. Then we could possible simplify the absurdly restrictive Native Vegetation Act and work on a program of serious fire mitigation in our Parks.

Incidentally, the alleged illegal clearing amounted to less than one hundredth of one per cent of the area of NSW.

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Republished with permission from Jim Hoggett.

Posted by jennifer at 06:13 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack

February 20, 2006

Organic Toilet Paper: For the Intelligent Consumer

Question: when is a tomato not a tomato? Answer: When it's an organic tomato. Those who are into organics say it's superior to anything you can get that has been grown using conventional production methods. They will tell you that an organic tomato tastes better, is better for you and is grown in away that causes less harm to the environment. It may be more expensive, but you get what you pay for, don't you?

Thats accoring to an article on organics titled It's only natural published over the weekend in the Sunday [colour] Magazine of the Sydney and Melbourne tabloid newspapers. I didn't see the magazine, but Detribe kindly sent these snippets for the blog:

Critics, however, say it's a rip-off. Nothing more than a load of marketing hogwash aimed at people with more money than sense, which plays on fears about the misuse of pesticides and is supported through a series of far-fetched claims. Weighing up the pros and cons can be confusing, but one thing that's New Age crystal clear is just how popular organic products have become in recent years.

In 1990, just 372,000 ha were farmed organically in Australia. Today, the total land area given to organic production is around 10 million hectares and Australia now accounts for nearly half the world's organic farmland. Staggering as that increase may seem, organic food production still represents less than two per cent of the total value of agricultural production in this country.

The Australian organic food industry, estimated to be worth between $250-$500 rnillion, remains a minor player in the agricultural sector But, according to the government's Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (RIRDC), domestic demand for organic products significantly outstrips supply, despite an estimated growth in organic production of at least 15-25 per cent per annum, every year for the past five years.

... "Our market is intelligent consumer" says Pierce Cody founder of Macro Whole foods, a new chain of organic supermarkets sprouting up in Sydney and Melbourne. The stores sell everything from organic toilet paper and toothpaste, to cleaning products and pet food. Cody believes the key to growth is treating the consumer with respect.

"I can't see us advertising on a billboard, 'Macro: You'll love us' because people don't buy organic just because you tell them to. It's a choice they arrive at themselves" he says.

Cody's background is in advertising, he confesses he only got, into organics because he could see there was "monstrous scope for growth". "It's the thing," he says. "The concept is very simple to understand. It's clean, original food, made the way it used to be made. We are taking food back to the future."

Cody admits that "our market tends to be more white collar than blue collar", but he, denies the higher cost associated with organics makes it elitist.

"It is more expensive, yes, but it's the real cost of food prior to industrialised farming, which cuts comers."

[But]... by not using artificial fertilizers -like nitrogen, organic farmers have smaller yields - typically around 30 to 50 percent less than crops grown on conventional farms. This is the main reason why organic products are more expensive.

...In 1994; Trina Karstrom took over the Botobolar vineyard in scenic Mudgee, NSW. The 22 ha vineyard was the first organic one to be planted in Australia. That was in 1971 and the vines have always been grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides or chemical fertilizers. She is in no doubt about the health benefits of organically grown produce.

"I shudder to think what residual spray is in [conventional] wines," she says, "Grapes don't get washed before they're processed and the chemicals growers are allowed to spray are quite scary." Or are they?

Not according to Microbiologist Dr David Tribe, Senior lecturer at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Melbourne. "The organic lot make all these claims about better nutrition and health benefits but, overall, the hard evidence simply doesn't support it" he says.

A review of more than 100 studies that looked at differences between organic and conventional food, conducted in 2002 at New Zealand's University of Otago found there was "no convincing evidence to back claims that organically grown foods were healthier or tastier than those grown using chemicals". The review found that nutritional value had more to do with freshness and methods of storage than whether artificial inputs, such as pesticides, were used during production.

Strictly speaking; professional bodies outside the organic movement, such as the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA) and the Australian Medical Association (AMA), do not share the view that organic food is necessarily healthier than food grown conventionally.

Sunday Magazine (News Ltd Herald/Sun), page 23.
February 19 2006 Craig Scutt

............

Thanks Detribe.

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February 19, 2006

Lift Ban on GM Food Crops: Peter Corish

The federal government's Agriculture and Food Reference Group handed down its report last week titled 'Creating Our Future: Agriculture and food policy for the next generation' (4,700 kbs). It is very long, over 200 pages, and covers a range of issues including GM food crops. I haven't had a proper read yet, but received the following note from Roger Kalla:

Jennifer,

You might be interested to know that the Agriculture and Food Policy Reference Group (that called for submissions to its review of Agriculture and Food policy in August) has delivered its report to the Minister for Agriculture.

It was reported in Friday's The Age under the heading 'Call for ban to GM crops to end'.

I had a conversation with the Gene Technology Regulator, Sue Meek, about it on Wednesday at the launch of the Victorian Agribiosciences Centre.

Sue was very encouraged by the findings of the review led by the leader of the National Farmers Federation, Peter Corish, which put the emphasis on the lifting of the GM crop moratoria so that the Australian farmers could catch up with the rest of the world.

By the way, during the launch Minister Brumby was unashamedly spruiking for a new comapny Gramina PL which has developed GM grass with new health and animal production traits. The GM rye grass is hypoallergenic and has got a superior herbage quality.

No sneeze (humans) and sweeter taste (cows) are the real benefits of these GM grasses.

The problem is that they can't be grown in Australia and have had to be field evaluated in the US!

Regards,

Roger

The National Farmers Federation has so far been silent on GM issues. It is great to see Peter Corish calling for a lifting of the bans and to see The Age reporting this.

..........................

You can read my submission to the Reference Group by clicking here.

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February 18, 2006

Greenland Melting Faster Than, When it was Cooling?

I reckon it is nearly impossible to keep up with the climate change literature particularly the latest climate change scare story. Working out whether a particular piece of information is invented, real, real but exaggerated, etcetera, certainly takes effort.

Brisbane's newspaper, The Courier-Mail, has a story on page 19 of this weekend's edition titled 'Greenland ice sheets double melt rate'.

It begins:

"Global warming is melting Greenland's glaciers much faster than previously believed, raising fears that sea levels will rise rapidly during the next century"

This is how it works according to a latest issue of Science magazine:

"The Greenland Ice Sheet gains mass through snowfall and loses it by surface melting and runoff to the sea, together with the production of icebergs and melting at the base of its floating ice tongues. The difference between these gains and losses is the mass balance; a negative balance contributes to global sea-level rise and vice versa. About half of the discharge from the ice sheet is through 12 fast-flowing outlet glaciers, most no more than 10 to 20 km across at their seaward margin, and each fed from a large interior basin of about 50,000 to 100,000 km2. As a result, the mass balance of the ice sheet depends quite sensitively on the behavior of these outlet glaciers.

Two changes to these glaciers have been observed recently. First, the floating tongues or ice shelves of several outlet glaciers, each several hundred meters thick and extending up to tens of kilometers beyond the grounded glaciers, have broken up in the past few years. Second, measurements of ice velocity made with satellite radar interferometric methods have demonstrated that flow rates of these glaciers have approximately doubled over the past 5 years or so."

This article in Science (Vol. 31, pg 963-964) goes on to explain that 2002 and 2005 are records for "melt extent over the 27 years of observation" - which I assume refers to the last 27 years.

Contrast this information with an article titled "Recent cooling in coastal southern greenland and relation with the north atlantic oscillation" published in 2003 by Edward Hanna and John Cappelen (Geophysical research letters, VoL. 30, NO. 3, 1132).

This research paper which covers the period up until 2002 (the year there was record melting according to the new article in Science magazine)states:

"Analysis of new data for eight stations in coastal southern Greenland, 1958-2001, shows a significant cooling (trend-line change -1.29C for the 44 years), as do sea-surface temperatures in the adjacent part of the Labrador Sea, in contrast to global warming (+0.53C over the same period). The land and sea temperature series follow similar patterns and are strongly correlated but with no obvious lead/lag either way. This cooling is significantly inversely correlated with an increased phase of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) over the past few decades (r = -0.76), and will probably have significantly affected the mass balance of the Greenland Ice Sheet.

This 2003 paper only refers to coastal southern Greenland, while the new Science paper refers to "several large glaciers" and the last 5 years or so.

............

Thanks to Phil Done for alerting me to the new paper in Science and Benny Peiser for the link to 2003 paper.

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More on Methane & Forests

A paper published in Nature (Frank Keppler et.al., Vol 439, pgs. 187-191) some weeks ago indicating that tree emit methane, generated lots of media for a couple of days, and then nothing.

I wrote my last two columns for The Land on the issue, click here and here.

I received the following email in response:

Hello Jennifer,

It was with interest that I read your recent article on the effect of trees on the atmosphere. In my youth I worked in the timber industry as a faller and later as a dozer operator, here in this higher rainfall area the amount of termite activity in mature and maturing trees is amazing, almost every tree you would fall would have a nest in the butt and almost all stressed trees with a bit of dead wood in them will be ant infested, this does include quite small trees at times.

I noticed that the CSIRO tested methane in a young pinus radiata plantation I think they should be challenged to do their trials in a mature eucalypt forest, an old growth forest would be ideal, I'm sure the result would be a damn site different there.

Regards
Bruce Campbell

Thanks Bruce. I would also like to see some figures for mature tropical forests in Australia. And I was fascinated to read that termites emit 20 million tonnes of methane per year (Nature, Vol 439, pg. 148).

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Politics, Religon and Those Cartoons

Growing up, I aspired at different times, to be a florist, a marine biologist, an archaeologist and a botanist. I worked for many years as an entomologist. I never thought I would become a writer.

Now I am a writer I am very aware of the importance of ideas, evidence, and freedom of expression in particular as a counter to the power of propaganda. I have written about the five basic rules of propaganda as defined by Norman Davies in a blog post titled 'Interest versus Propaganda'.

Propaganda is perhaps easier to define than 'free speech' and usually much more subtle.

Free speech can be very offensive.

Explaining why e-journal Online Opinion did not publish the cartoons mocking Islam, but defending the right of others to publish the cartoons, Graham Young has written,

"If free speech defends only the right to be nice to others, then it is not worth defending itself. Free speech exists to protect the objectionable and the unreasonable, or it means virtually nothing."

Today I read at Reporters without Borders that as a consequence of publishing those offending cartoons,

"At least eleven journalists are being prosecuted in five countries and six have been jailed. Some face long prison sentences if convicted. Two editors in Jordan have been charged with provocation and encouraging disorder. Four journalists have been jailed in Yemen and charged under article 103 of the press law, which bans publication of anything that "harms Islam, denigrates monotheistic religion or a humanitarian belief."

I support the call from Reports without Borders for the imprisoned journalists to be released.

..................

The cartoons can be seen by linking to Tim Blair's blog.

The last paragraphs of this blog post was changed and updated, following comment and advice from readers of this weblog including those offended by the cartoons, on the morning of 20th February and the cartoons and direct link removed.

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Sun Bears (Part 1)

I have previously written that more effort should be put into "saving sun bears", click here for that blog post.

The international organisation that regulates trade in endangered species, CITES, lists sun bear as threatened with extinction and notes that there is a trade in sun bear 'body parts' including for traditional medicines.

Several readers have commented they would like to know more about sun bears. I have no expertise and I don't know anyone with expertise, but here goes ...

An adult male Malayan sun bear grows to about 1.2 m tall when standing on its hind legs and can weigh up to 65 kg making them the smallest bear species.

They live in the forests of south-east Asian and eat a varied diet of fruit, vegetables, meat and honey.

A study of the ecology of the bears in Sabah, Borneo, by S.T. Wong from 1999 to 2001 concluded that the low density of bears in lowland rainforests was a consequence of food shortages during "non-mass fruiting years".

The picture of this sun bear is from Indonesianfauna.com. There is some general information on the ecology of sun bears at the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology website, click here.

Many conservation groups claim that the greatest threat to the long term survival of sun bears in the wild is poaching of bears for the traditional Asian medicine trade which prescribes sun bear fat, gall, meat, paws, spinal cord, blood, and bones for complaints ranging from baldness to rheumatism.

Bears are also caught for food, with sun bear paw soup considered a delicacy in Taiwan.

According to the Bagheera website:

"The Chinese have developed a way to extract bile from the gallbladders of live bears. An estimated 5,000 bears are now farmed for their bile. Descended from wild-caught individuals, the farm bears are now captive-bred. This effort is driven more by economics than concern for the animals. More than 100 times the bile can be obtained by milking a live bear than by killing one. Government officials claim that farming has slowed the killing of wild bears, but critics contend it actually promotes the use of bear products and makes them available to more people."

A 2004 CITES report indicated that some bladders traded [I assume illegally] as sun bear gall bladders were actually from pigs.

The same report noted that some laboratories can distinguish between bile from wild sun bears and bile from captive-bred bears. I assume trade in the wild sun bear bile is illegal while trade in bile from captive-bred bears is legal?

The report included the following snippets of information on trade in sun bears and conservation efforts:

"Indonesia reported that its wildlife law enforcement staff had established good working relations with the country's Drugs and Food Administration Authority and that they organize joint inspections of relevant shops. The Secretariat has previously reported that working with such agencies seems highly effective.

Malaysia reported undertaking enforcement campaigns that specifically targeted trade in bear specimens. This had resulted in early 2003 in the seizure of 43 alleged bear gall bladders from shops. Six cases involving illicit trade in Malayan sun bear specimens had been prosecuted in 2003. Five of the cases involved bear parts, whilst the sixth involved a live bear.

The Republic of Korea confirmed that the use of a sniffer dog to detect illicit trade at border control points was highly successful, with such a dog in their country detecting 85 cases in just over two years. The Secretariat notes that a survey conducted by TRAFFIC, published in July 2003, found that the use of tiger, rhinoceros and bear specimens in traditional medicine in the Republic of Korea was decreasing, although further work remained to be done on this issue.

Singapore reported that it had produced a leaflet in Chinese, explaining CITES and the use of specimens of endangered species (including bears) in medicine, which it was using to build on work it has done with traditional medicine associations in Singapore.

Viet Nam reported that it is working with non-governmental organizations and captivebreeders of bears to address the issue of bear farms. It has found this issue to be complicated by the fact that bear farms have been established with animals taken from the wild prior to Viet Nam introducing legislation protecting the species. It recognizes that this has adversely affected wild populations."

............
Some information on CITES:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, known as CITES, is an international treaty designed to control and regulate international trade in certain animal and plant species that are now or potentially may become threatened with extinction.

Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction that are or may be affected by trade. Appendix II includes species that, although not necessarily now threatened with extinction, may become so unless trade in them is strictly controlled. Appendix III includes species that any Party country identifies as being subject to regulation within its jurisdiction for purposes of preventing or restricting exploitation and for which it needs the cooperation of other Parties to control trade.

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February 17, 2006

No Whale Meat Glut: Hiroshi Hatanaka

There have been reports, including from the BBC, that there is a glut of whale meat in Japan and that whale meat is being fed to dogs.

Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka from Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) responded yesterday with a media release:

"The way in which this story has been spun by anti-whaling lobbyists through naive journalists who didn't check their facts demonstrates the lack of objectivity that some media have when it comes to whaling," the ICR's Director General Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka said today.

This is an indictment on western media who do not question the information they receive on whaling and instead further reinforce falsehoods and wrong assumptions. It is the public that loses through receiving false information," he said.

The particular sale of whale meat for pet food referred by the journalists was carried out by a company near one of the traditional small-type whaling bases on the Boso Peninsula, south east of Tokyo. This was sold as a jerky-type product and was made from less than 100kg of a batch of Baird's Beaked whale, which the processor received from a local whaling company.

Baird's Beaked whale is not one of the species regulated by the International Whaling Commission and is not included in the ICR's research programs. The sustainable management of this particular species of whale is regulated by the Government of Japan's Fisheries Agency.

"The whale meat used for the pet food was 'hyakuhiro' - the small intestine of the whale commonly referred to as tripe - and other cheaper cuts that are not utilized for human consumption," Dr. Hatanaka said. Similarly, a small percentage of whale by-products from the research programs, ie some leavings after processing, that are not utilized for human consumption are also processed for the pet food market. This accords with the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) where it states that whales taken under the research provisions "shall so far as practicable be processed".

"As with other meat industries, such as cattle and sheep slaughtering for instance, not every part of the whale - intestines, some organs, etc - is appropriate for human consumption and these parts are processed for the pet food market."

"To suggest, as these groups have done, that fine cuts of whale meat from Japan's research programs is being turned into pet food because Japan has a glut of it is not true," Dr. Hatanaka said.

The distribution of frozen whale meat from the research programs is highly regulated. The price range that Japanese consumers are expected to pay is set by the Government and the supply to the market is kept under tight control and drip fed to ensure that whale meat is available in selected areas throughout the entire year.

"Demand always exceeds supply. At any given time, there will be an amount of whale meat in storage to ensure supply is always available. Japanese are not losing their taste for whale, and if left to market forces, the price of whale meat would increase considerably and reach consumers at unaffordable prices," Dr. Hatanaka said.

"The fact that the price of whale meat is well regulated by the Government means it is also affordable for some schools to reintroduce it as a protein-rich lunch option for pupils."

The wholesale price of minke whale red meat is set at a fixed price of 1950 Yen per kilogram. The whale meat from the western North Pacific research is available to the public from mid-December onwards.

Dr. Hatanaka said anti-whaling lobbyists are told when the catch reaches storage and coincide their public relations campaign to falsely allege the augmented supplies mean whale meat is not in demand because there is a large amount of it.

"Obviously our stocks of whale meat increase when we start selling the by-products from the North Pacific after Government approval in December and again when selling by-products from the Antarctic in July. It is at these times that supplies of whale meat are at their highest," Dr. Hatanaka said.

............
*The original BBC News story has been updated and changed. If anyone has a copy of the original story quoting the conservation groups could they please email it to me.

And I should have checked 'my facts' before posting last Saturday.

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Croc Hunting: NT Government Again Seeks Federal Approval

The Northern Territory Government is yet again seeking support from the federal government, this time the new Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister for crocodile safari hunting, according to ABC News Online.

Last year the Federal Government rejected the Territory's proposal that would see 25 crocodiles a year killed by trophy hunters.

A friend wrote to me at about that time:

"We in the NT are currently battling the Fed Government over our right to allocate 25 of the 600 wild crocs taken each year by landowners to safari hunters, which can increase the money landowners get for tolerating crocs.

The only difference here is who pulls the trigger and how much the landowner gets. It is all being held up because of concerns of "wounding", with apparently Steve Irwin being the resident expert advising the Federal Minister."

There were once less than 5,000 saltwater crocodiles in the Northern Territory. The population was decimated in the late 1940 and 1950s by hunters. A ban was placed on hunting and the exportation of skins in the early 1970s. Croc numbers have bounced back and are now estimated at 70,000.

Ecologist Dr Grahame Webb was involved with the program to rebuild croc numbers. He told me the following three principles were promoted:
1. Public education,
2. A program to contain problem crocs including trying to keep crocs out of Darwin harbor,
3. Ensuring crocs had a commercial value - so landholders saw them as an economic asset rather than a pest.

The program has been successful in so much as numbers are high and about 20,000 eggs and 600 crocs are harvested from the wild each year under a permit system. Eggs sell for about $40 each while crocs sell for perhaps $500.

Many locals, however, resent the crocodiles.

The following arguments have been progressed in favour of the safari hunting proposal:

1. The NT's crocodile management program was implemented in the late 1970s against fierce opposition from animal rights NGOs, nationally and internationally. Their dire predictions all proved groundless. NT judgement on crocodile management in the NT has a long track-record of being proven correct, whereas the unsubstantiated claims of impassioned animal rights proponents have all proved spurious.

2. With the UN urging Government's around the world to help achieve development based on environmental sustainability, and with Australia supporting these initiatives, the Federal Government should be proud and supportive of the model sustainable use program implemented in the NT with crocodiles. It is providing the international leadership the UN is seeking.

3. There can be no hunting or fishing of any species without risk of wounding and/or injury to the target species. Nor can there be farming without risk of injury to the species being farmed. Nor can there be cars on the road without road kills of wildlife. Animal welfare provisions and codes are in place throughout developed countries to reduce "unnecessary pain and suffering" within whichever context the human-animal interaction takes place.

4. If the Federal Government assumes wealthy experienced hunters, with the best hunting equipment money can buy, with experienced backup guides in place for a second shot, are amateurs that pose an undue threat to the welfare of crocodiles, then the assumption should be well grounded in fact. It should not be based on psuedoscience or the unsubstantiated opinion of people totally opposed to any hunting, of any species, for any reason.

5. If Government does assume wounding rates and injuries would be excessive - despite the complete lack of supporting evidence - then it raises a series of additional welfare issues Government must also deal with, for example:

* All other forms of hunting and fishing that lead to export would need to be re-evaluated,

* Indigenous people hunting with traditional methods such as spears would by default be labeled as grossly in breach of the Federal Government's new animal welfare standards,

* Government officers having to destroy problem crocodiles for forensic or other purposes would be in breach of the Federal Government's animal welfare standards.

Posted by jennifer at 03:50 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

February 15, 2006

Can Trees Cause Salinity? Asks Ian Mott

Regular commentator at this blog Ian Mott sent me the following email:

Hello Jen,

We have all grown accustomed to the notion that it is the removal of trees from the landscape that causes salinity. But recent research from the Argentine Pampas indicates that the addition of trees to a natural grassland can also increase the salinity of groundwater flow systems (GFS).

This could have major implications for the management of salinity in the Murray Darling Basin, particularly in rangeland areas where major thickening events have taken place or where existing small clusters of forest have expanded onto grassland ecosystems.

The study, by Esteban G. Jobbagy and Robert B. Jackson, published in Global Change Biology compared 20 paired plots of forest and grassland and found a significant increase in groundwater salinity under the forested plots. "Afforested plots (10-100 ha in size) showed 4-19-fold increases in groundwater salinity on silty upland soils but less than twofold increases on clay loess soils and sand dunes."

While this study has been limited to planted forest plots on previously grassland ecosystems, the same causal factors are at play whenever forest vegetation expands on grassland. And it logically follows that the same causal factors will be at play when, for example, a 10% canopy woodland thickens to become a 60% canopy forest.

Jobbagy & Jackson have concluded that "Soil cores and vertical electrical soundings indicated that ...salts accumulated close to the water table and suggested that salinization resulted from the exclusion of fresh groundwater solutes by tree roots."

To which the average farmer would say, "Well, they would do that, wouldn't they".

The extensive, 1400 plus, rangeland sample plots done by Bill Burrows confirm that more than 60 million hectares of rangeland in Queensland is subject to thickening at an average rate of circa 0.25m2 increase in basal area per hectare. There is a further estimated 30 million hectares in NSW. And there are also numerous landholder reports of properties that had only 3,000 ha of Gidgee in the early 1900's but have in the order of 50,000 ha today as a result of major encroachment onto grassland.

And this poses an interesting question for the publicly funded anti-salinity industry and the policy arms that have focussed so much public attention on the removal of trees as salinity causal agent. If the lowering of a water table by excess bore irrigation can be widely recognised as a causal factor in increasingly brackish ground water resources, why has it taken so long to recognise that a similar lowering of a water table by the addition of trees can produce the same result?

It certainly invites the question, is there any similar research conducted here in Australia?

Clearly, the political exploitation of salinity appears to be sinking deeper and deeper into murkier water.

Regards,
Ian Mott

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Detribe: Who is He?

A regular contributor to discussion at this blog is someone know as Detribe -that's his blog signature.

I attended a conference with Detribe in Ballarat a couple of years ago and he offered me a lift back to Melbourne and the airport.

At some point during the trip he suggested I get something out of his brief case, he was driving. I did find that technical paper under a large book on Italian and an equally large text on evolution.

Detribe is a scholar and a gentleman, and he is also a Good Samaritan.

Last year he spent several weeks in Africa where his foundation "Sow the Good Seed" provides aid in a very direct material way by underwriting the cost of farm inputs for a hectare of land for subsistence farmers trying to get ahead. If you would like to get involved with this foundation and help an African farmer out of poverty contact detribe [at] gmail [dot] com .

This is a picture of Detribe with a local farmer in South Africa taken last year.

DeTribe also has his own blog full of information on biotechnology in particular genetically modified crops.

At the blog you will find out that Detribe is "Education in molecular genetics, biochemistry (genetic engineering), infectious disease and has professional experience in several areas of biotechnology including vaccines, molecular diagnostics, crop safety, and manufacturing of chemicals by fermentation."

You won't find out at his blog that he is dyslexic - but he has told me this is a "constant source of embarrasment".

Detribe is also a philosopher. Quotable Detribe quotes from this blog site include:

"AGW [Anthropogenic Global warming] is the green version of Mother Theresa."

and

"It's how we treat our contrarians that tells us whether we are living in a truly civil society. The contrarians are very valuable to us, because they point to the places where 'conventional wisdom' may be getting it wrong."

I also know that Detribe is fan of the skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg and that along with Dame Edna he lives in Moonee Ponds, Melbourne, Australia.

.............................................

This post will be filed under a new category titled "people".

As a reader and/or commentator at this blog you may like to tell us something about yourself? Contributions encouraged and you may use a 'nom de plume' ...please email to jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com.

Also, I'm putting some notes together on 'Boxer' - the character from Orwell's classic Animal Farm and also the Boxer who contributes to this blog site. Could someone who can draw possibly send me a caricature of 'Boxer' - something kind please?

Posted by jennifer at 09:48 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack

February 14, 2006

Greenhouse Mafia (Part 2): Ian Castles' View

The following comment from Ian Castles was made at the thread on yesterday's blog post Greenhouse Mafia Gagging Scientists?:

"I hold the directly contrary view to that presented in the [4-Corners] program: CSIRO scientists have had exceptional freedom to present their personal views, and this freedom has been used to present a one-sided perspective on climate change issues, including in official publications of the Australian Government.

I could give many examples, but for the sake of illustration I'll focus on Dr. Barrie Pittock, who lamented on last nights program that he wasnt allowed to put policy views into a government document.

Well, he's had free rein to give his opinions in the book Climate Change: Turning Up the Heat, which was published by CSIRO Publishing last October with a laudatory Foreword contributed by Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC. The book has also been published in London by Earthscan, which is marketing it as a 'major new textbook'.

Dr. Pittock makes no pretence of objectivity. On the pros and cons of the Kyoto Protocol and of quantitative emissions targets he cites a report to three State Governments, a report by the Australian Climate Group ('consisting of a number of industry, science, and environment experts'), the Federal Governments Chief Scientist, Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute and 'EU and UK thinking'.

He doesn't so much as mention the views of experts whove studied these subjects in depth, such as Warwick McKibbin ('the Kyoto Protocol is so badly constructed that it has set back the search for sensible and effective policy responses by at least a decade'), Aynsley Kellow (the Protocol is 'a step in the wrong direction, and one which could hinder rather than help future international cooperation'), Richard Tol ('the emission reduction targets as agreed in the Kyoto Protocol are irreconcilable with economic rationality') and William Nordhaus ('the Kyoto Protocol is widely seen as somewhere between troubled and terminal [and] threatens to be seen as a monument to institutional overreach').

The Australian Governments 'stated reasons for not ratifying the Protocol' are set beside 'some counter arguments' in a box which is acknowledged to be based on a lecture in which Clive Hamilton caricatured the Governments reasons as 'Silly Reason No. 1', 'Silly Reason No. 2'' and so on. Dr. Pittock uses essentially the same ten reasons, but leaves out the word 'silly' and tones down Dr. Hamilton's language somewhat.

Pittock represents Australias refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol as a symptom of an unenlightened attitude to the threat of climate change and to the future of humanity generally. He says that 'The industrialised world currently gives about 0.22% of GDP [in international aid], with the United States and Australia (WHO HAVE NOT SIGNED THE KYOTO PROTOCOL) giving far less.' This is wrong according to Yearbook Australia 2006, released by the ABS last month, which says 'The ratio of Australia's ODA to gross national income for 2005-06 is estimated at 0.28%, placing Australia above the donor average which, in the latest year available (2004), was 0.25%.

So far as the facts are concerned, I'll put my money on the ABS - but why was the reference to the Kyoto Protocol introduced into a discussion of foreign aid?

In my own area of interest, the IPCCs emissions scenarios, Dr. Pittocks analysis is all over the place. In Chapter 3 he says that the scenarios 'are clearly not predictions, and do not have equal probability of occurrence in the real world.' Then in the next Chapter, he gives a simple example of a climate change PREDICTION in which CSIRO used its projected warming in the Macquarie Valley of New South Wales of between 1.0 and 6.0 deg C by 2070 (which uses the IPCC scenarios in conjunction with CSIROs calibration for regional variation) as input to a runoff model, from which it was concluded that 'the projected change in runoff into the main water storage dam was in fact between no change (zero) and a decrease of 35% by 2070, which means a 50% chance of water supply decreasing by more than 17%.' This calculation implies that the IPCC scenarios DO have equal probability of occurrence in the real world.

In a box headed 'Impacts on Food Production', Dr. Pittock reports the results 'for all SRES scenarios' of 'a major international study' of this subject by Martin Parry and colleagues. But Parry and his team didnt use all the SRES scenarios: for example, in the A1 family they only modelled the A1FI (FI = fossil intensive) scenario, and didn't use the A1B (B = balanced) or the A1T (T = transition to sustainability) scenarios. Pittock correctly quotes the Parry et al paper as saying that the A1FI scenario is one of 'greater inequality', but in fact it is the scenario of LEAST inequality. He says that 'the majority of people will be worse off' by 2080, but with the possible exception of the A2 scenarios (which assume, improbably, that the world will by then have 14 billion people), the study shows unambiguously that the majority of people will be much better off by 2080. And so on.

Dr. Pittock has produced a 50-page set of 'Supplementary notes and references' to the book, which has been published on the CSIRO Publishing website. Its purpose is to avoid the need for footnotes or references to the literature in parentheses, which 'can be offputting to the general reader', and also to 'bring the notes up to date, for example in relation to Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans about the beginning of September. Barrie Pittock says that, if he gets the time he 'will try to further update these notes once or twice while the book remains current'. It appears that he's completely free to do so.

The Supplementary Notes are outrageously one-sided. McIntyre and McKitrick are said to have made an 'attack' on the IPCCs 'hockey stick' graph, but Pittock explains that 'Mann and co-authors are the recognised experts in the field, and thus best qualified to make the expert judgments on data quality and representativeness needed.' (Have the experts in CSIRO's Maths/Stats Division been consulted about the data quality and representativeness of the work of Mann & co?) . Dr. Pittock does not mention any of the three papers by M&M that were published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2005, or McIntyre's Climate Audit site (though there are several references to the realclimate site which includes Michael Mann among its proprietors).

Dr. Pittock names Bjorn Lomborgs 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' as a classic sceptic text and cites two hostile reviews of the book (but no favourable ones). The immediately succeeding sentence begins with a reference to 'Documentation of the fact that some [unnamed] leading contrarians have been funded by fossil fuel groups'.

Dr. Pittock claims that 'IPCC in its emissions scenarios used both MER and PPP', although David Henderson and I have explained in detail why it is that the so-called PPP scenarios produced by one of the IPCC's model builders are not in fact PPP. He says that McKibben (sic) and colleagues have reviewed the argument over the use of MER or PPP in a paper published by the Lowry (sic) Institute for International Policy, but does not mention that the paper strongly criticises the IPCC emissions scenarios. Nor does he mention a paper in which McKibbin & Stegman 'find strong evidence that the wide variety of assumptions about 'convergence' commonly used in emissions projectiions are not based on empirically observed phenomena.' Nor does he mention a recent peer-reviewed paper by Peter Dixon and Maureen Rimmer of Monash University which lends support to the Castles & Henderson critique.

On the other hand, Dr. Pittock reports that 'Pant and Fisher, from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, conclude in a 2004 paper 'PPP versus MER: Comparison of real incomes across nations' that 'The use of MER by IPCC remains valid and the critique by Castles and Henderson cannot be sustained'. This conference paper has not been peer-reviewed, whereas the Castles and Henderson paper 'International Comparisons of GDP: Issues of Theory and Practice' (which Pittock does not mention) was published in World Economics, January-March 2005. The publisher of WE states that 'All papers published in World Economics are read and reviewed by the executive editors who are all professors of economics of international repute.'

Incredibly, in the light of Barrie Pittock's highly selective citation of sources, peer reviewed or not, which support his position, he says in his book that:

'The peer review system means that statements based on such papers tend to be more reliable than other kinds of statements or claims. Claims made by politicians, newspaper columnists, special interest think tanks and campaign groups are not normally subject to such quality control beforehand.'

It would be interesting to know what quality control CSIRO Publishing applied to Dr. Pittock's book."

Posted by jennifer at 12:19 PM | Comments (104) | TrackBack

Eco-Roses

I wonder how much fertilizer, water and pesticide was applied to all the roses that will be delivered today - Valentine's Day?

Not to mention the energy involved in transporting them and keeping those cut stems cool?

According to a website about flowers:

"British people spend around 40 million pounds on flowers to say "I love you".

Sales of fresh flowers increase by 48% on average sales levels.

The majority of roses sold in the UK are flown in from Colombia, Ecuador, Holland and Kenya, to satisfy the huge consumer demand.

Valentine's Day is celebrated on the same day worldwide therefore over 55 million roses - mostly red - are traded on this one day alone.
Russians, Japanese and Americans are avid buyers of roses; and many European countries spend three times what we in the UK do, on fresh flowers.

Most nations want 'Valentine's' red roses."

Many an academic has said we shouldn't grow cotton and rice in Australia, but what about roses? Jared Diamond suggested we should phase our agriculture in Australia, but didn't mention roses in his book titled Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive.

Here is some more information, but I'm not sure how reliable:

"Just how many roses do Americans buy on Valentine's Day? On Valentine's Day 2002, they bought 130 million. Getting 130 million roses to the market for one day is neither easy nor cheap, say the growers.

Roses can't be cranked out like hamburgers or oil changes. Roses require time, care, warmth and sunlight.

Most of the roses on the market are grown in greenhouses. According to Roses Incorporated, a rose growers trade association, commercial rose growers in the U.S. operate nearly 900 acres of greenhouse area at a capital investment of about $1 million per acre.

In summer, a greenhouse can grow a rose in about 30 days. But in the cold, dark months of December, January, and February it takes between 50 and 70 days to grow a rose.

Keeping the Valentine's Day rose crop warm while it grows requires a lot of heat. So much that the winter heating bills of large, California greenhouses typically exceed $200,000 a month.

And the production logistics are daunting. At the same time growers are filling the Christmas season demand, they must gear up to produce a huge Valentine's Day crop.

The distribution logistics are no less daunting. The timing must be perfect. Growers and wholesalers must get the rose crop to 26,000 florists and 23,000 supermarkets within five days of Valentine's Day. Any sooner is too early, for the roses may perish. Any later is too late. Not many people buy roses the day after Valentine's Day."

Clearly we live in a rich society, full of tradition and ceremony and we still have the energy and land resources to mass produce and distribute roses.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Posted by jennifer at 08:55 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 13, 2006

Greenhouse Mafia Gagging Scientists? (Part 1)

The ABC television program Four Corners promotes itself as "investigative TV journalism at its best". It certainly has a reputation, and an ability to get its programs talked about even before they have been shown.

I have already received several emails and a phone call about tonight's program which is titled The Greenhouse Mafia and by Janine Cohen.

I usually play tennis on a Monday night, but I will have to see if I can get out of this commitment so I can watch the program.

The preamble at the Four Corners website suggests a conspiracy is about to be uncovered, with comment including:

"Are Australians getting the whole truth on global warming?

Not according to evidence given to Four Corners, which returns with disturbing allegations about the power wielded by industry lobbyists, the self-proclaimed greenhouse "mafia".

A whistleblower steps forward with claims that industry representatives have burrowed deep inside the federal bureaucracy in a successful bid to hijack greenhouse policy.

"Their influence over greenhouse policy in Australia is extraordinary", he observes."

Science in Australia has certainly become very politicised.

In my experience it is usually the 'environment industry' pulling the strings; click here for something of a review by Prof Bob Carter.

I received the following note from a government scientists recently on an issue unrelated to greenhouse:

"Most would not understand how much control over scientists there is.

When ...[information deleted so scientists can not be identified]... they were "directed" from on high in overall scope. Comments at press conferences are rehearsed. Between the Minister's Office and the operational senior scientist ... [chain of command]... then to Deputy Director General, across to a policy group, then Public Affairs (press and spin), then the Minister's minders, then the Minister and maybe Premier. If its hot maybe through [another Department mentioned here] and Premiers. Perhaps shot at by [another government department] in counter move by them. Briefs and public statements are written and rewritten. Some might argue it's about responsibility and quality control - but it often becomes sinister."

There is a real need for much more openness. Government scientists must be free to put the evidence and argue their case. Policy on environmental issues should be informed by the best science.

But I am wary of tonight's program.

I do hope it is not just another industry bashing exercise. Their journalist Ticky Fullerton got it wrong on the Murray River and certainly botched the program on Tasmanian forestry; click here for my blog on 'the forestry job' and this article by Christian Kerr from Crikey on Four Corners titled the ABC's Paralysis on Bias is a good read.

Posted by jennifer at 11:21 AM | Comments (49) | TrackBack

February 12, 2006

Neil Hewett

One of Neil Hewett's first contributions to this blog was a picture of a buttressed tree trunk. He has since made valuable contributions to discussion on a range of topics from whaling to the practicalities of powering a home in remote Far North Queensland.

Neil's passion is ecotourism and he gives us some insights into Cooper Creek Wilderness in the following contribution - the first under my suggestion (see comment following this post) that we find out more about some of the contributors to this blog.

Neil writes:

When Queensland's Wet Tropics World Heritage Area was inscribed on the 9th December 1988, Senator Graham Richardson imposed Australia's international management obligations onto the title-holders of almost two-hundred parcels of freehold and leasehold land.

I was working as an outdoor educator in the north Queensland timber community of Ravenshoe at the time Richardson was being pelted with rocks by infuriated members of this disenfranchised community. I remember being unimpressed with the Minister's recommendation that those who made the change to rainforest-based tourism would reap economic benefits beyond timber and as it has turned out, the promise of a prosperous Ravenshoe tourism economy remains unfulfilled. I have read more recently, perhaps even on Jennifer's blog, that those images on prime-time TV of angry timber-workers throwing rocks was the political pay-dirt that won the support of the multitudes.

I spent the following seven years working as an outdoor educator in remote aboriginal homelands before returning to the Daintree rainforest, to become a co-founding director of Cooper Creek Wilderness; a private-sector World Heritage land manager.

The greatest challenge for Cooper Creek Wilderness is sustaining a conservation economy against the complete subsidisation of the 98% majority publicly-owned portion of the WHA. Government disregarding conservation management as a business activity relieves it of any obligation to competitive neutrality. Tourism is subsidised recurrently to the tune of millions of dollars to patronise publicly-owned rather than privately-owned portions of WHA.

This leaves us in an interesting position to observe directly the impacts of government on conservation management and particularly off-reserve. About 70% of Australia's landscape is held under private interests, including indigenous landholders. This vast majority of Australia outside its system of protected area estate and yet it contains outstanding universal values in terms of biological diversity and ecological integrity.

Australia's National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development encourages protection of these values and challenges for nature conservation, both inside and outside protected areas.

Off-reserve conservation requires the cooperation of landholders. Financial incentives through ecotourism have enormous potential to renumerate the care and presentation of natural and cultural assets by the most rightful and intimately knowledgeable beneficiaries.

Cooper Creek Wilderness has pursued such an objective since its inception. Its model of off-reserve conservation through ecotourism regulates access, enabling visitors to enjoy wilderness values under the informative supervision of an inhabitant. This perspective value-adds to the destination's nature-based appeal. Visitors are amazed by the natural values but are also very interested in the interaction between human inhabitants and their natural environment and how they go about stewardship.

"User-pays" fully-finances the conservation management of the land without any cost to the taxpayer. The visitor is an active and willing participant in the achievement of Australia's international obligations and as a consequence, the environment is protected for the livelihoods it provides its stewards, to perpetuity.

Neil is also a contributor to Online Opinion. Find out more about Cooper Creek Wilderness by clicking here.
.................

This post will be filed under a new category titled "people".

As a reader and/or commentator at this blog you may like to tell us something about yourself? Contributions encouraged and you may use a 'nom de plume' ...please email to jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com.

Also, I'm putting some notes together on 'Boxer' - the character from Orwell's classic Animal Farm and also the Boxer who contributes to this blog site. Could someone who can draw possibly send me a caricature of 'Boxer' - something kind please?

Posted by jennifer at 10:34 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack

February 11, 2006

Richard Lindzen on Hockey Sticks

There has been more published in the last week about the hockey stick with summaries of what it all means at Real Climate and Climate Audit.

David J commented yesterday at this blog that,

It would seem the Hockey Stick "debate" is fast going the same way as the MSU "debate".

I understand David's comment to mean that more data and analysis is confirming that current warming is 'unnatural' and a consequence of global warming from greenhouse gases.

But the following comment from Richard Lindzen (see the second reason), sent as a letter to Benny Peiser, has got me wondering confused:

Dear Benny,

The concern over the hockey stick has always struck me as weird. There are several reasons for my impression:

1. There is no doubt that Europe and the North Atlantic were warmer than they are today for several centuries during the high middle ages. This is more than enough information to tell us that major climate changes can occur without the present level of industrialization -- regardless of what happened to the global mean temperature.

2. Indeed, if the global mean temperature did not change while Europe and the North Atlantic underwent very substantial warming, this would imply a major change in the geographic pattern of
temperature. However, a major assumption in the hockey stick is that the patterns remain fixed. One is then left with the paradoxical conclusion that if the hockey results are