Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for July 2005

Correction from David Douglass to Ken Miles

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I received the following email yesterday from David Douglass, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, New York:

Dear Dr Marohasy

The following quote from your web page has come to my attention:

“A good example of skeptics cherry picking is ‘Altitude dependence of atmospheric temperature trends: Climate models versus observation’ by David Douglass, Benjamin Pearson and Fred Singer (Geophysical Research Letters, 2004, Volume 31, Page L13208).

Here the authors claim to compare modeled and observed atmospheric temperature changes.
A nice idea in theory.
But in practice, the data set which they compare the modeling results against has been cherry picked in three ways.

[1] There are a number of different attempts to determine atmospheric temperature trends. They pick the only one that shows a cooling influence.

[2] The authors of this attempt to determine atmospheric temperature trends have since refined their algorithms, the new dataset shows warming. Their new data is ignored.

[3] They end their analysis in 1996. Had they included the extra data, the dataset would have shown warming.“(end of quote)

You have not read this paper very carefully (attached).

I will comment on your 3 points.

[1] Which atmospheric trend sets showing warming have we ignored? I believe that I have read all of the relevant papers and am not aware of a single measurement supporting positive trends in the troposphere. Please send reference to such papers.

[2] Who are the authors? Not us. You may mean other attempts to analyze the satellite data. If so, then Christy has shown that those attempts are flawed and that the UAH results stand. The UAH satellites only gives us one point. What about the other two independent data sets showing disagreement with the models?

[3] We explained why we only showed the results to 1996. However, we did do the whole range and found very little difference (read the paper).

I do not mind being called a skeptical scientist, but it is not too accurate because the word skeptic as used in the climate debate implies being against.

I prefer just “scientist”. In physics the word scientist, without adjective, has an invariant meaning. It means one who searches for scientific truth by comparing observations against hypothesis — if there is disagreement, the hypothesis is wrong.

However, in this field of climate research there evidently is more than one kind of scientist and adjectives seem to be necessary. If forced, then I choose “agnostic” for myself because I do not know which hypothesis is correct. That is why I am working in the field of climate research right now.

Sincerely
David Douglass
Department of Physics and Astronomy

I have emailed David explaining that the comment was posted by Ken Miles, not myself as he had assumed. And I wrote that I would post his response – which is what you have just read. The comment from Ken followed my post of 18th April titled “Warwick Hughes” and can be read here
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000559.html.

Ken ended with the comment, “Climate change skeptics may say that they are just after the truth, but in the vast majority of cases (I can only think of two prominent exceptions) it simply isn’t true.”

I ask, “Which pot is calling which kettle black?”.

God Bless America

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It is the 4th July, Independence Day in the USA, and NASA has successfully smashed something the size of a washing machine into a gigantic comet.

The aim of the cosmic collision, and I gather it was successful, was to find out what is inside comets. Comets are from somewhere else and believed to contain “primordial material, preserved in the deep-freeze of space, since the formation of the solar system”.

For fantastic pictures and more information on Deep Impact, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact.

It is almost as exciting as that nuclear fusion reactor they agreed to build last week in the south of France.

Asteroids (and also comets) can cause tsunamis, see http://www.ipa.org.au/files/news_892.html.

There are about 100 scientists on the lookout for things from outer space that could collide with planet earth see http://128.102.32.13/impact/intro_faq.cfm.

Teach Me to Fish

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Africa is in the news. I lived in Madagascar and then Kenya from 1985 through to 1992.

Here I am in in the far south-west of Madagascar in about 1986,
Jen stopping for lunch.

This was one way of getting about in Madagascar in the mid 1980s,
by taxi brouse.

Taxibrouses would run the more common form of transport off the road,
the bullock cart .

I read about the planned Live 8 Concerts for Africa last week and I was sceptical. I thought of the proverb, “Give me a fish and I eat or a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a life time”.

“Forgiving debt, or giving money, is not going to do much more than reward bad management,” were my thoughts.

Others had similar concerns. According to ABC Online,

“Some aid workers and Africans worry that the Live 8 initiatives will only serve to bolster corrupt regimes while scepticism persists that rock stars can change anything.
“I don’t believe it will do any good,” said 18-year-old Nir Livneh in the London crowd. “It won’t stop poverty in Africa.”
In Johannesburg, most of those interviewed among the crowd of 10,000 had never even heard of Geldof but Edward Romoki, yelling over a booming hip-hop act, said: “Maybe a concert like this can put Africa in the news and change things.””

How might putting Africa in the news change things?

I read today that Bob Geldof asked for more than just debit relief, he is asking for three things:
1. Action to wipe out Africa’s debt,
2. Double aid, and
3. The scrapping of trade barriers.

According to theSydney Morning Herald one million people attended the 10 free concerts in Europe, North America, South Africa and Japan, while an estimated 3 billion watched on television.

Bob Geldof, brought the computer billionaire Bill Gates to the Hyde Park stage, introducing him to the crowd of 200,000 as “the greatest philanthropist of our age”, who had given away $US5 billion.

Gates believes in technology including biotechnology (GM food crops). He believes in not only teaching people ‘how to fish’ (remembering the proverb) but also in providing them with the best technology. Towards this end he is supporting the work of a woman I once met, and admire immensely, Florence Wambugu. And you can find more about Florence at
http://whybiotech.ca/canada-english.asp?id=3603 .

Some of the projects supported by her group and that will be given a kick-along by the funding from Bill Gates can be found at
http://www.ahbfi.org/msv.htm .

Clear Fell for Tall Trees

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The Wilderness Society is no doubt celebrating the recent decision by Japanese paper mill Mitsubishi to only source woodchip from plantation forests. The end result, however, is likely to be fewer tall trees in Tasmania’s native forests.

The tall wet sclerophyll forests that make Tasmania so special are not able to regenerate without some form of severe disturbance and fire.

The annual three month window for burning has just ended in Tassie.

Where there is no logging and no wildfires, the mature eucalypt overstorey will stagnate and continue to decline, eventually to be replaced by (shorter) rainforest.

Clear felling to quote an old foresters, “bares the mineral soil to produce an adequate seedbed, and provides a brief respite for the new (Eucalyptus) forest to assert itself over its shrub competitors. The seed drop on the bared seedbed may be a serendipitous natural event, or else a man-made contrived additive. All our current “Old Growth Forests” were the result of major fire occurrences from lightning or indigenous firing.”

I was in Tassie in May.

And here are some pictures from that visit:

View image of stream in forest (about 50kb).

View image of swamp gum (about 50kbs).

View image of old tall Eucalyptus trees (about 130 kbs).

COMMENT from reader inserted at 3.20pm on 4th July:
Jennifer,
Your “View image of old tall Eucalyptus trees” requires explanation:
1.The background slope (R.H.S.& centre)is an area of very old forest burnt, without doubt by wildfire maybe 50 years ago with regrowth(same species)to 50-60 metres & many dead remnant “stags” of the original dominant Euc. species still standing –most have fallen over. To the left is remnant old growth, damaged but only some killed. Regrowth here will be patchy.
2. The mid-slope almost certainly is regrowth(same Euc. species) to ca. 40 metres following logging & regeneration burning & aerial seeding (same species).Note very few stags, they have long since been converted to furniture & high quality papers etc.etc.
3. The foreground could be another species but has apparently not been logged or catastrophically burnt c.f.1&2.
Regards, Bill.

View image of clear felled patch (about 130 kbs).

and
View closeup of recently burnt patch (about 50 kbs).

Nuclear Fusion to Power the World?

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Every so often I am asked to be a part of Friday morning’s panel of guests at the local ABC radio station. Guests nominate their ‘big issue’ for the week and discussion follows.

I am on tomorrow (it will probably be today by the time I post this) and I have been surfing the net and reading the papers thinking about what I might nominate as the ‘big issue’ in the morning.

The event that seems to have passed pretty well under-discussed is the announcement in Moscow on Tuesday to build a $16 billion nuclear fusion reactor in the south of France.

The advantage of nuclear fusion over the current uranium-dependent nuclear fission plants is that there is no radioactive waste. Both fission and fusion are greenhouse neutral.

I gather that the nuclear fusion rector has been on the drawing board since the early 1980s and since December 2003 negotiations had been deadlocked over where to build it with the Japanese (one of six countries involved in the project others are Russia, South Korea, US, China and European Union) insisting that the reactor be
based in Japan.

Anyway on Tuesday it was finally agreed that the site would be Cararache, near Aix-en-Provence in the South of France. Cararache apparently already has 18 nuclear installations and is already a centre for research on magnetic fusion.

I understand that nuclear fusion involves the forcing together of atomic nuclei, typically hydrogen atoms, under high temperature and pressure potentially through the creation of magnetic cages with strong magnetic fields which prevent the particles from escaping. It is claimed the technology can potentially deliver abundant cheap energy whose main by-product is water.

The sun is powered by nuclear fusion. While the concept is not new, this appears to be the first big investment in developing the technology for commercialization. With all the discussion about greenhouse and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emission, the price of oil, fear that oil will run out, and the opposition to power stations based on traditional nuclear fission technology, it seems surprising that this announcement has generated so little public discussion.