Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for August 2005

Cubbie Hole

By

Paul Sheehan writing in today’s Sydney Morning Herald blames the Queensland National Party for Cubbie Station and the water it holes up. Water that goes to grow cotton in Queensland instead of sheep in NSW. Sheehan writes:

“The Sinkhole, for example, breaks every rule of communal morality. It is better known as Cubbie Station, and it is an act of economic war by one state, Queensland, against another state, NSW. Cubbie is a source of rage for the former NSW premier, Bob Carr. Privately, he urged his fellow Labor Premier, Peter Beattie, to buy the station and take it out of production for the national good. Beattie was sympathetic, but Queensland is Queensland, the bulldozer is still king, and the Queensland Nats will die in a ditch to protect Cubbie Station.

This applies doubly to the Canberra press gallery’s latest pin-up boy, Senator Barnaby Joyce, whose political base is dominated by Cubbie and whose Senate campaign was funded in large part by Cubbie.”

I don’t have much sympathy for Cubbie Station, the Queensland Nationals, or Barnaby Joyce, but I am not sure Sheehan has told the whole story.

Cubbie managed to get its water, and keep its water, by playing and beating consequtive state and federal governments (Labor, National and Coalition)at their own game.

Cubbie’s story as told by ‘Smart Rivers’is at http://www.smartrivers.com/background.htm .

What is most striking to me about the Dirranbandi and St George communities that support Cubbie is their holistic approach to survival. They work in with, and employ the local aboriginals. They work in with, and employ the best scientists. They somehow managed to get Barnaby Joyce to Canberra.

Cross over the border from Dirranbandi into NSW and it looks and feels different. Many of the town centres are boarded up – they obviously have a crime problem. Aboriginal problems I’ve been told. It is so bad in at least one town that they are using plastic instead of glass in the windows of new government commissioned homes – I was told.

I have previously written expressing concern for the NSW graziers, and their Coolibahs, that have lost flood waters, see
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000629.html .

As explained in the above post of 26th May, I offered to plot the river height data against rainfall to help illustrate the problem – but they still haven’t manage to send me the data file in a format that I can open.

The Price of Woodchip

By

On Saturday I attended a conference at the State Library of New South Wales sponsored by the Independent Scholars Association of Australia, NSW Chapter, entitled “Looking for Forests, Seeing Trees: A Continent at Risk”.

Senator Bob Brown of the Australian Greens was the keynote speaker.

It soon became apparent that many of Sydney’s ‘Independent Scholars’ hold Bob Brown in the highest of regard. The audience was clearly enthralled as he told the story of Recherche Bay – Tasmania’s equivalent of Sydney’s Botany Bay but still essentially a beautiful wilderness area of incredible historical significance according to Bob Brown.

He told of the first friendly encounters between French scientists and the local Aboriginals in 1792 and how now – shock and horror – timber company Gunns Ltd was going to clear fell the forests of Recherche Bay. And it was all for woodchip that would be sold to Japan for $10 a tonne.

We were repeatedly told that Gunns Ltd turns 90% of the 200 year old trees it fells into woodchip which are then sold to Japan for $10 a tonne. We were told it was the same across Tasmania. There would soon be no old growth forest left in Tasmania if the ruthless company Gunns Ltd supported by the horrible Howard-government had their way – and all for $10 a tonne. He described the situation as “a holocaust”.

During question time I asked Brown a question that went along these lines. Wasn’t 80% of old growth forest in Tasmania reserved, as well as 70% of the original extent of forest still being in existence? Hadn’t Recherche Bay already been logged? So to suggest that the last tree was about to be cut down in Tasmania was, to say the least, an exaggeration.

He responded along the lines that there are statistics and statistics (you know: ‘lies, damn lies and then there are statistics’) but the bottom line is that as more is logged, “the percentage protected increases and eventually all will have been logged and then they (Gunns Ltd) will claim that 100% is protected”.

The audience loved Bob and it was with gushing praise he was cheered off the stage and then departed the conference.

Maybe I should have asked a question about the $10 per tonne. I thought it was more like $150 per tonne, but I wasn’t sure.

I have just checked some sources tonight.

Brown is not alone is claiming a low price for woodchip. Jared Diamond in his much acclaimed book ‘Collapse’ quotes $7 per tonne (pg. 404).

When I queried this figure with Alan Ashbarry from Timber Community Australia early in the year he emailed me a copy of the Woodchip Settlement Price dated 18th February from Gunns Ltd for 2004 showing the price per tonne at $159.00 (Download file) and the note:

“Diamonds un-referenced figures on the value of export woodchips do not stand scrutiny. The current price for woodchips is the leading Australian Hardwood Chip Exporter (LAHCE) benchmark price settled at AUD 159.00 per BDMT (bone dry metric tonnes). This equates to US$120, it takes two bone dry metric tonnes of chip to make a tonne of pulp used in paper manufacture. The price for paper quoted by Diamond is overstated when compared to international benchmarks.”

I have checked this value against the value in the most recent publication from ABARE, see http://abareonlineshop.com/PdfFiles/PC13135.pdf (pg. 51).

The most recent figures here are for December 2004 with a total volume of 1,413,300 tonnes exported to Japan at a value of $214,147,000 which gives a value of $152 per tonne. This confirms the value of $159 to be about right and suggests the value of $10 per tonne to be complete rubbish.

I did suggest at the conference that they should check the price for woodchip. I hope that there were some independent and scholarly enough in the room to do so. If Brown could get something so basic, and readily available, wrong, as the price for woodchip, can you rely on much that he says?

Glaciers Surveyed, Article Reviewed

By

Phillip Done, a reader of this web-log, reviews a recent article in New Scientist:

“The 27 August 2005 New Scientist (NS) has an article Global Warming: The flaw in the thaw.

It examines recent developments in worldwide glacial retreat. 79 out of 88 glaciers surveyed were retreating. The phenomenon of glacial meltdown is heralded by climate change protagonists as the “canary in the mine” for climate change.

What else do you need to know. But the article has something for everyone and maybe the climate change guys surf to the front at the end. The paper is instructive in that it discusses the complexities of climate change science and difficulties with untangling natural trends and CO2 induced warming.

Basically the glaciers started meltdown started before the global warming flux should have kicked in.

In another twist, the recent rewrite of the radiosonde data means that Kilimanjaro needs another look. Global warming theorists now have a better mechanism.

El Nino muddies the signal for glaciers in the tropical Andes making
interpretation confusing.

However many glaciers which slowed their rate of melting in the mid-1900s have now accelerated away with a vengeance. But there are always off regional exceptions such as seven glaciers in California’s Mount Shasta.

Does it matter anyway – is all this of just academic interest. Well the worry appears to be that peripheral ice sheet melting around Antarctica and Greenland is now proceeding rapidly with surface water getting in the bottom of the glaciers further speeding up their movement. The breakup of the Larsen ice shelf will allow more rapid glacial movement – up to eight times has been recorded. Sea level rises are predicted.

I commend the NS article to you – it has something for both sides of the debate.”

Organic Food Crisis – Problems with Paper Trail

By

According to the Britian’s Observer newspaper:

Britain’s organic food revolution was facing its first serious test last night after an Observer investigation revealed disturbing levels of fraud within the industry.

Farmers, retailers and food inspectors have disclosed a catalogue of malpractice, including producers falsely passing off food as organic and retailers failing to gain accreditation from independent inspectors. The findings raise concerns that consumers paying high premiums for organic food are being ripped off.

… Figures from market research agency Mintel suggest three out of four households now buy some organic food and environmental groups said fraudulent activity within the industry must be stamped out for the sake of customers and legitimate farmers.

“It is not right consumers are paying over the odds because of fraudsters,” said Vicki Hird, Friends of the Earth’s food campaigner.

“These people are causing economic damage to other businesses who are playing by the rules,” said Jenny Morris of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.

There are fears an increasing amount of ‘organic’ food is coming in from overseas making it difficult to establish its provenance.

“There are no tests for proving food is organic,” Morris said. “So it comes down to traceability, you have to follow a paper trail.”

So it all comes down to a paper trail?

Food Taboos – Harris’ View

By

There has been a bit of discussion at this web-log about GM versus organic food. My position is well known including that I consider the aversion to GM irrational. I have written in the IPA Review (March 2004, Vol 56, No. 1) that GM is the new ‘taboo food’ and suggested that organic food might be the equivalent to the Jewish kosher and Moslem halal.

Rog sent me some links this morning to information about a fellow called Marvian Harris. Harris (now deceased) wrote about ‘cultural materialism’ which is apparently “…based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence”.

Harris had some interesting ideas about food as culture including:

The Hindu ban on killing cows? Absolutely necessary as a strategy of human existence, Dr. Harris contended: they are much more valuable for plowing fields and providing milk than as a one-time steak dinner.

“Westerners think that Indians would rather starve than eat their cows,” he told Psychology Today. “What they don’t understand is that they will starve if they do eat their cows.”

In Dr. Harris’s view, then, a manufactured “divine intervention” was needed to encourage people simply to do the practical thing.

The Jewish and Muslim bans on eating pork? Pigs eat the same foods as humans, he reasoned, and are expensive to keep. Sheep, goats and cattle, by contrast, thrive on grass, and provide wool, milk and labor.

So in Harris’ view, what would the state government bans on GM food crops be about?

The links:

http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Harris/Index.htm#Web

http://www.users.voicenet.com/~nancymc/marvinharris.html

Build Dams So Hydra Can Wash Her Hair

By

I don’t think KPMG partner Bernard Salt would like Hydra Sustainable -a member of the Victorian Government’s eco-perfect family. In today’s The Australian, Salt complains about hotels suggesting he re-use his towel to save water. Hydra goes as far as to suggest we should wash our hair just once a week to save water.

What Salt says:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16370702%255E25658,00.html .

What Hydra says:
http://www.dse.vic.gov.au/thesustainables/hydra.htm .

I lived at a Presbyterian and Methodist girl’s boarding school in the 1970s and we were only allowed to wash our hair once a week and then only in the hand basins – noone was allowed to wash their hair in the showers at Clayfield College.

The ban on hair washing in showers probably had something to do with being austere – a Presbyterian and Methodist virtue. The rule actually created a lot of self-loathing, greasy-haired teenage girls.

Salt makes the observation that “The environment lobby has skilfully manouevered middle Australia to a no-dams policy without having to go through the tedium of public debate.”

The environment movement is really very Presbyterian and Methodist?

Salt suggests that no water restrictions would make Sydney greener and that this would be good for our souls, and our wildlife, and for social cohesion. … and I would add, our hair.

He suggests we should start talking about building some more dams.