Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for September 2, 2005

Link to New Orleans

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New Orlean’s daily newspaper The Times-Picayune is now publishing out of Baton Rouge including onto the internet, see http://www.nola.com/ .

This newspaper has a weblog: http://www.nola.com/weblogs/nola/.

Senator Andrew Bartlett’s blog has a post about the situation in New Orleans and links to some bloggers writing from, and about, the situation in New Orleans:

I noted the comment after his post:

“They say that every society is only three meals away from revolution. Deprive a culture of food for three meals, and you’ll have anarchy”.

Intelligent Design

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E-journal Online Opinion published a piece today titled Evolutionary science isn’t a closed book about the pros and cons of teaching Intelligent Design (ID) in schools and universities.

I read about the concept of ID in the August 15 issue of Time magazine.

It seemed to me to be just a rehash of the creationists argument that because we have such magnificent adaptations, e.g. the human eye, we must have been created by god (… for some ID believers, designed by an alien).

According to the article in Time magazine there has been lots of outrage because President Bush suggested “lessons in evolution include a discussion of Intelligent Design.”

The piece at OLO includes,

The battle lines are rigid. The US science establishment is adamant that ID casts doubt on well-established science, using specious evidence and faulty logic. The attempted incursion into the classroom is not to be tolerated. End of story. Add to this the legal campaign to maintain an iron wall of separation between church and state, and you have a belligerent “them” and “us”.

For their part, the ID leaders are a different breed from evangelical creationists who insist on a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis and Bible Belt morality. They hold PhDs in biology and mathematics from leading universities; some are tenured professors. Their organisational base, the Discovery Institute, located in Seattle, Washington, makes effective use of online, print and DVD promotion. By such means the institute reaches any teacher or student curious enough to run a Google search. Those who look discover telling points scored against the standard position, at least for those at the beginner level, and this embarrassment partly accounts for the science establishment’s anger.

I actually agree with Bush in so much as contrasting belief in ID (and creation)with the theory of evolution is a good way of illustrating the difference between belief and faith versus evidence and science. Let the students learn the difference (between faith and science) and make up their own minds.

PS I really enjoyed discussion of Gould and Ethridge’s ‘punctuated equilibrium theory‘ when I was at university.

Energy for Aquaculture (Part 1)

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I have always been interested in the relative efficiencies of different food production sytems.

I wrote and posted the piece on fishing last night (Let them eat fish)while trying to come to terms with how much money the Australian government is spending to close down a perfectly sustainable fishery – all in response to environmental campaigning driven by a belief we should not fish Great Barrier Reef waters.

The Australian aquaculture industry’s share of the $2.2 billion Australian commercial fishery has been steadily increasing and now represents around 34 per cent,
http://www.abareconomics.com/research/fisheries/fisheries.html .

I guess the trend is to close down ‘wild fisheries’ and eat more from ‘aquaculture’. But is this efficient?

I have been shown around aquaculture facilities and they seem really energy intense. We are taking the pressure off wild populations in building these facilities I am told.

But where is the balance between sustainably harvesting wild populations and energy intense aquaculture?