Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for November 2005

When in Drought, Grow Organic

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My friend Dr David Tribe from Melbourne University has just started his own blog, click here. Congratulations David!

I was scrolling through his recent posts and there is a great paper on organic farming, download file. Well it provides good quantitative comparative data on yields, nitrogen inputs, and nitrogen leaching for conventional and organic systems for trials in Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Australia.

It is a pity they don’t include the data from the Rodale Institute in the US.

Scott Kinnear, a Director of The Biological Farmers of Australia and Victorian Greens Candidate, and others, often quote the trials from the institute as evidence that that organic farming systems are superior to conventional systems and in particular that they give a higher yield.

Indeed Kinnear claims as much on page 9 of a recent speech titled How Organics and Slow Food will Feed The World:

“Organic farming in the US yields comparable or better than
conventional industrial farming, especially in times of drought”.

The only example of this that I can find is a paper titled The performance of organic and conventional cropping systems in an extreme climate year, by Don Lotter, Rita Seidel, and Bill Liebhardt of the Rodale Insitute. They write:

In five out of six of the drought years during the 21 year experiment, corn yields were significantly higher in the organic treatments than those in the conventional treatment. The 1999 drought year being far more severe, results were more complex, and showed differences between the two organic crop systems.
Rainfall during the 1999 crop season totaled only 41% of average. The critical month of July had only 15 mm of rain, about 17% of the average. Crop yields were reduced to less than 20% in corn and 60% in soybean. Most farmers would have abandoned such a dismal corn crop; however, this kind of stress can expose differences between crop management systems that mild stress conditions cannot.

So if you don’t mind a really dismal yield, and if in drought, well you could go organic.

Otherwise, as the GMO Pundit, Dr Tribe says:

A review of farming performance in practice shows that for the same crop yield, organic farming requires more land than is needed with conventional farming with synthetic fertiliser.

In Defence of a Good Lie

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Many academics genuinely believe that promoting anxiety and fear about a problem is a form of valium public service, according to Frank Furedi, a professor of sociology at Kent University, writing in The Times Higher Education Supplement last month.

The articles includes the comment:

The defence of the “good lie” or the “greater truth” is invoked when inflated stories are peddled to raise awareness of an issue. …

Appeals to a “greater truth” are prominent in debates about the environment. It is claimed that problems such as global warming are so important that a campaign of fear is justified. Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, justified the distortion of evidence in the following terms: “Because we are not just scientists but human beings… as well… we need to capture the public imagination.” He added that “we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified statements and make little mention of any doubts that we have”. With such attitudes widely circulated, is it any wonder that Hurricane Katrina is widely perceived as punishment for humanity’s environmental sins? That advocacy research translates so well into the language of divine retribution indicates how the crusading spirit can destroy the integrity of academic enterprise.

Of course academics are entitled to adopt a partisan role. They also have a right to raise concerns about the problems that capture their imagination.

We are also normal human beings who can get carried away with the findings of our research. Academic passion and commitment make a significant contribution to society. But however noble the ideals that motivate it, the promotion of fear displaces the quest for the truth. Instead of clarifying issues it contributes to a dishonest polarisation of attitudes that invariably closes down discussion. Fear entrepreneurship on campuses, like elsewhere, serves only the interest of intolerance and prejudice.

I reckon the biggest lie from the global warming alarmists is that it is going to get drier as it gets warmer.

On 27th May last year ABC Radio’s World Today had a feature titled ‘Changing conditions means more efficient water use needed: expert’ in which Peter Cullen suggested that as a consequence of climate change there will be more droughts and that agriculture will need to re-adjust. A few months later Tim Flannery was on ABC TV’s 7.30 Report (23rd June 2004) telling us that Australia was going to be affected by climate change sooner and harder than anywhere else on the planet and that Perth may end up a ‘ghost metropolis’ from lack of rain.

That was before the drought broke. I had a look at dam levels in Perth this morning and they keep rising, click here.

Isn’t it true that as it gets warmer it is, on average, going to get wetter? That’s what Australia’s climatologists tell us (Australasian Science, June 2004). That’s why there is more snow falling on Greenland. Furthermore, a paper by Roderick and Farquhar in the International Journal of Climatology (Vol 24, Issue 9, 2004) indicates that contrary to expectations, measurements of pan evaporation show decreases over the last 30 years in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere and also across Australia.

There seems a great propensity to exaggerate water issues and suggest that there is everywhere a shortage.

Media headlines in Queensland’s south east over the last week have focused on Brisbane Lord Mayor’s anger at nearby Gold Coast and Redlands decisions to reduce water restrictions and allow watering of gardens from 4pm rather than sticking with a 7pm to 7am regime. Redlands have a near full dam and completely independent water supply, yet Brisbane’s Lord Mayor wants everyone to suffer the restrictions. It doesn’t make sense to me.

Crikey Greenpeace

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In August, Melbourne’s The Age newspaper reported that Greenpeace was experiencing something of a cost blow out.

On Friday, Crikey was quoting an anonymous tipster suggesting financial problems at the multi-national, text follows below.

I find much of the information from the ‘anonymous tipsters’ a bit far fetched.

Crikey also published a response from Greenpeace denying they are on the verge of bankruptcy, text follows below.

It is interesting that the rumours are circulating. It is interesing that the media is taking an interest in the organisation. Once Greenpeace managed to focus the media exclusively on its campaigns.

Text from Crikey’s anonymous tipster:

A friend of mine who is a contractor at Greenpeace Australia Pacific is about to get the flick because they have suddenly realised that they are on the verge of bankruptcy. After taking a high risk strategy of running big deficits in the hope of a massive fundraising increase, they have suddenly panicked. Their three months reserve policy (see their financial report on their website) is gone, along with the reserves. To save the organisation, they have stopped hiring people for empty positions (I hear there are quite a few) and told all contractors that when their term contracts expire, they are out (this applies to about 20% of staff and their contracts generally expire by the end of the year). They have pretty much stopped any campaigning work for the rest of the year to save cash.

The CEO has left this disaster a couple of months ago (without even knowing it was coming) and has just taken up a position as CEO of the RSPCA in Australia. In the two weeks since this crisis began, one member of senior management has quit and the other 3 are under pressure to go. The new CEO starts in a few weeks.

The reason for this huge deficit – fund raising out of control. Fund raising expenses this year are around 50% of total organisation expenditure (up from 36% last year and around 30% in previous years).

For the next few months they are going to desperately try to find a few million to save from their annual budget. At the end of their review some full time staff are probably going to get the flick as well. Staff are close to starting a revolution.

The craziest thing about this is that fund raising income is above budget for the year and expenditure is below budget (because Greenpeace hardly does any campaigning any more). The whole disaster is because of financial incompetence by management.

On a side note – the board clearly didn’t see this coming either. Not quite sure what that bunch of pleasure cruisers are up to.

Crikey also published a response from Sonia Zavesky, Greenpeace communications manager:

Greenpeace Australia Pacific is not on the verge of bankruptcy. 3.8 million people worldwide give money to Greenpeace – in Australia Pacific we receive regular monthly donations of $1 million per month.

This year we will have more money donated to our work than ever before, and as our audited financial statements show, we maintain appropriate reserves. In line with our 5 year strategic fundraising plan, our investment in fundraising for the 04/05 tax year is 32% of turnover. This is annual planning and budget time and as we do every year we are looking at what campaigning work needs to be done and what staffing levels and operating budgets are required. As is the practise in most organisations, contract staff are brought in to cover busy periods, holiday cover etc. At the end of each contract period a decision is made on whether that contract needs to be extended. So while we can understand that some contract staff may find this difficult, it is simply wrong to say that all contractors are out, or that we are on shaky financial ground.

The simple truth is, that when your remit is to save the planet from environmental devastation, it’s hard to cut work. But our campaigning needs are changing, our methods of communicating are changing and we would be irresponsible managers if we did not adjust our structure and staffing levels accordingly.

As your article mentions, one senior manager has recently resigned: that is me. After 2.5 years working for an organisation I truly love, I have had to concede that being a sole parent and working for a global outfit that campaigns 24/7 around the globe, often in rapid response mode is no longer viable for me.

Greenpeace is the largest independent global environment organisation. We do not accept any funding from governments or business. We rely on donations from individuals who care about the planet to fund our work. We take our responsibility to our supporters very seriously, even if that means taking some measures that are unpopular with some individuals.

2005: On Track to Be The Warmest

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It was apparently without even consulting James Hansen, or others at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), that Washington Post journalist Juliet Eilperin ran the prediction on October 13th, that 2005 would be the warmest year on record, click here for more detail.

It was Hansen’s prediction much earlier in the year, that 2005 would be very warm, click here to download a file with notes from Hanson in response to the article.

Luckily for Eilperin, Hanson stands by his February prediction, that 2005 will be very warm.

He wrote on 3rd November with reference to the data and graphs in the attached file:

“For the first nine months of the year, 2005 is 0.02C cooler than 1998 in our land-ocean temperature index, and is tied with 2002 as the second warmest year in the period of instrumental data. The graph in the lower right shows that 1998 and 2002 were relatively cool in the last three months of the year, by more than the typical variation of the global temperature anomaly (Figure 3).

Therefore, there is a better than 50% chance that 2005 will move up in the rankings by the end of the year.

Considering also the continuing effect of the current planetary energy imbalance, we conclude that there is no reason to change the statements that we made in February and April (see above). It is now clear that 2005 surely will have been an abnormally warm year, comparable to the warmest year on record (1998), despite not being pushed, as in 1998, by a large El Nino. It is noteworthy that September 2005 was the warmest September in the 125 years of data.

Of course, it will be interesting to see how 2005 ranks compared to 1998 at the end of the year. However, for scientific purposes, the important result (already clear) will be that the trend of global temperatures toward global warming is now so steep that in just seven years the global warming trend has taken temperatures to approximately the level of the abnormally warm year of 1998. The steep global warming trend that began in the late 1970s (Figure 1) is continuing.”

It is good luck, if not good science, when the February prediction is still good in November!

All of this does ‘throw a spanner in the works’ for John McLean and some others who have claimed it is not getting warmer – because recent years have been cooler than 1998.

……..

Thanks to David Jones for sending me the Hanson notes in response to the Washington Post article.

Degradable Plastic Bags: Don’t pass the Turtle Test

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Since speaking today with a turtle expert at the local environment protection agency and reading summaries of their autopsy reports I have become more attached to my green bags.

After posting Why Ban the Plastic Bag , a reader of this web-log sent me a long and interesting report titled ‘The Impact of Degradable Plastic Bags in Australia’ published in September 2003 by Melbourne University RMIT, Download file (983 kbs).

I had not realized that there are already a whole range of degradable plastic bags in use and that a significant issue is that they don’t disintegrate as soon as they are thrown away. It seems they are more water proof and freezer safe than degradable.

The Queensland Government’s Environment Protection Agency with Flinders University in South Australia and Seaworld on the Gold Coast were testing the longevity of biodegradable fishing bait bags (pg 61).

The RMIT report indicated that while the research was ongoing, there was already agreement, including with the recreational fishing industry, for the new bait bags at $8.70/kg to be phased in over a two year period and the non-degradable conventional polyethylene bags at $1.50/kg be phased out. Concern that too many plastic bait bags end up in the ocean, and sea turtles eat them believing them to be jellyfish, and die, was driving the move to degradable bags.

The report made reference to the work of Colin Limpus, a turtle expert at the Queensland Environment Protection Agency. According to the report Limpus believed biodegradable plastic bags were a step in the right direction but since they still take six months to degrade in seawater, they are not a complete solution. Limpus was concerned that because the thermoplastic starch is modified to reduce its sensitivity to moisture, that this may prevent digestive enzymes breaking them down, but he accepted that at least in theory, the bags should be digestable and perhaps even nutritious for turtles.

In 2003 Limpus was trying to organize a project to study the breakdown time of biodegradable plastics in the digestive tract of turtles. However, since sea turtles are threatened species he was proposing to use herbivorous fresh water turtles, which are not threatened, in a plastic feeding trial.

I phoned Limpus today to find out where the research was up to.

He indicated that based on the work of a University Honour’s student (being written up) he nolonger supported biodegradable bait bags. He said that the turtles can’t digest them, they may work in landfill, but they are a threat to wildlife.

I asked about plastic bags as a cause of death relative to other threats. Limpus said that autopsy work gave a indication of cause of death and that the relative contribution of plastic bags is available in the environment protection agency’s annual reports at
http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/nature_conservation/wildlife/caring_for_wildlife/marine_strandings . I had a quick look at some of these reports this afternoon and note that in the reports for marine turtles, causes of death include “intestine obstructed with plastic” including bait bags.

Limpus said that turtles ate partially disintegrated plastic from Chinese takeaway containers and icecream containers. He said these types of plastic containers, along with boat strike, were a bigger threat to most of our marine turtles than plastic bags.

Limpus indicated that degradable and non-degradable plastic bags were a particular threat to Leatherback turtles, an endangered oceanic species.

Ten of 33 dead leatherbacks washed ashore between 1979 and 1988 had ingested plastic bags, plastic sheets or monofilament according to this international website http://www.turtles.org/leatherd.htm.

Australia Fudging to Meet Kyoto Targets

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SimonC has just posted a comment at The Cost of Kyoto stating:

I think the anti-Kyoto people are the ones who are scare mongering with their cries of ‘we’ll all be ruined’. …According to Howard we’ll meet our Kyoto targets (despite not ratifying it). So why hasn’t Australia fallen into economic free fall?

I understood that the reason Australia is going to meet its Kyoto targets (even though it hasn’t signed up to Kyoto) is because the Australian government has done a fiddle with the tree clearing figures particularly in Queensland.

Indeed, the Federal government report, Tracking the Kyoto Target 2004, published late last year indicated Australia was on target. But what the Minister did not acknowledge was this was mostly a consequence of restricting and redefining ‘tree clearing’.

The report says vegetation management legislation recently introduced into Queensland and NSW will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 24.4 million tonnes. By comparison, the energy sector increased emissions by 85 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent during the period 1990 to 2002.

The total reduction attributed to ‘land use change’, which includes reduced tree clearing, is 78 million tonnes for the same period. So the increase in emissions from the energy sector has been offset by clearing fewer trees – at tremendous cost to individual landholders in Queensland and New South Wales, yet the Minister made no mention of this.

This is how it works:

What is known as the “Australia Clause” (Article 3.7) in the Kyoto Protocol allows countries for which land use change and forestry was a net source of emissions in 1990 to include the emissions from land use change in their 1990 baseline.

It has been claimed that the Australian national greenhouse office consequently exaggerated the extent of the clearing in 1990 to give an inflated baseline value and at the same time not recorded carbon sinks resulting from forest growth and woodland thickening.

This made it easier to achieve the Kyoto target for 2008-2012.

Ecologist, Bill Burrows, writing in the journal Global Change Biology in 2002 explained how Australia’s often quoted total net greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by 25 per cent if we included the sinks resulting from woodland thickening in our National Greenhouse Gas Inventory.

But this would also affect our 1990 baseline and make it harder for the ‘accountants’ to suggest we are on target, and even more difficult to justify the vegetation management laws.

Burrows calculates the annual carbon sink in about 60 million hectares of grazed woodland in Queensland alone is about 35 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.

So we have a Federal Government pretending to meet its obligations to an agreement it hasn’t signed up to using accounting practices that deny the phenomenon of vegetation thickening.

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Some months ago Bill Burrows sent me a copy of a speech he gave earlier this year, Download file. It is a detailed critic of the recent politics of vegetation thickening in Queensland from the persepective of a retired government scientist.