Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 2006

Blair Announces New ‘Politics & Environment Wiki’

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Jennifer has kindly asked me to write a few introductory words as part of the launch of the new ‘Politics and Environment Wiki’.

As one who knows bugger-all about Wikis I guess I am eminently qualified… a bit like asking some of the commentators at this blog to say a few words about global warming!

This PEW (Politics and Environment Wiki) will provide an opportunity for interested and knowledgeable persons to actively contribute to the knowledge base concerning various aspects of the environment with special emphasis on the interaction between the political and quasi-political process and the environment.

Since I started reading and contributing, albeit in a small way, to this BLOG it became obvious to Jennifer and others that amongst all the vociferous outbursts, put-downs and in some cases outright nastiness, there is a lot of good information being posted on the site.

PEW will enable this information to be stored, changed and made more accessible to a wider audience. Of course the BLOG will stay and hopefully some of the spin-offs from the BLOG will encompass the identification of subjects worthy for inclusion in PEW and the clarification and development of ideas and thoughts prior to their inclusion.

However for PEW to realize its potential, certain protocols need to be observed.

While the finer details are spelled out in the site, contributors should remember that the underlying premise is that PEW exists for disseminating and storing knowledge and making it available to a wide audience. It is not for displaying one’s knowledge of invective or one-upmanship. It also becomes rather pointless as the articles show no author’s name.

So I guess the ball is at our feet and it’s up to us to make the best of the opportunity provided by Jennifer. So log in and create an account.

Blair

PS A nice little article about Wiki can be found here.

What About the Sun & Max Planck & Nature?

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David posted the following comment this morning at this blog:

“We know that the globe is warming very rapidly (~0.2C/decade), and that this warming has occured in the absence of any natural forcing process and is occuring about 10 times faster than the sustained warming at the end of the last ice age.”

And it reminded me of this press release from the Max Planck Institute which is only a couple of years old now.

Titled ‘The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years’ it includes comment that:

“An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun’s activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades

The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal Nature from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.

I was also reminded of this Max Planck media release when I read page 3 of The Australian on 27th March and a piece titled ‘Beachgoers back latest theory on brighter sun’. This story quotes a Martin Wild of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland.

The High Cost of Pseudo-Environmentalism

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The results of following the policy prescriptions of pseudo-environmentalists like Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich is not a cleaner environment but inefficient use of scarce resources, according to a new video featuring Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University, and Dr. Fred Singer from the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

I have not seen the video, but provide this information on behalf of a reader of this blog. The issue is certainly one often discussed here, but the language used by Williams and Singer is perhaps new?

Titled ‘The high cost of pseudo-environmentalism’ the converation between Williams and Singer apparently focuses on the issue of whether or not the United States is taking the right approach to the environment.

The promo for the CD/DVD which costs US$25 includes:

“The discussants agree that much of what passes for environmentalism today is based on parochial interests rather than creditable science and the common good.

Williams and Singer criticize Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich for their Malthusian predictions that have proven to be grossly inaccurate.

The opportunity cost of pseudo-environmentalism is the good that could have been done in other areas of public policy. Specific examples of imprudent policies, like the banning of DDT, are discussed. Dr. Singer questions the scientific validity of much environmentalism. He agrees with Walter Williams that environmentalism has been used to advocate government control of people’s lives much like the discredited ideologies of socialism and communism. Both discussants believe that providing the media with accurate information about the environment would help educate the public about the dangers of pseudo-environmentalism.”

Tony Blair & John Howard Talk ‘Climate Strategies’

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While British Prime Minister Tony Blair was in Australia earlier this week he apparently talked with our PM about Britain joining the recently formed Asia- Pacific Partnership on Clean Development, know as the AP6 because there are currently six participating countries.

According to the The Australian Tony Blair was interesting in forging a post-Kyoto accord to cut carbon emissions that had a “real dose of realism” and John Howard suggested a possible climate strategy involving the world’s 20 biggest carbon emitters, including China, India, Australia, the US and Britain.

Sounds like progress to me?

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Apologies this post was written on 29th, but not uploaded until 30th March at 9.30am.

Geoff Sherrington Responds to Chattering Class

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I am responding to the criticism of my letter in ‘The Australian’ of 15 February 2006 which read:

“THERE is an excellent argument for curbing the public statements of scientists like those from CSIRO, a former employer of mine. Scientists, like the public, cover a spectrum of beliefs, some of which are based on emotion rather than science. There are greenie scientists in CSIRO and there are honest ones. Human nature being what it is, there are private agendas pushed by CSIRO people that would make your jaw drop. An example is the selection of Australian weather recording sites used to construct the temperature measurements of the continent, which play a big part in southern hemisphere weather models. From the beginning, most sites that showed little or no temperature rise or a fall from, say, the 1880s to now were rejected. The few sites selected to represent Australia were mainly from capital cities and under suspicion for “heat island” effects. I could give example after example as it was one of my employment functions to distill the best results from the bogus on many matters related to energy/greenhouse/nuclear etc. I found few truly objective submissions among those masquerading as science.”

1. Nowhere did I mention BoM.

2. Nowhere did I criticise BoM.

3. Nowhere did I say I had worked for BOM.

4. I was critical of some statements made by people in CSIRO, but not about the selection of weather sites for early greenhouse models. What alarms me more is the stupified silence of senior scientists when they see bogus data. That is my real criticism.

5. Since writing that letter I have recognised it was the University of East Anglia, not Bath, which used the climate data from Australia.

6. I have since asked Phil Jones from East Anglia for a copy of his selection of the original Australian data. He says “We no longer have the Australian station date we were using in the early 1980s. At that time we had a limited network.”

7. In the MID-1980s (which was my time choice) there were abundant stations which were not used by Jones at all. Here is a list for which data were then available, but not used by Jones – not a full list, just a sample: Geraldton, Narrabri, Hay, Albany, Rottnest Island Lighthouse, Walgett, Deniliquin, Bourke, Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse, Coonabarabran, Echuca, Cooma, Moruya Heads Pilot Station, Omeo, Dubbo, Alice Springs, Gabo Island Lighthouse, Bathurst, Strathalbyn, Mt. Gambier, Yamba, Wilsons Promontory Lighthouse, Newcastle Signal Station, Cape Otway Lighthouse.

8. These stations, when averaged from the 1880s to the mid 1980s, showed a temperature decline until about 1951. This decline was not used in Jones’s paper, which some would say ignited the greenhouse debate with its alarmist conclusions.

9. These and many other Australian stations, averaged from 1951 to 1985 or so, showed a slight increase in temperature. Jones’s modelling was essentially post-1950.

10. Point is proven.

11. I continue to find the poorest quality of science in greenie publications. The most common error is to manipulate the raw data to fit the desired theory. Some is quite stupid, like from the nuclear industry, “Radwaste has to be managed for 250,000 years”. How many nuclear scientist who know this to be nonsense, whether from the CSIRO or not, have stood up and said so?

12. The Think Tank for which I helped formulate direction was the Tasman Institute. The person who brought this climate data to my attention was Warwick Hughes, a geologist (I am a Geochemist) used to dealing with hard data.

13. The statistical manipulations being used for climate data, that I have read, would commonly fail the stringency tests required of geologists when interpolating values of economic ores in deposits from drill hole data. If high standards of maths are needed to avoid wrong estimates of orebody worth, then they are equally needed for political-scientific issues like climate modelling.

14. I have suggested to Phil Jones that he use a certain type of mathematical statistic to get better results.

15. So, how many of you bloggers will now admit to wrong interpretation of, and confusion about, my letter to the Australian? I can prove all that I said and have proved some of it above.

16. I am currently moving home, so my telephone, email etc address will change in the next few days and I do not yet know what they will be. So don’t bother to try to argue with me, contemplate your navels instead.

More Water Won’t Save the Macquarie Marshes

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Yesterday the Sydney Morning Herald ran yet another nonsense story about the Macquarie Marshes. I reckon that their journalist, Anne Davies, was hoodwinked.

There is a strong belief that more water, in particular more environmental flows, will solve the environmental problems of the Murray-Darling Basin. Flood plain graziers have a vested interest in lobbying for more water, particularly in the Macquarie Marshes, where they claim “fat ducks equal fat cattle”.

I have previously posted photographs at this blog suggesting that a problem in the marshes may be overgrazing rather than inadequate environmental flows. Only 12 percent of the marshes are nature reserve leaving 88 percent for cattle fattening.

But the ‘eye poking’ is mostly always of cotton growers, despite evidence of overgrazing. This is what Anne Davies, the State Political Editor, at the Sydney Morning Herald had to say yesterday under the emotive title ‘As politicians squabble the wetlands die’.

“Then in the 1960s the Burrendong Dam was built, and after that came more intensive farming of cotton. By the late 1980s cotton farming had increased fourfold and irrigation licences meant less than 30 per cent of the original water flow was reaching the marshes.

Measures were then put in place to save the remaining 50 per cent of the marshes with considerable pain to the irrigators. But it proved to be insufficient. Last October, the Department of Environment conducted its annual aerial survey of wetland birds. The results, compounded by the continuing drought, were shocking.

“For the second year in a row, record low numbers of waterbirds were counted on the Macquarie Marshes,” the scientists wrote. “The marshes averaged 30,000 in the 1980s, never below 100 but this year less than 10 birds.”

There is a lot of misinformation here. I wonder who gave her that story? Who is the unnamed scientist?

I visited the marshes last October, when there were apparently only 10 birds to found, and here is one of the many photographs I took. Also, I saw lots of birds including great egrets, black ducks, reed warblers, straw necked ibis and spoon bills.

Macquarie Marsh Oct 05 004 blog.JPG

While Davies suggests the marshes are now receiving less than 30 percent of original water flow, since the 1996 water sharing plan, the official figure has been 85 percent. That is the marshes now receive 85 percent of their long term average annual flow.

The idea that birds have reduced in number from 30,000 to 10 since the 1980s is not consistent with the various technical reports or Atlas of Australian Birds which shows numbers of most colonial nesting waterbird species increased for the Darling Riverine Plains Bioregion over the past 20 years.

The graziers manipulate water flow in the marshes and one land holder in the region tells me new wetland habitat has been created by artificially directing flow into the Gum-Cowal Terrigal Creek wetlands and in this way directed water away from nature reserve to private land.

Here is an aerial photograph taken on 25th November 2005 showing a levy bank in the Terrigal/Gum Cowal system.

Terrigal Nov 05 3 blog.JPG

According to the landholder who sent me the photograph, “This is the system that we have been challenging strongly about even receiving much water, has now got the Ramsar wetland on it on private land although it is in conflict with the nature reserve. This is a system that should only receive minimal water under current conditions. An exceptional amount of environmental water has been pushed down there of late and virtually doesn’t reach the other end. It is held up by many banks such as this purely to develop wetlands for grazing as you can see in the image.”

The following photograph shows a levy bank just south of the southern nature reserve holding water on private land and preventing it reaching the nature reserve.

Terrigal Nov 05 1 blog.JPG