Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for May 3, 2006

Elephants to Sweden?

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There has been an interesting exchange between Ann in Sweden, David in Tokyo, and others following my blog post of 23rd April titled ‘Norway to Kill More Whales’.

The discussion has now moved from whales to elephants.

I lived in Kenya from 1989 through to late 1992 and visited Zimbabwe and South Africa. It was evident back then that there were too many elephants in southern Zimbabwe, while they were being shot out of Kenya.

I have previously mentioned the book by Raymond Bonner, ‘At the Hand of Man: Peril and hope for Africa’s Wildlife’ (Alfred Knopf, New York 1993, pp 322) which is about the early history of conservation groups in Africa and how their staff in Africa supported trade in ivory. But the fundraisers and executives at their headquarters in Europe and the USA wanted bans … lobbying for a ban on ivory generated membership and donations.

I’ve copied the following comment from David, because it does raise the very real issue of how ‘Africa’ can and should manage its elephants. Elephants can be so destructive and require so much space, and ‘Africa’ is being denied the opportunity to make money from ivory – which could give elephants a local value and in this way aid conservation of the species?

David wrote:

Ann,

Sorry, but your statements do confuse me. 🙂

Countries like Kenya are more than welcome to manage their elephants how they see fit.

However, they campaigned to have a ban on the ivory trade put in place because they had failed to manage their elephant populations, consequently suffering from poaching etc. The problem was, when the ban was imposed in 1989, it led to other nations being forced to abide by the ban even though their circumstances were different.

While Kenya had failed miserably to look after her elephants, nations in Southern Africa had been doing a fine job, and their elephants were in good shape. Here’s the thing – there is a demand for elephant products. Rather than ban this trade, why not permit it, make money from it, and with those funds manage and regulate the industry for the good of conservation?

Read about Zimbabwe’s CAMPFIRE approach to conservation here:

“While economic incentives are indispensable, the programme preaches and practises sustainable consumption as a vehicle for development. This is the language the Zimbabwean people and their ancestors have been practising since time immemorial.”

Unfortunately, NGO groups from the Western world seem to care more about African elephants than they do about African people.

Remembering that all parties agree that conserving elephants is a priority, which do you give more importance Ann? African elephants or African people?

As for relocation, nations in Southern Africa should be under no obligation to relocate their (valuable) elephants to Kenya, a nation which has failed abismally to look after theirs (unless Kenya wishes to pay?).

Even in Kenya, the elephant levels are growing these days – but for how long will the ecosystem be able to sustain continued growth?

Then what? Ship elephants to Sweden perhaps? 🙂

Westerners seem to love them so much, let’s see how they enjoy having them overrunning the local neighbourhood.

David

Thousands of elephants were culled in South Africa last year.

Birds, Bats & Wind Turbines, With Particular Reference to Orange Bellied Parrots: Bob McDonald

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I have copied this comment by Bob McDonald from my blog post of 7th April titled ‘MInister Blocks Wind Farm for Orange Bellied Parrots’:

Wind power as generated by turbines with large blades has only recently been discovered to have a significant and avoidable impact on birds and bats. Better siting will provide most of the solution to this problem.

The difficulty is that it is very hard to count birds and bats killed by wind turbines. Predators remove kills quickly and given the size of the turbines and given the maximum blade tip speeds of around 300kph bats and birds killed can end up a considerable distance from the turbines.

Surprisingly birds like white throated needle tails, a large swallow-like bird that migrates annually to Australia feeding and sleeping on the wing, have been among the kills recorded. These birds are not only supreme ‘flyers’ but also use a form of echo location to catch their prey.

Similarly with bats it is surprising they get killed by turbines. In West Virginia the bat mortality generated by turbines only came to light when students camped below turbines and used dogs to find more than 300 dead and injured bats from a couple of dozen turbines over a few moths. This was in 2004.

These problems were not predicted, though it has been known for some time that birds have been struck by blades – but monitoring has been by turbines owners and those paid to host turbines – neither with the incentive report kills.

Companies that build wind turbines seek the most prominent locations to remind potential customers to ‘tick’ the green energy box on their power bill.

The Victorian State Government simply provided a wind atlas to these companies showing where the most reliable winds were as a guide to siting. The same reliable winds may also be used by migrating birds and bats.

Bird migration routes and travelling heights are also poorly understood. The most common known migrations are of species that arrive in flocks in the Australian Summer and depart in the autumn, also in flocks and most often at night.

The conditions at the time of departure and arrival determine what height and to an extent what route these flocks travel at.

To the bird in question, the Orange Bellied Parrot, it is the rarest of 17 species of national and international significance found likely to be killed by turbines if constructed at Bald Hills wetland.

No-one could be reasonably expected to predict the extent and nature of this problem. Now that it has been identified far more care must be taken with the siting of wind turbines and State Governments have a responsibility to decide where wind turbines should not be located.

Some basic rules for siting turbines could be –

1. Not within 30 kilometres of the coast, wetland or lakes. This safety margin is to allow for the full range of weather conditions that may bring migratory birds and bats within the range of spinning blades.

2. Not on ridges frequented by birds of prey from a given region, (not all ridge lines are used as ‘lofting areas’.)

3. That alternative energy consumers and property owners, who are paid for having turbines on their land, pay for and allow monitoring of existing turbines for birds and bat kills.

4. That turbines that are found to cause kills (by monitoring) are shutdown for the high risk periods and that alternative energy consumers cover these costs.

5. The available infra -red monitoring technology by used extensively for monitoring of sites for proposed wind farms before agreements with land owners to site turbines are reached and monitoring of existing turbine sites.

The very low numbers of Orange Bellied Parrots, less than 200, makes them vulnerable to even normal predation. The spend winter on the increasingly rare Victorian saltmarsh fringes scattered along the coast, as small and hard to identify. The estimate of the blades of the proposed Bald Hills windfarm being likely to kill one Orange Bellied Parrot per year are better understood as there is a good chance in 30 years that a flock of 30 will be killed.

There are a wide range of issues regarding wind turbines, but the impact on birds and bats is new and unpredicted as may be amplified by the area of turbulence around blade tips that could be equally fatal to small birds and bats aa blade strike.

Better siting will avoid most of the bird/bat interaction issues. Barrel shaped turbines currently be developed may solve this problem completely.

Bob McDonald, Naturalist

More ‘Dumb’ Questions from Ian Castles

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Coby,

I accept that I should not have said [in my previous blog post, which can be accessed by clicking here] that well mixed GHGs “presumably have a similar warming impact in both hemispheres” (Figure 11 of Hansen et al, third map down in right column refers).

But I don’t agree that ‘there is no significant discrepancy between modeled and observed behaviours.’ For example, on my reading of Figure 18 of Hansen et al (2005), to which Gavin directed me, the observed warming exceeded modelled warming by a significant margin over much the greater part of the northern hemisphere in the 1979-2003 period. In the Antarctic the discrepancy was in the opposite direction.

For the world as a whole, both the observed and the modelled warming in this period was about 0.4°C – i.e., equivalent to less than one-seventh of the vertical axis of the Figure. Visual inspection suggests that, over about one-half of the globe, the DIFFERENCE between the observed and modelled warming for this 24-year period was similar to, or greater than, the observed average warming for the world as a whole for this period. I’m surprised that you think that these aren’t significant discrepancies.

I did not misinterpret the mapping of aerosols and their effects on the ‘Sulphur Cycle Experiment’ page of the climateprediction.net website. The description is quite clear: the map shows ‘the model’s surface temperature response to increasing sulphur emissions from pre-industrial levels.. to present day levels..’. The description also says that ‘The cooling effect of sulphate aerosol can be seen throughout the whole northern hemisphere’ (which isn’t strictly true: there is a warming effect in Northern Scandinavia).

The accompanying text says that ‘a PREDICTION of the climate of the 21st century needs to contain the effects of sulphate aerosol otherwise the warming trend may be OVERestimated’ (EMPHASES added). There are two errors here. First, the climateprediction.net simulations aren’t predictions; and secondly, the statement assumes, contrary to most expectations, that sulphate aerosol emissions will increase in the 21st century.

In fact, nearly all of scenarios project that emissions of sulphur oxides will DECREASE in this century. For the four SRES markers, the projected decreases between 2000 and 2100 are: A1, 60%; A2, 13%; B1, 84%; and B2, 31%. For the two illustrative A1 scenarios, the projected decreases are: A1FI, 42%; and A1T, 71%. These decreases lead to significant positive (negative of a negative) forcing in the 21st century, and concomitant WARMING in the IPCC scenarios.

There are huge uncertainties in relation to aerosols, both in respect of the trends in emissions in recent times and in the effects on climate. Having already tripped myself up once in a confusion of forcings and temperatures, I’ll avoid drawing my own conclusions and will simply draw a contrast between what Hansen et al (2005) say and what is posted on the climateprediction.net website:

(a) Hansen et al (2005) assess the total 1880-2003 negative aerosol forcing, including the indirect effect, as equivalent to more than one-half of the effective forcing for the total of the well-mixed GHGs (CO2, CH4, N2O and the CFCs) over the same period (pps. 5, 7). But they say that ‘empirical data for checking model-based temporal changes of tropospheric aerosol amount.. are meager’, and ‘Our largely subjective estimate of the uncertainty in the net aerosol forcing is at least 50%’ (p. 7).

(b) Hansen et al (2005) also say that: ‘Observed global warming, as well as the global warming in the model driven by all forcings, has been nearly constant at almost 0.15°C/decade over the past 3-4 decades, except for temporary interruptions by large volcanoes. This high warming rate has been maintained in the recent decade despite a slowdown in the growth rate of climate forcing by well-mixed GHGs.. The warming rate in the model is maintained because, BY ASSUMPTION, TROPOSPHERIC AEROSOLS STOP INCREASING IN 1990.. The ASSUMPTION that global aerosol amount approximately levelled off after 1990 IS UNCERTAIN, because adequate aerosol observations are not available.. An implicit well-known conclusion is that future global warming may depend substantially on how the global aerosol amount continues to evolve, as well as on the GHG growth rate’ (EMPHASES added).

(c) By (apparent) contrast, the simulations on the climateprediction.net website for the average of 66 models that had ‘made it to at least 2005’, to which I referred in an earlier post on this thread, show ‘overheating’ as a result of the non-inclusion of sulphate aerosols on what seems to be a much larger scale than implied in Hansen et al. Moreover, the widening of the gap between the ‘without aerosols’ temperature simulations and observations appears to be at least as great between 1990 and 2005 as in the decades preceding 1990.

To me, this suggests that the climateprediction.net estimates of aerosol emissions do NOT level off after 1990, and that a continuing growth in such emissions is reflected in the ‘Sulphur Cycle Experiment’ map.

In your initial post, Coby, you told me that for my follow up questions I might find Chapter 12 of the TAR informative, and provided a link. I am in fact quite familiar with what is said in that Chapter on regional climate projections, for which Australia’s John Zillman was Review Editor. If this post was not already overlong, I’d draw on the conclusions of that chapter, and on some of John’s subsequent statements on this subject, to reinforce some of the points made above.

I’m sorry if you think that I am again raising ‘the most elementary complication’ and that, because I ‘have never done anything but the most cursory research, [I] assume no one ever before has ever thought of it’ – and am ‘triumphantly pronounc[ing] climate science as an ignorant religion.’

You alleged, referring to me, ‘that it was completely understandable that most climate scientists are not interested in responding to people who come with pre-formed conclusions that imply they are stupid or frauds’, and said that it is ‘a credit to people like Gavin that they understand the importance of this issue and therefore the importance of overlooking, for the most part, such egregious behaviour.’

And you concluded that ‘the primary consequence is that the real experts in general decide not to waste their time with prejudice matched by ignorance and it falls on non-experts like [you] to spend the time.’

Let me assure you that I don’t come to climate change science issues with pre-formed conclusions that imply that climate change scientists are stupid or frauds. I tried for a long time to stick to my knitting, but found that I was being criticised (notably on this blog) for pleading ignorance of climate change science.

I’ve therefore decided that we should all be prepared to ask some dumb questions in areas outside our area of specialisation and that’s what I’m doing. I’ll have some separate questions to address to Gavin, but in the meantime I hope that you are able to take some time to respond to the issues raised above.

Ian Castles

16,119 Species Threatened with Extinction?

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The World Conservation Union (The IUCN) has just released it ‘red list’ for 2006 with the headline:

“The number of known threatened species reaches 16,119. The ranks of those facing extinction are joined by familiar species like the polar bear, hippopotamus and desert gazelles; together with ocean sharks, freshwater fish and Mediterranean flowers. Positive action has helped the white-tailed eagle and offers a glimmer of hope to Indian vultures.”

Several species that where listed as ‘vulnerable’ in the IUCN’s 1996 assessement are now listed as extinct, click here.

According to BBC News Online:

“Polar bears are listed as Vulnerable to Extinction based on forecasts that their population will decline by 50% to 100% over the next 50 to 100 years.”

In fact the BBC appears to have used predicted summer sea ice decline as a proxi for polar bear decline. Following is the actual text from the IUCN:

“Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are set to become one of the most notable casualties of global warming. The impact of climate change is increasingly felt in polar regions, where summer sea ice is expected to decrease by 50-100% over the next 50-100 years. Dependent upon Arctic ice-floes for hunting seals and highly specialized for life in the Arctic marine environment, polar bears are predicted to suffer more than a 30% population decline in the next 45 years. Previously listed by IUCN as a conservation dependent species, the polar bear moves into the threatened categories and has been classified as Vulnerable.”

Now the IUCN may also be using predictions about summer sea ice as a proxi for predicting future polar bear numbers and then just discounting a bit!*

Last time I spent some time looking at polar bear numbers based on the available evidence (click here for the blog post), rather than predictions about how much the planet might warm, I established that:

“There are thought to be about 22,000 polar bears worldwide with about 60 percent in Canada. Most bear populations are thought to be stable or increasing in number. Historically hunting has impacted on population numbers and over-harvesting is still considered the main threat to polar bears.”

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*More information on polar bears and why the IUCN has listed them as vulnerable may be more easily available once the IUCN’s searchable data base is online, apparently from the 4th May which is tomorrow. It would be good then to also have a look at how the northern hairy nosed wombat is fairing. I reckon the single biggest threat to biodiversity in Australia is probably mismanagement of our rangelands with ‘overgrazing’ and ‘vegetation thickening’ the two biggest issues that need tackling. What about a guest post from a reader who owns some country in western Queensland or NSW?