Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 2006

New Year’s Eve

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It’s 31st December 2006, a time for reflection and perhaps also New Year’s resolutions.

This time last year I wrote: “A CNN/TIME survey of Asia-Pacific countries reports that avian flu is expected to be the biggest global issue in 2006, followed by economic slowdown and terrorism. What happened to global warming? Why didn’t it rate a mention in the survey?”

I reckon global warming did emerge as the biggest global issue with Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ galvanized support for the idea that carbon dioxide is the cause of every climate crisis.

I did a series of blog posts on the movie, most of them are listed here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/faq.php?id=15&category=18 .

Along with ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, many environmentalists were consumed lamenting the fate of the world’s polar bears and minke whales (neither species likely to go extinct anytime soon) while a species of freshwater dolphin in the Yangtze did go extinct. As I wrote for the IPA Review in September, the extinction of the baiji has taken place at a time of unprecedented interest and concern for their large relative, the minke whale.

In May 2006, Ross Coulthart from Channel 9’s Sunday Program revealed some of the claims being used to support calls for billions of dollars to be spent on fixing a “looming salinity crisis” in the Murray River are simply not true: “Salinity is a problem. But it seems nowhere as bad as we’ve been told by environmental groups, government departments and many in the media.” Ross Coulthart began to research the issue after reading my monograph written in December 2003: ‘Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment’.

Next year the Murray River may run dry, and my home town of Brisbane will vote on whether or not we are prepared to drink recycled water, while the the sun might save us from global warming.

Next year I will be part of a new research group at the University of Queensland with funding available for 4 PhD scholarships to undertake evidence-based research into environmental issues with the aim of providing improved information and frameworks for prioritizing environmental need, quantifying the costs and benefits of conservation initiatives, developing agricultural policies and appropriate legal frameworks.

I’ve no resolutions for the New Year. But I am going to wish that the drought would break across southern Australia, that the bans on GM food crops are lifted and that more trees are cut down in Australian forests because trees are a renewable resource that sequest carbon and we shouldn’t be importing timber from south east Asia when we have so much forest in Australia. I will also hope for more controlled burning in state forests and national parks for the koalas. I also hope that more water gets through to the Macquarie Marsh nature reserve and here’s a list of my blog posts over the last year on this issue: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/faq.php?id=14&category=17 .

I also hope that David Hicks is released from prison in Guantanamo Bay, Richard Ness doesn’t go to prison in Indonesia, and that there is justice in the case of the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee in Queensland, Australia.

As regards this blog, I’m going to borrow from a recent post by Jim and endorse the following rules for 2007:
1. Assume good faith from your opponent – until bad faith is demonstrated
2. Address only the argument – it is very possible that a scientist paid by Exxon (or the IPA) might be an honorable, diligent and would never compromise their integrity by advancing a proposition they knew to be false. It is equally possible that well credentialed scientists may exaggerate, cherry-pick, offer up scary scenarios etcetera because of a messianic belief in their mission to save the world from evil. In short, it’s almost impossible to be certain about motivation so speculation is fruitless.
3. Acknowledge the deficiencies in your position – pretending your argument is self evidently correct and beyond doubt when it clearly isn’t is dishonest and arrogant.
And to Jim’s three I’m going to add one from Steven Pinker:
4. Acknowledge that precious and widely held beliefs, when subjected to empirical tests, are often cruelly falsified.

Thanks to everyone who’s contributed to this blog over the last year. Here are two guest blog posts worth re-reading:

A crusading journalist is one who closes one eye in order to see better with the other by Roger Underwood: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001633.html

and also,

Paul Williams explains the pines may be a better proxy for carbon dioxide (CO2) than temperature, so the famous hockey stick graph may not be a ‘temperature hockey stick’, but rather a ‘CO2 Hockey Stick’: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001546.html.

My best wishes to YOU for 2007.

The Discoveries of Science: Comment from Steven Pinker

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David Tribe sent me a link to a piece by Steven Pinker titled ‘Less Faith, More Reason’. Here’s an extract:

“Missing from the report is a sensitivity to the ennobling nature of knowledge: to the inherent value, with consequences too far-reaching to enumerate, of understanding how the world works. For one thing, it is a remarkable fact that we have come to understand as much as we do about the natural world: the history of the universe and our planet, the forces that make it tick, the stuff we’re made of, the origin of living things, and the machinery of life, including our own mental life.

I believe we have a responsibility to nurture and perpetuate this knowledge for the same reason that we have a responsibility to perpetuate an appreciation of great accomplishments in the arts. A failure to do so would be a display of disrespect for our ancestors and heirs, and a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements that the human mind is capable of.

Also, the picture of humanity’s place in nature that has emerged from scientific inquiry has profound consequences for people’s understanding of the human condition. The discoveries of science have cascading effects, many unforeseeable, on how we view ourselves and the world in which we live: for example, that our planet is an undistinguished speck in an inconceivably vast cosmos; that all the hope and ingenuity in the world can’t create energy or use it without loss; that our species has existed for a tiny fraction of the history of the earth; that humans are primates; that the mind is the activity of an organ that runs by physiological processes; that there are methods for ascertaining the truth that can force us to conclusions which violate common sense, sometimes radically so at scales very large and very small; that precious and widely held beliefs, when subjected to empirical tests, are often cruelly falsified.

I believe that a person for whom this understanding is not second-nature cannot be said to be educated. And I think that some acknowledgment of the intrinsic value of scientific knowledge should be a goal of the general education requirement and a stated value of a university.”

You can read the complete article here: http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=515314 .

Ice Shelf Becomes Sea Ice: Perhaps Good News for Polar Bears?

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Two days ago the mainstream media was lamenting that polar bears should be listed as threatened with extinction because of disappearing sea ice all a consequence of global warming.

Today the media is reporting that a giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic and has formed an ice island. Furthermore, this ice island is likely to end up as sea ice in the very places scientists are complaining there is not enough of the stuff for the big bears…

“Within days, the floating ice shelf had drifted a few kilometres offshore. It travelled west for 50 kilometres until it finally froze into the sea ice in the early northern winter… Prevailing winds could then send the ice island southwards, deep into the Beaufort Sea.”

Well isn’t this good news for polar bears?

It could be, if there was any truth to the story that polar bears are threatened with extinction from a reduced area of sea ice.

But the whole “disappearing sea ice threatens polar bear’s survival” story is in reality a farce.

While the area of sea ice has been declining over the last couple of decades, the number of polar bears has actually been increasing. That’s right increasing!

So it is very wrong for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to uncritically report that: “The World Wide Fund for Nature says the declining number of polar bears is a major warning on the impact of climate change.”

There were only about 5,000 polar bears in 1970, numbers depressed by hunting. There are now about 25,000 polar bears. The increase a consequence of agreements to restrict hunting under quota systems.

The biggest threat to discrete populations of polar bears continues to be illegal hunting in places like the Chukchi sea and Greenland’s failure to agree to the quota system.

If the extent of sea ice continues to decline in places like Hudson Bay and the Beaufort Sea, these populations of polar bears can move north to where there is more sea ice with ringed seals, or they might simply switch to hunting seals that prefer warmer weather.

As I have previously written, the two polar bears living happily at Sea World, on Queensland’s Gold Coast, enjoying watermelons and museli bars, are evidence of the capacity of this big bear to adapt, including to warm weather.

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The mass of ice fell away 16 months ago but scientists have ony just realised because it all happened at a remote locality off the coast of Ellesmere Island which is about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole.

The issue of environmentalists and scientists taking advantage of the popularity of polar bears and drawing rediculous conclusions from the available data all to progress their global warming agenda is reviewed in a piece I wrote for the IPA Review earlier this year entitled ‘Polar Bear Politics: Underestimating the survival capacity of one popular bear’.

There is an old blog post from 25th October 2005 here (Polar Bears on Thin Ice) and another from 3rd May 2006 here ( 16,119 Species Threatened with Extinction?) and I also wrote something on 30th May 2006 here (Polar Bear Politcs: Misrepresenting the Nature of One Smart Bear).

www.whalephoto.com

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Congratulations to whale and wildlife photographer, George McCallum. His revamped website is back online with a thousand or so images including of minke whales, humpback whales and killer whales:

http://www.whalephoto.com .

The website includes albums on ‘European birds’, ‘oil platforms and rigs’, and also one entitled ‘weather and water’:

http://www.whalephoto.com/2007/thumbnails.php?album=24.

For more information on George: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001650.html.

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www.whalephoto.com

Swimming with Whales: A Note from Libby

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Hi Russell,

Going back to your points about sentient beings and our perception of other life forms. As you say, there is debate about how intelligent certain species are, how to measure that intelligence, whether they can feel emotions, what this all means. Being human, although we may try to be objective in assessing the cognitive abilities of other species, we are still limited by our own perceptions and interpretations.

I guess you would have come across certain situations with all manner of different species that have amazed you and made you re-evaluate your idea of how these organisms perceive their world. Most people who have pets, domestic animals or who have worked with wild animals can tell you interestng stories of certain encounters, but of course interpreting this into something that will not be labelled anthropomorphising is very hard. Often I think that our shame of anthropomorphising animals means we miss a lot of interesting details.

With regards to whales, I am sure that George, Ann and Peter can related stories that would suggest cetaceans are sentient beings and can feel fear as well as other emotions, and there is literature out there on studies into cetacean ‘intelligence’ and perception. For myself, I have had a few encounters that suggest to me that cetaceans are most definately sentient beings . One was with a southern right whale female I was cautiously observing in the water. I was careful to maintain my distance from her, but she kept positioning herself right next to me. If I would swim away she would follow. When I got tired and was treading water at one stage, she came up underneath me so that I was supported on her back. When I returned to the small boat and placed my hand in the water to say ‘goodbye’, she apporached the boat and lifted it up so that she could touch my hand with her back. Another encounter was observing a mother and calf humpback The mother was snoozing on the reef, but all of a sudden the calf looked up at me, left her side, swam straight up and put me on his belly, before casually rolling over and returning back to mum.

Why did these two animals choose to interact with me the way they did? Was I just a weird looking cetacean, or was I something quite different but that could obviously provide some tactile stimuli as well as perhaps ‘entertainment’? As I said, people who are close to pets and so on would have countless stories of special interactions with them.

Our preception of other species is also as you mentioned dependent upon cultural and religious beliefs. Whether we see ourselves as the pinnacle of all life and thus the ones to control it and dominant it depends often on these factors.

For me, I believe that as animals that can feel empathy, and have an awareness of themselves and others, we have a responsibility to ensure that our actions are not unnecessarily harming those others. Our relationships with animals should be humane and with careful thought for the past, present and future. Humans nowadays divorce themseves from the natural world, but in the end we are animals and part of that natural world, and could do well to remember that.

Cheers Libby.

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This note was originally posted as a comment here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001806.html .

Techno-Fixes for Climate, Locally and Globally?

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The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, yesterday announced that $7.6 million will be provided over four years to evaluate the effectiveness of cloud seeding in increasing rainfall in Queensland, Australia.

Mr Beattie said beginning next year (2007) a pilot project would be conducted in south-east Queensland using new “warm cloud” seeding processes.

The pilot project will be in collaboration with the Bureau of Meteorology and the United States National Centre for Atmospheric Research.

Interestingly China already has a $50 million a year weather-modification program with the aim of increasing rainfall by up to 15 percent.

Indeed when the Chinese government’s 11th Five Year Plan kicked off earlier this year it included provision for the creation of 48 billion to 60 billion cubic meters of artificial rain annually. How many gigalitres is that?

So what about techno-fixes for global warming too? We could fertilize the ocean making more algae which sequester carbon? We could put sulfur particles into the stratosphere to cool the earth?

I can hear an environmental fundamentalists shout, “DON’T MESS with the climate!” But we already have?