Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 14, 2007

Rising Sea Levels or Just Sinking Islands: A Note from Ian Mott

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Hello Jen,

Our national broadcaster, the ABC, has struck again with a new low in responsible journalism.

In ‘PNG – That Sinking Feeling’, broadcast last night as part of the ‘Foreign Correspondent’ program, reporter Steve Marshall has trashed any credibility the ABC had left on environmental reporting.

The unambiguous message in the documentary and all the introductory material was that here was firm “evidence” of rising sea levels producing climate refugees.

The most powerful scene was of one islander and the reporter standing waist deep in water where the islanders father had once had his veggie patch. The implication being that sea levels had risen by close to two metres over recent decades.

The only problem with this is that the Carteret Islands are only a short distance from Bougainville where no such sea level rise has been reported. Moreover, the area is only 500km from some very serious recent volcanic activity at Rabaul and form part of an active volcanic chain through the Solomon Islands.

The Islanders appear to have been convinced that they are the victims of rising sea levels and global warming, no doubt from a procession of publicly funded planet ponces.

But if Marshall and the program managers at ‘Foreign Correspondent’ had been able to deal with more than one variable at a time they would have drawn the inescapable conclusion that the islands are sinking.

Instead they appear to have manufactured a piece of green propaganda that neatly dovetails with Al Gore’s thoroughly discredited claim that Pacific Islanders are already being displaced by rising sea levels?

What I find most offensive is the way a group of islanders who are confronted by a serious problem appear to have been exploited.

If the ABC can get something this simple completely wrong, then what does that tell us about the veracity of their reporting on much more complex issues elsewhere?

Regards,
Ian Mott

Eco-Freaks: A New Book by John Berlau (Part 1, DDT)

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I occasionally get emails from the other side of the world with a query about something environmental that is uniquely Australian.

It was not so many years ago that John Berlau emailed me about the Murray River and also bushfires. He was writing a book. It’s now published. Called ‘Eco-Freaks: Environmentalism is Hazardous to Your Health’ the book includes chapters on DDT, Asbestos and Hurricane Katrina.

I’ve only read the first three chapters. There could be something in the following few about the Murray River and Australia or he may be saving that for another book.

Anyway, while the focus in ‘Eco-Freaks’ is on America, the issues Berlau chooses to explore are relevant to the whole world.

The second chapter on DDT, and entitled ‘Rachel Carson Kills Birds’, will have Tim Lambert in a spin. In fact Berlau references Lambert’s blog ‘Deltoid’ (footnote number 128). But it’s not complementary.

I have read a lot about DDT, Rachel Carson and environmentalism, but I still learnt a lot from that chapter.

And I was amused by the anecdotal. In particular, that Joseph Jacobs, a chemist who worked to mass-produce DDT to protect American troops during World War II, ended up with DDT poured over him when the valve at the bottom of a large vessel was accidentally opened. In his autobiography, Jacobs wrote:

“When it dried, I had DDT an inch thick all over me. In my hair, in my ears, and in my mouth and nose. I took off my clothes, showered, and scrubbed, but probably ingested more DDT during that one incident than is today considered safe to absorb over any years.”

Berlau goes on to comment about the fate of Joseph Jacobs:

“After all, in the years after Silent Spring, DDT was called ‘double death twice’. One touch could kill you. And sadly, after being exposed, Jacobs did die – more than sixty years later in 2004, at the tender young age of eighty-eight.”

‘Eco-Freaks’ is available from Amazons.com.

Mars and Pluto Also Warming, But What About Venus?

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“Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events,” writes Ker Than in LiveScience.com.

In the same article entitled ‘Sun Blamed for Warming of Earth and Other Worlds’ Benny Peiser, Liverpool John Moores University, is quoted commenting that, “I think it is an intriguing coincidence that warming trends have been observed on a number of very diverse planetary bodies in our solar system. Perhaps this is just a fluke.”

Read the complete article, including the various different phenomena thought to be driving warming on the different planets, here:http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html