Dear Jennifer,
Don’t miss the Sunday programme tomorrow on Channel 9. Ross Coulthart exposes phony claims about the “threatened” grey nurse shark.
The eco-nazis have already made a press release ‘Bogus Grey Nurse Sharks Claims Quashed’ responding to the story before it is even broadcast. Obviously they know they are in trouble.
Best,
Walter
In a new book ‘Eco-Freaks, Environmentalism is hazardous to your health’, John Berlau contends that environmentalists have promoted doomsday scenarios some of which have proven to be false, and that nature is not always benign and can sometimes pollute and poison.
Following my post on John Berlau’s chapter on DDT (Eco-Freaks: Part 1, DDT), a regular commentator at this blog known as SJT, suggested the book was misleading because Berlau’s has written that, “tree contribute more CO2 to the atmosphere than cars.”
When I first posted on DDT, I hadn’t read the chapter on trees or the chapter on cars.
I read on, and on, and on, including these two chapters. But I could not find any reference to “trees contributing more C02 to the atmosphere than cars”.
So I emailed John Berlau. He replied:
“Jennifer,
I never have written that trees contribute more CO2. I was talking about the hydrocarbons in smog, [in] which I do document that tree contribute a greater portion, part of which is due to the fact that the catalytic converter has reduced cars’ hydrocarbon emissions by 90 percent.
But also due to the fact that new measurements show that gases from trees contribute much more than thought, when devices were developed to trace the hydrocarbons’ source.
The first such study documenting this was the University of Georgia Chaimedes in 1988. It has been show again by dozens of prestigious reasearchers, including some I cite [in the book] from Australia’s top scientific agency.
[Ronald] Reagan, however, was not simply pulling this out of his hat when he said this in the late 1970s and the 1980 campaign. He cited scientists such as Texas A&M’s John J. McKetta, who questioned the assumptions about the relative contributions of cars and trees [to smog] and were later vindicated when the research confirmed their theories.
An interesting point is that in cars, the catalytic converter reduces pollutants by, or course, transforming hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide into water vapor and carbon dioxide. This was hailed as a great advance at the time, around the early 1970s.
Liberal senator Edmund Muskie, a Democrat from Maine who sponsored the Clean Air Act of 1970, spoke about how wonderful this device was that could turn these harmful pollutants into, in his words, “harmless carbon dioxide” that we breathe out and plants breathe in.
This is a point that needs to be made more often: that one major reason for the increase in carbon dioxide emissions is actually pollution control. [end of quote]
The first time John Berlau mentions trees and cars in ‘Eco-Freaks’ is in chapter 4 ‘Smashing the engine on public health’. This chapter is essentially about the long running campaign in the US against cars. On page 118 Berlau makes the point that:
“The main charge against cars made since the late 1970s is not that they are adding harmful pollution. It’s that they are contributing to the buildup of carbon dioxide … but carbon dioxide is not a pollutant like lead. It is a basic element that humans breathe out and plants breathe in. In fact, cars are emitting carbon dioxide in part as a way of reducing pollutants. Catalytic converters, placed on cars after the mandated pollution reductions from the Clean Air Act of 1970, “oxidize” pollutants such as carbon monoxide and harmful hydrocarbons and transform what comes out of the tailpipe into water and carbon dioxide. … Proponents of the Clean Air Act, including many environmentalists now sounding the alarm about carbon dioxide, thought this was great … proclaiming proudly that with catalytic converters, cars would now be primarily emitting the same substance that plants breathe. [end of quote]
In summary, trees can contribute to smog, cars now emit more carbon dioxide than they used to, and don’t believe everything you read in comments following my blog posts.
Dear Jennifer,
This morning 23rd March, an item on ‘AM’ the ABC Radio current affairs programme quoted an ARTC (Australian Rail Track Corporation) report as saying that the use of timber sleepers results in 500x the carbon emissions compared to using concrete sleepers.** That report claimed the Australian Greenhouse Office as its source.
I have commented to AM through their web site which unfortunately goes to them and them alone. For your interest the following is a reasonable reproduction of that email.
“Dear Sir,
Your item this morning 23rd March quoted the Australian Greenhouse Office as the source of a statement that the use of timber sleepers produces 500 times the carbon emissions of concrete sleepers. That statement must surely put the credibility of the Greenhouse Office at risk.
Some basic facts:
Fact 1. We should all know that timber contains carbon and concrete does not.
Fact 2. To store 1000kg of carbon in railway sleepers 67kg of carbon will be emmitted in the process. The production of concrete to do the same job emits 430kg of carbon and stores none.
Fact 3. To convert a timber sleeper track to a concrete sleeper track means that all the timber sleepers become an emission. Add that to the emissions of producing the concrete replacements and we have a combined emission of 61.2 tonnes of carbon per km and none in storage.
Fact 4. A natural forest of regrowth and old growth is carbon neutral. That is it is emitting carbon at the same rate it is absorbing it from the atmosphere.
Fact 5. A healthy, sustainably managed, production forest is constantly absorbing more carbon than it emits. At the same time carbon is being stored for the life of its products in service.
Fact 6. By excluding the tribal aboriginal from the river front, open woodlands of River Red Gum have turned into closed forests of tall slim trees. If these forests become National Parks they will still need thinning treatment if they are to support the range of biodiversity that we expect to find.
Fact 7. Forests in National Parks can receive thinning treatment, as is the case in the Box- Ironbark, but the trees must be felled to waste as the product from a National Park cannot be sold.
Yours faithfully
Vic Eddy
—————–
** On October 01, 2006, I blogged ‘Switch to Concrete Railway Sleepers, Negates Wind Farm Savings’ with comment that:
“There is much community concern about global warming and an expectation we will all do our bit to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So why did the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) decide to transfer its annual requirement for 400,000 railway sleepers from timber to concrete?
According to Mark Poynter* this will result in an extra 190,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year that could otherwise have been negated by carbon sequestered in forest regrowth and saved by avoiding concrete manufacture.
Read the full post here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001660.html
Hello Jennifer,
I have been a reader and minor contributor at your blog over the last few months.
A few weeks ago I was discussing the Coorong with another commentator in relation to the Prime Minister’s new $10 billion National Water Security Plan in particular the hyper-salinity aspect.
With all the talk of the Murray “dying” I had thought the hyper-salinity was due to lower flow from the Murray River, the direct implication being less dilution of the Coorong as well as not being able to keep the mouth open.
As an irrigation farmer it is not pleasant to be accused of being partially responsible for destroying the Coorong.
Having been across the barrages and seeing the Coorong first hand late last year, meeting affected stakeholders and talking to South Australian government officials, I couldn’t help but feel it is the right thing to send the Coorong more water and thus that I should support the $10billion plan in its aim to buy back water for the river.
However, if my interpretation of this report ‘A Paleaecological Assessment of Water Quality Changes in the Coorong, South Australia’ is correct, the actual water from the Murray River has had no noticeable influence on the Coorong.
In fact, according to the report:
“Before European settlement the northern lagoon of the Coorong was dominated by tidal input of marine water. Marine flushing also strongly influenced the southern lagoon but less
frequently or to a lesser extent.
At no time in the 300 years before European settlement has the Coorong been noticeably influenced by flows from the River Murray.
The northern end of the southern lagoon occasionally experienced hypersaline conditions in the 300 years before European settlement. Elsewhere in the Coorong, the salinity was typically at, or below, 35,000 mg/L. In the southern lagoon the presence of diatom and ostracod taxa preferring salinity levels ~ 5000 mg/L suggests regular freshwater input. This source is likely to have been from the south-east.” [end of quote]
The report also states that “the extended presence of marine diatom taxa in Lake Alexandrina suggests the tidal prism regularly extended into Lake Alexandrina throughout the last 6000 years”, which I take to mean long periods of low flow where the mouth evidently did not close but rather was flushed by the sea.
What few people now realize is that there are barrages, construction completed in 1940, across each of the five channels connecting the lakes with the Coorong. These barrages restrict tidal flow into the lakes and stop freshwater flowing out of the Murray River’s mouth.
So effectively we might spend billions taking water from upstream irrigators and in the process displace jobs/communities and achieve nothing for the Coorong.
I do realise there are other “iconic” sites on the Murray that will benefit from more water, but they benefit already from the environmental nature of water deliveries prior to extraction, and don’t require 1000GL of fresh water evaporation from the lakes in low availability scenarios.
I now wonder if the most natural thing we can do for the Coorong is to remove the barrages and allow tidal action to do it’s business in particular flushing the Coorong. If this study by Adelaide University is correct the fresh water from the Murray River is not what the Coorong needs. It needs to be flushed by the ocean and this would be facilitated by the removal of the barrages.
Using stored fresh water from upstream to keep the mouth of the Murray River open, as currently advocated by various environment groups and the federal government shouldn’t really be an option.
There is currently a proposal to build a weir on the river at Wellington which is upstream of the lakes.
Irrigators currently dependent on the Lakes would have to be supplied from water upstream of this proposed new weir, much to their benefit by getting better quality water. Funding under the new $10 billion water plan could allow this to happen.
If we don’t get significant inflows the weir at Wellington will be built, the lake levels will fall and the irrigators won’t be irrigating anyway. But the situation at the Coorong will not improve unless the barrages are removed or opened.
If we do get substantial inflows, what was the problem again?
Cheers
Rojo
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has just released a report entitled ‘World’s Top 10 River’s at Risk’.
Australia’s Murray-Darling is included in the top 10. But it’s two rivers, so maybe the title should be ‘World’s Top 11 River’s at Risk’?
The report goes onto state that, “The Murray and Darling Rivers have great variability in year to year flows, and their ecology is driven by large floods covering their extensive flood plains and intervening dry periods.”
This may be the case for stretches of the Darling River, but the Murray is now a completely regulated system which, has even during this worst drought, been mostly full of water.
Anyway, this new report which has generated much publicity for WWF has identified the “key threat” to the Murray-Darling as “invasive species, especially from aquarium trade”.
But, interestingly, key invasive fish species identified in the report were not introduced recently or from the aquarium trade.
According to the new WWF report, native fish species such as the Silver Perch, Freshwater Catfish and the large Murray Cod are all “in rapid decline” while numbers of invasive species have significantly increased.
The report cites a government report, Barrett 2004, and a World Resource Institute website, WRI 2003, to support the contention that numbers of native fish are in decline and another government report, but also on the native fish strategy, MDBC 2005, as evidence numbers of invasive species are on the increase.
But none of these reports included good credible data on changes in numbers of invasive or native fish species.
The government’s native fish strategy was written by ecologist Jim Barrett. I contacted Mr Barrett when I was writing ‘Myth & the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment’ back in 2003.
Based in part on information provided by Mr Barrett, I wrote in that report that, “Since the 1980s, carp numbers [a key invasive species in the Murray River] have been observed to decline and downstream of Yarrawonga, numbers are thought to be about half what they were in 1997 and are now estimated to represent 21 per cent of total fish numbers. According to the Murray Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) a likely explanation for the decline in carp numbers is that the initial population boom resulted in an overutilization of available resources and subsequent reduction to equilibrium carrying capacity for this species. In contrast, local fishermen attribute the observed reduction in carp numbers to predation from an increasing Murray cod population.”
The WWF report acknowledges that, “since 1996 A$2 billion has been allocated to recover water to increase environmental flows and restore fish passage for the lower 1,800 km of Murray River.”
But in the next paragraph, without providing any data, falsely concludes that “despite these worthy initiatives, the ecological health of the rivers continues to decline.”
But even the typically pessimistic head of the Murray Darling Basin Commission (MDBC) Dr Wendy Craik recently described the “visionary Native Fish Strategy” as a success with “solid evidence” that native fish are using the new innovative fishways built as a part of the sea to Hume Dam fish passage program. Furthermore, Dr Craik claimed another success in the “resnagging” project in which large tree stumps, or snags, are placed strategically into rivers. The snags provide refuge from fast-flowing water and help to recreate original river habitats for native fish.”
But when is the MDBC, or WWF, or someone else, going to start collecting some good credible data on fish numbers?
In summary, the WWF report ‘World’s Top 10 River’s at Risk’ which is making news today, is about 20 years out of date at least with respect to the Murray River. Indeed while numbers of native fish have on average, probably declined since European settlement, with a crash in Murray Cod populations in the early 1960s, there is evidence to suggest numbers of native fish, including the Murray Cod, are now on the increase while invasive species are on the decline. So the WWF has got it all the wrong way around. Then again, they are perhaps more interested in ‘hand-waving’ than river ecology.
Earlier this year I spent a week at the beach, more specifically at Bluey’s Beach, on the NSW mid-north coast. My daughter and partner are both keen surfers. So, always in search of that best wave break, we also visited Boomerang, Elizabeth, Seal Rocks and a few other beaches.
I’m used to southeast Queensland with the summer water temperature a very pleasant 26C or so, and expected the same in NSW.
But the first day we went surfing it was a very cold 14C!
So much for the global warming of sea temperatures I thought as I shivered on the beach that day.
The locals explained that it was unusual, but they didn’t seem to have a good explanation. Interestingly, the water wasn’t so cold every day or at every beach.
According to a recent article in Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph a “massive, mysterious whirlpool of cold water” formed off Sydney in January and is still active “forcing the sea surface to fall almost 1m and ocean currents to change course”.
So sea levels are falling off Sydney?
According to the CSIRO, oceanographers have identified a huge, dense mass of cold water off Sydney but know very little about what causes it.
“What we do know is that this is a very powerful natural feature which tends to push everything else aside – even the mighty East Australian Current,” says CSIRO’s Dr David Griffin.
Dr Griffin, from the Wealth from Oceans Flagship Research program, said cold-water eddies regularly appear off Sydney.
“Until 20 years ago we would not have known they even existed without accidentally steaming through them on a research vessel,” he said.
“However, now that we can routinely identify them from space via satellite, marine scientists can evaluate their role as a source of life in the marine ecosystem.”
Reaching to a depth of more than 1000m, the 200km diameter ocean eddy has a rotational period of about seven days. Its centre is about 100km directly offshore from Sydney.” [end of quote]
Now I’m waiting for a best AGW explanation for this dramatic, even if localized and ephemeral, drop in sea level and sea temperature.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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