Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for June 2007

Some Weekend Reading from Marc Morano

By

1. Scientist who warned of coming ice age in the 1970’s is still standing behind global cooling prediction

Excerpt: ‘Thanks to new evidence that Dr. Kukla only recently published, he now knows that global warming always precedes an ice age. That makes the current period of global warming a mere blip that constitutes additional indication of the ice age to come.’

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=bdc24964-7f82-4f7a-863c-f0ff43010278

2. Another Scientist predicts cooling:

Solar output drives climate change: ‘We should prepare now for dangerous global cooling’

Climate scientist claims new research is shattering ‘myths’ about global warming

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4&p=4

3. Report: Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists versus Scientific Forecasts

‘We have been unable to find a single scientific forecast to support the currently widespread belief in dangerous, human-caused “global warming”.

http://www.nzclimatescience.org/images/PDFs/warmaudit31.pdf

4. Al Gore Gets Rich After White House – ‘Former Vice President Is Worth at Least $100 Million, Thanks to Smart Business Ventures’

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3281925

5. Environmental toilet water flow restrictions in Australia necessitate using toilet brush and flushing twice

‘Toilets that don’t do what toilets are supposed to do. Famous 19th-century British pioneer of sanitary plumbing, Thomas Crapper, would be rolling in his grave.’

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/flushed-with-the-best-intentions/2007/06/20/1182019196282.html?page=fullpage

6. Environmental group reports U.S. leading world in toilet paper use

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5142

7. Update: Worldwide reaction teaches fourth-graders who wrote global warming report a lesson on free-speech

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=115838&ac=PHedi

8. Flashback: Maine fourth-graders issue climate report: ‘Global warming is a huge pending global disaster’

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=113600

9. CLIMATE: Silly science of fourth-grade climate report – Paper: Fourth-grader’s ‘fed propaganda masquerading as science’

‘America’s schoolchildren are being fed propaganda masquerading as science, and as it is with the global-warmists’ computer models, it’s garbage in, garbage out.’

http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=25817

10. Left-winger counters global warming hysteria

http://info.detnews.com/weblog/index.cfm?blogid=10038

11. President of Czech Republic: ‘Do you really ‘see’ any damage caused by current warming?’

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e9df7200-19c7-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html

12. Terrorism Fears Surpass Global Warming in U.S.

http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/index.cfm/fuseaction/viewItem/itemID/16199

13. Hold the Line on Global Warming

http://www.junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20070618.html

14. BBC’s Hypocritical Analysis of its Own Global Warming Coverage
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0620-climate_poll.html or alternate article: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/warming-062007.html

16. Climate change movie “The Tipping Point” begins production

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20070620-14430600-bc-britain-climatemovie.xml

17. Going Green: The Media Reveal a Major Color Scheme

Journalists lose their jaded attitudes and embrace an environmental pallet for just about everything.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/commentary/2007/20070620155029.aspx

18. Too Busy Admiring Greens to Notice What They’re Really About

Environmentalists want to limit our society and your behavior, but you won’t hear that from the media.

http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2007/20070620135046.aspx

18. Farming the oceans to combat global warming

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/6823/

19. An American company wants to seed the oceans with iron, helping to grow plankton, and fight global warming.

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/6823/

—————
Thanks Marc Morano for all these links.
Happy reading.
I’m off to Noosa for the weekend.

Fish, Mud and Global Cooling

By

In 1998 Timothy Patterson from the Department of Earth Sciences at Carlton University, Canada, was funded to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. The government was looking to establish appropriate fishing quotas including for species of anchovies, herring known to have “wide swings” in populations abundance.

Patterson writes in an article for the Financial Post entitled ‘Read the Sunspots’:

“In one season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.”

He goes on to explain how in a search for a predictor of climate over thousands of years as a predictor of fish abundance his research team began collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords.

The subtitle of the article is “solar output drives climate change – and we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling.”

I really like the opening paragraph:

“Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that “the science is settled.” At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.”

And midway through the piece there is a list of the two dozen or so article in the series on the ‘Deniers’ : The National Post’s series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science.

Read more here: http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4&p=4

New Perspective on Global Temperatures: A Note from Ian Mott

By

Hello Jen,

It has been obvious for some time now that the world has been encouraged to regard temperature changes as being overly significant by the use of anomaly graphs that use the entire vertical scale to portray the extent of the temperature change.

This has denied the public the opportunity to view the changes in relation to their relevance to normal temperatures. So I thought readers might be interested in seeing the familiar data in a new perspective.

temp_image003.gif

Regards,
Ian Mott

Farmers in Court for Carbon Credit Compensation

By

“The Commonwealth [of Australia] has failed in an attempt to have a compensation claim by farmers fighting land clearing regulations dismissed.

“The group known as the Commonwealth Property Protection Association has filed a claim against the Commonwealth for compensation for lost carbon credits because of land clearing restrictions.

“The hearing will resume on July 19…

Read a bit more here: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/21/1957942.htm

Low World Grain Supplies: US National Farmers Union

By

“The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its first projections of world grain supply and demand for the coming crop year: 2007/08. USDA predicts supplies will plunge to a 53-day equivalent-their lowest level in the 47-year period for which data exists.

“The USDA projects global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record. Further, it is likely that, outside of wartime, global grain supplies have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer,” said National Farmers Union Director of Research Darrin Qualman .

worldfoodsupplies.JPG
from http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_5660.cfm

Most important, 2007/08 will mark the seventh year out of the past eight in which global grain production has fallen short of demand. This consistent shortfall has cut supplies in half-down from a 115-day supply in 1999/00 to the current level of 53 days. “The world is consistently failing to produce as much grain as it uses,” said Qualman. He continued: “The current low supply levels are not the result of a transient weather event or an isolated production problem: low supplies are the result of a persistent drawdown trend.”

In addition to falling grain supplies, global fisheries are faltering. Reports in respected journals Science and Nature state that 1/3 of ocean fisheries are in collapse, 2/3 will be in collapse by 2025, and our ocean fisheries may be virtually gone by 2048. “Aquatic food systems are collapsing, and terrestrial food systems are under tremendous stress,” said Qualman.

Demand for food is rising rapidly. There is a worldwide push to proliferate a North American-style meat-based diet based on intensive livestock production-turning feedgrains into meat in this way means exchanging 3 to 7 kilos of grain protein for one kilo of meat protein. Population is rising-2.5 billion people will join the global population in the coming decades.

“Every six years, we’re adding to the world the equivalent of a North American population. We’re trying to feed those extra people, feed a growing livestock herd, and now, feed our cars, all from a static farmland base. No one should be surprised that food production can’t keep up,” said Qualman.

Qualman said that the converging problems of natural gas and fertilizer constraints, intensifying water shortages, climate change, farmland loss and degradation, population increases, the proliferation of livestock feeding, and an increasing push to divert food supplies into biofuels means that we are in the opening phase of an intensifying food shortage.

End of media release.

Thanks to Aaron Edmonds for this link.

Minister and Cabinet Fund Secret GM Feeding Study: A Note from Ian Edwards

By

Hello Jennifer,

We had a very lively GMO [genetically modified organism] Reference Group Meeting [in Perth, Western Australia,] this morning and I had the opportunity to lay a few concerns on the line with the Agriculture Minister, Kim Chance, particularly with respect to the Animal Feeding Study by Judy Carman and colleagues in Adelaide. Among the key points to emerge from the exchange were the following:-

1. The Minister refused to disclose the protocol for the feeding study; the list of scientists (local and international) who allegedly approved the protocol; and the members of the review committee who will address milestones.

He was reminded that this is his own Ministerial Reference Group; Western Australian taxpayers money is involved; the study never went out to tender; and is not a state mandate anyway given that WA is a signatory to the Inter-governmental Agreement on Gene Technology Regulation wherein Human Health and the Environment are a Federal jurisdiction.

2. He was also informed that his action could easily be construed as undermining public confidence in the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) and FSANZ, when the independent review of the Gene Technology Act of 2000 has already published its findings (2006) showing that Australia already has one of the most rigorous regulatory systems in the world.

3. He was also reminded that going back to December 2005 Professors Graeme Robertson (Muresk/Curtin Univ.); Stephen Powles (UWA); and Mike Jones (Murdoch/SABC) had written to him informing him that Judy Carman could not be seen as independent and she and her group have no track record in conducting animal feeding studies.

He was also reminded of international concerns for the study (expressed in writing, and responded to in Parliament); and two letters from AusBiotech (Anna Lavelle / Ian Edwards) expressing concerns, and also (in the case of Ian Edwards’ letter) calling for the studies to be halted.

4. The Minister made it clear that only when the results of the studies are published in peer-reviewed journals will he release the protocols. He contended that Bayer and Monsanto do not release details of the protocols for studies that they are currently undertaking so why should he? He said that if there is indeed a flaw in the studies then this will also be revealed upon completion! He also explained that since the commissioning of the studies was by approval of Cabinet he was not obliged to go to the tender process. He assured the Group that the studies were taking place in Australia, and specifically in Adelaide.

5. When asked whether he really believes that the study will answer the outstanding questions that he thinks the “public” still has in their minds he acknowledged that the study is unlikely to provide these answers and it may in fact raise more questions for future work. He also acknowledged that the amount of funding was very small, but “maybe Judy Carman may have other sources of funding to contribute to the study”.

6. He further maintained that ‘consumers’ are confused about the anomalies that have occurred in feeding studies; that our health regulators have a duty of care; and that they have not explained differences in feeding studies to consumers. He further claimed that “only 2 or 3 out of 137 feeding studies presented any details of the protocol involved” and posed the question “Why is there so much unanswered un-answered public information?”

7. He was challenged on this, and attention drawn to the “Risk Assessment and Risk Management Plans” prepared by the OGTR in 2003/04 in response to the Bayer and Monsanto canola submissions that received regulatory approval. These documents were then attacked by the NGO members (Network of Concerned Farmers and Organics). A summary of the key findings of the Bayer Risk Assessment was then given to the Group and I explained that Judy Carman’s claims of there being “little or no feeding studies and no allergenicity studies” did not square with the facts.

Julie Newman will be seeing Judy Carman tomorrow and will notify her that these “preposterous allegations had been made against her”. Julie also informed the meeting that Judy Carman “has a room full of files on Monsanto at her home”.

Best regards,
Ian Edwards

————-
I have previously blogged on this issue here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001067.html