Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for September 2007

Frogs and Snakes

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When Stoney Creek treefrogs (Litoria lesueuri) mate, hundreds of males congregate around three or four females. In contrast to their normal olive drab, the much smaller and more numerous males display their state of excitement by becoming brilliant bright yellow.

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I have never seen any any nocturnal snakes avail themselves of these veritable smorgasborgs; perhaps the treefrogs are poisonous. The Keelback or Freshwater Snake (Tropidonophis mairii) however, is diurnal and can tolerate the toxins of young cane toads (Bufo marinas) and also Stoney Creek treefrogs, if captured during the day.

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In this media release from Sydney University, strategic behaviour of frogs and snakes reveals an unexpected sophistication:

When dinner is dangerous

Normally, when a snake meets a frog it is the frog that must fear for its life. But in the tropics of Australia there are several frog species that can turn the tables on their attacker.

The marbled frog produces a strong glue when bitten by a snake, making the frog difficult to handle. Dahl’s aquatic frog uses a different tactic, producing a potent poison that can kill a snake attempting to swallow it.

In a recent article in The American Naturalist Ben Phillips and Richards Shine from the University of Sydney show that one species of Australian snake has developed an ingenious trick for dealing with these dangerous prey items. The northern death adder is a highly venomous front-fanged snake native to the same floodplains inhabited by these dangerous frogs. By examining snake feeding behaviour, Phillips and Shine found that death adders not only know that these frog species are dangerous, but they recognize which species they are attacking and deal with them appropriately.

How do the snakes deal with these toxic prey? The answer is simple: by biting and then waiting. The adders simply bite then eat non-toxic frogs, but dangerous frogs are bitten, envenomated and then released. By waiting for the toxic frogs to die, and then waiting for the toxin to degrade, predatory snakes can effectively dodge the toxic frog bullet.

Intriguingly, the snakes recognize which kind of prey they are dealing with: the glue of marbled frogs takes about ten minutes to lose potency and so snakes wait about 12 minutes after biting this frog before eating it. The toxin in Dahl’s aquatic frog takes longer (about 30 minutes) to lose potency. Thus, adders delay swallowing for 30-40 minutes after biting and releasing these frogs.

In evolutionary terms, the snake’s strategy of “bite, release, and wait” is unbeatable by the frogs. Although prey often evolve ways of overcoming predator tactics, the frogs can’t do so in this case – because the snake’s strategy only becomes effective after the frog has died. Natural selection ceases to operate on an individual after that individual’s death, so frogs will probably never evolve toxins that last longer in response to the snake’s tactic. Thus, this waiting strategy is likely to be stable and unbeatable over evolutionary time.

“The common assumption is that snakes are pretty stupid, and to them a frog is a frog. But here we see a snake that effectively discriminates between frog species and then deals with each species in an appropriate manner. If dinner can kill you, you have to be careful,” said Dr Phillips.

Mossman Sugar Trials

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It has been my observation that the little-known prehensile-tailed rat (Pogonomys mollipilosus) loves the sweet gel around the seeds of cocoa beans and I have wondered how cocoa can be protected from their adverse economic enthusiasms.

The notion may well come to a head, with Mossman Agricultural Services helping to develop a cocoa industry with a $199,000 Sugar Industry Innovation Fund grant. In partnership with Cocoa Australia and Mossman Central Mill, the project seeks to diversify the income stream for the mill, by manufacturing sugar-based products needed for cocoa and chocolate production. Part of the grant will be used to help establish a cocoa processing factory.

Plummeting world sugar prices have encouraged the development of value-adding in Mossman Mill, through organic chocolate production and also the world’s first batch of low glycemic-index (GI) sugar, which could help people with diabetes.

Damage Mitigation Permits are processed by Queensland’s Environmental Protection Agency, after non-lethal strategies have shown to be unsuccessful, but the little-known prehensile-tailed rat has not been previously identified as a pest and neither has it been listed for its vulnerabilities.

The Bushfire Disaster in Greece was Predictable: A Note from Roger Underwood

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Reports in the media and from fire management colleagues indicate that the recent horrific bushfires in Greece have parallels in Australia and were predictable.

It is estimated that nearly 70 lives have been lost and close to 200,000 hectares of agricultural land, national parks and mountain forests have been incinerated. The loss of olive groves is economically disastrous. Similarly the mountain forests are mostly coniferous, and unlike eucalypt forests, are destroyed by high intensity fire. Serious soil erosion and flooding can be expected in the coming winters.

Like southern Australia, Greece has a Mediterranean climate with cool, rainy winters and hot dry summers – ideal conditions for bushfires. Traditionally, however, it has not had disastrous all-consuming wildfires even in previous periods of below average rainfall. What is going on? It appears that the answer lies not in “global warming” as the usual people are inevitably saying, but in land use changes, mismanagement and inappropriate policy. Three things stand out:

1. Loss of land to traditional rural people. Over the last 20 years of so there has been a splurge of buying-up of small rural properties by wealthy people from European countries. A luxury holiday villa is built, and the new owners retire there, or pop in now and again to enjoy the warmth and beauty of the Greek mountains. However, just as when wealthy people from Perth buy their little vineyard in the karri forest, or move to a property on the edge of the bush in the hills, the first thing they do is try to change traditional land use practices, especially burning, and to introduce a “new environmental awareness”.

Mild burning in spring and autumn has been a practice of villagers and small land owners for centuries in Greece for all the usual reasons – including producing fresh grass for grazing, keeping the woods healthy and maintaining a low fire hazard. Increasingly burning has declined as the former land owners move to larger towns, and the new owners fail to do the job.

2. Transfer of bushfire responsibilities from land managers to emergency services. A few years ago the Greek government decided to take fire management responsibilities away from their Forestry Service and give them to the fire brigades. Almost immediately, routine burning programs in forest areas ceased. The bushfire service was confident it could tackle any fire, but this view was based on their experience with fires which occurred in forests which had been prescribed burnt for generations.

Once burning stopped, fuels began to accumulate, and when this fuel became dry in the current drought period, the resulting fires were unstoppable. As is so often the case world-wide, fire services tend to have a “suppression mentality” and do not sufficiently involve themselves in the essential work of bushfire preparedness and damage mitigation. Greek foresters could see it all coming, but did not have the political support to get anyone to face up to the coming crisis.

3. Reliance on technology. Greek authorities have been seduced into investing huge sums of money into aerial fire fighting technology. This was sold to them as the answer to the maiden’s prayer. At the same time, traditional ground-based systems, including access for fire fighters and old-fashioned pre-suppression work, were allowed to run down. The result: when there were many simultaneous fires, the new system was simply overwhelmed. There were not enough water bombers to tackle a large number of small fires, and then when the small fires rapidly became large and intense, the water bombers were ineffective.

Australian bushfire specialists listen to all this with a rueful expression on their faces, or roll their eyes with despair.

Analysis of the massive bushfires in Victoria, ACT and NSW in recent years indicate exactly the same patterns have emerged in Australia, with almost exactly the same result.

We have been lucky that only a small number of lives have been lost. But this may not be the case in the next bad fire season. If Australian governments continue to go down the line of replacing land managers with emergency services, investing in massive aerial technology instead of permanent staff and preparedness programs on the ground, and allowing bushfire policies to be dictated by people from the inner suburbs of the big cities who have no practical experience, the bushfire situation will only get worse here, as it has in Greece.

Roger Underwood is a former General Manager of CALM in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Dolphins Still in the Yangtze River – or Not?

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The Yangtze River dolphin is considered functionally extinct. The species of freshwater dolphin, also known as the baiji, had not been sighted since September 2004 despite extensive surveys.

On August 19, 2007 a large white animal was filmed in the Yangtze close to Tongling city in Anhui Province.

The international media has reported:

Wang Kexiong, of the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said experts at the institute had confirmed the footage was of a baiji.

But according to the baiji.org Foundaton website:

Wang Ding from the Institute of Hydrobiology, Wuhan, commented on the film he could not give a 100 percent confirmation since the video was of poor quality and taken from a distance of about 1000 metres away.

Scientists of the Institute of Hydrobiology are organising a small survey in the area where the film was taken.
The baiji.org Foundation is co-organizing another survey of the Yantzee River for 2008 .

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You can read about efforts to save the baiji here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001498.html
I have written about the loss of the baiji for the IPA Review: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/data/Baiji_%20MAROHASY.pdf

Postmodern Science – A Contradiction in Terms: A Note from Walter Starck

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The ideal of scientific objectivity has been subverted — even in the world’s most prestigious universities — by the pernicious and pervasive influence of postmodernism, laments scientist Dr Walter Starck.

Over recent decades a few widely publicised instances of scientific misconduct have occasioned much concern. All have involved fabrication or misrepresentation of data in the highly competitive big budget area of biomedical research.

Remarkably, however, in some other areas of research, similar and often even more egregious breaches of scientific ethics have become such common practice as to pass without comment. In such areas the ideal of scientific objectivity has been abandoned for overt advocacy, with cherry-picking, misrepresentation and suppression of data becoming near normal.

Moreover, any attempt to question such claims is met not with reasoned argument but appeals to authority, claims of expert consensus and personal denigration. How this gross departure from what were once core scientific values deserves consideration.

The scientific method has been the most effective means yet developed to understand our world. It has resulted in longer, healthier, safer, more interesting and comfortable human lives than ever before. Essential to this success has been a philosophical approach in which understanding is evidence-based, logically consistent and subject to revision in the light of new evidence or more comprehensive explanation.

In science the highest goal has been a pursuit of truth as determined by reason and empirical evidence. Disregard for truth and false evidence are unacceptable for any reason.

The history of science has been an ongoing account of the discovery of previously unthinkable new under-standings of the world and the abandonment of previously accepted ones. A heliocentric solar system, a multimillion-year-old Earth, evolution, continental drift, relativity, quantum theory — every new perception that challenges established belief always meets strong resistance regardless of the weight of reason and evidence to support it. The core strength of science is that it fosters such challenges and demands their acceptance if they cannot be refuted.

Whether or not one approves of all its findings, the success and authority of science are difficult to deny. Attempts to adopt its methodology and lay some claim to its authority have been made with varying success in other fields of study. In the humanities and so-called social sciences the result has been decidedly mixed. Part of the difficulty has been the inherent complexity of the subject matter, but the conflict between unavoidable conclusions from evidence-based analysis and deeply held beliefs has also been a major obstacle. Too much in careers, reputations and convictions rests on foundations inconsistent with empirical evidence to permit easy acceptance of fundamentally different ideas.

Increasingly, however, the findings of science have begun to impinge upon the established order in the humanities. Postmodernism has been in large part a response to this challenge. It ignores the irrefutable success of science in permitting us to better understand our world; it rejects its authority as being simply a cultural artefact, no more or less valid than any other belief. Truth, facts, reason and objectivity are rejected because in practice the aim does not fully achieve the ideal.

Uncomfortable scientific findings are then “deconstructed” so as to dismiss or reinterpret them as desired. Into the vacuum of ethics and meaning it seeks to fill, this nihilistic pseudo-philosophy then inserts its own agenda, a new edition of the old leftist catechism re-branded as a form of moral righteousness we recognise as political correctness.

Postmodernism is now as predominant in academia as the socialism it has replaced. Although the latter attracted many scientists, their professional activity had limited relevance to social concerns and there was little direct influence on the practice of science itself.

Postmodernism, however, recognises the increasing influence of science on social issues and has attacked, co-opted and subverted it with considerable success. This has been made easier by the absence of any formal study of logic or the philosophy of science as a part of scientific training.

Awareness of the philosophy and ethics of science is something scientists are simply assumed to absorb from their environment, although these are matters which seldom arise in the normal course of events. Although a PhD purports to be a doctor of philosophy, most holders of the degree are in fact advanced technicians with highly specialised training, and with neither the breadth of scientific understanding nor philosophical knowledge the degree implies.

On the other hand, various issues of political correctness are virtually daily fare in the broader academic environment of which scientists are a part. Although few scientists might consider themselves as politically correct or (heaven forbid!) postmodern-ists, many, perhaps most, do subscribe to the prevailing attitudes of an academic community heavily influenced by this view.

Postmodernism has focused its concern and had its greatest effect on those areas of science which bear most strongly on societal matters. Behavioural and environmental studies have been notably influenced.

Such influence has taken manifold forms. A common one has seen many scientists abandon any attempt at an objective search for truth in favour of outright advocacy, in which evidence is misrepresented, ignored and suppressed to accord with some objective deemed to be socially or environmentally correct.

Regardless of the fact that dishonest scientific claims are often the basis for laws and restrictions that wreak havoc on people’s lives, or even criminalise otherwise harmless activity, perpetrators of such dishonesty are seldom held responsible for any harm they cause. Ironically, incorporating similar misinformation in support of a public share offering would make one subject to criminal prosecution.

In environmental matters, dishonest scientific claims have become so widely practised and accepted that questioning or exposing them is the only thing now treated as a breach of ethics!

The penalties start with personal attack and denigration. For those in business it often includes severe legal and regulatory harassment. For researchers it can entail withdrawal of research support, publishing rejections, shunning by peers and even dismissal from employment. Such threats are very real and examples are common enough to deter all but the most determined or reckless.

Lawrence Summers after Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences passed a no-confidence vote against him.

Two examples — one specific, the other general — clearly illustrate the pernicious and pervasive influence of postmodernism on science. Harvard University is one of the world’s most prestigious academic and research institutions. Last year its president, economist Lawrence (“Larry”) Summers, gave a conference address entitled “Diversifying the science and engineering workforce: women, underrepresented minorities, and their S&E careers in Massachusetts”.

In it he considered that social attitudes and discrimination might not be the sole reason for under-representation but that family vs. career choices and innate aptitudes might also be involved. He referred to indicative evidence and suggested that further research and a more objective approach could be useful.

His overall tone was moderate, unassertive and reasonable. By any normal standards of discourse he offered only a modest suggestion. However, the mere suggestion of any possibility of innate differences in aptitude between genders provoked a storm of protest. Those from aggressive women’s activists groups might not be too surprising, but a threatened vote of no confidence by Harvard’s powerful Faculty of Arts and Sciences led to his forced resignation.

Although he retained the support of many faculty students — with even an apparent majority among other faculties — it seems ironic it was the science community that demanded his head. In subscribing to irrational belief it seems that recent converts must always compete to demonstrate their commitment. As to the outcome, one can reasonably assume his replacement will not be likely to again suggest a rational scientific approach to such issues.

At the time of this writing, a brilliant young theoretical physicist at Harvard, Lubos Motl, has reportedly had his position terminated as a consequence of his outspoken support for Larry Summers and for his criticism of discrepancies between the claims of global-warming alarmists and the fundamental radiative physics involved. With this happening to the brightest at the best institutions, one can hardly expect better elsewhere.

A more general and closer-to-home example of postmodernist thinking involves the management of Australian fisheries. Australia has the largest fishery-zone per capita, yet the lowest harvest-rate in the world. The latter is only 1/30 of the average rate. The total catch is only half that of New Zealand and very close to that of PNG, Italy, Poland and Portugal.

Much of our fishery zone is in fact not fished at all. Despite this indisputable reality, our resource managers claim our fisheries are widely threatened with over-fishing and the world’s most restrictive and costly management has been imposed. For the Commonwealth-licensed fishing fleet, annual management costs are in excess of $100,000 per vessel.

The result of such (mis)manage-ment is a rapidly declining industry and rising imports. Seventy per cent of domestic seafood consumption now comes from imports. All these come from areas much more heavily fished than our own. Thailand is the largest supplier. It produces 11 times our total catch and from a fishing zone only 1/20 as large.

The cost of seafood imports is currently $1.8 billion annually, and a CSIRO study projects a 400 per cent increase in consumption by 2020. To make matters worse, prices are increasing steeply with Asia’s growing wealth and demand.

In effect, we are selling off non-renewable mineral resources to buy a renewable resource we have in abundance but which, thanks to mismanagement, we cannot harvest. In a superb example of bureau-speak, this is then touted as “sustainable management”. To top it off, those responsible for this travesty of management have proclaimed the result to be the “best-managed fisheries in the world”.

Bureaucratic empire-building, research promotion, media sensationalism, environmentalist ideology and political pandering have all played a role in this situation, but postmodern thinking has greatly facilitated it by sanctioning the abandonment of truth and evidence in favour of advocacy for the higher purpose of protecting our precious environment.

Although the bureaucrats, researchers, journalists, activists and politicians involved all have their own agendas, they share a common tertiary academic background wherein postmodern ethical influence prevails. This makes advocacy in accord with perceived political correctness a virtue, and disagreement politically incorrect. The more irrefutable any conflicting evidence presented, the greater the righteousness in its rejection.

With the collapse of socialism, disapproval of existing society has regrouped around the environment, but the agenda of restructuring society by coercion remains the same. The purported concern has simply shifted from downtrodden workers to the birds and bees. This accords well with the neo-pagan romanticism of nature popular among an overwhelmingly urbanised middle-class disconnected from the realities of the productive activity which supports them.

Societal disconnection from reality is a recurrent theme in human history. It may be imposed or may emerge when good fortune lasts long enough for people to begin to accept it as a given and even their just due.

Such delusions may sometimes be corrected if a leader is daring enough to state the obvious, and or may be abandoned en masse, as happened with the collapse of communism.

More often they self-correct by consequences resulting in disaster. With a chronic trade deficit, foreign debt growing at twice the rate of the economy, declining manufacturing and a looming global fuel shortage, Australia appears headed for a severe economic readjustment, but our delusions prevent us from doing anything or even recognising the situation.

A new, more holistic and realistic view of human ecology is overdue. Also needed is a leader who will dare to challenge the orthodoxy of environmental correctness. Hopefully, this will occur before the consequences of self-inflicted economic, energy and environmental impediments impose their own harsh corrections.

Dr Walter Starck is a marine scientist with 50 years’ worldwide experience in reef biology.

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First published in News Weekly and reproduced here with permission from the author.

Gene Technology in Australia – Fact not Fiction

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Agrifood Awareness Australia Limited (AFAA) has recently released an updated version of its very popular booklet, Gene Technology in Australia – Fact not Fiction.

The new edition of the booklet contains a wide range of information from basic detail on the science of gene technology, to the laws and guidelines surrounding research, and opinions on the technology from government, science and farming industries.

Also included in the booklet is information on:

1. Gene technology around the world;
2. Impacts and uses of the technology;
3. Gene technology in Australia;
4. The research process of gene technology; and
5. Labelling of genetically modified foods

In addition to the new booklet, AFAA has completely updated and redesigned its fact sheets. Copies of the booklet and fact sheets can be downloaded or requested from AFAA’s website: www.afaa.com.au.