Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for September 2007

Pumping Water to Stop Climate Change

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James Lovelock’s plan to pump ocean water to stop climate change is reported in the UK’s Daily Telegraph today, 27th September.

A plan to save our world from extreme climate change by pumping cold water from the depths of the oceans is outlined today by James Lovelock, the scientist who inspired the greens.

James Lovelock is best known for his ideas that portray Earth as a living thing, a super-organism – named Gaia, after the ancient Earth goddess – in which creatures, rocks, air and water interact in subtle ways to ensure the environment remains stable.

Today Lovelock, of Green College, Oxford University, outlines an emergency way to stimulate the Earth to cure itself with Chris Rapley, former head of the British Antarctic Survey who is now the director of the Science Museum, London.

They believe the answer lies in the oceans, which transport much more heat than the atmosphere and, covering more than 70 per cent of the Earth’s surface.

They propose that vertical pipes some 10 metres across be placed in the ocean, such that wave motion would pump up cool water from 100-200 metres depth to the surface, moving nutrient-rich waters in the depths to mix with the relatively barren warm waters at the ocean surface.

This would fertilise algae in the surface waters and encourage them to bloom, absorbing carbon dioxide greenhouse gas while also releasing a chemical called dimethyl sulphide that is know to seed sunlight reflecting clouds.

Read more.

The article is derived from Lovelock and Rapley’s correspondence in this weeks Nature magazine.

The Macquarie Marshes: An Ecological History

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I was at Burrima in the Macquarie Marshes yesterday for the launch of an important piece of research by Gillian Hogendyk:

The Macquarie Marshes: An Ecological History, published as an Occasional Paper by the Institute of Public Affairs, September 2007.

Speakers included Don Burke (Australian Environment Foundation), Professor David Mitchell (Charles Stuart University) and Bertie Bartholomew an elder from the Wailwan people. It was the closing remarks from Gillian Hogendyk that I found most inspiring:

“I hope this paper brings about a moving on from past disputes, and that all groups in the Macquarie Valley can begin to work cooperatively towards our common goal: a healthy, viable Macquarie Marshes, and healthy, viable Macquarie Valley communities.

The time is right to achieve something really worthwhile for the Marshes. Currently there is a total of almost $206 million dollars of both State and Federal money on the table for the recovery of threatened wetlands in NSW. Surely the Macquarie Marshes, recognised both nationally and internationally, can benefit from this commitment.

However the right decisions for the Marshes must be based on the right information. This is where I hope my paper can be part of the solution. If I could put the message of my paper in a nutshell it would be this:

The Macquarie Marshes are in trouble, and have been for a very long time. We have been told that the solution is simply to buy more environmental water and send it down here. This solution completely ignores some fundamental problems. We now know that a significant part of the environmental water is regularly diverted, and doesn’t reach the Nature Reserves. We know too that large levee banks have been built upstream of both Nature Reserves. We know that the South Marsh has serious erosion problems and the North Marsh has salinity problems.

The good news is that solutions are possible. Like everyone here today, I would like to think that in the future my children and grandchildren will be able to visit and enjoy the Marshes.

Many of those present today have given me great encouragement and have added significantly to the content of my paper. In 2005 thirty Macquarie River Food and Fibre members dug into their own pockets to finance the purchase of this property ‘Burrima’. This was a pivotal moment in the whole marsh debate, as we can now lead by example and show people the results of our rehabilitation efforts here.

Thank you to all the owners of Burrima, to Don, Jennifer, and David for giving your support today, and to everyone who has worked so hard to make this day such a success. Thank you also to Bertie for welcoming us to the country of his ancestors, the Wailwan people.”

Macquarie Marshes grazed and ungrazed.jpg
This photograph taken by Jennifer Marohasy yesterday (September 26, 2007) shows a grazed area within the Macquarie Marshes adjacent to the northern nature reserve in the north marsh. To the east of the fence line (within the ungrazed northern nature reserve) are reed beds.

Failed Wheat Crops and a Note from Bill Kininmonth

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When somebody is down on their luck they are fair game for getting a cheap swipe. Drought continues [in Australia] and so the rural community are in the gunsights. It is the farmer’s environmentally unfriendly land management practices that are contributing to global warming, so it is said . It might never rain again! Repent and implement green-friendly practices (shoot the stock and plant native trees) and all will be well!

The drought is continuing despite the earlier predictions that a La Nina is with us and should have brought good winter rains. Obviously man-made global warming.

Unfortunately folklore highlights the 1982-83 El Nino when Malcolm Fraser called an early election during a drought, he lost the election to Bob Hawke and immediately the drought broke with good late autumn and winter rains. Bob Hawke was thenceforth recognised as having divine qualities.

The truth is rather more prosaic. El Nino droughts often break in autumn as they are followed by a rapidly developing La Nina, but not always. If the break does not come in autumn then the next likely period is late spring after the equinox. The current La Nina commenced as a rather weak event but is gathering strength. The Climate Prediction Center in Washington is backing its development. There has been a very active summer monsoon over Asia reflecting the benefits of the La Nina event. A late spring break for Australia after the equinox remains a good prospect.

Rather than further scaring the rural communities with fairy-tales about man-made global warming our communitiy leaders would do better to acquaint themselves with useful knowledge about climate and its prospects and reassure the farmers and their families that climate is only following a well-worn cycle. It would seem that government assistance is available as support and the prospects for rain are not hopeless. Life on the land is tough and survival depends on optimism grounded in fact, not pessimism enhanced by fairy stories.

Bill Kininmonth

Macquarie Marshes 145.jpg
Jennifer Marohasy took this photograph yesterday (September 26, 2007), it was one of many failed winter wheat crops that she saw north of Dubbo in central western New South Wales

Valid Criticism or an Attempt to Discredit Carbon Offsetting?

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The following article appered in The Sunday Times on 23rd September: The ‘carbon offset’ child labourers, Indians work off West’s holiday guilt.

Extracts:

Pumping furiously on a foot treadle in the afternoon heat, six-year-old Sarju Ram is irrigating her impoverished family’s field, improving the crop and – without knowing it – helping environmentally sensitive holiday-makers assuage their guilt over long-haul flights to dream destinations.

But Sarju and her four brothers and sisters working flat out in a clump of trees that provide scant shelter from the sun illustrate a growing argument over claims that British environmentalists’ efforts to curb greenhouse emissions are inadvertently fuelling an increase in child labour.

Sarju’s family is a beneficiary of Climate Care, an organisation that helps some of Britain’s leading public figures and companies to offset their carbon dioxide emissions by funding sustainable energy projects.

Customers of British Airways are among those who have been encouraged to log on to Climate Care’s website and calculate how many tonnes of greenhouse gases their flights will generate, and how much it will cost to neutralise the impact on the atmosphere. A flight to Barbados for a family of four, for example, generates 7.55 tonnes of carbon dioxide, which will cost them £56.64 to offset.

Climate Care uses the money to help persuade families such as Sarju’s to give up labour-saving diesel pumps and buy human-powered treadles instead. It claims that by using the treadle, a family will save money on diesel and hire charges, earn more from increased crops and cut the carbon emissions that would have been produced by the pump.

Last week Indian experts criticised the scheme, saying it was promoting child labour and forcing poor farmers to work harder so that wealthy air travellers could enjoy exotic holidays without worrying about the environment.

“The problem is the number of times child labour is involved,” claimed Ashutosh Pandey of Emergent Ventures India, which advises companies on clean technology.

“It’s not being monitored properly. It’s not reducing emissions. People are selling their diesel pumps to others who are using them.”

Michael Buick, a spokesman for the Oxford-based Climate Care, confirmed that children were working the pumps it promotes, but said that people had to focus on the benefits to the whole family.

He said his group was proud of its scheme, which had led to more than half a million foot treadles being sold, and had won several awards. Four reports had identified major benefits.

According to Buick, critics are mistaken in claiming that diesel pumps are better than human-powered alternatives, because they are costly to run. The treadles meant farmers could rely on increased crops.

Buick said that by “all mucking in” families were able to increase yields and earn more to pay for children to go to school. The extra income also meant fathers could stay with their families rather than leaving them to look for work in the cities.

“If mum is planting and harvesting, the daughters help out. It’s just a different way of life. The phrase ‘child labour’ is emotive. It implies factories, but these are family farms where everyone gets stuck in, watering the crops and taking a turn on the treadle pump,” he said.

No! To An Extended Holocene – A Note from Peter Harris

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One of the essential prerequisites for the IPCC case for extended global warming is the claim that we face an extended Holocene because orbital geometry now is similar to the 400KY (Stage 11) interglacial which lasted for 28, 000 years.

Based on the paper by Berger and Loutre (2003) it is claimed that the extraordinarily long Stage 11 interglacial period resulted from the low orbital eccentricity at the time, and now we have similar eccentricity and should therefore expect an extended Holocene. (IPCC TS 6.4 1.5)

It is reported that “It is very unlikely that the earth would naturally enter another ice age for at least 30 000 years” (IPCC TS 6.2.4 “Robust Findings”)

This position is completely without merit.

An analysis of FIG 1. below shows the orbital forcing during the 400KY precedent compared to the present configuration and it can be seen that we are very close now to the tipping point like that which led Stage 11 into the following ice age.

NO EXTENDED HOLOCENE.bmp

FIG.1 QUINN, LEVINE, RAYMO ET AL ORBITAL GEOMETRY VS CLIMATE
(AA) Projection at present insolation, (BB) Projection of Glaciation, (X) Paillard

The position (X) shows the insolation maximum at 427KY which triggered the Stage 11deglaciation. (Paillard 1998) The following small dip in insolation was not sufficient to reverse the warming trend . “The Interglacial thus lasts an additional precessional cycle, yielding a total duration of 28 000 years.” (IPCC 6.4.1.5)

This is the so called precedent for an extended Holocene. This is the reason given by IPCC for the “Robust Finding” that it is very unlikely that the earth would enter another ice age for at least 30 000 years. But as shown in FIG.1 there is no such change in insolation now and Solar Forcing is in rapid decline.

Projecting present Solar forcing (insolation) (AA) back to the 400KY precedent we intercept at exactly 400KY which corresponds to the collapse of the Stage 11 interglacial climate as it enters the following ice age.
The collapse of the Stage 11 interglacial occurs when the insolation decline is similar to today.

From this analysis, based on the Solar Forcing from present global geometry which has been accepted as the external signal for climate, the contention that it is very unlikely the Earth would naturally enter another Ice Age for at least 30 000 years is unsafe.

There is good reason to expect the imminent termination of the interglacial because of the coincident action of 3 major cyclic processes.

1. Insolation in rapid decline similar to the 400KY precedent.

2. We are near the end of the nominal 100KY glaciation cycle.

3. The present interglacial is near the average age for termination.

We are also witnessing some major natural processes which occur at the end of each interglacial such as the slow down of the MOC and polar ice melt.

It is time to plan for the coming Ice Age.

Peter Harris
September 2007

That Phrase ‘Holocaust Denier’ Again

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This article ‘Ahmadinejad: The New Boogeyman’ compares ‘Holocaust denial’ to global warming denial:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust. Let me ask this provocative question: so what?

Of course, I understand that people have a visceral reaction to that claim. It is grossly untrue, offensive and ignorant. But we are also told how dangerous Ahmadinejad is because he doesn’t believe in the Holocaust. I fail to see that connection.

There are countless people all across the world that deny many things that are patently true — and we don’t go to war with them over it. Senator Inhofe (R-OK) denies global warming. As far as I know we are not planning on invading Oklahoma over it………

The writer seems to be ignorant of the fact that whilst the Holocaust actually happened, the global warming catastrophe is a computer modelled prediction, not a fact.