Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for October 29, 2007

Land Clearing and Climate Change in Australia

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The University of Queensland’s Dr Clive McAlpine said their research showed the clearing of native vegetation had made Australian droughts hotter.

“Our findings highlight that it is too simplistic to attribute climate change purely to greenhouse gases,” said Dr McAlpine of UQ’s Centre for Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Science.

The study titled “Modelling Impacts of Vegetation Cover Change on Regional Climate” will be published later this year in Geophysical Research Letters.

Read the full article in The Sydney Morning Herald entitled, ‘Land clearing blamed for climate change.’

Boyd’s Forest Dragons

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Boyd’s Forest Dragons Hypsilurus boydii are endemic to the rainforests of Australia’s Wet Tropics. They can reach a total length of 54 cm and may live to thirty years. They prefer the vertical surface of a tree-trunk, particularly one with a slightly larger diameter than their own girth, to hide behind upon the approach of any potential threat. Occupying a territorial distribution of one dragon per 500 square metres of forest, they protect themselves from Amethystine Pythons in another peculiar way.

They distinguish themselves from all other rainforest reptiles by maintaining a consistently colder body temperature. This is achieved by avoiding exposure to direct sunlight in an unusually precautionary thermo-regulation. Ищите дешевых проституток поблизости? Найдите их на сайте: https://sex-tumen.prostitutki72.com Имеются дешевые проститутки от 500 рублей!. By ensuring that their body temperature is always precisely the same as the temperature of the vegetation upon which they sleep, they remain thermally inconspicuous to the Amethystine Python with its formidable thermo-detection capabilities.

They do, however, leave a scent trail, but this unavoidable legacy is offset by false trails and the selection of a sleeping position that replicates that of the Spectacled Monarch as described previously. Juvenile dragons sleep at the very ends of flimsy branches on under-storey plants so that their instinctive sensitivity to vibration wakes them from sleep upon the approach of a snake. Adults rely more upon the sensitivity of the tip of their tail, which is thermally indistinguishable from the tree, but some lose portions of tail which do not regenerate with this species.

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NewsBusters: ‘Funding Global Warming Hysteria’ by Noel Sheppard

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As media regularly accuse every scientist skeptical of man’s role in global warming as being on the payroll of Big Oil, you almost never see a news report addressing the funding of those responsible for spreading climate alarmism.

This all changed Thursday when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published an op-ed by the John Locke Foundation’s Paul Chesser detailing how one environmental advocate receives funds from largely liberal donors to encourage state governments to impose strict regulations on all things speculated to be causing global warming.

Read the full article: ‘Funding Global Warming Hysteria’

Hat tip to Woody.