Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for October 2007

Southern California Burning, Again

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Bush fires are threatening suburbs in Southern California. …several homes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties were evacuated. Seven-hundred fire-fighters battled the blazes, the largest covered 2,800 hectares. The fires were whipped by high winds of up to 70 km/h. Some homes were destroyed and flames and smoke were visible for several kilometres.

Read more here: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/09/29/california_fires20050929.html

And that article is a couple of years old. Yesterday CBC was reporting:

Firefighters in Southern California are battling more than a dozen wildfires that have destroyed 16,000 hectares of land and forced the evacuation of more than 250,000 people from their homes in the area. …Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declared a state of emergency late Sunday in seven counties where fires have killed one person and injured dozens, said Monday that “it’s a tragic time for California.”

Read more here: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/10/22/fire-california.html

Monsanto Files Suit Against GM Activists

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The French unit of US Biotech giant Monsanto has filed a lawsuit following the latest destruction of some of its test fields for genetically-modified maize. In a statement issued on Friday, Monsanto said that unidentified activists had ransacked three test fields in Valdivienne in central France after dark on Thursday.

Read more here: http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/44924/story.htm

Data Sharing in Climate Research

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Press Release

GAO Says Agencies Could Improve Data Sharing in Climate Research
October 22, 2007

WASHINGTON – The Government Accountability Office reports that federally funded climate researchers aren’t always required to follow the government’s own data-sharing policies, and the Republican lawmakers who sought the inquiry say that’s a mistake that needs correction.

“We want to know that critical data and methodology, paid for by taxpayers and used to formulate policy, cannot be hidden from the rest of the research community,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “Science works best when scientists are courageous and their work is transparent.”

Barton, R-Texas, and U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., ranking member of the committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, had requested the GAO study of four federal agencies last year after it was discovered that some climate researchers did not share their data with other scientists.

The four agencies – Department of Energy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Science Foundation – primarily rely on inter-agency or their own policies and practices to encourage researchers to make climate change data available, GAO reported.

However, GAO found that, while broad policies require data sharing and archiving, specific written guidelines varied among and within the agencies. For example, in its 12 climate-related programs, NOAA has only one program that has a written data-sharing policy and no agency-wide data-sharing policy.

The effectiveness of these policies is unclear.

“While the four agencies have taken steps to foster data sharing, they neither routinely monitor whether researchers make data available nor have fully overcome key obstacles and disincentives to data sharing,” GAO found. “Because agencies do not monitor data sharing, they lack evidence on the extent to which researchers are making data available to others.

“Key obstacles and disincentives could also limit the availability of data. For example, one obstacle is the lack of archives for storing certain kinds of climate change data, such as some ecological data, which places a greater burden on the individual researcher to preserve it,” GAO noted. “In addition, data preparation does not further a research career as does publishing results in journals…. Consequently, researchers are less likely to focus on preserving data for future use, thereby putting the data at risk of being unavailable to others.”

GAO had several recommendations for federal agencies, including to develop mechanisms to monitor archiving and to use the grant process to facilitate data sharing.

A copy of the GAO report can be found here.

A Sunspot Correlation?

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An unusual paper has appeared in the journal Technological Forecasting & Social Change:

Sunspots, GDP and the stock market

Theodore Modis

Abstract

A correlation has been observed between the US GDP and the number of sunspots as well as between the Dow
Jones Industrial Average and the number of sunspots. The data cover 80 years of history. The observed correlations permit forecasts for the GDP and for the stock market in America with a future horizon of 10 years. Both being above their long-term trend they are forecasted to go over a peak around Jun-2008.

The paper concludes:

…..If one accepts that there must be some correlation between GDP growth and stock-market growth as
displayed in Fig. 5, then one cannot use the lack of scientific proof as an argument against the existence of
correlation between the stock market and sunspots (Fig. 2), or between GDP and sunspots (Fig. 4). On the
other hand, if these correlations are real, then we can venture long-range forecasts for the DJIA and the GDP….

….The levels forecasted here for the DJIA of 13908 in mid 2008 and 7919 in early 2014….

Well, we won’t have to wait too long to test the mid 2008 prediction. There’s time enough for Lockwood & Frohlich to debunk The Great GDP Sunspot Swindle, and for James Hansen to make several adjustments.

That Sink-ing Feeling

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This week’s climate doom and gloom story comes from the unsurprising source of the University of East Anglia, reported in an unsurprising place – the BBC website:

Oceans are ‘soaking up less CO2’

The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world’s oceans has reduced, scientists have said.

Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.

The unusually restrained BBC Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin did however point out that it isn’t known whether this is due to climate change or natural variations.

RealClimate’s William ‘Stoat’ Connelley points out on his blog that the airbourne fraction of CO2 is still about 55%, so this can’t be happening globally.

There’s more, because on 17th May the BBC reported Polar ocean ‘soaking up less CO2’

One of Earth’s most important natural absorbers of carbon dioxide is failing to soak up as much of the greenhouse gas as it was expected to, experts say.

The decline of Antarctica’s Southern Ocean carbon “sink” – or reservoir – means that atmospheric CO2 levels may be higher in future than predicted.

Similar story, same libarary photograph of floating ice, with the addition of a mention of the other favourite – ocean ‘acidification.’

Lyssa macleayi

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Lyssa.jpg

If this spectacular moth had a common name it would almost certainly be the Night Citrus Swallowtail. Previously known as Nyctalemon patroclus, it has since been re-affirmed as the formerly identified Lyssa macleayi.

The compound eyes of many insect species have an effective tapetum (reflective carpet) producing strong eye shine under illumination. Light that enters the eye is only partially absorbed and that which escapes is reflected off the tapetum so that it has another chance of being absorbed. A portion of this reflected light leaves the eye again as eye-shine.

The moth is large (full hand size) and stunning in its velvety-brown and white dorsal aspect, but I do like the photograph above and particularly the way that the eyes have captured the flash of the camera.

Interestingly, the moth positions itself at rest during the day upside-down; presumably to encourage any unfortunate avian predation to the less critical end of the moth, with the ‘swallowtails’ resembling antennae.

Lyssa1.jpg