Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 9, 2008

Dip in Global Sea Level Won’t Save Tuvalu

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SEA level is measured in two ways: from tidal gauges and by satellite altimeter.   According to the University of Colorado, Bolder, since August 1992 the satellite altimeters have been measuring sea level on a global basis with unprecedented accuracy and since 2005 the steady upward trend has stumbled.  

The recent dip could not qualify as a trend, but it is interesting – particularly given that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide continue to rise.

Of course even a drop in the global sea level may not save Tuvalu because the great majority of oceanic islands, including Tuvalu, were formed by volcanic activity. While the volcanoes are active, the islands rise relative to the global averaged sea-level. When volcanic activity stops, the islands will cool and eventually start to sink. So there are islands rising and sinking all the time – and Tuvalu should be sinking.

[Hat tip to Jack Moevich for the link to the latest data on global sea levels.]

Always Scared to Death?

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With reference to the crisis in financial markets, Sydney-based think tank The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) held a forum yesterday entitled ‘The End of Capitalism’.   

CIS Research Fellow, Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, suggested that doom and gloom headlines in magazines such as Time, The Economist and Der Spiegel foretelling the end of capitalism were no different from other irrational scare stories.  Dr Hartwich referred several times to examples of global scares from the book ‘Scared to Death’ by Christopher Booker and Richard North.   

I am not sure that I agree with Dr Hartwich – he went as far as to suggest that with the fear of a depression we wouldn’t be hearing so much about global warming because the media could generally only focus on one major scare at a time.  But I can definitely recommend the Booker and North expose of a long list of media scare stories beginning with the great salmonella scare of 1988-89.

The book is dedicated to “all those scientists and campaigners who, amid the madness of our age of ‘scares’, have kept a sense of proportion and fought for the truth to prevail.”     

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Scared to Death, From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth by Christopher Booker and Richard North, published by Continuum UK, 2007. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scared-Death-Global-Warming-Costing/dp/0826486142

Best [Australian] Blogs of 2008

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Each year On Line Opinion and Club Troppo collaborate to publish a Best Blogs feature in January, which features the best blog pieces from the previous year selected from reader nominations.

This year we are doing it again.

What was the best blog piece that you read in 2008? It can even be one you have written yourself – so don’t be shy.

Let us know, by casting your votes here http://polling.nationalforum.com.au/index.php?sid=54429&lang=en

We will take look at your votes, weigh them up with our expert panel, and get the right to republish as many of them as we can in On Line Opinion over the January period. While you’re thinking, you might like to check out last year’s Best Blogs feature http://onlineopinion.com.au/feature.asp?year=2008&month=1

The Cult of Celebrity and Tasmanian Forestry

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THE public hysteria surrounding the proposed Tasmanian pulpmill shows that the logging of native forests remains one of Australia’s hottest environmental topics. This is surprising given that sustainable wood production is now permitted within just a net 6 per cent portion of the nation’s public forests, it is highly regulated, and it is regarded as among the best managed in the world. As an environmental threat, the government’s Australia State of the Forests Report, regards logging as insignificant.

Despite this, it has become politically incorrect to support native hardwood production as a sensible and responsible use of a naturally renewable resource. Those who do so are routinely vilified as I was last week when a letter I had published in The Age newspaper drew responses that scorned me as an “industry apologist trying to keep us in the dark ages” and a “spin doctor” who “relies on the public being fools”.

In the past, I have also been described as a “mouthpiece for the logging industry” or the “pro-logging lobby”, which is apparently “blind to the bigger picture of global crisis”. I have been called a “forest raper” and a “pro-logging, anti-life person”. Others believe I am “motivated by short term greed” and “headed towards my own demise”. I am apparently one of those “people who can chop, hunt, maim, kill, exploit, dominate and destroy in the name of progress and jobs” and I have been likened to “the captain of the Titanic refusing to believe that your enterprise is fatally flawed”.

[Read more…] about The Cult of Celebrity and Tasmanian Forestry