World Vision was the first non-government agency to negotiate a deal with the World Bank for carbon-commission offsets for a reforestation project in Ethiopia. Read more here.
Archives for May 2009
Defining the Greens (Part 10)
MANY of the world’s great doctrines claim that man’s moral duty is to serve others. Environmentalists, on the other hand, might claim that it is to live in harmony with nature. The Greens are perhaps a bit different. They might claim that in order to live in harmony with nature we need to first change society and in particular our attitude to the consumption of the earth’s finite resources. In short Greens might suggest that in order to save the earth, we need to first change our values.
According to my Oxford dictionary values are principles or standards of behaviour – one’s judgement of what is important in life. Some argue that if you take nothing seriously, it means that you have no values. But where do these values come from and what in particular does a Green value?
DIY Modelling of Climate Change
GLOBAL warming theory is not that complicated. According to Michael Hammer it can be incorporated into a simple model which readers can build themselves on an excel spread sheet.
Mr Hammer gives detailed instructions and formulae to enter for his DIY climate change model. The model then calculates the temperature rise from carbon dioxide plus water vapour forcing and allows for the time constant in the system.
A temperature rise by 2070 of 3C for a business as usual scenario, however, gives model output that is not compatible with what we know of past climates. So, what is wrong with Mr Hammer’s model?
All-Red Snow Plants – Nourished by Fungi
IT emerges from the soil like a mini-plastic Christmas tree in the image of a red Mexican succulent. But it’s not a succulent or even an entire plant and it’s not from Mexico. Rather it’s the flowering stalk of a species closely related to the cranberry, blueberry, azalea and rhododendron and it grows in the Sierra Nevada of California. Apparently called snow plants because they emerge as the snow melts, these stalks were photographed in June along the Sliver Fork Trail in the Sierra Nevada by Aom, a hiking buddy of Larry – a regular commentator at this blog.
The species, Sarcodes sanguinea, has no chlorophyll and so, like most plants, can’t obtain its energy directly from the sun. Instead it is parasitic on fungi that also colonise the roots of pine trees. Experiments with radioactive carbon 14 show that the sugars from the conifer roots enter the fungi and then are transferred into the roots of the snow plant.
So we have a true vascular plants with flowers and seed-bearing capsules, that can’t photosynthesis, instead getting its energy from pine trees via fungi.
Does this all have something to do with being perfectly red?
Orwellian
WITH the rise of big government convinced that belief in a climate crisis will be good for us, it is perhaps pertinent to remember George Orwell and his novel ‘1984’. The term ‘Orwellian’, his idea that wellbeing is crushed by restrictive, authoritarian and untruthful government, has its origin here. Read more.
Australian Government to Invest in Solar
LAST night the Australian Government handed down its budget for the coming financial year. The centre piece of planned spending on the environment is $4.5 billion for “clean energy”. This is defined as energy that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost employment.
Most of the money, $2.4 billion, will be used for the development of low-emissions coal technologies. This announcement could be interpreted as an attempt to appease the coal industry and unions – it is certainly unlikely to benefit the environment.
There is $1.6 billion for solar energy technology, ostensibly to position Australia as a world leader in solar energy technology. This may produce some benefit particularly if the investment is in new solar thermal technology and it eventually becomes a commercial reality.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.