Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for December 2011

New Year’s Resolutions for Climate Scientists: Steven Goddard

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Steven Goddard has published the following list of New Year’s Resolutions for Climate Scientists:
  1. I will admit that warming has been much slower than we expected
  2. I will admit that recent sea level rise is nothing unusual or threatening
  3. I will admit that our forecasts of declining snow cover were wrong
  4. I will admit that Arctic temperatures are cyclical, and that we have no idea what will happen to Arctic ice over the next 50 years
  5. I will admit that our forecasts of Antarctic warming have been a total failure.
  6. I will admit that Polar Bear populations are not threatened
  7. I will admit that climate models have demonstrated no skill, and are nothing more than research projects
  8.  I will admit there was a Medieval Warm Period
  9. I will admit that that there was a Little Ice Age
  10. I will stop pretending that we don’t have climate records prior to 1970
  11. I will admit that the surface temperature record has been manipulated and is contaminated by UHI
  12. I will stop making up data where none exists
  13. I will honestly face skeptics in open debate.
  14. I will quit trying to stop skeptics from being published
  15. I will admit that glaciers have been disappearing for hundreds or thousands of years
  16. I will stop telling people that the climate is getting more extreme, without producing any evidence
  17. I will admit that hurricanes are on the decline
  18. I will admit that severe tornadoes are on the decline
  19. I will admit that droughts were much worse in the past
  20. I will admit that efforts to shut down power plants have potentially very serious consequences for the future
  21. I will pay for my own tickets to tropical climate boondoggles  like Cancun, rather than improperly using taxpayer money for political activism
  22. I will admit that there is no missing heat
  23. I will admit that temperatures have been cooling for at least the last decade
  24. I will publish the raw data and not lose it.
  25. etc. etc. etc.

Holiday Reading: Emma Marris

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Hi Jennifer,

Longtime reader etc etc and I must thankyou for your always interesting blog.

I could find no mention of Emma Marris and her new book ‘The Rambunctious Garden’ on there so I wondered if you were aware of it. I thought it would generate some debate as it has with my group of friends, so I thought I’d pass it on.

The first link is to an article she co-wrote and the second a review of sorts. She is a superb writer and I commend it to you.

Best wishes for the season and the new year!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/opinion/the-age-of-man-is-not-a-disaster.html

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/living-with-natures-original-sin-20111209-1oo3n.html

Regards Ross

Station Buyout a Waste of Money: David Boyd

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DAVID Wroe from The Sydney Morning Herald has written a well balanced article on the waste of money in buying Toorale (pronounced Too-rally) Station at Bourke: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/station-buyout-a-waste-of-money-20111223-1p8ln.html.

I attempted to leverage this with a letter to the Editor which failed to make the final cut:

Congratulations to the SMH (Station buyout a waste of money- 23rd December) for “outing” the Commonwealth and former NSW State Government for the total waste of $23.75m in purchasing Toorale Station. Not only was this a waste of taxpayer’s funds for negligible environmental benefit, it also took out of production the hard hit Bourke community’s most productive enterprise. How downstream grazier Justin Mc Clure can argue that a 0.01% increase in flow can generate downstream environmental benefits is a real mystery.

The episode has wider ramifications in terms of the Draft Murray Darling Basin Plan. The Commonwealth Water Act 2007 and the approach of the Murray Darling Basin Authority is deeply flawed and the Toorale outcomes represent a good example of the likely consequences-negligible environmental benefit, but significant negative economic consequences. When flows are low, license conditions prevent extractions and diversions, when flows are significant the impacts of extractions and diversions are minimal. Dorothea Mackellar was absolutely right in describing inland Australia as a land of “droughts and flooding rains”, she could have added and “not much in the middle.

In using absolute numbers as the MDBA has done, to prescribe acceptable extractions/diversions limits without gearing these to actual flows (availability) is really nonsense. To argue that these numbers are “averages” doesn’t help, given the enormous spreads around the averages. Our current water bureaucrats could do worse than studying how the existing control system operates. It works rather well.

J.D.O.(David) Boyd
St Ives NSW 2075
(Former Chairman and CEO of Clyde Agriculture, the previous owner of Toorale Station)

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And sign the petition here please http://listentous.org.au/

Climate Update: November 2011

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Dear all.

Please find below a link which will take you directly to a monthly newsletter (ca. 1.3 MB) with meteorological information updated to November 2011:
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_November_2011.pdf

All temperatures in this newsletter are shown in degrees Celsius.

Previous (since March 2009) issues of the newsletter, diagrams and additional material are available on http://www.climate4you.com/

All the best, yours sincerely,
Ole Humlum

Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography
Department of Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences
Norway

All I Want for Christmas…

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is for you to sign the petition here: http://petitions.listentous.org.au/detail/index/pid/17

RIVERS NEED ESTUARIES CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED

Biologist Dr Jennifer Marohasy has launched the Australian Environment Foundation, AEF, campaign’Rivers Need Estuaries’ to have the current Murray Darling Basin Authority draft plan completely revised to prioritise restoring the Murray River estuary.

Dr Marohasy announced that the campaign’s petition would call on the federal parliament to recognise the estuary should be restored by re-engineering or removing the 7.6 kilometres of barrages, in part or whole, to allow inflows from the Southern Ocean.

The AEF maintains that restoring the estuary through removal of the barrages should be the priority of the basin plan as it would allow for savings of hundreds of gigalitres of water during times of drought, water currently wasted attempting to maintain artificial levels of freshwater in the Lower Lakes during the last drought.

Over 800 gigalitres (equal to 800,000 Olympic swimming pools) evaporates from the Lower Lakes each year.

“Communities are being asked to give up further large amounts of water to prop up this badly managed Lower Lakes system that has been degraded by the barrages since they were completed in 1941.

“The current MDBA draft plan fails to address this fundamental issue.”

The peer-reviewed scientific literature, unlike many recent government reports, recognises that the barrages have destroyed the estuary.

The campaign has the support of communities across the basin as they face further cuts to water allocations without any specific environmental benefits so far articulated in the draft plan.

The Rivers Need Estuaries campaign petition to be tabled in the House of Representatives details the major objectives of the campaign.

This petition of concerned citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the House:

Despite past dire predictions, the Murray Darling Basin has not been lost to salt or drought. However, upstream water storages are not large enough to keep the Lower Lakes supplied with adequate freshwater during protracted drought. Furthermore, the 7.6 kilometres of concrete barrages that created this artificial freshwater system have destroyed the Coorong-Murray River estuary. 


The petitioners request that the Australian parliament recognise that: 


1. Restoring the Coorong-Murray River estuary must be a priority in any Murray Darling Basin Plan.

2. The estuary should be restored by re-engineering or removing the barrages in part or whole to allow inflows from the Southern Ocean.

3. Adelaide’s water supply can be secured by building a lock downstream from Tailem Bend.

THEREFORE – We petition the members of the House to act to restore the natural estuarine environment of the Lower Lakes and Coorong.

Sign the petition here: http://petitions.listentous.org.au/detail/index/pid/17

’cause it’s all I want for Christmas.

Season’s Greetings

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This brilliant red, waxy toadstool is the fruiting body of an inconspicuous fungus that thrives on leaf litter, rotting wood and soil in the rainforests of North Queensland when the weather starts to warm up…  which is usually towards Christmas time in Australia. The image was sent to me by Neil Hewett from Cooper Creek Wilderness with best wishes for Christmas.  www.ccwild.com