Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 2012

Time to Celebrate Coal not Candles: Viv Forbes

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Coal not candles should be the symbol of Earth Hour.

It was coal that produced clean electric power which cleared the smog produced by dirty combustion and open fires in big cities like London and Pittsburgh. Much of the third world still suffers choking fumes and smog because they do not have clean electric power and burn wood, cardboard, unwashed coal and cow dung for home heat.

It was coal that saved the forests being felled to fuel the first steam engines and produce charcoal for the first iron smelters.

It was coal that powered the light bulbs and saved the whales being slaughtered for whale oil lamps.

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Australian Broadcasting Corporation Endorses More ‘Junk Science’

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ELEANOR HALL: Australian delegates to an international conference on global sustainability delivered a warning today that the earth is reaching a point where it’s changing beyond our control.

  Almost 3,000 scientists have been in London for the conference to discuss the relatively new field of earth system science.

That’s how the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) began a story today on ‘The World Today’.

Want to really know what the conference is about and how qualified the scientists delivering the message about tipping points are?

Read ‘The Royal Society’s Blatherfest’ by Donna Laframboise here:

http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2012/03/24/the-royal-societys-blatherfest/

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Donna Lafromboise is the author of ‘The Delinquent Teenager’ all about the IPCC and how unqualified its ‘experts’ are.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/my-book/

Unbalanced Reporting on Solar Power: Peter Lang

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Peter Lang sent a complaint to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) about last night’s 7:30 Report on solar power.  Here is a slightly reworded versions with hyperlinks added:

“The ABC 7:30 report has improved greatly since Leigh Sales and Chris Uhlmann took over from Kerry O’Brien.  However, there have been lapses.  Last night’s 7:30 report on solar power was atrociously biased.  ABC has been strongly biased towards renewable energy for over 20 years.  Last night’s program was unbalanced, lacked objectivity and presented wrong and misleading information.

They interviewed two of the extreme renewable energy proponents in Australia (Matthew Wright and Tristan Edis) but did not provide balance by getting a competent person to explain the cost of renewable energy and what the costs do to the price of electricity (and therefore to Australia’s economy).

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Queensland to Dump ‘Green’ Schemes

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NEW Queensland Premier, Campbell Newman, orders ex-Queensland Premier’s husband, Greg Withers, to kill green schemes. That’s according to an article in today’s The Australian:

“The showpiece of the Gillard government’s $1.5 billion Solar Flagships Program is now in jeopardy, after Mr Newman yesterday pulled the plug on $75 million in state funding pledged for the $1.2bn Solar Dawn solar thermal project near Chinchilla, west of Brisbane.

“[Federal] Resources Minister Martin Ferguson yesterday suggested the federal government might withdraw its own $464m contribution, promised only last month…

“Mr Newman yesterday declared his LNP government would axe seven other green schemes, on the grounds the carbon tax would make them redundant…

“Mr Newman has given the job of dismantling the programs to the bureaucrat who set them up – Greg Withers, who is married to Ms Bligh.

“We want him to unravel those programs ’cause he’s the bloke who set them up…

Read more here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/elections/campbell-newman-orders-anna-blighs-husband-greg-withers-to-kill-green-schemes/story-fnbsqt8f-1226311864712

Government Funding Corrupts

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“There’s an assumption that private funding must always be acknowledged because it’s dirty, while public funding never needs to be acknowledged, because it’s pure.”

Michael Duffy from ABC Radio National Counterpoint made that comment yesterday when he interviewed me about the Murray Mouth barrages.[1]

Biologist Walter Starck [2] replied today with the following comment:

“A telling point to consider in relation to government sponsored research is that when generous funding is made available to study a purported problem, one outcome is certain. It will never be discovered that there really isn’t one.

“The implicit assumption that government funded research is unbiased is nonsense.

“On the contrary, it virtually guarantees the manufacture of problems to be studied in that researchers have learned that suggesting a link to a possible problem greatly improves the probability of funding approval. This has become so dominant in the environmental sciences that basic research has almost ceased to exist and nearly all effort is now directed at investigating purported problems. Worse yet, the dominance of problem-oriented research has created an environment wherein the normal scientific process of rigorous critical examination of claims has been suppressed in environmental matters. Now even the most poorly founded, and often even absurd claims, regularly pass peer review and are published in leading journal. Then, if challenged by anyone, the critic is denigrated while the substance of the criticism is ignored.

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But Jonathan Holmes: Your Report Has Not Been Peer-Reviewed and It’s Wrong

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LAST Monday on ABC TV’s Media Watch the sniggering Jonathan Holmes suggested that there was something wrong with Peter Ridd peer-reviewing my technical report ‘Plugging the Murray’s Mouth: The Interrupted Evolution of a Barrier Estuary’.

Today I was interviewed on ABC Radio National’s Counterpoint and Michael Duffy commented that Professor Peter Ridd said he might have not seen flaws in it.

I replied that Peter Ridd told me a Media Watch research person had phoned him. Apparently she spent a lot of time talking with him about the flaws in peer review. Peer review is a process in which suitably qualified scientists are invited to comment on articles prior to publication. Peter is a scientist from James Cook University who is qualified to comment on the report I wrote.

The bottom line is Professor Ridd and I are colleagues. The paper was not sent to a journal. It was a technical report for the Australian Environment Foundation and Professor Ridd was asked to review it. Had he found errors I am sure that he would have told me and I would have corrected them before it was published.

I was also asked on radio today if anyone else had peer-review the technical report. I comment that I have sent the report to other estuary expert and they have told me it is sound. But they have not been prepared to have their named attached to it because of the politics.

Mr Duffy also commented on national radio today that two scientists who wrote papers I quoted have since said they disagree with me. I was asked to comment on this and I replied that Media Watch sent me specific written questions. The first question was: Do you accept that the vast majority of recognised experts on the natural history and hydrology of the Lower Lakes disagree with your conclusion that they were estuarine immediately prior to the erection of the Murray Mouth barrages, or at any time in the past 2000 years?

I replied: No. The relevant scientific literature, as published in peer-reviewed journals by recognised experts, indicates that the Lower Lakes were estuarine prior to the erection of the Murray Mouth barrages. I then provide the names of experts and quoted some of them.

Listen to the complete interview here: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/murray-mouth/3908760

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