Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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More ABC Bias, But Anyway

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I should probably be flattered to be invited on to the popular ABC TV program Q&A as a panelist.  But why is the promo for the program next Monday advertising Tim Flannery as ‘scientist’ and me as ‘climate sceptic’?

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/

Tony Jones could refer to us both as ‘scientists’.  Alternatively the promo could suggest Tim is an ‘alarmist’ and me the ‘denier’.

I am not even a climate sceptic… but rather sceptical of what was the consensus position on anthropogenic global warming.

Anyway, it would be good if there were a few other so-called climate change sceptics at the event…  and also some people who don’t believe more water for South Australia will necessarily solve all the environmental problems of the Murray Darling Basin.   So, I am encouraging readers of this blog to try for a place in the studio audience next Monday by applying here: http://www2b.abc.net.au/AudienceBooking/Client/AudienceRegistration.aspx
And you can send in questions via email using this link http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/ask.htm

Also, the annual Australian Environment Foundation Conference is this Saturday at Rydges in Brisbane.  Max Rheese is organising a Q&A session at the Conference dinner on Saturday night, to give me some practice in advance of Monday, October 18th.  Apparently there will be a ‘Tony Jones’ at the dinner and through him you can ask me questions.  It should be a lot of fun.  You can register here: http://aefweb.info/

New Murray Darling Basin Guide: All Politics?

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The Murray Darling Basin Authority released a ‘Guide to the Proposed Basin Plan’ yesterday which had been touted as an independent scientific report.   My impression of the document, however, is that it is an audacious grab for more water based on popular myths.  

Amongst the many unsubstantiated claims in the Guide, is mention of an 80 percent decline in the abundance of waterbirds across the Basin since 1983.   

I am a little familiar with numbers of water birds  in the Macquarie Marshes.  According to various public statements by expert Richard Kingsford numbers have also been in dramatic decline here, but his actual data, only available from 1985 through to 2001, indicates an increase.

Our Malicious ABC Science Show

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Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) currently dominates climate science to the extent that many consider it a fact – not a theory.   The famous philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, would describe AGW as the current dominant paradigm because this is where the majority of professional scientists claim their allegiance. Of course there are dissenters, commonly referred to as sceptics or deniers, and Kuhn would have correctly predict that these individual would be excluded from the scientific community as evidenced in the Climategate emails.  

It is particularly evident from the Climategate emails that a group within the scientific community will go to great lengths to deny so-called sceptics the opportunity to publish in the peer-reviewed literature including through the removal of editors and stacking of review committees. 

Nevertheless, outspoken sceptic Bob Carter has managed, over his distinguished career to amass a long list of publications in the peer-reviewed literature including publications of direct relevance to climate science in the best international peer-reviewed science journals.

I make specific mention of Professor Carter and his publication record, because yesterday, on the ABC Science Show, it was repeatedly stated that Professor Carter has a very poor publication record.

[Read more…] about Our Malicious ABC Science Show

Comment on ‘Solar’ by Ian McEwan

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IN his latest novel about climate change, award-winning novelist Ian McEwan[1] apparently took inspiration for his main character, Michael Beard, from the people he encountered at the 2007 Potsdam Nobel Laureate Symposium on climate change.   Not surprising Professor Beard is male and a Nobel Laureate, but interestingly also fat, comic, aging, a liar and scoundrel.  

At the beginning of the novel Beard is a global warming sceptic, but by the end he is lecturing on the need for fund managers to invest in his research on artificial photosynthesis as the new clean energy and solution to peak oil etcetera… 

“We have to replace that gasoline quickly for three compelling reasons. First, and simplest, the oil must run out. No one knows exactly when, but there’s a consensus that we’ll be at peak production at some point in the next five to fifteen years. After that, production will decline, while the demand for energy will go on rising as the world’s population expands and people strive for a better standard of living. Second, many oil-producing areas are politically unstable and we can no longer risk our levels of dependence. Third, and most crucially, burning fossil fuels, putting carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere, is steadily warming the planet”.

While the book has been praised and promoted by environment groups, including Friends of the Earth, and not received so well by US Republicans, there are various appeals in the story to classic liberal philosophy including in the following paragraph where Beard juxtaposes the grand plans for the world expounded by a group of climate activists sharing time together in the Arctic with their general inability to maintain order in a shared boot room …

“Everyone, all of us, individually facing oblivion, as a matter of course, and no one complaining much. As a species, not the best imaginable, but certainly the best, no, the most interesting there was. But what about the general disgrace that was the boot room? Evidently, a matter of human nature.  And how were we ever going to learn about that? Science of course was fine, and who knew, art was too, but perhaps self-knowledge was beside the point. Boot rooms needed good systems so that flawed creatures could use them properly. Leave nothing, Beard decided, to science or art, or idealism. Only good laws would save the boot room. And citizens who respected the law.”

[Read more…] about Comment on ‘Solar’ by Ian McEwan

Save the Murray: Remove the Barrages

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The release of a new Murray Darling Basin plan on October 8, 2010, is likely to reignite debate over how best to solve the problems of the Murray River. It will further pit some environmentalists and some South Australians against upstream irrigators as a debate over how to fix the two very large freshwater lakes at the very bottom of the Murray River rages. Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert are situated behind the narrow expanse of water known as the Coorong, beyond the Coorong is the Southern Ocean and upstream of the lakes is the River proper. 

Few understand how different ecologically this region was before European settlement and the impacts of agriculture and the construction of barrages designed to keep salt water out. Oral histories from local families and the diaries of the first European explorers paint a different picture of the Lakes than that shaping the debate today. If we look back to what the river was like before the barrages then there is a much different solution than that currently being proposed. A solution that may not be as palatable to the South Australian Government or those communities who have grown used to life behind the barrages but a much cheaper and more environmentally sustainable solution in the longer term.  

Many academics and bureaucrats deny that the lakes were ever estuarine. But families that have lived in the region for generations explain, for example, that in 1915, before the barrages and during a period of prolonged drought, sea water penetrated beyond Lake Alexandrina up the River Murray as far as Mannum with the sightings of a shark at Tailem Bend and a dolphin at Murray Bridge.

Since 1941 and the completion of the barrages blocking 90 percent of flows between the lakes and the South Ocean a new history and geography of the Lower Lakes, Coorong and Murray mouth has been created…

Read more here at Quadrant Online.

Methane Leak

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Scientists have discovered the Arctic ocean seabed is leaking huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere.  The research published in the journal Science shows the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic shelf, which was thought to be a barrier sealing methane, is perforated.  Read more here.