Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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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

Summary of 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season

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EVER since Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore’s movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ there has been a fear that every year will bring more destructive cyclones because of global warming. 

The 2008 hurricane season for the Atlantic officially ended on November 30 and Phillip Klotzbach and William Gray have already published their 50 plus-page report on the season.

They explain that it was an active and destructive season with an early start followed by five major hurricanes. 

They conclude that the Atlantic has seen a very large increase in major hurricanes during the last 14-year period as a result of the multi-decadal increase in the Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation and that this is not directly related to increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide or global sea surface temperatures.  

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Summary of 2008 Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity and Verification of Author’s Seasonal and Monthly Forecasts.  Phillip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, November 2008. http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Forecasts/2008/nov2008/nov2008.pdf

Some Nuts Can be hard to Crack

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Spare a thought for this scrub turkey unable to open that nut.  I watched the bird struggle with it for quite a while at Alexandra Bay, Noosa National Park, on November 24, 2008. 

If only I’d had a parang, I would have opened the nut for the turkey.

I try hard with this blog to open issues in a way accessible to everyone. 

I received the following comment from a reader not so long ago:

“I have seen on your blog site where a great deal of healthy debate has raged.  This has the benefit of  not only giving all a go, but also challenges those commenting to tidy up loose ends of their argument, or cuts off invalid arguments totally.  One point that I have noticed is that the comments also help us as readers, to see similar comparisons to our own situation.  While we may not agree with a particular persons view on most points even, we are stimulated by other points that draw out ’sleeper’ issues.”

Don’t forget that as well as the main page, this blog has a ‘Community Home’ and a Donation Button.

The IPA Review & Articles by Jennifer Marohasy

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I have been a senior fellow with the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) for more than five years now.   I have written a lot for the magazine,  which used to be published by the IPA quarterly, but now comes out every two months.   A year’s subscription is not that much – just $33 a year.

Anyway,  Nichole Hoskin has made a list of many of the articles I have had published in the ‘Review’ over the years, and here goes:

Jennifer Marohasy, ‘Deceit in the Name of Conservation?’, IPA Review, March 2003, http://www.ipa.org.au/library/Review55-1%20Deciet%20in%20the%20name%20of%20conservation.pdf

Jennifer Marohasy, ‘Where’s the Data?’, IPA Review, June 2003, http://www.ipa.org.au/library/Review55-2%20Wheres%20the%20data.pdf

Jennifer Marohasy, ‘GM Fish and Chips? Already and Australian Staple!’, IPA Review, September 2003, http://www.ipa.org.au/library/Review553%20GM%20Fish%20and%20ships.pdf

Jennifer Marohasy, ‘How Useful are Australia’s Official Environmental Statistics?’ IPA Review, December 2003, http://www.ipa.org.au/library/review554%20How%20useful%20are%20Australias.pdf

Jennifer Marohasy, ‘The Taboo Food- Genetically Modified Anything’, IPA Review, March 2004, http://www.ipa.org.au/library/review56-1%20The%20taboo%20food.pdf

Jennifer Marohasy, ‘There are Votes in the Murray’, IPA Review, September 2004, http://www.ipa.org.au/library/56-3-%20there%20are%20votes%20in%20the%20murray.pdf

Jennifer Marohasy, ‘Time to Redefine Environmentalism’, IPA Review, December 2004, http://www.ipa.org.au/library/56-4-Time%20to%20Redefine%20Environmentalism.pdf

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Cattle Still in the Barmah Forest

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ON Monday, the first day of summer here in Australia, residents of the little town of Barmah in northwestern Victoria, drove cattle into their forest in defiance of a government ban.  The Department of Sustainability and Environment has threatened legal action, but so far the cattle are still there.

The forest has historically been grazed and the Barmah locals believe this is important to reduce the fire risk. 

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Clarifying the Role of the Sun and Global Temperatures

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YESTERDAY atmospheric scientist, Professor Marvin Geller, explained to Leigh Dayton, science writer at The Australian newspaper, that the sun could not be driving “recent global warming as climate change sceptics claim” because solar radiation has not changed very much since 1978.  

But climate change sceptics do not claim there has been recent global warming.  They claim there has been a levelling off, or fall in temperatures, over the last 10 years since the 1998 El Nino-driven peak. [Click on the chart for a larger view of global temperature trends.]

As regards the El Nino event of 1998, according to Professor Geller, El Ninos cause a temporary increase in global temperatures, not the steady and consistent upward trend typical of warming from greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

But there has been no “consistent upward trend”.   

Indeed, Professor Geller misrepresents the position of global warming sceptics and the available global temperature data. 

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