President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday delivered a videotaped message to a climate change summit convened by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, vowing quick action to curb emissions and engage in international talks. Read more here.
Aussie Farmers: Not Beaten by Salt, But Drought and Government Policies
REMEMBER the stories about how the Murray Darling Basin, the food bowl of Australia, was going to be lost to salt? Headline after media headline told of imminent ruin from rising water tables bring salt.
The Riverina, a once rich farming area in south western New South Wales, was considered most affected by this “scourge of salinity”, this “curse of salt”.
In the next year it is likely that a lot of farmers in this area will walk, will leave the Riverina, but it won’t be because of salt. Farmers in the Riverina worked with their local water corporation, Murray Irrigation Limited (MIL), and government engineers to solve the salt problem.
While it was once feared over 300,000 hectares would be lost to salt, by March 2003 the area with shallow water tables had stabilized below 20,000 hectares and is now less than 4,000 hectares.
Indeed farmers won’t be leaving because of salt. They will be leaving because of prolonged drought, and government policy.
[Read more…] about Aussie Farmers: Not Beaten by Salt, But Drought and Government Policies
Three New Sumatran Tigers
THERE are thought to be less than 500 Sumatran tigers left in the wild and these few remaining tigers are under threat, in particular from poaching for body parts.
There is a successful captive breeding program at Perth Zoo in Western Australia, and today the latest three additions to this program made their public debut.
Photograph of a Sumatran tiger in the wild, via Richard Ness, taken by a camera trap set in Sumatra by Dr. Neil Franklin from The Tiger Foundation.
Don’t Ditch Cattle Yet, Science Isn’t ‘Settled’
HOW many times have you heard it said, the science is settled, we will have catastrophic global warming unless we change our ways and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions?
While the “science might be settled” it does not seem to be well understood.
At least there has been a dramatic rise in key greenhouse gases in the past last two years, in particular methane, but temperatures have not gone up.
In fact, global temperatures are falling. That’s right – falling.
While Australian farmers have been told they should make a transition from cows to kangaroos to reduce their greenhouse gas emission, in particular emissions of methane, it is increasingly unclear that such a dramatic action, even if it was undertaken, would have any effect on global methane levels. [Read more…] about Don’t Ditch Cattle Yet, Science Isn’t ‘Settled’
Temperature Data from Satellites: Inconvenient but Accurate
IT is my prediction that in not so many years time weather station data will be collected more for fun, a sense of history and for site-specific information, than for serious regional and global climate statistics. In the future it will be data from satellites that is recognised as much more reliable for understanding regional and global temperature trends. [Read more…] about Temperature Data from Satellites: Inconvenient but Accurate
Apologies to Josh Willis: Correcting Global Cooling (Part 3)
ON Tuesday, I suggested at this blog that I was not convinced by a story from Josh Willis, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explaining why and how he corrected data showing global ocean cooling. The title of my blog post suggested that Dr Willis had changed the data to fit output from computer models. Dr Willis has responded, via Fred Singer, explaining that the correction was made, not on the basis of computer output, but on the basis of high quality temperature and pressure measurement from ocean buoys. [Read more…] about Apologies to Josh Willis: Correcting Global Cooling (Part 3)
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.
