Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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More Opinion on Global Warming this Sunday on Channel 9

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Some of the personalities regularly featured on this blog will be on Australian television this Sunday morning talking with journalist Adam Shand about global warming.

The feature story on the Channel 9 Sunday Program will include comment from Tim Flannery, Robyn Williams, Don Aitkin and myself.

I gather the story could be on anytime from 7.30am – the program runs for a couple of hours.

Update June 28

From the Sunday Program website:

Questioning Science
Reporter: Adam Shand

The theory of anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming has become an unchallengeable fact, a piece of black letter law almost unique in the world of science.

Proponents of the theory say the time for scientific debate is over. It would irresponsible to fund any further research into counter views on the relationship between elevated levels of carbon dioxide and a rise in temperatures since the mid-1970s.

It’s regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming, let alone deny the orthodox consensus view as adopted by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

However, there is a school of thought that our knowledge of climate systems is as yet insufficient to be so conclusive on the causes of global warming.

Today Sunday examines the political consensus building that has portrayed global warming as the most urgent crisis humankind has ever faced.

Skeptics point to the gaps in the knowledge base and the flaws in the measurement of vital climate and weather data upon which the consensus is based.

Social researchers also highlight the dangers of conducting science as a form of religion, divided into believers and deniers.

They warn that as governments prepare to make expensive policy decisions, such as carbon emissions trading schemes, this consensus may not reflect the best science.

http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_2493.asp

The Eerie Parallel Universe of Blogging

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There has been some negative reaction in the blogosphere to a piece by David Burchell in The Australian newspaper entitled ‘Huddled Lasses Yearn to be Free’. The title is presumably with reference to the young Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez, whom Burchell suggests with some admiration has played a significant role in the struggle for freedom in Cuba.

But here in Australia, according to David Burcell, the blogosphere is mostly a “vast outpouring of pseudo-expertise and vituperation” serving mainly as “a testament to Western societies’ tendency for producing self-important, opinionated folks far in excess of our capacity to employ them.”

Burcell continues, “in this the blogosphere resembles the so-called literary low-life of the decades before the French Revolution. In those days resentful and under-employed scribblers amused themselves by illegally publishing salacious rumours about Marie Antoinette or the clergy, the better to strip away the sacred veil of monarchical rule. Except that, in those days, publishing even salacious rumours required a certain sort of bravery.”

Wow!

But then again, on reflection, as I see it, all writing requires a certain amount of bravery.

When it comes to blogging there is always the risk that the writer might get something seriously wrong and with it ruin reputations and any hope of financial security.

Indeed I have never met anyone who wrote primarily for notoriety, or job security, or in the hope of becoming rich.

Many bloggers, like myself, write primarily because we want to communicate, we feel a need to communicate, and in my case to provide an alternative perspective on important environmental issues.

But the real difference between a blog, and an article in The Australian newspaper, is that the blogger lays his thoughts and evidence open to criticism the moment the text is uploaded. There is no retreat and no hiding behind letter editors.

In the ‘mud-wresting’ (as Burchell describes it) that follows the posting of a blog entry there is much potential to have fun, test the strength of your argument, make friends, and even learn something important, new and interesting.

Thanks for reading and often wresting with the evidence and ideas.

Real Food Shortage Will Require Real Science and Technology?

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The British government is preparing to open the way for genetically modified crops on the grounds they could help combat the global food crisis.

At least that’s according to Andrew Grice, Policitical Editor with The Independent, reporting on a meeting between Britian’s Environment minister, Phil Woolas, and the Agricultural Biotechnology Council, amidst claims that “rocketing food prices and food shortages in the world’s poorest countries mean the time is right to relax Britain’s policy on use of GM crops.”

As Graham Young, Chief Editor of e-journal On Line Opinion, recently emailed me, “With food shortages becoming the new Greenhouse type issue, I think that all is set to change. Governments will be throwing money at scientists who say they can feed the world, and it will become a new glamour industry… it is perhaps ironic that hard science, rather than computer modeling, might come back into vogue now that we have a real, rather than potential, problem.”

Ken Willett Talking Transport in Brisbane

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The Institute of Public Affairs invites you to the third Brisbane Club Lecture for 2008. Entitled ‘Prescribing the right medicine for a city choked with congestion’ the lecture is on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 5pm in The Brisbane Club’s The Oak Room (241 Adelaide Street, Brisbane CCBD).

After the talk, attendees are invited to come at their own expense to an informal dinner with Ken Willett at the nearby restaurant Zenbar at 7:00pm.

Ken Willett is a Senior Consultant for ACIL Tasman. Ken has worked in project/corporate for more than 38 years and is an expert in urban transport economics and natural resource economics. In recent years he has focused on anti-congestion policy and abatement of greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector. Before joining ACIL Tasman, Ken worked in the private and public sectors in three states and headed RACQ’s public policy department for nearly 5 years.

RSVP Andy Poon, Telephone 03 9600 4744, Email apoon@ipa.org.au

Food Crisis Consequence of Bad Government Policy

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The current global food “crisis” is not so much a consequence of natural resource constraints as it is a consequence of poor food policy decisions by government. That’s the headline in an article by Mick Keogh, Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute, published on Monday by On Line Opinion.

I tend to agree with Mick.

The bottom line is that governments in Europe and North America, as Mick explains, have very actively discouraged agricultural production over recent decades by converting arable land into conservation areas. According to Mick, the USA has 16 million hectares of crop land (almost two thirds of Australia’s total crop area) in Conservation Reserve.

In Australia, the bans on tree clearing, but in particular the purchase of water allocation from irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin, is going to significantly impact on our potential to produce food in the longer term. Indeed while the Murray Darling Basin has historically received only 6 percent of Australia’s annual rainfall, it has produced 40 percent of Australia’s food. This is where we have concentrated the national investment in water infrastructure.

Mick suggests that the imminent introduction of greenhouse emission mitigation policies in Australia and New Zealand also has the potential to adversely impact global agricultural capacity by converting agricultural land to permanent carbon sink forests.

I thought this had already occurred to some existent in Australia, with the bans on broad scale tree clearing in our rangelands? But Mick is perhaps referring to new Blue Gum and pine plantations. Does anyone have any figures on areas likely to be converted from agriculture to this type of forestry?

Mick also mentions the lack of investment in agricultural research and development, government policies mandating the use of food crops for fuel production and policies that restrict trade.

Stop Complaining About the Lower Murray And Open the Barrages

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The South Australian Government’s claim, as reported by ABC Online, that it cannot save the Lower Lakes and Coorong on its own and is reliant on support from the other Murray-Darling states is simply untrue.

As I wrote in The Land on May 15, the main problem in the lower Murray is developing acidity from the drying of the lower lakes, and the simple solution is to open the barrages at the bottom of Lake Alexandrina and let the area reflood with seawater.

Potential acid sulphate soils (ASS) are common along much of the Australian coastline. These soils formed after the last major sea level rise, which began about 10,000 years ago. The soils are harmless as long as they remain waterlogged. But, if the water table is lowered the sulphide in the soils will react with oxygen forming sulphuric acid.

In the case of the lower lakes near the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia, the barrages built 80 years ago are stopping inundation from seawater; in the same way the dykes in Holland are used to reclaim land. Indeed the Dutch have been managing associated acid sulphate soil problems for more than four centuries.

The drought continues in the Murray Darling Basin and so the barrages should be opened to flood the lower lakes. If a temporary weir was constructed at Wellington, the salt water would not go any futher upstream.

Despite the drought, South Australians have so far been receiving fully 76 percent of their annual entitlement when many NSW and Victorian irrigators have had no water allocation.

It is time the South Australians stopped blaming upstream irrigators for a drought beyond everyone’s control.

Acid Sulfate Soils have been associated with fish kills in coastal Queensland and New South Wales when land was inappropriately drained. For example, about 700 hectares of land near Cairns was drained in 1976, and since then it has been estimated that 72,000 tonnes of acid has flowed into Trinity Inlet.

Approximately 50 percent of the NSW cane land is underlain with potential ASS and inappropriate drainage of these soils caused a major fish kill in the Tweed River in 1987.

NSW farmers have since solved the problem through the implementation of less intrusive drainage and liming.
The can-do NSW farmers got on and fixed their problem, but the South Australians have instead provided money to CSIRO Land and Water to undertake a study, including to, establish the severity and spatial extent of the problem.

In the interim there will be lots of media releases and whinging, including about how they should be receiving more stored irrigation water from the Hume Dam in the Upper Murray or else their lake turns to acid.

There is in fact a simple solution to the problem in the lower Murray, open the barrages and let seawater re-flood the area.