Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

Blog Being Archived in Canberra

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Dear Dr Marohasy,

Thank you for granting the National Library of Australia a copyright licence to include your website in the PANDORA Archive. As agreed this licence permits the Library to copy your publication into the Archive and to retain that copy and provide online public access to it in perpetuity.

I am delighted to inform you that your publication is now publicly available in the PANDORA Archive at http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-66941.

Access to your publication in the Archive is facilitated in two ways: via the Library’s online catalogue; and via subject and title lists maintained on the PANDORA home page http://pandora.nla.gov.au/index.html.

Librarian
National Library of Australia
Canberra

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** This letter has been shortened and some personal detail removed.

Nyoongars, Noolbengers and No Fires: A Note From David Ward

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Hello Jen,

I attach a couple of pictures of an unplanned recent fire at Scott River, Western Australia.

I don’t know the exact fuel ages before the fire, but obviously one area was much older (possibly 15 year old), and heavier littered, than the other (possibly 3 or 4 year old).

GrassTrees_Scott River 30Jan07 extreme scorch BLOG.JPG
Scott River, 30th January 2007

GrassTrees_Scott River 30 Jan 2007 mild patchy area BLOG.JPG
Scott River, 30th January 2007

If you were a Noolbenger (Honey Possum, Tarsipes rostrata), which would you prefer?

Some claim that these animals would benefit from fire exclusion, from large areas, for twenty or thirty years.

I think Nyoongars (South West Aborigines) would have burnt many patches at about three years old, by lighting grasstrees.

Such fires would have trickled around, even in midsummer. They would have gone out in the late evening when the humidity rose, leaving many unburnt refuges.

Nyoongars would have had no trouble hopping, in bare feet, across burnt patches. They probably regarded Noolbengers as a tasty snack, flushed out by a mild fire – a perfect evening’s entertainment.

In recent fires in Fitzgerald River National Park, Noolbengers were running up fire fighters’ legs, and one was seen to swim fifty metres across an inlet.

Davey Gam Esq
aka Dave Ward
Western Australia

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Dave,

Thanks so much for the note with pictures. What a contrast. And I wonder what a honey possum looks like?

By-the-way, On Line Opinion has published an article by Mark Poynter this morning on forestry and fires.

Cheers, Jen

How Much Hot Air?

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ALMOST every day some report or event is claimed as evidence of global warming. Al Gore’s recent movie An Inconvenient Truth went so far as to claim that we have a “climate crisis” right now.

Do we?

It can be hard finding the real facts on climate change among all the hype.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a mandate to deliver a comprehensive assessment of human-induced climate change every few years, and the Fourth Assessment Report, AR4, is due for release sometime this year.

You have possibly been led to believe, given all the media headlines, that this big report was released in Paris last Friday. It wasn’t.

Friday’s document was just a 21-page summary of the first part of AR4, and doesn’t even have a bibliography.

That’s right, just a summary of a quarter of the big report.

Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis – Summary for Policy Makers is nevertheless an important document, because it details the position of many global warming experts. So what does it say?

Read my opinion in today’s The Courier Mail, click here: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,21169204-27197,00.html .

Whooping Cranes Killed In Florida Storm

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“A small flock of year-old whooping cranes led south by an ultralight aircraft has been wiped out by violent storms that swept over their habitat in the Florida salt marshes.

The 18 birds were raised in a Wisconsin sanctuary and left last fall on a 2,000-kilometre migration that took 78 days.

“They were strong and healthy birds, and they’re all gone now,” said Joe Duff, one of the lead ultralight pilots and co-founder of Operation Migration. …

Read the story in the Toronto Star here: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/178087

The Real Issue: Global Over-Breeding – A Note From Haldun Abdullah

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Hi Jennifer,

Now that we have left global warming behind us (almost unanimous agreement that it is the result of human activity or rather over-activity, and that its here to stay unless something is done about it urgently) we can concentrate on the real issue, which is, as I believe over population both at the global and local levels.

It seems like the balancing forces of nature, biotic potential and environmental resistance (in the ecological sense), have lost their balancing character in favor of biotic potential. World population has been soaring in the past few centuries in spite of wars, diseases, epidemics and so forth. I have attached an illustrative reference, which shows how world population has increased over the years and how it will reach about 8 billion by 2020. The animation included is really gloomy (Australia does not seem to be effected).

I strongly believe that, unless something is done about human over-breeding very urgently (like having an international agreement on limiting populations on a rational basis) the whole world will be overpopulated in such a manner (like some countries already are!), that the developing countries shall not be able to reach a standard of living of the so called developed countries. Further, because of the continued depletion of resources, the standards of living in the developed countries will reach such levels that severe intra-specific competition (sometimes referred to as “innovation”) will be dominant in every aspect of our lives. Not to mention that present day international conflicts will be much more widespread. So far, we humans have been clever overcoming environmental resistance, it did not work out, let us try to be wise from now on (not wise guys!).

Regards, Haldun

Weekend Reading: Climate Change 2007 – The Physical Science Basis

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The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just released a 21 page report summary for policy makers of a report entitled ‘Climate Change 2007 – The Physical Science Basis’ which will be released later in the year.

The report summary can be downloaded here: http://www.ipcc.ch/ .

The report summary has been the focus of intensive media interest for some days and according to the ABC has been described by WWF as a “clarion call to governments to act urgently to slash emissions” and by Greenpeace as a “screaming siren”.

It is unclear from the associated media release when the full report will be made available.

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Changes to the text in this blog post were made about 10 minutes after I posted it. New text is underlined.