Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

Waste to Diesel: How Soon?

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A Washington-based company called Green Power claims it can turn household waste and medical waste into diesel for US$0.52-0.58/gallon.

According to FarmOnline the company thrilled spectators with a demonstration in Washington on 26th July witnessed by government officials, oil refinery, corporate and other representatives using a process called catalytic depolymerization.

Is this a new or improved technology or just a variation of what is already happening in Philadelphia where Changing World Technologies (CWT) have a pilot plant?

What are the limitations and opportunties from this technology?

What Do You Think About Treated Sewage Effluent in Water Supplies?

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At the weekend 62 percent of Toowoomba residents voted against drinking treated sewage effluent. Just yesterday the Local Government Association of Queensland put out a press release suggesting Toowoomba is not typical of the rest of Queensland – or at least not typical of South East Queensland.

The association sponsored a survey which including 700 South East Queensland residents and 60 percent of them said they supported the use of treated sewage effluent to supplement the town water supply.

Across Queensland they found 57 percent of people in support of the concept with support strongest in males and lowest amongst those over 65 years.

These results correspond somewhat with a survey done by Graham Young and John Black last year as part of their regular gig on local ABC radio called ‘What the People Want’.

Nearly 500 people were survey for the ABC radio program.

Graham Young and John Black begin their report with comment that: “If there is one thing that Premier Peter Beattie could do that is less popular than making Brisbanites drink recycled sewage, it is to force them to add fluoride to their water”.

How about that! And I was given fluoride tablets as a child.

Anyway, Graham Young and John Black found that pretty much everyone agrees (96 percent) with recycling water for garden and industrial use, but only 48 percent agree when the recycling is for drinking water. 35 percent disapproved of recycling sewage as drinking water with a percent undecided or without an opinion or not wishing to answer.

The full report with lots and lots of table can be read by clicking here.

A few days ago they put up a new poll and emailed me. They are keen to know how you feel about this issue.

If you go to their questionnaire by clicking here or copying and pasting http://whatthepeoplewant.net/questionnaire-021-water-recycling.asp into your browser address bar, you can tell them.

Climate Skeptics on Trial in California: Steven Milloy

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“The State of California has filed a request in federal court to force auto makers[General Motors, DaimlerChrysler Corp., and the Association of Automobile Manufacturers] to disclose all documents and communications between the companies and the so-called “climate skeptics”. California accuses the climate skeptics of playing a “major role in spreading disinformation about global warming.”

California has been joined in the lawsuit by environmental activist groups including, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense.“

… according to Steven Milloy at www.JunkScience.com .

DDT returns to battle malaria in Africa: Reuters

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“Controlled indoor spraying of the infamous pesticide DDT is poised to make a comeback in countries that have tried and failed to do without it in the battle against malaria,” reports news service Reuters.

The Institute of Public Affairs* has published several proponents of DDT, including Roger Bate in an article titled ‘The Ban on DDT is Killing Millions in the Third World’.

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*I’m a Senior Fellow at the IPA.

How Trees Can Be Bad: Ross Coulthart

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You may remember that some weeks ago the Channel 9 Sunday Program featured a documentary on salinity title ‘Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis’. While researching the dryland salinity issue, reporter Ross Coulthart got interested in land clearing issues. This Sunday (6th August) the current affairs program will feature a documentary titled ‘Woody Weeds: How Trees Can Be Bad’. I’ve just received the media release:

“This week SUNDAY travels to far western NSW to check out the claims being made by many Green groups and politicians of a looming ecological disaster being caused by land clearing.

What we find overturns many of the alarmist claims that many of Australia’s largely city dwelling environmentalists have taken as gospel.

SUNDAY reporter Ross Coulthart details the strong evidence to show that current Government policies restricting land clearing, pushed by a powerful environmental lobby, are in fact causing serious environmental damage.

As several eminent scientists reveal this week too many trees in that landscape can actually be bad for the environment.

As recently as six years ago, Australia’s peak science body, the CSIRO, was warning of the ecological threat posed by invasive native scrub – the farmers call them “woody weeds” – that has taken over what was once largely, sparsely-treed, open grasslands across far western NSW and southern Qld.

Even the Wentworth Group of Scientists, in their 2002 ‘Blueprint for a Living Continent’ warned that laudable restrictions on broad-scale land clearing needed to be clearly distinguished from the “need to control shrub invasion in the semi-arid and pastoral areas of Australia.”

As local Nyngan aboriginal elder Tommy Ryan explains, for 45,000 years these largely open grasslands were managed by indigenous Australians using fire. But since European settlement that lack of burning has caused a huge growth of invasive scrub that has taken over between 15-25% of NSW alone.

Now tens of millions of hectares of that once open grassland are effectively being locked-up by Native Vegetation laws that NSW farmers claim are excessively restricting their clearing of what they say is environmentally harmful woody weeds.

Farmers are commonly demonised as the villains responsible for broad-scale land clearing, and that’s what the farmers of Nyngan and Cobar are now accused by the Wilderness Society’s public campaign of doing.

But the farmers claim the plants and animals that evolved to depend on those open grasslands are under threat because of the very trees the Greenies are fighting to save.

And, as SUNDAY details, they have some heavy-weight scientific backing for their arguments. As former Western Lands Commissioner and soil scientist Dick Condon tells Coulthart:

“We don’t need forest. We need open space for the species that use that grassland.”

Mick Keogh, Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute, says the evidence is there to show that the magnitude of vegetation loss across Australia has been grossly over-exaggerated. Yet the official estimates of 650,000ha being cleared a year in 1989-90 went on to become the cornerstone of Australia’s negotiating position at Kyoto, where limits on greenhouse gas emissions were negotiated. He believes that in order to ensure the reduction in land clearing occurred, the Federal Government made State funding dependent on the States banning land clearing. Keogh argues that a misguided effort to meet those inaccurate targets has led to the current highly restrictive Native Vegetation laws.

Also, current land clearing estimates don’t take into account the extent of regrowth and replanting of trees. When this is taken into account, reafforestation far exceeds even the official, exaggerated, estimates of land clearing.”

Water Actually Recycled Urine: Mercurius

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Last weekend residents of Toowoomba — Australia’s largest inland regional city and a city running out of water — voted against a proposal whereby the city would draw 25 per cent of its water from recycled effluent. On the subject of water and recycling, Mercurius posted the following alert at the On Line Opinion Forum last night:

“The World Health Organisation (WHO) today issued an unprecedented global alert for the entire world’s population to avoid drinking water which, it has found, is actually recycled urine.

The Director-General of WHO, Lee Jong-wook, was visibly shaken as he read out a statement. “It is my solemn duty to inform the people of the world that WHO scientists, operating independently in over 80 countries, have confirmed our worst fears. They have reached consensus that the water we drink, whether it is comes from a tap, a sealed bottle, or straight from a well or river, is actually recycled urine.”

The urine-water link has been blamed on the so-called hydrosphere effect, a radical hypothesis in which water from your toilet is flows out into the ocean and evapourates into the sky; from where scientists believe it falls as rain upon mountaintops, and make its way via rivers directly back into your household tap.

Said Mr Lee, “the hydrosphere effect is so far out of control there seems little chance of turning back the tide. We took samples from thousands of patients and found their bodies were riddled with water, in some cases as high as 75%. It’s too late for us, but maybe not for our children.”

The finding has set public health officials scrambling for alternatives. But AMA Secretary Dr. Robyn Mason said that water is in everything we drink. “We tested fruit juice, milk and even beer, and found water content as high as 96%,” she said. According to the AMA, safer alternatives include cask-strength whisky (29% water, 1% barley, 70% alcohol) and cat’s milk, which has far less water than dairy varieties.

Some have expressed hope of obtaining super-pure water from deep aquifers or Antarctic ice. But Mr Lee has poured water on these plans, stating that even the deepest groundwater sources are comprised of ancient number ones from prehistoric fish.

“There’s no escape. And don’t even think of swimming in the ocean – there’s a reason it’s salty you know. I’d rather take my chances in a pool full of primary school kids.”

Posted by Mercurius on Monday 31 July 2006 at On Line Opinion and republished here with permission.