Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

Minister Blocks Wind Farm for Parrot?

By

Could saving an orange-bellied bird warm the planet?

That’s the subtitle of the editorial in today’s The Australian.

The piece begins:

“A LITTLE bird is causing big trouble in Victoria. At issue is the endangered orange-bellied parrot and the blocking of a $220 million Gippsland wind farm by federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell 580 days after it was approved by the Bracks Government. According to Senator Campbell, the 52-turbine wind farm planned at Gippsland’s Bald Hill is too near where the birds spend part of the year and might – again, might – kill one of them a year.

The piece finished with the comment:

“The conflict over the Gippsland wind farm is emblematic of a broader conflict within the environmental movement, one that stems from the inherent bias against human progress and towards NIMBY-ism that is at the philosophical heart of the greens. Environmentalists in Australia have used the threat of extinction to try to stop everything from gold mines to resorts to, most famously, logging operations in Tasmania. … Whether politically or ecologically minded, Senator Campbell’s decision was a poor one that deserves to be reversed immediately.”

So the Minister cares about parrots as well as whales?

And I wonder, how were we really going to benefit from the wind farm? Are wind farms in Australia really going to stop global warming?

Red Gums, Edward River, Deniliquin

By

Deni_5april06 beautiful redgums ver 2.JPG

I took this picture at Deniliquin on the banks of the Edward River just this afternoon. The Edward is an anabranch of the Murray River and very much part of the Riverina.

There is a perception that most red gums in this region are dead – well that’s according to newspapers like The Age – but they are not.

They are beautiful trees.

Hybrid Cars Not That Energy Efficient

By

In his latest book The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery suggests we can all do our bit for the environment including by considering buying a hybrid car.

However, according to CNW Marketing Research Inc. as reported at Auto Spectator, and they spent two years collecting data on the energy necessary to plan, build, sell, drive and dispose of a vehicle from initial concept to scrappage, well, hybrid cars are not that energy efficient:

“To put the data into understandable terms for consumers, it was translated into a “dollars per lifetime mile” figure. That is, the Energy Cost per mile driven.

The most Energy Expensive vehicle sold in the U.S. in calendar year 2005: Maybach at $11.58 per mile. The least expensive: Scion xB at $0.48 cents.

While neither of those figures is surprising, it is interesting that driving a hybrid vehicle costs more in terms of overall energy consumed than comparable non-hybrid vehicles.

For example, the Honda Accord Hybrid has an Energy Cost per Mile of $3.29 while the conventional Honda Accord is $2.18. Put simply, over the “Dust to Dust” lifetime of the Accord Hybrid, it will require about 50 percent more energy than the non-hybrid version.”

And I recently bought a little red manual Ford Fiesta (non-hybrid) as my 17 year old daughter is now learning to drive. She is doing OK, but I keep my eyes closed a bit.

Good News About Gouldian Finches

By

Its good news that numbers of the endangered gouldian finch appear to be increasing in northern Australia.

Colleen O’Malley, from the Threatened Species Network, told ABC Online that:

“We’re talking birds in the vicinity of 200 to 400 in a flock, which is a really exciting thing that sort of harks back to the days when there were flocks of thousands of birds.”

And ABC Online were following up on a media release from WWF. WWF runs the threatened species network with public money.

Interestingly the WWF media release doesn’t come with a link to a full report or a chart showing bird numbers, but rather with a link to page where we are told WWF wants your help to find Gouldian finches in the wild and have produced the Gouldian Finch Sightings Kit. The kit does include some information on the ecology of the species in northern Australia.

More Claims & Counter Claims on Climate Change

By

I received the following note,

“No one with any vestige of objectivity could read the following and still believe that Anthropogenic Global Warming remains the threat that is being proclaimed. Jennifer, you must comment on this in your blog. It will be most interesting to see how far the AGW faithful will go in the desperate desire to defend their faith. Based on advanced behavioural modeling I predict two forms of response. Some will just abandon any pretense of analysis and reject it entirely on the basis of its derivation from a source of which they disapprove. Others will simply ignore the evidence and cite IPCC scripture as irrefutable scientific proof.

I’m not going to comment – and I didn’t quite get through the three papers. But, anyway, following is the media release from the Washington-based Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) and links to the papers.

“The release of these papers comes at an opportune time,” says Robert Ferguson, executive director. “The current issue of TIME offers a series of essays reputedly about climate science, carrying the ominous head line: ‘Be Worried, Be Very Worried’. If viewed through a prism of current science, it should read: ‘Be Skeptical, Be Very Skeptical’. The entire series is ill-informed, biased and unacceptable for serious public policy decisions. It is, in short, nearly hysterical advocacy designed to frighten readers toward supporting far-reaching policy decisions that would be both harmful and useless.”

Concludes Ferguson, “For too long, Scientists who challenge alarming claims are rarely given voice by the media, and are often labeled as “skeptics” and dishonest fronts for “corporate polluters.” TIME has an explicit policy not to print anything contrary to the ‘end-of-the-world’ warming orthodoxy. What is truly ironic is that the purveyors of alarm are the real skeptics who cling to virtual alarm against widely accepted empirical findings.”

The first paper, “Issues in the Current State of Climate Science” is a guide for policy makers and opinion leaders. It explores the constantly shifting scientific literature of climate change, discussing what is and what is not known about such issues as melting polar caps, species migration and extinction, coral reefs, mosquito-borne diseases, extreme weather events, sea level rise, polar bears, great white sharks and butterflies. The paper concludes with a reprint of MIT Professor Richard Lindzen’s recent testimony to the UK House of Lords on the nature of the present climate debate, what is trivial and what is not. (see: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20060331_issues.pdf)

The second paper, “Wind Farms Provide Negligible Useful Electricity” by Richard Courtney explains why wind farms for power generation can only provide negligible electricity to grid supply systems, make no significant reduction in pollution, cause significant environmental damage, increase the costs of electricity and create risks of power failures.
(see: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20060331_wind.pdf)

The third paper, “An Assessment of Montreal COP/MOP 1” by Chris Horner explores the looking-glass legal world that is the Kyoto Protocol. It shows with pole-star clarity that Kyoto’s own long and tortured path toward approval manifests that enthusiastic support for its regime is not matched by a desire to codify it. (see: http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20060126_horner.pdf)

Explains Ferguson, “Sadly, alarmists exploit the observation that few laymen understand what global warming is all about. And most people (including scientists) can rarely follow 15 minute discussions of somewhat complex science; the conclusion of the listeners is that the objections are too obscure to challenge their basic prejudice. We trust that these papers will help develop an antidote to that malady.”

The journal Science has also been featuring articles on climate change. Last week I was sent copies of the latest papers. There was some discussion at the blog Real Climate.

When I read Real Climate it seems the modelers go it right, but then when I read the review paper by Richard Kerr (Science Vol 311 pgs. 1698 – 1701) it seems the models don’t accord with the observations?

————–
The following blog post was not uploaded until 12.30pm on 4th April.

Taz the Technician

By

Taz, who also uses the pen name Bugger, has an opinion on most everything. A champion of the anecdotal he can hold his own in discussion on forestry, energy – but I’m not so sure about salinity.

I’d been wondering how Taz spent his time between growing up in Tasmania and retiring in Canberra, so I sent him an email and this was his reply:

“Technical history – Fitter, Machinist, Mechanic, Scientific Instrument Maker, Engineer, Technician, Technical Officer

Before retirement 1996, The Spectrum Management Agency – frequency assigning, licensing policy, major network rollout, implementation of device interference and immunity standards.

Previous; AFP technical support only, mostly in radio communications for routine & covert operations, VIP protection, also supported with our gear some UN and offshore operations.

ANU John Curtin School Medical Research, electronic instrument circuits for the late Professor Peter Gage

Last industrial site as contractor; Cleveland Tin, cassiterite and associated mineral recovery and concentration plant at Luina closed down in 1986. Other Mines were King Island Scheelite, Savage River ion ores, Renison (Bell) Goldfields tin separation and metal concentration.

Other freelance technical support in Tasmania, Education Dept. scientific instruments in high schools and colleges, UMT (Bonlac) reverse osmosis whey protein filtration, cheese making, milk drying, Bakeries, Glaxo opium poppy storage, Tasmanian (Adelaide, Seini) mushroom crops Spreyton, Blue Ribbon smoked small goods Camdale, various vegetable processors.

Simultaneously I sold fire protection door to door in these industries for importers like Firemaster & CIG. In this manner I visited most timber and logging operations.

Melbourne industrial scene; worked all over, natural gas & fuel, oil refineries & petro-chemical plants, ICI research, paper mills, hospitals, breweries, food processors, appliance makers, MMBW water supply & sewage treatment plants, Pilkington’s float glass plant.

Some special fields in industry, Pressure and Temperature measurements, Ph control in acid treatment, flow of slurries, effluents, furnaces and boilers, natural gas & super heated steam, evaporation, freezers, vacuum, chlorination, fluoridation, floatation, continuous cellulose web production, hazardous environments, radio propagation and reception, induction furnaces, nuclear devices, x-rays.

Other long term interests; Australian military aircraft production and aeronautical research at Fishermen’s Bend, Bushfires, Civil Construction, Electricity generation and distribution, Industrial noise & hearing defects, Materials recycling, Hand tools, Soils, Timber, Streams.

Major industrial achievement – my retirement, mostly intact with ten toes and fingers.”

Thanks Taz.

————————

This post will be filed under a category titled ‘people’. As a reader and/or commentator at this blog you may like to tell us something about yourself. Contributions encouraged please email to jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com.