Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Cyclone Larry Intensifies

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I am guessing that Neil Hewett and his family have spent the day preparing for Cyclone Larry.

The cyclone is already a category 4 (225-279 km/hr winds) and expected to intensify before crossing the coast somewhere south of Cairns (and the Daintree) early tomorrow morning.

Hurricane Katrina was a category 4, as was Cyclone Tracy.

My brother Jim lives in Cairns and he said he had never seen the city so busy as it was today, with people stocking up on food, cleaning up around their homes and gardens and carting rubbish to the dump.

I am also thinking of my Aunt Diana, keep safe.

Global Warming: More Water, But Not More Floods

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After reviewing more than 100 peer-reviewed studies, Thomas Huntington from the United States Geological Survey, has concluded that there is more water circulating as a consequence of global warming. This includes more rainfall and more evaporation, but there has not been more tropical storms or more floods over the last 100 years.

Huntington’s findings were published earlier this week in the Journal of Hydrology (Volume 319, No 1-4, pages 83-95) in a paper titled ‘Evidence for intensification of the global water cycle: Review and synthesis’.

Eureka Alert includes the following comment about the study:

“Although data are not complete, and sometimes contradictory, the weight of evidence from past studies shows on a global scale that precipitation, runoff, atmospheric water vapor, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, growing season length, and wintertime mountain glacier mass are all increasing. The key point with the glaciers is that there is more snowfall resulting in more wintertime mass accumulation – another indication of intensification.

“This intensification has been proposed and would logically seem to result in more flooding and more intense tropical storm seasons. But over the observational period, those effects are just not borne out by the data in a consistent way,” said Huntington.

Huntington notes that the long term and global scale of this study could accommodate significant variability, for example, the last two Atlantic hurricane seasons.

“We are talking about two possible overall responses to global climate warming: first an intensification of the water cycle being manifested by more moisture in the air, more precipitation, more runoff, more evapotranspiration, which we do see in this study; and second, the potential effects of the intensification that would include more flooding and more tropical storms which we don’t see in this study,” said Huntington.“

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Thanks to Benny Peiser for alerting me to this study.

Phil Done on ‘Gross National Happiness’

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Following is a note from Phil Done, a reader and regular commentator at this blog:

“A recurrent theme on the blog in the great battles of good versus evil is that that free markets are wonderful efficient mechanisms and economic growth is a good thing. But is a big fat Gross National Product the meaning to life.

Does the GNP represent the environment, our heritage, our culture and our true happiness?

The New Economist reports:

“The hippies, the Greens, the road protesters, the downshifters, the slow-food movement – all are having their quiet revenge. Routinely derided, the ideas of these down-to-earth philosophers are being confirmed by new statistical work by psychologists and economists.

First, surveys show that the industrialised nations have not become happier over time. Random samples of UK citizens today report the same degree of psychological well-being and satisfaction with their lives as did their (poorer) parents and grandparents. In the US, happiness has fallen over time. White American females are markedly less happy than were their mothers.

Second, using more formal measures of mental health, rates of depression in countries such as the UK have increased. Third, measured levels of stress at work have gone up.

Fourth, suicide statistics paint a picture that is often consistent with such patterns. In the US, even though real income levels have risen sixfold, the per-capita suicide rate is the same as in the year 1900. In the UK, more encouragingly, the suicide rate has fallen in the last century, although among young men it is far greater than decades ago.

Fifth, global warming means that growth has long-term consequences few could have imagined in their undergraduate tutorials.

None of these points is immune from counter-argument. But most commentators who argue against such evidence appear to do so out of intellectual habit or an unshakeable faith in conventional thinking.

Some of the world’s most innovative academics have come up with strong evidence about why growth does not work. One reason is that humans are creatures of comparison. Research last year showed that happiness levels depend inversely on the earnings levels of a person’s neighbours. Prosperity next door makes you dissatisfied. It is relative income that matters: when everyone in a society gets wealthier, average well-being stays the same.

A further reason is habituation. Experiences wear off. …Those who become disabled recover 80 per cent of their happiness by three years after an accident. Yet economics textbooks still ignore adaptation.

A final reason is that human beings are bad at forecasting what will make them happy. In laboratory settings, people systematically choose the wrong things for themselves.”

Economic theory has a concept called utility. If I give you $1M you’ll be really happy. $2M even happier. But as you go up with incremental millions your happiness does not keep increasing linearly. It tails off (except for Joe).

Most people of course don’t get off the linear part of the curve -like me!

But it’s more than that – our decisions need other values than economics built in.

Like http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=3257.

Led by its young king, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the kingdom of Bhutan is the only country in the world to measure its wellbeing by Gross National Happiness (GNH) instead of Gross National Product (GNP). This unorthodox approach is a serious attempt to question the values of unbridled economic progress, and foreground the importance of maintaining a balance between tradition and modernisation. Bhutan has followed a cautious path of development since the 1960s, with the intention of preserving its heritage and culture and protecting its environment.

GNH is an official policy of the kingdom, having been passed in parliament, and it is perhaps best illustrated by some examples from Bhutan which prove that happiness really does take precedence over economic prosperity there. The country limits the number of tourists that are able to visit it, because the Bhutanese had complained that the environment was being affected and sacred lands were being spoiled. The limiting was therefore aimed at increasing the ‘happiness’ of these people. Similarly, demonstrating that the concept of GNH is inextricably connected to accountability, anyone with a grievance can go to the king himself and get a hearing.

The policy of GNH, as well as focusing on cultural promotion and good governance, also aims to put an end to ‘spiritual hunger’. Material and technological progress is not rejected or banned, but it must not be to the detriment of the value of human life, and humanity’s soul. So the new policy has a spiritual aspect to it, as well as an eminently sensible accountability aspect. Mental and psychological wealth are genuine considerations in Bhutan. Happiness is more important than monetary wealth.

Should we in Australia replace the GNP with the GNH?

Or even better Ian Mott should enshrine the GNH as the prime statistic for the new happy state of Tropicana.

I reckon this blog being the innovative forum that it is (this obsequious grovelling should stop me getting deleted for a week) could lead a national revolution on use of the GNH. We could use it as a mediating concept in environmental disputes. No more taking greenies to court or chaining yourself in front of bulldozers – we would simply use a GHM (global happiness model) to optimise a mutually compatible and happy solution using multiple ensemble runs to explore the happiness chaos space under a variety of future happiness growth scenarios using a model of appropriate happiness sensitivity.

We would ask Ian Castles as the special envoy representing the stats office as a post-retirement fellow (having sorted out those SRES chappies and feeling very happy) to conduct a “basket of goods” type survey on happy indicators. You wouldn’t ask the Land and Water Audit or the IPCC as happiness might be going up when they tell you it’s going down?

Maybe happiness is affected urban heat islands? Would Warwick Hughes be happy with our happiness measurements? Would Louis insist there was an abiotic theory of happiness? Could Motty define happiness on the back of envelope. Would Ender insist on renewable happiness. And would Thinksy explore the inner semantic nature of happiness. Joe would be happy trading derivatives in higher happiness. If all else fails – Detribe could implant us with genetically engineered happiness.

And you would have to compensate for Rog being happy to be unhappy.

Be happy!“

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Thanks Phil.

Land & Water Audit Got it Completely Wrong, But Who Cares?

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According to National Water Commission Chairman Ken Matthews:

“Ground water, in my view, is the sleeper issue in Australian water management, and indeed all over the world,” Mr Matthews said.

“Ground water is very poorly understood in Australia and overseas.

“It is being over-exploited overseas and in some areas of Australia, and we need to improve our understanding and management.”

Mr Matthews sounded the alarm during a speech to the Australian Water Summit in Sydney on Monday.

He said a lack of knowledge of water resources was hampering water planning and that the quality of Australia’s water accounting was “not good at all“.

It is actually much worst than this. Reports prepared under the National Land and Water Audit have been wrongly claiming groundwater levels are rising.

It is now six years since the Natural Heritage Trust funded National Land and Water Audit published its report Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000. The 129-page glossy warned that because of rising groundwater, including in the Murray-Darling Basin, the area with a high potential to develop dryland salinity would likely increase from 6 million hectares in 2000 to 17 million hectares in 2050.

Yet data did not support the notion that we had a situation of rising groundwater in the Murray-Darling Basin. Groundwater levels in the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Coleambally irrigation areas – the regions considered most at risk in eastern Australia – have generally fallen over the past ten years. They were rising in the 1970s but falling by the late 1990s.

In 2004 the CSIRO provided me with the following reasons for the general fall in groundwater levels: improved land and water management practices; relatively dry climate over the past ten years and increased deeper groundwater pumping and higher induced leakage from shallow to deeper aquifers.

How could they be so incompetent at the National Land and Water Audit? Or where they just too focused on salinity and generating worst case scenarios?

Good News: Krill & Phytoplankton Thriving off Antarctica

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Scientists from the Australian Antarctic Division and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre have just returned from a 10-week survey of the Australian Antarctic Territory where, according to Dr Nathan Bindoff, they saw lots of krill and whales in warmer and saltier than expected waters, click here and here for some of the news stories.

Dr Bindoff said the ocean had warmed 0.05C in two-thirds of the area studied, and he considered this significant.

There was lots and lots of krill, to the extent that Dr Bindoff suggested some of these aggregations must be the largest aggregations of animal life on earth. Krill are a main food sources for some whales and some seabirds and the survey showed whales were widely distributed throughout the area, not just close to shore.

And according to Dr Bindoff, the phytoplankton were clearly having an impact on the carbon dioxide exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere with a lot of Co2 being consumed by the phytoplankton.

Sounds like all good news to me.

Species Vulnerable to Extinction (Part 6): Liverworts in Karri Forests

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Dear Jennifer,

I would like to share an example of the absurdity and wastage which goes under the name of endangered or threatened species management in southwestern forests [of western Australia], part of the ‘great diversity hotspot’ referred to by Professor Myer and others.

A few months ago I visited the karri forest and drove out with a former colleague to have a wander in the Warren and Dombakup State forests, south of the Warren National Park. I once knew these areas very well; I had been the District Forester at Pemberton in the 1960s and 1970s. The Warren and Dombakup State forests were at the time being cutover to supply sawlogs to the big sawmill at Pemberton. Part of my job was the preparation of the logging plans for the mill, supervision of the treemarking (selection of seed trees), quality control of logging operations and the post-logging regeneration of the cutover forest. The clearfelling took place over two or three years, and the regeneration operations in the summer of 1971/72. This involved a process of “scrub-rolling” (using a bulldozer to flatten the tall dense understorey of karri wattle so we would get an even seedbed) and then burning to create an ashbed at a time when there was ripe seed in the crowns of the retained seed trees.

Karri trees only produce seed every 4 or 5 years, so the timing of regeneration operations is very critical. The burns themselves were a tremendous challenge, because of the heavy fuels in the national parks to the north and west, but we had a good handle on the seed cycle, and I had a cadre of very experienced field staff and forest workmen. The whole business succeeded wonderfully. The following winter we got a mass germination of karri seedlings, plus all the other plants which come away after fire in this country. The log landings and some of the old snigging tracks were planted with karri seedlings from the nursery at West Manjimup.

It was great to revisit this forest 35 years later. The hillsides are now covered with tall (>40 metres), swaying karri trees as far as the eye can see, and the day I was there the bush was alive with birdsong and rich with wildflowers. I was told the fauna (which is mostly nocturnal) is abundant, and I sampled for myself the good clear water running in the streams. In one section there was a commercial thinning operation going on, taking out the smaller less vigorous trees to free up the bigger and better trees, and enhance their maturity. The logs were being sold to a sawmill for the production of tile battens, and the thinned stands looked absolutely magnificent.

The whole thing appeared to me to be a working example of ecologically sustainable forest management, with the new forest replacing the old and already providing environmental services as well as commercial values, and growing sturdily into the Old Growth of the future. It seemed to me that here was a scene of beauty and productivity, something of which we could all be proud. Not so.

To my surprise I noticed that all through the regrowth, officers from the Department of Conservation and Land Management (CALM) had been designating areas in which the thinning operations were banned. These were marked with plastic tape. When I asked what was going on, it was explained to me that a CALM officer had discovered “rare” species of cryptogams (liverworts) growing on the karri wattle in the regrowth forest in this area.

A liverwort is a primitive green, moss-like slime which grows on the trunks of woody shrubs in higher rainfall forest areas all over the world).

CALM feared that the liverworts would be destroyed in the thinning operation and become extinct. So in these areas the thinning was banned. This will have a number of downsides, including a reduction in the rate of development of the stand, loss of commercial value and income, demand for officer time to delineate the exclusion zones and police them, loss of profit to thinning contractors and a much more difficult forest in which to carry out green burning for wildfire mitigation (unthinned karri regrowth is tricky to burn). Carried forward, it will mean that the areas can never be logged again and are more vulnerable to high intensity summer bushfires.

To put this into context: on an evolutionary scale, liverworts are a very ancient type of plant. They have undoubtedly lived in the karri forest for as long as there has been karri forest, and that is countless thousands of years. Certainly they have not evolved in this area during the last 35 years. Over the eons they would have survived thousands of bushfires, including mild burns lit by Aborigines and high intensity stand replacement fires lit by lightning. By their very presence in the regrowth forest, these liverworts demonstrate that they were quite able to survive the forest being clearfelled, scrub-rolled and given a hot regeneration burn and converted from old growth to regrowth. While CALM admit that the liverworts may well have recovered after the clearfelling and hot regeneration fire, they regard them as too delicate to survive selective thinning of the subsequent regrowth forest.

I did some checking and discovered that these liverwort species are well known from as far afield as the Stirling Ranges and are widespread (though scattered, and their distribution is not mapped) throughout the southern forests. They may not be “rare”, but CALM has decided they are “threatened”. So that’s that.

I challenged CALM over the idiocy of their policy, thinking that perhaps they did not understand the history of the area. Far from it. They knew, but it made not one iota of difference. The good old Precautionary Principle was duly trotted out, and as usual presented as unchallengeable. Neither did the disgraceful waste of staff resources involved in the “protection” of these non-rare and non-threatened species worry anyone. I was left wondering whether CALM has too many staff, with not enough to do.

I don’t go so far (as some Old Growth Foresters do) as to suggest that the environmental ideologues in government are deliberately playing the threatened species card to stop timber cutting in the karri forest. I think it is more likely that inexperienced young CALM staff with an academic background in environmental science rather than forestry, and with a burning desire to do something for the environment suddenly found themselves with an opportunity, and went for it, without thinking through the logic or the consequences. I have observed many young people in the new environmental and land management agencies, and they share a common characteristic: they know what they are against, but they do not know what they are for.

The multipurpose-multivalue and pro-active forest management system I was taught and then practiced as a young forester has been replaced by a vacuum, and in groping for something to do (as opposed to something to stop), they come up with something silly. The worst thing about all this, to my mind, is that the senior people in government, the people who are running the show, let it happen.

Yours sincerely,

Roger Underwood.