Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

SA Premier Pledges 60% Cut in Emissions

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South Australian Premier Mike Rann might be listening to the once-banned Solar Shop advertisements in which Tim Flannery says climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity.

According to ABC Online, just today he has pledged a whopping 60 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions if his government is re-elected on March 18.

He will even introduce new laws to make sure the target is achieved by 2050.

The policy was apparently announced at a wind farm this morning and includes $250,000 to set up a climate change research centre at the University of Adelaide and the installation of mini wind turbines on government buildings in the city.

So 2050 is how many elections away? How old will Mike Rann be in 2050?

(Sorry Joe, but one for Ender.)

How Green was My Subsidy?

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The European Union spends about A$5.6 billion a year on schemes aimed at encouraging less-intensive farming in order to increase biodiversity, improve water quality etcetera on farm. But it has delivered very little tangible environmental benefit according to a recent news feature in Nature by John Whitfield titled ‘How green was my subsidy’.

One of the problems according to the feature article is that “most of Europe’s agi-environmental schemes have very vague goals.”

And sometimes research results indicate that wildlife is not adverse to a bit of farming. For example, one of the first scientific audits of an agri-environment scheme, showed that in Holland a project intended to help ground-nesting meadow birds by delaying the mowing of fields was having no effect – in this region some birds actually seemed to prefer intensively farmed fields.

David Kleijn, an ecologist from Wageningen University in Holland, has spearheaded the research effort to document the benefits in a rigorous way.

This work has concluded that:

“Plants showed the most widespread benefits, with higher diversity on scheme fields in
every country except the Netherlands. Bees benefited in Germany and Switzerland, grasshoppers and crickets in Britain, and spiders in Spain. In cases where the biodiversity went up, nearly all the beneficiaries were common species; only one scheme – a Spanish programme aimed at making arable fields bird-friendly by leaving winter stubble – showed a positive effect on endangered species, one of which was the thekla lark (Galerida theklae).”

The Nature news feature article really emphasis the extent to which Europeans like to mix their nature and farming with the conclusion:

“Such schemes may not be the best way to promote the preservation of endangered species. … Europe might do better to allow some areas to revert to a state close to wilderness while others are intensively farmed, and then to manage the whole system so as to maximize leisure, flood protection, and water quality.

… biodiversity benefits would accrue even if not particularly targeted. But Europeans like farmland landscapes, and will probably continue to try and convince themselves that there are practical ways to keep areas that are rich in wildlife and pleasing to the eye, which also produce cheap food and don

Steller’s Sea Cow

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There has been a fair interest at this blog in marine mammals, in particular whales. (If you are a new reader just do a search using the word ‘whale’ or ‘whaling’.)

But I actually think dugongs are more beautiful and probably more vulnerable as a species.

Dugongs are more closely related to elephants than to whales and dolphins.

Their closest living aquatic relatives are the manatees. Manatees live in rivers and also coastal waters of West Africa, the Caribbean, South America and the southern United States.

I was interested to read this morning that the also closely related Stellar’s Sea Cow was the first marine mammal recorded as becoming extinct, in recent times.

According to this website, the sea cow’s grew to 8 m long and weighed more than 6000 kg.

The last populations were found in the Bering Sea in 1741, but previous populations had occurred along the Pacific rim from Mexico to Japan.

Apparently the entire estimated population of 2000 became extinct by 1768 due to intensive hunting by seal hunters, taking them for their meat.

It got me thinking, which is the rarest species of marine mammal in the world today?

Congratulations to Dr Jim Peacock

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Congratulations to Dr Jim Peacock who was recently appointed to the postion of Chief Scientist for Australia.

I have always admired his dogged approach to GM issues. He was waving the flag in a very matter-of-fact way when it was most unfashinable to be pro-GM.

In an interview this morning with Tony Easterly on ABC radio he says he is concerned about global warming and that as a nation we should consider nuclear power.

Not a man to duck an issue, lets hope the New Chief Scientist can foster a culture where there is more open debate about these important issues – GM, nuclear power and global warming.

BOINC and save the planet!

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Everyone with a computer can help scientists better understand the universe, or just climate change, according to Phil Done. In the following guest post Phil suggests we all join the The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) community:

“Bored with that aquarium screen saver – worried about the computer being idle and generating greenhouse emissions between blog comments – or do you just want to do something that Ian Mott cannot do on the back of an envelope – BOINC and save the world!

What could make the climate change enthusiast’s heart beat faster – help solve the problem faster and make a personal contribution. That little hotspot on Greenland might be yours!

With Climateprediction.net and the BBC Climate Change Experiment you can do just that. You can contribute a small piece of the modelling puzzle.

How does it work?

The Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) is a distributed computing infrastructure intended to be useful to fields beyond the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). This software platform is open in that it is free and open source software released under the GNU Lesser Public License. Currently BOINC is being developed by a team based at the University of California, Berkeley led by David Anderson, the project director of SETI@home – a project which uses this software.

It’s supercomputing on the grassroots level – millions of PCs on desktops at home helping to solve some of the world’s most computer – intensive scientific problems. And it’s an all-volunteer force of PC users, who, with very little effort, can contribute much-needed PC muscle to the scientific and academic communities. There are hundreds of millions of Internet-connected PCs, and they’re getting more powerful all the time, so volunteer computing can provide computing power and storage capacity way beyond what can be achieved with supercomputers, clusters, or grids. The volunteer computing approach works best for applications that don’t need to move a lot of data between processors, but this limitation will diminish as the Internet gets faster.

Of course if you’d prefer molecular biology and speed up GMO research, fighting human diseases, finding aliens in a celestial haystack, or sorting out gravitational waves there’s something for you too.

Of course contrarians have warned not to run BOINC software if:
* You are in an urban heat island,
* You’d rather find out what happens to the climate personally, or
* You are not familiar with the MER/PPP parameter settings.

Denialists have also suggested we don’t need a SETS project – Search for Earthbound Terrestrial Stupidity – it’s already been solved. And perhaps you’re blogging so hard that your screen saver never appears anyway.

Is BOINCing a western ideology? Are we losing out in the global BOINC? Do only greenies and left wingers BOINC or is BOINCing bipartisan? Are right wingers born to BOINC?

Also, you need broadband, and laptops are not recommended due to heat buildup. See the relevant FAQs.”

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Thanks Phil.

Al Gore, and Another Air Conditioner in the Wall

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“How can anyone living through today’s bizarre and mutable weather not be concerned about global warming?” wrote David Kirkpatrick in a recent issue of CNN Money.

Kirkpatrick then goes on to tell us that he heard the best speech from former US Vice President Al Gore about unprecedented change in the earth’s climate seriously aggravated by human activity.

I was interested to know how much of the “unprecedented change” Al Gore attributed to “human aggravation”, but instead he just listed the “evidence” that “climate is changing”.

The following points are Kirkpatrick summary of Al Gore’s evidence:

“1. Global CO2 levels are way outside what have been historical norms over several hundred thousand years.

2. All ten of the hottest years on record, globally, have occurred in the last 15 years.

3. Last summer, all-time heat records were set in both the U.S. West and East.

4. Global ocean temperatures are far outside of historical norms.

5. Even after last year’s devastating Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent Hurricane Wilma was briefly the most severe hurricane ever recorded.

6. Last year Japan hit an all-time record for typhoons –10. The previous record was 7.

7. The largest downpour ever seen occurred last summer in India.

8. Thirty-five years ago there were an average of 225 days when Alaska’s tundra was frozen enough for trucks to drive. Today there are only 75.”

The first point doesn’t actually tell us climate is changing. Points 2,3,5,6,7 and 8 read like a mumble jumble of ‘cherry picked’ anecdote – but I can see there are some interesting statistics here. Number 4 doesn’t match. And I didn’t know that global ocean temperatures were far outside of historical norms?

Not that I deny climate change – there has always been climate change and there will always be climate change. But how much is due to us?

A movie by Paramount Classics based on this sort of ‘evidence’ and Al Gore’s personal journey of discovery titled ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ is due out in May. And there will be a book out by the same name, also by Al Gore. And, according to David Kirkpatrick, Gore is working with major environment groups in the US on a new consortium with the aim of running a “campaign of public persuasion” about global warming and its consequences.

I think the message is already out there – that it is getting warmer.

But no one really believes the world is about to end. Rather several of my friends, and lots of other people, have decided (as far as I can tell based at least in part on all the news reports about global warming) that they need to install an air conditioner, because it is going to get hotter.

The new air conditioners will be coal-powered, in so much as most of the electricity for Brisbane in south eastern Queensland, Australia, comes from coal-fired power stations.