Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

God Bless America

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It is the 4th July, Independence Day in the USA, and NASA has successfully smashed something the size of a washing machine into a gigantic comet.

The aim of the cosmic collision, and I gather it was successful, was to find out what is inside comets. Comets are from somewhere else and believed to contain “primordial material, preserved in the deep-freeze of space, since the formation of the solar system”.

For fantastic pictures and more information on Deep Impact, visit

http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact.

It is almost as exciting as that nuclear fusion reactor they agreed to build last week in the south of France.

Asteroids (and also comets) can cause tsunamis, see http://www.ipa.org.au/files/news_892.html.

There are about 100 scientists on the lookout for things from outer space that could collide with planet earth see http://128.102.32.13/impact/intro_faq.cfm.

Teach Me to Fish

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Africa is in the news. I lived in Madagascar and then Kenya from 1985 through to 1992.

Here I am in in the far south-west of Madagascar in about 1986,
Jen stopping for lunch.

This was one way of getting about in Madagascar in the mid 1980s,
by taxi brouse.

Taxibrouses would run the more common form of transport off the road,
the bullock cart .

I read about the planned Live 8 Concerts for Africa last week and I was sceptical. I thought of the proverb, “Give me a fish and I eat or a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for a life time”.

“Forgiving debt, or giving money, is not going to do much more than reward bad management,” were my thoughts.

Others had similar concerns. According to ABC Online,

“Some aid workers and Africans worry that the Live 8 initiatives will only serve to bolster corrupt regimes while scepticism persists that rock stars can change anything.
“I don’t believe it will do any good,” said 18-year-old Nir Livneh in the London crowd. “It won’t stop poverty in Africa.”
In Johannesburg, most of those interviewed among the crowd of 10,000 had never even heard of Geldof but Edward Romoki, yelling over a booming hip-hop act, said: “Maybe a concert like this can put Africa in the news and change things.””

How might putting Africa in the news change things?

I read today that Bob Geldof asked for more than just debit relief, he is asking for three things:
1. Action to wipe out Africa’s debt,
2. Double aid, and
3. The scrapping of trade barriers.

According to theSydney Morning Herald one million people attended the 10 free concerts in Europe, North America, South Africa and Japan, while an estimated 3 billion watched on television.

Bob Geldof, brought the computer billionaire Bill Gates to the Hyde Park stage, introducing him to the crowd of 200,000 as “the greatest philanthropist of our age”, who had given away $US5 billion.

Gates believes in technology including biotechnology (GM food crops). He believes in not only teaching people ‘how to fish’ (remembering the proverb) but also in providing them with the best technology. Towards this end he is supporting the work of a woman I once met, and admire immensely, Florence Wambugu. And you can find more about Florence at
http://whybiotech.ca/canada-english.asp?id=3603 .

Some of the projects supported by her group and that will be given a kick-along by the funding from Bill Gates can be found at
http://www.ahbfi.org/msv.htm .

Clear Fell for Tall Trees

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The Wilderness Society is no doubt celebrating the recent decision by Japanese paper mill Mitsubishi to only source woodchip from plantation forests. The end result, however, is likely to be fewer tall trees in Tasmania’s native forests.

The tall wet sclerophyll forests that make Tasmania so special are not able to regenerate without some form of severe disturbance and fire.

The annual three month window for burning has just ended in Tassie.

Where there is no logging and no wildfires, the mature eucalypt overstorey will stagnate and continue to decline, eventually to be replaced by (shorter) rainforest.

Clear felling to quote an old foresters, “bares the mineral soil to produce an adequate seedbed, and provides a brief respite for the new (Eucalyptus) forest to assert itself over its shrub competitors. The seed drop on the bared seedbed may be a serendipitous natural event, or else a man-made contrived additive. All our current “Old Growth Forests” were the result of major fire occurrences from lightning or indigenous firing.”

I was in Tassie in May.

And here are some pictures from that visit:

View image of stream in forest (about 50kb).

View image of swamp gum (about 50kbs).

View image of old tall Eucalyptus trees (about 130 kbs).

COMMENT from reader inserted at 3.20pm on 4th July:
Jennifer,
Your “View image of old tall Eucalyptus trees” requires explanation:
1.The background slope (R.H.S.& centre)is an area of very old forest burnt, without doubt by wildfire maybe 50 years ago with regrowth(same species)to 50-60 metres & many dead remnant “stags” of the original dominant Euc. species still standing –most have fallen over. To the left is remnant old growth, damaged but only some killed. Regrowth here will be patchy.
2. The mid-slope almost certainly is regrowth(same Euc. species) to ca. 40 metres following logging & regeneration burning & aerial seeding (same species).Note very few stags, they have long since been converted to furniture & high quality papers etc.etc.
3. The foreground could be another species but has apparently not been logged or catastrophically burnt c.f.1&2.
Regards, Bill.

View image of clear felled patch (about 130 kbs).

and
View closeup of recently burnt patch (about 50 kbs).

Nuclear Fusion to Power the World?

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Every so often I am asked to be a part of Friday morning’s panel of guests at the local ABC radio station. Guests nominate their ‘big issue’ for the week and discussion follows.

I am on tomorrow (it will probably be today by the time I post this) and I have been surfing the net and reading the papers thinking about what I might nominate as the ‘big issue’ in the morning.

The event that seems to have passed pretty well under-discussed is the announcement in Moscow on Tuesday to build a $16 billion nuclear fusion reactor in the south of France.

The advantage of nuclear fusion over the current uranium-dependent nuclear fission plants is that there is no radioactive waste. Both fission and fusion are greenhouse neutral.

I gather that the nuclear fusion rector has been on the drawing board since the early 1980s and since December 2003 negotiations had been deadlocked over where to build it with the Japanese (one of six countries involved in the project others are Russia, South Korea, US, China and European Union) insisting that the reactor be
based in Japan.

Anyway on Tuesday it was finally agreed that the site would be Cararache, near Aix-en-Provence in the South of France. Cararache apparently already has 18 nuclear installations and is already a centre for research on magnetic fusion.

I understand that nuclear fusion involves the forcing together of atomic nuclei, typically hydrogen atoms, under high temperature and pressure potentially through the creation of magnetic cages with strong magnetic fields which prevent the particles from escaping. It is claimed the technology can potentially deliver abundant cheap energy whose main by-product is water.

The sun is powered by nuclear fusion. While the concept is not new, this appears to be the first big investment in developing the technology for commercialization. With all the discussion about greenhouse and the need to reduce carbon dioxide emission, the price of oil, fear that oil will run out, and the opposition to power stations based on traditional nuclear fission technology, it seems surprising that this announcement has generated so little public discussion.

How Much More Water?

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It has been very wet in Brisbane over the last couple of days. But not as wet as on the Gold Coast where over 400mm has fallen over the last 24 hours. The Hinze Dam, that supplies the Gold Coast, is predicted to fill completely some time this evening. But there has not been much runoff into the three dams that supply Brisbane the Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pines dams.

Nevertheless there is a feeling that the recent drought has finally broken.

But, I would argue, now is not the time to stop thinking about new water infrastructure. It is unlikely to keep raining, while the population in the SE of Queensland is predicted to keep growing.

It was only two months ago, on the 27th April that Queensland’s Premier Beattie and Treasurer Mackenroth announced water projects worth more than $2.3 billion including a new dam and possible desalination plant as part of a grand SE Queensland Infrastructure Plan.

After perusing the plan and wondering how much extra water the projects listed in Table 6 of the glossy were likely to deliver, I phoned my local state member Ronan Lee MP and asked him a few questions including how much extra water the projects listed in the Infrastructure Plan (including the dam and desal plant) were likely to deliver.

Ronan Lee couldn’t answer my questions. He said if I sent him an email he would have a go at finding out, or forward the information to the Premier.

I sent an email off on 5th May.

On 30th May I received an email from the Premier’s Chief of Staff letting me know that the issues I raised had been noted and fall within the responsibilities of both the Deputy Premier and the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines and they would all have a go at answering them.

Then just today, 30th June, I received an email from the Treasurer telling me that my email “seeks information on the amount of water that the projects identified in the Infrastructure Plan and Program will deliver”. That was one of my questions.

The email then went on to tell me that this question would be answered by the Minister for Natural Resources and Mines.

You wouldn’t want to be in a hurry!

While I can understand that my local member, the Premier’s Chief of Staff and the Queensland Treasurer, may not know the answer, you would think they could easily find it out/give me the name and number of someone who does?

Indicative information about storage capacity etcetera should have been in the glossy document launched on 27th April.

Fire, Folly & Dead Canaries

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In National Parks, Reserves, and on private property in south-western Australia, grasstrees are under termite attack, rotting, breaking off, and toppling over, due to vast accumulation of thatch. The grasstree in this photograph, with heavy thatch removed by hand to show the decay underneath, is typical of thousands.

View image of grasstree rotting under long fire exclusion in Yalgorup National Park, Western Australia (38kbs).

Had grasstrees been covered by heavy thatch when Europeans first arrived, there would have been no reason to call them ‘blackboys’, since the black stems would have been largely hidden. Only rarely would they have produced a flower stalk, usually weak and twisted, quite unlike a spear. More likely popular names with British settlers would have been ‘greybeards’, or ‘haystack trees’. Early sketches and paintings consistently show them, quite clearly, as recently burnt, with black stems, little thatch, and a prominent flower stalk, like a spear.

As a rule of thumb, a grasstree thatch fire lasts as long in minutes as it has been unburnt in years. A three year old thatch will flare for only a few minutes, doing little damage to the green crown. A thirty year old thatch will burn for half an hour or more, reaching an incandescent thousand degrees Celsius.

Such fierce thatch fires often kill the grasstree immediately, because the protective mantle of old leaf bases is rotted away. Where dead eucalypt leaves, or casuarina needles have formed a ‘birds nest’ in the green top, the rot is exacerbated, the green top is reduced in size and vigour, and the eventual fire may completely burn the green top. If the grasstree survives the immediate fire effect, it is forced to live on starch reserves until a new top can grow. Complete replacement of the top can take a year, and the plant may die in the meantime, if its starch is exhausted.

If grasstrees are burnt more often, when the thatch is small, they flower and seed profusely, the protective mantle remains intact, the green top remains largely unburnt, nutrients in the thatch are recycled, and soil pH around the base is raised. The needles become obviously greener, longer, and thicker. Fire scars on some grasstrees along the old railway track in John Forrest National Park show annual burning by railway gangs when the railway was operating from the 1890s to the early 1960s. These grasstrees obviously survived. Now, under long fire exclusion, they are beginning to die.

There is a serious conservation problem with these old icons of the bush. Although still plentiful, the possibility of mass collapses and local extinctions cannot be ruled out. Grasstrees are like the Miner’s Canary – they are warning us that something is amiss in our bushland. The West Australian Government’s”Threatened Species Unit’ has been informed, but, apart from asking me to fill in a form, I am unaware of any action on their part. Perhaps the concept of ‘common and endangered’is too intellectually audacious for those accustomed to the familiar mantra of ‘rare and endangered’. But would a miner be wise to ignore his canary falling off the perch, because canaries are still plentiful?

By David Ward, Retired Senior Research Scientist with the Department of Conservation & Land Management, Western Australia, and formerly Visiting Senior Research Fellow at Curtin University School of Environmental Biology.

Copyright David Ward, 30th June 2005