Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

jennifer

Should Academics Play E-Politics?

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What role might Universities play in the “small-p politics” of the environment? This is the subject of a piece in today’s The Australian in which I am quoted as saying, academics should foster informed debate but not be “advocates of a particular perspective”.

Professor Peter Fairweather from Flinder’s University is quoted, “We (academics) have to primarily give the scientific view first because nobody else can really do that.”

I note the word “scientific view”. I would like to think it was a poor choice of words.

It seems to me that academics increasingly confuse evidence, facts, theories and hypothesis, from arguments, from knowledge. Then there is opinion and there are views. And then there is the truth.

The Professor goes on to suggest that, when scientists spoke in the policy debate they should make this clear since as citizens they did not “necessarily have any more importance than anyone else, because everyone’s got a view of what we should do policy-wise,” he said.

What waffle! There are views and views and views. But it requires discipline and knowledge to build a robust argument.

The piece in The Australian is reporting on a decision by the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee to consider a role for universities in environmental politics.

I do think it is good the issue is being considered. But let us not pretend that Universities are not already involved in environmental politics. I know a professor in a Life Science Faculty that has unashamably very publicly driven campaigns for WWF.

GM Food Crops (Part 3)

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Yesterday ABC radio’s The World Today ran a story on GM wheat as a solution to Western Australia’s salinity problems. While a general solution to salinity I am sure it is not, a salt tolerant/more salt tolerant wheat variety must be a welcome addition to the mix of varieties currently available.

I was aware of research at the South Australian-based Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) focused on developing new drought and frost tolerant varieties.

According to discussions I had with these researchers in SA about a year ago, frost tolerance has become an issue because plant breeders have been selecting for early maturing varieties in order to escape potential summer drought. But, this has now exposed crops to frost during flowering.

There is apparently variation for traits for frost and salt tolerance in the “crossable” gene pool for wheat and barley, but there are far better genes in other plants and these would need to be transferred via GM methods.

I am well known as ‘a fan’ of GM food crops.

I often repeat the statistic that 90 per cent of Queensland and NSW cotton growers now plant GM and use on average 88 per cent less insecticide than those growing conventional varieties.

It is perhaps less well know that I am genuinely puzzled by many people’s aversion to GM.

I can understand and respect the ethical arguments, but the “I hate corporations therefore I am against GM” seems rather trite.

And the argument that Monsanto is all powerful just doesn’t wash. That all State governments (except Queensland which has a climate unsuitable for canola) have now passed legislation banning the commercial production of GM food crops (cotton exempt in NSW on the basis it is grown primarily for fibre even though about 35 percent of the vegetable oil we eat in Australia is from cotton seed) as a direct consequence of the successfully Greenpeace campaign against Monsanto’s GM canola would suggest to me that it is Greenpeace, not Monsanto, that has most pull with State governments.

I do crave some really honest and informed public discussion on GM.

Monsanto

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“Monsanto is not alone in the research and development of crops designed to ward off destructive pests and disease, to require reduced pesticide applications, and to increase nutrition and yield in areas with traditionally poor showing for both.

Some of these pioneering life science research centers are for-profit firms. Some are government agencies. Others are academic institutions also working to find new ways to bolster the world’s food supply and alleviate hunger. In one form or another, these agriculture research operations are found in nations around the world: in China, Japan, Kenya, South Africa, Brazil, India, Australia, France, Switzerland, Germany, the U.S., etc. Burdensome local biases against intellectual freedom so necessary for science to thrive cause many of these firms to operate out of research centers located in the United States. One key component common to each grouping of scientists is how to achieve their goals without contributing more deleterious stress on the environment.

Regardless of the number of firms in the biotech field and despite the promise and products of this research, the harshest criticism, not praise, is reserved for Monsanto. …

Arguably, to characterize Monsanto’s century plus of labor as completely chivalrous, saintly and beyond reproach is to present only the “glass half full” portrait of the company and the chemical industry in general. The history of the field and firm is hardly free from legitimate environmental concerns. The most egregious include a horrific legacy of indifference in waste disposal. Admittedly most of the offensive practices by Monsanto and others took place during an era, before the birth of environmentalism in the 1970s, when newspaper empires embodied in the great dailies such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, when Members of Congress, the nations cities, factories and everyone else flushed raw sewage and piped every type of industrial and human waste into our waterways, forests, oceans and wild lands. It was an accepted practice with no evil to the earth intended. That’s just what everyone did without regard to the immediate or long-term consequences.”

The above text is from The International Foundation for the Conservation of Natural Resources website with the article at http://biotech.ifcnr.com/article.cfm?NewsID=500.

This is Part 2 of ‘GM Food Crops’. Part 1 was posted on 8th June.

Update: Nuclear, Forest & Cattle, &

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Pilliga-Goonoo

Pilliga-Goonoo forest communities want Premier Bob Carr to visit, but it doesn’t look like he will. They are lamenting job loses.

I reckon they would have a better chance of getting their jobs back if they focused on the environmental issues – the need for active management of these forests.

Alpine Grazing

In response to the Victorian government locking the mountain cattlemen out of the Alpine National Park the federal government appears to have successfully had the Park included on its National Heritage List under emergency provisions. The Victorian government has said cattle will still be banned. Which government will win this battle of the cattle?

Federal Labor AGainst Nuclear Debate

Federal Labor MPs have apparently shouted down New South Wales Premier Bob Carr’s call for a debate on the merits of nuclear power. The ALP’s state conference in Sydney is apparently set to reaffirm the party’s opposition to nuclear power with Peter Garrett saying it is an option not worth considering. Strong words.

Another Matter Altogether

Ian Beale PhD sent in the following thought: The trouble, at least on the surface, seems to be that any government department would rather spend a dollar on simulation than a dime on in-service testing, and the simulation frequently misses vital points while stressing irrelevancies.

Truth & Beauty

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Comment from Walter Stark PhD,

There is a most interesting essay by Rebeca Goldstein on Godel and the ‘Nature of Mathematical Truth’ at The Edge website.

It deals with the fundamental philosophical divide between those on the one side who accept that an objective reality does exist, that truth is defined by its consistency with objective reality and that beauty arises from the recognition of such truth, and those on the other who believe that reality,truth and beauty are ultimately our own constructions.

While the former pursue the discovery of truth, the latter aim to construct it in accord with whatever hopes, ideologies or ethics they deem desirable.

This same division seems to underlie much of my own dissention from various mainstream environmental concerns. What to the constructionists is a righteous crusade for the betterment of humankind appears to the realist an ugly disregard for truth and reality.

As for reality itself the SF writer Philip K. Dick said it well, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Goldstein’s essay is at http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge162.html.

Feeling Good About Emmissions (Part 2)

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Norman Endacott sent in the following comment in response to yesterday’s post on this issue.

I am sure there is another perspective and invite someone (perhaps Steve) to send me a piece that is supportive of the Greenfleet initative that I could post perhaps as ‘Feeling Good About Emmissions (Part 3)’.

Norman writes:

I wish to comment on Greenfleet’s naive efforts to compensate for the world’s excessive fossil fuel consumption by landscape-scale tree planting.

They should realize that Nature, in collaboration with Murphy’s Law, is lined up against them.

These are the problematical facts about tree/forest growth and carbon sequestration:

1. Though their life cycle, trees photosynthesize and absorb CO2 , lock up carbon in their tissues and expire oxygen. That is great, but simultaneously they respire and convert some of their carbohydrates back to CO2. It is a balancing act (CO2 versus O2) which fluctuates dramatically daily (night versus day) and more subtly and inscrutably over the decades of the tree’s life.

2. As the tree passes through its juvenile phase and into middle age, its rate of wood increment accelerates, remains at a high level, plateaus out and after maturity (100 years plus) starts to decline, becoming virtually zero when the assault of wood-destroying fungi and insects take their toll, cancelling out the miniscule annual wood accretions of which the veteran tree is capable. Then the inevitable failure of the life processes leads to death and disintegration and reversion of all that sequestered carbon back into CO2. (Refer to the condition and fate of the revered Monarchs of the Forest in Tasmania’s Midlands and Victoria’s Central Highlands, observed over the past 100 years.)

3. The greater the compatibility between soil and climate and the tree species chosen, the greater the success in maximising annual wood increment (carbon sequestration). Impoverished sites and arid or unreliable rainfall profiles lead to poor or mediocre growth and wood increment, and accentuate attacks by insect pests. In those situations, languishing and mere survival are all that may be expected. (I’m sure that Greenfleet’s expectations go beyond this).

4. Insect and fungal attack throughout the life cycle of the forest are an actuarial unknown. So are forest fires. Past successful carbon sequestrations may be wiped out with little or no warning.

5. There is no free lunch in this tree planting caper! If success is achieved, and cleared farmland has been converted to vigorous young forest , the conclusion that may be drawn is that good quality agricultural land in a good climate has been used, and high OPPORTUNITY COST attaches to this operation. (Which prompts me to ask – what land is being used by Greenfleet to create its new forests, and produce the promising young forested landscapes depicted in the photographs on its website?).

6. I gather that Greenfleet occupies the high moral ground, and its plantations will never be used for the sordid business of producing timber crops. Those new forests will remain sacrosanct for ever more. But if such new forests have commercial forestry intent, it’s a different carbon cycle ballgame. The forests will be periodically harvested (20 years or 50 years, depending on management objectives). The carbon sink will be reduced to zero, and replanting or regeneration will take place. One must presume that for practical purposes, the harvested produce will finally revert to CO2, given time. I have no idea how the mathematics of ‘carbon trading’ will handle this puzzle. Possibly somehow the continuum of carbon sequestration figures for an idealistic , high-minded, sacrosanct-in-perpetuity , carbon-dedicated plantation may have to be divided by a factor of two , to cover commercial plantations.

8. Likewise, how will the carbon-trading caper get its head around the question of ‘perpetuity’? If the new forest, planted specifically for creation of a carbon sink, goes through its life cycle of say 200 years, then dies and disintegrates and becomes CO2 again, calling for a regeneration process, how can all that complexity be anticipated in the mathematics of 2005 carbon trading? Or is Greenfleet’s programme entirely pro bono (apart from Premier Beattie’s largesse and the donations of the gullible public)?

9. There is another OPPORTUNITY COST burden. The idealogues have only in recent years discovered that forests consume soil moisture in the course of tree metabolism and physiology. What’s more, the faster the growth and the more carbon sequestration that occurs, the greater the water uptake, and the greater the loss to urban and rural water supplies. This should be factored into Greenfleet’s rosy-tinted view of the situation.

Greenfleet is milking the Queensland Government of large sums of money, and also appealing to the community for financial support.

We are entitled to confront them with the above complexities, and find out how rigorously they have thought through the whole process, its uncertainties, economic and social cost/benefits, growth limits and practicalities. One of the most important things we would wish to know is the foreshadowed end-game. How much non-forested land is available thoughout Australia which is of suitable quality and is available. Then, an idealistic scenario to be set out, covering a reasonably short project period. Then some pretty good mathematics indicating what sort of a dent that effort would put, in the overall (alleged) global warming problem.

Ends.