Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Dam Building in Singapore

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MANY South Australians, and the Australian government, and the Murray Darling Basin Authority, claim that it is necessary to have barrages across the bottom of the Murray River because of the upstream irrigation industries [1]. There is no equivalent large-scale irrigation in Singapore, but they have barrages across the Marina channel. Marina barrages Singapore

In Singapore, unlike Australia, the government freely admit that the barrages have dammed the estuary to create a freshwater reservoir. Such refreshing honesty.

Singapore is a tiny country with not much freshwater [2]. An official website explains [3]:

“Built across the mouth of the Marina Channel, the Marina Barrage creates Singapore’s 15th reservoir, and the first in the heart of the city. With a catchment area of 10,000 hectares, or one-sixth the size of Singapore, the Marina catchment is the island’s largest and most urbanised catchment. Together with two other new reservoirs, the Marina Reservoir increased Singapore’s water catchment from half to two-thirds of the country’s land area in 2011.”

“As the water in the Marina Basin is unaffected by the tides, its water level will be kept constant all year round. This is ideal for all kinds of recreational activities such as boating, windsurfing, kayaking and dragonboating…”

And this blog post is to reintroduce you to the revamped Myth and the Murray website that includes more information about the River Murray barrages … www.mythandthemurray.org

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Haven’t Lost Half of the Great Barrier Reef: Part 2, Junk Methodology

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HOW could scientists conclude that half of the Great Barrier Reef has been lost in the last 27 years: target coral reefs most affected by cyclones, coral bleaching and crown-of-thorn starfish outbreaks, while ignoring more representative reefs with healthy corals. And I didn’t make that up! It’s documented in a peer-reviewed study by H. Sweatman, S. Delean and C. Syms entitled: ‘Assessing loss of coral cover on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef over two decades, with implications for longer-term trends’ [1].

Indeed the claim that there has been a 50 per cent decline in coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef appears to be largely an artifice of the survey method. In particular, coral reefs most severely affected by bleaching in 1998, and reefs disproportionally affected by crown-of-thorn starfish outbreaks, and also reefs with insufficient time to recover from cyclones in 2009 and 2011 were targeted for repeated sampling, while more representative reefs with healthy corals were ignored.

In part 1 of this series, I reported that the World Heritage Centre will demand action by the Australian Government to spend vast sums of taxpayers’ funds to address this manufactured issue, or have the Great Barrier Reef placed on its World Heritage in Danger List. This demand is a recommendation of the United Nation’s International Union for the Conservation of Nature, UNESCO, in its State of Conservation report prepared for the June meeting of the UNESCO committee [2], which in turn is based upon a report of the environmental lobby groups WWF and the Australian Marine Conservation Society, whose report [3] in turn relies on the claims of a peer reviewed study by Glenn De’ath and co-workers [4].Outer Barrier Reef, Photograph by Walter Starck

The paper by De’ath and co-workers published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 [5] does indeed claim a 50 per cent decline in coral cover based on 27 years of data from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) Long-Term Monitoring Program. [Read more…] about Haven’t Lost Half of the Great Barrier Reef: Part 2, Junk Methodology

The Great Barrier Reef: Have we Really Lost Half of It? [Part 1: Water Quality]

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IT was all over the news again this morning, that unless action is taken to improve water quality the Great Barrier Reef could be placed on the World Heritage list of sites in danger and by the way, there has already been a 50 percent decline in coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef.

No wonder the average person is concerned about the environment! Such casual reporting that we have already lost a full half of the Great Barrier Reef!

Photograph by Walter Starck
Photograph by Walter Starck

This publicity is all part of a campaign to stop the development of new port facilities along the Queensland coastline. But rather than just come out and say they don’t want more development– that in fact they despise industry– the activist scientists dress it up as the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. [Read more…] about The Great Barrier Reef: Have we Really Lost Half of It? [Part 1: Water Quality]

Greg Hunt’s Carbon Buy-Back Scheme for Australia

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THE Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Greg Hunt MP, was in Brisbane yesterday explaining the Coalition’s plan to tackle climate change post September 14, 2013. You can download the manifesto as presented at the seminar here:

The Coalition’s Direct Action Plan, 29 April 2013 (9.8MB)

Clearly the Coalition has no intention of showing leadership on this issue with Mr Hunt explaining that:

“We agree with the Government on the science of climate change, we agree on the targets to reduce emissions and we agree on using markets as the best mechanism.”

But I can’t see how this “Direct Action Plan” can possibly work as detailed, in particular the economics of revegetation for carbon sequestration and soil carbon sequestration don’t add-up. Yet Mr Hunt claims:

“The fund will not only reduce our emissions, it will improve Australia’s environment through a range of measures including revegetation, better land management and enhanced soil quality.”

But hang on. Mr Hunt is claiming the price of carbon will climb to $350 per tonne by 2050. Ha! Hasn’t anyone told Mr Hunt that the carbon market recently collapsed in Europe?  Only a fool or a politician could write:

“This simple, straightforward approach is a vastly better way to tackle climate change than the blunt instrument that is the Carbon Tax, which has already inflicted economy-wide pain and will continue to do so as it climbs to its own predicted price of $350 per tonne of C02 by 2050. That is why we will repeal the Carbon Tax and replace it with a classic reverse auction system, based on incentive and innovation.”

What a crock!

Consensus and Controversy: The Debate on Man-Made Global Warming

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‘IN open societies where both scientists and the general public are equipped with critical skills and the tools of inquiry, not least enabled by the information revolution provided through the Internet, the ethos of science as open, questioning, critical and anti-dogmatic should and can be defended also by the public at large. Efforts to make people bow uncritically to the authority of a dogmatic representation of Science, seems largely to produce ridicule, opposition and inaction, and ultimately undermines the legitimacy and role of both science and politics in open democracies.’

That’s the final paragraph in a new report by Emil A. Røyrvik; a social anthropologist and senior research scientists at SINTEF Technology and Society, Scandinavia’s largest independent research organisation.

The report about “the debate on man-made global warming” including an analysis of “the four myths of climate change”, “the hockey stick”, “climategate” and surveys and petitions of dissenting and contrarian positions.

Dr Røyrvik comes at the issue from an academic perspective and very clearly articulates the strength of the consensus position but also the logic of the contrarians – as he labels us.

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Sarah Ferguson Defends Abattoir Footage of Dubious Origin

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IN June 2011 the Australian government halted all live cattle exports to Indonesia after ABC Four Corners broadcast disturbing footage of Australian cattle being mistreated in Indonesian abattoirs. As I wrote in May 2012, Australians were lead to believe that this footage, that shocked the nation, was typical of what occurs inside many abattoirs in Indonesia and that the footage was taken by Lyn White from Animals Australia [1]. However, according to British filmmakers Gem and Ian from ‘Tracks Investigations’ they were responsible for the footage that sparked massive public opposition [2]. Nowhere in the Four Corners program is the involvement of these professional filmmakers declared; activists who for a fee “offer a comprehensive global investigation and film production service to conservation, environmental and animal protection groups.”[3]

In the following email, which Sarah Ferguson from ABC Four Corners has asked me to publish, she explains that my recent column in The Land on the same topic is “mischievous” [4]. In particular she claims a first hand knowledge of the situation in Indonesia and that half the abattoir footage in the program was filmed by Four Corners.

[Read more…] about Sarah Ferguson Defends Abattoir Footage of Dubious Origin