Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Brown Leaves Greens

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ON Friday, the leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, announced he was stepping down and also retiring from Australian federal politics.

Miranda Devine has a piece in today’s Herald Sun that begins:

“THE intergalactic phones still didn’t ring on Friday after the earth-shattering news that Greens Leader Bob Brown had resigned.

Was that nutty speech to his ‘Fellow Earthians’ in Hobart last month a sign that he was on his way out the door?

Was it a final mad explosion of pent-up hubris that had him calling for a one-world government, an ‘all-of-the-Earth representative democracy’?

It was certainly time to go, Brown told a press conference on Friday, flanked by his successor, Christine Milne, and his handsome, bearded partner Paul Thomas.

People had taken to stopping him in Hobart’s Salamanca Place to say, ‘Thank God for the Greens’.

With a desperate Labor minority government belatedly turning on its Greens partners, and the Greens vote going backwards in state elections, Brown, 67, had passed the zenith of his career.

Best to get out while the going is good, with his legacy intact and before anyone notices the decline of the party he has led as a senator of 16 years.

As usual, a woman is left to clean up after the party, formidable and not to be underestimated though Christine Milne is.

In her first comments at Brown’s farewell press conference, Milne, 58, made a pitch to rural and regional voters, claiming “the Greens and the bush” simply misunderstood each other.

‘I’m going out there as a country person to say to other country people it is time that the Greens and country people worked together.’

Good luck with that, considering greenies are the chief cause of grief to the bush.

Let us count the ways. Forestry towns destroyed by irrational green tree worship. Uncontrollable bushfires caused, not by global warming, but by green opposition to hazard reduction.

National parks left to feral animals that rampage though neighbouring farms. Dams never built thanks to greenie protests. Wind turbines plonked all over bucolic hillsides. A live cattle industry brought to its knees…

Read the entire article here: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/greens-country-girl-christine-milne-is-no-friend-of-the-bush/story-e6frfhqf-1226326602622

I’ve written many blog posts cranky with Mr Brown for being such a hypocrite and for so often telling made-up stories and trying to pass them off as ‘saving the environment’.   Remember my blog post of June 2009 ‘The Already Bankrupt Brown Green’ about the pristine forest that was once a thriving timber town known as Wielangata…

Read more here:  https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2009/06/the-already-bankrupt-brown-green/

Why the Lower Lakes are Important to the Proposed Basin Plan

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OVER the last decade, the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, and other groups, have successfully lobbied for the environmental needs of Australia’s river systems to have a guaranteed first priority call on water. This became reality with the Water Act 2007 that not only gives environmental needs priority over industry and community, but within this category, environments listed under international conventions are given particular priority.

The Water Act 2007 imposes a legal limit on the amount of water that can be diverted for non-environmental purposes and, through implementation of the Proposed Basin Plan, will result in a significant transfer of water from food production to the environment.

The Proposed Basin Plan does not specify where the new environmental water recovered under the plan will be used i.e. which environments will benefit most. However, it is generally acknowledged that most of the water will be sent to the Lower Lakes in South Australia. This is because the legislation specifies that the new diversions limit must preserve the environmental values of key sites within the Murray Darling Basin in accordance with international conventions (i.e. these environments are first priority). The Lower Lakes are vast coastal lagoons at the termination of the Murray River that are listed as freshwater lakes under the international Ramsar convention. According to key reports the lakes are currently suffering from inadequate freshwater flows.[1]

According to the Proposed Basin Plan the Murray Darling Basin, presumably including the Lower Lakes, can be returned to ecological health if 2,750 GL is returned to the environment. But South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has signalled that unless this figure is increased to somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 GL South Australia will launch a High Court challenge because this is how much water is needed to preserve key environments just in South Australia.

Such a legal challenge from South Australia would likely be prefaced on the Proposed Basin Plan failing to met the objectives of the Water Act 2007; in particular that the Basin Plan must be prepared to give effect to the relevant international conventions.

Indeed, given current arrangements and despite relatively large volumes of water being channelled down to these lakes, including during the recent drought, they are an ecological disaster. However, the solution is not more fresh water.

Because the Lower Lakes are Ramsar listed, the Australian government is obliged to report on their ecological health at regular intervals. In the last report the Australian government acknowledged that ‘the site’ had been in ecological decline for at least 20 to 30 years prior to listing in 1985, with the rate of decline increasing since listing in part due to drought conditions. In particular the Australian government acknowledged that nearly half of 53 key functions were described as being ‘of alarm’ and a further third ‘of serious concern’.

A key issue for the ecological health of the Lower Lakes is the sea dykes (the barrages), that have dammed the estuary. To quote Bob Bourman from the University of Adelaide and coworkers [2]:

“Originally a vibrant, highly productive estuarine ecosystem of 75,000 ha, characterised by mixing of brackish and fresh water with highly variable flows, barrage construction has transformed the lakes into freshwater bodies with permanently raised water levels; freshwater discharge has been reduced by 75% and the tidal prism by 90%.”

Peter Gell from the University of Ballarat writing in the recently published The Sage Handbook of Environmental Change has commented that the natural state of the Lower Lakes was tidal, that the lakes have been incorrectly listed as freshwater in the International Ramsar Convention, and that until their natural estuarine character is recognised it will be difficult to reverse the long-term decline in their ecological health.[3]

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[1] See in particular ‘The Murray Futures Lower Lakes and Coorong Recovery: Securing the Future: a long-term plan for the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth’. According to the plan ecological values of the Coorong, Lower Lakes and Murray Mouth can only be maintained if there are adequate freshwater end-of-system flows and thus the key long term management action is to secure adequate freshwater. The planning document does not specify the specific amount of water required but suggests a mean total end of system flow of 5,550 GL would result in improved management.
[2] Marine Geology 170:141-168
[3] See Chapter 27. Human Impacts on Lacustrine Ecosystems, page 595

Murray Darling Carbon Tax Link: Josephine Kelly

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TWO of the most controversial issues that will face the Gillard government in the coming months — the allocation of water in the Murray-Darling Basin and the carbon tax — have something in common. They arise from legislation based on the commonwealth’s foreign affairs powers and international environmental conventions entered into under that power.

The Lower Lakes and the Coorong that lie landward of the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia were listed as a wetland of international significance under the Ramsar international convention on wetlands in 1985. Until Dr Jennifer Marohasy presented a paper to the Sydney Institute in February this year demonstrating the Lower Lakes formed part of the Murray River estuary before the construction of 7.6km of barrages in the 1930s, the barrages had been conveniently ignored in the debate about the allocation of water from the Murray-Darling Basin for the Lower Lakes.

There had also been no reference to the consequential destruction of a native mulloway fishery and the creation of a terrific environment for the notorious pest the European carp as the environment changed from estuarine to predominantly freshwater. The Australian government website about the Ramsar listing acknowledges the Lower Lakes, Alexandrina and Albert, are comprised of fresh to brackish-saline waters and were part of the estuary before the construction of the barrages.

“The ecological characteristics of the area have been altered significantly since extensive water extraction from the Murray-Darling Basin commenced in the 1800s and barrages were constructed to separate the lakes from the estuary in the 1930s,” it says.

The Murray Darling Basin Commission’s Living Murray discussion paper stated: “The barrages have also changed the ecology of the lower lakes, reducing the estuarine area of the Murray to 11 per cent of its natural size.”

Read more here
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/historic-link-shared-by-murray-darling-basin-and-carbon-tax/story-e6frg97x-1226325273552

Historic link shared by Murray-Darling Basin and carbon tax
BY: JOSEPHINE KELLY From: The Australian April 13, 2012

NASA Rebuked for Promoting AGW

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Many of my colleagues are saying there are lots of signs about that its already the beginning of the end of an era, in particular that it will soon no longer be popular to believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Breaking news today is the release of a letter signed by 50 former NASA employees asking the organisation desists from making embarrassing comments promoting AGW…

March 28, 2012

The Honorable Charles Bolden, Jr.
NASA Administrator
NASA Headquarters
Washington, D.C. 20546-0001

Dear Charlie,

We, the undersigned, respectfully request that NASA and the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) refrain from including unproven remarks in public releases and websites. We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data. With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.
[Read more…] about NASA Rebuked for Promoting AGW

How Many Polar Bears in Nunavut?

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FOLLOWING aerial surveys to estimate polar bear numbers, it was recently reported in The Globe and Mail [1] that polar bear population numbers are higher than originally thought:

“The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.”

Ever since that April 3, 2006, cover of Time Magazine many people have been very worried about polar bears.

The Globe and Mail report is apparently quoting Drikus Gissing, Nunavut’s director of wildlife management. But I can’t find this number of 1,013 in the actual report on the survey. [2] And what does it mean if there are 1,013 bears?

According to Anthony Watts [3]:

“What I found most interesting is the clear message that polar bears are thriving in an environment where sea ice (NSIDC includes Hudson Bay as sea ice) seasonally disappears entirely.”

But, again, I can’t find any evidence in the report that polar bears are thriving?

Across the entire region surveyed, polar bear numbers appear to have increased slightly from the 2,200 in the early 1990s to 2,580 in 2009/10.

It is generally assumed, by those who fear anthropogenic global warming, that polar bear numbers are declining globally. But many of us skeptical of this popular consensus have been quick to quote an assumed increase in polar bear numbers over recent decades from a low of about 5,000 in the 1960s to recent estimates of about 22,000.

But how reliable are these figures?

I’ve tracked down a copy of the ‘Proceedings of the First International Scientific Meeting on Polar Bears’ held in Fairbanks Alaska, 6-10 September 1965. It doesn’t actually state how many polar bears there were back then. The Canadian Wildlife Service Brief includes comment that:

“Scott and others (1959) concluded that about 2,000 to 2,500 polar bears existed near the Alaskan coast. By extrapolation they arrived at a total polar bear population of 17,000 to 19,000 animals. Uspensky (1961) estimated the world polar bear population at 5,000 to 8,000 animals. Harington (1964) has given an estimate of 6,000 to 7,000 polar bears for the Canadian Arctic and believes the world polar bear population is well over 10,000. Approximately 18 percent of the total Canadian Arctic population is cubs (0-2 years old).”

There is no reference list with this brief.

In summary we may live in The Information Age, but it’s sure hard to find meaningful information on population numbers for the iconic polar bear.  I’m not sure we have any real idea how polar bear population numbers are trending along the western shore of Hudson Bay, Nunavut, Canada or globally.

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Links

1. Healthy polar bear count confounds doomsayers. Paul Waldie. April 4, 2012 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/healthy-polar-bear-count-confounds-doomsayers/article2392523/

2. Foxe Basin Polar Bear Aerial Survey
http://env.gov.nu.ca/sites/default/files/foxe_basin_polar_bears_2012.pdf

3. Nunavut Government Study: “the [polar] bear population is not in crisis as people believed,”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/05/nunavut-government-study-the-polar-bear-population-is-not-in-crisis-as-people-believed/#more-60777