Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Whale on Menu for Activists?

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THE Australian government is under pressure to secure the release of three Australian activists detained after boarding a Japanese whaling security ship the Shonan Maru No 2. But it is more likely the men will be taken to Japan to face legal action.

Prisoners don’t usually get a lot of choice in what they have for dinner. Minke whale is probably on the menu.

Some people worry about whether a particular food tastes good, others whether it is healthy. Activists are often concerned with the ethics of food production and consumption.

There are two criteria that I consider valid when it comes to ethical food choice: 1. Is the harvest of the animal sustainable, and 2. Is the killing humane.

Whaling by the Japanese is undertaken in accordance with a strict quota system to ensure populations are not depleted and every effort is made to get a quick and painless kill including through the use of a grenade tipped harpoon.

So I had no problems with the ethics of eating free-range, organic whale when I visited Tokyo… and the right cut, properly cooked, tasted like an exceptionally tender eye fillet.

I wonder how whale meat is served to prisoners on the Shonan Maru No. 2?

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Whale on the menu in Tokyo: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/2008/09/eating-whale-in-tokyo/

David’s blog: http://david-in-tokyo.blogspot.com/

Southern Ocean Tides Could Save Lower Lakes

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THERE are a lot of comments in the thread following my blog post ‘Healthy Country Means Less Water for South Australia’. In that thread Peter R. Smith OAM has claimed that if it weren’t for the barrages Lake Alexandrina, a terminal coastal lake at the bottom of the Murray Darling catchment, would become hyper-saline. In the same thread Sean Murphy has replied, but Lake Alexandrina was once tidal, so how could it become hyper-saline?

It could become hyper-saline if the Murray’s sea mouth closed over completely, something that engineers warned in 1903 could happen if the barrages were built stopping inflows from the Southern Ocean – stopping the tide.

Soon after Europeans started farming on the shores of Lake Alexandrina they began devising plans to preventing it from becoming salty. The first such plan was presented to the South Australian parliament in 1890. Prepared by the Engineer in Chief Alex B. Moncrieff it proposed the building of a lock on the Goolwa channel and barrages across the other channels to prevent seawater from entering the lake.

Federation, and the 1895-1902 drought, focused the attention of the communities along the River Murray on the need for cooperation if they were to develop the waters of the River Murray. In 1902 the Corowa Water Conservation Conference led to an Interstate Royal Commission with the purposes of “To inquire and report on the conservation and distribution of the Murray and its tributaries for the purpose of irrigation, navigation and water supply.” It was another twelve years before the River Murray Waters Agreement 1915 was ratified which created water sharing principles for New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia including an annual water entitlement for South Australia to be met in equal share by Victoria and New South Wales, and the development of a program of major works including the construction of dams and weirs which the three states and the Commonwealth where to jointly fund.

In the meantime a more substantial plan was developed to prevent Lake Alexandrina becoming salty, as it had during the federation drought. The plan was presented to government in 1903 as a joint report by T.W. Keele the Principal Engineer of Harbors and Rivers of New South Wales, W. Davidson the Inspector-General of Public Works of Victoria and Mr Moncrieff who was still the Engineer in Chief in South Australia.

The report, dubbed, the “Report by Experts” begins with reference to why the best option for securing “the impounding of the fresh water” should involve the blocking of several channels from the lake that converge on the Murray’s sea mouth rather than placing a barrage across the actual sea mouth of the river. The report also explains why the barrages should be placed such that they exclude the Coorong from the Alexandrina lake system because the Coorong represented “an evaporating area of 90 square miles additional to that of the lakes”.

The report details and quantifies the tidal influence through each of the channels relative to a tidal gauge at Milang. The opening between Mundoo and Hindmarsh Islands is referred to as the most direct outlet from the lakes to the sea and with a tide that rises considerably higher than the tide through the Goolwa channel. Different barrage structure were proposed for each of the channels with a permanent earthen wall pithed with stone across Boundary Creek, while for the Goolwa it was proposed a sheet-pile structure be built with a lock large enough for river steamers.

The Report by Experts includes two important warning: that after construction of the barrages the Murray’s mouth would be expected to close over completely; and before erecting the barrages a more regular supply of fresh water from the river would first need to be secured or the lakes would dry-up during periods of drought. These important caveats have been subsequently ignored by state and commonwealth governments and are never referenced in the very many reports published with increasing regularity by the Murray Darling Basin Authority.

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Report by experts. The Murray Barrages. August 20, 1903. The Advertiser p. 8 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4987833

Annual Climate Statement: Australian Bureau of Meteorology

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“2011 was another wet year for Australia, with data collected by the Bureau of Meteorology showing that the Australian mean rainfall total for 2011 was 699 mm (234 mm above the long-term average of 465 mm), placing the year at the third-wettest since comparable records began in 1900. Back-to-back La Niña events led to a two-year rainfall total of 1402 mm which is the second-highest total on record behind 1407 mm in 1973-74.

“The 2010-11 La Niña, one of the strongest on record, continued to dominate climate patterns during the first part of 2011 before decaying in autumn. A second La Niña developed in spring 2011 and, although weaker than the first event, was associated with rainfall significantly above average across much of the country. It is likely that a record warm eastern Indian Ocean also contributed to above average rainfall in 2011.

“From January to March, rainfall was generally very much above average in most areas, and April was rather wet over the north of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Falls greater than 300 mm across much of the tropical north led to the wettest March on record for Australia as a whole, with average rainfall of 149 mm topping the previous 1989 record by 23 mm. The period from May to September (when La Niña had receded) saw rainfall below average for most of the country. October was very wet in the western half of the country, with Western Australia experiencing its third-wettest October on record. November rainfall was above average for most of the country, while December was wet for the southwest and parts of Queensland. For the year as a whole, the majority of Australia received above average rainfall; the only regions with below-average rain were patches of southwest Western Australia, western Tasmania and pockets of New South Wales and southeast Queensland.

“The Australian area-averaged mean temperature in 2011 was 0.14 °C below the 1961 to 1990 average of 21.81 °C. This was the first time since 2001 (also a wet, La Niña year) that Australia’s mean annual temperature was below the 1961-90 average. Even though, when taken over the whole country, the mean temperature was below average, the southern half of Australia was warmer than usual.

“In 2011, maximum temperatures averaged 0.25 °C below normal across the country, while minima averaged 0.03 °C below normal. Contrasting this, the global mean temperature in 2011 was the highest for any year which began with a La Niña. Australia was one of the few places on the globe to experience cooler than average temperatures in 2011.
Despite the slightly cooler conditions in Australia in 2011, the country’s 10-year average continues to demonstrate the rising trend in temperatures, with 2002-2011 likely to rank in the top two warmest 10-year periods on record for Australia, at 0.52 °C above the long-term average…

Read more at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website:
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20120104.shtml

New Year’s Resolutions for Climate Scientists: Steven Goddard

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Steven Goddard has published the following list of New Year’s Resolutions for Climate Scientists:
  1. I will admit that warming has been much slower than we expected
  2. I will admit that recent sea level rise is nothing unusual or threatening
  3. I will admit that our forecasts of declining snow cover were wrong
  4. I will admit that Arctic temperatures are cyclical, and that we have no idea what will happen to Arctic ice over the next 50 years
  5. I will admit that our forecasts of Antarctic warming have been a total failure.
  6. I will admit that Polar Bear populations are not threatened
  7. I will admit that climate models have demonstrated no skill, and are nothing more than research projects
  8.  I will admit there was a Medieval Warm Period
  9. I will admit that that there was a Little Ice Age
  10. I will stop pretending that we don’t have climate records prior to 1970
  11. I will admit that the surface temperature record has been manipulated and is contaminated by UHI
  12. I will stop making up data where none exists
  13. I will honestly face skeptics in open debate.
  14. I will quit trying to stop skeptics from being published
  15. I will admit that glaciers have been disappearing for hundreds or thousands of years
  16. I will stop telling people that the climate is getting more extreme, without producing any evidence
  17. I will admit that hurricanes are on the decline
  18. I will admit that severe tornadoes are on the decline
  19. I will admit that droughts were much worse in the past
  20. I will admit that efforts to shut down power plants have potentially very serious consequences for the future
  21. I will pay for my own tickets to tropical climate boondoggles  like Cancun, rather than improperly using taxpayer money for political activism
  22. I will admit that there is no missing heat
  23. I will admit that temperatures have been cooling for at least the last decade
  24. I will publish the raw data and not lose it.
  25. etc. etc. etc.

Holiday Reading: Emma Marris

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Hi Jennifer,

Longtime reader etc etc and I must thankyou for your always interesting blog.

I could find no mention of Emma Marris and her new book ‘The Rambunctious Garden’ on there so I wondered if you were aware of it. I thought it would generate some debate as it has with my group of friends, so I thought I’d pass it on.

The first link is to an article she co-wrote and the second a review of sorts. She is a superb writer and I commend it to you.

Best wishes for the season and the new year!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/opinion/the-age-of-man-is-not-a-disaster.html

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/living-with-natures-original-sin-20111209-1oo3n.html

Regards Ross

Station Buyout a Waste of Money: David Boyd

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DAVID Wroe from The Sydney Morning Herald has written a well balanced article on the waste of money in buying Toorale (pronounced Too-rally) Station at Bourke: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/station-buyout-a-waste-of-money-20111223-1p8ln.html.

I attempted to leverage this with a letter to the Editor which failed to make the final cut:

Congratulations to the SMH (Station buyout a waste of money- 23rd December) for “outing” the Commonwealth and former NSW State Government for the total waste of $23.75m in purchasing Toorale Station. Not only was this a waste of taxpayer’s funds for negligible environmental benefit, it also took out of production the hard hit Bourke community’s most productive enterprise. How downstream grazier Justin Mc Clure can argue that a 0.01% increase in flow can generate downstream environmental benefits is a real mystery.

The episode has wider ramifications in terms of the Draft Murray Darling Basin Plan. The Commonwealth Water Act 2007 and the approach of the Murray Darling Basin Authority is deeply flawed and the Toorale outcomes represent a good example of the likely consequences-negligible environmental benefit, but significant negative economic consequences. When flows are low, license conditions prevent extractions and diversions, when flows are significant the impacts of extractions and diversions are minimal. Dorothea Mackellar was absolutely right in describing inland Australia as a land of “droughts and flooding rains”, she could have added and “not much in the middle.

In using absolute numbers as the MDBA has done, to prescribe acceptable extractions/diversions limits without gearing these to actual flows (availability) is really nonsense. To argue that these numbers are “averages” doesn’t help, given the enormous spreads around the averages. Our current water bureaucrats could do worse than studying how the existing control system operates. It works rather well.

J.D.O.(David) Boyd
St Ives NSW 2075
(Former Chairman and CEO of Clyde Agriculture, the previous owner of Toorale Station)

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And sign the petition here please http://listentous.org.au/