Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Charlotte Ramotswe

Definitions of Science: Double Standards from Australian Government

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The Australian legal system ruled on the definition of science some years ago, however, the Australian government is now pursuing the Japanese and their whaling program on the basis of an all together different definition, explains Charlotte Ramotswe.  

Dear Jennifer,

Australia has taken Japan to the International Court of Justice disputing a basis of its whaling program – that it is scientific. You wrote about this recently in the blog post “Japan Attacks Aussie Moralising on Whaling”.Minke whale

In the international court, it seems that the Australian Government has argued that what the Japanese are doing does not constitute “science”. What is this thing called science? The subject has preoccupied philosophers and historian and been the subject of many books including a classic by A.F. Chalmers.

Let’s face it: at least the scientific whaling program does generate a lot of data and publications.

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The Long and Costly War on Carbon: Viv Forbes

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‘The Australian government claims that next month’s tax on carbon dioxide cannot be blamed for today’s soaring costs of living.

This tax, however, is just their latest assault in the decades-long war on carbon that is already inflating the cost of everything.

For at least a decade, power companies have been obliged to source 10-15% of their power at inflated prices from costly and unreliable sources like wind and solar. And for every wind or solar plant built, a duplicate backup gas facility is needed, increasing the demand and price for backup gas, hitting other gas consumers. Moreover, the threat of more carbon taxes has deterred the construction of efficient new coal-burning power plants. Rising electricity costs feed into the cost of everything from public transport to building materials.

The climatists are also responsible for numerous policies pushing up the price of food. These include the ethanol/biofuel madness, the restrictions on the fishing industry, the Kyoto scrub clearing bans, the spread of carbon-credit forests over farming and grazing land, the never ending war on irrigators, and the virtual ban on building new water-supply dams.

Then we have all the hidden costs of the climate industry. Thousands of our smartest graduates are lured into well-paid dead-end desk jobs in the overheads industry devoted to climate red tape, while real entrepreneurs are unable to find workers to develop our continent of under-utilised resources. There is an overpaid bureaucracy devoted to climate “research”, alternate energy, international junkets, Kyoto give-aways, and administration, auditing, enforcement, accounting, law and propaganda for their empire of climate taxes and subsidies.

Finally we have income tax implications from all the money being flung around to bribe people to accept their carbon tax? Every Australian will get these bills somewhere, sometime. And who pays for the hundreds of millions poured down subsidy rat-holes like carbon capture, solar panels, pink bats and the IPCC?

Australia’s crippling carbon tax is but the latest symptom of the costly Climate Madness infecting the well-fed elite of the western world.

********
Text from Viv Forbes, photograph from Jennifer Marohasy taken near Lithgow, NSW

Away with Rio+20: The Voice of the Peasant

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‘GOVERNMENTS from all over the world will meet in Río de Janeiro, Brasil from June 20-22 2012, to supposedly commemorate 20 years since the “Earth Summit”, the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development, that established for the first time a global agenda for “sustainable development”. During this summit, in 1992, three international conventions were adopted: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, and the Convention to Fight Desertification. Each of these promised to initiate a series of actions destined to protect the planet and all of the life on it, and to allow all human beings to enjoy a life of dignity.

At that time , many social organizations congratulated and supported these new conventions with hope. Twenty years later, we see the real causes of environmental, economic, and social deterioration continuing without being attacked. Worse still, we are profoundly alarmed that the next meeting in June will serve to deepen neoliberal policies and processes of capitalist expansion, concentration, and exclusion that today have enveloped us in an environmental, economic, and social crisis of grave proportions. Beneath the deceptive and badly intentioned term “green economy”, new forms of environmental contamination and destruction are now rolled out along with new waves of privatization, monopolization, and expulsion from our lands and territories.

La Via Campesina will mobilize for this event, representing the voice of the peasant in the global debate and defending a different path to development that is based on the well being of all, that guarantees food for all, that protects and guarantees that the commons and natural resources are put to use to provide a good life for everyone and not to meet the needs for accumulation of a few.
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Adelaide Advertiser: Yet to Correct Errors of Fact

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Dear Jen

The Adelaide Advertiser has not published your letter to the editor in response to the very crazy claims it published on Saturday from Minister Paul Caica. It published errors of fact and has not corrected them.[1]

The news today in Adelaide is the new Goyder Institute Report which can be downloaded here:

http://www.goyderinstitute.org/uploads/Expert%20Panel%20Final_020412.pdf

This report has been written by some of our most popular scientists including: Aldridge KT, Jolly ID, Nicol J, Oliver RL, Paton DC and Walker KF. This is the same Dr Walker who told the ABC TV Media Watch team that Lake Alexandrina has always been a freshwater lake.

I know this report is going to be demanding more freshwater for South Australia and more freshwater for the Lower Lakes. It will be very popular in Adelaide.

We lost the Grand Prix to Victoria. Now we want their water.

No one wants to hear your sensible practical solution of restoring the Murray River’s estuary. In South Australia we just want to complain and we want more water and the Adelaide Advertiser wants to sell more newspapers.

Charlotte Ramotswe.
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New Canal Development at Bottom of Murray Darling: With Freshwater

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The South Australian government dammed the Murray River’s estuary making lakes Alexandrina and Albert totally dependent on the Murray River.   That was in the 1930s.

More recently the South Australian government has been encouraging the subdivision of land around the shores of Lake Alexandrina.   That’s irresponsible.

Now its approved the subdivision of land on the edge of Lake Albert.  Apparently it’s to be a canal development with the canals full of freshwater.

I guess that’s just another vested interest to join all the others around Lake Alexandrina and Albert lobbying for more of the waters from the upper Murray and Darling.

Yep.  On my drive home today on Greenhill Rd., I saw this huge sign advertising lifestyle lots for sale called “Meningie Waters”.  Here’s a description from the local newspaper…

“Coorong District Mayor Roger Strother said plans for the development had been delayed for the past six years because of drought with some adjustments made to the design to cater for a similar situation.

“Originally the canal system was suppose to be connected to the lake but now it won’t be,” he said.  Mayor Strother said developers had taken into consideration the environmental needs of the lakeside
township and had met all protocols.

“This is being developed on a low salty flat area so won’t affect any wildlife in the lake,” he said.

“They plan on using a lot of groundwater to fill the canals and will have to pump some water in.”

From Charlotte R.

http://www.murrayvalleystandard.com.au/news/local/news/general/meningie-set-for-population-explosion/2446288.aspx

http://www.meningiewaters.com.au

http://www.facebook.com/MeningieWaters

Irresponsible: SA Politicians Unite Against Upstream Communities and Environments

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ADELAIDE in South Australia is a one paper town. Everyone reads the Adelaide Advertiser. Today, as usual, it’s full of parochial chatter including a one page advertisement devoted to a statement from all 23 South Australian Federal MPs (Green, Labor and Coalition) blaming the problems of the Lower Lakes and Coorong on upstream irrigators and their “chronic overuse of water”.

Of course the Adelaide Advertiser has never let the facts get in the way of a good story and so, without explaining that there is a local solution to the problem, their journalist Catherine Hockley supports the advertisement organised by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) with a nonsense story headlined ‘Politicians unite to rescue the Murray’

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/politicians-unite-to-rescue-the-murray/story-e6frea6u-1226080269703

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