Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Why to ‘Like’ a Legal Rhino Horn Trade

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I’M often confronted, via my Facebook News Feed, with grotesque images of butchered animals and an expectation that I participate in the emotionally satisfying activity of clicking ‘like’ and thus demonstrating that I’m against animal cruelty and for conservation. I’ve never once seen something in my Facebook News Feed that promotes the sustainable use of wildlife. Yet this is more likely to contribute to the long term survive of species like the Rhinoceros.

The last few years has seen a dramatic rise in the incidence of rhino poaching. Previously secure populations are now being targeted by aggressive poaching operations, backed by international crime syndicates. Part of the problem is that the legal trade has been banned following campaigning by the ignorant self-righteous.

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Thatcherism and the Climate Catastrophe

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With the passing of Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, much will be heard from the conservative side of politics about all the good that she did. But for the sack of truth, something she cared much about [1], let us also consider her role in helping to build the illusion of catastrophic climate change.

Margaret Thatcher was no friend of science, but she was a friend of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that was established in the School of Environmental Science at the University of East Anglia in Norwich in 1972.

This is the same institution that Climategate exposed as being up to its neck in scientific fraud.

The establishment of the CRU only just preceded Thatcherism. With Thatcher’s market economics applied to public science none of the scientists at the CRU were ever guaranteed a salary. They had to generate their own income through grants and contracts.

Much of their money did end up coming from government but it had to be earned, they had to show their value to the politician and this is now par for the course [1].

It was following the miner’s strike in the UK and Prime Minister Thatcher’s increasing impatience with Arthur Scargill, then president of the National Union of Mineworkers, that the first tentative links were drawn between coal mining and the possibility of a climate catastrophe.

Various luminaries from that time have told me that Prime Minister Thatcher was keen to reduce Britain’s dependence on coal. She drew the connection between rising carbon dioxide emissions and coal mining before it was fashionable because she thought there was perhaps some scientific justification, and because she was keen to find justification for alternative energy sources, particularly nuclear.

Indeed her government became a strong supporter of climate research in the mid-1980s. Mrs Thatcher visited the CRU and assembled her entire cabinet to hear a seminar on climate change at which Tom Wigley, then director of CRU, was the star performer.

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[1] “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” – on her election as prime minister in 1979

[2] Bob Carter explains in ‘Science is Not Concensus’ how during the 1980s there came a restructuring of the way in which government science operated. Public-good programme funding for the activities of government science agencies shrank, to be replaced by funding for individual projects with limited lifetimes.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/IPA-RMC-03Reviewr.pdf

The Apple on the Banana Again: Marcott Admits Temperature Spike Not Robust

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IT is terribly unfashionable to admit it, but I’ve just never been able to believe that the late 20th Century was particularly warm. This admission despite ‘the hockey stick’ graph that featured so prominently in the United Nation’s third IPCC assessment report, and despite that amazing looking chart in Al Gore’s movie that also showed a recent spike in global temperatures relative to the last many thousand years.

My key problem with the ‘the hockey stick’ has always been that the upward spike representing runaway global warming in the 20th Century was never of the same stuff as the rest of the chart. That is the spike is largely based on the instrumental temperature record i.e. the thermometer record, while the downward trending line that it was grafted on to, is based on proxies, in particular estimates of temperature derived from studies of tree rings.

It has always, for me, been a case of Michael Mann comparing apples and oranges, or to put it another way sticking an apple on the end of a banana.

The Michael Mann and Shaun Marcott Hockey Sticks

Worst the grafting was necessary because the proxy record, i.e. the tree ring record, shows that global temperatures have declined since about 1960.

Of course we know that global temperature haven’t declined since 1960, or thereabout, so there must be something wrong with the proxy record. This is known as “the divergence problem” and it is a problem, because if tree rings are not a good indicator of global temperature after 1960, how can they be a good indicator of global temperature prior to 1960?

Indeed there doesn’t appear to be a reliable method for reconstructing the last 100 or so years based on the standard techniques used to reconstruct the last 2,000, 4,000 and even 11,000 years of global temperature.

So when someone claims the past 10 years have been hotter than the past 11,300 years, as the Australian Broadcasting Commission did recently [1], there is good reason to cringe.

Of course the ABC didn’t make it up. They were reporting on the work of climate scientists recently published in a reputable journal. In particular a paper by Shaun Marcott and colleagues published in Science [2].

Sceptic, mathematician and blogger, Steve McIntyre, broke the original hockey stick into bits to do a thorough analysis, showing that the entire shaft, not just post 1960, was a fancy construct to create the impression of runaway global warming [3], and he’s done the same with this new Marcott fabrication [2].

While some who read this blog may cringe at my use of the word fabrication, it is more than justified because as Dr Marcott now admits in his own words[4]:

“[T]he 20th century portion of our paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the basis of any of our conclusions. Our primary conclusions are based on a comparison of the longer term paleotemperature changes from our reconstruction with the well-documented temperature changes that have occurred over the last century, as documented by the instrumental record.”

In summary, Dr Marcott created the perception of a spike in temperatures the same way Michael Mann did in that first hockey stick paper that featured so prominently in the third IPCC report, by comparing apples and oranges… or perhaps best described as grafting an apple onto the end of a banana.

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1. Earth on track to be hottest in human history: study . March 8, 2013
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-08/climate-study/4561164

2. A reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years. Marcott et al.. Science, Volume 339, No. 6124, pages 1198-1201.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198.abstract

Abstract: Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling through the middle to late Holocene (

3. see http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/mcintyre-ee-2005.pdf and more http://climateaudit.org/multiproxy-pdfs/ and the latest http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/31/the-marcott-filibuster/

4. Response by Marcott et al. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/03/response-by-marcott-et-al/

Global Temperature Update to February 2013

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“On average, global air temperatures were somewhat below the 1998-2006 average, although
with large regional differences…

“The global oceanic heat content has been rather stable since 2003/2004…

The above quotes and charts are from a monthly newsletter with global meteorological information updated to February 2013:

http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_February_2013.pdf

Compiled by

Ole Humlum, Professor of Physical Geography, Physical Geography, Institute of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway

Absurd Murray Darling Basin Plan Now Irreversible

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THE key plank of the national water reform agenda in Australia, the Murray Darling Basin Plan, was presented to the Australian Parliament on 22nd November 2012, and was passed with the support of the Coalition on 29th November. There was a dis-allowance motion, but that expired earlier this week. The same day, Tuesday 19th March 2013, Federal Water Minister Tony Burke was reported crowing that the implementation of the plan is now “irreversible” and that the Basin will now benefit from “an extra 3,200 billion litres of water a year”.[1]

What nonsense. There is no extra water. There will simply be a redistribution of water to the Lower Lakes. That is what the plan is in essence all about, more water for South Australia and in particular a massive artificial lake system that has been in ecological decline since the building of 7.6 kilometres of sea dyke in the 1930s. [2]

The Goolwa Sea Dyke

Public statements from The Minister have made much of the need for the “extra” water to keep the mouth of the Murray open [1]. But this is also a lie.

Along the NSW and Queensland coastlines local governments recognise that river mouths must be constantly dredged to maintain safe passage for boats and to avoid flooding of communities in the lower reaches. This was particularly the case recently following ex-cyclone Oswald with the associated storm surges throwing up sand that blocked river mouths.

But when it comes to the Murray’s mouth, rather than the local Lake Alexandrina council paying for some dredging, the federal Water Minister promises thousands of gigalitres of freshwater from upstream to scour the mouth!

Mr Burke repeatedly justifies the new Basin Plan with the explanation that by taking 2,750 gigalitres of water from food producers and sending it down to the Lower Lakes the Murray’s Mouth will be kept open 90 percent of the time [3].

We surely are a rich country if we can afford to spend between $3.4 and $5.5 billion in freshwater, water that could otherwise be used to grow food, to keep this narrow and shallow channel open to the Southern Ocean.

But the story as repeated by Mr Burke is actually even more bizarre because the sea dykes that the Minister never mentions, block the flow of freshwater to the mouth.

The sea dykes have also limited the potential for scouring of the Murray’s Mouth by the tides of the Southern Ocean.

Indeed back in 1856, South Australia’s Surveyor General George Woodroffe Goyder recognised the potential of the Mundoo channel to scour the Murray’s Mouth. He suggested the natural process of deepening and widening the Murray’s sea mouth be enhanced by cutting through the rock bar across this channel thus further concentrating tidal water inflow and river water outflow. The rock bar is of calcareous sandstone and a relic of sea level rise about 125,000 years ago. Instead over the last 156 years government policy has worked to stop the tide and block the channel.

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[1] Watershed moment for our mighty River Murray as Murray Darling Basin plan becomes fixed. March 19, 2013. By David Jean and Tim Dornin http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/watershed-moment-for-our-mighty-river-murray-as-murray-darling-basin-plan-becomes-fixed/story-e6frea83-1226600145482

[2] There are five sea dykes, known locally as barrages, and their impact on the lower Murray is explained at the Lakes Need Water website http://www.lakesneedwater.org/the-case-for-an-estuary

[3] Draft Murray Plan: Tony Burke, Radio National, Breakfast, April 12, 2012 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/draft-murray-plan-tony-burke/3945288

For a more detailed overview of the situation read ‘Save the Murray: Restore the Estuary’ available for download here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Murray-Estuary_Sydney-Institute-Paper-2.pdf

FOIA, Government-funded Climate science and Hole-digging

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FOIA is a recognised shorthand for Freedom of Information Act. Legislation by this name has existed in the USA since 1966, Australia since 1982 and the UK legislation was introduced in 2000. It was climate scientists at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, conspiring to evade the UK FOIA that probably inspired Climategate, with Mr FOIA, as the “hacker” calls himself, releasing over 220,000 documents and emails beginning in November 2009. In a recent email he explained: “The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.”

By providing public access to emails and documents from leading climate scientists, Mr FOIA exposed how tricks, adjustments, and corrections, were routinely applied to climate data to support the propaganda of the largely government-funded global warming industry.

I recently scrutinized documents from a successful FOI request by John Abbot to the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, DCCEE. As far as I can make out from the documents the entire Australian Climate Change Science Program can be likened to what Mr FOIA describes as “a massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor” for which the climate scientists are generously remunerated by the Australian taxpayer. Let me explain in more detail:

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