Jennifer Marohasy

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One Big Quoll

By

Jen,

Have a look at the size of this male quoll we saw in Boonoo Boonoo National Park near Stanthorpe a few days ago.

It is currently mating season for quolls and he was quite aggressive as well as curious.


They are rare in southeastern Queensland these days. As you would know, these Dasyurus maculatus go by the common names of Spotted Tail Quoll, Tiger Quoll and Tiger Cat. Their habitat runs from southeastern Queensland to Tasmania with another sub-species up north.

An old bloke who lived in the New England ranges as a kid once told me that these male quolls would bale him up on his way to and from school and he was terrified of them.

When I saw this quoll, I initially thought it was a feral cat running behind a tree. But the feral morphed into this magnificent native cat when he appeared the other side.

A truly magic moment: Fair took my breath away.

Jim

Artificial Salinity Target for Artificial Lower Lake

By

IN the newly released Murray Darling Basin Plan there is a proposed target salinity for Lake Alexandrina. The plan suggests this target salinity value to be measured at Milang:

“The inclusion of a salinity target for Lake Alexandrina will provide for the management of salinity in both Lake Alexandrina and Lake Albert. The Milang location is proposed as there is a historical record for this site, and it is not influenced by the day-to-day operations of the barrages which could result in short-term salinity fluctuations at sites closer to the mouth.

The proposed Basin Plan has been amended to introduce a new target value for salinity for managing water flows in the Lower Lakes (measured at Milang) of 600mg/L for 95% of the time.”

Milang is located on the western edge of Lake Alexandrina, as you can see on the map.

The salinity target value of 600mg/L can be compared to the salinity of seawater that is about 35,000 mg/L.

In other words, the target value is about 1.7% of the salinity of the ocean.

[Read more…] about Artificial Salinity Target for Artificial Lower Lake

More Nonsense in National News about Murray Darling

By

THIS morning our national newspaper, The Australian, has a very misleading story about a farmer Colin Grundy complaining that Murray river water is too salty for irrigation. [1]

In fact Mr Grundy does not live anywhere near the Murray river. He lives right beside the sea.

Mr Grundy lives on Mundoo Island that faces the Murray’s sea mouth that is a narrow outlet to the pounding surf of Encounter Bay and the Southern Ocean.

Reporting on water quality in the Murray River with reference to Mundoo Island is like reporting on water quality in the Parramatta River from Circular Quay in Sydney Harbour, or water quality in the Brisbane River from Fisherman’s Island at the mouth of the Brisbane River.

There is a sea dyke across the Mundoo channel to hold back the tides of the Southern Ocean but last autumn the Southern Ocean did splash over the top of it.

Upstream, in the Murray River proper, salinity levels are at historic lows. [2]

[Read more…] about More Nonsense in National News about Murray Darling

Deal with Climate Reality as it Unfolds: Bob Carter

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“OVER the last 18 months, policymakers in Canada, the U.S. and Japan have quietly abandoned the illusory goal of preventing global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, an alternative view has emerged regarding the most cost-effective way in which to deal with the undoubted hazards of climate change.

“This view points toward setting a policy of preparation for, and adaptation to, climatic events and change as they occur, which is distinctly different from the former emphasis given by most Western parliaments to the mitigation of global warming by curbing carbon dioxide emissions.”

So begins an article by Bob Carter recently published in Canada’s Financial Post. The article is a summary of a public lecture Professor Carter will be giving in Ottowa, Toronto and Calgary over the next week. It continues…

“Ultimately, the rationale for choosing between policies of mitigation or adaptation must lie with an analysis of the underlying scientific evidence about climate change. Yet the vigorous public debate over possibly dangerous human-caused global warming is bedevilled by two things.

[Read more…] about Deal with Climate Reality as it Unfolds: Bob Carter

Media Watch Witch Hunt

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IN the old days they would have just bound her, thrown her into the lake, and waited to see if she floated. That was how one viewer responded to the vicious dunking of Jennifer Marohasy by Jonathan Holmes on their Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Media Watch program on March 19, 2012.

Dr Marohasy just wants to restore the Murray River’s estuary, but the pushback from the ABC ’s Media Watch program was personal and aggressive.

My name is Koala and I’ve been studying a complaint about that Media Watch program made by Bob Fernley Jones, a retired professional engineer, to the ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs (A&CA). As Mr Fernley Jones explains: Media Watch ignored all the evidence in condemning Dr Marohasy and broke its own rules and standards. Mr Fernley Jones made it easy for the A&CA by listing all the standards that have been breached.

But according to the A&CA, Jonathan Holmes was just expressing their opinions, and under the Editorial Policies, there is no requirement for accuracy in their opinion. So the A&CA has rejected this complaint from Mr Fernley Jones. What a nonsense ruling!

Even a Koala can see that Mr Holmes was very naughty and nasty.
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Media Watch of 19 March 2012 (What’s in a Name),

By Bob Fernley Jones

SUMMARY:

These complaints concern extreme bias and errors of fact as communicated by Jonathan Holmes in the ABC Media Watch program of March 19, 2012 entitled ‘What’s in a Name’. The show very obviously broke key ABC Editorial Policies in these ways:

A. Jonathan Holmes presented his personal interest views in a gross subjective manner

B. Critical information was withheld from the viewers

C. There was no balance and group-think was apparent in the Media Watch team

D. The scientific consensus on the Lower Murray estuary was seriously misrepresented

E. The program overtly attacked the reputation of two Australian scientists, Jennifer Marohasy and Peter Ridd, and also the Australian Environment Foundation

F. ABC Media Watch should issue an apology to Dr Marohasy, Professor Ridd, the Australian Environment Foundation and the public

[Read more…] about Media Watch Witch Hunt

Basil Beamish for Climate Commissioner

By

I’ve been reading about the Commission: the Climate Commission established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change.

Two of the commissioners, Professors Will Steffan and Lesley Hughes, have just published a report stating that New South Wales is becoming hotter and heatwaves will become more severe.

My name is Mr Koala Bear and I’ve been studying their report ‘The Critical Decade: New South Wales Climate Impacts and Opportunities’. And that is not what the data says, not all the data.

Scientist Basil Beamish begins at the beginning. He has plotted climate data for two sites in NSW for which there is data back to 1890: Bathurst (pink line in chart) and Observatory Hill (blue line in chart). One of these is an inland site and one is coastal. One is to the east of Parramatta, the site favoured by the Cimate Commissioners and one is to the west.

This data suggests that that it was hotter back in the period 1910 to 1930. It was indeed very hot at Bathurst in 1919 with more than 31 days above 35.0°C (pink line in chart).   At Observatory Hill, the hottest year measured by days above 35.0°C was 1926 (blue line in chart).

If Professor Steffan and Hughes are going to make statements about temperatures trends they have an obligation to consider all the instrumental data that is available. I mean they have an obligation to begin at the beginning, not 1960 as they do in their very misleading report.

I am not keen on the idea of counting day above 35.0 °C by calendar year as a measure of global warming. A problem is that the calendar year separates the hot months in each summer; it arbitrarily splits this one discrete period into two repeatedly. But never mind, if the Commissioners want to do this they can. But they must start at the beginning.

Professors Hughes and Steffan have no business being Climate Commissioners.

I want to start a petition: Basil Beamish for Climate Commissioner!

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