Hunters in Nunavut’s Baffin Bay [a region near Greenland] will be able to kill up to 105 polar bears this season, after the territory’s environment minister agreed to leave the quota unchanged. Read more here.
News
UN Chief Misled Sydney Audience
LAST month, a regular reader of this blog, Michael Duffy, witnessed something shocking:
“Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW [in Sydney, Australia]. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply.
As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]”.
Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there’s been a sharp cooling. These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.
So it’s disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri’s presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.”
Read more here.
Michael Duffy is a writer and author who used to play in rock bands. He now hosts ‘Counterpoint’ on Australia’s ABC Radio National every Monday afternoon which can be heard worldwide on the internet.
Michael Crichton Dies Aged Just 66
MICHAEL Crichton, author of more than a dozen best-selling science fiction adventures including ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘The Andromeda Strain’, and also a well known global warming sceptic, died of cancer in Los Angeles, aged 66, on Tuesday.
My favourite Crichton-book is ‘State of Fear’, a thriller about a character with a strong handshake known as Kenner. A Professor of Geoenvironmental Engineering at MIT, Kenner travels the world fighting eco-terrorists including at the Antarctic. Published in 2005 the novel is premised on the idea that global warming is a hoax.
My favourite Crichton quote is “The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance. We must daily decide whether the threats we face are real, whether the solutions we are offered will do any good, whether the problems we’re told exist are in fact real problems, or non-problems. Every one of us has a sense of the world, and we all know that this sense is in part given to us by what other people and society tell us; in part generated by our emotional state, which we project outward; and in part by our genuine perceptions of reality. In short, our struggle to determine what is true is the struggle to decide which of our perceptions are genuine, and which are false because they are handed down, or sold to us, or generated by our own hopes and fears.”
What a terrible loss.
Obama to Put Renewable Energy First
There is speculation that the new US President will focus on job creation through the development of ‘clean energy’ with an energy bill before a climate bill. Read more here.
Australian Water Market Report
Dear Waterfind subscriber,
Waterfind has today publically released our 2007-08 Annual Water Market Report. As a part of Waterfind’s dedication to providing an integrated water brokerage service, we strive to provide our clients with the most up to date and comprehensive information about the Australian water market.
The report provides information on the state of our National water resources, major policy announcements and trading activity for the 2007-08 irrigation season, and provides some analysis on how these factors impacted the water market throughout the season.
Key findings of the report include:
1. Major northern water storages above the NSW–QLD border line were not adversely affected by the current drought conditions being experienced in Australia, holding on average 90% of their capacity compared to 20% on average for major southern storages.
2. The largest volume of water stored in Australia was in Lake Argyle in Western Australia, with over 10 million ML of actual water storage, more than the other 9 largest water storages in Australia combined.
3. The price of water in Australia’s largest water markets in the Southern Murray Darling regions experienced extreme volatility during the 07-08 season, peaking at $1200 per ML in November 2007 only to drop to below $300 per ML in February 2008. This was influenced by water resource availability and major policy/allocation announcements during the season.
4. Early observations indicate that water market activity in the 2008-09 season has been lower than in 2007-08, with prices being recorded at up to 50% less than the same period last year. This has been attributed to grower concerns about last season’s record high prices and current uncertainty of water resource availability.
To view the full 2007-08 Annual Water Market Report, visit www.waterfind.com.au/water-report-signup.html.
Regards,
Waterfind Pty Ltd
NATIONAL WATER BROKERS
US Elections
Democrat Barack Obama is the new President of the United States. In his acceptance speech he promised to be a President for all Americans. He made only one oblique reference to climate change speaking of our earth in peril.
Oklahoma Senator and Republican Jim Inhofe, the only outspoken climate change sceptic in Washington, won a third term.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.