Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

News

Deal with Climate Reality as it Unfolds: Bob Carter

By

“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

World Leaders to Tackle Real Pollution from Black Carbon

By

“IT seems to have gone virtually unnoticed, but the world leaders at the weekend’s G8 summit look as if they have taken the biggest step in years in tackling climate change. And it’s quite apart from anything to do with carbon dioxide.

“The summit’s final communiqué, the Camp David Declaration, supports; comprehensive actions’ to reduce “short-lived climate pollutants”. These substances – including black carbon (soot), methane, ground-level ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons – are responsible for about half of global warming…

“More important still, the measures would save some 2.4 million lives a year, mainly by cutting the inhalation of soot, chiefly emitted by vehicle diesel engines and by the inefficient wood and dung burning cook stoves used by most of the world’s poorest people – and increase grain harvests, at present hit by pollution, by 52 million tons a year. 
While the international climate negotiations drag on, these pollutants can be reduced through existing national laws and regulations, using technologies that are already available…

Read more here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100159272/g8-leaders-open-up-vital-new-front-in-the-battle-to-control-global-warming/

G8: Leaders open up vital new front in the battle to control global warming by Geoffrey Lean @ The Telegraph, May 22, 2012

Media Watch Witch Hunt

By

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.
*********

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

The Climate Play

By

THE Heretic, a play about climate change by award winning British playwright Richard Bean, is currently on at the MTC Summer Theatre in Melbourne.

Outspoken warmist Clive Hamilton has reviewed the play with comment:

Richard Bean has swallowed, without chewing, all of the climate denier talking points favoured by the Tea Party. He must have spent a long time clicking from one denier website to the next, without ever bothering to look at any real science — you know, the science endorsed by every scientific academy in the world…
Diane Cassell is presented by playwright Richard Bean as the lone figure of integrity who has the courage to stand up to the climate science establishment, scientists who are cravenly manipulating their research to stay on the gravy train.

Today the play was reviewed by blogger and sceptic Andrew McIntyre at Quadrant Online:

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2012/05/on-with-the-play

Mr McIntyre concludes with comment:

But how will Australian audiences react? As mentioned above, in the performance I attended last night, there were some long spots and not as much laughter as I thought it deserved. There was one saving grace. A long-standing warmist friend I happened to encounter at interval said that it “made her think”.

That is an improvement on being offended.

Climate Commission Fudges Hot Day Data

By

IF you believe Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Tim Flannery, it is getting hotter and hotter in Western Sydney.[1]

But scientist Basil Beamish noticed that in the Climate Commission report they only show the trend of the number of hot days from 1970-2011. There is data for Sydney, measured at Observatory Hill, back to 1890.

Dr Beamish noticed that if you use all of the hot days data back to 1890 it is clear there is a different long-term pattern in play (see blue line in chart). In fact the year with the greatest number of hot days for Sydney is 1926 (12 days) and this has not been beaten since.

But instead of reporting on the long term trend for Sydney as measured at Observatory Hill from 1890, Professor Flannery has chosen to just focus on Western Sydney and in particular use only the data for Parramatta North (see red line in chart). This data set begins in 1970, which was a low point in the hot days cycle. By choosing Parramatta and beginning in 1970, Professor Flannery can make the upward trend in hot days look dramatic.

Parramatta is further inland than the Observatory Hill site and so the summers are warmer and the winter’s colder. But if there were data for Parramatta back to 1890 it would almost certainly show the same pattern as Observatory Hill. Indeed it was almost certainly hotter in Parramatta, in Western Sydney, in 1926 than anytime since.

Once again the observational data does not support the nonsense claims made by Australia’s Climate Commissioner, Professor Flannery.

******
Basil Beamish provided the chart and many of the words. Thank you.

1. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-14/heatwaves-bushfires-predicted-to-hammer-nsw/4009006

Who filmed the video clip of Australian cattle in the Indonesian abattoirs?

By

IN June 2011 the Australian government halted all live cattle exports to Indonesia after ABC Four Corners broadcast disturbing footage of Australian cattle being mistreated in Indonesian abattoirs. 

Australians were lead to believe that this footage, that shocked the nation, was typical of what occurs inside many abattoirs in Indonesia: that the footage was real.

We were told the footage wasn’t taken by Four Corners or the ABC.  Lyn White from Animals Australia is the face of the campaign against live cattle export and she starred in the documentary. She was at pains to tell us it was easy enough to get the footage. So we were lead to believe she had taken it herself.

Of course professionals could have staged something like this. The footage could have been totally contrived. We could have been looking at a work of fiction: a setup, a horror film.

Interestingly there is an organisation that specialises in film production for environmental, conservation and animal protection groups. In the ‘Tracks Investigations, Annual Review 2011-12’ the UK-based directors, Gem and Ian, claim responsibility for the footage shown on ABC TV. They boast that their work was “aided” by the screening on “Australia’s main TV station ABC in May”. They also claim it was their most successful project in their 18 year history:

“Some 40,000 media stories followed, sparking massive public opposition to the live export trade and awakening the consciences of a nation to the plight of animals.”

What I’m curious to know is: if it was so easy to get the footage as claimed by Lyn White, why did Animals Australia contract Tracks Investigations to do the work? And if it was indeed Track Investigations, and not Lyn White, who were responsible for the shocking video clips, why wasn’t this declared in the ABC Four Corners program?