Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Greenpeace NZ Loses Charity Status

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Charity status gives organisations tax benefits.

Greenpeace New Zealand lost its charity status last year, and on Monday lost an appeal on the basis of its political activities and the illegal activities of some of its members.

According to 3News New Zealand:

“Non-violent, but potentially illegal activities (such as trespass), designed to put (in the eyes of Greenpeace) objectionable activities into the public spotlight were an independent object disqualifying it from registration as a charitable entity,” the judge said.

Greenpeace’s lawyer Davey Salmon argued all of the organisation’s primary purposes were charitable and the engagement of charities in political advocacy was more acceptable now in 21st century New Zealand.

Justice Heath dismissed the appeal and made no order as to costs.

http://www.3news.co.nz/Greenpeace-loses-charity-status-case/tabid/423/articleID/210506/Default.aspx

A New Website with Blog: Myth and the Murray

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A new website, Myth and the Murray, went live yesterday. Myth and the Murray is designed to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy on Murray River issues and I’m hopeful that it will be supported with a newspaper advertising campaign – more on this soon.

In small societies, when one or a few individuals start to say something that others don’t what to become general knowledge a known tactic employed by many on the left in Australia is to simply ignore the new information. Shelley Gare explains how it works in this podcast…

http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2010/08/death-by-silence

Gare makes reference to an investigation of the Hindmarsh Island Affair. Diane Bell, an American anthropologist from the University of Adelaide, was involved in the campaign to stop the bridge connecting Hindmarsh Island to the mainland and Bell is behind the current push for more freshwater for the Lower Lakes.

Listen to the podcast to get some idea what those of us advocating a saltwater solution for the Lower Lakes are up against.

Of course the Murray River has not been lost to salt, or drought, or over-allocation, and there is a simple environmental remedy for the Lower Lakes – letting in the Southern Ocean.

If you want to know more visit:

www.mythandthemurray.org

Oceans Not Warming as Predicted

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The NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) has updated its Ocean Heat Content (OHC) data (0-700Meters) for the first quarter of 2011.

The oceans are not warming as the experts predicted.

This is another good reason for governments across the Western world to start reassess the advice they have been receiving on climate change and to start seeking out the opinions of the many meteorologist, climatologists, paleoclimatologists and hydrologists who are sceptical of anthropogenic global warming.

Via Anthony Watts
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/08/the-new-giss-divergence-problem-ocean-heat-content/#more-39512

A Note from the Daintree

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Hello Jennifer,

Tourism in the Daintree Rainforest is continuing to decline, partly because of the relative value of the Australian dollar.

Recent upturns in the global economy have been met with a proportionate recovery in other parts of Australia, but the far north seems to have suffered the double whammy of natural disasters which have been overly-publicised to the extent that many travellers to Australia are still shying away from Queensland.

The challenge for the people of the Daintree Rainforest is to get the word out that we are enjoying unobstructed accessibility, are open for business and waiting to showcase the rich diversity of experiences that make a great nature-based holiday in the oldest rainforest in the world.

If you feel inclined to assist, kindly forward this eNewsletter onto a friend who may be considering travelling in the not too distant future…
[Read more…] about A Note from the Daintree

At Today’s Rally

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A few well known Queensland sceptics of ‘anthropogenic global warming’ attended the ‘No Carbon Tax’ rally today in Brisbane…  and there is also a frequent contributor to this  blog in this photograph. 

There were perhaps 400 at the rally. 

I suggested government needed to look around for better advice on climate change reminding the crowd that Tim Flannery once said that our dams would never fill again.  

Of course when the drought broke the dams filled to overflowing with Wivenhoe flooding Brisbane.   At that time government should have reassessed the quality of the advice it was getting on climate change, but instead and incredibly the Prime Minister Julia Gillard promoted Professor Flannery…  at a time when he should really have been sacked.

No Wiser After Decades of Climate Modelling

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“AN outcome from the anthropogenic global warming alarmism has been the implementation of government policies that can only reduce community resilience to the natural hazards of climate. The enormous research expenditure directed toward computer modelling and potential impacts has been at the expense of better understanding of the climate system and improved early warning of known hazardous events. None of the expenditure on climate change research over the past three decades has improved our ability to better understand and predict the onset and duration of drought, of tropical cyclones, conditions conducive to fire, or the extent of flooding. Yet each of these has been experienced across parts of Australia over the past 12 months, with significant loss of life, enormous private and public infrastructure destruction, and diminution of productivity.

“Proposed Government actions to make energy more expensive, or raise barriers that deny community access to existing energy forms, will further reduce community resilience to the hazards of climate. Today’s broad-acre farming is an outcome of mechanised production and transport based on fossil fuels; rural infrastructure is implemented and maintained with equipment driven by fossil fuels. From an economist’s perspective, rural industries are a diminishing percentage of GDP and of declining importance to national welfare. This jaundiced view fails to understand Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: we self-actualise (ie, expand the national GDP) only after satisfying our basic wants of food and shelter. A community that neglects what underpins the resilience of basic food production and infrastructure becomes more vulnerable to climate variability and extremes…    an extract from ‘Community resilience and the hazards of climate’, by William Kininmonth

Read more here:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11986&page=0