Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Arctic Sea Ice Back

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Various media have been reporting that in the Arctic about a million more square miles of ocean are covered in ice this August than just last year. This is apparently an increase of 60 percent. Sea Ice 2013

August is usually a low point in the annual cycle, and not so many years ago some were predicting the Arctic would be ice free by August of this year, by 2013.

But if you consider the longer millennial-scale temperature trends as detailed in the technical literature, it is one of summer insolation declining through the Holocene, summer temperatures being generally cooler and the area of Artic ice expanding. [Read more…] about Arctic Sea Ice Back

Open Thread

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I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
Richard P. Feynman

Flooding Faye 098 Kangaroo

Photograph of the kangaroo taken in the Central Murray Valley by Faye Ashwin [click on the image for a larger/better view].

Murray Darling Basin Authority Rewriting History – Yet Again

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IAN Rowan lives on the shores of Lake Alexandrina and he is fed-up with the nonsense from the Murray Darling Basin Authority. In an open letter to the Authority following the recent publication of the ‘2013-2014 Basin Annual Environmental Watering Priorities’ he states:

“If the Murray Darling Basin Authority et al cannot even get recent events correct then how can we rely on them for future predictions and the proper management of the system?”

He has reason to be angry. On page 79 of the document that will set priorities for the distribution of billions of dollars worth of water, the history of water management at the Lower Lakes during the recent prolonged Millennium drought is fabricated.

According to the Murray Darling Basin Authority:

“In an attempt to maintain the water levels in the Lower Lakes above critical acidification levels the barrages were closed from 2007 to 2010. Even with this action, acidification occurred in some of the exposed fringing habitats of the Lower Lakes as the water level dropped well below 0.0m (Australian Height Datum) AHD and much of the lake bed was exposed.”

Mr Rowan writes:

“This statement is clearly nonsense and inconsistent with actual events as the possibility of acidification was only ‘discovered’ 12 months after the barrages were closed.”

Of course the entire problem of acidification and hypersalinisation at the Lower Lakes could have been avoided by simply opening the barrages to the Southern Ocean: by letting the Southern Ocean roll in, by letting the Southern Ocean fill the Lower Lakes.

Boat at Goolwa High and Dry, 2007

Yet, the Murray Darling Basin Authority with their Orwellian approach to the truth, suggest that by closing the barrages that lake water levels could be maintained!

[Read more…] about Murray Darling Basin Authority Rewriting History – Yet Again

Fishing Lobby Trumps Murray Cod Recovery (The Native Fish Strategy for the Murray Darling Ten Years On: Part 3)

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THE key recommendation in the Native Fish Strategy for the Murray Darling Basin 2003-2013 – a document developed by the Murray Darling Basin Commission, (MDBC) and adopted by the Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) – was the need to address the issue of cold water pollution in particular from the Hume dam.

The strategy, published ten years ago, includes comment that cold-water pollution abatement is a “clearly definable, tangible, cost-effective intervention” that can be completed for the major storages in the Murray Darling Basin within ten years, through a combination of engineering and operating changes. The strategy was to run from 2003 to 2013 with the objective of returning native fish to 60 per cent of their pre-European levels.

Hume Dam, like most of the dams throughout the Murray Darling, have outlets for irrigation positioned at depth, so water release occurs as a jet of cold water. Releases are typically made in spring and this is the same time Murray cod and other native fish like to spawn. Murray Cod Wikipedia

[Read more…] about Fishing Lobby Trumps Murray Cod Recovery (The Native Fish Strategy for the Murray Darling Ten Years On: Part 3)

Undemocratic Politics Again Determines Land Use in Tasmania: An Update

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A DECISION made in Cambodia this month by the United Nation’s World Heritage committee could add 172,000 hectares of forest to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Federal Minister for the Environment Tony Burke was seeking to have the deal sealed without proper scrutiny, in particular by using a loophole in the UN guidelines to label it as a “minor” modification. But this plan to rush through the extension in support of the Tasmanian forest peace deal hit a major hurdle when a key UN adviser, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) recently rejected the proposal as ‘minor’ and recommended that the nomination be ‘referred back’ to Australia to enable full and proper consultation.

The draft decision is at: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2013/whc13-37com-8B-Add-en.pdf

But what the final outcome will be is unclear. It is understood that the Australian government and the environmental NGO’s will be sending delegations to lobby individual committee members to overturn the recommendation to ‘refer back’ the nomination.

Tasmanian Wilderness 172000 ha addition

[Read more…] about Undemocratic Politics Again Determines Land Use in Tasmania: An Update

Haven’t Lost Half of the Great Barrier Reef: Part 2, Junk Methodology

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HOW could scientists conclude that half of the Great Barrier Reef has been lost in the last 27 years: target coral reefs most affected by cyclones, coral bleaching and crown-of-thorn starfish outbreaks, while ignoring more representative reefs with healthy corals. And I didn’t make that up! It’s documented in a peer-reviewed study by H. Sweatman, S. Delean and C. Syms entitled: ‘Assessing loss of coral cover on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef over two decades, with implications for longer-term trends’ [1].

Indeed the claim that there has been a 50 per cent decline in coral cover at the Great Barrier Reef appears to be largely an artifice of the survey method. In particular, coral reefs most severely affected by bleaching in 1998, and reefs disproportionally affected by crown-of-thorn starfish outbreaks, and also reefs with insufficient time to recover from cyclones in 2009 and 2011 were targeted for repeated sampling, while more representative reefs with healthy corals were ignored.

In part 1 of this series, I reported that the World Heritage Centre will demand action by the Australian Government to spend vast sums of taxpayers’ funds to address this manufactured issue, or have the Great Barrier Reef placed on its World Heritage in Danger List. This demand is a recommendation of the United Nation’s International Union for the Conservation of Nature, UNESCO, in its State of Conservation report prepared for the June meeting of the UNESCO committee [2], which in turn is based upon a report of the environmental lobby groups WWF and the Australian Marine Conservation Society, whose report [3] in turn relies on the claims of a peer reviewed study by Glenn De’ath and co-workers [4].Outer Barrier Reef, Photograph by Walter Starck

The paper by De’ath and co-workers published in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012 [5] does indeed claim a 50 per cent decline in coral cover based on 27 years of data from the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS) Long-Term Monitoring Program. [Read more…] about Haven’t Lost Half of the Great Barrier Reef: Part 2, Junk Methodology