Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties. John Milton [via Benny Peiser]
Opinion
The Cult of Celebrity and Tasmanian Forestry
THE public hysteria surrounding the proposed Tasmanian pulpmill shows that the logging of native forests remains one of Australia’s hottest environmental topics. This is surprising given that sustainable wood production is now permitted within just a net 6 per cent portion of the nation’s public forests, it is highly regulated, and it is regarded as among the best managed in the world. As an environmental threat, the government’s Australia State of the Forests Report, regards logging as insignificant.
Despite this, it has become politically incorrect to support native hardwood production as a sensible and responsible use of a naturally renewable resource. Those who do so are routinely vilified as I was last week when a letter I had published in The Age newspaper drew responses that scorned me as an “industry apologist trying to keep us in the dark ages” and a “spin doctor” who “relies on the public being fools”.
In the past, I have also been described as a “mouthpiece for the logging industry” or the “pro-logging lobby”, which is apparently “blind to the bigger picture of global crisis”. I have been called a “forest raper” and a “pro-logging, anti-life person”. Others believe I am “motivated by short term greed” and “headed towards my own demise”. I am apparently one of those “people who can chop, hunt, maim, kill, exploit, dominate and destroy in the name of progress and jobs” and I have been likened to “the captain of the Titanic refusing to believe that your enterprise is fatally flawed”.
[Read more…] about The Cult of Celebrity and Tasmanian Forestry
New Trails and Academia
“Really new trails are rarely blazed in the great academies. The confining walls of conformist dogma are too dominating. To think originally, you must go forth into the wilderness.” S. Warren Carey (Australian geologist) via Fred Singer.
Clarifying the Role of the Sun and Global Temperatures
YESTERDAY atmospheric scientist, Professor Marvin Geller, explained to Leigh Dayton, science writer at The Australian newspaper, that the sun could not be driving “recent global warming as climate change sceptics claim” because solar radiation has not changed very much since 1978.
But climate change sceptics do not claim there has been recent global warming. They claim there has been a levelling off, or fall in temperatures, over the last 10 years since the 1998 El Nino-driven peak. [Click on the chart for a larger view of global temperature trends.]
As regards the El Nino event of 1998, according to Professor Geller, El Ninos cause a temporary increase in global temperatures, not the steady and consistent upward trend typical of warming from greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
But there has been no “consistent upward trend”.
Indeed, Professor Geller misrepresents the position of global warming sceptics and the available global temperature data.
[Read more…] about Clarifying the Role of the Sun and Global Temperatures
Eating Reindeer
Around 70 per cent of Swedish reindeer slaughtered are calves, which means they die without seeing snow, claims the animal welfare group Viva!. Read more here.
Australian Parliamentarian, and Sceptic, Banned Prevented from Tabling Climate Data
DR Dennis Jensen BAppSc (RMIT), MSc (Melb), PhD (Monash) is the only member of the Australian Parliament with any training in science a PhD in a science discipline.
[As correctly pointed out in the comments following this posting, my brother Jim Turnour, also a member of the Federal Parliament, has a Batchelor of Agricultural Science. Other members with science and science-related degrees are listed in a comment in the following thread.]
Yesterday Dr Jensen suggested in the Australian Parliament that many of the current problems facing the Murray Darling Basin are the result of low runoff as a consequence of changed land management practices (including more plantations in the top of catchments), catchment-wide drainage management plans (place in the 1980s and 1990s to lower water tables) and more efficient water use (resulting in less leakage).
He explained that it was wrong to blame climate change for the low levels in the dams, because there had been no long term decline in rainfall in the Basin.
Dr Jensen also explained that many of the climate models used to predict regional rainfall, including the CSIRO models (relied upon by Ross Garnaut in his report on climate change to the Australian government), are unreliable and unduly pessimistic.
When Dr Jensen asked to table supporting information in the Parliament by way of charts and tables, the request was denied.
Much of the information that Dr Jensen was banned from tabling can be found in a recent publication from the IPA entitled ‘What’s Happening to the Murray River?’.
**************
The picture of Dr Jensen is from his parliamentary website.
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.