Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

Why Campaign Against Hunting Polar Bears?

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THE World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has condemned Nunavut – the most sparsely populated and largest Canadian Territory – for maintaining its polar bear hunt quota threatening that boycotts may follow the decision.

CBC News ran a story last week that Environment Minister, Olayuk Akesuk, has accepted a recommendation from the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board not to change this season’s polar bear quota of 105 polar bears for the Baffin Bay area.  This is despite concerns from government officials about overhunting. Baffin Bay is an area of water and ice between the northern Baffin Island and Greenland. 

Of course much of the English-speaking world would be surprised to learn that polar bears are still hunted.   [Read more…] about Why Campaign Against Hunting Polar Bears?

Why You Should Support Independent Media (Part 1, For Koalas)

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SOME time ago I found myself seated next to a University academic – he had thin grey hair.  We were squashed together at the end of a long table in a dim and noisy Vietnamese restaurant in Brisbane [Australia].  The gathering was organised in support of alternative online media, so, I felt comfortable suggesting to him that the mainstream media had lost its way; that journalists at newspapers across the English-speaking world too often just repeat whatever is politically correct. 

The professor was offended – what right did I have to pass critical judgement on his colleagues!   So, I changed tack. I tentatively ventured that there seemed to be a lot of repetition in reporting of issues in the mainstream media.  

He agreed, and went on to explain that there are established story lines – that journalists only add to these narratives, as one might add to a large tapestry.  

I was struck by the metaphor.   The mainstream news had to all fit together like a picture.  What is reported tomorrow is expected to accord with what was reported yesterday. 

THERE is a story regularly reported in the mainstream Australian media about the Murray River and the death of red gum forests based on a false and romantic notion of wilderness.    

Politicians, wanting to ‘save forests’, support naive legislation based on the story.  The red gum forests become progressively less, rather than more, resilient including to wildfires.

Every time there is a hot fire in the red gum forests along the Murray River koalas are burnt.   This koalas just survived a forest in Barmah Forest, in the Central Murray Valley, on 17th October, 2008. 

SUPPORT politically-incorrect independent media that can provide an alternative perspective and challenge some of the non-sense.  Support this blog.  There is an orange DONATE button at the top of the right-hand column of this page.

UN Chief Misled Sydney Audience

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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.