Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

Bushfires are Getting Worse

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“IT is too late to leave, you need to take shelter in your home and actively defend it.”

That’s part of a government warning issued today to residents in the Shire of Augusta-Margaret River in south western Western Australia. Twenty homes have already been lost.

Roger Underwood, Chairman of The Bushfire Inc, an organization devoted to improving the standard of bushfire management in Australia, has been warning of potential disaster for many years. At the organisation’s website, Underwood explains:

“For a 25 year period after the 1961 Dwellingup fire there was a comprehensive fuel reduction program in WA forests that gave us a very high level of protection from serious bushfires. Up until about 1985 the majority of the jarrah forest, for example, was burned by low intensity fires every 5-7 years to keep fuel loads down. After that time, the fuel reduction burning program fell away badly and the area of bushfires began to rise. Now, about half the forest area will support an uncontrollable crown fire – a tragic situation.

“There is a similar situation on private land in the South West of the State. For about 25 years the Bush Fires Board and volunteer brigades carried out a vigorous fuel management program, which maintained low fuel loads in rural areas. When the functions of the Bush Fires Board were taken over by FESA, this program also fell away, as FESA’s prime focus is fire suppression, not fuel management.”

The Australian landscapes needs to be actively managed to keep it safe and biologically diverse. This reality is not understood by many of those currently responsible for the development and implementation of land management policy, not just in Western Australia, but across Australia. This reflects a broader myth within the Australia community that when people are excluded from landscapes they will revert to a natural state, a natural order. But none exists.

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http://bushfirefront.com.au/

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/11966054/fierce-bushfire-razes-homes-near-margaret-river/

Reform or Abandon the IPCC

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A leading environmental economist has called upon governments to either radically reform or abandon the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In his report ‘What is Wrong with the IPCC? Proposals for Radical Reform’ published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Professor Ross McKitrick (University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada) reviews the IPCC’s own procedures in detail and highlights a number of serious flaws and weaknesses.

McKitrick’s report shows that, under current procedures:

1. The IPCC’s managing bureau unilaterally selects Lead Authors, giving it direct influence on the content of reports;

2. IPCC Lead Authors are frequently asked to review their own work and that of their critics, placing them in a conflict of interest;

3. The IPCC peer review procedures allow Lead Authors to overrule reviewers, and to rewrite the text after the close of peer review, rendering it ineffective at preventing bias;

4. Government review and oversight through the plenary panel is cursory at best, with the vast majority of member governments failing to take any active role.

McKitrick presents a number of case studies that illustrate how these various procedural flaws have had material effects on key sections of past reports.

McKitrick proposes a set of rule changes that would aim to make IPCC editorial procedures as rigorous as those of a standard academic journal. Even this modest target would require substantial changes.

Read more here: http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mckitrick-ipcc_reforms.pdf

Climategate II

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TWO years after Climategate – the scandal caused by the leaking of over one thousand emails detailing correspondence between leading climate scientists exposing conspiracy and collusion including how to stack review committees, exaggerate warming trends, and avoid the disclosure of sensitive information – another batch of emails have been leaked, again from the University of East Anglia and again from the infamous Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Kevin Trenberth and the hapless Keith Briffa.

According to bloggers and columnists who’ve been up earlier than me and who have already start reading the file: what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism.

The new leaked file of emails, dubbed FOIA 2011, is apparently introduced with comment from the Whistleblower:

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day. Every day nearly 16,000 children die from hunger and related causes. One dollar can save a life — the opposite must also be true. Poverty is a death sentence. Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels. Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.”

James Delingpole, breaking new for the UK Telegraph, concurs:

“If you’re going to bomb the global economy back to the dark ages with environmental tax and regulation, if you’re going to favour costly, landscape-blighting, inefficient renewables over real, abundant, relatively cheap energy that works like shale gas and oil, if you’re going to cause food riots and starvation in the developing world by giving over farmland (and rainforests) to biofuel production, then at the very least you it owe to the world to base your policies on sound, transparent, evidence-based science rather than on the politicised, disingenuous junk churned out by the charlatans at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”

Download the emails here:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ROCGBR37

University Entitlement Must Change

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THE revelations that Paul Greenfield, vice chancellor at the University of Queensland, has been forced to retire early because of “irregularities” in admission of a close relative to medical school do not come as a shock to many of us who have worked in the Australian university sector for many years (‘Relatively stupid for vice-chancellor’, November 12-13, Australian Financial Review).

Neither does the unsuccessful attempt to cover up the scandal.  Ethical standards in universities have deteriorated alarmingly over the past couple of decades.  I have seen situations where final grades of particular  students at Queensland universities, including University of Queensland, have been arbitrarily changed to accommodate the whims of senior administrators.

I have been a lecturer and senior lecturer at universities for more than 20 years.  These also include Queensland University of Technology and Griffith University.

I have seen practices amounting to selling degrees to poorly qualified overseas students to bring in revenue.  Those at subordinate staff levels who try to intervene or object are dealt with very harshly.

There is a pervasive sense of personal entitlement and lack of accountability among the most senior ranks of our universities that is very disturbing.  This culture needs to change.  A step in the right direction would be for Greenfield to leave his position immediately, acknowledge his failings, and at least provide a public apology to the hapless medical school applicant his relative displaced.

John W. Bearsey
Noosa, Queensland
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Republished with permission from Bearsey, first published by the Australian Financial Review, Letters, November 15, 2011.

Australia to Become Involved in ‘Subprime’ Carbon Market?

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EARLIER this week the Australian Senate passed the Clean Energy Bill and the associated 18 other Bills that set out the carbon pricing mechanism due to come into effect from July 1, 2012. The so-called big polluters will need to reduce or offset their emissions from that date.

One potential mechanism for offsetting emissions is by buying Kyoto compliant carbon units from overseas.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) established under the Kyoto Protocol is a cornerstone of the existing international greenhouse-gas emissions-trading scheme. It allows emissions to be offset by investing in schemes, for example hydroelectric power and wind farms, in developing countries. But the schemes have to be certified.

About one-fifth of existing Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) are registered in India, and certified, but they may nevertheless be non-compliant.

That’s according to a recent article in the journal Nature that reported on a 2008 diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks.

The situation may have improved, but the Nature article suggests it may have actually gotten worst. Then again the United Nations own validation and registration process for the CDMs, like Kyoto itself, is fairly arbitrary and bureaucratic and not particularly focused on emissions reductions.

Now the carbon tax legislation is through the Australian parliament the Australian Regulator will start to auction floating priced carbon units, based at least in part on CDMs. In addition to buying carbon units in the auction process, secondary markets and derivative markets will likely also develop in Australia also linked in to the international greenhouse-gas trading system.

So does this in effect mean Australia will soon be linked in to a type of ‘subprime’ UN compliant carbon trading scheme?

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Australia: Carbon tax/pricing mechanism approved – what needs to be done to prepare for it? By Fiona Melville And Jo Garland
http://www.utilityproducts.com/news/2011/11/1538624264/australia-carbon-tax-pricing-mechanism-approved-what-needs-to-be-done-to-prepare-for-it.html

Clean-energy credits tarnished: Wikileaks reveals most Indian claims are ineligible. By Quirin Schiermeier.
Nature, Volume 477, pages 517-518

Dredging a Harbor Won’t Destroy the Great Barrier Reef

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Activist group GetUp! has just launched a campaign to save the Great Barrier Reef from the dredging of Gladstone Harbor.

http://www.getup.org.au/campaigns/coal-seam-gas/great-barrier-reef/dredging-the-reef/take_action

“Millions of cubic metres of sea floor is being removed from the Great Barrier Reef right now. It’s the largest dredging project ever undertaken in Australia, making way for massive new coal seam gas export facilities.

“This massive industrial activity is damaging the Great Barrier Reef and threatens its status as a World Heritage Site. Sign the emergency petition now!”

Over the years the Great Barrier Reef has been going to be destroyed by crown-of-thorns starfish, over-fishing, agricultural run-off, global warming and more. But it’s still a big place running almost the entire length of Queensland and still in mostly pristine condition. And dredging of one little harbor is not going to have any long-term significant impact. In fact Heron Island, just off the coast of Gladstone, is still open for business…

http://www.heronisland.com/Articles.aspx