Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

Bad Farmers Produce More Food

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You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs and you can’t grow food without water – and lots of it. That’s reality. But fashion dictates that farmers pretend otherwise.

Consider the ‘Rice and the Environment’ page at the Ricegrower’s Association of Australia website. It says that the rice industry was “the first to initiate a project to return water to the environment through the Living Murray initiative, delivering more than 12,000 megalitres to the river system.”

Why is an industry that is so totally dependent on the availability of water boasting that its given water back to the environment?

Imagine if West Australian mining giant Ghina Rhinehart, said she was giving back Iron Ore to mother earth? We don’t expert Ms Rhinehard to give back Iron Ore, we expert her to mine it and sell it to China. So, why do we expect farmers to give back water and to a river system that is either in chronic drought or flood?

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Cardinal Attacks Primitive Climate Change Religion

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IF the saying ‘it takes one to know one’ has any truth then the extraordinary attack by Cardinal George Pell on the science of anthropogenic global warming in a recent lecture given in Westminster Cathedral Hall, London, has special significance.   Not because the Cardinal is a scientist, but because he apparently recognizes a competing belief system when he sees one.   Indeed the Cardinal is so blunt as to liken the language used by AGW proponents with that used in “primitive religious controversy” and compares the costs “true-believers” would impose on economies with “the sacrifices offered traditionally in religion, and the sale of carbon credits with the pre-Reformation practice of selling indulgences”.

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Reflections on the ‘Malthusian Catastrophe’ as the World Approaches 7 Billion

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ON October 31, 2011 the world’s population will top seven billion. That’s according to expert opinion and a recent article in Nature.[1]

Writing in 1798, when there were less than one billion people on planet earth, Thomas Malthus suggested that misery, vice and poverty would keep population in check. [2]

Malthus was wrong.

Where there is most poverty, population growth is accelerating, while in rich countries population growth is slowing. The average number of children per woman in the world’s poorest countries is 4.5, compared to 1.7 for developed countries.

It is small increases in wealth and education that can lower fertility and are likely to result in a slowing in the world’s population growth.

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1. Jeff Tollefson. Seven billion and counting. Nature 478, 300 (2011)
2. Thomas Malthus. An Essay on the principle of population. Thomas Malthus, 1798

Business Must Answer to ‘Occupy Wall Street’: Adam Creighton

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I don’t usually touch on economics at this blog, unless there is a clear science link, because it is not something I know much about. But I was so pleased to read the following piece by Adam Creighton this morning at On Line Opinion. It clearly articulates what I perceive to be right about the ‘occupy protests’, what is right about capitalism, and what is wrong with ‘the economic system’ at the moment.

I’ve been particularly disappointed to see many so-called right wing commentators so dismissive of the efforts of the protestors. People on the right too readily equate their ideology with the financial sector making lots of money, which is wrong.

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Earth Warming According to New Berkeley Analysis

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“Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1°C since the mid‐1950s.” The media release continues:

“Analyzing temperature data from 15 sources, in some cases going as far back as 1800, the Berkeley Earth study directly addressed scientific concerns raised by skeptics, including the urban heat island effect, poor station quality, and the risk of data selection bias.

On the basis of its analysis, according to Berkeley Earth’s founder and scientific director, Professor Richard A. Muller, the group concluded that earlier studies based on more limited data by teams in the United States and Britain had accurately estimated the extent of land surface warming.

“Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the U.S. and the U.K.,” Muller said. “This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate change skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.”

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Let’s Agree to Disagree for the Sake of Science: Daniel Sarewitz

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“THE very idea that science best expresses its authority through consensus statements is at odds with a vibrant scientific enterprise. Consensus is for textbooks; real science depends for its progress on continual challenges to the current state of always-imperfect knowledge. Science would provide better value to politics if it articulated the broadest set of plausible interpretations, options and perspectives, imagined by the best experts, rather than forcing convergence to an allegedly unified voice.

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