Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

The Most Important Vote Since Federation?

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“The vote that Senators deliver on August 13, and again later should the bill be defeated and resubmitted, is the biggest decision that they will make in their political careers. For the passage or not of this bill will determine the fate of the Australian economy, and the standard of living of average Australians, for decades to come.”  Bob Carter

Quadrant Online ETS Forum, edited by Professor Bob Carter, is now online.

Forum participants: James Allan, David Archibald, Bob Carter, Ian Castles, Sinclair Davidson, Terry Dwyer, David Evans, Ray Evans, Viv Forbes, John Izzard, William Kininmonth, Jennifer Marohasy, Des Moore, Alan Moran, Joanne Nova, Ian Plimer, Alex Robson (some essays will be posted over the coming days).

www.quadrant.org.au

Michael Connor, Quadrant, Sydney

Red Gum Forests Need Water and Thinning: Not Bob Carr

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Nick Ashwin 001 copyFORMER New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, obviously has no idea when it comes to the history and ecology of river red gum forests in south western NSW. His misguided comments in The Land one week ago (“Forests or fenceposts”, July 30, pg 19) reflect the prejudices of someone born and breed in Sydney and trained as a journalist before becoming a career Labor politician, and more recently a handsomely paid roving representative for Macquarie Bank.

Mr Carr may have a deep knowledge of US political history, but he clearly doesn’t understand the history of the forests in his own land – Australia. [Read more…] about Red Gum Forests Need Water and Thinning: Not Bob Carr

Dissent from German Scientists

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More than 60 prominent German scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made global warming fears in an Open Letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel… The scientists declared that global warming has become a “pseudo religion” and they noted that rising CO2 has “had no measurable effect” on temperatures. The German scientists, also wrote that the “UN IPCC has lost its scientific credibility.” Read more here and in German here.

Climate Change Not Poised to Feed on Itself

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ONE week ago the Sydney Morning Herald published an opinion piece by Michael Raupach from CSIRO and fourteen other Australian scientists making four key claims to support the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).  A regular reader and commentator at this weblog, Cohenite, explains that the claims are not supported by the available evidence: 

1. The world is warming

The first conclusion is that the world has been warming since 1850. This is generally correct but what Professor Raupach et al. don’t mention is the warming follows a particularly cold period called the Little Ice Age [LIA] which ended in 1850. The correlation of a decline in solar activity with the LIA is well established with various measures of solar activity showing an increase at the same time as the world warmed after 1850.

Professor Raupach et al. say that most of the warming since 1850 has happened since 1950. This is incorrect. The temperature data from both the official English agency, HADCRUT, and the land-based American temperature agency, NASAGISS, show an increase in temperature from 1910 to 1944 which is equivalent to the temperature increase from 1976 to 1998. [Read more…] about Climate Change Not Poised to Feed on Itself

Who’s a Climate Scientist?

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“PROMINENT scientists with long publications records, such as Bob Carter, are routinely described by the media as not being climate scientists and really not reputable scientists at all if they aren’t on the alarmist bandwagon.  On the other hand, lawyers expressing alarmist views are described as prominent scientists. 

“And the scientists regularly put forward in the media as the world’s leading climate experts often turn out to be computer modelers with little or no background in climate science…

Read more from Myron Ebell here.

And of course Graeme Pearman who many in Australia assume to be a climate scientist, actually trained as a biologist and has a PhD in carbon budgeting. 

As an example of the bias, consider this interview by ABC Journalist Sabra Lane.