Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Opinion

Climate-Related Policy Should be Evolutionary Not Presumptive

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I have come to believe that the official expert advisory process, and the IPCC process within it, are seriously flawed… Two related forms of evidence have brought me to this view. They represent findings on my part, not presuppositions.

First is the evidence that work which the IPCC and its member governments have drawn on has been marred by professional deficiencies which have gone unacknowledged and unremedied. Second is the evidence that the influential expert advisory processes have been throughout, and continue to be, subject to chronic and pervasive bias.

From this assessment I draw a straightforward conclusion for policy. In a subject area where so much remains uncertain or unknown, today’s confident and far-reaching policy settings should not be taken as given. Policy should be evolutionary, not presumptive; and its evolution should be linked to a process of inquiry, review and advice which is more open, more balanced and more professionally watertight than is now the case.

This was the main message presented by David Henderson at a conference held on 22 April 2009 at the Said Business School, Oxford University. The subject of the conference was ‘Beyond Kyoto – Green Innovation and Enterprise in the 21st Century’.  

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Bushfire Royal Commission to Focus on the Politically Possible

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EARLIER this year the suffering from the Victorian bushfires, and that video of the fire fighter giving a koala a drink of water in a burnt-out forest, captured the imagination of people around the world.

At the time some media outlets blamed the ferocity of the fires on global warming and this assessment was supported by some authorities at reputable institutions including Melbourne University, the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. Others disagreed and claimed inadequate controlled burning as a key issue.

The Premier of Victoria promised a Royal Commission into the fires and preliminary hearings started this week.

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Quiet Sun Shouldn’t Baffle Astronomers

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THE Sun is the dimmest it has been for nearly a century.  There are no sunspots, very few solar flares – and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time. 

That’s according to a BBC report by Pallab Ghosh, which goes on to explain these observations are baffling astronomers … the Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period…  Last year, it was expected that it would have been hotting up after a quiet spell. But instead it hit a 50-year low in solar wind pressure, a 55-year low in radio emissions, and a 100-year low in sunspot activity.

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Defining the Greens (Part 4)

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ALL Greens have a deep passionate desire to make sure we live well without doing serious damage to the environment, but apart from that are a motley lot impossible to accurately define.

This is one of the messages that have emerged from my series entitled ‘Defining the Greens’. 

But I can’t agree. 

In the 70s there was some agreement that protecting the planet required fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology – I’m paraphrasing  John Tierney from an article in Monday’s New York Times. 

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