Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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It Matters That Journalists Keep Getting It Wrong

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There has been some suggestion that in my recent blog post on a dead possum I was too hard on the ABC. Gavin and others have suggested there are bigger issues and that it doesn’t matter that sometimes some journalists get it wrong.

I disagree.

It’s my experience that it is common practice for many environmental reporters to just repeat the content of media releases and briefings from activists, particularly when the perceived villain is a miner, logger or irrigator. The story is set up for them … and they run with it.

Indeed I see significant problems with how the mainstream media reports on environmental issues and I believe there is a need for much more accountability.

I’m not sure we can properly address the many pressing environmental issues out there if journalists keep responding to activist campaigning rather than making their own minds up about what does and doesn’t need to be reported.

Then there is the human dimension of the misreporting.

There is a guy, Richard Ness, who sometimes reads this blog, and who is currently on trial in Indonesia probably because some local environmental activists thought they could create the perception of an environmental disaster. They probably assumed, given the way the media tends to work when it comes to environmental issue, that their fabrication would quickly become a news story. All they had to do was grab a few props (in this case babies with skin problems) and make a few accusations.

Indeed while the evidence doesn’t stack up, BBC Online continues to report the story including more comment from the activists who should by now be dismissed as scoundrels. Meanwhile, Richard Ness faces the prospect of 10 years in jail for something that never happened.

Pulp Mill To Reduce Rainfall?

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I have been sent bits of information about particulate pollution and how this can reduce rainfall downwind of industrial areas and cities. I made some comment on this issue when I was in Hong Kong and somewhat surprised by the extent of the air pollution.*

Aaron Gingis has been a key proponent of the thesis. He has variously suggested that the reason we have a drought in south east Queensland is because of particulate pollution and that the solution to the drought in the Murray Darling Basin is cloud seeding.

I have often pondered Gingis’ claims while studying this map:

BOM%20jan97-06%20rainfall%20deciles%20blog.jpg

It suggests record low rainfall in our most heavily populated catchments. It was part of a blog post from David Jones in which he commented that Perth, Canberra and Melbourne catchments have all experience their lowest (or nearly so) rainfall on record. David didn’t mention pollution as a cause, and I have been meaning to ask him why.

Anyway, while some doomsayers have been more inclined to blame low rainfall on global warming, the Tasmanian Greens have commissioned Mr Gingis to prepare a report which has concluded that there will be a massive drop in rainfall in Tasmania’s north-east if a proposed pulp mill goes ahead.

According to ABC Online:

Mr Gingis said the ultra fine particles emitted by the mill will change the density of clouds and reduce rainfall in the north-east by up to 80 per cent…

“They make clouds actually constipated, in other words the clouds simply changing their metrophysics and not precipitating or precipitating much less.”

Mr Gingis has lobbied governments, irrigators, bloggers and others on the issue of pollution and reduced rainfall suggesting we can’t do much about the pollution and that the solution is cloud seeding.

It is interesting that ABC Online has just now reported the phenomenon and in the context of a campaign against a pulp mill proposed by timber company Gunns Ltd and there is no mention of cloud seeding as the solution.

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* See https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001631.html :

I was recently sent the following very interesting papers on global dimming and its potential impact on rainfall in Australia: Rosenfeld, D. (2000) Suppression of rain and snow by urban and industrial air pollution. Science, Vol 287, pp 1793-1796. Rosenfeld et. al. (2005) Potential impacts of air pollution aerosols on precipitation in Australia. Clean Air and Environmental Quality, Vol 40, No. 2, pp 43-49. Rosenfeld, D. (2006) Aerosols, Clouds and Climate. Science, Vol 312, pp. 1323 – 1324. ABC TV Four Corners did a feature on global dimming in March 2005, the transcript and reference documents can be found here: http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2005/s1328747.htm

Keeping Wildlife In the Freezer

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When I worked for the sugar industry, there was a guy who lived in Ingham, in Far North Queensland, who used to regularly pull the same fish out of the freezer when there was a fish kill and get it on television as an example of poisoning from acid sulfate soils.

It seems activists also keep wildlife in their freezers in Tasmania and have no worries pulling a possum killed by a motorcar out of the freezer and parading it as an example of 1080 poisoning. At least that’s the message we get from Pier Akerman writing in The Daily Telegraph on Saturday in a piece entitled ‘Hello, wasn’t that the ex-possum again?’.

While some activists have no real interest in the truth, just a particular barrow to push, you would like to think journalists from the Australian national broadcaster, the ABC, were a bit more diligent. But it seems they don’t even have a particularly good system for keeping track of file tape/news footage… click here.

The Montreal Protocol Hasn’t Stopped Ozone Depletion

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There was a crash in the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) following the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987.

By 1999 atmpospheric levels of manmade ozone destroying chemicals had leveled off and since 2003 there has been a 7 percent drop in the amount of chlorine and bromine in the lower stratosphere (10-25 km). This is apparently where most ozone loss occurs.

Given its original objectives, the Montreal Protocol has been a huge success and reduced concentrations of ozone-depleting gases.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been predicting for some time that the reduction in concentrations of ozone-depleting gases will result in a recovery in the ozone layer and also the Antarctic ozone hole.

So what happened this year?

Over the last few weeks we have heard report after report that the ozone hole over the Antarctic has expanded to a near-record size despite the successful global ban on chlorofluorocarbons.

An incredible 40 million tonnes of ozone had been lost over Antarctica this year, exceeding the record 39 million tonne loss in 2000 with the depth of the ozone hole now rivaling the record low ozone values of 1998.

Discussion, including at this blog, has focused not on chlorofluorcarbons as the cause of the now growing ozone hole, but on atmospheric temperatures and other phenomena.

It is interesting to reflect on what some skeptics were writing 10 years ago.

At that time S. Fred Singer was sounding something like a global warming skeptic with his piece entitled ‘Ozone politics With a Nobel imprimatur’ in the Washington Post.

He wrote: “Further research will likely prove the CFC-ozone issue to have been a minor environmental problem. In the meantime, hasty policies to ban CFC production by the end of 1995, though a financial windfall for chemical companies and appliance manufacturers, will impose substantial economic costs — up to $100 billion — on U.S. consumers and make life worse for the poorest everywhere — especially in developing nations.”

There is even mention of hurricanes and Al Gore in the article.

Anyway, it is interesting to ponder why, given the success of the Montreal Protocol, there has not been a reduction in the hole over the Antarctic?

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Thanks to Bob Foster for sending me the S. Fred Singer paper.

A note to commentators, I am interested in better understanding this issue and I’m interested in your opinion. But comments that don’t add new information and/or that are disrespectful may be edited and /or deleted.

R U Flying: An Inconvenient Truth (Part 4)

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Aviation generates about 5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions but their warming effect is up to four times greater at high altitudes according to Jonathan Leake writing last weekend in The Sunday Times.

The article entitle, ‘A green snag they emitted to mention…’ suggests that environmental leaders are amongst the highest greenhouse gas emitters in the world because they like flying to exotic locations for their holidays and conferences. According to the article:

“Among those with the highest air miles is Bob Napier, chief executive of WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund, one of the best-known environment groups. In the past 12 months he has visited Spitsbergen, Borneo, Washington, Geneva, and Beijing on business trips and taken a holiday in the Falklands, generating more than 11 tons of carbon dioxide. A typical British household creates about six tons of CO2 a year.”

And did anyone notice how many planes Al Gore got on and off, and how many places he boasted he had visited to give that lecture, in that movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. I lost count.

Anyway, someone sent me this link to a piece published by USA Today entitled ‘Gore isn’t quite as green as he’s led the world to believe’.

It doesn’t add up the plane trips, but it does suggest that Mr Gore is another one of those environmental leader who doesn’t practice what he preaches.

gmc0502259909.jpg
For photographs visit www.whalephoto.com.

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I’ve a series running on that movie, the last post, part 3 can be read by clicking here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/001641.html .

Killer Greenhouse Effect (or Pardon my Anoxia): A Note from Luke

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Luke Walker reminds us that geological history includes evidence of mass extinctions from “killer greenhouse conditions”:

“Readers of this blog are often witness to accusations of alarmism by those opposed to scenario projections using contemporary anthropogenic global warming theory.

Comfort is often taken in the world having survived substantial climate swings in geological time and that some species such as reef building corals have come through that turmoil.

So it is with some irony that the October 2006 issue of Scientific American has a major article by Professor Peter Ward at the University of Washington suggests that extinction events in geological history have been caused by killer greenhouse conditions. What’s this – geological alarmism? Is nothing sacred?

“More than half life on the earth has been wiped out, repeatedly, in mass extinctions over the past 500 million years. One such disaster, which includes disappearance of the dinosaurs, is widely attributed to an asteroid impact, but others remain inadequately explained.

New fossil and geochemical evidence points to a shocking environmental mechanism for the largest of the ancient mass extinctions and possibly several more: an oxygen depleted ocean spewing poisonous gas as a result of global warming”

Apparently five times over the last 500 million years most of the world’s life forms have ceased to exist. End of the Ordovician 443 My ago; close of the Devonian 374 My; the Great Dying at the end of the Permian 251 My where 90% of ocean dwellers and 70% of land dwellers were obliterated; the end of the Triassic 201 My; and the end of the Cretaceous at 65 My with a likely asteroid impact.

However, new analyses are showing that some sudden extinctions were not that sudden lasting several hundred thousands of years.

It theoretically works something like this:

1. Volcanic activity releases carbon dioxide and methane

2. Rapid global warming occurs

3. Warm ocean absorbs less oxygen

4. Anoxia destabilises the chemocline where oxygenated surface waters meet H2S permeated waters in the ocean, anaerobic bacteria flourish

5. Hydrogen sulphide gas (H2S) gas upwells through the ocean as the chemocline rises to the ocean surface

6. Green and purple sulphur bacteria in the surface ocean thrive while oxygen breathers suffocate

7. H2S gas kills land animals and plants.

8. H2S destroys the ozone shield

9. Ultra violet radiation from the sun kills remaining life.

“A minor extinction at the end of the Palaeocene 54My ago was already – presciently – attributed to an interval of oceanic anoxia somehow triggered by short-term global warming.” Evidence is also present at the end of Triassic, middle Cretaceous, and late Devonian.

So are these extreme greenhouse effect extinctions possibly a recurring phenomenon in the earth’s history. Atmospheric CO2 was 1000ppm when extinctions began in the Palaeocene. “

So if the modern earth got close to 1000ppm this might represent something for our children to deal with. But maybe that’s just geological alarmism for you.

I’m getting a Lotto syndicate going called “Killer Greenhouse”.

More reading:

Climate simulation of the latest Permian: Implications for mass extinction by Jeffrey T. Kiehl & Christine A. Shields Climate Change Research Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, Colorado 80305, USA

Abrupt and Gradual Extinction Among Late Permian Land Vertebrates in the Karoo Basin, South Africa
Science 4 February 2005:Vol. 307. no. 5710, pp. 709 – 714 by Peter D. Ward,1* Jennifer Botha,3 Roger Buick,2 Michiel O. De Kock,5 Douglas H. Erwin,6 Geoffrey H. Garrison,2 Joseph L. Kirschvink,4 Roger Smith3

Photic Zone Euxinia During the Permian-Triassic Superanoxic Event, Science 4 February 2005:
Vol. 307. no. 5710, pp. 706 – 709 by Kliti Grice, Changqun Cao, Gordon D. Love, Michael E. Böttcher, Richard J. Twitchett, Emmanuelle Grosjean, Roger E. Summons, Steven C. Turgeon, William Dunning,Yugan Jin

Massive Release of Hydrogen Sulphide to the Surface Ocean and Atmosphere during intervals of Oceanic Anoxia. Kump, L.R., Pavlov, A., Arthur, M.A. Geology: 33:5:397-400. May 2005.”

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Thanks Luke. And I’m going to add to your reading list: The Past is the Key to the Present: Greenhouse and Icehouse Over Time by Prof Ian Plimer, IPA Review, Vol 55, No. 1. March 2003, pgs. 9-12.