Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Climate Skeptics on Trial in California: Steven Milloy

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“The State of California has filed a request in federal court to force auto makers[General Motors, DaimlerChrysler Corp., and the Association of Automobile Manufacturers] to disclose all documents and communications between the companies and the so-called “climate skeptics”. California accuses the climate skeptics of playing a “major role in spreading disinformation about global warming.”

California has been joined in the lawsuit by environmental activist groups including, the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense.“

… according to Steven Milloy at www.JunkScience.com .

DDT returns to battle malaria in Africa: Reuters

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“Controlled indoor spraying of the infamous pesticide DDT is poised to make a comeback in countries that have tried and failed to do without it in the battle against malaria,” reports news service Reuters.

The Institute of Public Affairs* has published several proponents of DDT, including Roger Bate in an article titled ‘The Ban on DDT is Killing Millions in the Third World’.

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*I’m a Senior Fellow at the IPA.

How Trees Can Be Bad: Ross Coulthart

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You may remember that some weeks ago the Channel 9 Sunday Program featured a documentary on salinity title ‘Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis’. While researching the dryland salinity issue, reporter Ross Coulthart got interested in land clearing issues. This Sunday (6th August) the current affairs program will feature a documentary titled ‘Woody Weeds: How Trees Can Be Bad’. I’ve just received the media release:

“This week SUNDAY travels to far western NSW to check out the claims being made by many Green groups and politicians of a looming ecological disaster being caused by land clearing.

What we find overturns many of the alarmist claims that many of Australia’s largely city dwelling environmentalists have taken as gospel.

SUNDAY reporter Ross Coulthart details the strong evidence to show that current Government policies restricting land clearing, pushed by a powerful environmental lobby, are in fact causing serious environmental damage.

As several eminent scientists reveal this week too many trees in that landscape can actually be bad for the environment.

As recently as six years ago, Australia’s peak science body, the CSIRO, was warning of the ecological threat posed by invasive native scrub – the farmers call them “woody weeds” – that has taken over what was once largely, sparsely-treed, open grasslands across far western NSW and southern Qld.

Even the Wentworth Group of Scientists, in their 2002 ‘Blueprint for a Living Continent’ warned that laudable restrictions on broad-scale land clearing needed to be clearly distinguished from the “need to control shrub invasion in the semi-arid and pastoral areas of Australia.”

As local Nyngan aboriginal elder Tommy Ryan explains, for 45,000 years these largely open grasslands were managed by indigenous Australians using fire. But since European settlement that lack of burning has caused a huge growth of invasive scrub that has taken over between 15-25% of NSW alone.

Now tens of millions of hectares of that once open grassland are effectively being locked-up by Native Vegetation laws that NSW farmers claim are excessively restricting their clearing of what they say is environmentally harmful woody weeds.

Farmers are commonly demonised as the villains responsible for broad-scale land clearing, and that’s what the farmers of Nyngan and Cobar are now accused by the Wilderness Society’s public campaign of doing.

But the farmers claim the plants and animals that evolved to depend on those open grasslands are under threat because of the very trees the Greenies are fighting to save.

And, as SUNDAY details, they have some heavy-weight scientific backing for their arguments. As former Western Lands Commissioner and soil scientist Dick Condon tells Coulthart:

“We don’t need forest. We need open space for the species that use that grassland.”

Mick Keogh, Executive Director of the Australian Farm Institute, says the evidence is there to show that the magnitude of vegetation loss across Australia has been grossly over-exaggerated. Yet the official estimates of 650,000ha being cleared a year in 1989-90 went on to become the cornerstone of Australia’s negotiating position at Kyoto, where limits on greenhouse gas emissions were negotiated. He believes that in order to ensure the reduction in land clearing occurred, the Federal Government made State funding dependent on the States banning land clearing. Keogh argues that a misguided effort to meet those inaccurate targets has led to the current highly restrictive Native Vegetation laws.

Also, current land clearing estimates don’t take into account the extent of regrowth and replanting of trees. When this is taken into account, reafforestation far exceeds even the official, exaggerated, estimates of land clearing.”

Water Actually Recycled Urine: Mercurius

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Last weekend residents of Toowoomba — Australia’s largest inland regional city and a city running out of water — voted against a proposal whereby the city would draw 25 per cent of its water from recycled effluent. On the subject of water and recycling, Mercurius posted the following alert at the On Line Opinion Forum last night:

“The World Health Organisation (WHO) today issued an unprecedented global alert for the entire world’s population to avoid drinking water which, it has found, is actually recycled urine.

The Director-General of WHO, Lee Jong-wook, was visibly shaken as he read out a statement. “It is my solemn duty to inform the people of the world that WHO scientists, operating independently in over 80 countries, have confirmed our worst fears. They have reached consensus that the water we drink, whether it is comes from a tap, a sealed bottle, or straight from a well or river, is actually recycled urine.”

The urine-water link has been blamed on the so-called hydrosphere effect, a radical hypothesis in which water from your toilet is flows out into the ocean and evapourates into the sky; from where scientists believe it falls as rain upon mountaintops, and make its way via rivers directly back into your household tap.

Said Mr Lee, “the hydrosphere effect is so far out of control there seems little chance of turning back the tide. We took samples from thousands of patients and found their bodies were riddled with water, in some cases as high as 75%. It’s too late for us, but maybe not for our children.”

The finding has set public health officials scrambling for alternatives. But AMA Secretary Dr. Robyn Mason said that water is in everything we drink. “We tested fruit juice, milk and even beer, and found water content as high as 96%,” she said. According to the AMA, safer alternatives include cask-strength whisky (29% water, 1% barley, 70% alcohol) and cat’s milk, which has far less water than dairy varieties.

Some have expressed hope of obtaining super-pure water from deep aquifers or Antarctic ice. But Mr Lee has poured water on these plans, stating that even the deepest groundwater sources are comprised of ancient number ones from prehistoric fish.

“There’s no escape. And don’t even think of swimming in the ocean – there’s a reason it’s salty you know. I’d rather take my chances in a pool full of primary school kids.”

Posted by Mercurius on Monday 31 July 2006 at On Line Opinion and republished here with permission.

Survey: Native Private Forestry in NSW

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I received the following note:

“You may like to bring this survey to the attention of your readers:

http://www.AdvancedSurvey.com/default.asp?SurveyID=42053 .

Responses are public: anyone who takes the survey can see a summary of all the responses when they complete their entry.

Responses are anonymous, I have no way of telling who responded. The survey software assigns each respondent a sequential number (and ensures only one response from each computer), so I can do cross-tabulations of responses, but I cannot identify respondents. If the survey gets sufficient responses to make the result meaningful, an analysis of responses will be published in due course.”

So click on the link and fill in the survey, please.

PS Not living in NSW I had problems filling in Question 8, I think I ticked Sydney and then explained at the end that I actually lived in Brisbane.

Toowoomba Votes Against Water Recycling

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“The Mayor of Toowoomba, Di Thorley, says the case for water recycling in Australia has been dealt a severe blow as a result of yesterday’s poll in the south-east Queensland city.

Around 60 per cent of residents have voted ‘no’ to a plan to draw 25 per cent of the city’s water from recycled effluent.”

… reports ABC Online.

Luke left the following comment earlier this morning at an earlier blog post on this issue:

“And there you have it – should put the sword through any other politicians trying to run the agenda for some time. A powerful option gone from the toolkit.”

Yet the front page of today’s The Sunday Mail includes the headline:

“Recycled Water Vote No, But Beattie sets date for new southeast referendum”.

Last Friday, before the vote was lost, Graham Young blogging at Ambit Gambit, suggested it was not a bad election issue for the Premier to run on.

It is interesting to ponder why Toowoomba voted against waste water recycling.

The ‘no campaign’ played on the ‘yuk’ factor and it is unclear to what extent the push was supported by local irrigators who have been using the city’s sewage to water their lucerne for about 60 years.

Perhaps the outcome could be seen as one group of resource users out-smarting a city council so they retain access to ‘cheap water’ so they can keep growing lucerne for their cows?

My understanding is that Goulburn will soon be drinking recycled sewage and that there will not be a referendum.

Economics and science would suggest that recycling waste water is the way to go for places like Toowoomba and Brisbane, but now it seems politics is getting in the way?

Interestingly I support the Australian Greens on this issue. Since 2004 it has been their policy to:

“Implement national policies that facilitate a decrease in per capita consumption of fresh water and expand opportunities for its re-use.”

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Update next day, 31st July

I expanded this blog piece into an article titled ‘Democracy versus leadership in Poowoomba’ published this morning by On Line Opinion which you can read by clicking here http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4742 .