Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Running on GM Sugarcane: New Australian Biotec Breakthrough

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Ethanol can be made through the fermentation of many natural substances and used to run motorcars. There is some dispute about the net energy benefit of producing ethanol from food crops including corn, sugarcane is considered more efficient than most.

At the recent big biotechnology conference in Chicago an even more effective system for ethanol production from genetically modified (GM) sugarcane was announced by Farmacule and its research partner Queensland University of Technology (QUT):

According to Mel Bridges, Farmacule chairman, the company’s research team successfully modified sugarcane plants using the INPACT technology (and cellulases in the plant) to enable highly efficient conversion of cellulose into fermentable sugars after crushing. The remaining sugars can then be used efficiently to produce bioethanol, leaving the sucrose untouched and available for the consumer sugar market.

Bridges says that the concept, known as cellulosic bioethanol, is seen as the next generation of ethanol production techniques as it aims to produce higher yields per hectare at costs lower than current techniques.

“President Bush recently endorsed the cellulosic bioethanol approach, suggesting that it may come to market within six years,” said Bridges. “Farmacule’s genetic technology will make this a reality, producing viable plants that contain the cellulase enzyme to enable the cost-efficient production of ethanol as a byproduct of the sugarcane.”

Farmacule’s proprietary technology, Bridges added, would use cellulase in the sugarcane leaf material to convert cellulose to fermentable sugars that could then be converted to bioethanol. He said the use of this technology in bioethanol production is an important development in alternative fuels and offers strong benefits for sugar producers and the local and international economies.

“The key to our approach will be to generate plants in which the over-expression of high levels of cellulase is tightly controlled, and activated when required, using our technology. This ensures that the sucrose used for consumer sugar is not sacrificed in any way — we would just be using the waste that’s left after the sucrose is extracted,” he explained.

I had thought President Bush was backing hydrogen, rather than ethanol powered motorcars?

It is interesting this biotechnology breakthrough has come out of Australia, with the mainstream Australian media still running lots of antibiotechnology stories. David Tribe critiques a recent feature in Melbourne’s The Age.

And it is Brazil that has already mapped the sugar genome and already developed a viable ethanol industry.

Perhaps Australians are really innovative, an issue Thomas Barlow discusses in his new book ‘The Australian Miracle’?

First Birthday & Going Fishing

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This blog is a year old tomorrow, the 14th April.

Interestingly there are comments at that first post from Walter Starck, Tim Lambert and Michael Duffy.

I have learnt a lot over the last year, especially about people and how they view different issues, and the knowledge and prejudices they often bring to a discussion.

I have been amazed at the web traffic this blog has generated. My Alexa rating is now 91,696. If this is any reflection of comparative traffic, my blog is now one of the most popular political blogs in Australia according to analyses in January by Tim Blair and Tim Lambert, click here. In fact, while my Alexa rating has improved dramatically over the last few months moving from 482,108 to 91,696, the other blogs mentioned at that post have not moved much with Tim Blair now on 42,756 (was 50,087), Catallaxy now on 238,196 (was 225,665) and Gravatt.org on 482,108 (was 488,606).

I would like to thank National Forum for hosting this site and advertising the blog at The Domain.

I am going to start using the subscribe facility at this website to send out a monthly email. I will perhaps include links to a few of the best blog posts for that month and information about what’s happening and where I might be speaking. So please log on, and register your email address by clicking here.

The blog costs me time and money and I am considering placing some advertisements at the site or asking for sponsorship.

The blog and website might be useful for advertising upcoming conferences in environment and related areas – doesn’t anybody know anybody who organises lots of conferences who might be interested?

The blog Larvatus Prodeo has a paypay for donations, maybe I could also add something like that?

There have been some comments, particularly at the global warming threads, suggesting I am pushing a particular perspective in my posts while others claim that I am too negative and always questioning rather than providing answers.

In response:

1. I repeat my offer to post essays at this blog from those with a very different perspective. I have posted different perspectives on whaling (including from Greenpeace and Libby Eyre) and I am more than happy to do the same on global warming.

2. According to Wikipedia: The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those which lead to contradictions. It was designed to force one to examine his own beliefs and the validity of such beliefs. In fact, Socrates once said, “I know you won’t believe me, but the highest form of Human Excellence is to question oneself and others.”

Anyway, thanks for sharing your prejudices, evidence, insights, and stories with me over the last year – and may the reef be as beautiful, and autumn as warm, in April next year.

I leave tomorrow for a few days of camping on the New South Wales mid-north coast. But I will be back.

Burleigh Jan06 013 blog.JPG

Best wishes for Easter, from the beach, East Coast of Australia.

AntiFreeze Gene from Antarctic Grass

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It is interesting that during this period of overwhelming concern about global warming, and given bans on GM food crops in all Australian states except Queensland, that Australian scientists should find an antifreeze gene in Antarctica and begin a discussion about crop losses due to frost.

Victorian Minister for Innovation, John Brumby, made the announcement at a biotechnology conference in Chicago, and The Age reported his comment that:

“Over the next few years, we should see the development and application of technologies for frost tolerance in crops based on the knowledge gained from the functional analysis of these antifreeze genes.”

So when will the Victorian government lift its ban on the commercial production of GM food crops? And why is there a ban in place anyway?

Even Bill Clinton is pro-GM food crops – at least that’s according to today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

I would like to know more about the Antarctic hairgrass, which has the antifreeze gene. It apparently grows on the Antarctic peninsula.

But Reed Beds Need Water!

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I have previously expressed concern that graziers in the Macquarie Marshes are diverting environmental water from the Ramsar-listed nature reserve to private land.

About two weeks ago I asked the NSW government whether the levy bank, as shown in this aerial photograph blocking the flow of water into the southern nature reserve in November 2005, was a legal structure.

Terrigal Nov 05 1 blog.JPG

At the time I was advised by email, following a phone conservation, that:

“We are still trying to identify where this bank/levee/channel is actually constructed. Until we can accurately locate it we cannot say for sure whether it is an approved work or not. Similarly, until we locate it accurately we are unable to ascertain whether it had any impact, adverse or otherwise, on the October/November 05 environmental flow release. The department will contact you again once we have more details.”

Following is a satellite photograph showing the Macquarie Marshes in December 1999 (green areas show flooding) and it is evident that the same levy bank is blocking water from reaching the southern nature reserve and holding it on private land.

marshes mapped blog.bmp

Environmentalists, and graziers, and government, all agree the marshes need more water. Indeed reed beds need water. Yet, I received the following justification for the levy bank from the NSW government today:

“Investigations carried out by DNR have now confirmed that the bank in question is located on a water course known as the Monkeygar Creek Return. This embankment was constructed by the then land-holders approximately 15 years ago with the sanction of the then Department of Water Resources and National Parks & Wildlife Service.

This embankment was constructed to slow down the passage of water in the Monkeygar Creek Return so as to prevent serious headward erosion and channelisation of Monkeygar Creek.

Headward stream channel erosion has been a major cause of wetland degradation and this embankment has been beneficial in the establishment and maintenance of important reed beds in the Marshes.

This work is considered to be an environment improvement work because of the benefit it serves to the preservation of the Macquarie Marshes reed beds and by preventing stream channel erosion.”

It doesn’t make sense.

I would like to see the extent of the change in the area of reed bed since that levy bank went in – bet it has contracted.

Coral Bleaching & The Reef: Walter Starck

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There is a widespread belief, cultivated at least in part by Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg that global warming has resulted in more coral bleaching.

Given the interest in the subject, I have copied the following comment from Dr Walter Starck, from yesterday’s rather long and tedious thread:

“Bleaching events result from extended periods of calm weather during which mixing from wave action ceases and surface water becomes exceptionally warm. Such warming is especially marked in very shallow water such as on reef flats. At the same time the absence of waves also eliminates the wave driven currents that normally flush the reef top. Bleaching conditions require at least a week or more of calm weather to develop and this may happen every few years, only once in a century, or never, depending on geographic location. On the outer GBR it is uncommon due to ocean swell and currents even in calm weather. In the mid-shelf and inshore areas it is much more common due to the absence of swell and reduced currents.

Characteristic bleaching scars and isotope temperature records from coral cores commonly show evidence of past bleaching events going back thousands of years. There is no evidence for a recent increase in frequency and/or severity of bleaching events and nothing to link extended periods of calm winds with global warming.

In past geologic periods when global climate was warmer than at present corals enjoyed greater latitudinal distribution. The most likely effect of a warming climate on reefs would seem to be an expansion of their geographic distribution and there is some evidence this is already happening. In Florida recent growth of coral has occurred farther north than it did a few decades ago and in the same areas sub-fossil corals indicate previous such advances in the recent geologic past.

Hoegh-Guldberg has found an attractive GW niche in the well established guild of GBR doomscryers. It has provided notoriety, acclaim and generous research support. Whether his prophesies will stand up to the reality test remains to be seen. Based on the track record of science based doomscrying his odds don’t look too good. In fact sheep’s entrails and tea leaves seem to produce better results, probably because they at least incorporate some element of intuitive judgment.”

Last year Walter wrote a review titled ‘Threats to the Great Barrier Reef’, published by the IPA, it can be downloaded by clicking here.

This picture was taken at the Great Barrier Reef by Roger Steene:
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Global Warming & The Reef: Andrew Bolt &

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On 31st January there was a piece in The Age titled ‘Scientists worried by reef bleaching’ quoting Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the University of Queensland, with Don Henry from the Australian Conservation Foundation suggesting the problem of bleaching that Ove was so worried about, could be fixed if only the Australian government ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

I received an email from a reader of this blog a couple of weeks ago pointing out that expert, and academic, Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg keeps changing his tune on global warming and its impact on the reef. He wrote:

“Within a little over a month, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg’s estimates have dropped from 50-60 percent to 1 percent of the reef bleached. That is simply an amazing change over a short period of time, particularly when you consider the amount of time required to do field work, analyse data etc. In the later article, Ove appears to be discrediting the scientists who made the initial estimates, when of course they were his!

I will be interested to see if Ove makes a statement also modiyfing his claims that the reef will be dead and barren within 30 to 50 years.

My feeling is that the initial claims were simply scaremongering and the disappointing thing is his willingness to go public with such claims with only preliminary data rather than any real published material.”

Herald Sun Columnist Andrew Bolt also noticed the inconsistencies in the advice from Ove:

“How many times must the experts be wrong about Barrier Reef devastation before we disbelieve their scares?

HOW many times must the Great Barrier Reef “survive” before we figure it’s not really dying?

Actually, the real question is a bit ruder.

As in: How many times can global-warming alarmists such as Prof Ove Hoegh-Guldberg be wrong about the reef’s “devastation” before we learn to ignore their scares?

The trouble is our reef is so well-loved that green militants, desperate that we back their theory of man-made global warming, consider it the perfect hostage.

No month goes by without one screaming: “Freeze! Out of the car, or the reef gets it!”

And Hoegh-Guldberg, head of Queensland University’s Centre for Marine Studies, has threatened us more often than most.

Just three months ago he was at it again, issuing a press release with a grim warning: High temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.

Just four paragraphs on he upped the ante, warning that the warm seas “may result in greater damage” still — to more than 60 per cent of the reef — and we “have to rapidly reduce the rate of global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.”

You heard him, jerk. Get out of your car.

But as anyone who’s seen the reef lately knows, it’s still there and still beautiful.

Ask — hey! — Hoegh-Guldberg himself. He’s just back from a trip out to the outer reef and reports that, um, the bleaching, er, has had, well, “quite a minimal impact”, after all. In fact, just 1 per cent was affected.

And history tells us even that little bit will recover.

What history? The history of an earlier Hoegh-Guldberg scare.

In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg was commissioned by Greenpeace — warning — to find out why bits of the reef had just turned white.

Global warming was to blame, he concluded, which pleased Greenpeace awfully.

More, it moaned, and the professor obliged: Warming seas meant “coral reefs could be eliminated from most areas of the world by 2100”.

Click here to keep reading.

You don’t need to be really clever to work out that global warming might not be so good for polar bears, but it is probably going to be OK for Nemo, as I’ve explained previously, click here.

But even the Australian Financial Review can’t help but scaremonger. An article in the Review on Friday (BCA Warms to Climate Change Rethink, pg. 57) claimed a 1C temperature rise would result in 81 percent of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching. One degree was the extent of the temperature rise last year according to the Bureau of Meterology. The Review would have published the one degree temperature rise for last year, and is now publishing that a one degree rise will bleach most of the reef! How confused must editors and journalists be with all the global warming scaremongering?

Several commentators at this blog have been indignant about the letter from the 60 skeptics in which the scientists suggested there has been some exaggeration, and there could be more public consultation about climate change issues (see comments following the blog post here). They claim the letter ignores the science and seriousness of the issue and is just about playing politics. But these same commentators will ignore the more ridiculous claims from Ove and other ‘believers’ who spin stories that result in completely nonsense predictions.

On a brighter note, here is a little Nemo from The Great Barrier Reef:
Reef Dave 016 blog2.JPG