Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Climate Change

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Rita hit the US mainland (near Port Arthur, Texas) as a category 3 hurricane last night. This will put Rita in the US National Hurricane Centres ‘major hurricane’ category.

It is starting to really look like there has been a recent significant increase in the number and intensity of big storms hitting the North Atlantic basin.

I thought the recent paper at Tech Central Station was interesting from this perspective. If you want to keep arguing the relevance of this paper and about numbers and intensity of hurricanes there is a long thread at this blog here.

Some have suggested ‘it’ is all to do with anthropogenic global warming (AGW), others that is is a return to ‘the conditions’ of the 1940s.

A bit has been said about weather patterns changing in Australia after 1976. This is when some claim it really started to get dry in the south west of Australia.

I had a look at the Bureau of Meterology time series rainfall data the other day and noticed that there was a spike this autumn for the SW, View image .

The spike didn’t carry through to winter. But it will be interesting to see what this year’s total rainfall for the SW looks like.

I have also noted water allocations keep increasing for irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin. I gather places like Mildura are looking green, as is much of western Queensland.

Could we be in for some wetter years?

Quote for this Week

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If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

George Orwell

……………………….
And I might post another ‘quote for the week’ next Friday. So feel free to send me your best quote for next week, next week. In the interim perhaps post your best quote from this week as a comment below. Cheers,

PM Announces Support for Biofuels

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The Prime Minister has just announced:

Today I am pleased to release the report of the Biofuels Taskforce. I commissioned the Taskforce in May of this year to examine the latest evidence on the impacts and benefits of ethanol and other biofuels.

The Taskforce found that:

1. there are potentially significantly greater health benefits from ethanol use than previously thought; and

2. greenhouse and regional benefits are similar to previous research undertaken; but that

3. the biofuels industry faces considerable market barriers including low consumer confidence and high commercial risk; and

4. on current settings the Government’s biofuel production target of 350 megalitres (ML) by 2010 will not be met.

I reaffirm the Government’s commitment to achieving our target of at least 350 ML biofuel production by 2010.

In a world of high oil and petrol prices, it is important that unnecessary barriers preventing the development of an alternative fuels market in Australia are removed to allow consumers to make decisions based on sound economic, environmental and social signals. In a climate where petrol prices are likely to remain high it is important to encourage greater use of biofuels.

Today I announce a package of measures to help address market barriers and restore consumer confidence in the biofuels industry.

The Australian Government will work with oil companies, petrol retailers, consumer groups, the biofuels industry and car manufacturers to ensure achievement of the target by 2010. In particular, the Government will work with the major oil companies to develop Industry Action Plans to underpin the achievement of the 350 ML biofuel target.

The Deputy Prime Minister and I will meet oil companies next week to commence the development of Industry Action Plans. This meeting will also provide an opportunity to discuss the outlook for petrol prices.

The Government will closely monitor progress against the Industry Action Plans to ensure all actions are delivered on time.

Consumer confidence in the biofuels industry was damaged in 2002. The Taskforce report finds that the low level of consumer confidence is not justified by the facts. The Government considers that every effort should be made to restore consumer confidence in the biofuels market. The Government will:

1. demonstrate its confidence in ethanol blended fuel by encouraging users of Commonwealth vehicles to purchase E10 where possible;

2. undertake vehicle testing of vehicles in the Australian market to validate their operation with E5 and E10 ethanol blends and work with the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries to ensure that consumers receive accurate and up-to-date information;

3. increase fuel quality compliance inspections to ensure ethanol blends meet fuel quality standards;

4. simplify the E10 label, which inadvertently acts as a warning to consumers against using ethanol;

5. subject to the results of vehicle testing, allow E5 blends to be sold without a label, as in Europe, giving fuel companies greater commercial flexibility to increase supply; and

6. work with Australian fuels and transport industries to establish standard forms of biodiesel to provide certainty to the market.

7. work with the States and Territories to adopt fuel volatility standards (an existing market barrier) that are transparent, nationally consistent and take full account of the latest information on the impacts of ethanol blends on air quality.

The Biofuels Taskforce found that there are potentially significant air quality and health benefits from ethanol use. To further assess and promote the benefits of biofuels the government will:

1. commission a study on the health impact of ethanol to validate overseas research under Australian conditions; and

2. promote biodiesel’s beneficial environmental properties such as its biodegradability through a B5 biodiesel trial in Kakadu National Park.

The package I announce today is in addition to the Australian Government

Killing Elephants

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Up TO 10,000 elephants, including whole families, are facing slaughter as South Africa prepares to end its ten-year ban on culling according to various news reports, including at Times Online.

The South Africa government is expecting an outcry from animal rights groups across the world and is trying to temper this through an 18-month ‘consultation period’ to precede the cull. The cull will involve rounding up and shooting entire family groups.

The cull is necessary because the thriving elephant population in the Kruger national park is eating itself out of vegetation and drinking itself out of water.

An adult elephant consumes about 170kg of vegetation a day. And this is what it produces …

Photo taken in Kenya in about 1990 .

The article in Times Online continues,

The inevitable outcry about the cull disguises South Africa’s remarkable achievements in bringing the Kruger elephants back from the brink of being wiped out. At the beginning of the 20th century there were only 50 or so wild elephants in the whole of South Africa.

Major James Stevenson-Hamilton, a short, stocky Scot, Laird of Fairholm in Lanarkshire, started the recovery when he created the Kruger Park in 1902 at the end of the Boer War. There are now 17,000 elephants in 31 separate South African reserves.

It is unknown how many elephants there are globally. It is generally accepted/quoted that in 1930s there were 5-10 million elephants in Africa. But by 1979 only 1.3 million. The current estimate is about 600,000. But I am not sure how any of the above figures were calculated/estimated.

I can’t find any information on elephants numbers at the CITES site.

It seems particularly sad if there are so few, that any have to be killed. Many of the Kenyan National Parks were being poached out when I was working there in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

‘Red Poles’ Also Costs Lots

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Louis was perhaps somewhat baffled by my recent post on salinity. A reader of this weblog who lives closer to the issue sent in this comment from ‘The Ringer’, Download file. It perhaps provides an additional perspective.

The Ringer suggests the random red splotches on that map are just as controversial and costly to tax payers as the National Gallery’s Blue Poles.

And all this reminds me of the ‘National Land & Water Resources Audit Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000’ which appears to provide detailed statistics on the extent and magnitude of our salinity problem. But on careful analysis it is evident that the document always presents a prediction – even when data is presented for 1998. The entire document is concerned with ‘hazard’ and ‘high risk’ without providing a single statistic indicating the actual measured extent of dryland salinity.

And then there is the ‘National Land and Water Resources Audit Australian Water Resources Assessment 2000’ which is also meant to provide salinity information. However, without presenting a single trend line for any water quality indicator, the report purports to provide, “the first overview of Australia’s declining surface water quality with salinity, nutrients and turbidity issues revealed across most of the intensively used basins”.

Good News for Four Dolphins

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The NOAA Fisheries Service and the Marine Life Aquarium of Gulfport, Miss., working with a number of other partners, rescued the last four of the eight trained bottlenose dolphins that were swept out of an aquarium tank torn apart by the storm surge of Hurricane Katrina on August 29. Normally held in captivity, the dolphins don’t have the necessary skills to survive on their own. They have survived various injuries and predators and have stayed together since the storm. … read more here http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2510.htm .

And isn’t this a beautiful picture, http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/images/katrina-dolphin-rescue-09-2005.jpg .