Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Natural Gas to Replace Oil in Australia?

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The recent prediction by the head of Caltex Australia that the price of oil may very well double the already record highs for crude, have only heightened concerns about the security of Australia’s future fuel supplies. The Federal Government, for instance, has launched a national energy security assessment.

As oil production in Australian fields declines, the Government has also sought and won approval under the United Nations Convention on the law of the sea, to expand its search for oil offshore by an area equivalent to five times the size of France.

But Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson agrees that unless there is soon a “eureka oil strike”, Australia must find a new fuel alternative with sufficient reserves to power a vast and vital national car and transport fleet.

But there are those who say there’s an obvious solution to the fuel crisis right under our collective nose, a solution that could cut fuel bills by up to 60 per cent: natural gas.

ABC – The 7.30 Report: Natural gas: the future of fuel?

Mercedes is offering the new Sprinter transporter with natural-gas drive, with operating costs 30 per cent lower than comparable diesel-engined versions.

Drive.com.au: Mercedes van with natural-gas drive

Biofuel Production Criminal: Jean Ziegler

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The United States and the European Union have taken a “criminal path” by contributing to an explosive rise in global food prices through using food crops to produce biofuels, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food said today.

At a press conference in Geneva, Jean Ziegler of Switzerland said that fuel policies pursued by the U.S. and the EU were one of the main causes of the current worldwide food crisis.

Ziegler was speaking before a meeting in Bern, Switzerland between UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of key United Nations agencies.

Ziegler said that last year the United States used a third of its corn crop to create biofuels, while the European Union is planning to have 10 percent of its petrol supplied by biofuels.

The Special Rapporteur has called for a five-year moratorium on the production of biofuels.

Read more here: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2008/2008-04-28-03.asp

Satellite Tagged Seals Collect Data from Ocean Around Antarctica

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The latest research from scientists in Antarctica reveals the deep ocean around the frozen continent is becoming less salty and that this could play a major role in changing ocean currents and the climate. New details about changes to salinity are coming from deep beneath the sea ice, courtesy of satellite tagged seals. This unique tracking program involving Australian scientists is part of a major international research program shedding new light on how the world’s oceans are changing.

ABC 7.30 Report Transcript: Satellite tagged seals shed light on climate change

On-line video report also available.

Oh, what a golden web she weaves (part III)

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Goldface.jpg

Funny, the things that you see in nature, like this humanoid face on the cephalothorax of a golden orb-weaver, Nephila pilipes.

I have previously described aspects of this spectacular species of spider, here and here. With this instalment, the adult female in the image below descended from her web on the 19th April to build her egg-sac on the ceramic-tiled floor of our living room.

Nephila3.jpg

At the outset, her abdomen was rotund, perhaps twice the diameter of the largest aspect within the image captured at the conclusion of the construction.

On a foundation bed of the same orange silk that can be seen, a white disk was established and then encased in more of the orange material. Five weeks later, the orange casing had lifted. The white disc had been abandoned, but its character was surprisingly hard; rather like coral in its chalky-porousness. I can only imagine that it was produced in much the same way as a mantid’s ootheca – soft upon release but hardened under external exposure.

It had been my understanding that egg-laying was the final phase in the three-month life-cycle of this species, but this individual struggled back to the ceiling and over a succession of days manged to rebuild a small web. Aided by the sympathies of my children, a number of march flies allowed for a fuller recovery and the re-establishment of a master-web. She lived another month and then presumably underwent a second and final reproductive cycle.

Fred Singer Does Not Believe in Martians: Lawrence Solomon

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Fred Singer, one of the world’s renowned scientists, believes in Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. “Do you really believe in Martians?” I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a Washington event. The answer was “No.”

Wikipedia’s error was neither isolated nor inadvertent. The page that Wikipedia devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer’s biography is designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career by painting him as a political partisan and someone who “is best known as president and founder (in 1990) of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, which disputes the prevailing scientific views of climate change, ozone depletion, and second-hand smoke and is science advisor to the conservative journal NewsMax.”

Innocent Wikipedia readers would be surprised to learn that Dr. Singer is no conservative kook but the first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Center; the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a commendation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for research on particle clouds; and the recipient of a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for the development and management of weather satellites.

He is, in short, a scientist of the highest calibre, with a long list of major scientific achievements, including the first measurements, with V-2 and Aerobee rockets, of primary cosmic radiation in space, the design of the first instruments for measuring ozone, and the authorship of the first publications predicting the existence of trapped radiation in the earth’s magnetic field to explain the magnetic-storm ring current.

Read more here: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/25/the-real-climate-martians-solomon.aspx

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The Real Climate Martians, by Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, April 26, 2008

100 per cent ‘Green’ Tax Increase, Less Than 1 per cent Decrease in CO2 Emissions

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In case anyone didn’t notice, the UK Treasury is the epicentre of climate related reports and also benefits from the resultant so called ‘green taxes.’ Nicholas Stern was a member of the Treasury at the time of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change, which was based on extreme computer modelled scenarios. The Stern Review spawned the equally absurd Garnaut Review.

The most recent review instigated by the UK Treasury was the King Review of Low Carbon Cars, which looked at the potential for alternative fuel cars, such as ethanol, hydrogen, or battery powered electric vehicles My suggestion for considering methanol as an alternative, as proposed by Nobel Prize for Chemistry winner George Olah, was ignored. Recently, I was fortunate enough to attend Professor Julia King’s inaugural lecture as Vice Chancellor of Aston University, which was based on the King Review. I talked to her afterwards and it became clear that isn’t a fan of personal motorised transport and is ‘government friendly.’ Hardly a recipe for objectivity, yet government reports and reviews are always described as ‘independent.’

March saw the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s ‘Budget.’ This included changes to the current road tax system for cars, which is based on CO2 emissions. As a result, the vast majority of drivers will pay more, drivers of family-sized vehicles being the hardest hit. Last week, as reported in The Telegraph, shadow Treasury minister Justine Greening obtained Treasury projections which disclose that while the amount raised from car tax will more than double – from £1.9 billion to £4.4 billion by 2010 – carbon dioxide emissions from motoring are expected to drop by less than one per cent.

I’ll leave the last words to Greening, who said, “This is a massive tax hike which will have virtually no impact on the environment. Despite their claims, the Government don’t expect this move to change behaviour at all – it is just another eco-stealth tax of the worst kind.”