Forget drugs, extortion or prostitution. If the makers of the Underbelly TV series are looking for new worlds of organised crime, they need look no further than Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s policy to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Read more here.
Blog
Giant Squid!
Australian PM Blogging?
Welcome to the Australian Prime Minister’s new blog. A first topic for discussion is climate change. Visit here.
Solar Cycle Link to Global Climate: Now Something Official
THERE is nothing new about claims of a link between solar cycles and global climate. But now there is research which has been peer-reviewed and published somewhere reputable. Also, the work was by scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. According to yesterday’s press release it shows that maximum solar activity and its aftermath have impacts on Earth that resemble La Niña and El Niño events in the tropical Pacific Ocean. This is what they say:
“THE research may pave the way toward predictions of temperature and precipitation patterns at certain times during the approximately 11-year solar cycle.
“These results are striking in that they point to a scientifically feasible series of events that link the 11-year solar cycle with ENSO, the tropical Pacific phenomenon that so strongly influences climate variability around the world,” says Jay Fein, program director in NSF’s Division of Atmospheric Sciences. “The next step is to confirm or dispute these intriguing model results with observational data analyses and targeted new observations.”
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Saving Australia’s Forests for Carbon: Valid Science or Green Activism?
A RECENT Australian Government study of 115 key industries found that only the forestry sector was net carbon-positive. Yet, a major Wilderness Society campaign is advocating the closure of Australian timber industries to help mitigate climate change.
Their campaign revolves around research by scientists from the Australian National University Fenner School of Environment and Society who have found that large amounts of carbon reside in some Australian “old growth” forests. Environmental activists have shoe-horned this finding into their over-arching 40-year campaign to completely evict timber production from all Australian forests. Their rationale is that a total absence of timber harvesting will allow all forests to become “old growth” which will store maximum amounts of carbon.
This raises several important issues. First, closing a carbon-positive industry that is based on a renewable resource is hardly likely to reduce carbon emissions. Second, the capability of most forests to attain “old growth” is reliant on fire, irrespective of timber harvesting. And third, there is concern about the integrity of the Wilderness Society’s campaign and the key participatory role of several ANU scientists.
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Sorting Priorities
“Right now the only certain way to save lives is by calling off this misguided war on climate change. If and when climate change promises to claim more casualties than poverty and starvation, the world will begin heeding their calls. If, however, these climate-change casualties don’t materialize, there would have been no need to act in the first place. Either way, the world has far more immediate and scarier problems than climate change to address right now.” Shikha Dalmia, Forbes, 15 July 2009
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.