Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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AP Duped by Spoof Global Warming Study?

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CBS News have published an Associated Press (AP) story entitled: ‘Today’s Quakes Deadlier Than In Past,’ Study: Seismic Activity 5 Times More Energetic Than 20 Years Ago Because Of Global Warming:

(AP) New research compiled by Australian scientist Dr. Tom Chalko shows that global seismic activity on Earth is now five times more energetic than it was just 20 years ago

The research proves that destructive ability of earthquakes on Earth increases alarmingly fast and that this trend is set to continue, unless the problem of “global warming” is comprehensively and urgently addressed……

What a pity an earlier study by Chalko seems to have gone unnoticed: ‘Can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming?’

NU Journal of Discovery is an unknown journal, with only a handful of publications, all of them by Chalko, who happens to be on the journal editorial board. NU (or Nature University) isn’t a real university.

Here are a few more things Chalko has been involved in:

Aliens! http://thiaoouba.com/faq.htm

Auras: http://thiaoouba.com/seeau.htm

Astral Travel? http://thiaoouba.com/astr.htm

He even sells “bioresonant” shirts:
http://bioresonant.com/dress.html?PHPSESSID=1a7fd4e1219326e73544904d8d1ac67d

Now they are groovy! I might even get one myself.

Global warming causing earthquakes and exploding planet earth. What next?

Hat tip to MM and JP.

UPDATE: The CBS News article has now been pulled – the link is dead.

Stop Complaining About the Lower Murray And Open the Barrages

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The South Australian Government’s claim, as reported by ABC Online, that it cannot save the Lower Lakes and Coorong on its own and is reliant on support from the other Murray-Darling states is simply untrue.

As I wrote in The Land on May 15, the main problem in the lower Murray is developing acidity from the drying of the lower lakes, and the simple solution is to open the barrages at the bottom of Lake Alexandrina and let the area reflood with seawater.

Potential acid sulphate soils (ASS) are common along much of the Australian coastline. These soils formed after the last major sea level rise, which began about 10,000 years ago. The soils are harmless as long as they remain waterlogged. But, if the water table is lowered the sulphide in the soils will react with oxygen forming sulphuric acid.

In the case of the lower lakes near the mouth of the Murray River in South Australia, the barrages built 80 years ago are stopping inundation from seawater; in the same way the dykes in Holland are used to reclaim land. Indeed the Dutch have been managing associated acid sulphate soil problems for more than four centuries.

The drought continues in the Murray Darling Basin and so the barrages should be opened to flood the lower lakes. If a temporary weir was constructed at Wellington, the salt water would not go any futher upstream.

Despite the drought, South Australians have so far been receiving fully 76 percent of their annual entitlement when many NSW and Victorian irrigators have had no water allocation.

It is time the South Australians stopped blaming upstream irrigators for a drought beyond everyone’s control.

Acid Sulfate Soils have been associated with fish kills in coastal Queensland and New South Wales when land was inappropriately drained. For example, about 700 hectares of land near Cairns was drained in 1976, and since then it has been estimated that 72,000 tonnes of acid has flowed into Trinity Inlet.

Approximately 50 percent of the NSW cane land is underlain with potential ASS and inappropriate drainage of these soils caused a major fish kill in the Tweed River in 1987.

NSW farmers have since solved the problem through the implementation of less intrusive drainage and liming.
The can-do NSW farmers got on and fixed their problem, but the South Australians have instead provided money to CSIRO Land and Water to undertake a study, including to, establish the severity and spatial extent of the problem.

In the interim there will be lots of media releases and whinging, including about how they should be receiving more stored irrigation water from the Hume Dam in the Upper Murray or else their lake turns to acid.

There is in fact a simple solution to the problem in the lower Murray, open the barrages and let seawater re-flood the area.

2000 Years of North Icelandic Sea Surface Temperatures

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A new paper has been published by Sicre et al in Earth and Planetary Science Letters entitled: ‘Decadal variability of sea surface temperatures off North Iceland over the last 2000 years.’

The Abstract states:
Ocean variability at decadal time-scales remains poorly described partly because of the scarcity of high temporal resolution marine records. Here, we present a reconstruction of Sea Surface Temperatures (SSTs) over the past two millennia at unprecedented temporal resolution (2 to 5 years), from a marine core located off North Iceland. Alkenone paleothermometry was used to infer SST variability, and tephrochronology to build the age model. Spectral analyses of the SST signal indicate intermittent 20–25 year oscillations, with periods of strong and weak power, that are likely reflecting the ocean response to wind forcing, presumably the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Warmer SSTs and paleo-magnetic proxy data, between 1000 and 1350 year A.D., overlapping the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), suggest enhanced heat transport across the Denmark Strait by the North Icelandic Irminger Current (NIIC). This is in contrast with the subsequent period, which includes the Little Ice Age (LIA), showing continuous cooling towards the 20th century. Reduced NIIC flow through the Denmark Strait likely resulting from higher freshwater and sea ice export from the Arctic would account for the observed colder conditions.

Keywords: Decadal variability; Sea surface temperature; North Atlantic; Alkenones; Medieval Warm Period; Little Ice Age; Iceland

l1_northiceland2.gif

The authors state in the Discussion:

“A remarkable feature of the North Icelandic SST record is the abrupt increase of around 1–1.5 °C occurring within a decade around 980 A.D., maybe imputable to the onset of the MWP. This sustained warm period, lasting for several centuries, ends by a sharp cooling around 1350 A.D., following a brief cold episode around 1250 A.D. The same pronounced centennial-scale warming, though not exactly synchronous, has been documented by the distant records from the Sargasso Sea (Keigwin, 1996), the Eastern sub-tropical Atlantic (deMenocal et al., 2000) and estuarine sediments of Chesapeake bay (Cronin et al., 2005), confirming its widespread occurrence in the North Atlantic region.”

Hat tip to CO2Science.org

How ‘Green’ is the Hybrid Car?

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On 10th June we learned that Australia’s first locally manufactured hybrid car will roll off Toyota’s production line in less than two years, in a deal Victorian Premier John Brumby has heralded as a ‘coup’.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Toyota’s president Katsuaki Watanabe made the announcement today in Japan.

ABC News: Brumby lauds $35m Toyota hybrid ‘coup’

I don’t have any axe to grind over Hybrid cars, I’d just like to know the truth about how ‘green’ they really are. In the US and UK there has been some controversy over the ‘dust to dust’ or ‘life cycle’ CO2 emissions, costs and energy useage of the Toyota Prius. Toyota supposedly produced their own report, which to the best of my knowledge has never been made public. A CNW Marketing report claimed that the dust to dust cost per mile for a Toyota Prius was $3.249, compared to $3.027 for Hummer H2. There is more in a balanced article from the UK Telegraph from 2007 entitled: Who are you kidding?

This news has reached Australia:

As more Australians scramble to buy hybrid petrol/electric cars, Britain’s biggest-selling auto magazine has taken a swipe at them, saying hybrids are no better for emissions than an efficient diesel or petrol-driven car.

The magazine Auto Express says none of the hybrids’ advertised emissions figures were borne out in their test drives.

ABC News: Hybrid cars ‘not so green’

Meanwhile, Toyota are promising a ‘plug-in’ hybrid for 2010.

Thanks to Luke for alerting me to Australia embracing the hybrid car, while I was on holiday in Spain – I’m still catching up!

Jason – 2 Ocean Research Satellite Due for Launch

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Teams of climate change researchers around the world will be anxiously counting down the launch of the Jason-2 satellite from California, scheduled for 20 June 2008. Successful lift-off will mean a whole new era in detecting the expansion of our oceans and sea level rise, both major indicators of climate change.

CSIRO: ‘Countdown to Satellite Launch and new era of ocean research’

The Only Way is UP: Reality Trumps Emissions Projections

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There is a new paper (in press) in the journal Climatic Change by Peter Sheenan of the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia entitled: ‘The new global growth path: implications for climate change analysis and policy’

The Abstract states:

In recent years the world has moved to a new path of rapid global growth, largely driven by the developing countries, which is energy intensive and heavily reliant on the use of coal—global coal use will rise by nearly 60% over the decade to 2010. It is likely that, without changes to the policies in place in 2006, global CO2 emissions from fuel combustion would nearly double their 2000 level by 2020 and would continue to rise beyond 2030. Neither the SRES marker scenarios nor the reference cases assembled in recent studies using integrated assessment models capture this abrupt shift to rapid growth based on fossil fuels, centred in key Asian countries. While policy changes must and will occur, the realism of the reference case is critical for analysis and policy formulation. Using such a reference path will have significant effects on impact and damage estimates, on the analysis of achievable stabilisation paths and on estimates of the costs of achieving stabilisation at a given GHG concentration level. Use of a realistic reference path is also essential for the international negotiations, arising out of the COP13 meeting in Bali, to achieve widely desired stabilisation goals: both the level of emission reductions to be achieved, and the preferred distribution of those reductions over countries and regions, will be heavily influenced by the reference case assumed.

Meanwhile, China has clearly overtaken the United States as the world’s leading emitter of carbon dioxide, a new study has found, its emissions increasing 8 percent in 2007. The Chinese increase accounted for two-thirds of the growth in the year’s global greenhouse gas emissions.

As UK Aussie Rolf Harris would say, “Can you tell what it is yet?”

Hat tip to Prometheus.