Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Taz the Technician

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Taz, who also uses the pen name Bugger, has an opinion on most everything. A champion of the anecdotal he can hold his own in discussion on forestry, energy – but I’m not so sure about salinity.

I’d been wondering how Taz spent his time between growing up in Tasmania and retiring in Canberra, so I sent him an email and this was his reply:

“Technical history – Fitter, Machinist, Mechanic, Scientific Instrument Maker, Engineer, Technician, Technical Officer

Before retirement 1996, The Spectrum Management Agency – frequency assigning, licensing policy, major network rollout, implementation of device interference and immunity standards.

Previous; AFP technical support only, mostly in radio communications for routine & covert operations, VIP protection, also supported with our gear some UN and offshore operations.

ANU John Curtin School Medical Research, electronic instrument circuits for the late Professor Peter Gage

Last industrial site as contractor; Cleveland Tin, cassiterite and associated mineral recovery and concentration plant at Luina closed down in 1986. Other Mines were King Island Scheelite, Savage River ion ores, Renison (Bell) Goldfields tin separation and metal concentration.

Other freelance technical support in Tasmania, Education Dept. scientific instruments in high schools and colleges, UMT (Bonlac) reverse osmosis whey protein filtration, cheese making, milk drying, Bakeries, Glaxo opium poppy storage, Tasmanian (Adelaide, Seini) mushroom crops Spreyton, Blue Ribbon smoked small goods Camdale, various vegetable processors.

Simultaneously I sold fire protection door to door in these industries for importers like Firemaster & CIG. In this manner I visited most timber and logging operations.

Melbourne industrial scene; worked all over, natural gas & fuel, oil refineries & petro-chemical plants, ICI research, paper mills, hospitals, breweries, food processors, appliance makers, MMBW water supply & sewage treatment plants, Pilkington’s float glass plant.

Some special fields in industry, Pressure and Temperature measurements, Ph control in acid treatment, flow of slurries, effluents, furnaces and boilers, natural gas & super heated steam, evaporation, freezers, vacuum, chlorination, fluoridation, floatation, continuous cellulose web production, hazardous environments, radio propagation and reception, induction furnaces, nuclear devices, x-rays.

Other long term interests; Australian military aircraft production and aeronautical research at Fishermen’s Bend, Bushfires, Civil Construction, Electricity generation and distribution, Industrial noise & hearing defects, Materials recycling, Hand tools, Soils, Timber, Streams.

Major industrial achievement – my retirement, mostly intact with ten toes and fingers.”

Thanks Taz.

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Auditing of Environmental Policies: Request from Victorian Farmers

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I received the following note from a policy officer at the Victorian Farmers Federation:

“This may be of interest as it relates directly to your work regarding the importance of scientific accountability. It’s an extract from the Victorian Farmers Federation’s 2006-07 Pre-Budget Submission to the Victorian State Government. It can be found at www.vff.org.au.

2.4 Expansion of the Auditor-General’s Office

Environmental policies which are adopted, implemented and funded by government should always be based on credible scientific data. Unfortunately, all too often, government decisions in relation to environmental issues are made on the basis of political imperatives, rather than substantiated scientific evidence.

The Victorian farm community is extremely concerned with this changing trend in government decision making, as we believe it is a nationwide phenomenon which is affecting governments of all political persuasions. While this disquiet was initially founded upon concerns about poor policy development, we are now becoming more worried about the increasing cost of implementing and maintaining questionable environmental policies based on limited scientific justification.

A recent example of this problem in practice is the current situation facing farmers in Victorian in regards to our State’s native vegetation regulations. To date, neither the policies nor the regulations have ever been thoroughly audited by any notable authority. Despite the government’s insistence on enforcing the regulations implementation, the farm community has never been informed of what the true cost of this policy is, and if there has been any genuine attempt to quantify the environmental benefits which are supposedly to have resulted from its implementation.

It is the view of the VFF that environmental policies such as this should be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis which would investigate the true price of maintaining such a policy, with comparisons made to the expected community value attributed to its ongoing enforcement. Unfortunately, while the farm community would warmly welcome such an initiative, no organisation within government is currently equipped or empowered to undertake such a task.

As a result, the VFF would like the State Government to expand the functions, mandate and powers of the Auditor-Generals Office so that it can conduct regular audits of the scientific environmental advice and outcomes provided to and overseen by Government departments, agencies and statutory authorities.

The Auditor-Generals Office currently reports ‘to parliament and the community on the efficient and effective management of public sector resources, and provides assurance on the financial integrity of Victoria’s system of government[1]’. We believe that with adequate funding, support and direction, such an organisation would be ideally suited to conduct this important task.

Recommendation:
That the State Government expand the functions, mandate and powers of the Auditor-General’s Office to include regular audits of:
1. The scientific environmental advice provided to Government by various agencies and statutory authorities, and;
2. The environmental outcomes achieved by Department initiated programs.”

This submission seems rather relevant in the context of the following recent blog posts:
1. Exaggerated salinity predictions and absence of auditing of spending on salinity.
2. Spending on environmental flows to the Macquarie marshes given the levies on private land preventing water getting to the southern and northern nature reserves.

The Whale: A Fish in Japanese Eyes (Part 2)

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Whales&Jap_Komatsu.jpg

Most Australians love whales and abhor the idea of killing these magnificient creatures. In contrast there is a long tradition of killing and eating whales in Japan.

I am an Australian and I am interested in understanding the history and culture of whaling in Japan. I like challenging my beliefs and preconceptions and learning why and how different cultures harvest wildlife.

This is part 2 of ‘The Whale: A Fish in Japanese Eyes’ a series of readings from Whales and the Japanese by Masayki Komatsu and Shigeko Misaki:

“Some 4000 to 5500 years ago, in the earliest days of the Jomon Period, our ancestors were eating whale meat, as re-vealed by archaeological finds from around San Nai Maruyama, in Aomori Prefecture.

Large deposits of whale and dolphin bone have been discovered at these sites. In those days, there was no whaling as we know it today, rather the people made use of small whales that beached themselves, or drifted already dead to shore. Those whales were called yori kujira, or visiting whale, and were thought of as gifts from heaven.

There is considerable debate, depending on which period of our history we analyze, as to whether or not ancient Japanese people simply passively awaited yori kujira or went to sea to actively hunt whales. However, one thing is certain: Japanese have utilized whales and small cetaceans for food throughout our history, just as we have utilized all the sea’s resources such as seaweed, fish and shell-fish. However, even in the Jomon Period, there is evidence of some active whaling.

The remains of a Jomon Period village (from 4000 BC to 300 BC) unearthed in Noto Peninsula, in Ishikawa Prefecture, revealed a considerable deposit of whale and dolphin bone. It was found in such quantities as to indicate a high probability that the people of that region actively hunted whales and dolphins.”

To read Part 1, and the comments that followed, click here.

Climate Models More Accurate Than Salinity Models

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Some time ago I was sent a link to a paper by Myanna Lahsen, an anthropologist who spent seven years studying climate modelers at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research.

Her research findings seem to focus on what the modelers said, without scrutinizing the extent to which what they said about the models, accorded with reality. In particular Myanna found that the modelers were very attached to their models and sometimes confused model output with reality. But it is unclear from her work how accurate the models were – the extent to which they did accord with reality?

Last time I looked I was impressed with the extent to which well known global warming scientist, James Hansen, was still on track with his 1988 prediction (Scenario B) about global temperature increase.

Then again between his Scenario A and C, he was covering a range of possibilities?

But hey, all predictions, made back in 1988, have been consistent with what has been a warming trend over the last 18 years.

In contrast, government scientists who made predictions about salinity along the Murray, in particular the NSW Riverina, got it really wrong.

The following graph shows what the models predicted would be the extent of the problem in the Riverina with, and without, a commitment to catchment and farm drainage plans.

salinity projections NSW riverina.JPG

The problem of rising groundwater in the NSW Riverina once seemed intractable. In 1990 123,300 hectares was considered at high risk of salinity because the water table was within two meters of the surface. At that time it was predicted that if the irrigators did nothing, by 2006 228,700 hectares would be lost to salt. If the irrigators committed to a $473 million program with $150 million from the state and federal governments, it was predicted that only 182,620 million hectares would be lost.

The irrigators committed to the program in the early 1990s including the implementation of drainage works often including water recycling systems to reduce recharge to the groundwater and improve water use efficiency.

The actual area now affected by shallow water tables is just 3,758 hectares – this is just two percent of the area that the NSW government thought would be affected under the most optimist scenario.

While I am pleased salt levels have been falling in the Murray River, and that the area at risk of salinity in the NSW Riverina has reduced to 2 percent of what was predicted, I am always amazed at how many people ignore this great news story.

Earlier this week the Australian Parliament’s Senate Environment Committee released a report about salinity. The report reads as though hardly anything has been achieved in address salinity in the Australian landscape.

The report recommends an extension of funding for the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality – a project that began in 2001 with a budget of $1.4 billion. It is unclear from the senate report how this $1.4 billion has been spent.

Senator Andrew Bartlett chaired the committee and has a blog piece on the report here.

The Senate report repeats the finding from the National Land and Water Audit’s Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000 that 17 million hectares of Australian farmland could be lost to dryland salinity by 2050.

Yet various recent reports have shown the 17 million hectare figure to be a gross exaggeration.

As Mick Keogh from the Australian Farm Institute recently explained:

“Increasingly, researchers are concluding that many of the assumptions and much of the data used in generating this estimate were wrong, or should not have been used. There are suggestions, for example, that some State salinity assessments used to calculate the national estimate overstate the current extent of salinity by factors of between three and seven times, let alone the projected future extent. Several of the state reports had no reliable data to base estimates on, and many made assumptions about future groundwater levels – a critical element in salinity assessments – that defy the laws of gravity and science, and are not supported by available data.”

At some point in time, the Australian community and the Australian Senate should accept that farmers have learnt how to manage salt. It hasn’t gone away, but the area affected by salinity is contracting and this is a great news story everyone should be shouting about.

But they are not.

And I am reminded of a comment posted at this blog about the same day the Senate released the report. While Geoff Sherrington made the comment in the context of global warming, it seems much more applicable to salinity modeling:

“Modelers would be prudent to keep their frameworks up to date, with periodic testing and private comparison with others, until consensus is reached that the methodology is scientifically good and all plausible effects are quantified.

Economists should not make predictions until that consensus is reached, unless they like eating humble pie.

If, in my earth sciences past, our company had announced a new ore deposit and given figures for its value to the Stock Exchange that was premature, we would well have ended up incarcerated.

If we got our maths wrong and mined a body that turned out a dud, we could go out of business and on the street. These outcomes instill a certain caution and accountability. Greenhouse modelers who produce premature estimates don’t have the same sword hanging over their heads. Their reward is more likely idolatry from supplicants.”

Certainly the doomsay salinity modelers have received nothing but praise, and the science managers who repeated their predictions promoted including to the National Water Commission, while I am often called all sort of nasty names at the popular blogs including at John Quiggin’s and Andrew Bartlett’s for daring to suggest they might have got their predictions very wrong.

Blair Announces New ‘Politics & Environment Wiki’

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Jennifer has kindly asked me to write a few introductory words as part of the launch of the new ‘Politics and Environment Wiki’.

As one who knows bugger-all about Wikis I guess I am eminently qualified… a bit like asking some of the commentators at this blog to say a few words about global warming!

This PEW (Politics and Environment Wiki) will provide an opportunity for interested and knowledgeable persons to actively contribute to the knowledge base concerning various aspects of the environment with special emphasis on the interaction between the political and quasi-political process and the environment.

Since I started reading and contributing, albeit in a small way, to this BLOG it became obvious to Jennifer and others that amongst all the vociferous outbursts, put-downs and in some cases outright nastiness, there is a lot of good information being posted on the site.

PEW will enable this information to be stored, changed and made more accessible to a wider audience. Of course the BLOG will stay and hopefully some of the spin-offs from the BLOG will encompass the identification of subjects worthy for inclusion in PEW and the clarification and development of ideas and thoughts prior to their inclusion.

However for PEW to realize its potential, certain protocols need to be observed.

While the finer details are spelled out in the site, contributors should remember that the underlying premise is that PEW exists for disseminating and storing knowledge and making it available to a wide audience. It is not for displaying one’s knowledge of invective or one-upmanship. It also becomes rather pointless as the articles show no author’s name.

So I guess the ball is at our feet and it’s up to us to make the best of the opportunity provided by Jennifer. So log in and create an account.

Blair

PS A nice little article about Wiki can be found here.

What About the Sun & Max Planck & Nature?

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David posted the following comment this morning at this blog:

“We know that the globe is warming very rapidly (~0.2C/decade), and that this warming has occured in the absence of any natural forcing process and is occuring about 10 times faster than the sustained warming at the end of the last ice age.”

And it reminded me of this press release from the Max Planck Institute which is only a couple of years old now.

Titled ‘The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years’ it includes comment that:

“An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun’s activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades

The activity of the Sun over the last 11,400 years, i.e., back to the end of the last ice age on Earth, has now for the first time been reconstructed quantitatively by an international group of researchers led by Sami K. Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany). The scientists have analyzed the radioactive isotopes in trees that lived thousands of years ago. As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal Nature from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years. Based on a statistical study of earlier periods of increased solar activity, the researchers predict that the current level of high solar activity will probably continue only for a few more decades.

I was also reminded of this Max Planck media release when I read page 3 of The Australian on 27th March and a piece titled ‘Beachgoers back latest theory on brighter sun’. This story quotes a Martin Wild of the Institute of Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich, Switzerland.