Jennifer Marohasy

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Salt Threat Grossly Exaggerated (Part 2)

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The consensus from Australian scientists in positions of authority on the issue of ‘river salinity’ and the ‘spread of dryland salinity’ appears to be crumbling.

As Mick Keogh wrote yesterday in The Australian Financial Review with respect to the issue of dryland salinity:

“Increasingly, researchers are concluding that many of the assumptions and much of the data used in generating this estimate [that 17 million hectares of farmland would be lost to salt] 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.
It would be easy to dismiss these criticisms if they were just coming from farmers who have an interest in downplaying salinity.

But increasingly, the criticisms are coming from senior scientists and researchers employed by State and Commonwealth Governments, from University academics, and are contained in official reports and published research findings.”

Mick Keogh heads The Australian Farm Institute and published several papers in the institute’s journal last November (Farm Policy Journal, Vol 2, No. 4) by scientists and economists explaining that previous estimates were a gross exaggeration and that many of the policy solutions funded under the $1.4 billion Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality are seriously flawed.

I have been questioning the figure of 17 million hectares since the Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000 was first published*. I am on record in submissions to government inquiries and, for example, in Quadrant magazine in December 2004 explaining how myths are made:

“…[journalists at The Australian] have relied heavily on the government’s report “The National Land & Water Resources Audit’s Australian Dryland Salinity Assessment 2000” (NLWRA) for information regarding the spread of dryland salinity. The document warns that the area with a high potential to develop dryland salinity (from rising groundwater) will increase from 6 million hectares in 2000 to 17 million hectares in 2050, as reported by Hodge in the Australian on March 17, 2001.

The NLWRA has been widely cited and was used to help secure $1.4 billion in funding through the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality. It is therefore worth considering its technical integrity.

Interestingly, the report does not distinguish between what might normally be considered irrigation salinity as opposed to dryland salinity. It determined that areas with groundwater within two metres of the surface are at high risk of dryland salinity. The forecast ground-water levels were “based on straight-line projection of recent trends in groundwater levels”.

Yet no data supports the notion that we currently have a situation of rising groundwater in the Murray – Darling Basin. Groundwater levels in the Murray, Murrumbidgee and Coleambally irrigation areas – the regions considered most at risk – have generally fallen during the past ten years.”

I have also questioned claims river salinity levels were rising, and would continue to rise, including in my IPA Backgrounder Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment.

John Quiggin has been scathing of my work on salinity and my daring to challenge “30 years of scientific research”. In April last year he suggested that the debate really comes down to a “a pure question of comparative credibility” and concluded I had none.

What a difference a year can make.

Now some CSIRO scientists are suggesting that their organisation may have got it wrong including John Passioura who wrote in a review paper titled From Propaganda to Practicalities – the progressive evolution of the salinity debate that, “Our only defence against the charge of charlatantism is that before deceiving others, we have taken great pains to deceive ourselves” (Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture, Vol 45, pgs. 1503-1506).

John Passioura also commented:

“Remote sensing techniques, especially aerial electromagnetics coupled with good ground-truthing, were revealing great variation below ground in the occurrence of saline aquifers, both laterally and vertically. The methaphor of the ‘silent flood’, the widespread rapidly-rising uniformly-saline watertable that as going to take out millions of hectares of our most productive agricultural land, was therefore being questioned – not by the mass media, who embraced it with the macabre fascination that goes with gothic horror novels, but by experienced observers of landscapes and of hydrographs.”

Those who hate having to admit they might have been wrong, could now argue that Passioura and others are only referring to dryland salinity, not river salinity levels. That salt levels in the Murray could still be, just about to start rising again.

But come on, the boggie man with respect to reducing river salinity, has always been the argument that because of spreading dryland salinity, well, it would eventually find its way into the Murray and river salinity levels would start rising again.

This argument has now been exposed as just as hollow.

Let’s accept, it now appears that I got it right on both river salinity and dryland salinity! I feel vindicated. But I won’t hold my breath, waiting for an apology from John Quiggin or anybody else.

And I suggest Mick Keogh not hold his breath either, waiting for the ABC to correct the information at their websites.

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*It used to be easy to access the Salinity Assessment on the internet but now I just keep finding this ‘summary document’. Lucky I kept my hard copy!

Salt Threat Grossly Exaggerated (Part 1)

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Mick Keogh from The Australian Farm Institute had a piece published in yesterday’s Australian Financial Review titled ‘Getting a balanced perspective on salinity’. It reiterated what some scientists have been saying since late last year, that they got it wrong with their salt predictions.

Keogh wrote:

Conduct an internet search using the terms “salinity” and “17 million hectares” and you can access almost 500 references explaining that Australia could have 17 million hectares of salinised land by the year 2050. Websites providing this information range from the ABC and the CSIRO, to Parliaments, the BBC, the Australian Academy of Sciences, major Australian and international media groups, educational organisations, environmental groups and even sites containing speeches by the Prime Minister and the Governor General.
With such an impressive list of organisations, anyone from school children through to senior policymakers could feel comfortable that the figure is credible, and represents an authoritative estimate of the potential scale of the dryland salinity problem in Australia.
Unfortunately, the comfort is ill-founded.

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

Hydrogen Cars: President Bush’s Environmental Focus

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In his State of the Union Address, President Bush pledged $1.2billion in funding for hydrogen cars and mentioned a ‘Healthy Forests Initiative’ focused on reducing the impact of bushfires. Speaking to the American Congress he said:

…Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while dramatically improving the environment. I have sent you a comprehensive energy plan to promote energy efficiency and conservation, to develop cleaner technology, and to produce more energy at home. I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70-percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years. I have sent you a Healthy Forests Initiative, to help prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of treasured forest.

I urge you to pass these measures, for the good of both our environment and our economy. Even more, I ask you to take a crucial step and protect our environment in ways that generations before us could not have imagined.

In this century, the greatest environmental progress will come about not through endless lawsuits or command-and-control regulations, but through technology and innovation. Tonight I’m proposing $1.2 billion in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean, hydrogen-powered automobiles.

A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car — producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.

Join me in this important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

A story in the Weekend Australian reporting on a British government report outlined some alternative transport scenarios for the future:

Every journey will have to be justified, and face-to-face contact with colleagues, friends and relatives will increasingly become a luxury, with most meetings taking place via three-dimensional “telepresencing”.

… Foresight, the [British] Government’s science think tank, consulted 300 transport experts when drawing up its vision of how travel will change by 2055. It concludes that the growing demand for greater personal mobility is unsustainable and based on false notions.
Congestion should be tackled by making smarter use of existing capacity rather than by building roads and other transport links.
It states: “We cannot presume that we will have cheap oil for the next 50 years, (or that) we can respond to increasing demand by building more capacity, (or that) we will continue to have the right to move as and when we please.”

It proposes that people should be forced to pay the true cost of their journeys, including compensating for the environmental damage they cause. Charging for trips by the kilometre “would make people aware of the real costs of travel”.

… The report offers four scenarios for 2055, with the world’s willingness to adapt and ability to find technological solutions dictating which comes true. In the bleakest scenario, an acute oil shortage and lack of affordable alternative energy sources trigger a global depression. Economies collapse as businesses can no longer afford to move goods and people. People survive in increasingly isolated communities that have to learn to become self-sufficient, with most trips made by bicycle or horse.

The most optimistic scenario envisages that a cleaner alternative to oil is available in abundance, allowing greater globalisation to continue apace.

I Would Rather be a Minke Whale

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I didn’t expect Greenpeace Expedition Leader Shane Rattenbury to hesitate for so long and then to be so coy, when he was asked by Michael Duffy on ABC Radio Counterpoint (23rd January 2006) whether he would have blamed the Japanese if one of his men was hurt or killed in the Antarctic.

The text follows (for full transcript click here), but to hear the really long pause from Rattenbury, listen to the full interview (click here).

Michael Duffy: What if something went wrong? What if one of your people was killed or seriously injured? Would you blame the Japanese for that?

Shane Rattenbury: That’s something we desperately hope to avoid. We do place a real paramount on safety. All our activists are well-equipped, and you mentioned someone heading into the water…we did have that happen just last week and we were in a situation there were we were able to quickly retrieve that activist. He was suitable dressed for the occasion. I guess we do rely a certain amount on the whaling fleet in this case having a level of respect for human life as well and that they would not place…or take actions that would bring even greater risk upon our activists.

Rattenbury was not so coy when the Nisshin-Maru and Arctic Sunrise collided, click here. But that was perhaps just damage to a ship – not a life.

The Radio National interview is fascinating and includes Glenn Inwood explaining how and why the Nisshin-Maru was moving before the collision occurred, click here for my first blog on the issue.

The radio interview was just a few days after Greenpeace decided to leave the whales, the whalers, and the Antarctic, click here for Greenpeace’s summary of their campaign (20th January 2006).

That was only a few days after one of the Greenpeace campaigners ended up in the freezing waters of the Antarctic coloured red with the blood of a recently harpooned whale. The campaigner had maneuvered a small inflatable between whale and ship and then clung to a taut harpoon line. The Japanese version of events with a link to the Greenpeace video is at the end of this blog post, see below.

There is no denying the bravery of these righteous Greenpeace activists.

I say righteous, because they are so sure of themselves.

But I am not so sure.

They have left the Antarctic but will continue their campaign focused on whales and whaling.

But why not campaign for Sun Bears? It would seem there is much more real need here with the bears dwindling in number and being held in the cruelest of conditions. The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA)claims about 7,000 bears are kept at more than 200 farms across China in excessively cruel conditions,
click here.

There has been a fair amount of arguing at this blog about how special whales are. All life is special.

As long as we eat meat, some animals are going to be slaughtered, but I like the idea that they have the opportunity to ‘stretch their legs’ and feel the sun before they are slaughtered.

To quote from the High North Alliance website:

…obviously, it is extremely difficult to compare the whale’s relatively short-lasting, but intense pain when being killed, with the other more long-lasting but less intense forms of suffering experienced in cattle farming. Personally, I have no problems in making such a comparison. The conclusion of this comparison is that,

I would rather be a minke whale living in freedom until the final few minutes of pain, than a …pig or hen [or a sun bear].

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ICR Media release about Greenpeace Activist in Water:

Greenpeace claims that their activist was thrown into the cold Southern Ocean by a taut harpoon line are shown to be false in new video released by the Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR) today.

The version of the story by Texas Joe Constantine that the harpoon line fell onto their inflatable, became taut and threw him out of the boat has been placed on their website:
http://tvyil.greenpeaceweb.org/default.asp?loadfilm=59&loadcat=10
Texas Joe said:

“The harpoon line came down onto our boat trapping us between the whale and the catcher. The line came tight at that point and threw me from the boat into the water. It was a few minutes before our boat was able to come around and pick me up out of the water.”

The ICR has today placed video footage on its website that shows the line was slack on the Greenpeace inflatable for some time while Japanese crew members told the activists to throw off the line before something dangerous occurred.

ICR Director General Dr. Hiroshi Hatanaka said, “Our crew were concerned about their safety and urged them to throw the line off their boat. This can be clearly seen by the video. They kept the line on their inflatable so long that eventually it became tight. The Greenpeace activists deliberately held onto the rope while they decided how to get the best PR from it.”

Dr. Hatanaka said that when you view the edited Greenpeace video it appears the event happened in a matter of seconds, but there was plenty of time available to throw the rope off. “This slick manipulation misrepresented what happened, and Greenpeace must come out and admit their man had enough time to avoid being thrown into the sea.”

He added that this was the second time edited Greenpeace footage had shown the organisation to make false claims. Greenpeace claims that the Japanese vessel the Nisshin Maru collided with the Arctic Sunrise have also proved false.

The latest video footage can be seen at:
http://www.icrwhale.org/eng-index.htm

Gagging Who? James Hansen! Impossible!

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James Hansen has already featured on the front page of most the world’s influential newspapers at least once telling us the sky is about to fall in … well, not exactly.

James Hansen has though been in the media a lot, over the last decade or so, telling us that temperatures are rising and that by 2010 the earth will be somewhere between 0.6 and 1.1C warmer, see some of the discussion here at the Real Climate blog.

Prof Bob Carter coined the term, Hansenism, based on pronouncements by James Hansen, click here for the original speech.

According to Carter:

Why Hansenism? Because James Hansen was the NASA-employed scientist who started the climate alarmism hare running on June 23, 1988, when he appeared before a United States Congressional hearing on climate change. On that occasion, Dr Hansen used a misleading graph to convince his listeners that warming was taking place at an accelerated rate (which, it being a scorching summer’s day in Washington, a glance out of the window appeared to confirm). He wrote, in justification, in the Washington Post (February 11, 1989) that “the evidence for an increasing greenhouse effect is now sufficiently strong that it would have been irresponsible if I had not attempted to alert political leaders”.

Hansen’s testimony was taken up as a lead news story, and within days the great majority of the American public believed that a climate apocalypse was at hand.

Much later (2003), Hansen came to write “Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate … scenarios consistent with what is realistic”.

But this astonishing conversion to honesty came too late, for in the intervening years thousands of other climate scientists had meanwhile climbed onto the Hansenist funding gravy-train. Currently, global warming alarmism is fuelled by an estimated worldwide expenditure on related research and greenhouse bureaucracy of US$3-4 billion annually. Scientists and bureaucrats being only too human, the power of such sums of money to corrupt not only the politics of greenhouse, but even the scientific process itself, must not be underestimated.

Now, today Hansen features on the front page of the New York Times Online, not telling us how 2006 is going to be the hottest year ever, but claiming he is being gagged by the government.

For Hansen, claiming you are being gagged, seems to be yet another way of getting a link to all your research papers out there.

At least I found this link, on this page.

How could you gag someone like James Hansen in 2006 in the US – if you really wanted to?

Whaling Off Norway is Sustainable: Rune Frovik

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I have just been reading about the High North Alliance, an organisation representing whalers, sealers and fishermen from Canada, The Faroes, Greenland, Iceland and Norway.

Their base is in Reine, Norway, which is a long way away from me here in Brisbane, Australia.

Last night I received an email from Rune Frovik from the High North Alliance with some comments in response to the letter that I published from Peter Corkeron, click here.

Rune Frovik.jpg
(Picture Copyright High North Alliance)

Here’s a picture of Rune (left) with the New Zealand Minister for Conservation, Chris Carter.

Rune responds issue by issue to the various claims made by Peter Cockeron:

1. Peter Corkeron wrote:

Minke quotas have trended upwards over time – the 2006 quota is 1052 animals. Some of this has come from carrying over untaken quotas from previous years – not a part of the RMP/RMS as far as I’m aware. Some has come from changing the “tuning level” – a multiplier built into the CLA/RMP to allow for uncertainty, and changing circumstances. Other problems with quota setting include that predominantly female minkes are taken, and (as I understand it) the CLA assumes a balanced sex ratio in a hunt.

Rune Frovik responds:

The carry-over mechanism for unused quotas is a part of the RMP. Such carry-over can take place within the five years quota periods.

The Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission recommended tuning level in the interval 0.60 to 0.72, the former calculates a higher quota than the latter. Until 2000, Norway set quotas with 0.72 tuning level. Since then various tuning levels have been used, and for 2006 Norway’s quota is based on 0.60 tuning.
The sex ratio is taken into account. Corkeron correctly points out that CLA assumes a balanced sex ratio in the hunt. But the CLA also has a mechanism in case of unbalanced sex ratios. So if the more than 50 percent of the harvested animals are female, this leads to lower quotas. This has been practiced for the Norwegian quota. If the sex ratio was balanced, the current quota could have been higher.

2. Peter Corkeron wrote:

The most recent survey series was not synoptic – the survey area was divided into 5, with one area surveyed in each of five years. These surveys are logistically difficult to run, and synoptic surveys are really hard to organize – I think the last was in 1995.
So a strong assumption (that is, an assumption that, if it’s wrong, the analysis wrong) is that whales don’t move between survey areas between years. This remains untested.

Rune Frovik responds:

Corkeron has a point. But the precautionary logic mainly goes the other way, since it is not proved that the stock is not comprised of sub-stocks, the scientists assume there could be sub-stocks.

Therefore quotas are set for smaller areas. However, scientific evidence now indicates that there is no need for sub areas. The whalers have always argued that the whales don’t respect these borders, that the whales go where there is ample food supply, something which varies between and within years.

The sighting surveys take into account that whales move between areas. But for logistical reasons not all areas are covered in one season, but in a five to six year period all areas are researched.

3. Peter Corkeron wrote:

I’ve never taken part in one of the minke surveys, but know how they work, as I’ve taken part in others elsewhere (US waters, Antarctic). Unlike virtually all other vessel-based surveys for cetaceans, the Norwegian team don’t use binoculars. They have their reasons for this, but it reduces their effective strip width, hence their survey coverage and so the precision of their abundance estimates.

Rune Frovik responds:

This is correct, except the conclusion that it reduces the precision of the abundance estimates. With binoculars you see both more and less. There are good reasons why the Norwegian whalers don’t use binoculars in the lookout.

4. Peter Corkeron wrote:

Over time (this has been going on for a little over a decade), quotas set have trended upwards, and now don’t bear much resemblance to quotas that would have been set under the way that the IWC Scientific Committee designed the RMS. So, this management procedure, developed to ensure sustainability (as far as humanly possible) hasn’t actually been implemented by the Norwegians.

Rune Frovik responds:

Norway is still using the quota calculation model developed and recommended by the IWC Scientific Committee. Only Norway has implemented this procedure.

5. Peter Corkeron wrote:

The final decision on quotas for the minke hunt is made by the Norwegian Sjopattedyrradet (marine mammal advisory board), comprised of industry representatives, based on advice from the Fisheries Directorate, who in turn receive advice from IMR.

Rune Frovik responds:

This is wrong. Final decisions are made by the Ministry of Fisheries and Coastal affairs. The advisory board only supplies advise and their view to the Ministry.

6. Peter Corkeron wrote:

So in theory, the sustainable harvest of whales may be possible. As things are playing out in Norway at present, this remains theory.

Rune Frovik responds:

Well, Norway has taken more than 100 000 minke whales in this area since WWII. From the 50s to the early 80s the annual average catch was about 2000 minke whales. The IWC Scientific Committee has considered this to be a sustainable harvest in that period. While historic catch records are an indicator that this could also be a future sustainable level, it is not a proof. Current science however indicates so.

What Norway is doing is not theory, it is very hard reality.

7. Peter Corkeron wrote:

One aspect of whether Norwegian whaling is sustainable or not that gets missed completely – by both sides, it appears – is the economics of the Norwegian market for food. From an OECD report on agricultural subsidies in 2004, Norway is one of the five worst offenders internationally when it comes to overpaying their internal agricultural lobby.

Australians may be astonished to learn that one of the reasons against Norway joining the EU is Norwegian agricultural subsidies would have to be dramatically reduced to drop to EU levels.

So prices for meat in Norway are artificially high. Given the current population sizes of baleen whales in the northeast Atlantic, were a management regime for whaling that demonstrated a decent chance of being sustainable (the IWC’s RMS or something similar) ever implemented, the meat would be so expensive that it would probably price itself out of an open market.

Rune Frovik responds:

What Corkeron says about agricultural subsidies is correct, but I have some problems seeing where he is heading. I disagree with the statement that prices for agricultural meat in Norway are artificially high, I would rather say it is the opposite, that because of subsidies they are artificially low.

The seafood sector, including whaling, does not receive any subsidies at all. (In fact Norway argues strongly on the international arena that fisheries subsidies should also be removed in other countries.)

Since it has been difficult to compete with meat prices, and also because many Norwegians provide themselves with fish, the seafood industry has traditionally focused on export markets, but recently more efforts are put into the domestic market. The whale meat is currently only sold on the domestic market, and because of no subsidies, the consumers must pay the real price for whale meat.

This is certainly a challenge for the whale meat industry, but something which it tries to cope with.

8. Peter Corkeron wrote:

I’ve seen ‘fresh’ whale meat turning green as it sat on sale at the local fish market, waiting to be bought.

Rune Frovik responds:

Green?! Whale meat doesn’t like air, so it rapidly turns dark if it is not protected from air. For this reason vacuum packaging is commonly used. Anyway, you should absolutely complain if your offered poor quality meat.

9. Peter Corkeron wrote:

Sometimes at these markets, there was also a stand giving away free meals of whale meat, part of the government drive to encourage Norwegains to eat whale. Government-funded undercutting of small businesses run by enterprising migrants.

Rune Frovik responds:

The government does not encourage Norwegians to eat whale meat or not, that is not their business.

With the possible exception of the Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who is portrayed in a new film documentary (Oljeberget), purchasing whale meat and preparing it for dinner, and smilingly exclaiming that, “whale meat is extremely good”.

The industry certainly attempts to encourage consumption and they pay their own marketing.

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For more information on whaling and the High North Alliance visit their website, click here. The site includes a collection of harpoon cartoons. One of the cartoons includes an Aussie talking to a sheep about eating whale meat, click here.