Jennifer Marohasy

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Organics Use Less Energy?

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My recent writings on GM food crops, including in The Land newspaper last Thursday, have resulted in some emails suggesting that I am wrong and that organics, rather than GM, really are the answer.

I received an email with a link to a paper titled ‘Organic farming stands the test of time’ by David Suzuki published on 5th August:

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly08050501.asp

Suzuki suggests that organics use less energy than conventional systems. But then states organics require more labour to remove weeds.

I understand about 70 percent of the labour spent in traditional subsistence organic food production systems in Africa involve women hoeing for weeds. If this type of manual labour is not counted in the energy budget then the calculations are worth nothing.

Suzuki makes mention of the Rodale Institute Farming Systems which are organic.

Their website is here:
http://www.newfarm.org/depts/NFfield_trials/0903/FST.shtml .

I can’t find any data that shows yields in organic versus conventional systems and relative to energy input.

What is Wilderness? (Part 1)

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In order to understanding how and why the coronial inquiry into the January 2003 Canberra bushfires unraveled, and in order to understand the recent decision of the ACT Supreme Court to clear Coroner Maria Doogan of ‘apprehended bias’, it is perhaps necessary to have some understanding of the various meanings of ‘wilderness’.

The following quotes are perhaps relevant:

“Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and downs,
To the silent wilderness,
Where the soul need not repress
Its music.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, c. 1820

“Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 1903

“The emotional aspects of a wilderness experience might be compared to a religious experience. It is particularly valuable for those people whose unconscious association of pain and discomfort in relationship to man render a deity in human form impossible. Christianity is unacceptable to some people because of the use of the human symbol, but some who can’t accept Christ can gain a tremendous sense of peace from relating to uncontaminated areas.”
Donald McKinley, Forest Industries, February 1963

“Wilderness, in the environmental pantheon, represents a particular kind of sanctuary in which all true values – that is all nonhuman values – are reposited.”
William Tucker, Harper’s, March 1982

“Wilderness: Land that, together with its plant and animal communities, is in a state that has not been substantially modified by, and is remote from, the influences of European settlement or is capable of being restored to such a state, and is of sufficient size to make its maintenance in such a state feasible.”
National Strategy for the Conservation of Australia’s Biological Diversity, Department of Environment and Heritage, 1996 http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/publications/strategy/gloss.html

“This might apply to the surface of Pluto or the centre of the Earth, perhaps, but it would be arrogance or ignorance to presume that there is any place on Earth that hasn’t, at some time in the past, been managed or substantially affected in some way by humans.”
Bob Beale and Mike Archer in their book titled ‘Going Native’, October 2004

“Wilderness is an outdated 70s concept and it is dangerous. It is dangerous because in its pure form it prohibits proactive management in the area.”
Phil Cheney’s evidence to the ACT Coroner’s Inquiry into the January 2003 Canberra bushfires
http://www.courts.act.gov.au/supreme/judgments/doogan1.htm

Don Burke Talks About the AEF

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Don Burke was on ABC Television’s Landline program today talking about the need for a new approach to environmental issues. You can view the interview at:

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2005/s1436505.htm .

Don was speaking as Chair of the new Australian Environment Foundation (AEF). I am a board member of the AEF and there has been some discussion about the organisation at this web-log:

https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000757.html .

Burning Sumatra

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The hundreds of forest and plantation fires burning in Sumatra are choking out Malaysia. Greenpeace have commented that “the 1997 fires in Indonesia’s rainforests added as much carbon to the atmosphere as all the coal, oil and gas burned in Western Europe that year.” How much is this?

Interestingly The Australian newspaper has focused on the impact of the fires on the Indonesian-Malaysian relationship:

The Australian, 12th August
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16232761%255E30417,00.html

“The thick smog presents the country with its worst pollution crisis since 1997, when smoke mainly from Indonesian bushfires blocked out skies across Southeast Asia. Fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, which is a short ferry ride from peninsular Malaysia’s west coast, flare up around this time every year as farmers, plantation owners and miners burn forests to clear land during the dry season.
The opposition Democratic Action Party said Malaysians were “furious and worried” about the pollution and that it would mount a protest at the Indonesian embassy today as well as a public rally on Sunday.” end.

A Malaysian newspaper is comparing the cause of these fires to the 1997 fires and considering the role of their own companies with plantations in Sumatra:

New Straits Times, 13th August
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Saturday/Columns/20050813075949/Article/indexb_html

“According to Plantation Enterprises and Commodities Minister Datuk Peter Chin, who has just returned from Medan after meeting with Indonesian Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban, fires on plantation land made up 30 per cent of the hotspots while the rest of the fires were caused by slash-and-burn farmers.

This seems to be the reverse of the situation in 1997-98 when most of the fires were said to have been started deliberately to clear land for oil palm plantations. According to one estimate, up to 80 per cent of the burning in 1997 occurred in plantation company concessions, and 75 per cent of these were oil palm estates.

Oil palm plantations were certainly over-represented in the list of 176 companies charged in court for starting the fires of 1997-98.” end.

The Indonesian Jakarta Post seems to look to government for answers and suggest the fires are about slash and burn agriculture:

Jakarta Post, 14th August
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detaileditorial.asp?fileid=20050813.E02&irec=1

“Too often the fires have been the result of land clearing by either farmers or speculators. While slash-and-burn agriculture is common among the indigenous populations, these fires can spread uncontrollably in dry conditions.

Since the major forests fires of 1997 and 1998, which created a region-wide crisis, various mechanisms and high profile meetings have been held to set up a joint mechanism to manage such catastrophes and provide early warning.

The repeated recurrence of fires proves that much of these efforts simply don’t work, or more precisely, haven’t been made to work.” end.

I wonder about the impact of the fires on the local fauna and flora?

The Troposphere is Warming

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Three new research papers debunk earlier research that showed the planet was not warming up, according to ABC Online. The news report states:

In 1990, study of data collected by the University of Alabama satellite found that the atmosphere’s low-level troposphere was not warming in line with computer modelling predictions.

The study been used ever since by global warming sceptics.
But now a correct reading of the data has revealed unequivocally that the planet’s atmospheric and surface temperatures are on the rise.
The Californian firm that did the new reading, Remote Sensing Systems, has found the University of Alabama satellite was collecting faulty data.

Dr David Jones, from the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, says one satellite used to collect the data was not properly calibrated.

And I never realized that the global warming believers ever accepted the earlier satellite readings that now appear to have been incorrect.

I just found this post that I made at John Quiggin’s blog on 22nd April. The information was sent to me some time ago by Bill Kininmonth in response to a question from me:

Greenhouse gases in the troposphere cause the troposphere to cool. The upward emission to space and the downward emission to the earth’s surface exceed the sum of direct absorption of solar radiation and absorption of upward emissions from the earth’s surface. Whether it is 280 ppmv (pre-industrial) or 380 ppmv (now) the direct effect of greenhouse gases is to cool the troposphere.
The ‘radiative forcing’ hypothesis of IPCC suggests that as the concentration of CO2 increases the upward emission to space decreases slightly and hence energy is retained in the earth’s climate system, leading to ‘global warming’.

We cannot measure the net radiation at the top of the atmosphere to better than of order 5 W/m2 (greater than the ‘radiative forcing’ for a doubling of CO2) so the hypothesis cannot be verified directly.

Satellite measurements (Wielicki et. al. 2002, Evidence of large decadal variability in the tropical mean radiative energy budget. Science Vol 295, pg841) suggest that, at least over the tropics, longwave emission to space increased over the period 1985-1999, contrary to what would be expected from anthropogenic greenhouse radiative forcing.

ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management

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ABC Television program Catalyst ran a story last night featuring the work of botanist Rod Fensham. Fensham has done some great research work on Queensland’s rangelands. But the program, by putting a popularist spin on it all, did our rangelands and Fensham no favours.

Catalyst started off by suggesting most of Queensland’s old growth forest had been cleared by graziers and then went on to explain how vegetation thickening is real. An overriding theme was that the bans on broad scale tree clearing are good and that current thickening is natural and a consequence of higher rainfall over the second half of the last century. Furthermore drought, not land clearing or fire, should be left to maintain the balance of nature.

I was left wondering what they meant by old growth forest, and how the old growth forest had survived the terrible drought to be destroyed by graziers. And wasn’t it generally acknowledged that these areas have been a fire mediated sub-climax ecosystem as in South Africa and the southern USA?

The following comment as part of the voice over was interesting:

But seeing the timbers dying in all districts of western Queensland it would seem not unreasonable to conclude that drought was the cause of thousands of miles of country in the never never to be denuded of scrub. …So there it was, proof that the climate had caused tree death and thinning.

The full transcript can be read at
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1435595.htm .

I used to have a beer with Fensham and other Brisbane-based botanists and entomologists on a Friday afternoon at the St Lucia golf links in the early to mid 1990s.

The Catalyst program suggested that Fensham was against the use of fire, as well as broad scale tree clearing. It didn’t ring true to me.

A link to a piece by him at the bottom of the Catalyst webpage also suggests otherwise.

In this piece titled ‘Trial by fire’ Fensham makes the following points:

1. The role of climate in shaping vegetation patterns should not be ignored in a land of notorious climatic extremes.

2. The structure and density of eucalypt woodlands in the Queensland pastoral zone is influenced by management (fire), land use (grazing) and climate (especially drought).

3. Appropriate burning regimes may offer Queensland pastoralists a management option that maintains productivity and is less devastating for biodiversity than tree clearing.

Read the complete article here
http://www.lwa.gov.au/downloads/publications_pdf/PN040707_trial_by_fire.pdf .

Earlier in the week I was sent this link
http://www.amonline.net.au/eureka/environmental_research/2005_winner.htm .

It came with the note, “An interesting rewrite of history – a negative reality inversion.”

The link is to an announcement titled ‘Research that shaped new bush clearing laws’ and is about how Fensham has won the Eureka prize for Environmental research and includes the following text:

The recent debate on land clearing in Queensland was fierce, with the arguments often unsupported by clear scientific evidence. Dr Rod Fensham and Russell Fairfax changed that. Over ten years, these two scientists from the Queensland Herbarium have methodically developed a scientific foundation to measure and understand the fate of Queensland’s native rangelands. Their research, and their science advocacy, gave the Queensland Government the information it needed to create stronger laws on land clearing. Their work now earns them the $10,000 Sherman Eureka Prize for Environmental Research.

I observed at close range the politics that drove the bans on broad scale tree clearing in Queensland including as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Council – Vegetation Management (MAC-VM). Fensham’s work didn’t enter this policy debate which was driven almost exclusively by very dumb (but effective) campaigning by a coalition of environment groups spearheaded by the Wilderness Society and Queensland Conservation Council and supported by a Queensland University Professor.

Had Fensham’s work been influential, the clearing laws may have turned out at least half reasonable.
……………

Update 2pm

Following discussions with Rod I have the following additional comment, and I hope Rod might do a guest post for me/us:

The Eureka Award was in recognition of Rod’s contribution to our understanding of regional ecosystems and how they can be mapped. This mapping work occurred independently of the campaigning by the Wilderness Society and the mapping is critical to the current legislation and important if the current legislation is to ever deliver reasonable rangeland protection and management.

I have also updated the title for this post from ‘ABC TV and Eureka Awards Got it Wrong on Fensham’ to ‘ABC TV Got it Half Right on Rangeland Management’.