Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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What do Geologists know about Climate?

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After Michael Duffy interviewed Prof Bob Carter on climate change on his ABC radio program Counterpoint, there was comment on at least one web-blog site.

John Quiggin wrote:
“It would be more accurate to describe Carter as a prominent research geologist with a personal interest in the issue of climate change, and a strongly-held view that Kyoto is a bad idea.
As regards the major issues, I see little evidence to suggest that Carter is any better informed than I am.”

Some of my geologist mates have interpreted this as a slight on their profession and an inference that geologist know nothing more than economists about climate.

I received the following from a geologist:

“Astonishingly, some persons appear to believe that geologists have no part to play in the current public discussion on climate change.

Geologists, as scientists, operate in deep time. They study environmental phenomena on scales commensurate with the earth’s dynamic and changing nature, over periods of hundreds to thousands to millions of years and more.

Geologists are therefore the persons to whom one should turn for accurate advice on whether current meteorological trends, if projected as climate trends, are in any way unusual when compared with Earth’s past behaviour.

Using information from ice cores, deep sea cores, lake cores and other data, first year geology students the world over are taught:

1. That climate has always changed, and always will. Some of the climatic changes are due to slow trends, others due to sudden climate shifts whose origin is not yet understood.

2. That rates of ‘climate’change during the 20th century, as manifest from surface meteorological records of temperature, are in now way unusual in either their magnitude or rate of temperature change.

3. That the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere in past times has not infrequently attained values of 1000 ppm or more (i.e. much more than a doubling of current levels), without any known adverse affects apart from the prolific growth of plant life, for which carbon dioxide is a powerful aerial fertilizer.

4. That over the last half million years the earth has experienced several glaciations and interglaciations. For the majority (>90%) of that time, Earth’s average surface temperature has been substantially, and often much, colder than today.

5. That the current warm period, called the Holocene, has already lasted about 10,000 years, which is the average length of earlier warm periods, and that beyond question Earth’s biggest near future environmental changes are going to be those associated with the onset of the next ice age.

6. Geologists freely admit, however, that it is not possible to predict exactly WHEN the next ice age will start, and also th at despite the magnificent climatic records that they have assembled, there are still many things about climate that are not understood.

It is strange that anyone would assert that geologists have nothing to contribute to the understanding of climate change.”

There is a transcript of the interview with Prof Carter at the Counterpoint site.

Counting Coral Trout

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It was the WWF Save the Reef Campaign that really developed my interest in environmental campaigns and through my public criticism of the same I have meet some wonderful characters.

Dr Walter Stark grew up in the Florida Keys and was awarded his PhD at the University of Miami the year after I was born – in 1964.

Walter now lives in Townsville and has a tremendous general knowledge of the world’s coral reefs.

Just today his review article titled ‘Threats to the Great Barrier Reef‘ was published by the IPA. It is an interesting read and includes information on everything from the population dynamics of crown-of-thorn starfish to global warming.

I found the fisheries information particularly interesting.

There exists 20 years of data on coral trout numbers estimated from surveys where divers count individual fish. Not a bad job.

Walter contends that arguing “that the GBR is overfished at an annual harvest of 17 kg/km2, when over a broad range of other Pacific reef areas an average of 7,700 kg/km2 is sustainable, is beyond ridiculous.”

If you have a query and post a comment below, Walter may post a reply.

If you don’t have time now to read the detailed review, On Line Opinion has published a shorter piece which is also a good read.

Australia’s Highest Paid Blogger

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Last week, sociologist and blogger Mark Bahnisch made the comment that “blogging reflects not just a broader decline in civility, but something about the very nature of political discourse – it’s not about getting to the truth but about swaying others through means fair and foul.”

But surely blogging can be about honest discussion and debate. Surely through postings and comment on the same, there is the opportunity for a wide range of views to be canvassed and discussion advanced.

Such discussion is desperately needed on Murray River issues.

Interestingly, John Quiggin, is paid to research the “sustainable management of the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB)” and is probably also Australia’s highest paid blogger.

He earns a massive $230,000 a year! No typo there.

I began working on MDB in July 2003 and six months later in December 2003 published “Myth and the Murray: Measuring the Real State of the River Environment”.

Since this time there have been two House of Representatives Parliamentary Inquiries on MDB issues; the Living Murray Initiative has been kick-started; and the National Water Initiative ratified.

Quiggin’s University home page gives a list of his submissions, newspaper articles, conference and journal papers. Quiggin regularly contributes opinion pieces to the Financial Review on a range of topics except the MDB. Most of his comment on the MDB appears to have been in his web-blog.

On 21st April 2004 I was alerted to a blog posting in which Quiggin suggested that the Prime Minister should consign the interim report of the House of Representative’s Standing Committee on Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry “to the dustbin, where it belonged” essentially because the committee had clearly been hoodwinked by me and that as an employee of the Institute of Public Affairs I was a right-wing hack.

This was my first introduction to the world of blogs.

Quiggin has since removed this posting. On 30th April he replaced it with a posting of the same title on the basis that “having veered from the Murray to libertarianism… I thought I’d move it back to the top of the page.” Quiggin deleted the first couple of paragraphs of the original posting but does not mention this in his re-posting.

He also made a posting on 24th April 2004 to what he called summarize his objections to the claims put forward by me.

In all of this Quiggin completely misrepresents my work and my recommendations. Quiggin also misrepresents the work of my colleague Lee Benson. Quiggin’s post of 30th April claims Benson and Marohasy’s main argument is that “we should do nothing until all the uncertainties are resolved”.

I make no such claim. Rather my concern is that academics and ‘science managers’ continue to seriously misrepresent the available data and sensible proposals to address real environmental problems.

Benson’s work recommends immediate actions to improve the MDB environment – but not what the government bureaucrats were proposing at that time.

A media release of November 2003 states “Dr Benson’s report puts forward a number of different approaches to system management – approaches which he believes will lead to significant environmental benefits with much less risk of social or economic impact than the current approach focusing on increased environmental flows.”

Benson’s proposals, backed by the MDB’s largest irrigation company, were surely worthy of detailed scholarly discussion by someone being paid to study the same. Instead Quiggin dismissed Benson’s detailed 70-page report in a single sentence on his web-blog and without outlining an alternative proposal from which we might move forward.

Frank Devine concluded his article in the March 2005 issue of Quadrant quoting Tim Blair with the comment that “blogs will remain raiders on the periphery of the media unless they can demonstrate an ability to build things up as well as cut them down.”

Anzac Day & the Man from Snowy River

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Noeline Franklin (High Country crusader and member of the Miles Franklin family) emailed that today we might also remember the horses that went to war.

About 160,000 horses from Australia went to WWI.

Australia’s mounted soldiers included stockmen from the High Country – mostly volunteers who took their own horses.

The story goes, that at war’s end, many of these men were asked to shoot their horses. The horses could not come home.

For Noeline, the brumbies that now roam the High Country are their descendants and represent “the free spirit of our people and the horses who never returned”.

Bushfire Petition

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Veteran fire fighter and volunteer brigade captain Val Jeffery wants to break the record for most signatures on a petition presented to Federal Parliament (record currently 792,285) and, more importantly, force a Royal Commission.

Jeffery and many others are frustrated over the handling of the Coronial Inquiry into the Canberra bushfires which was suspended last October. Coroner Maria Doogan is now fighting against her disqualification in the Supreme Court – an action that was brought by nine ACT bureaucrats and x-bureacrats whose legals costs are being paid by the ACT government.

Firefighters and bushfire experts say she was getting too close to the truth.

Val Jeffery has emailed:

“In January 2003, disastrous bush fires raged from the Queensland border to Bass Straight costing Australia billions of dollars in damages, many lives, hundreds of horrendous injuries, burnt out suburbs in our national capital, millions of hectares of grazing and parkland, destruction of stock and the extinction of species of native wild life, carbon and sludge silting of our water catchments as well as immeasurable trauma etc.

The damage from bush fires has escalated dramatically in Australia over the past decade or so and this escalation has ran in parallel with cultural change in attitude to fuel and suppression management at Australia’s expense. Our society can no longer continue to sustain this escalation in property and human cost.

Several inquiries initiated before and after the January 2003 bush fire disasters have failed miserably to come to grips with the problem as the same old excuses have been regurgitated. The final straw is the ACT Government’s interference in the Canberra Coronial which was at last appearing to come to terms with the need for accountability and responsibility. That interference is also a grave threat to the basic structure of democracy, the separation of Government and the Judiciary.

It is time for the Federal Parliament to establish as a matter of urgency a Royal Commission to come up with the answers. The next wild fire disaster is just around the corner.

Go to the web site at www.bushfires.net and download the petition.”

Farmer, goat cheese maker, and IPA colleague Jim Hoggett (with son Aled) have written a backgrounder ‘When will we ever learn?’ on the 2003 bushfires.

Timber Communities & National Parks (Part 1.)

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I live in a wooden house and I work off a wooden desk. I know trees re-grow and that Australia has one of the most productive and sustainable timber industries in the world.

I know that I have more of an affinity with the timber communities that work native forests than with the companies that plant extensive pine plantations.

I also know that timber communities are under intense pressure because they are swimming against the tide. The Australian community has come under what seems like ‘the spell’ of environmental activists who campaign incessantly against logging.

I recently received several emails from Rod and Juleen Young who are part of the Pilliga-Goonoo timber community in north-west NSW. They are waiting for a decision from the Carr government that will determine the fate of their community including 240 remaining timber workers.

At issue is whether public land that until recently has supported a timber industry worth $38.4 million in gross output and generated employment for 420 people should be turned into National Park.

If the land has been logged for over 100 years and is still of such high conservation value why not keep it the way it is?

Rod and Juleen have written:

“The State Government has refused to accept the Brigalow Region United Stakeholders (BRUS) Option and after a protest in the Pilliga in February 2003 by the Greens the government placed a moratorium on 500 logging compartments of the best timber in the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion (BBSB) demanded by the Greens.

This moratorium has restricted our timber industry to unsustainable logging areas, leading to a downgrading of log supplies and as a result a lot of the mills are almost bankrupt.

The Government promised a decision on the BBSB no later than November 2002. The local communities, dependant on the timber industry have been on a knife edge ever since and are still waiting.

We are now desperate for a decision.

The debate is all about active land management versus lock up. For years we have stressed the need for thinning the cypress pine forests, the long term sustainable forest management, the viability of the koala population and barking owls etc in logged areas, the need of the forest road network for fire control, the case of landowners living next door to a forest, the small towns that provide the necessary services and social base for the timber workers and the local farming and grazing families.”

At issue is whether these forests in the Pilliga-Goonoo region of north-west NSW should become National Parks or continue to be State Forests and usable by the local timber community.

The Pilliga-Goonoo community have identified 189,300 hectares of new conservation reserve (where logging will be excluded) while allowing for continued access to sustainable yields of white cypress sawlogs of 68,000m3 per year. The region has also produced valuable timber products from iron bark.

Why has the NSW government taken so long to say yes or no to the Pilliga-Goonoo community?

Is it that the government feels it can’t say no to the Greens because it risks losing Sydney votes at the next election? At the same time it would be so unfair to close down yet another productive and sustainable timber community that works a beautiful native forest?