By jennifer
A friend suggested to me recently that all the concern about global warming is driving increasing acceptance of uranium as an energy source. So is this a case of one scary campaign trumping another?
Of course many who campaigned against uranium are now campaigning against global warming.
By jennifer
The question that I asked last Thursday (18th August) – might it get wetter as it gets warmer – was not answered.
There was comment made that this question can’t be answered. There was comment made that the question is irrelevant.
Phil Done has said he will do a summary of that long thread as it progressed the climate change argument/our understanding of the science of climate change, in particular by listing points of agreement. I look forward to this summary.
But I am also interested in moving beyond the detail of the argument about the science and the impact/potential impact of greenhouse gases on global temperatures and consider how we might/can adapt to climate change.
As part of the thread of the 18th August David Brewer provided a link to a talk given by Brian Tucker in October 1986 on the ABC radio program “Ockham’s Razor”. Tucker said:
“And finally there is an assumption that the total cost to society of such a drastic reduction of Greenhouse gas emissions, including social as well as economic consequences, will be less than the cost of adapting to any change in climate, for if it is not, then adaptation is the major sensible policy.”
As I see it adaptation must be a component of any policy, anyway.
Yet there seems to be so little real discussion about adaptation – including how much easier it might be for the developed as opposed to developing world to adapt.
What are the issues? What are the risks? How might we adapt?
By jennifer
Where would you plant a Wollemi pine?
According to The Australian, fewer than 300 saplings of the relic giant tree which can live for 1,000 years are to be auctioned by Sotheby’s soon.
But why stop at a 90 million year old pine for the farm or acre block?
What about an elephant?
A couple of days ago The Australian gave a fair amount of space to the following story about introducing African wildlife into North America based on a Reuters story, based on an article in science magazine Nature:
Reintroducing the modern relatives of the Late Pleistocene losers to North America could spark fresh interest in conservation, contribute to biodiversity and begin to put right some of the wrongs caused by human activities.
“Establishing Asian asses and Przewalski’s horse in North America might help prevent the extinction of these endangered species and would restore equid species to their evolutionary homeland,” the scientists wrote.
They proposed a second phase that would include reintroducing African cheetahs, lions and Asian and African elephants to large private parks.
“Free-roaming, managed cheetahs in the southwestern United States could save the fastest carnivore from extinction, restore what must have been strong interactions with pronghorn and facilitate ecotourism as an alternative for ranchers.
“Managed elephant populations could similarly benefit ranchers through grassland maintenance and ecotourism,” they wrote, adding that reintroducing lions would represent the pinnacle of the Pleistocene re-wilding of North America.
They admitted the plan would be controversial but said it was a far better option than simply accepting the terminal decline of some of the world’s most impressive species due to human encroachment and global warming. end of quote.
As someone who spent years working for a research station dedicated to the control of weeds and feral animals – the mind boggles.
Perhaps elephants would do a good job of controlling the African exotic prickly acacia (Acacia nilotica) on the Mitchell grass downs of NW Queensland � I have seen first hand how damaging elephants can be to acacias in Africa.
But hey, America is going to save Africa’s wildlife in America?
By jennifer
CSIRO climate change modeling has generally concluded that as it gets warmer, it is going to get drier.
I will give two examples:
1. CSIRO News Flash on Monday 15 August 2005 titled ‘Natural change, greenhouse effect influence WA rainfall’ with the text “Continued rainfall decreases in the south west of Western Australia are most likely a combination of natural variability and the enhanced greenhouse effect”. Read more at:
http://www.csiro.au/page.asp?type=mediaRelease&id=145WArainfall
2. CSIRO modeling for Queensland predicts that annual rainfall may decline by as much as 13 per cent by 2030 compared to conditions in the 1990s. By 2070 the decline may be as much as 40 per cent compared to conditions in the 1990s. For more detail see my earlier blog post at: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000735.html .
But I thought that in past times as the earth got warmer it got wetter?
3. For example, a recent article in ABC Online began:
You would not expect to find a rainforest in what is now one of the hottest and driest places on the east coast of Queensland.
Ancient fossil deposits found in caves near Rockhampton in central Queensland have revealed the area was once a tropical rainforest, wiped out by climate change.
4. According to the IPCC there has been a 0.6C warming over the last 150 odd years and I have interpreted the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) summaries to show that it has generally got wetter over the last 100 years in Australia.
But I have been told:
Jen, The comment on Australia getting wetter – well you shouldn’t really quote national numbers. The centre to north-west may be getting wetter. But everywhere people or major agriculture is located doesn’t show this. We have a drier SW WA and east coast drying trend. See ALL the various period maps at: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/trendmaps.cgi . We also have had few La Ninas since 1976, more El Ninos and back-to-back “unusual” El Ninos. Few coast crossing cyclones.
So we can quote national figures for everything except rainfall? Because overall it has got wetter, see http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=aus&season=0112 ?
5. I checked the National Greenhouse Office and they say :
Climate modelling has predicted that on average Australia will get wetter as temperatures rise, especially in summer. Tropical cyclones and floods may become more common, and will happen in places that haven’t had them before. However, places such as Tasmania and parts of Western Australia will actually get less rainfall than before, and might even have droughts.
But then they conclude: As temperatures rise and some place get less rain, droughts could happen more often.
6. I remember that the IPCC has written that with climate change, in some areas it will get wetter, in others drier, and I also remember reading that,
7. Australian climatologists have predicted that it will generally get wetter as it gets warmer.
8. I have just read Rod Fensham’s new paper in the Journal of Ecology (2005, vol 93,pgs 596-606) titled ‘Rainfall, land use and woody vegetation cover change in semi-arid Australian savanna’. The summary includes “… this pattern (changes in vegetation cover in western Queensland) is consistent with the first half of the 20th century having more intense droughts and being drier overall than the relatively wet second half”.
So could it get wetter as it gets warmer?
By jennifer
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.
By jennifer
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’.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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