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AEF Annual Conference: Photographs from The First Day

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The Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) held its Annual Conference and AGM this last weekend in Canberra.   We heard some great speakers and also had a good time.  Photographs about to be uploaded here

After I welcomed delegates to the conference as Chair of the Australian Environment Foundation, Professor Bob Carter spoke about climate change – both warming and cooling – as a natural hazard.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bill Kininmonth, a meteorologist formerly at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, and Professor Don Aikin, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Canberra, also spoke on climate change and emphasised like Professor Carter, that it is something that always changes.  

 

Gillian Hogendyk, AEF Secretary, is pictured in the front row at Rydges Lakeside.  Gillian is a Vet who lives in Warren (near Dubbo) and has spent some years studying the natural history of the Macquarie Marshes in central western New South Wales.  Gillian spoke to conference delegates about the need for controls on grazing within the marshes. 

       

Forester, Mark Poynter, is pictured here making some last minute changes to his speech notes before telling us about the River Red Gum forests of western Victoria including how controlled grazing can be a useful weed control. 

 

 

 

Well known climate change sceptic and sometimes commentator at this blog, John McLean was also at the conference.

 

 

 

Leon Ashby recorded the entire first day’s proceedings and I hope will have DVDs for sale soon.  I shall ask him to post details as a comment.

 

 

I will post more on the conference over the next week, including photographs from the dinner where comedian Dr Barry York spoke about “that movie”.   

Next year’s AEF conference and AGM will be in Perth.

Rajendra Pachauri to Speak in Sydney

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Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) and Nobel Prize Winner, will be awarded the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa and deliver the 2008 Wallace Wurth Memorial Lecture entitled: “Our Vulnerable Earth – Climate Change, the IPCC and the role of Generation Green” at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, on Thursday, October 23, 2008. Read more here.

Don Burke Retires as Chair of the Australian Environment Foundation

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Don Burke, best known for his TV program ‘Burke’s Backyard’, recently retired as chair of the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF).  He was at the helm of the organisation for three years and will continue to be a great ambassador for the environment. 

As a practical environmentalist, it is not surprising that as Chair the AEF Don took a particular interest in the issue of woody weeds, visited western NSW on behalf of the AEF and did numerous radio and print media interviews on this topic. 

 

Don also visited Tasmania in support of the pulp mill recognising it represents world’s best practice, spoke in support of waste water recycling for Toowoomba recognising water is precious and recycling sensible for a growing inland city, and of course was an advocate for nuclear power as the only carbon-neutral source of reliable base-load power available at this point in our history.  

 

The moratoria on genetically modified crops were lifted in Victoria and NSW earlier in the year.  Don is a staunch supporter of GM technology and spoke in favour of GM crops and the clear environmental benefits from their use.

 

The AEF may not have made a particularly large splash on any one of these issues, but the organisation and in particular Don’s involvement was another important brick in the wall; progressing a reasoned evidence-based approach on these important issues.

 

I am a founding member and director of the AEF and at a recent board meeting I agreed to take over as Acting Chair. 

 

Our annual conference and AGM is just a few weeks away.  The theme for this year’s AEF conference which will be held in Canberra over the weekend of 11-12 October is ‘A climate for Change’.   Speakers specifically on this topic will include Stewart Franks, Bill Kininmonth, Bob Carter and Don Aitkin.

 

Why not join us and register for the conference http://www.aefweb.info/display/conference.html

 

Cheers,

William Connolley at Wikipedia – by Lawrence Solomon

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At Wikipedia, one man engineers the debate on global warming, and shapes it to his views:

Next to Al Gore, William Connolley may be the world’s most influential person in the global warming debate. He has a PhD in mathematics and worked as a climate modeller, but those accomplishments don’t explain his influence — PhDs are not uncommon and, in any case, he comes from the mid-level ranks in the British Antarctic Survey, the agency for which he worked until recently.

He was the Parish Councillor for the village of Coton in the U.K., his Web site tells us, and a school governor there, too, but neither of those accomplishments are a claim to fame in the wider world. Neither are his five failed attempts to attain public office as a local candidate for South Cambridgeshire District Council and Cambridgeshire County Council as a representative for the Green Party…

Read more here: http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=490337

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The Opinionator, At Wikipedia, one man engineers the debate on global warming, and shapes it to his views.
by Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, Published: Saturday, May 03, 2008

Fred Singer Does Not Believe in Martians: Lawrence Solomon

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Fred Singer, one of the world’s renowned scientists, believes in Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. “Do you really believe in Martians?” I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a Washington event. The answer was “No.”

Wikipedia’s error was neither isolated nor inadvertent. The page that Wikipedia devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer’s biography is designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career by painting him as a political partisan and someone who “is best known as president and founder (in 1990) of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, which disputes the prevailing scientific views of climate change, ozone depletion, and second-hand smoke and is science advisor to the conservative journal NewsMax.”

Innocent Wikipedia readers would be surprised to learn that Dr. Singer is no conservative kook but the first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Center; the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a commendation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for research on particle clouds; and the recipient of a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for the development and management of weather satellites.

He is, in short, a scientist of the highest calibre, with a long list of major scientific achievements, including the first measurements, with V-2 and Aerobee rockets, of primary cosmic radiation in space, the design of the first instruments for measuring ozone, and the authorship of the first publications predicting the existence of trapped radiation in the earth’s magnetic field to explain the magnetic-storm ring current.

Read more here: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/25/the-real-climate-martians-solomon.aspx

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The Real Climate Martians, by Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post, April 26, 2008

Who the Hell is Robyn Williams? Request for Information from Graham Young

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This morning’s Ockham’s Razor broadcast was by Don Aitkin on global warming. Presenter Robyn Williams introduced him in these terms:

“It is one of the disappointments of my life as a broadcaster that I’ve never managed to interview Nigella Lawson. How would she fit into a science program you may wonder, but that’s mere detail.

I have, on the other hand, had her father Nigel Lawson on the Science Show, talking about innovation or some such, with his usual flair and penetrating intelligence. Not a science-trained man, but economics is near enough, isn’t it, and he was Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (or Treasurer).

Now Lord Lawson has brought out a book on climate called An Appeal to Reason. Here’s the first paragraph of a review in this week’s Spectator magazine:

‘When there is so much data suggesting the world’s climate is heating up’, goes the review, ‘some may find it presumptuous of Nigel Lawson, who is not a scientist and has undertaken no original research, to hope to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy. Would we take seriously an appraisal of his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer written by someone whose only expertise was in oceanography?’

Well the same could apply to Professor Don Aitkin, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Canberra, a political scientist and like Lawson, a journalist. Professor Aitkin gave a lecture on climate to the Planning Institute of Australia, A Cool Look at Global Warming. That was a couple of weeks ago, and I thought you might like to hear some of his thoughts, recast for Ockham’s Razor. Though 9 out of 10 Australians are said to be alarmed at climate change, 10% think differently, and Professor Aitkin is one of them.”

There are a number of issues of impartiality that arise from this introduction, but in this post I am interested in the main slight which is that because Aitkin is a “journalist” (I actually think he would be more correctly described as a social scientist) he cannot be taken seriously on the issue of climate change.

So, I’m interested in what qualifications Robyn Williams has. Afterall, while argument from authority has no role to play in establishing the truth of a proposition, turned back on its proponent it can often be the best demonstration of just how hollow their argument is.

Here is what I think I know about Williams. Happy to be corrected, or to have the list extended.

He has an honours degree in biology. He does not have qualifications in physics, climatology or earth-sciences
He has some honorary PhDs, but he does not have an actual PhD
He is a visiting professor at UNSW, but is not actually on staff
He is an adjunct professor at UQ, but is not actually on staff
He has in the past, and perhaps to the present, been a supporter of communist politics.

If I am correct in all of this it leads to the conclusion that his only standing on this issue is as a journalist, with a particular political bent, who is no better qualified than Don Aitkin. Which in his own terms must make it quite improper to make the introduction that he did. Afterall, with those qualifications, what would he know?

Graham Young
Ambit Gambit

This is a cross post from http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/002974.html