Jennifer Marohasy

LAST week the International Whaling Commission (IWC) met on the Portuguese island of Madeira and agreed that climate change is a threat to whales.   A decision on the Danish proposal for Greenland to hunt 10 humpback whales a year was postponed.  Australia’s Environment Minister was there and told the meeting that whale-watching is a growing [...]

 WHY do so many environmentalists consider cattle something to be excluded from the Australian landscape?  According to Ian Mott, a third generation landholder, they modify parts of the landscape but they do not destroy it.  In the following note, Mr Mott suggests modifications to government advice on the management of livestock in riparian zones. 

CHEAP, simple to use and extremely effective fire management tools that are owned and operated by almost every householder who is exposed to the risk of wildfire are the humble axe and the chainsaw. But the various native vegetation “protection” laws around Australia have effectively outlawed their use, even in the most extreme emergencies. Indeed [...]

Hello Jennifer,   Humans have developed some curious rationales for various food taboos.  Now a Swiss restaurateur has been banned from serving dishes prepared with human breast milk.  This ban would seem to be the most convoluted and lacking in underlying principle.    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/634151/breast-milk-delicacies-off-the-menu   On one hand we have most humans on the planet [...]

Further to my recent article on how rising food prices will be good news for rural communities all over the world, The Land newspaper has carried an interesting report on how rising energy and fertiliser costs (Nitrogen is now $1000/tonne) have restored and reinforced the economics of growing nitrogen fixing cover crops in fallow rotation. [...]

The moralising on the supposed evils of converting grain to biofuel and pushing food prices to record levels in a soon to be hungry world has only just begun. It has been described as nothing less than a “crime against humanity” by UN expert, Jean Ziegler and these sentiments were also echoed by the IMF. [...]

Dear Ian, The Center for Biological Diversity contends that staghorn coral and elkhorn coral are “the first, and to date only, species listed under the Endangered Species Act due to threats from global warming.” Kieran Suckling, the policy director of the Center, “We think this victory on coral critical habitat actually moves the entire Endangered [...]

The latest satellite (SLATS) data on Queensland clearing is now available and it provides an interesting insight into how data can be presented in a way that is quite remote from the truth on the ground. The report, Landcover Change in Queensland 2004-2005 can be seen at www.nrw.qld.gov.au/slats The annual average area cleared in the [...]

Hello Jennifer, Further to recent posts on the need for new perspectives on Global Warming that can only come from revised graphical treatment, I enclose two graphs that provide us with valuable information on the exact nature and threat potential of Global Warming. The decadal change in the UK between the 1980′s and 1990′s produces [...]

Hello Jen, It has been obvious for some time now that the world has been encouraged to regard temperature changes as being overly significant by the use of anomaly graphs that use the entire vertical scale to portray the extent of the temperature change. This has denied the public the opportunity to view the changes [...]