Jennifer Marohasy

It’s 31st December 2006, a time for reflection and perhaps also New Year’s resolutions.
This time last year I wrote: “A CNN/TIME survey of Asia-Pacific countries reports that avian flu is expected to be the biggest global issue in 2006, followed by economic slowdown and terrorism. What happened to global warming? Why didn’t it rate [...]

David Tribe sent me a link to a piece by Steven Pinker titled ‘Less Faith, More Reason’. Here’s an extract:
“Missing from the report is a sensitivity to the ennobling nature of knowledge: to the inherent value, with consequences too far-reaching to enumerate, of understanding how the world works. For one thing, it is a [...]

Two days ago the mainstream media was lamenting that polar bears should be listed as threatened with extinction because of disappearing sea ice all a consequence of global warming.
Today the media is reporting that a giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic and has formed an ice [...]

Congratulations to whale and wildlife photographer, George McCallum. His revamped website is back online with a thousand or so images including of minke whales, humpback whales and killer whales:
http://www.whalephoto.com .
The website includes albums on ‘European birds’, ‘oil platforms and rigs’, and also one entitled ‘weather and water’:
http://www.whalephoto.com/2007/thumbnails.php?album=24.
For more information on George: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001650.html.

www.whalephoto.com

Hi Russell,
Going back to your points about sentient beings and our perception of other life forms. As you say, there is debate about how intelligent certain species are, how to measure that intelligence, whether they can feel emotions, what this all means. Being human, although we may try to be objective in assessing the cognitive [...]

The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, yesterday announced that $7.6 million will be provided over four years to evaluate the effectiveness of cloud seeding in increasing rainfall in Queensland, Australia.
Mr Beattie said beginning next year (2007) a pilot project would be conducted in south-east Queensland using new “warm cloud” seeding processes.
The pilot project will be in [...]

1. GM Files: Getting the Truth Out There
By Glenn Tong
December 20, 2006
… Worsening drought conditions around Australia have brought into sharp focus the need for new technologies to meet the challenge of global warming. The indisputable reality is that we cannot afford the indulgence of ignoring genetically modified (GM) crops amid this worsening crisis. Gene [...]

I was at church yesterday on Christmas Day, and I was also at church on Christmas Eve. I am a protestant by upbringing and tribal affiliation, but like Richard Dawkins, an atheist by conviction. But unlike Dawkins I am not against religion.
Richard Dawkins has just written a new book ‘The God [...]

Following is the text* from a ‘Special Climate Statement’ entitled ‘Climate conditions preceding the December 2006 southeast Australian bushfires’. The statement was issued on 19th December 2006 by the National Climate Centre.
Introduction
Southeast Australia has experienced highly unusual widespread bushfire activity in December 2006. These fires were preceded by exceptionally dry conditions, over both the [...]

I received the following note* from Vincent Gray. He began by wishing us all “the compliments of the season” and then lauched into a discussion of mean global surface temperature records:
The theory that “Climate Change” is caused by increases in carbon dioxide stands or falls on the reliability of the “mean global surface temperature [...]