A farmer from south western Queensland phoned me about one of my columns in The Land newspaper earlier this year. It was my column on koalas and he wanted to tell me about how many koalas, kangaroos and emus there were on his property. I suggested that there was some good information on kangaroo numbers on the internet at the Environment Australia website.
He replied that he didn’t trust anything he read on the internet – but he did trust what he read in The Land.
I was reminded of the George Orwell quote: Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
I wonder what Orwell would have had to say about blogging?
I think he would have liked the medium, because it seems to potentially be the ultimate form of independent communication. It is a mechanism for those with an alternative perspective to make comment and tell their story.
Since I started my blog in April this year three other blogs have come on line focusing on environmental issues from an Australian perspective.
Peter Spencer first posted on 28th June, click here for first entry. Peter’s key issue is vegetation management but his blog has turned into something of a personal account of farming and families in the High Country.
David Tribe first posted on 11th November, with a short note listing sources of information on GM food crops, GM organisms and biotec websites, click here for first entry. David described his site as a clearing house for information on biotechnology, but it has evolved to cover a range of agricultural and environmental issues with a recent post on water.
Warwick Hughes’s first post is dated 26th November, click here for first entry. Warwick is passionate about climate science and very critical of established institutions including the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. His blog has already attracted debate and discussion amongst ‘global warming skeptics’ with an interest in the detail and an interest in scrutinizing information on global warming as reported in the popular press.
I have just today started a blog roll at my website, click here. I have added the above three sites and ‘The Domain’ which includes Australian political blogs. I have also included a blog maintained by Brendan Moyles, a Kiwi, who takes a keen interest in environmental issues in Australia and New Zealand.
Brendan has a sense of humor, click here, and shares my interest in alternative and environmentally friendly foods, click here.
I am interested to know of other blogs with an Australian environmental focus. Have any foresters started blogging? Are there any Australian blogs that take, for example, an anti-GM perspective? Is there an Australian blog that is more sympathetic to the Bureau of Meteorology than WarwickHughes.com/blog? I am keen to also include these on my list at my website.
Blogs and the internet potentially provide an important alternative perspective. Furthermore, they are likely to be providing a forum for the discussion of ideas several days, if not years before the mainstream media/popular press. But I wouldn’t believe everything I read, on the internet, or in The Land!
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Problem issue with formal institutions in the Commonwealth (CSIRO, BoM, AFFA) and states (Dept Ags, DPIs, DNRs) is that individual scientists whose work is being discussed are very constrained as to whether they can reply. Even more constrained as to whether they can “mix it” in the trenches with sundry bloggers.
In many state departments, a reponse letter would go through the Minister’s office after a few weeks. You won’t get near the reponse the issue deserves – you won’t get a “realclimate” reponse that is really required.
How do they do it ? Dunno – maybe more unis involved. But they must have more freedom. Does that say anything about Australia.
So bloggers get many free kicks .. ..
Is this good. Is it bad. Does it matter? I guess it depends whether blogging is debate, discussion, dialectic or simply a form of entertainment or contact sport.
On the subject of “environmentally friendly” foods Tim Harford says;
“So you have got acres of fertile land in Guatemala that you could grow sugar there. But because of protectionism, the sugar is grown in Florida and the Everglades are destroyed. And meanwhile the Guatemalans are either growing coffee for basically nothing, or like the Columbians, they think, well, maybe we should grow cocaine instead.
Now this is not a good idea. And I have a little graph — I don’t have a lot of graphs in my book. I prefer the written word. But sometimes the picture is worth 1,000 words — and it’s just a graph of trade barriers for different countries and how much fertilizer they use on their agricultural land. The countries that have the highest trade barriers, Japan and Korea use so much fertilizer. Then it is the EU. They use a lot. American less, but you know they still have quite a lot of protectionism and they still use quite a lot of fertilizer.
And then countries like Brazil that don’t have a lot of agricultural protectionism don’t use much fertilizer either. And when you think about it, it makes perfect sense. The protectionism is necessary because the land is not good. And the fertilizer is necessary because the land is not good. So free trade in agricultural products is — well it’s good for a lot of reasons. But one of the reasons is it is good for the environment.”
On organic food;
“I call it price targeting. Most economists would call it third degree price discrimination. I just find this pretty tedious. And the cleverest way of price targeting is to get the customers to identify themselves as price sensitive or not. So if you offer them some choices you may be able persuade some of your customers to reveal themselves as not looking at the price.
So sometimes you just offer the same product packaged two different ways at different prices. And if a customer is looking at the price they will buy the cheap one. And if they are not looking at the price, well 50/50 chance they will buy the expensive one. So that is very simple.
Or you can get more sophisticated. So I talk about fair trade coffee. There are some coffee chains in the U.K. who are charging markups of about 20 cents on a fair trade cappuccino. And the natural assumption of the customer is that that 20 cents is going to go to some poor farmer in Guatemala.
But actually hardly any of it does. It’s not because the company is stealing the money. It’s because there is just not that much coffee in a cappuccino. And while the farmer is getting much more money for his coffee, most of that 20 cents is markup. Just pure extra profit that goes to the cappuccino seller.
So I’m not saying don’t buy fair trade coffee. I’m just saying the reason they offer fair trade coffee is not because they support fair trade. It is because it maximizes their profits.
And it is a similar thing with organic food. A lot of people like to buy organic food for various reasons. Some people say it is better for the environment. And some people say it is better for their health. Some people say it tastes better. I don’t have a strong opinion on any of this. I have not studied the evidence. What I do know is that the markup is higher on organic food. Substantially higher.
Organic food is more expensive to produce. But most of the costs of getting something on the supermarket shelves — staff time, electricity, rent, distribution costs — they are not actually the raw cost of the produce. And I argue that in many supermarkets you will see organic food priced with much more substantial markup. And it is deliberately separated away from the conventional food because that would make the price comparison too obvious, too sobering.
And so I went to my local health foods store with a clipboard taking all kinds of notes. And one of the things I noticed was you can get your conventional bananas and you can get your organic bananas. You get your conventional apples and you get your organic apples. You’ll never see them next to each other.
You might see the organic garlic next to the conventional onions and the organic bananas next to the conventional apples. You won’t see the organic apples next to the conventional apples.”
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0195189779/ref=cm_cr_dp_pt/102-4564295-0367368?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=283155&s=books
Interview link
http://www.tcsdaily.com/printArticle.aspx?ID=121805A
Jen
There’s a salinity forum at http://forum.crcsalinity.com/forum/index.php but it’s not really in the style of a blog, more a quiet forum where the workers in the field dip their oars in now and then.
if you want blogs on the other side of the spectrum from WH on climate, you could link to:
http://www.realclimate.org
and
http://www.timlambert.org
both interested in the detail, just like WH
Jennifer,
The BoM is not improving.
See my latest post “BoM moves the Goal Posts”
Warwick is just on a big anti-BoM crusade.
The warmest year stuff is really just froth and bubble. El Nino corrected is is the warmest year – but who cares – its just another pretty record warm one in the current series.
Just think if Warwick is actually right and the analysis of the terrestrial record was all wrong – this would be the shock of the century. Let’s see “Australian amateur meteorologists flattens IPCC”. So don’t beat around the bush – get it published in the journal literature. Pass the test. In fact I’m sure there would be some contrarian mathematicians or geologists out there who would assist in the writing. Would this not almost be a sacred duty for the Lavioiser Society to achieve?
Hmmm – now wonder why the satellite temps are also showing a warming trend now corrected, glaciers are melting, species mating and flowering earlier, and arctic is melting.
Must be because it’s cooling.
Thanks Steve,
I am amazed there are not more Australian blogs on environmental issues including perhaps forestry, GM, whaling? Surely there are more?
Perhaps we should encourage more governemnt scientists to join the blogs under a pseudonom using their home computer far from prying government eyes. But of course specific information can likely be traced back individual scientists given there are so few in any specific area.
In some areas there are hardly any research scientists left. In the arid and semi arid lands of Australia they seem a most endangered species (more so than any other bit of the biodiversity), e.g. just who is left doing any ecological research in Western NSW.
I notice the print version of the Australian has a weather page that includes the record temperatures for that particular date, from the BoM.
The record highs for 30th December, for the capital cities, were set in the following years.
Canberra, 1965
Sydney, 1922
Brisbane, 1895
Melbourne, 1897
Adelaide, 1981
Perth, 1994
Hobart, 1897
Darwin, 1891
It looks as though the IPCC are right, the 90’s were the hottest decade in the last 1000 years.
Hottest days for Dec 30 in citys seems to me to argue against heat island effect being as large as anti greenhouse people suggest it might be. If it were a large effect one would expect it to be acting similarly on all days and months of the year equally. The records do not appear to be saying this .
All the best for 2006 to Jennifer and blog contributors.
First the Paul Williams post on 30 Dec, I see 4 of your dates are from the 1890’s. I fail to see how your have quoted helps the IPCC in their wild claims. When the dairy industry returns to Greenland, then the IPCC might have something to crow about. It would be in the best interests of science and for the broad benefit of mankind if the IPCC were disbanded and the money saved put to assist the global underprivileged.
Re Richard Darksun comments on the UHI 1 January. I think the weight of evidence from all the reviews of UHI data I have read over the years would be that the UHI is felt most prominently in the cooler seasons and at night. So keep up your reading Richard.
For a very revealing detailed study of the UHI at the little village of Barrow in northern Alaska where the researchers recorded temperatures with 54 real time data loggers spread over circa 150 square kms around Barrow.
At http://www.geography.uc.edu/~kenhinke/uhi/ there is a downloadable pdf paper from Int J Clim and also a PowerPoint presentation.
And yes, Barrow was of course used by the IPCC’s Jones et al 1986 and later global compilations without “correction”.
The Jones team made a gross mistake in their underestimating the importance of the UHI impacts in station data used to compile global trends. In 1990 they published their “Letter to Nature”, still quoted by the IPCC to justify the validity of the Jones et al trends.
My rebuttal at, http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/90lettnat.htm
shows they were quoting as “rural” an Eastern Australian series of 49 stations for which the population averaged circa 5,775, note more than Barrow.
They also quoted a “rural” series from Eastern China made up of stations that had populations “mostly less than 0.1 million”.
You see ? Gross mistakes.
Finally, a word re Phil Done on 27 Dec saying “So bloggers get many free kicks” .
I would say it is the CSIRO & BoM (playing catchup) who are getting free kicks as they have flooded the pliant green media for years with their pro IPCC stories.
What a ridiculous notion that the these bodies can not comment on criticism. They both have large media departments and it is entirely their choice what they say.
Warwick – welcome also to a warm 2006.
Stop beating around the bush and publish the definitive study in a well regarded meteorological journal of your choice. Will be the paper of the century.
You have the whole intellectual resources of Lavoisier at your disposal to assist.
And on the contrary I think CSIRO and the Bureau have been most circumspect in their support of global warming. They have been criticised in some quarters for being over-cautious.
Warwick – My post was meant to be satirical, but not even Phil or Ender had a bite!
Warwick – upon further reflection that CSIRO and the Bureau or other govt environmental organisations cannot make comment. Of course they can and do to some extent. But it isn’t like you get in realclimate with gloves-off reasonably politically neutral reponse from the actual scientist.
Depends who you talk to as well – if you get a reply back officially or from the Minister’s office that’s not a “gloves-off” robust response necessarily – with lots of technical detail.
We need an Australian realclimate forum equivalent for the environment where operational scientists (- not departmnetal heads or Minister’s advisors – ) can mix it robustly with the contrarians in the blog trenches.
Anyway on trends – the ball is in your court – what are the global trends or otherwise in your opinion. How do you reconcile your seeming assertion of no warming when we have warming oceans, satellite measured warming, sea level rise, worldwide glacial melt, Artic melt, species changes galore etc.
I know you object to almost everything – but what exactly if your understanding and position?
{ Paul – I thought why would you worry about capital city temps except for interest and assumed 1000 years was a typo (too subtle for us nerds)}
Hi this site is fantastic!
I am studying an Aus Politics course at uni and i have an environmental question to give a presentation on- How does environmentalism challenge how we think about Australian Politics? I’m at a bit of a loss, can anyone help me on this?
Cheers
Hi,
Jack here – a northern Oz dweller with a particular interest in Cassowaries and 35 years worth of natural history work behind. The big black chooks wander through my corner of paradise most days but what are the Q’ld Govt. doing to effectively conserve them? Almost zero is the tragic answer! Mission Beach has 80km speed limits coming into town (Main Roads) and 15 birds have died on the roads in 12 months past. Dogs are a continuing problem with at least one youngster being retrieved from a canines canines recently. This little chap wasn’t orphaned, just separated from his Dad cos he couldn’t keep up and so is now in foster care learning how to be a human. Not good enough Anna!Cyclone Larry decimated the youth of the population and now that they’ve finally managed a decent breeding season we’ll cull ’em on the roads, via our dogs and most significantly by fragmenting their habitat as the developers move through with their relentless march to “progress” We have no Council as the Govt. sacked them for incompetence so an administrator can rubber stamp every proposal that lands on his desk until elections for the new Council are held in 2008. Help our Cassies guys! get noisy!
Hello
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hey jennifer, i have just set up a new environmental news blog – it’s http://www.realdirt.com.au
When will the worlds leaders recognised the ‘Great Ecological Crisis?’
I watch the reaction to the financial crisis facing the world with amazement. While I support the moves being made by Governments around the world, what I wonder is when will these some people realise that we are also facing an ‘Ecological Crisis’ and support it with the vigour as they are supporting all the banks and insurance companies.
Imagine if the US Government allocated US$700bn to save the worlds rainforests and other woodlands, I mean these are our carbon banks. What about allocating this money to poverty and thus preventing the continued destrustrion of forest for farming.
I am no expert on the cost of saving forest however I am sure US$700bn would go a long way in Indonesia or Brazil. not to mention all the money the rest of the world governments are allocating to save their own institutions. Australia alone is giving $4bn to the non bank lenders.
What about allocating these funds to research on renewable energy?
Do you think we could focus the governments of the world to the environment with the same intensity as they do with the finance sector, time will tell?