Rural climate change sceptics shock kayaker
From ABC Rural Thursday, 09/08/2007
A man paddling and pulling his kayak from Brisbane to Adelaide to promote the need for action on climate change says he is disappointed with the sceptical nature of outback Australians.
Steve Posselt, who is pulling his kayak along the Darling River road due to a lack of water, says that many rural people do not believe in climate change.
He says he did not expect so many people to doubt what the majority of climate scientists agree on.
“I’ve been astounded by the actual lack of belief on this trip,” he said.
“Many people want to argue the issue about whether there is such a thing as global warming.
“You can talk to blokes in the pub and they say yep winters aren’t what they used to be, they’re a lot shorter.
“And you say, ‘well do you believe in climate change? No, mate its just a cycle’.”
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
It just proves that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time!
The scam is beginning to unravel on more than just one front anyway. Time to burn The Goracle at stake.
Living in a hyper rural locale myself, I wonder if it has more to do with what demographics and geographic distribution the pro-AGW propaganda (or educational information if you prefer)is directed at.
I think you’ll find the bulk of it is directed at middle class urbanites more than anything.
News today of an 8000 year old site off the Isle of Wight under 35 feet of water. How can anyone be sure that whatever went on between then and 100 (+/-) years ago has gone away and that something totally different is going on now? Oh, yes, it was a computer model, like the ones blowing up the financial markets. Good call.
Don’t talk like that Allan Ames. You sound like an anti-technology luddite. What do you think we should do? Bin 1000 years of science and a half century of computer development and go back to counting on our fingers and getting an understanding of the climate by asking the local medicine man?
Jen loves technology, she won’t take kindly to that kind of alarmist talk.
Maybe our fearless paddler would be encountering less obstructions if he was in Arctic right now.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=464
Wonder what 1934 looked like?
The trouble with the bush is that families tend to be in the one place for several generations. That makes for preservation of long family memories; of past seasons, and particularly of past Govt policies and “social engineering” campaigns. And of being eventually scapegoated for compliance with past Govt campaigns.
Makes for caution, scepticism, even cynicism – and great tall poppy cutters. My people. Love ’em.
And that’s why the sector also keeps getting drought aid decade after decade too. If only they had realistic views of the real climate.
Wonder what 1934 looked like [in the Arctic]?
Polyakov reckons that (from statation/ship observations) it was just as warm if not warmer. See temp graph at top left here:
http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/data/means.gif
I haven’t seen much to cast doubt on this research (apart from outputs of climate models of course). Have a browse here:
http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/index.php
By the way, do you have a comment on the Cryosphere adjustment?
Current anomaly:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
This is the anomaly that was reported a year or so ago:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060207120009/arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
cheers
Arnost
This week’s QCL page 53:-
“1880: A seven-year national drought that will kill millions of sheep starts”
This week’s QCL page 53:-
“1880: A seven-year national drought that will kill millions of sheep starts”
This week’s QCL page 53:-
“1880: A seven-year national drought that will kill millions of sheep starts”
Country folk are not only sceptical about urban views on climate. There is a linked scepticism about urban views on bushfire, and water shortage. Having been in the same place for generations, they know the truth – that the severity of recent fires is due to neglect of the regular burning of the past, not climate change. As is the loss of some native plants and animals. And the lack of water in our rivers and dams is partly due to El Nino drought, but is also due to thickening scrub, which graetly increases evapotranspiration. This thickening is caused by lack of regular burning.
Ian & Davey – yep agree no problems. But .. .. the comment is that “oh yes we in the bush know all about climate extremes from our experience”. So therefore why does the bush need any help managing drought. Like billions. Why do superbly adapted – “yep we know about it” – producers have any problems with drought feeding etc. Are those who maybe have to plough in their orchards saying “yep not a problem”. And Davey – landholders can burn their grazing lands if they want to – so why do we have thickened woodlands? We’re not talking forestry here. Just asking.
An answer might be that landholders are not well positioned to cope with long drought periods for a variety of reasons and burning for woody weed control is a risky business in an El Nino environment. If you have enough grasss to burn of course.
Victorias department of environment did do a burn off at Wilsons’ Prom just a year or so ago, because they do manage the area, despite what appear to be the constant rumours around here. The ferocity of the fire that resulted caught them by surprise, it went out of control it was so fierce.
Anybody seeing someone dragging a kayak along a road beside an irregualr flowing river would be entitled to say “oarsome”
Talking of melting ice – I came accross this paper in 2005 which suggests that if CO2 was quadrupled and held constant – it would take 3000 years to melt Greenland’s ice:
Elimination of the Greenland Ice Sheet in a High CO2 Climate
J. K. RIDLEY
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom
P. HUYBRECHTS
Alfred-Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven, Germany, and Department of Geography, Free University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium
J. M. GREGORY
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, Exeter, and Centre for Global Atmospheric Modelling, Department
of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
J. A. LOWE
Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Met Office, Exeter, United Kingdom
(Manuscript received 10 November 2004, in final form 9 March 2005)
ABSTRACT
Projections of future global sea level depend on reliable estimates of changes in the size of polar icesheets. Calculating this directly from global general circulation models (GCMs) is unreliable because the coarse resolution of 100 km or more is unable to capture narrow ablation zones, and ice dynamics is not usually taken into account in GCMs. To overcome these problems a high-resolution (20 km) dynamic ice sheet model has been coupled to the third Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere GCM (HadCM3). A novel feature is the use of two-way coupling, so that climate changes in the GCM drive ice mass changes
in the ice sheet model that, in turn, can alter the future climate through changes in orography, surface albedo, and freshwater input to the model ocean. At the start of the main experiment the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was increased to 4 times the preindustrial level and held constant for 3000 yr. By the end of this period the Greenland ice sheet is almost completely ablated and has made a direct
contribution of approximately 7 m to global average sea level, causing a peak rate of sea level rise of 5mm yr1 early in the simulation. The effect of ice sheet depletion on global and regional climate has been examined and it was found that apart from the sea level rise, the long-term effect on global climate is small.
However, there are some significant regional climate changes that appear to have reduced the rate at which the ice sheet ablates.
I’ve just run into another local conditions mention which has come up in a recording of oral history – this one that there was a period of about 20 years when the Balonne didn’t run. More when I’m told more.
IGNORANCE IS BLISS!
“Denial” is probably the applicable term to use. I feel it would be wrong to assume that rural folk are unaware of the damaging nature of urban culture (and definitely many antiquated rural practices). With and the sudden increase in the world population, one from rural communities can remember as a child the population was only 2.6 Bil (1950s). And it is not difficult to even calculate that the inputs and outputs of such a population expansion will have a significant impact on the system from which it draws resources and in which it exists. The message I get from the bush is that folk don’t want to wear the blame or responsibility for any degradation or rapid change of climate. Fair enough, nobody does! Unfortunately historically, rural landholders have already modified high proportions of the landscape (creating vast areas of high reflectivity (of low frequency radiation)). Denial is a means of keeping ones self respect, it is also a dangerous barrier to preparing for the inevitable.
Pat, I think the issue of keeping one’s self respect is a significant part of the rate of scepticism in the Bush about AGW global warming. But this problem is deeper than you seem to know.
As a child in a rural school I can remember being told by teachers that farmers had a moral duty to clear land to grow more food to feed a hungry world. (Felt good to know that my parent’s occupation was valued in the wider scheme of things. Called self esteem, Pat.)
Clearing land to increase production was the official policy, and farmers were getting it from all sides, including, presumably, from their kids. This was backed up by powerful positive incentives (tax deductions) and social incentives (those who refrained from clearing as much as they could were often disdained as ‘lazy’ by neighbours and bank managers).
With the onset of the Green Revolution (google Mervyn Borlaug), production per acre began to rise, and the political imperative to clear land for farming began to decline. So a higher political value began to be placed on the unintended (and largely unforseen)consequences of the pressure to clear land. Like loss of biodiversity and soil erosion.
With that, the message to farmers changed. In another rural school my kids were taught that farmers were to blame for overclearing, environmental damage, etc, etc, and they had to admit their mistakes and mend their ways. (What has that done to a whole generation of rural kids’ self esteem and pride in their parents’ occupations?) We, the parents, also got the message from all sides.
But when you analysed it, farmers were being blamed for listening too respectfully to past policy experts, and for not forseeing unintended consequences that the better educated Government advisers failed to see. To mend their ways farmers needed to listen up respectfully to a new batch of policy experts.
This blame game was the precursor to conservation laws which created statutory obligations on landowners to preserve bidoversity, soil etc. With no financial help, as Governments have no obligation to help citizens meet their statutory obligations. It’s called cost shifting, Pat, and Governments are doing it to Local Government all the time. But Local Governments can raise rates to pay for statutory cost shifting, farmers cannot.
This creation of statutory obligations on targeted sections of the population (perceived as at fault) is a politically convenient way of delivering on the conservation demands of urbanites without said urbanites (taxpayers)having to pay for the cost of their demands. That’s called free riding, Pat.
Over the years we have had policy experts throw various slogans at us as the latest ‘cure all’ for whatever current problems droughts, markets or regulations are giving us. I can remember “diversify”, followed by its opposite, “get big or get out”, as two memorable ones. Both having some merit, but both having unintended consequences if taken too far. Consequences paid by farmers and rural communities.
So many of us have learned to be cautious about government policies, especially environmental ones. We know from experience that we are in line to cop the cost (and blame) for unintended consequences. The more extreme the policy or propaganda appears, the higher goes the caution meter.
Regarding self respect, Pat, many landholders and rural people would now find it utterly self denigrating to have to grovellingly shoulder blame for the unintended consequences of aggressively persued past government policies.
And with that, acceptance of the whole political culture of blame shift / cost shift that has evolved over the last two – three decades.
Luke,
I was thinking mainly of thickened understorey (and leaf litter) in state forests and National Parks. I gather farmers in the eastern states are having a problem with woody weeds in former pasture. Being native weeds, they cannot legally clear them. Is this true?
Pat,
You may not be aware that when governments sold land to producers, it was under the condition that the buyer clear the land to the fence line. Most producers knew that this was bad practice, for example, creeks should be protected.
I have a letter from the Qld dept of lands, dated 1991, threatening to revoke the title of a producer because he had not cleared enough land at the prescribed rate.
And this went for all of teh soldier settlement blocks, the brigalow scheme, all over the country.
Remember too, that at the time, the CSIRO, and the state departments of primary industry were at the world’s forefront in agricultural research. And their advice to primary producers was to clear the land to increase productivity.
So the producer was legally bound to clear, having bought land released by government, and also acting on the advice of the national experts.
I am not surprised at the scepticism of rural people towarrds the AGW hypothesis.
When I talk to young people, mostly is mid teens to mid twenties, many or most are sceptiocal too.
Davey – “woody weeds in existing woodlands” is the issue. Woodlands are obviously mixtures of grasses and trees.
there’s woody weeds, wood weed encroachment, and woodland thickening. In woodland thickening – the grassland-woodland continuum tends towards “woodies” due to a lack of fire, prevention of fire, or not enough grass to support a fire – also see overgrazing. Whether one can clear the thickening depends on whether it’s classified remnant or not. If it gets out of hand you can end up with the Cobar woody weeds patch.
You can also set off massive regrowth and thickening by some clearing practices in some vegetation communities. Fire as you already know is the key – but graziers are often reluctant to burn. The alternative to the flame is the bulldozer.
Luke,
Glad we agree on something. With a forest hydrologist, I am doing some modelling at present which is rather startling. When we have checked all angles we will publish. From current calculations it seems that avoiding only quite a modest amount of evapotranspiration (by flame or bulldozer or chainsaw), over a large catchment, translates into substantial gigalitres of runoff into the dam. Frequent, mild burning in a mosaic pattern (like Aborigines) would yield the extra water, but also avoid major erosion and turbidity which comes from big, uncontrollable fires, such as a few years ago in Victoria, NSW, Canberra etc. Let’s hope logic will prevail, although emotional opposition to prescribed burning seems to prevail in political circles at present, due to urban voters, and the influential views of some daft academics. P.S I favour green landscape. The best way to achieve it is by frequent, mild mosaic burning. Saves native animal populations, and humans too. Both Aborigines and country folk know that.
Davey we may agree on much more than you think. Agree whole heartedly with your comments above.
Luke: problem is who has the fire stick these days considering risk management, OH&S etc
Gavin,
State governments have the fire stick – but are afraid to use it. By not using it they lay themselves open to future individual and group action for damages and injury from predictable and unnecessary fierce fires.
Luke,
When flying along the Indonesian island chain, I have often noticed clouds sitting over islands. In Australia, might extra evapo-transpiration from thickened vegetation be a hitherto neglected climate (and water table) factor? Water vapour is, after all, a major greenhouse gas, and clouds are tricky, both blanketing and reflecting. I believe forest cover has actually increased in Europe over recent decades. Has cloudiness increased, and so nocturnal warmth? Was Pliny the Elder right, or partly so? What think?
Ref: Andreassian, V. (2004) Waters and forests: from historical controversy to scientific debate. Journal of Hydrology 291:1-27.
Davey – you don’t have to go to Indonesia as you have great examples in your WA backyard at the rabbit fence. See the picture in these links.
http://wwwcomm.murdoch.edu.au/synergy/0403/fence.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/stories/s1152730.htm
http://www.iemss.org/iemss2002/proceedings/pdf/volume%20due/154_lyons.pdf
http://www.airborneresearch.com.au/Rabbits%20and%20Climate.pdf
Chapter 3 of 4AR says this about clouds i.e. it’s unclear.
“.. .. After correcting for ECT drift and
other small calibration errors in AVHRR measurements of
cloudiness, Jacobowitz et al. (2003) found essentially no trend
in cloud cover for the tropics from 1981 to 2000.
.. ..
In summary, while there is some consistency between
ISCCP, ERBS, SAGE II and surface observations of a reduction
in high cloud cover during the 1990s relative to the 1980s, there
are substantial uncertainties in decadal trends in all data sets
and at present there is no clear consensus on changes in total
cloudiness over decadal time scales… ..”
Yes, yes, yes, yes, nooooo…,
Clouds are tricky. Thanks for your rummaging, Luke. Unfortunately there may be fatal confounding between the Rabbit Proof Fence (runs north to south, based on the rabbit gradient of east to west) and the rainfall gradient (west to east). One could equally well propose that rabbits themselves were the cause of declining rain. The answer lies, as we all know, but some deny, in underwater volcanoes … and don’t forget that an upsurge in Earl Grey drinking will lead to an increase in water vapour from boiling kettles … but let us not mention such things. Don’t want to frighten the horses, what, what?
Well it depends on the ear colour – more white bunnies have higher albedo.
Some narcissistic suburban drop kick drags his engorged ego and a Kayak down a dry creek bed and the stupid poop can’t figure out why the country folk are sceptical?
Let me spell this out for the slow ones. City folk are masters at communication but have only very casual relationship with reality. So when they start talking about climate they give a first rate demonstration of the genus, “articulate bimbo”.
The image of this Kayaking boofhead trying to lecture a bunch of folks, many of whom can recall things like the actual pattern of rainfall in a particular year more than half a century ago, and how it affected the flowering of more than two dozen tree and shrub species, and how a particular kind of parrot is especially abundant when all those elements coincide, merely highlights the extraordinary extent of urban oafishness.
The most telling point about this story is the fact that we got to hear about what some itinerant village idiot thought while those with the deepest understanding of local climatic variation went unreported.
Ian Mott, thank you for some excellent insight and the best laugh I’ve had in some time.
— but I think Steve, above, deserves an honorable mention in view of his citation.