The environmental movement has achieved much over the last few decades. Much of this can be dated from the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in 1962, and the formation of Greenpeace in 1971 marks the effective birth of organised, high profile activism. From these beginnings, in less than half a century, environmentalism has become mainstream. In the industrialised world, air and water quality has improved tremendously, recycling rates have steadily improved, and European farmers are paid for conservancy work rather than just growing food. By any standards, this degree of change is a major achievement.
But successful organisations don’t just fold when they have achieved their aims: they find new causes and new goals. Having established their influence, they are loathe to lose it. The original term NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) has increasingly been replaced by CSO (Civil Society Organisation). Under this guise, these unelected bodies are viewed by politicians as legitimate representatives of public opinion. However, worldwide membership of Greenpeace is believed to be less than 3 million, well down from its peak in the early 90s. The nature conservancy body with by far the largest membership in the UK is the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), with around one million members. Clearly, these are significant organisations, but such membership numbers still categorise them as minority groups.
But their continued influence belies the figures. In the USA, things are different; business lobbies are very powerful and environmentalists do not take priority. In Europe, this is certainly not the case. The doors of politicians and policymakers are wide open to environmentalists, with businesses often having much less access. And the results are clear to see in the spread of ever more stringent and precautionary legislation.
The furore created over GM crops resulted in a complex and barely-workable legislative framework, with no evidence that the public is any the safer for it. The REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Approval of Chemicals) regulation is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, demanding safety testing of a wide range of chemicals in everyday use (and requiring the use of tens of thousands more laboratory animals). And current proposals for revision of the already tough European directive on pesticides would see decisions being made on the basis of hazard rather than scientific risk assessment. Avoidance of all risk seems to be the aim, with no weighing of this against the benefits. To make matters worse, decisions are made by politicians rather than on the advice of experts.
They have achieved so much in part because they are believers in a cause, and don’t necessarily let facts get in the way of achieving their ends. Greenpeace infamously prevented Shell from doing the environmentally sound thing of sinking the Brent Spar oil rig in the ocean and forced them instead to dismantle it on shore. In this case, they apologised later for giving false information, but were apparently still pleased to have achieved their victory. In the case of agriculture, all sorts of partial, selective or misleading data is quoted while anything not supporting the case is ignored. A prime example was a Greenpeace/Soil Association study claiming that GM crops were a failure in North America, on the basis of interviews with a few dozen disgruntled farmers and activists, while acreage was actually growing rapidly year on year.
The reason we have reached this position is that the values of the environmentalist movement are also part of the makeup of many politicians and civil servants. At the same time, there seems to be increasing distrust of business and the profit motive. No matter that it is overwhelmingly the private sector that creates wealth and – directly and indirectly – funds the revenue streams which governments need, the business lobby is seen as intrinsically selfish and greedy. On the other hand, environmental lobby groups, as well as enjoying their unwarranted position as the voice of public opinion, are deemed to have pure and unselfish motives.
This, of course, is a caricature. In practice, a wary and distrustful population does not believe everything which Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth may say, but they tend to distrust governments and businesses even more, at least according to public opinion surveys. But this imbalance tips the scales in favour of the NGOs (sorry, CSOs) and their influence on policy. We have even seen recently that Friends of the Earth Europe receives half its funding from the European Union, and then spends this money lobbying the very institutions who provided it.
Big Environmentalism represents vested interests every bit as much as does the business lobby. Their motives may be different but they are no purer. At heart, they want power and influence so that they can shape policy to their liking. They are politicians by any other name, but they remain unelected. Despite the good things the movement has helped to achieve in the past, their influence now is surely too strong if we want rational, balanced policymaking to be the norm.
Newsletter
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre, Cowley Road, Cambridge CB4 0WS
(Paul Biggs is a member of The Scientific Alliance)
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
As a former activist in Greenpeace I have some experience. Many things that GP fights for are good deeds among them fighting for a moratorium on bottom trawling on the high seas.
I met very friendly people at the Greenpeace Nordic office , however I was put off a little by the organisations political side. As I’m interested in environmental and animal welfare issues I was not especially happy that they de clared that they were not neutral ( which they declare offically) but actually took a political stance( in this case a left wing view).
Another case was this ” traditional” fight between the conservation people as WWF and Greenpeace ( we call them the numbers people) against animal/ welfare activist people. As Paul mentioned GP is not interested in animal rights issues( maybe excluding their oldest campaign , the whales). They gladly sacrify lab animals and when I was activ in GP they told me ” we are not an organisation that cares about parrots with broken wings”.
Friends of the Earth Europe received €635,000 from the EU last year – Funds from German, Austrian and Dutch ministries of environment, plus the UN Environment Programme account for over 50% of the group’s income, making it primarily a taxpayer-funded organisation.
Hah,
“increasing distrust of business and the profit motive”
Increasing? or simply collective memory of the exploitation and human degradation that has been behind some businesses (and political movements) throughout history.
Did I hear someone say AWB, well that’s almost history.
This sounds like someone wingeing that they’re not the boss anymore…
You’ll be eternally disappointed if you demand everyone play monopoly with the world and life on Earth. Then get all disgruntled when it turns out those who didn’t really want to play to begin with, nevertheless manage beat your flabby ignorant asses.
Sounds like their doing alright for themselves really eh. A real growth industry, isn’t that what you think is a good thing.
I’m back… 🙂
Some brief comments perhaps. One thing that has become conspicuous over the last 20 years, is the explosion in NGO participation in conservation causes. Many more now attend CITES meetings, IWC meetings, and employ full-time lobbyists.
I’m not sure they are helping. They’re biased towards iconic and charismatic species. E.g. minkes must be saved, but we’ll leave the baiji to Budweiser.
In some parts of SE Asia they have usurped conservation policies from existing governments. I suspect that WWF or WCS spend much more on reserves and policy advice than the countries they work on. Not this is a bad thing, putting your money where your mouth is is fine. But when that position allows you to stifle innovation and debate, to lock in ineffectual policies, there’s a problem. WWF can block TRAFFIc reports on wildlife use, because it partly funds this TRAFFIC. So, the TRAFFIC ‘t-Sas Rolfes’ reports contradicting WWF positions don’t get published.
We end up with a whole package of policies being advocated- largely I suspect on the palatability of these policies to the donors. And these are often tacitly racist. Apparently black or brown people in poor rural communities, don’t value wildlife as much as Western NGOs. So it’s only fair we come up with policies to dump must of the costs of conservation policy on the poorest people on the planet.
At the previous CITES meeting, we had one European NGO wonder why Namibia was trying so hard to export ivory to Japan- when this only had a return of $60,000. The concept this might be worth a lot to people living (and dying) on incomes of less than a dollar a day, seemed lost on someone whose annual photocopying budget approximated this sum.
Re-badging oneself from NGO to Civil Society Organisation is a delightful piece of spin.
Thinking about the meaning of the term “civil”, means surely to adopt the norms of other organisations within civil society. And these norms are? Civil society is nature itself, red in tooth and claw, but with padded gloves. Just because politicians, bureaucrats and business executives don’t literally cut each other’s throats to resolve disputes, doesn’t mean that their behaviour is noble or moral for much of the time.
You could see this attempt to put a shiny exterior on the same old groups is an admission that they are no longer paragons of virtue, but that they have joined the rest of society in the bear pit.
This being the case, the honourable courses of action for the NGO’s would be either
1.Float themselves as public corporations with shareholders instead of members. They may then pursue the same objectives but subject to corporate laws, competition, and direct legal contact with other multinationals. No more hiding behind the facade of superior morality and using elected politicians to protect them from all the rigours of the market place.
or
2. Place themselves in the political arenas of the world’s democracies as political parties and expose themselves to the electorate. If the modest role played by green political parties around the world is any indication, they would continue to exist but their influence would decline.
Did I say “honourable”? Silly me.
Love untinteded consequences. Campaigns to increase public trust in business and the public motive has resulted in much higher accountability demanded from business than from those driving these campaigns, the media, and activists within both the NGO and the Politician /civil servant arena.
So which estate is, on balance, the most trustworthy? The one held to the highest standards of accountability and probity. Businesses, small and large, private and public.
On top of regulatory accountability, you have the market. And does that punish perceptions of wrong doing! The AWB is actually an example of this. If you want to be in business for the long haul, accountability /good name is the only game in town.
We will always have ends-justifies-means opportunists. Businesses are under huge regulatory and public pressure to weed them out. NGO’s and the political / civil servant sphere are not.
So guess where the vermin are more likely to thrive? To the eventual wider public discredit of both NGO’s and civil servants. The good people in these estates do not deserve this.
In my own experiences with activist civil servants and the politicians in bed with them, I have, unwillingly, learned two hard lessons.
1. There is a profound difference between the principles of conservation and the principles of some conservationists.
2. If they behave like crooks, they probably are.
Sorry. Error. The second sentence should read “Campaigns to increase public Mistrust …”
You can’t deny that a big part of the reason NGOs find it easy to “pray” on public mistrust of private enterprise operations is because there’s no shortage of examples of obviously unethical behaviour that businesses get engaged in. But often these occur in such a manner that the public is likely not to be aware of them, unless they get brought to attention.
If NGOs are themselves engaged in obviously unethical behaviour themselves, then it should be equally easy for businesses to run campaigns to expose them. Given they rely on donations, few people are likely to donate to an organization that has been exposed as miscreant. OTOH, consumers will buy products from businesses with known-to-be shady standards, because the benefits of the products outweigh their ethical concerns. Even the most anti-ExxonMobil types will buy petrol from Mobil stations if they need it badly enough and there’s no easy alternatives.
BTW, Helen, re your #1 “hard lesson” above, you could just as well change the last word to “conservatives”.
Or to “leftists”.
Come on – generalising simply invites tot for tat – there’s plenty of not too good examples on all sides.
Patrick Moore is worth reading in this respect. he is devastating in his criticism of the environmental movement he helped found.
The same comments could also be made of Amnesty International unfortunately.
The comparison with business is both relevant and irrelevant.
On one hand , Paul’s point about Business Lobby access and influence in competition with NGO’s
is spot on – both seek to advance their sectional interest by influencing policy formation , legislation and regulation.
Some in both camps on occassion use clever media and public manipulation to bring pressure to bear.
However , media scrutiny on each is unequal.
IMO this is because;
1. The natural political inclinations of journos are anti-business ( would cite Henningham as evidence ).Journalism is the profession of forming and propogating opinion which is a lot easier than actually taking risks , producing wealth and being judged by tangible outcomes.
2.Business usually doesn’t try to portray itself in the moral poseur light. This is much more interesting for journos – if one of the protagonists in a confrontation can be painted as the good guy and one as the baddie , it not only fits the natural prejudices of the journo but it’s simplistic – and let’s face it ; convenient categorisation into the good and bad camps is a prerequisite for most on the left side of the political scale.
It would be enough if both business and NGO’s were judged by the same principle – no-one deserves a free pass just because they’re claiming the moral high ground.
So if business or “corporations” ( now there’s a word that can generate a good Pavlovian response!!) makes it’s profits legally and ethically, pays it’s taxes, deals with information more or less truthfully and responsibly, let’s celebrate ! History has shown society is much better off for it.
The same standard of behaviour should be expected of NGO’s.
The end justifies the means isn’t acceptable in private industry or the NG sector.
Dylan
It is one of the Medias, jobs to expose wrong doing in all spheres which enjoy or depend upon public trust. The media are pretty good at exposing questionable business practices, but are much more reticent in exposing sub-standard practices in the NGO spere and in Government agencies, particularly those in conservation / environment administration.
Let me give you an example of a civil service tail wagging the Parliamentary dog. If you have an understanding of the Doctrine of Separation of Powers, you will get what is wrong with this. It comes from the South Australian Hansard, 27/11/01 page 2880.
The Shadow Minister said the following: “Secondly, the bill requires a significant biodiversity gain in return for any clearance approval. Once again I understand that this is the current practice of the Native Vegetation Council. It is not in the existing Act, and this bill today strengthens and makes law what is currently only policy.”
Under our Westminster system of democracy, all are bound by law. Regulations may not exceed the powers of the parent Act. Policies may not exceed the powers of the Parent act or regulations under that Act.
Civil servants are employed to implement legislation and are required to perform their duties in a lawful manner. They are accountable, through their Minister, for the proper and are accountable to Parliament, through their Minister for the proper adminstration of Parliamentary legislation. They are required to do their duties in a lawful manner.
The lawful sequence is Legislation -> Policies -> Practice -> Precedent.
That politician, who later became the Minister, supported Practice -> Precedent -> Policy -> Legislation. With such slack accountability at the top, how can you trust such agencies to do their job lawfully?
Environmentalism has become so mainstream that its values (and ends-justifies-means activism?)are now part of the make-up of many politicians and civil servants.
Don’t know about you, but I have found more integrity in the businesses I can choose to deal with, than in some of the civil service agencies I have to deal with.
It’s a brave new action group or committee that builds a sunset clause into their constitution. We are not geared to short term goals despite the rhetoric about politics and processes in our working democracy. Most campaign organisations respond to some periodic demand such as an election or update of public or private agreements.
The last example is about the unions we one had. The seeds of what Paul calls “environmentalism” started with unionism. By the early seventies Australian environmentalism had reached academia and the media via teachers through their unions. Young lawyers would soon catch on and initiate their own campaigns aimed at, you guessed it the very core of the constitution we all so depend on.
At the core of the post ww2 fuss was an almost total disregard for natural things as we raced to build the transport and power system that made industrial automation possible.
Beyond the obvious demand for materials was an insatiable hunger for energy. Much of that infrastructure was state owned. Jobs in construction became the carrot after the demobilisation of the military. Pacification had a new cost for places remote from former battle fields. Protests here sometimes began here with refugees in their private retreats.
It’s been my experience this environmentalism is not something one initially learned in schools. Neither was it ever a religion and the ‘ism’ is all just too easy for those who don’t understand roots. IMO sustainability must be about roots. The core of a campaign is therefore the average passer by down the street from your average GPO. It must also include at some stage the wisdom of your mum and dad. Their impression puts the brakes on the media and a crafty minister.
How do we on the blog most successfully manipulate these masses of faceless people?
My answer would have been a good pair of shoes.
At one time people around me tried to use Trades Hall, the ACF and the Duke, The Club of Rome, UNESCO, The High Court and the street. Newspapers and TV followed some of the action. Green Peace and Friends of the Earth at a guess were less than one in twenty then.
I bet most individuals across that spectrum have retired. What happens today comes from a whole new wave. That’s the nature of this environmentalism.
“Greenpeace infamously prevented Shell from doing the environmentally sound thing of sinking the Brent Spar oil rig in the ocean”
It was Brent Spar that finally convinced me not to believe anything Greenpeace had to say.
GP Germany needed cash, so the easiest way to get it was to manufacture a baseless dispute, get the press to promote it, and wait until the little old ladies started scratching a few marks from their pensions to make a donation. And how the money rolled in.
When Greenpeace start being as open, transparent and accountable as Shell I might start believing them, but until then? If a Greenpeace spokesman tells me the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, I will look for a second opinion.
Utterly dishonest, deceitful and greedy organisation.
” Utterly dishonest, deceitful and greedy organisation.”
Well, I gonna rebel a bit now…
One of the most uncomfortable moments with Greenpeace have been following moments:
1) Energy and Climate Campaigner telling GP staff ” that the best thing that could happen to our climate campaign is a new Katrina hurricane and a new Chernobyl accident”
2) Head Oceans Campaigner telling ” that GP know this but is never going to tell the public this information…we are not interesting to inform people , only getting their e-mail adresses”
3) Lies about GP owning ” only” one SUV
etc, etc…..
Hello from sunny California.
The weather is fine.
Sorry to bug you, but I have a question that I believe you have expert knowledge of.
Something happened in 1993 that caused the closing of a bucket load of Australian WHCN stations.
Would any of you know what that something was?
Peace out, Jim
Jennifer, state your credentials so we know who you work for ! Big business has emlpoyed all sorts of people to promote Greenwash and loves ex-environmentalists who have gone over to the dark side. Well of course we want to influence politics – that’s why I moved to Tasmania in 1992, home of the world’s Green Party. But I accept that there are Dark Greens (like me) and Light Greens, and those who work in business and other political parties or in a host of NGOs. That’s normal if youn study the history of social change. And there are male egos (maybe a few female ones, but mostly male) and we make mistakes.
I’d rather accept the idea of stewardship than the old Genesis line about subduing the Earth or the Tasmanian motto “If it flows dam it, if it grows chop it down, if it moves, shoot it.”
Hi Peter D. Jones,
This piece was posted by Paul Biggs. You will see his name at the top and bottom of the piece in blue. Here’s some information about Paul http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002133.html .
While my photograph is at the top of the blog it is now really a group blog and the banner will be changed (hopefully today) to include a picture of Paul and also Neil Hewett.
If you want to read more about me click here http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/about.php
BTW I’m an atheist.
When Peter D Jones quotes such a familiar bit of rhetoric “If it flows dam it, if it grows chop it down, if it moves, shoot it.”
I wonder if he has found the source yet.
Jim’s Q on WHCN stations has me stumped. “Something happened in 1993 that caused the closing of a bucket load of Australian WHCN stations”
Hot rock hey
I found the Sciemce Alliance piece interesting because I am currently writing something about the potential undermining of democracy by various advocacy groups claiming to represent “the community”. In Western Australia we have a number of environmental advocacy groups who make that claim. They back it up by the usual methods of colorful websites, street theatre, loudhailers, getting material into schools, getting members into local government etc. Has anybody any ideas on how I could find out their actual membership numbers, inedependently of their own claims? Is there a government register of such groups? Are they required to publish all their funding sources?
“Potential undermining of democracy by various advocacy groups claiming to represent “the community”” – you mean politicians or religion or the media or the IPA 🙂 ?? Those religious instruction classes are insidious and all corrupting – made me into an atheist.
Well shucks.
The mass closing of surface temperature stations in 1993 is sort of important. You see Hadley/GISS/NCDC use those measurements to produce the world average temperature graph.
With fewer surface stations, they are free to extrapolate the temperature of larger areas of the planet. Extrapolation is sure to introduce bias.
It is shocking to me that in this era, when the IPCC is claiming more and ever greater precision of climate models, and ever more dire predictions of consequences of human influence on the environment, that when I look at the means of measuring the supposed effect, I see the instrumentation shrinking.
Here is a list of all 464 surface stations which once upon a time were operating in Aus with their temp history hot linked.
I haven’t clicked through all of them. Just the first row. Out of the eleven I looked at 9 are defunct – with the end of their records always being 1993.
Seems like political shenanigans to me.
I would like to look into why they are shuttered, but I am in California.
Perhaps there is a reasonable explaination.
Can’t think of one right off the bat.
Did the Australian weather department go into foreclosure in 93? Where they forced by the court to sell off their thermometers?
Is it a coincidence that this happened then record heat started being reported by NCDC?
Help me out here.
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/501/index.html
James – you should ask at the source – Australian Bureau of Meteorology – specifically the National Climate Centre section – contacts here at http://www.bom.gov.au/inside/contacts.shtml
But before you do you should also look at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/how/climarc.shtml
and http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/
You would also be well advised to check the Bureau’s independent climate change assessment for Australia here http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/reference.shtml and here http://www.bom.gov.au/silo/products/cli_chg/
Steady on there Luke:; PJ may pick up something of real value!
James Mayeau,
I would guess that 1993 corresponds to when the Australian Bureau of Meterology go full steam ahead with automatic weather stations (AWS), quite a few of which started operating from the late 80’s and early 90’s. The closed stations were manned, thus often had missed observations. AWS’s are in better locations, removed from urban influences of some old ones, like out the back of a post office.
Here’s an interesting environmental issue I noticed in this morning’s paper. There’s no politics here, these are facts (apparently):
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/eerie-saga-of-the-vanishing-bees/2007/08/19/1187462083686.html
Thank you all.
Your weather bureau has the right approach. Wish they would do something like that here.
Seriously. Following the guidelines for station setting, complete with pictures – who’da thunk it.
You sure this is a government operation?
The Scientific Alliance eh?….
The Scientific Alliance claims to offer a rational scientific approach to the environmental debate and says that it was formed ‘in response to the growing concern that the debate on the environment has been distorted by extreme pressure groups’. However, the Alliance is seen by many as a corporate-friendly front group forwarding its own extreme agenda. It is also perfectly prepared to attack the scientific consensus on issues that do not fit with that agenda – for example, climate change.
The founders of the Scientific Alliance were Mark Adams and quarryman Robert Durward, the director of the British Aggregates Association. Durward says he is ‘a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff… much of which is unjustified, such as the climate change levy. We also have the aggregates tax, which will put the UK quarry industry out of business.’
Durward and Adams established the Scientific Alliance in 2001. Two years later The Scotsman newspaper reported that on contacting the Alliance to ask about Durward’s role, ‘after some uncertainty, the switchboard it shares with a number of other firms denied any knowledge of Mr Durward’s existence. Matthew Drinkwater, the one person responding to calls to its offices, could also be contacted by ringing the offices of Foresight Communications.’
Foresight Communications is a PR firm established by Mark Adams in January 2001. As well as The Scientific Alliance, its client list includes the British Aggregates Association and the New Party for Britain (also known as the People’s Alliance). The New Party – also the name of Oswald Mosley’s first party – is so right-wing that the Tory leader in Scotland, where it operates, has called it ‘fascist and undemocratic’. Like the Scientific Alliance, this ‘People’s Alliance’, was established by Durward and Adams.
According to The Scotsman, Durward has spoken out on many issues, including the ‘witch-hunt’ against drink drivers, the ‘media-fuelled circus of Kyoto’, and the ‘bluster emanating from the collective witch-hunt referred to kindly as the green movement’. He has also written,’Perhaps it is now time for Tony Blair to try the “fourth way”: declare martial law and let the army sort out our schools, hospitals, and roads as well. Who knows, they might even manage to put the ‘great’ back into Britain.’
On organic farming, for instance, the Scientific Alliance says:
‘Many scientists maintain that the organic movement follows ideological principles which are not supported by science. Indeed, Dr Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, has argued that if all farming were to be organic, productivity would be so low that almost all forests around the world would have to be destroyed to make way for agricultural land. If the whole world went organic, it could support only 3-4 billion people, with a high risk of pest and disease epidemics.’
Not mentioned is the fact that, since leaving Greenpeace nearly 20 years ago, Patrick Moore has spent much of his time countering environmental concerns as a paid front man for Canada’s lumber industrialists.
‘such membership numbers still categorise them as minority groups’ – Paul Biggs
Tell me Paul how many members does the unelected Scientific Alliance have?…
James Hansen has developed a folksy style of prose complete with Creationist overtones with more than just a touch of Armageddon warning that;
“The disaster in New Orleans will be small potatoes compared with world wide catastrophes due to rising seas” and “We could drive half of the plant and animal species on the planet to extinction” and ” Heavy rains and floods will increase, but so will extreme droughts and forest fires..”
Floods, fire, tempest and drought. Is there a way out of this wilderness?
“It is up to the public to make sure that we get onto a path that
stabilizes climate and allows all the creatures of Creation to continue to thrive on this planet.”
That path is also the path to a better democracy, a democracy that “Special interests may have wounded..”
“..We need a way to smoke out who is serious, who will give priority to preserving creation for today’s and future generations, and who, on the contrary, is subservient to special interests.”
Who said it was just about the weather?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Iowa_70805.pdf
When James Mayeau gave us this link I spent a while pondering the records, too long as I was quite busy elsewhere.
http://www.unur.com/climate/ghcn-v2/501/index.html
The last dozen or so numbers contain stations in places I know and I can’t explain all we see. At a glance some of it seemed absurd.
For starters, what is a zoomed in version?
Waratah; 95950 seems to have a nice steady record but it’s been adjusted. That old mining town is a damned cold place. Passing through every day in the winter of 1986 I carried in the wagon a down filled sleeping bag in case I got stuck in ice or snow as traffic was low.
Wynyard 95957 it would seem shows an oscillation. OK; what about the frost?
“vertical and horizontal scales are automatically computed by the graphing library” ??
Orford 95984 another coastal town on the far side of the island is similar. Also what about the differences between our airports and PO locations? IMO it’s not the problem.
Note: Merimbula 95930 another small airport on the mainland is similar. Compare it to Montague Is 95935 up the NSW Coast. Not bad hmmm.
However Mt Wellington – Grove Research 95978 absolutely defeats me. What have they done to the records? Must be dodgy gear hey, rather than dodgy filters that left us with some obvious discontinuities.
Yesterday I picked up an old MiG Tot. Imm. thermometer in a very tarnished slotted 32 cm brass tube. If I get time today I will attempt a home calibration for old times sake. It should remind me of some difficulties working between -10 to 110 C in .1 C guestimates. After a good case clean let’s do it all over hampered by the viewing slot and case delays!
What Lamna omits to mention is that farmers always quit farming “organically” when it’s within their means to do so, unless there’s a substantial subsidy available for producing half as much food per acre or less.
What Schiller omits to mention is that he is talking complete and utter tosh… here in the UK the organic farming industry has been a means for farmers to charge more for their produce because it has added value in the market place, which has helped loosen the supermarket and food processing corporations iron grip on farmers throats, choking the financial life out of them to increase profits for the corporations.
But of course what Thurkettle means is the starving developing world where genocidal European greenie subsidies are slaughtering millions….
‘Similarly, 25000 cotton producers in the U.S are given a subsidy of approx $4 billion annually. This has brought cotton prices down artificially, allowing the U.S to capture world markets which were earlier accessible to poor African countries such as Burkina, Faso, Benin, Mali.
The subsidy of $230 per acre in the U.S is genocidal for the African farmers. African cotton farmers are loosing $250 million every year. That is why small African countries walked out of the Cancun negotiations’ – Vandana Shiva
Oops, that would appear to be American GM product… how embarrassing…
Thurkettle is just cranky because he didn’t pick up Whole Foods Market shares back in the day….thought it was just a Texan fad…
What Lamna omits to mention is that half of the certified “organic” acres in Britain consists of swamps and the sides of roadways, and that organic farming produces so little that Britain must import organic food from Africa, where they can’t afford better farming methods.
Lamna also omits to mention that organic farmers are so unproductive in developing nations that they are forever begging for government subsidies to make up for their lack of productivity.
Lamna also omits to mention that cotton is a cash crop, not a food crop, and is therefore unrelated to the problems associated with feeding people in countries where local currencies are either worthless or inflate at 1,000% per year or worse.
Lamna also omits to mention that GM cotton in more developed nations, such as India, have lifted farmers out of mere subsistence, and they are living unprecedentedly well.
Lamna also omits to mention that Vandana Shiva doesn’t even know what a rice field looks like! She looked at a fallow field of weeds and said, “That rice looks sad.” The farmer replied, “Ma’am, that’s not rice, that’s weeds.”
Citing Vandana is either crooked or ignorant.
‘Lamna also omits to mention that cotton is a cash crop, not a food crop, and is therefore unrelated to the problems associated with feeding people in countries where local currencies are either worthless or inflate at 1,000% per year or worse.’ – Schiller
Disingenuous as ever Thurkettle, if the farmer is not growing a food crop, he needs to be able to sell his cash crop to buy food, so if the market is awash with the Uncle Sam’s subsidised GE cotton thats why his local currency is worthless and he can’t afford food…
You dont like Vandana’s figures?… then give us verifiable US government subsidy figures for GE cash and food crops big fella…oh and chuck in the import duties on foreign GE crops as well… it will be just as interesting for the Aussie GE lobbyists as farmers in developing countries…
From Ann’s: ” that the best thing that could happen to our climate campaign is a new Katrina hurricane and a new Chernobyl accident…”
This is the thing that gets my goat with the climate change debate. From the enviro politics side, it appears that it’s all about scaring people to do the right thing. You over emphasise one side and de-emphasise the other. And what’s worse – if you don’t have a real disaster to spin – you manufacture it!
This is a dangerous game and can backfire. The above can only work if people are ignorant and stupid… And people are neither. It is not difficult these days to verify things – and if even a little bit of subterfuge is discovered, it’s game set and match – nobody will believe anymore (the Brand is dead).
Case in point (my newest irregularity in one of the climate change totems):
I was looking through some bits and pieces on the Arctic and found this. I found slide 11 extremely interesting:
http://ioc3.unesco.org/oopc/meetings/oopc-9/presentations/monPM/Rayner_OOPC9_pr.pdf
So it made me think – this is the Cryosphere Today Arctic sea-ice extent. I’m sure that everyone has seen this trumpeted regularly in the last week or two and shows that the northwest passage is well and truly opened:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/arctic.jpg
This is a current satellite photo shows the NW passage – it tells a little different story:
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2007234/crefl1_143.A2007234194000-2007234194500.4km.jpg
The northwest passage is still closed. In fact there appears to be a lot more ice in the area that what Cryosphere Today suggests.
Some time ago I pointed out that something changed in Cryosphere Today’s historical sea-ice anomaly record.
http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/2918/anomalykm3.gif
So I begin to wonder if the Cryosphere Today Arctic sea-ice extent measurements are based on microwave soundings and if original compensating adjustments (i.e. for the 25% underestimation from slide 11) were re-adjusted out. And I wonder why they put up ice extents that clearly conflict with observation?
I have been following a forum where the CT historical change was identified and where participants contacted CT for an explanation. There has not been an answer for nigh on two months. Luke contacted NCDC/NOAA for an explanation of an anomaly that I found in Australian Temperature and their global temp records. The explanation that was received was not entirely satisfactory. Without adequate explanations – ultimately I suspect an environment agenda of some kind – let’s manufacture a disaster!
Bottom line is – if I find these sort of unexplained irregularities in something that is being rammed down my throat as proof that I should accept a reduction in my living standard, I lose trust. So when somebody now rams a lovely digitalised, colourised, Cryosphere Today pic in front of me – I think “just more propaganda”.
I’m sure that there are others that will feel the same way.
Any way, food for thought…
cheers
Arnost