We are not talking much about the environment in the Moggill campaign because everyone knows that’s the Greens strong point. Still some may like reassurance so I present here some independent assessments.
A combined score card of the major parties in the Queensland state election has been issued by various environmental groups. The Wilderness Society has also issued one. Here they are (click on the pictures to see a bigger version):
Let’s use the best science to make Brisbane safe, says Greens candidate
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“In the wake of the Victoria Black Saturday disaster, it is important to consider whether fire management in Queensland is up to scratch,” says Greens candidate for Moggill, Dr Philip Machanick. “In consulting my science advisors, I am troubled to learn that some preventive fire strategies in Brisbane could be increasing risk of fire.”
There has been reporting in Victoria of the need to reduce fuel loads, and to avoid dangerous strategies in high-fire areas like planting big trees close to houses.
“Reducing fuel loads sounds like a good idea,” Dr Machanick continues, “but it is also important to ensure that you don’t end up making the problem worse by replacing the burnt fuel by vegetation that burns hotter and faster. The problem arises because frequent burn-offs of the same large area selects for fire-adapted vegetation. Why is this bad? Fire adapted vegetation uses a combined strategy of burning hot and fast to clear the competition, then growing back rapidly after the fire. This means that a poorly-managed preventive burning program can increase the risk of catastrophic fire.”
Addressing the Queensland situation specifically, Dr Machanick says, “I don’t know if this is the case in Victoria, but in Queensland, we have a lot of exotic African grass, much of which is highly fire-adapted. Around Brisbane, the city council has a preventive burning program that fails to take this fact into account. If you look for areas they’ve burnt, you can see singed trees with no indigenous undergrowth, only exotic grasses, ready to burn hotter and faster next time some dolt drops a smouldering cigarette butt out of their car window, or deliberately lights a fire.”
Natural undergrowth
Similar area after burning
Dr Machanick takes The Australian to task for assigning blame to the Nillumbik Shire Council before all the facts are known, and publishing strongly-worded opinion pieces that say the best science was ignored, while survivors are still grieving. “It’s possible that mistakes were made, but the people who made these decisions have paid a heavy price. It is extremely insensitive to go hard on criticising them when we should be focusing on disaster recovery. This is the same paper that tells us routinely that we should ignore the best science on climate change. I hope this means they are coming around to the view that we should always use the best science.”
He concludes: “In the wake of the Victorian disaster, rather than the usual finger-pointing and blame shifting, I hope we can have some real solid debate on the best science of fire prevention and survival. We have to get this right because climate change will lead to more frequent, longer and hotter heat waves.”
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Background
“Council ignored warning over trees before Victoria bushfires”: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25038717-5018722,00.html
Watch this space for brief reviews of science topics and pointers to places where you can find out more.
If the World is Warming, How can we have very cold weather?
Global warming refers to the long-term world-wide average. Redistribution of energy from one part of the planet to another may make some areas warmer and others cooler. For example, in the northern hemisphere 2009-2010 winter, some areas experienced extreme cold. However, if you look at the distribution of northern hemisphere temperatures, what happened was that the Arctic warmed considerably. Look at the image: the Arctic region shows strong warming, with Greenland considerably warmer than usual (more accurately, less chilly), yet Northern Europe and North America are large local areas of cooling. Possibly this effect caused cold air to move south, but in any case, the cooler overall northern hemisphere in the most inhabited regions has hit the news, a slightly misleading picture when you look at the whole map.
Dead Zones
A dead zone is part of the ocean where oxygen levels are too low (less than 2 parts per million) to support life, or anoxic. Here is a site at Montana State University that provides some information. For more, see NASA’s information on dead zones. Algal blooms can make part of an ocean anoxic. In an extreme case, about 251-million years ago, the oceans became widely anoxic, as part of a mass extinction event at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic though probably that event had different causes.
Life In Your Back Yard Want to find out if there are endangered species or unwanted alien invaders somewhere, or just check out who or what your wild neighbours are? The federal environment department has a great tool for finding these things out. Click the “Interactive Map“ link, find your area of interest on the map, click Report and use the mouse to drag out a rectangle on the map.
How Green is the electric car? Electric cars – in the early days of motoring, a mainstream option – are making a comeback, with variations such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids. But how green are they really? Here’s an article with more detail. Check out Tesla’s first sedan. A UK company, Riversimple, has some interesting ideas on how to build an ultra-efficient car using a hydrogen fuel cell. I remain unconvinced of the hydrogen economy because hydrogen takes a lot of energy to produce, but Riversimple has some interesting ideas, like leasing the cars rather than selling them as a way of avoiding the false economy of planned obsolescence.
Smart Grid
Something that will be talked about increasingly is managing energy use more intelligently not only to be more efficient but to fit swings in demand to swings in supply better, as a remedy for the intermittency of some modes of renewable energy. Look out for articles about the smart grid such as this one.
Electric Vehicles
Now that the Obama administration is talking up clean energy, there’s been an explosion of interest in electric vehicles, so much so that rather than summarize articles, I’ll list pointers to them here as I encounter them:
Biochar
Biochar is the idea of burning carbon-containing materials in low oxygen (pyrolysis), resulting in charcoal that can be buried in the ground, improving the soil while sequestering carbon and reducing nitrous oxide (potent greenhouse gas) emissions from the soil. Biochar can also be used to produce biofuels as a byproduct. Here’s a nice YouTube summary of Australian work on biochar:
“Clean” coal
Various projects claim to be cleaning up coal. Carbon sequestration is one of the buzz words. The theory is that you can bury the CO2 deep underground. In practice, to do so on a significant scale would be very hard. The perceived need for carbon sequestration arises from the incorrect perception that a coal producing country like Australia cannot survive a transition away from coal, a claim that is hotly contested even by former coal supporters. Here are some contrary views:
Some obstacles: worldwide emissions would amount to around 30km3 per year even compressed down to a liquid. One power station would be a lot less but still a vast volume of toxic gas to handle. Pumping it out at high temperature through a high smoke stack dissipates it into the air, and turbulence mixes it into the atmosphere quickly. A cold leak at ground level on the other hand will not dissipate fast, and can kill people in large numbers, as occasionally happens as a result of volcanic processes. Here is a detailed critique I wrote of a “clean coal” proposal for Felton in Queensland. And here is a Coen brothers ad featuring their take on clean coal:
Forest management and climate change
The forestry lobby is big on the benefits of harvesting timber. Cutting down trees, they claim, is somehow good because new growth will sequester even more carbon. The reality is a lot more complex than that; logging old growth is almost always a net loss, and managing plantations for the best overall return on carbon emissions takes careful management. This Forest, Carbon, Climate Mythsslide show covers most of the major issues.
Regenerating lost forests
Watch biologist Willie Smits explain how he re-grew clearcut rainforest in Borneo, saving local orangutans – and at the same time creating work for the locals. Ignore the car ads.
Let’s stop the name-calling, says Greens candidate
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“Senator Barnaby Joyce’s labelling of measures against climate change as ‘Nazi’ is completely unacceptable,” says Greens preselected candidate for Moggill, Dr Philip Machanick. “In announcing my candidacy for the 2009 Queensland state election, I would like to appeal to all sides to desist from disrespectful language. The problems we are faced with are too serious to descend to emotional mud-slinging.”
Dr Machanick continues: “I hope my opponent in Moggill, Dr Flegg, repudiates this sort of language. My parents both served in World War II, and my mother reminded me frequently of how dreadful the Nazi regime was. Any Jewish person seeing Senator Joyce’s remarks would rightly feel repulsed. For Senator Joyce to equate a scientific position he doesn’t accept to the systematic subjugation and slaughter of millions is absurd and offensive. It is an affront to our veterans and the memory of the millions of victims of Nazi aggression.
“The Greens have serious misgivings about the climate change policies of the federal government, but this is no reason to equate their position to an extremist police state regime. Senator Joyce has objected to being called a ‘denialist’, claiming that this label equates his position with Nazism. How can he then use the language he has used?”
Dr Machanick, as a scientist of over 25 years’ experience, is able to make sense of the science of climate change without resorting to mud-slinging to distract from real issues. He aims to stick to the issues that matter in the upcoming campaign: creating sustainable jobs, promoting renewable energy, protecting the environment locally as well as great icons like the Great Barrier Reef, fixing public transport to the outer western suburbs of Brisbane, creating local facilities to reduce the need to travel and building a liveable community.
The Moggill electorate, as part of the green lungs of the city, has pristine natural spaces that should be protected as part of maintaining the environment and quality of life for residents. Dr Machanick is committed to maintaining the character of this special part of Brisbane, while correcting the chronic lack of infrastructure development in the electorate.
