Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
By Dr. June Scorza Terpstra 02/15/07 "ICH " — — During a heated debate in a class I teach on social justice, several US Marines who had done tours in Iraq told me that they had "sacrificed" by “serving” in Iraq so that I could enjoy the freedom to teach in the USA. Parroting their Continue Reading →
Bruce Ward, Farm Consultant and Candidate for Climate Change Coalition in the NSW Elections for Legislative Council, said: "Unbelievably to many, our grasslands will be in the front line of the battle to overcome human induced climate change, a battle that will require widespread biological and technical changes at the farm level."
New era of industrial agriculture starting: Formerly the General-Manager of one of Australia’s largest cotton producing organisations, Ward was convinced that a new era of industrial agriculture is genuinely profitable and that biologically sound agriculture has begun. Ward said: "To capture and safely store existing C02 requires an altogether different approach to that required to prevent future releases. The different approach is an age-old natural process called photosynthesis, employed each day by green, growing plants such as trees and grasses, to power their growth.
Flora fond of CO2: The vast area of Australian grasslands and their soils are the key," said Ward. "When plants and animals are properly managed our soils rapidly transfer vast amounts of C02 from the atmosphere into the soil. Each 1 per cent increase in organic matter of our Australian soil removes more than 25 billion tonnes of atmospheric C02."
State governments called on to act: Ward has called on all parties in the NSW election to support the immediate implementation of a soil-carbon trading regime. "We simply cannot wait for the Federal Government to act on this. The states must drive this process. State governments must display the kind of leadership we require, and all NSW political parties have the chance to state their case right now," he observed.
Water was at last coursing through Queensland’s desert rivers and channels, transforming the arid outback into verdant pasture as it flowed towards Lake Eyre in South Australia, reported The Australian (14/02/2007, p.7).
Heavy rains liven-up dry river beds: Floodwaters across the Georgina-Diamantina catchment around Bedourie and the Coopers Creek catchment near Windorah were moving through the world’s last unregulated wild river system, filling channels that now measured up to 5m deep after being dry for years. "It’s like a network of veins – it defies logic really. It’s so spectacular," said Steve Wilson, the regional co-ordinator for Desert Channels Queensland. "We haven’t had this sort of rain for probably several years.”
A boom time for local flora: Tussocks of native pasture had burst up across large parts of the northern reaches of the Lake Eyre basin, with Queensland bluegrass, Flinders grass and spinifex among the most common species. The dune country around Windorah would soon be covered in spectacular windflowers.
Water gushing towards Lake Eyre: Some areas had received three times their normal annual rainfall. Birdville first flooded when it rained in January. Now the rains that fell upstream, at Bedourie on Eyre Creek, and over Mulligan Creek along the eastern side of the Simpson Desert, had cut the roads, again. "We’ve woken up to water views," said Nell Brook, of Birdville who runs the Adria Downs station. The water was travelling towards Lake Eyre, which was 15m below sea level and was the lowest point on the continent and fifth largest lake in the world, at more than 9500sq km and generally dry. Mr Wilson was optimistic about the water reaching the lake. "Lake Eyre might get something because it tends to fill more from the Georgina and Diamantina side," he said.
A letter from Dr Geoff Love, Director of Meteorology to Dr John Tamblyn, Chairman of Australian Energy Market Commission on 7 September 2006 showed summer rainfall was not likely over the Snowy Geehi storage. Love told NEMMCO hotter summers in Adelaide and Melbourne are were associated only weakly with lower summer rainfall totals in Khancoban, with the association being somewhat stronger for Sydney.
NEMMCO commissioned-report: Love, in a “Report on historical incidence of summer storms over the Snowy Mountains and the relationship between such storm activity and high temperatures in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales”, said capital cities of Sydney/Parramatta, Melbourne and Adelaide/Kent Town were chosen as most representative of their respective states for the number of hot spells. Only a few rainfall stations were used to represent the summer rainfall regime in the general vicinity of the Geehi reservoir.
Data ‘best available’ at short notice: Love said it was possible in the time available (24 hours) to determine the extent to which the stations chosen are indeed representative of the range of variability of summer rainfall in the region.
• The likelihood of a significant rainfall event following hot weather at any of the major cities within three days was 13 per cent;
• the likelihood of a rainfall event within seven days increased to 31 per cent.
A ~30-year analysis of summer rainfall totals in the catchment (using Khancoban), correlated with the total number of days in summer when the temperature exceeded 35 degrees celcius in each of the cities, revealed weak negative correlations for Melbourne (-0.12) and Adelaide (-0.13), and a somewhat stronger negative correlation for Sydney (-0.36).
If delegates to the Green Cities conference at Sydney’s Darling Harbour this week felt the irony of the situation they didn’t show it, says The Sydney Morning Herald (14/2/07, p.13).
Mall-minded: Stoical to the end, they braved the relentless mall-mindedness of our uptown fun-land to hear the world’s leading green urbanists in action. As the Arup director and London sustainability commissioner Peter Head said at the conference, it’s getting desperate. Experts give us 20 years, max, to showdown.
Tipping point terror: The planet’s near-vertical carbon dioxide graph is approaching 360 parts per million, based on emissions from the 1970s. Within 20 years present emissions will take it to 500ppm at best; so Britain’s target of last year for a 60 per cent reduction by 2050 has been reined in to 2025. Be scared; it’s real. Tipping-point terror.
It can be done: But be hopeful. It can be done. A new residential development in Hanover has achieved a 75 per cent carbon dioxide reduction and authorities are seeking to retrofit the same principles onto existing cities. Head is designing zero carbon housing for London’s Mayor, Ken Livingstone.
China’s green projects: Sure, you say, but what of China, frantically burning its coal and ours to fuel its brown revolution? Head will be glad you asked. China is doing remarkable things on the environmental front, including Tangye eco-village in Jinan and the proposed Dongtan ecometropolis on Shanghai’s Chongming Island, near a world-class wetland at the silty mouth of the Yangtze.
Self-contained city: By 2040 Dongtan will house half a million people. Phase one, complete for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, will take 80,000 and provide 51,000 jobs (compared with 50,000 residents and 19,000 jobs on a business-as-usual model). Linked to Shanghai by a 30-kilometre road-rail umbilicus, Dongtan will be otherwise self-contained, growing its food on small organic farms, powering its zero-particulate cars by battery or fuel cells, generating wind energy and hydrogen, capturing stormwater and recycling all waste. Buildings will be topped with photovoltaics and green-roof.
Small eco footprint: Dongtan’s eco footprint will be about 2.6 hectares a person, compared with 7.5 in Shanghai and other Western-type cities. Using mainly private capital, it’s been kick-started by huge public transport investment as well as legislation.
Quarry land: Others may break their necks to save the planet, but we, here in quarry land, are so busy pillaging we don’t even see the "knowledge economy backwater" – Stanford professor Bill Miller’s words – we are creating. Here there’s just the rhythmic slurpings from the trough, then silence.
The Japanese Government, owners of Institute of Cetacean Research aka the Japanese whaling fleet, breaks the regulations and the moratorium of the International Whaling Commission are being violated. The Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is being violated. The Antarctic Treaty territory is being violated. The Australian Antarctic Territory is being violated. The rules of the Convention Continue Reading →