Category: Archive

A plan by national engineering firms to save 300 gigalitres of fresh water a year for South Australia has been lodged with the National Water Commission reported The Advertiser (10/2/2007, p.43).

Federal funding sought for Twin Lakes scheme: Adelaide-based natural resource management group Kellogg Brown & Root is seeking $5 million in federal funding for a feasibility and environmental impact study of its Twin Lakes scheme. The group has been joined by environmental and engineering consulting firm URS in pushing for the project.

Saltwater pool in freshwater Lake Alexandrina: The $250 million proposal, first floated more than two years ago, involves building a saltwater pool in the middle of freshwater Lake Alexandrina. The inner seawater lake would connect to the sea by removing the Ewe Island barrage, with the design capable of saving 300 gigalitres of fresh water a year in evaporation. Under the plan, an embankment would be built about 1km from the shoreline of Lake Alexandrina to create the inner seawater lake.

The Advertiser, 10/2/2007, p. 43

An illegal Japanese whaling ship and a boat owned by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, an anti-whaling group, collided twice in Antarctic waters during clashes over a pod of whales, conservationists and Japanese officials said.

The Sea Shepherd vessel said it suffered a three-foot gash in its hull, while the Japanese boat issued a distress signal during the clash to seek help from another Japanese whaling ship in the area.

The Sea Shepher vessels, Robert Hunter and Farley Mowat, caught the Japanese whaling vessel Kaiko Maru bearing down on a pod of whales. The conservation vessels moved in and chased the whaler into the ice. 

Japanese officials accused the anti-whaling group of attacking the whaling ship like pirates, however, the whaling ship was operating illegally in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. 

For up to date information on the battle against Japanese illegal whaling in the antarctic, go to the Sea Shepherd web site.

Southern Right Whale breaching 

11/2/07: An illegal Japanese whaling ship and a Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship collided twice in Antarctic waters during clashes over a pod of whales. Sea Shepherd chased the whaler into the ice. Full story

Brown pointed out to a crowd of 700 people that the woodchipping industry in Tasmania blows up old growth trees using ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel as an explosive, removes a fraction of the timber to be sent as woodchips to Asia, and then firebombs the rest.

“We are destroying the world’s largest carbon bank to sell at $10 per tonne. Once carbon trading is introduced its value as a carbon sink will be up to $200 per tonne,” Brown said.

The parliamentary leader of the Greens has also challenged the major parties to develop a twenty-year plan to phase out the coal industry. “If they cannot develop such a plan within the next three year parliamentary term, then people should not vote for them,” Brown said.

The Greens have always been climate change activists. Now that the Greens position is popular the major parties struggle to catch up. “It is only window dressing,” Brown said.

“Coal mining was not mentioned once in the debate between Turnbull and Garret on the 7.30 Report last week. Both parties are clinging to the industrial ideologies of the nineteenth century. For the sake of the planet, we have to move on.”

The Sydney Morning Herald, 6/2/2007, p.11

Source: Erisk Net 

The Australian Financial Review, 8/2/2007, p.58

Source: Erisk Net