Category: Archive

More than one-quarter of gross value of Aust agriculture products from irrigation

admin /30 March, 2006

Irrigated agriculture represented about 28 per cent of the gross value
of agricultural production in Australia, according to a Productivity
Commission staff working paper on “Irrigation externalities: pricing
and charges”.

Agriculture uses 67 per cent of all extracted water used: In the
overview section, the staff working paper said irrigation water was
used to supplement rainfall in agricultural production systems.
Agriculture accounted for about 67 per cent of all
extracted water used in Australia.

NSW the biggest user: Most of the water used by Australian
agriculture was in NSW (44 per cent in 2000-01), Victoria (22 per cent)
and Queensland (21 per cent).

Charging regime: Water utilities charged irrigators for the water allocated and/or delivered to farms.

Trading of entitlements: In addition to purchasing water from
utilities, irrigators could trade entitlements (irrigators’ access
rights to a specific quantity of water each irrigation season,
sometimes referred to as “permanent trade”) and seasonal allocations
(the proportion of water entitlements allocated by water utilities
during an irrigation season, sometimes referred to as “temporary
trade”).

Uranium prices soar to $US40 a pound after increasing sixfold over past five years

admin /29 March, 2006

Uranium prices have soared to almost $US40 a pound after increasing almost sixfold over the past five years, reported The Australian Financial Review (28/3/2006, p.16).

Australia holds world’s largest, lowest-cost reserves: Australia
has the world’s largest reserves of uranium and about 30 per cent of
the world’s low-cost uranium. It is followed by Kazakhstan with 18 per
cent and Canada with 12 per cent. But importantly, Australia has 38 per
cent of the world’s lowest-cost resources (under $US40/kg), and is the
second-largest uranium producer in the world after Canada.

Major companies position for Chinese deal: BHP Billiton – with
its massive Olympic Dam copper/uranium deposit – Rio Tinto’s ERA with
Ranger and Jabiluka, Heathcote Resources’ Beverley mine in SA, and a
host of Australian wannabe uranium companies will all be jostling for a
slice of the Chinese pie.

Olympic Dam would triple BHP production: The deal with China
could mean even more for BHP Billiton than other players if the mining
giant goes ahead with its huge $5 billion expansion of Olympic Dam.
This would triple its annual uranium production to 15,000 tonnes.

Controversial claims that rising sea temps have almost doubled hurricane activity substantiated

admin /29 March, 2006

Last September, days after Katrina devastated New Orleans, Peter
Webster and Judith Curry of the Georgia institute of Technology in
Atlanta claimed that the number of intense hurricanes had almost
doubled over the past 35 years, reported New Scientist (25/3/2006, p. 21). The increase was worldwide, they said, and it was caused by rising sea temperatures.

Study criticised:The study was criticised for ignoring other
variables known to influence hurricane intensity, including high
humidity, atmospheric circulation (the large-scale movement of air),
and the strength of horizontal shear winds. William Gray of Colorado
State University, who compiles annual hurricane forecasts for the North
Atlantic, said the findings were “not physically plausible”.

Outside statisticians assess findings: To address such
criticisms, the team asked statisticians at Georgia Tech to look at
their original findings, comparing the role of sea temperatures with
competing factors. Led by Carlos Hoyos, this team concluded that all
four factors have been working to increase the strength of hurricanes.

Primacy of rising temperatures “confirmed”: The three additional
factors, they say, can explain why hurricanes form on particular days
in particular places. But, confirming the original conclusion, they say
that the contribution from sea surface temperature dominates in every
ocean. Critic Gray has yet to comment.

Greener houses are built of brick and timber

admin /29 March, 2006

By choosing their materials carefully architects could reduce the
greenhouse gas contribution of building homes by as much as a third,
reported New Scientist (25/3/2006, p. 27).

New emphasis on carbon from manufacturing: Almost all research
on the carbon dioxide emissions of houses has so far concentrated on
heating and lighting, with very little emphasis on the carbon released
during manufacture. Now Maria Conzalez and Justo Navarro from the
Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain, have designed three houses in
Valladolid with the aim of minimising CO2 emissions throughout their
life.

Brick/timber cuts emissions by 1/3 from concrete: Because the
houses were built mainly of brick and timber, instead of reinforced
concrete, they found carbon emissions dropped from 142 tonnes to 103
tonnes (Building and Environment, vol41, p 904).

Water Privatisation Springs a Leak

admin /28 March, 2006

After a decade of privatising their water supplies, national governments are reclaiming their people’s drinking water. Privatisation was promoted by the International Monetary Fund and other international non-government organisations on the basis that water would be better managed if it had commercial value. The realities, though, have been better water supplies in urban areas and Continue Reading →

Terrorists could kill hundreds of thousands using simple nuclear weapon

admin /28 March, 2006

Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel, in a New York Times
interview not long after 9/11, estimated that simply dropping a
45-kilogram lump of weapons-grade uranium onto a second piece of a
similar size from a height of about 1.8 metres could produce a blast of
5 to 10 kilotons, according to New Scientist (18/3/06, p.36.)

Thousands of bombs could be made from the uranium in the world:
With enough highly enriched uranium in the world to make hundreds of
thousands of such weapons, and frequent reports of nuclear material
being stolen from the former Soviet Union, it is far from unthinkable
that terrorists could get their hands on enough to make a bomb.

10-kiloton bomb could kill hundreds of thousands: In 2004, a US
government-funded working group published an estimate of the number of
radiation casualties that would follow a 10-kiloton detonation in a
mid-sized city of 2 million, the size of Washington DC (Annals of
Internal Medicine, vol 140, P.1037). The numbers make for sobering
reading: 13,000 killed immediately; 45,000 facing certain death
regardless of treatment; 255,000 at risk of dying without hospital
treatment; and a further 140,000 in need of observation.

A smaller device would still kill thousands: Even a 1-kiloton
explosion, from a smaller device or an imperfectly executed detonation,
would produce perhaps a third to a half that number of radiation
casualties, according to Jamie Waselenko of the Sarah Cannon Research
Institute in Nashville, Tennessee.