Category: Archive

Too complex: Della Bosca concedes there is provision for
compensation to the hydro scheme owners in return for tipping extra
water over the wall, but says the agreement is too complicated to be
able to say under what circumstances and how much.

“Not good enough”: That’s not good enough, says Craig Ingrain,
an independent Victorian MP who was elected in 1999 on a platform of
guaranteeing environmental flows to the Snowy.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 18/2/2006, p. 15

Source: Erisk – www.erisk.net 

The Canberra Times, 14/2/2006, p. 1

Source: Erisk – www.erisk.net

The Australian Financial Review, 16/2/2006, p. 61

Source: Erisk – www.erisk.net 

The Canberra Times, 17/2/2006, p. 14

Source: Erisk – www.erisk.net 

Greenland’s glaciers are the worlds largest reserves of fresh water
and they are melting twice as fast as predicted five years ago.
Research carried out by the NASA Jet Propulsion Labroratory and the
California Institute of Technology indicate that 36 million cubic miles
of ice are now being dumped into the oceans each year. This is largely
due to an increase in air temperature of 3 degrees Celcius which
lubricates the bottom of the glaciers, making them slip faster across
the landscape.

The glaciers cover 650,000 square kilometers,
almost the size of NSW. if they melted completely sea levels would rise
by 7 meters. The researchers say that the computer models predicting
the impact of climate change will have to be reprogrammed, as it is
happening much faster than predicted using five year old data.  

A summary of the article published in Science is available at Reuters.

Ministerial concern over WWF support: They say the minister
expressed concern over the group’s comments on water reform and its
funding links to World Wildlife Fund Australia president Robert Purves.
Mr Purves, a Bungendore grazier, financial investor and philanthropist,
paid for dinner and the hire of a hotel conference room when members of
the group initially met in Sydney at the invitation of land clearing
campaigner Peter Cosier.

Attempt to suppress damning biodiversity report: WWF Australia
and CSIRO jointly published the blueprints with funding from Mr Purves.
The meeting followed the leaked release of a controversial and damning
report to the federal government by Queensland ecologist Dr Paul
Sattler on the state of Australia’s biodiversity. The report, which
scientists assisting Dr Sattler claim the Department of Environment and
Heritage tried to suppress, listed land clearing as the No 1 threat to
Australia’s biodiversity and ecosystems.

Bureaucrats would rather not know: “Yes, there was some pressure from the minister over Wentworth,” Dr Morton told The Canberra Times
yesterday. Dr Williams said there had been “lots of pressure and lots
of angst and agony” from government bureaucrats in at least three
departments over the Wentworth Group analysis of environmental problems
facing the nation.

The Canberra Times, 14/2/2006, p. 1