By Andrew Bolt

Holland’s Elsevier reports on new research findings that once more show Al Gore faked his findings in An Inconvenient Truth:

Former American vice president and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore has for years used the melting snow on Africa’s highest mountain (5892 metres) for his climate propaganda. The snow cover is shrinking and that is caused by man and his greenhouse gases!

The Dutch scientist Jaap Sinninghe Damsté debunks this story of climate guru Gore in the leading periodical Nature.

A natural process of large climate shifts seems to be the true cause, says the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research on Thursday….

The researcher and European colleagues discovered that Kilimanjaro underwent successive periods of heavy monsoons and extreme dryness. Ice and snow retreat from the top in dry periods and return in the very wet ones….

Al Gore must find another symbol for his climate problem. Kilimanjaro does now have little snow on the peak, but that seems to be completely natural.

(My translation.)

No doubt a correction of this and all the other errors and exaggerations in Gore’s film will be sent to the millions of students forced to watch it as a lesson in “science”.

Oh, and what did the CSIRO top expert in global warming effects, Penny Whetton, say of this farrago of exaggerations, distortions and untruths upon its release – when even a mere journalist then could see through the bunkum?

“I was really quite moved, and given that this film was about a topic I deal with every day, this says something about how powerfully it communicates its message. Its scientific basis is very sound.” 4.75 out of 5

Retraction, please, Ms Whetton.

UPDATE

I’m not sure even The Australian’s journalists have quite caught up with the public’s sudden revolt against scaremongers like Al Gore. Check the readers’ comments to its latest report on the Great Green Gore’s pronouncements.

TonyfromOz adds …..

The CSIRO mentioned here is the (Australian) Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. This is Australia’s peak Scientific Establishment, and funded by the Australian Federal Government.

Andrew Bolt is a journalist and columnist writing for The Herald Sun in Melbourne Victoria Australia.

Read more excellent articles from Andrew Bolt’s Blog

Rachael loved her sparkly new nanodiamond ring. Illustrated by Mike McRae

From CSIRO Science by email. If you had a watch with glowing hands in the early 20th century, there is a good chance it was painted with a newly discovered element called ‘radium’. Radioactive chemicals such as this were used in everything from clocks to toothpaste to health tonics. The technology might have been new and exciting, but was also potentially dangerous. Workers who painted those watch hands fell ill, most of them dying of cancer.

Of course, today’s world wouldn’t be the same had we never discovered radioactivity. It’s used in medical diagnostics, scientific research and technology such as smoke alarms. However it’s vital that we remain cautious about new discoveries to reduce any possible risks they pose.

Amanda Barnard was presented with one of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science for her work on nanotechnology. Researchers have understood for a long time that a material can behave differently depending on whether you have a big chunk of it, or a tiny piece. For example, specks of gold only a few nanometres across look purple rather than bright yellow.

Amanda’s computer models attempt to predict what certain nanoparticles will do in different environments. Knowing how chemicals behave when they are so tiny is important as we find more applications for them. While they might be safe in some circumstances, combining them with UV light, changing the temperature or adding other chemicals could lead to unforeseen problems.

Her current work involves exploring how tiny diamonds might be used to deliver drugs to the right part of the body. Modelling the way nanoparticle diamonds move in an electrical field might help reduce the amount of chemotherapy cancer patients need.

Technology always poses a range of problems as well as useful outcomes. With the help of super computers and researchers like Amanda, it’s possible to avoid the dangers while still getting the benefits from new discoveries.

THE CSIRO has sought to secretly close a loophole that allows scientists to publish research and comment in their private capacity about politically sensitive issues…. From The Australian. Full story

This site may contain information about: circiut city. The blog is also related to: vice city.

Alright, I’m here in Sydney, and getting close to normal again. What better way to regain normality than regular blogging again?

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is Australia’s national science agency. They manage national R&D facilities and focus on several areas of interest to the country. Their current “national challenges” include focusing on:

• Ocean health and resources
• Enhanced barley
• Saving energy at home
• Cardiovascular health

• The Opposition may want agriculture excluded from the ETS, but the nation’s top climate scientists are calling on the Federal Government to include soil and vegetation in Australia’s emissions trading scheme.

Few other countries have recognised soil's effective capacity to store carbon

A report released by the Wentworth group of scientists says that unless this is done, it will be “next to impossible” to achieve the emissions cuts needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Wentworth Group scientist Peter Cosier says institutional structures need to be put in place to increase carbon storage in soils.

“Our analysis shows that if we increase the amount of carbon stored in vegetation and soils across our landscape, it has the potential not only to make profound contribution to meeting our carbon pollution reduction targets, but it also presents a unique opportunity to address a raft of other seemingly intractable environmental problems,” he said.

“In other words, we can use soil and vegetation carbon to help address climate change but we can get win-win outcomes if we design our institutional structures properly.

“At this stage we don’t have those structures in place because we don’t have a terrestrial carbon market, but if we do introduce a CPRS, and if the Government does extend the ability for polluters to offset their pollution by storing carbon in soil and vegetation, then we will create a very large terrestrial carbon market.”

Australia ‘uniquely placed’

Mr Cosier says up to a quarter of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions could be offset in soil and vegetation over the next four decades.

He says few other countries have recognised soil’s effective capacity to store carbon.

“The analysis that we have looked at which follows on some work by CSIRO for the Queensland Government is that if Australia were to capture just 15 per cent of the biophysical capacity of our landscape to store carbon, you would offset the equivalent of 25 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions every year for the next 40 years,” he said.

“Some governments have recognised it. For example, the legislation going through the United States does recognise soil and vegetation offsets as their part of their legislation.

“Australia is rather uniquely placed because we are a relatively small economy with a large landscape. The contribution that terrestrial carbon can make to our carbon pollution reduction targets is actually far greater relative to other nations.”

He says utilising the storage could pump billions into the economy.

“If we were to achieve capture 15 per cent of the potential that CSIRO estimate is possible, we could potentially create a terrestrial carbon market in Australia of between $3 billion and $6 billion per annum every year for the next 40 years,” he said.

“The actual market created would depend of course on the size of the reduction target the Government commits to.”

But questions remain over how farmers can effectively delegate land for carbon storage.

Mr Cosier says a balance must be struck between storage and food production.

“Well, at the moment the CPRS does allow offsets into carbon forestry as it is called, Kyoto compliant forestry,” he said.

“If farmers choose to, they would be able to use some of those opportunities to plant carbon forests or biodiversity plantings if they chose to on parts of their property and that would give them a new income stream.

“There is a risk that if we don’t properly regulate the market, we could also see large areas of agricultural land taken out of food production and converted into these carbon forests, so we need a balance.

“But if we get the balance right, the potential benefits to agriculture in terms of new income streams, the benefits for restoring degraded landscapes and biodiversity conservation are enormous.”

source: abc.net.au

With the projects announced and applications coming in thick and fast, I thought I might give you the opportunity to hear more about the people you might be working with.

First up, we’ve got the project on “Exploring the possibilities of growing single-walled carbon nanotubes with uniform properties” which is based at our Lindfield site in NSW with Professor Kostya Ostrikov.

Kostya joined the Materials Science and Engineering division of CSIRO in 2008 as a Chief Executive Officer’s (CEO) Science Leader. His CEO Science Leader project aims at solving a scientific challenge around deterministic synthesis of hierarchically arranged, self-organised nanoarchitectures and the control of their shapes and positioning.

Essentially, we need this control in order to develop next-generation materials and nanoelectronic, photovoltaic, sensing, biomedical, and quantum information devices.

Kostya is the youngest ever recipient in Ukraine of the highest academic degree of Doctor of Sciences (DSc).

He also holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Science, achieved at the Kharkov National University, Ukraine.

Professor Ostrikov’s awards, fellowships and achievements are extensive. Among them are:

* CSIRO, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Science Leader, Australia since 2008
* Director, Plasma Nanoscience Centre since 2008
* Director, Centre for Waves and Complex Systems, The University of Sydney, Australia
* Winner of six fellowships in United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Singapore, and Australia
* Recipient of the Pawsey Medal of the Australian Academy of Sciences, 2008
* Recipient of the ‘Best Young Scientist of Ukraine’ award of the Academy of Sciences, Ukraine, 1997
* Author of over 500 publications, including monographs and refereed journal articles
* Plenary or keynote speaker at more than 11 conferences, plus 50 invited talks in the last five years

It is the area of plasma nanoscience that has Professor Ostikov so captivated; discovering the unique properties of ionized gases (plasmas and ion beams) to create ultra-tiny pieces of matter including nanostructures and intricate nanoscale assemblies.

Kostya is definitely an exciting person to be around and keen to teach budding young scientists.

If you would like to learn more about Kostya’s project, please jump online and visit the CSIRO website.

I’m very excited to announce that our positions are finally up and ready to go. Apologies to those of you that have been hanging in there for the last few weeks. I promise it is worth the wait!

I think I'm so excited I just wet myself

Here are the key sites you need to check out:

Summer Vacation Scholarships Fact Sheet
Full list of all the projects and locations
Apply here
Learn more about CSIRO Materials Science and Engineering

Applications close on 25th October so best of luck. If you have any questions, feel free to post them here (to help others out) or email experiencerealscience@csiro.au

Just a quick update on the Undergraduate Vacation Scholarships Program for 2009-2010.

The supervisors are submitting their expressions of interest thick and fast at the moment as we sort through some amazing science experiences for some very lucky uni students this year.

Here are some ideas that are currently being throw around:

The use of braided composits for sports equipment
Advancing Human Performance: experimental study of bicycle bottom brackets performance
Hydrogen Powered Cars – Towards Driving without Greenhouse Gases
Exploring the possiblities of growing single-walled carbon nanotubes with uniform properties
Nanoparticles from trees. An exciting renewable material for the future.
Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Membrane for Water Purification
Electrospraying of Nano-stuctured Inkjet Coatings
Optical dark modes in systems of metallic nanoparticles – paving the way for the development of nano-scale lasers

As you can see we have a lot of variety in the work that we do in Materials Science and Engineering. If this sounds like something you would like to be a part of, make sure you have registered your interest at experiencerealscience@csiro.au and I’ll be in touch very soon.

• DROUGHT experts have for the first time proven a link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and a decline in rainfall.

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed that the drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.

Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative said the rain had dropped away because the subtropical ridge – a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country’s south – had strengthened over the past 13 years.

Last year, using sophisticated computer climate models in the United States, the scientists ran simulations with only the ”natural” influences on temperature, such as differing levels of solar activity.

The model results showed no intensification of the subtropical ridge and no decline in rainfall.

But when human influences on the atmosphere were added to the simulations – such as greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone depletion – the models mimicked what has been observed in south-east Australia: strengthening high pressure systems and the significant loss of rain.

”It’s reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,” said the bureau’s Bertrand Timbal.

”In the minds of a lot of people the rainfall we had in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.”

Dr Timbal said that 80 per cent of the rain loss in south-east Australia could be attributed to the intensification of the subtropical ridge. The research program covers the Murray-Darling Basin, including parts of NSW, all of Victoria and parts of South Australia.

Monash University’s Neville Nicholls, a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who has also published work on the subtropical ridge,  said he believed the research program’s results were right.

“We did think that the loss of rain was simply due to the [rain-bearing] storms shifting south, off the continent,” Professor Nicholls said. “Now we know the reason they have slipped south is that the subtropical ridge has become more intense. It is getting bigger and stronger and that is pushing the rain storms further south.”

The scientific results have implications for many State Government water programs and drought funding, some of which factor in climate change and some of which do not. Projections for the water coming to Melbourne in the north-south pipe, for instance, are based on the assumption that Victoria will return to rainfall levels of last century.

The Victorian Farmers Federation new president, Andrew Broad, said he would not speculate about whether there was a connection between drought and climate change.

“I have a healthy scepticism for scientists,” he said. “But I will say that the doomsday people in climate change are robbing people of hope at a time when that’s all they’ve got left.”

Melbourne’s dams get roughly a third less water than they did before the drought began in October 1996.

smh.com.au: Melissa Fyfe

National Science Week 2009 logo

It’s National Science Week and time to celebrate!

The theme for this year is Ignite Your Imagination!

There are lots of wonderful things happening to celebrate science, check it out!

Have a look at the National Science Week website on http://www.scienceweek.gov.au/Pages/index.aspx

Find science week events in your state or click on the “Schools” tab for ideas.

Schools have a special theme Astronomy Science Without Limits – check out the schools webpage at http://www.scienceweek.gov.au/Schools/Pages/default.aspx

The CSIRO has it’s own National Science Week page filled with events, contacts, a science week blog, even a link to Twitter!

Check it out at http://www.csiro.au/events/NationalScienceWeek.html

The ABC also has a fantastic science site. Check it out at http://www.abc.net.au/science/

There are wonderful links to Australia’s First Astronomers, a night sky quiz and HEAPS of other wonderful links.

I LOVE the moon photos, so beautiful.

Remember, it doesn’t have to be a huge deal! A small experiment, a visit to the Zoo, Scienceworks and the Planetarium, the Museum or Aquarium. Even blowing bubbles or making balloon animals are all ways to celebrate science. Go for it

Dont forget to drop me a line and let me know how you celebrated National Science Week 2009.

What do Cosmos Magazine, the CSIRO, NASA and Australia’s Dept of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research have in common?   They’re giving us the opportunity to Tweet aliens.  Cosmic social networking!  It sounded cool at first.  Then I read some of the messages.

• Are u hot?
• Want to interbreed?
• Marry me
• 42
• Write me back!
• What’s your email?
• Send pic
• I hope you get this
• Nom nom nom
• Greetings, from planet earth, Psst Mars hates you… (Jason)
•  While you’re traveling towards us, fetch me a bottle of H2O please. We’re running out. (Christian)
•  We have chocolate, what about you? (Andrew)
•  If you dont have Jim Beam and cola cans im not visiting (gary)

It was very thoughtful of someone to warn the aliens about germs & diseases, but I am otherwise unimpressed.   THIS IS NOT FACEBOOK folks!  These are messages to be beamed into outer space. 

Is this all we have in us?  C’mon!  

Let’s keep at it.  I think we can do better.  Go to Hello From Earth by August 23rd and enter a message to be sent to planet Gliese 581d. 

• Tasmanian surfers may be able to leave their wetsuits at home with the southern island experiencing its warmest water temperature on record.

Satellite images reveal warm water stretching around the southern coastline of Tasmania and up the east coast (CSIRO)

Scientists believe the balmy temperature, up an average of 1.5°C, is caused by changes in Australia’s ocean currents.

But they are quick to point out that it is not due to climate change.

Oceanographer Katy Hill, of the Integrated Marine Observing System, says Tasmanian waters are influenced by two main currents.

“The two currents are the East Australia Current (EAC), which comes down the east coast of Australia and the Leeuwin Current, which comes down the west coast of Australia and Tasmania,” she says.

Hill says the EAC is strongest in summer bringing warm waters to the east coast of Tasmania, while the Leeuwin current is stronger in winter bringing warm waters to the west of Tasmania.

The currents usually meet at the base of the island.

But this winter the Leeuwin current has moved further around Tasmania than it ever has before, says Hill.

Not only did the current loop around the bottom of the island, but it came up the east coast of Tasmania as far as St Helens.

“We’ve never seen that before,” says Hill

Waters along the east coast are about a degree and a half warmer than they usually are at this time of year, she says.

Researchers at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research uncovered the extended current using satellite images of sea surface temperature.

Natural variability

Hill says natural climate variability is probably the cause of Leeuwin current moving further than usual.

The currents are also influenced by both decadal and annual variation.

“It’s a case of trying to tease apart all those variations and see what might be causing what.”

Ignoring seasonal variability, Hill says the EAC is getting stronger with climate change, while the Leeuwin Current is weaking.

“Australia had a wetter year than usual this year, but that doesn’t mean we’re not still on a drying climate trend,” she says. “You get similar variations in the ocean from year to year.”

But the warmer waters are not welcomed by all.

Rodney Treloggen, Chief Executive of the Tasmanian Rock Lobster Association based in St Helens, says fishers are concerned at what he describes as a “bad year” for the industry in the south-east and east coast.

“We know the warmer waters have an impact, but we’re not sure how much,” he says.

Article: abc.net.au

• USING more renewable power in Sydney would make electricity bills more affordable, according to a study prepared for the CSIRO that challenges assumptions about cheap coal-fired energy.

Plans - Old Kent Brewery site on Broadway

More intelligent use of the existing energy grid could slash greenhouse gas emissions and cut household power bills by up to $60 a year, the report from the University of Technology Sydney shows.

On Wednesday the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal gave utilities permission to raise energy bills by a fifth, or up to $200 a year for some families.

The study looked at five scenarios for NSW, ranging from building more coal-fired power stations, as recommended by the 2007 Owen review of the state’s energy needs, to a large energy efficiency campaign combined with more renewable power.

It found building baseload power using coal was much more expensive than focusing on energy efficiency and tapping into a network of small “co-generation” power sources sprinkled in the suburbs.

That conclusion was reached without factoring in the increased costs to fossil fuel generators that would be imposed if Australia brings in a carbon trading scheme. Carbon trading is expected to raise the costs of greenhouse-intensive power like coal even more.

“Even though we decided to be very conservative in our estimates of costs for coal, it still shows that there is no reason why we should see coal as cheap, and renewable power as expensive – it’s more interesting than that,” said Chris Dunstan, a researcher at the university’s Institute for Sustainable Futures.

Cogeneration, or the similar trigeneration, involves installing small, efficient low-emissions power plants in buildings and using them to power structures in nearby streets.

The Owen inquiry found there would be a shortfall in the state’s baseload power by 2014 and recommended that a new power station should be built to compensate. Yet energy demand in the past two years has not increased as fast as the 2007 inquiry forecast.

Building a new coal-fired power station to meet demand before 2020 would cumulatively cost up to $30 billion, while building the infrastructure to supply the grid from more local low-emissions sources plants would total about $27 billion over the next decade, the university report calculated.

The study, released this week, is part of a wider project for which the CSIRO commissioned five universities to examine Australia’s energy sector and look at ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The City of Sydney is the only council seriously planning for a network of small cogeneration plants. The Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, confirmed this week that the council intended to build a trigeneration plant in the basement of Town Hall, with a view to supplying the QVB and possibly other surrounding buildings with energy.

“I have proposed a pilot project … in partnership with a project by Frasers Property at the former Carlton United Brewery site,” Cr Moore told business leaders on Wednesday. “Our restoration of Prince Alfred Park provides another opportunity for trigeneration, and our consultants are now working on options for distributing lighting, heating and cooling for the project itself and parts of the surrounding neighbourhood.”

Ben Cubby, www.smh.com.au/environment

Photo: www.frasersbroadway.com.au

• SOARING way above the Bago Forest at Tumbarumba, a 70-metre tower covered in instruments is measuring the air, every hour, every day, to test whether the tall mountain ash trees in southern NSW are still helping to keep the planet cool.

CSIRO Monitoring Forests at Tumbarumba

In a triumph for nature, this year the forest has been working overtime, absorbing more of our carbon dioxide than it has for some time, thanks to the return of good rainfall and the disappearance of a destructive sap-sucking insect, the psyllid.

Five years ago, Helen Cleugh and colleagues from the CSIRO who were monitoring the Tumbarumba tower were disturbed to discover that the severe drought and an insect infestation had upset the natural order of this forest.

Instead of helping absorb the carbon dioxide that humans were pushing into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, the forest was actually adding to the planet’s problem. As leaves expired and the forest died, the natural cycle of carbon changed and the forest began producing more carbon than it absorbed.

“For a period the forest became a source of carbon dioxide,” Dr Cleugh said. “That was a bit of a surprise to us.”

Dr Cleugh, along with about 100 of her colleagues from the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and some key academics, are the Australian Government’s climate detectives. They help measure the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. They observe climate change first hand. And, most importantly, they try to inform the politicians what will happen to Australia if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to continue growing at the present rapid pace.

Over the past two decades, these scientists from the Australian Climate Change Science Program have been at times ignored and criticised as well as encouraged. But this year, as they celebrate the 20th anniversary of their work, their role will move to centre stage, with climate science influencing the Federal Government’s policies both at home and in the UN talks in Copenhagen in December.

Yesterday, when Senator Steve Fielding met the Chief Scientist, Penny Sackett, she was armed with the advice of the climate scientists. Senator Fielding returned from Washington last week quoting climate change sceptics and told the Insiders program he had discovered information “that showed that over the past decade or so carbon emissions have been going up, but global temperature hasn’t”.

If Senator Fielding had consulted the ACCSP before he left, he would have found this claim has been discredited. The ACCSP’s 2007 report to the Australian Government states that Australian average temperatures have increased by 0.9 degrees since 1950.

The findings correspond with climate change science advice from Britain’s Hadley Centre, from NASA and from the US National Climate Data Centre showing seven of the hottest 10 years on record have been between 1999 and 2007.

The manager of the ACCSP, Paul Holper, said the link between carbon emissions and temperatures underpins the advice of climate scientists around the world. That advice is to keep global greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million to stop temperatures from rising above 2 degrees.

Marian Wilkinson

Environment Editor: smh.com.au