During the decades of the 1960s and 1970s there was increasing evidence that humanity was harming the earth and moving into an uncertain future.  

It was realised that many major problems – financial and economic collapse, climate change, oil price rises and resource shortages, terrorism and war, food and water scarcity, and overpopulation – are global and the accumulated consequences of actions over many years.  They interact and cannot be dealt with in isolation.

I was part of a New Zealand effort to examine this issue, in the DSIR, as secretary of the New Zealand Club of Rome, as New Zealand representative in the OECD Interfutures project and then with the Commission for the Future and many international organizations.  Research into long-term global trends required studies of many global models and research projects as well as associated research into social issues and similar stressed historical events – a dedicated effort and a long learning curve.

The result was a comprehensive forecast that is proving robust, as many events have followed the expected pattern.  Yet now that the earlier concerns are becoming reality, this interdisciplinary science is denied; the DSIR has been destroyed and all that remains is a rump science captive to the growth imperative.

An account of events and the forecast is available in my new book, which is called “A plague of people” because population is the major driving force (1 billion in 1800, 7 billion now, 9 billion forecast by 2050).  We live in a remarkable period as Earth becomes fully colonised.  The number of people, and their stressful activities, are driving past a tipping point in 2030, the overshoot and decline described in “The limits to growth” in 1972.  This is the “perfect storm” indicated for 2030 by UK science adviser Sir John Beddington.

New Zealand will then become an overcrowded lifeboat nation.

We should all be concerned.  This is a critical time in the history of mankind yet people continue with business as usual, with businesses and governments calling for ever more growth.  The world is over full and collapsing, and a dreadful future is in store for us and for our children.  We must all dare to face what is happening – to look catastrophe in the face and manage as best we can, with care for one another and the natural world.  Muddling along over the edge is foolhardy.  It is worth thinking about, and considering the wealth of information presented here.

Information is on a website www.ibwspp.blosgspot.com.  Copies of “A plague of people” ($40) are available from Tross Publishing, P.O. Box 22 143, Khandallah, Wellington 6441, email contact , website www.trosspublishing.co.nz or the author, email contact .

At this time of year there’s nothing better than being warm and cosy in front of a blazing wood fire. But take a moment to walk outside and check your chimney – it could be polluting an entire neigbourhood.

I have to declare that I am ambivalent about this. I love nearly every aspect of wood heaters. The sight, the smell, the heat they produce, the link with a beautiful and living source of fuel.

When my family moved to Tasmania a few years ago, we found a lovely older style house with high ceilings and verandas that was heated with wood. The fire warmed the entire house and I was delighted with it. But there was a problem.

At the time of our move, I was completing a doctorate on the health effects of bushfire smoke – a small niche within the giant corpus of global research on the health effects of air pollution.

Smoke harms

Bushfire smoke and the smoke produced by wood heaters have much in common. They, along with tobacco smoke, are examples of biomass smoke – emissions that come from burning organic matter such as grass, leaves or wood.

Biomass smoke is a toxic soup of hundreds of different chemicals that includes many well-known toxins and carcinogens.

The population-wide health impacts of outdoor biomass smoke have been far less extensively studied than the more dominant causes of urban air pollution that mostly comes from burning fossil fuels for industry or transport. But the evidence is growing.

There’s absolutely no doubt about the harm woodsmoke does to lungs in those who are susceptible, from precipitating asthma and worsening existing respiratory diseases in the short term, to causing chronic lung diseases and lung cancer in the long term.

In cities where wood is the main fuel used for home heating, outdoor smoke pollution concentrations have been directly associated with hospital admissions for both heart and lung diseases. Even relatively brief (one or two days) exposure to outdoor biomass smoke from bushfires has a measurable impact on population health.

My research has shown that on days that Australian air quality standards were exceeded because of bushfire smoke, mortality rates increased by about 5%. And others have found that out-of-hospital cardiac arrests on such days increased by almost 50%.

Lessons from Tasmania

The Tasmanian city of Launceston achieved notoriety during the 1990s as one of Australia’s most severely polluted cities, with air quality that didn’t come anywhere close to meeting national air quality standards for most of winter.

A coordinated series of government interventions from 2001 included an education campaign to reduce the proportion of poorly operated heaters belching visible plumes of smoke, and a buy-back scheme that saw the absolute number of wood heaters fall by half.

The result was vastly improved air quality. The average winter concentration of particulate matter fell by 40% – an improvement large enough to see a
substantial drop in mortality. Winter deaths from heart diseases were reduced by 20% and winter deaths from lung diseases fell by 28%.

In absolute numbers this translates into approximately 30 premature deaths avoided every year from the inner city population of 70,000 people.

Deaths are the extreme and uncommon end of the spectrum of health impacts from air pollution. But they represent the tip of the iceberg of community impacts. For every death avoided, there will also be far greater numbers of avoided hospital admissions, ambulance call outs, GP attendances, days unwell and absences from work or school.

Mitigating risks

In rural areas, wood is often readily available at minimal cost and represents the most affordable option for many people. Yet wood smoke clearly extracts a large health toll from the community, even in very small population centres.

So how can we minimise these impacts? The value of insulation and choosing energy efficient fuels are well documented but the immediate costs are beyond the reach of many families.

Systematic government programs clearly have a role and are likely to be highly cost effective. Individually, wood heater owners can do a huge amount to reduce the pollution they cause.

Even modern certified heaters are capable of producing orders of magnitude more pollution when burning inefficiently compared with bright, flaming, efficient use.

Inefficient burning results in the emissions of potent greenhouse gases such as methane and wastes energy that could otherwise be heating the home. You can find detailed advice on how to minimise pollution from your wood heater on many websites.

Probably the single most important thing to remember is to open the air vent fully each time new wood is added to the fire and then allow it to burn hot for 20 minutes before reducing the air intake. It’s especially important never to completely close the air intake.

If a flame is not present, wood gases – invisible in the fire box – will condense into microscopic particles that form thick smoke plumes that will continue to pollute your neighbourhood throughout the night while contributing very little heat to warm your home.

Smoke should almost never be visible from a working chimney, but I still count numerous think plumes on my way home every night. We clearly have a long way to go before efficient operation of wood heaters becomes the norm.

I still love wood heaters, but owning one meant owning its pollution. Even if we achieved consistently prefect operation, I knew that other heating choices would be better for the environment and the community. We replaced our heater with a less polluting alternative. It’s a bit less evocative but does come on at the flick of a switch.

Fay Johnston receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries and the Bushfire CRC.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Today, the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate research to date was published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Our analysis found that among papers expressing a position on human-caused global warming, over 97% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. Overwhelming agreement among scientists had already formed in the early 1990s. And the consensus is getting stronger.

In a previous Conversation article, I argued that climate denial is essentially consensus denial. For over two decades, attacking the scientific consensus has been a central part of the movement to prevent meaningful climate action.

As early as 1991, Western Fuels Association spent $510,000 on a campaign to “reposition global warming as theory (not fact)”. Their strategy was to construct the impression of active scientific debate using dissenting scientists as spokesmen. This approach was concisely articulated in a memo to Republicans by political strategist Frank Luntz, leaked in 2002:

Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming in the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.

Using Skeptical Science’s taxonomy of climate myths, a recent analysis tracked climate misinformation published in opinion editorials from 2007 to 2010 by syndicated conservative columnists. The most popular myth was “there is no consensus”. More recently, a variation of the “no consensus” myth has emerged – the notion that the consensus is “on the verge of collapse”.

Our analysis examined the status of the scientific consensus over 21 years of published climate research, from 1991 to 2011. We searched for any papers matching the search “global warming” or “global climate change” in the Web of Science, a database of scientific peer-reviewed research. We rated the level of endorsement of human-caused global warming in each abstract, a short summary at the start of each paper.

In 2007, Naomi Oreskes predicted that as a consensus forms, fewer papers should explicitly endorse the consensus position. For example, you don’t expect to see geography research papers endorsing the fact that the earth is round. Our analysis confirmed this prediction, finding most abstracts didn’t state a position on whether humans were causing global warming.

However, we did identify over 4,000 abstracts that did state a position on human-caused global warming. Among those 4,000 abstracts, 97.1% endorsed the consensus. There was overwhelming agreement on human-caused global warming in every year since 1991.

To independently check our results, we also invited the thousands of scientists who authored the climate papers to rate the level of endorsement of their own papers. We received 1,200 responses with over 2,000 papers receiving a “self-rating”. Interestingly, most of the abstracts that we rated as “No Position” turned out to endorse the consensus in the full paper, according to the papers’ authors. Among all the papers that were self-rated as expressing a position on human-caused global warming, 97.2% endorsed the consensus.

Our results are strikingly consistent with other measurements of consensus. The seminal work on consensus was conducted by Naomi Oreskes who in 2004 analysed 928 climate papers. She found zero papers rejecting the consensus. We analysed the same papers as Oreskes and similarly found zero rejections in the papers matching her search parameters.

Two more recent studies have sought to measure the level of consensus in the scientific community. A survey of Earth scientists found that among actively publishing climate scientists, 97% agreed that humans were significantly changing global temperature. A compilation of scientists making public statements on climate change found that for the scientists who had published peer-reviewed climate research, there was 97% agreement.

While a number of studies have independently established overwhelming agreement among climate scientists, two decades of sustained attack on the consensus has been effective. There is a gaping chasm between the public perception and the actual 97% consensus. When a US representative sample was asked how many climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming, the average answer was around 50%.

Why is climate denial synonymous with consensus denial? Social scientists are just starting to figure out what climate deniers have understood for decades. A 2011 study found that when people correctly understand that climate scientists agree, they are more likely to support policy to mitigate climate change. This is why a political operative hired by fossil fuel interests to undermine climate policy focused on attacking the consensus, arguing “If we win the science argument, it’s game, set, and match.”

This underscores the importance of correcting the mis-perception that scientists are still debating whether humans are causing global warming. An important step towards stronger public support for meaningful climate action is closing the consensus gap.

The results of the paper Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature are summarised in a simple, user-friendly manner at theconsensusproject.com.

John Cook does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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[Ed: Note - I'll be moderating a panel discussion in Wellington tonight featuring a scientist, criminologist, journalist and policeman talking about the science of crime - details here]

You’ve heard of the so-called CSI effect – the manner in which the exaggerated portrayal of forensic science on crime television shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation influences public perception.

As a researcher in forensic science education, I don’t think this effect is exaggerated. On the contrary, I would argue that, since the second half of the 20th century, public interest towards science has been hugely impacted by the media and TV shows. Much worse, I would argue that we, as educators, may be heavily relying on this.

For the last few years, forensic scientists and members of the judiciary have shared anecdotes about jury members being astonished if there was no forensic evidence (particularly DNA) presented in a case – even if the case does not require such evidence – because that’s what they’ve become used to seeing on TV.

Anecdotes are also shared by forensic scientists about how they have been approached by police investigators, who expect them to finish their forensic testing and analysis of the evidence in minutes.

The CSI effect has been the focus of a number of articles worldwide – such as this one and this one – and an Australian study conducted by Judith Fordham in 2006, as outlined in her 2011 article on The Conversation.

While not an empirically-confirmed syndrome, such anecdotal evidence spurred Max Houck, director of the Forensic Science Initiative at West Virginia University, to remark back in 2002 that:

every third person on the planet wants to be a forensic scientist.

In Australia, the number of education institutes offering forensic science qualifications has boomed from one university in 1994 to nearly 20 in 2005.

In the UK, the number of students enrolled in forensic science majors have increased from 2,191 in 2002-03 to 5,664 in 2007-08 as reported by the Skills for Justice organisation in 2009.

What I see

Some Year-12 students, I would contend, are taken in by TV shows to the extent they start enquiring about forensic science courses before even considering whether they truly enjoy science or whether there are job opportunities for them when they graduate.

Some students, in my experience, want to become forensic experts without considering whether or not they are prepared to work at 2am picking blowfly larvae from a corpse with a pair of tweezers.

The fact forensic science is very specialised and forensic investigations can be challenging, time-consuming and complicated is often overlooked by movie and TV show makers – and consequently students and the public at large.

This sad state of affairs no doubt fed into the decision by Victoria Police earlier this year to publish a statement with the heading: Is Forensic Science really like the television show CSI?

The document warns some of the techniques and results displayed on TV are “not common or realistic” and that:

(unfortunately!) there are no jobs available in Australia like those depicted on CSI.

A study I published last year shows that, in the last decade, a number of science courses worldwide (some of which are chemistry courses) started employing the adjective “forensic” in their titles to attract enrolments, benefiting from the growing public attention towards forensics.

And some of those courses referred, directly or indirectly, to the CSI show on their websites for marketing purposes.

But research in 2009 reported a downturn in student enrolments and a corresponding drop in entry scores for forensic science in Australia.

This might suggest the public mood is about to move to the next interesting thing. Those responsible for forensic science courses that were initially chemistry or biology courses and only enjoyed the “forensic flavour” without a properly designed curriculum and well-established connections with the industry stakeholders (law enforcement agencies, forensic laboratories, etc) might soon find themselves in a very uneasy situation.

In short, such courses might be at a high risk of closure.

And in their place, who knows? Maybe a spike in astrophysics-flavoured courses, given the current popularity of shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Wonders of the Solar System.

Keeping the fire going

Public interest in science is essential for a number of reasons, not least to ensure enough students enrol and specialise in the various science disciplines and science applications.

That this interest is influenced to a certain extent by TV dramas, creating false expectations and misinformed opinions in some instances, seems self-evident.

The problem comes when we, as educators, rely on this unrealistic packaging of science as an integral part of our recruitment strategy.

So what’s to be done? Conversations must be had between students, teachers, parents, scientists, science educators, and policy makers about maintaining a sustainable interest in science, independent of TV dramas.

We need, if I can put it bluntly, to get real. And quickly.

Ahmad Samarji does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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With the global population now well over seven billion there are few remaining parts of the world relatively untouched by human activity. We assess the current state and future prospects of five final frontiers: rainforests, Antarctica, the Arctic, the deep sea and space.

Antarctica is the coldest, highest, driest continent – and the one which bears the smallest footprint of human occupation. It is also the only continent designated as a “…natural reserve, devoted to peace and science”.

So how is Antarctica faring? What are the human impacts on this, the last of continents, and what might the future hold?

Climate change impacts

By far the greatest human impact on Antarctica and the surrounding Southern Ocean are the effects of climate change. In some regions, most notably the Antarctic Peninsula, these impacts are clear: warmer ocean temperatures, loss of floating ice shelves, melting glaciers, changes in the coverage and seasonality of sea ice, and environmental and ecological responses such as changes in the distribution of penguin species.

In other parts of Antarctica the impacts are more subtle: changes in sea ice distribution, below-surface melt of floating ice shelves, increased precipitation and changes in the profiles of ocean currents.

Some of these “subtle” changes though, are profound. The measured decrease in the salinity of Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) and over 50% decline in its volume signal great changes to the global ocean overturning circulation.

Ocean acidification, caused by the oceans’ absorption of carbon dioxide, has already had a measurable impact on some Southern Ocean organisms. The big unknown is the potential for these marine species in the Southern Ocean to adapt to inevitable changes in the acidity of their environment.

Tourism

In the 2011-12 tourist season, 26,519 tourists travelled to Antarctica. The figures provided by the International Association of Antartica Tour Operators show that this represents a significant decline compared to historical numbers which peaked at around 45,000 in 2007-08 (before the global economic crisis). Tourism numbers, though, are likely to steadily increase in coming years. Visits to the continent from tourist vessels (21,131 people in 2011-12) are usually brief and restricted to a relatively small number of sites. By far the bulk of this tourism occurs in the Antarctic Peninsula region.

The Antarctic Treaty’s Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) recently concluded a study on how tourism interacts with the Antarctic environment. Although data on tourism impacts is limited, the weight of available evidence indicates that, apart from obvious track formation, and localised destruction of some moss beds, tourism is not having a great direct measurable impact, even in the most heavily visited areas.

At the scale and intensity of current Antarctic tourism, the impacts of human activity are more likely to be indirect – such as through the introduction of alien species or diseases to wildlife. However a recent study indicates there is a greater risk of introduction from national Antarctic programs than from the tourism industry.

National Antarctic science programs

Even though the peak summer and winter occupation of Antarctic research stations are around 4000 and 1000 people respectively, scientists spend much more time on the continent than tourists. National program activities involve a much greater level of infrastructure and operational support, including permanent stations, wharf and air facilities, fuel, waste management and field outposts.

There are ongoing impacts of historical research activity in Antarctica. These are usually the legacy of past waste management practises: abandoning buildings, vehicles and equipment; and leaving waste material, including oils and other organics and heavy metals in dumps or letting them float out to sea on ice. Thankfully these practises are a thing of the past. But while the volumes may have been small on a global scale, the significance is magnified by the location of many of these legacy sites in rare ice-free coastal environments.

The current management of national activities is a far cry from the past practises, but still provide the biggest pathway for human impacts on the continent and its fringes.

Eternal vigilance and control over the supply chain of national programs is the key to ensuring that the very research that’s conducted in Antarctica is not its greatest direct threat.

Marine resources and fishing

The decimation of the populations of great whales and some seal populations in the 19th and 20th centuries represent the biggest biological impacts of human activity in the Southern Ocean. While many of these species have begun to recover (some, like fur seals, most spectacularly) others, such as the Blue Whale, are only a small fraction of their pre-exploitation numbers.

But Antarctica has the largest underexploited fishery in the world – the krill fishery. Increasing human populations and the pressure on oceans around the globe will result in increased interest in the Antarctic krill fishery. Currently fished at around 200,000 tonnes per annum, the krill fishery has a potential precautionary catch limit in the millions of tonnes.

There are some signs that changes around the Antarctic Peninsula region have resulted in changes to the distribution of krill, and also to the behaviour of krill fishers. Any ramping up of the krill fishery will have to be carefully managed to ensure that localised impacts are avoided and the integrity of the Southern Ocean ecosystems maintained – it would be foolish indeed to squander the opportunity to manage this fishery for both the ecosystem and humankind.

Minerals

Much media and academic commentary has been directed at Antarctica’s potential as the last remaining unexploited mineral province on the planet. There is an indefinite and legally binding prohibition on mineral exploitation in the Antarctica Treaty area as a direct result of the negotiation of the Madrid Protocol. But speculation about the intention and motives of countries with respect to mining in Antarctica is likely to remain a feature of Antarctic discourse.

However for both practical and political reasons, mineral exploitation in the Antarctic, including for oil, is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

The future of Antarctica

Antarctica is blessed by its remoteness, harshness and political history. The bulk of Antarctica is a long way from anywhere and human access and presence is restricted. It is a continent at the bottom of the globe, surrounded by a cold ocean which will slow the progress of regional warming. The Antarctic Treaty System established on principles of peace, cooperation and science provides a governance regime which has the power to balance the competing interests of human pressure against the protection of the environment.

But that does not mean the future is clear sailing. Measures to incorporate modern thinking and science into a comprehensive system of marine protected areas have been slow to be adopted, and climate change has already locked in changes to Antarctica that will endure even if the world takes significant steps in the near future to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Managing human impacts as the climate opens up new opportunities for alien species to become established will also be a major challenge for the future, as will the systematic and precautionary management of the harvesting of marine living resources.

The world should ensure that Antarctica remain the last of continents, largely free of the ravages wrought upon other continents. And it should support and strengthen the Antarctic Treaty System to carry out its mandate to keep Antarctica a natural reserve devoted to peace and science.

Next: the Arctic.

Tony Press receives funding from the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Centres Program. He is the CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre. He was Director of the Australian Antarctic Division from 1998 to 2008; was Australia's Alternate Delegate to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting from 1999 to 2008; Australia's Representative to the Antarctic Treaty's Committee for Environmental Protection (CEP) from 1999 to 2008; Chair of the CEP from 2002 to 2006; and Australia's Commissioner to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources from 1998 to 2008.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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While the common misconception of global plastic pollution in our oceans is based on descriptions of the north Pacific gyre being a trash island the size of Texas, the reality is much more complicated.

Although plastic is not biodegradable unlike other floating marine debris, it is eventually broken down by the sunlight into microscopic particles that persist, are difficult to clean and may be eaten by small marine organisms, thus entering the food chain. In spite of the ocean currents accumulating marine debris into five identified gyres, the garbage patches vary in concentration and cannot be spotted on satellite images.

Global oceanic circulation distributes plastic particles worldwide Source: Dumpark

In order to get a better understanding of where the plastic particles are likely to be located and where they they might have originated, we have developed a computer model that tracks virtual particles that are released into the ocean based on coastal population, urban development and shipping traffic and transported using a global ocean circulation data archive. This way we are able to determine the various contributors to each accumulation zone – the five large oceanic gyres and also smaller marginal seas. With the study recently published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, we developed an interactive visualisation to make the results also available to a broader audience in a graphic way allowing to explore plastic accumulation zones and concentrations around the globe and also to identify and compare its main contributors by regions.

The infographic maps the relative contributions of the different source regions to each ocean gyres. Source: Dumpark

As it is impossible to determine the exact amount of plastic pollution generated, the model considers the global pollution mass as unitary or 100% and determines how the global mass is relatively distributed. Further work will include a calibration with ocean based samples to validate the model and progress towards a more precise estimation of global plastic pollution in the marine environment.

By Laurent Lebreton, head of data science at data visualization creative agency Dumpark.

Three years ago in March 2010, southeast Australia was still in the grip of “the big dry” or the “millennium drought” – billed as the worst drought since European settlement. Dams across the Murray-Darling Basin were down to only 25% of capacity. Then the floods came, followed by yet more floods.

Five months ago, the dams were 95% full. Since then, several thousands of gigalitres have been released and today the dams sit at around 70% – almost exactly the level they sat in 2001 when the drought first started to bite. Meanwhile, governments have spent billions of dollars trying to prepare Australia for the next dry, but the complexity of droughts means we have little hope of being ready.

The millennium drought

A recently published study, which I co-authored, analysed climate, water, economic and satellite data to try to determine the impacts of the millennium drought from 2001 to 2009.

The millennium drought was unique in being both widespread and protracted. Had it been more local, the Murray River might not have been as affected. Entire floodplain forests died along the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin; for many of them, the drought was just the final straw. Some of them had not seen a flood for decades.

There were also some surprises; for example, that the terminal lakes of the Murray River would become truly terminal, turning into shrinking brine pools, leaving toxic acid soils in their wake. There was even a “happy” surprise: the drought put a stop to rising groundwater levels and river salinity and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority had no trouble achieving its salinity targets. (Unfortunately it did not help the ultimate aim: to protect the Murray River and Adelaide’s drinking water.)

In trying to determine what was behind the low rainfall, we found only partial answers. In northeast Australia, the El Niño cycle could explain most of the observed drought conditions. In southeast Australia it was mainly a lack of autumn and winter rainfall that contributed to the protracted drought. This may have been caused by natural cycles in the Pacific ocean or by the same global weather system changes that are drying out southwest Australia and are consistent with climate models. We found some support for both ideas. In any case, it means we may have to assume that these new climate conditions are not going to change back anytime soon.

Are we prepared?

In reaction to the millennium drought the Australian government has spent more than $25 billion to improve irrigation infrastructure, buy back water entitlements, improve water information, help struggling farmers, build new desalination plants, modify and expand water supply systems, and commission research, development and planning studies.

New laws were also introduced, the National Water Commission and the Murray-Darling Basin Authority were created, and new staff appointed in various government departments and agencies. When it’s all combined, each of us will be chipping in well over $1500 in tax and water bills to pay for it.

You might think that these government measures will prepare us for the next drought. Unfortunately, that is unlikely.

Our study made clear that droughts are wickedly complex disasters, that each is bad in a different way, and that we basically have very few means to prevent their impacts.

For starters, each new big drought is likely to be the “worst on record” in some new way and bring its own surprises. This is partly because severe droughts are by definition rare; on average they happen once every 20 years or so. Over such long periods, our collective memory fades and society changes.The WWII drought was about as bad as the one we just had, but a lot of things changed in our society in between.

Each new drought is also unique because drought severity can be measured in three different dimensions: how widespread they are, how deep they bite, and for how long they grind us down. In that last respect, the millennium drought was a shocker.

Each drought is different

The drought affected Australia in so many different ways, and interacted with so many other events and changes, that often we have no way of knowing what a similar drought would have done 20 years ago, or what it will do 20 years from now. Many impacts can be explained in hindsight. But being able to explain the impacts, does not mean we understand them well enough to predict them. And if we cannot predict the impacts, there is little hope that we can prevent them.

For example, we could estimate that Australia’s dry land wheat production was 20% lower during the drought years than it would have been under average conditions. Despite that, total wheat production still went up, because farmers continued to innovate and expand cropping area. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may also have helped the crops.

The study found that the reduced river outflows and lack of flooding were literally made two times worse because of the way the dams and weirs were operated. Don’t blame the river managers: the operating procedures were designed to secure water for the people and businesses relying on it, not to make the river flood. The recent decision to set aside 2750 gigalitres per year for the environment will not dramatically turn this around. And then, for some floodplain forests the recent floods may have come too late; they may be gone forever.

The water and drought policy reforms so far have certainly not inoculated us against drought, and progress on the thorniest issues appears to be stalling. Better drought monitoring and forecasting systems are being put in place by the Bureau of Meteorology. They may be ready in time to warn us for the next big drought, but will not stop it.

Some politicians still have their pipe dreams, believing we can drought-proof Australia by pumping water from the wet north. That may be possible in theory, but will we fill the rivers and drench our dry lands with it? The costs would be astronomical, not to mention the side effects. As Wentworth Group member John Williams put it, perhaps it is time we myth-proof Australia instead. Maybe we should stop trying to fight droughts, and start living with them.

Regardless, the next drought will likely bring some new nasty surprises and break some record or other. What is a fairly safe bet is that temperatures will have risen further by then. The 2003 summer heat waves in Europe and subsequent summer heat waves in the US, Russia and China have shown that increasingly, droughts and heat waves will go hand in hand.

With the dams sitting almost exactly where they were before the big dry, it seems we are primed for the even bigger dry.

Albert Van Dijk worked at CSIRO Land and Water until 2012 and retains an unpaid affiliation. While at CSIRO, he received funding from the Bureau of Meteorology, National Water Commission, Murray-Darling Basin Commission, and other government sources.

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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Just 12 months after being arrested for copyright infringement, racketeering and money laundering for his involvement with now-defunct cyberlocker Megaupload, and despite facing extradition from New Zealand to the US to face such charges, Kim Dotcom has launched Megaupload’s successor: Mega.

Flamboyant internet mogul Kim Dotcom

The site went live on January 19 with more than 100,000 users signing up in the first hour and more than 1 million registrations in the first 24 hours.

While there are obvious similarities between Mega and Megaupload, a key point of difference, according to Dotcom, is the fact Mega and its users are protected by a solid legal framework.

So is Dotcom right? Will Mega be able to avoid the legal issues that led to Megaupload’s demise?

Wait, what is Mega even for?

Mega is a file storage service similar to Dropbox, Google Drive, and Apple’s iCloud.

The idea behind such cloud services is simple: users may upload data and then access that data from elsewhere. Most services (including Mega) permit sharing of the uploaded files with others.

It is through this sharing mechanism that users can commit acts of piracy by sharing copyrighted material such as music, movies, books and so on.

Engaging in or facilitating copyright piracy is outlawed in many countries, and offenders face sanctions including liability to pay damages or disgorge profits to rights holders.

Safe harbour

Content hosts and internet providers usually have access to “safe harbour” provisions limiting their liability when user behaviour infringes copyright. These provisions are generally conditional on the content host removing the infringing material as soon as they are aware of it, and having a policy of disciplining users who repeatedly break the rules.

The indictment of Kim Dotcom and others in the “Mega Conspiracy” claims instead that Megaupload actively supported users who used the service to share infringing material.

According to the indictment, Megaupload was the single largest piracy repository on the internet. And by facilitating piracy the service apparently cost copyright owners US$500 million in lost revenue while making US$175 million in profits.

Same, but different

One of the the features that sets Mega apart from its predecessor is the encryption of files during the upload process.

Encrypting files in this way means all files stored on Mega are useless to anyone who doesn’t have the decryption key. This means the administrators of Mega cannot view the contents of a file, and so they cannot determine whether a file contains business material or the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

A simple legal argument can then be made: if Mega doesn’t know what it’s hosting, then it cannot be held responsible if that content is infringing, or otherwise illegal.

But like most simple arguments, this one is wrong.

Infringement notices

Most content hosts have no idea what content they are hosting, but instead rely on notices from copyright owners to identify content which may be infringing. In the case of Mega, any links that are distributed for the purpose of sharing copyright material will still result in infringement notices being sent.

YouTube is an example of a site on which all uploaded content is checked via an automated content-matching process. This process is in place to detect unauthorised copies of video material or soundtracks. By providing this tool to copyright owners, YouTube avoids most claims of piracy.

Mega, on the other hand, uses across-the-board encryption, and because of this it is technically impossible to proactively filter or check content.

Without these automated tools, content owners are left with the Sisyphean task of locating and reporting infringing content to Mega.

Nothing has changed in the legal landscape with respect to liability of content hosts. In order to use the “safe harbour” provisions, Mega must remove infringing content as soon as it becomes aware of it, and must also discipline the person responsible. Without the “safe harbour” provisions Dotcom can expect another raid in the near future.

Legally watertight?

The Mega site help files and terms of service are very copyright focused. They require users to not infringe on anybody else’s intellectual property, nor do anything illegal.

All responsibility for content is with the user. The help files and terms of service also set out processes for the handling of copyright notices, and how to make counterclaims.

In all, it’s fairly standard legal boilerplate comparable to most other content services – with the bonus that it invokes Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That is:

No-one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

In theory, Mega is a model content host which appears to comply with best practice. User content is kept private through encryption, procedures are in place to take down infringing content upon notices being filed, and Mega promises to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers.

What now?

Those with a stake in Hollywood and the music industry are furious with Mega’s launch. Anti-piracy lobby group StopFileLockers has already commenced a successful campaign to cut off funding to Mega. They claim that the new Mega is simply a re-launch of Megaupload.

StopFileLockers has highlighted that as Mega only holds encrypted files, automated processes cannot be used to locate infringing material, and so will be a haven for copyright pirates.

The behaviour of Mega over the coming months will send a clear signal to copyright holders and those who file-share. The question remains: can Dotcom’s latest venture stick to the rules, or will the entrepreneur again find himself in hot water?

Dotcom is using privacy as the reason to offer a service which automatically encrypts all content. While privacy is important, it appears that the purpose of the automatic encryption is primarily to provide Mega with excuses to not proactively co-operate with rights holders.

By structuring their service to technically preclude co-operating with rights holders, Mega is a distinctly copyright unfriendly service.

Karl Schaffarczyk does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

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The heated battle between Australia’s anti-vaccine lobby, the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), and those fighting against its misinformation took a positive turn late last week, with the New South Wales Department of Fair Trading ordering the AVN to change its name or risk being shut down.

The move follows what has been described as “numerous” complaints from both the public and the Australian Medical Association that the AVN name was misleading the public and wasn’t an accurate representation of its activities.

The order was hand delivered to the home of Meryl Dorey, AVN president, spokesperson and public officer, just before midday on Friday.

What’s in a name?

Publicly, the AVN claims to be pro-choice and a “vaccine safety watchdog”. And its name gives the impression of a neutral resource for vaccination information, but scratching the surface of its slick-looking website quickly reveals an anti-vaccine agenda.

A 12-month investigation of the site by the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, found the AVN website, “provides information that is solely anti-vaccination, contains information that is incorrect and misleading, and quotes selectively from research to suggest that vaccination may be dangerous.” This resulted in the publication of a public warning advising people not to get their medical advice from the AVN.

The AVN later challenged the public warning and won, however during the case the Judge was not convinced by Dorey’s claims “to educate her subscribers and the general public into making decisions about vaccinations”.

As Justice Adamson put it, “It seems slightly coy that your client is so shy about admitting what it is on about”.

Further evidence for the Judge’s suspicions come in the form of T-shirts sold on the AVN website emblazoned with “Love Them, Protect Them, Never Inject Them”. And a children’s book called Melanie’s Marvellous Measles which teaches children to embrace infectious diseases!

Not very “pro-choice”.

The issue of the misleading name has led to confusion for parents and professionals alike, with The Australian College of Midwives a recent victim. It mistakenly sent out invitations to all its members (which were later withdrawn) for an AVN seminar, as it was unaware the AVN was an “anti-immunisation lobby”.

Parents commenting on the Stop the AVN Facebook page share similar stories;

Dear Meryl, I was attracted to the AVN several years ago because the name suggested that you might be a reputable source of information about vaccination (I was preparing for an overseas trip). I found nothing of the sort on your site…..I was indeed misled and deceived by your name. And I’m not the only one.

In 2009, the Australian Skeptics, with sponsorship from Dick Smith, took out an ad in the Australian newspaper to warn parents not to look to the AVN for health information. During the flurry of publicity that ensued, Dick Smith said:

They are actually anti-vaccination, and they should put on every bit of their material that they are anti-vaccination in great big words. They have every right for that belief but they should communicate it clearly so people are not misled.

Yet, the practice of anti-vaccine groups using misleading names is not new. In the United States there is the National Vaccine Information Centre or NVIC, (which refers to itself as a vaccine watch dog) and in New Zealand there is VINE or Vaccination Information Network.

And it’s pretty obvious why they are so keen to disguise their true agenda – I can’t imagine parents looking to the Anti-Vaccine Network for unbiased advice (although kudos to the Australian media, as the AVN is increasingly being called this).

The AVN now has until February 21, 2013 to submit an application for a name change which also must be approved by the Commissioner. Of course, Dorey and co have a right to appeal this order, but if they decide to ignore it, their registration can be cancelled and their assets seized and split up – making this a rather serious matter indeed.

So far, Dorey has responded to the order in the only way she knows, with accusations of “suppression of free speech” and “government bully boys”. And in a bizarre analogy she questioned why she was being targeted when “Greenpeace is not green, nor do they go around looking for peace…”.

Of course, this is not an issue of free speech, but one of a name that accurately describes the activities of the organisation. As NSW Fair Trading Minster Anthony Roberts put it in no uncertain terms on radio 2UE:

What we are asking this organisation to do is be upfront and honest with people and stop misleading people … for far too long this organisation has been misleading individuals and getting away with it.

These people aren’t about pro-choice, these people are about pushing an anti-vaccine line.

So here’s my suggestion for the AVN: change your name to the Anti-Vaccination Network. That way there can be absolutely no confusion about your agenda and you get to keep you domain name. Because you’re not fooling anyone anymore.

Rachael Dunlop receives funding from The Institute for Ethnomedicine, WY. She is a Vice President of Australian Skeptics and an administrator of the Stop The AVN Facebook page.

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My cat caught a starling this week. By the time I intervened, the poor bird’s leg was broken, the kitchen floor was strewn with feathers, and I had to make one of those awful decisions. Was I to leave the bird to the satisfaction of my cat; do all I could to keep her alive; or wring her neck and put her, as they say, out of her misery? I wrung her neck. The toes of her good leg clenched around my finger and she was dead within seconds.

Reading this story, many ecologists will condemn my cat-husbandry – and understandably so. What business do I have, after all, letting an obligate carnivore scamper around on my roof where who-knows-who might end up in her jaws?

For most of these ecologists, however, the evil of this particular incident will be mitigated by the fact that my cat’s victim was a starling, an exotic bird; indeed, in the hectic phrasing of the Western Australian Department of Agriculture, a member of “one of the world’s worst invasive alien species”.

Invasive status is of course not intrinsic to a species. In 2007, the “invasive” starling joined the bottlenose dolphin and the otter in an official list of declining and threatened species on Britain’s Biodiversity Action Plan.

Most ecologists understand the term “invasive” not as a heading under which to categorise a species permanently, but as a way of describing an ecological phenomenon, the process and effect of a species migrating into a new bioregion.

The term “invasive species” has additional legitimacy among conservation biologists because it refers not only to a species’ impact on humans but on ecosystems and on non-human species. Some of these will become extinct or will be pressured into behavioural and perhaps genetic change as a result of the invasive species’ arrival.

Nonetheless, there is still a profound anthropocentrism lodged in the idea of the invasive species. Australia’s Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities defines the invasive species as one “occurring, as a result of human activities, beyond its accepted normal distribution and which threatens valued environmental, agricultural or other social resources by the damage it causes.”

The idea that a species becomes invasive because of its impact on “valued” elements of an ecology is all too obviously anthropocentric (it is humans that value the threatened “environmental, agricultural or other social resources”). Indeed, many ecologists attempt to avert the human-interested bias from their talk of species value by investing all constituents of a “pre-invasion” ecology with value.

But just as anthropocentric is the idea that a species introduced to a new environment “as a result of human activities” should belong to a significantly different category from a species introduced to a new environment as a result of non-human activities, such as continent drift, wind or water currents, or via bird droppings.

The history of life on earth is punctuated with such migrations. The reason why every continent on earth is inhabited is because organisms did not conform to their “accepted normal distribution”.

The vegetation on coral atolls gives us a good example of how species migration produces distinctive life forms. Vegetation arrives at the atoll because birds or ocean currents import seeds, not because the plants and the atoll came into existence in the same instant.

Inevitably, newly migrated species will shift an ecology in which they establish themselves. In some cases these shifts will be insignificant, and in other cases they will entail some species’ extinction. Often, subsequent to an original migration, a migrant species will produce variant offspring. The distinct climate and ecology of the new host environment will advantage some individuals over others so that the variant might flourish and a new variety – perhaps, eventually, a new species – will arise that is peculiar to its bioregion, at least until it, in turn, migrates.

This process of ecological change is intrinsic to the production of biodiversity. Natural selection, the mechanism that allows some individuals to give rise to new varieties, and in turn new species, operates when environmental pressures produce a differential death rate. Some individuals, and varieties, are extinguished, and others prosper.

Species change and species extinction – the casualties attributed by conservation biologists to “invasive species” and that are widely supposed to threaten biodiversity – are also the agents by which biodiversity is produced.

Is there a difference between the seed deposited by the bird in its droppings and a seed introduced into a new environment via, say, human droppings? Is there a difference between a seed that catches in the fur of a migratory bat and a seed that catches in a human traveller’s sock? Clearly the seed itself is the same, regardless of the method by which it is transmitted from place to place. But I want to suggest that the agents of transmission – bird, bat, human – are also the same, or of the same category: they are all animals, they are each, equally, part of nature. (In fact, once we recognise that humans are not separate from nature, the idea of nature itself becomes redundant, or tautological.)

There is no denying that our species’ numerousness and our own migratory activities have meant that human-enabled species migration is currently far more prevalent than species migration enabled by other vectors such as birds, bats, wind, water.

There is no denying that humans are collectively exerting pressures on the world’s ecologies – indeed, on the world ecology – that are accelerating both species extinction and species adaptation beyond the rates known within geological memory.

In their multitude, humans, as Dipesh Chakrabarty has observed, currently constitute a force of nature, something equivalent to a geological force. They are not, however, outside nature.

The species that manage to prosper in part because of human agency are no less natural than the species that are made extinct because of human agency.

Alexis Harley does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

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