Cooling technologies set to become red hot sector

The article below shows only the vaguest awareness of cost in any sense.  Take for instance the chiller truck cooled by liquid nitrogen.  How expensive is the nitrogen?  And how much power was used in cooling  it?  It seems most unlikely that there is any energy saving or any cost saving in the idea

On a warming planet, demand for cooling is increasing.  But if we obtain that cooling from electricity generated by fossil fuels, it makes warming worse. So, the world needs new clean, cool technologies. And British inventors are rushing to provide them. One invention from a garage in Bishop's Stortford is a supermarket chiller truck cooled by liquid nitrogen. Sainsbury's begins testing it this weekend

Other novelties from entrepreneur-inventors are the ice-cooled fridge, and the battery-cooled food delivery van

Experts say they are front runners in a cool tech market that may be worth œ100bn a year in coming decades."The size of energy challenge from cold and cooling internationally is colossal," says Prof Martin Freer from Birmingham University, who wrote a report on the Cold Economy."It will, by the middle of the century, be the biggest single problem the world faces in terms of energy. And we have to do this in a low carbon way."

 It is debatable whether cooling will be the "number one" energy challenge, but it is clear that it is a genuine problem - that makes the nitrogen-cooled truck a trendsetter.The engine uses waste liquid nitrogen at -200C (-328F) left over from the creation of liquid oxygen. It is held in a tank in the truck and its coldness is used to cool the chiller compartment - which is normally cooled by a polluting diesel engine.In another innovation on the truck, a radically new type of engine is driven by the power of liquid nitrogen as it expands 700 times to become a gas. This engine produces electricity for secondary cooling

The system was devised by the amateur inventor Peter Dearman who is feted by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.He suggests it could use existing waste liquid nitrogen, but there are questions about what it would cost to run if additional supplies had to be made.The firm suggests this could be done using excess cheap energy produced by wind turbines or nuclear plants at night. The liquid nitrogen would, in effect, be an energy store - like a sort of battery.

A much simpler chiller truck invention comes from two more backyard inventors based at Lampeter in Wales.

Their system - Perpetual V2G - replaces the diesel engine used to cool the truck with a secondary battery that can be charged overnight by off-peak electricity or topped up by an extra alternator.Their kit is also on trial with Sainsbury's.Meanwhile, the inventors of an ice-cooled fridge are bidding to bring their creation into the kitchen.

 The interior of the Surechill fridge is surrounded, or topped - depending on the model, by a plastic sleeve filled with water. When cheap electricity is available, the water in the sleeve is frozen. The electricity can then be switched off during the day when power is expensive, while the ice keeps the food cool.The most advanced Surechill product is a vaccines fridge. The firm says it stays cold for two weeks without power.Manufacturing has begun in India and South Africa, resulting in the closure of the plant in mid-Wales where the product was first developed

 A more prosaic use of the ability of water to store heat or cool can be found in a growing number of hotels and offices in the UK. They are rewarded with cheaper energy prices if they turn off the power driving their air-conditioning systems at times of peak demand. Marriott Hotels say guests don't notice the marginal change in temperature because the water stays cool in the system's pipes even when the fans are temporarily switched off.

Some of the innovations have been supported by the government, which has allocated at least œ50m for innovation in smart technologies. "We're investing in a variety of innovative ideas such as those coming out of the Cold Economy that can help us provide secure, affordable and clean energy now and for the next generation," the Department of Energy and Climate Change tells the BBC.But some say a broader approach is needed. Prof Freer says the cold economy needs to ensure the waste from one process is the fuel for another. He condemns, for instance, the waste of potential energy when liquid natural gas (LNG) imported into the UK is converted from liquid in ships to gas in pipelines

 That cooling power, he complains, might be used to cool data centres or for refrigeration as part of the food chain."There is no shortage of great ideas," adds Oliver Hayes from Friends of the Earth." But if these ideas are to thrive and grow they need strategic government and industry support, otherwise old and inefficient technologies will freeze them out of the market."

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The Assault on Science

by Robert Zubrin

Recently, the attorneys general of a number of states have launched an effort to use the RICO statute to prosecute opponents of climate-change alarmism.  This is nothing less than an all-out attack on science.

There are several vital issues involved here, involving not only substance, but, even more important, process. Let's start with the latter.

Science is not a collection of facts; it is a process of discovery. Science, alongside its sister, conscience, is based on the signature Western individualist belief that there is a fundamental property of the human mind that, when presented with sufficient information, is able to distinguish right from wrong, justice from injustice, truth from untruth. Matters of science must therefore be determined by reason, not by force. To attempt to prevail in a scientific dispute through the use of force is equivalent to the use of a gun to prevail in a courtroom, or, for that matter, of rape to prevail in courtship. It is nothing less than a criminal rejection of a basic principle of our civilization.

It is also prima facie evidence that the case requiring such enforcement is severely defective. No valid scientific theory has ever required the use of police powers to prevail. No Ptolemaist was ever burned at the stake by Copernicans, nor did the relativity theorists ever find the need to round up the hard-core Newtonians or Etherite dead-enders. Even such counterintuitive theories as quantum mechanics and the Big Bang have done just fine without the assistance of Gestapo raids directed against their detractors. In the courtroom of science, if you have the facts on your side, you don't need a gun - and juries would be well advised to distrust the case of those parties who choose to use weapons to silence adversarial witnesses.

The supporters of the new Inquisition say the catastrophe skeptics are wrong, and as they are spreaders of doubt of essential beliefs, their heresy requires suppression for the public good. But, as consideration of the list of successful theories in the preceding paragraph illustrates, most of the important ideas now established in science were at one time heretical, and therefore it is permission, and not suppression, of heresy that is vital to scientific progress.

That said, let us consider the substance of the inquisitors' complaint, to wit, the undermining by skeptics of the following argument:

1. The Earth is warming.




2. This warming is caused by human industrial activity, which emits CO2.




3. This CO2-driven warming is very harmful to either humanity or wild nature or both.




4. Therefore, policies must be implemented to counter such warming.



5. The best such policies are regressive measures that increase the price of fuel, electricity, food, and other basic goods.

In making the above case, the alarmists have only one demonstrable proposition. This is the first; the Earth is indeed warming, and has been since about 1600. We know this for a fact, not from the doubtful claims of researchers who say that they can measure ongoing global temperature increases averaging 0.01 degree C per year, but from historical accounts, such as those in Dickens, which attest to snowy winters in London in the mid-19th century, or accounts of frost fairs held on the frozen Thames in the age of Cromwell. So the minority of doomsday skeptics who base their case on rejecting proposition No. 1 are indeed on weak ground.

The fallacy of the alarmists' position is that they jump directly from scientifically demonstrable proposition No. 1 to demonstrably brutal proposition No. 5, without considering the very questionable intervening logic. This is a fallacy equivalent to maintaining that the reality of the theory of evolution, as amply demonstrated by the geologic fossil record, requires adherence to such repugnant political programs as eugenics, Social Darwinism, or National Social Darwinism (i.e., Nazism) - as indeed all these movements actually did. So let's look at the argument a bit more closely.

Proposition No. 1 is true. Proposition No. 2 might be true, but is not demonstrable. The atmosphere of the Earth has been enriched over the past century from 300 parts per million CO2 to 400 parts per million, a rate which is consistent with human fossil-fuel use, and this could cause a temperature rise in the range of what we see. However, there are other industrial gas emissions that are global cooling agents, and the observed warming began long before human industrial activity was sufficiently large to be a credible agent of climate change. But let's stipulate No. 2 as being true, regardless.

We then come to Proposition No. 3, which is manifestly false. Indeed, contrary to the claims of the anti-carbon crusaders, both the CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere and the global warming that it may have caused have been greatly beneficial to both humankind and wild nature. Based on the theory of photosynthesis - which is as widely accepted as that of the round Earth - the enrichment of the CO2 content of the atmosphere should accelerate plant growth, and such quickening has indeed been repeatedly measured in many studies, in the lab, in the field, and from orbit. Furthermore, the warming that has occurred over the past century has had the further useful roles of increasing net global rainfall and of lengthening the growing season, as shown, for example, by this map, published by the EPA.



Lacking scientific honesty, the alarmists almost never choose to mention these inconvenient truths. Instead they seek to make doomsday predictions based on the theory that global warming must necessarily cause a disastrous flood. But this prediction is also clearly unsound, as shown by the fact that despite four centuries of global warming, no prominent port city of the early modern era in now underwater. For example, here is a map of Boston, comparing its coastline in 1630 to that today. It can be seen that the Pilgrims' famous City on a Hill has actually increased its land area since its founding, and while some of this increase is due to landfilling activity, there is no evidence, either in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, or any other American colonial city, of a general coastal retreat in the face of an advancing ocean.



Moving on, if Proposition No. 3 is false, then Proposition No. 4 must be as well. In that case, Proposition No. 5 has no rational basis, unless one were to claim that, despite the falsity of the entire supporting climatist argument, making fossil fuels and their products less available to humanity is a valid goal in and of itself. Let us consider this possibility.

Here is a graph comparing average global per capita income, in inflation-adjusted 2010 dollars, to total human carbon use. It can be seen that average human well-being has risen in direct proposition to carbon utilization, with a tenfold increase, from $900/year to $9,000/year in just the past century. In secular terms, this is the greatest story ever told, but it still has a long way to go. The average American income is $45,000 per year, and we still have some poverty here. To raise the world average to anything like our current level would require multiplying global carbon use several times over. Restricting carbon availability to what it is now, or even worse, rolling it back, would require keeping billions of people in crushing poverty, or returning them to it. Such a policy is not moral.



So it is not the doomsday skeptics, but the carbon-benefit deniers who are diverting the public with potentially catastrophic misinformation.

This is not the first time the authority of scientific orthodoxy has been abused for reactionary purposes. As noted above, eugenics, Social Darwinism, and National Social Darwinism all sought justification for their horrid programs in evolutionary theory. But unlike Nazi Germany, in the United States, up until now, such charlatanism has been open to challenge.

In the early 20th century, for example, hundreds of thousands of poor southern whites and blacks would die every year from pellagra, or diseases made fatal by weaknesses induced by pellagra. Using enormous compendiums of data, the eugenicist establishment was able to show that in the great majority of cases, pellagra victims had others in their family or ancestry who were also pellagra victims, and that therefore pellagra must be a hereditary disease, whose necessary remedy was to allow those afflicted to die off, thereby improving our national racial stock via natural selection.

In 1914, however, Dr. Joseph Goldberger of the U.S. Public Health Service showed experimentally that pellagra was a nutritional-deficiency disease, which could be readily cured by a proper diet including adequate amounts of fruits and vegetables, or alternatively, vitamin pills. These findings provoked the anger of the eugenicist establishment, but while they could slander and demean Goldberger (he was a Jew, after all, and his experimental sample was much smaller than the eugenicists' vast storehouse of medical records), they could not block his publications, let alone lock him up. The debate of data and counter-data therefore continued, and since he was right, by the 1930s, Goldberger's pellagra theory won the day, freeing millions of Americans from a horrible disease. But imagine what the outcome might have been had the prosecutors of the day decided to take it upon themselves to defend scientific orthodoxy by silencing the heretical Dr. Goldberger.

As outrageous as it sounds, such is the threat we currently face. The measures proposed by the climate alarmists - carbon taxes (i.e., sales taxes focused on basic goods), cap and trade (a form of carbon tax farming, even more pernicious than direct taxes), and crony capitalism (involving state-enforced direct transfer of funds extracted from the general public to the super-rich via rigged-up energy prices) - are all extremely regressive.

Nevertheless, they claim that such brutal policies are necessary, as purportedly demonstrated by "scientific" authority so unimpeachable as to make contradicting it a criminal offense. But this is nonsense: Real science never fears contradiction. Rather it relishes every joust with opponents as a chance to prove its worth on the field of intellectual battle, or honorably salute the victory of a stronger challenger in the never-ending contest to advance the cause of truth. The demand by the climate alarmists that no one be allowed to enter the lists against them is proof not of strength, but of extreme weakness.

The facts of the fossil record never justified denying poor people a healthy diet. The facts of the weather record do not justify denying poor people affordable energy. And no set of facts, whatever they may be, can justify denying scientists - or anyone else, for that matter - the right to free speech.

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MIT: Incandescents Now More Efficient than LEDs

Now they tell us...

Researchers at the MIT are publicizing that they have fixed the incandescent lightbulb with a brilliant improvement. They have wrapped the interior filament in a crystal glass that both bounces light and contains heat. It recycles energy in a way that addresses the main complaint against Edison’s bulb: It burns far too much energy for the light that it produces.

Why is this interesting? About a decade ago, governments around the world developed a fetish for banning incandescents (through an efficiency rule) and replacing them with expensive LED technology and florescent bulbs. It happened in Europe first but eventually came to the United States. The last American factory to produce them closed in 2010, and they are ever harder to find in even the big-box hardware stores. (As with all such bans, there are exceptions for elites who desire specialty bulbs.)

The change has been seriously annoying for many consumers. It has even given rise to hoarding and gray markets (in Germany, such bulbs were repackaged as “heat balls”). It has produced something of a political backlash, too.

On a personal note, my own dear mother replaced all her incandescents with fluorescents several years ago. I was sitting in her house feeling vaguely irritated by the searing lights in the room — cold and dreary — and had to turn them off. Sitting in the dimly lit room, my thought was: this is what the government has done to us. A great invention from the dawn of modernity is being driven out of use. Do I have to bring my own candles next holiday season?

Why should governments be in the position of deciding what technologies can and cannot be used, as if consumers are too stupid to make such decisions for themselves? Who is to decide what is efficient, and what the proper trade off should be between the energy expended and the light produced?

Maybe some people don’t mind the “inefficiency” of incandescent bulbs relative to the warm and wonderful light they produce. Entrepreneurs need to be able to discern and serve their needs.

The bans have given rise to a vast debate about which bulb is best and what kind of light technology governments should and should not permit. But these are really the wrong questions. The real issue should be: Why should governments be in the business of picking right and wrong technologies at all?

As the MIT innovation in lighting suggests, there are possibilities yet undiscovered that regulators have not thought of. If you write detailed regulations about existing technologies, you are forestalling the possibilities that scientists and entrepreneurs will discover new ways of doing things in the future.

A vast regulatory apparatus on cell phone technology in 1990 could never have imagined something like a modern cellphone. Regulations on digital commerce in 2000 might have stopped the rise of peer-to-peer services like Uber. Indeed, one of the reasons that the digital world is so innovative is precisely because the regulators haven’t yet caught up with the pace of innovation.

Regulations on technology freeze the status quo in place and make it permanent. How, for example, will regulations respond to the news that a new and improved form of incandescent bulb is possible? Early tests show it to be more efficient than the replacements which the regulations favor. Will there be a new vote, a rewrite of the law, a governing body that evaluates new lightbulbs, the same way we approach prescription drugs? None of this can possibly match the efficiency of a market process of trial and error, of experimentation, rejection, and adoption.

In government, a ban is a ban, something to be enforced, not tweaked according to new discoveries and approaches.

Herein we see the problems with all attempts by government to tightly manage any technology. Bitcoin is a great example. As soon as the price began to rise and the crypto sector began to appear viable, government agencies got in the business of regulating them as if the sector was already taking a shape that would last forever. And because technology and industry are always on the move, there is never a rational time to intervene with the proclamation “this is how it shall always be.”

Regulatory interventions stop the progress of history by disabling the limitless possibilities of the human imagination.

By the time regulators get around to rethinking the incandescent, the industry will probably have moved on to something new and even better, something no one can imagine could exist today.

SOURCE  





NOAA: 'Uncertainty About Whether High-Activity Era of Atlantic Hurricanes Has Ended’

Is NOAA hedging its bets?

Climate factors known to influence the formation of hurricanes, including a possible multi-decade cooling trend in the Atlantic Ocean, are causing “uncertainty about whether the high-activity era of Atlantic hurricanes has ended,” according to Kathryn Sullivan, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

 “This year, there is strong variability in several key climate factors greater than in past years. And so there is uncertainty as to whether these factors will be reinforcing each other or competing with respect to tropical storm formation.

“More specifically, there’s uncertainty about whether the high-activity era of Atlantic hurricanes has ended,” Sullivan told reporters during a press conference Friday at NOAA’s Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland.

“This high activity phase began in 1995. It’s associated with an ocean temperature pattern that is called the warm phase of the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation, or AMO. A warm phase of the AMO leads to warmer Atlantic Ocean temperatures, and a stronger West African monsoon, and these contribute to the formation of hurricanes.

“However, during the past three years, weaker hurricane seasons have been accompanied by a shift towards the cool signature of the AMO, cooler Atlantic Ocean temperatures, and a weaker West African monsoon,” Sullivan continued.

“If this shift proves to be more than short-lived, if it’s not just a temporary blip, then it could be signaling the arrival of a low activity era for Atlantic hurricanes. Possibly, that’s already begun, possibly we’re just in a transient,” she said, adding that “high and low phases tend to run 25 to 40 years."

“When we’re looking at these ocean temperature patterns, we’re not looking at month to month or year to year changes. We’re looking at patterns that last for multiple decades at a time,” explained Dr. Gerry Bell, head of NOAA’s hurricane forecasting team.

“So while we’re seeing the warm phase of the AMO possibly switching to the cold phase, this couple of year transition we’re seeing may just reflect the normal year to year signals and not really a multi-decadal pattern. So what we’ll be looking for to see if this actually is a multi-decadal shift is the duration and also its duration during the year.

“Right now, we’re seeing the cold AMO signal more in the winter and in the cool season, but really not very much in the summer and into the hurricane season. So we would expect this pattern to develop more through the year and the next couple of years. It may take a few years to really know if we’re in the cool phase of the AMO or not.”

The last time there was a transition to the cool phase of the AMO was in the early 1970s, Bell continued, and “we didn’t have any of the capabilities we have now to monitor this.”

CNSNews.com asked Bell what effect the cool phase of the AMO would have on hurricane activity over the next two decades.

“If and when [the AMO] does switch back to its cool phase, that is associated with a weaker African monsoon and also weaker hurricane seasons,” he replied.

 “The last time we had a cold phase of the AMO, it was during 1971 to 1994. That was a low activity era for Atlantic hurricanes, and during that 25-year period, we only had two above-normal seasons and half were below normal. So that’s how strong this AMO signal is. It really is a powerhouse as far as controlling the hurricane season for decades at a time.”

However, Sullivan also told reporters that the upcoming 2016 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through November 30, is likely to be “near normal” - with more hurricane activity than last year’s “below normal” season,

“NOAA’s outlook for this season indicates that it is most likely to be a near-normal year. In the Atlantic this season, it will likely produce a range of  between 10 to 16 tropical storms. Those are systems with top sustained winds of at least 39 miles an hour,” Sullivan said.

“Four to eight of those are expected to become hurricanes, with top winds sustained at 74 miles an hour or greater. And between one and four of those hurricanes are expected to grow to major strength of Category 3 or higher [on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale], which translates to wind speeds of at least 111 miles an hour.

“Near normal may sound sort of encouraging, relax, things are okay, but I want to emphasize that the predicted level of activity that I just read off, compared to the past three years that we’ve experienced, actually suggests we could be in for more activity than we’ve seen in recent years,” Sullivan warned.

She noted that NOAA’s 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook predicts the number of storms likely to form, not their tracks or possible landfalls.

Last year, NOAA's updated 2015 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook predicted “a 90 percent chance of a below-normal season… the highest given by NOAA for any such season since their seasonal hurricane outlooks began in August 1998.”

The agency based its 2015 prediction on a strengthening El Nino, which created “atmospheric conditions that are exceptionally non-conducive to tropical storm and hurricane formation."

NOAA predicted that six to 10 named storms would form in the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico last year, with one to four becoming hurricanes, and at least one developing into a major hurricane.

In its 2015 hurricane season summary published in December, NOAA reported that 11 named storms formed in the North Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico last year, with four reaching hurricane strength. Two were classified as major hurricanes: Danny and Joaquin. Neither storm struck the U.S. mainland.

“While the number of named storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes was only a little below the long-term average activity levels of 12, 6, and 3, respectively, many of the named storms were relatively weak and short-lived…. This makes 2015 a below-average season in terms of ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy),” NOAA said.

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Banned in Portland by climate catastrophists

By Gordon Fulks

"Banned in Portland" may not yet have the same notoriety as "Banned in Boston" or "Banned in Tennessee." But we are catching up. Please do not look for a centerfold in this newspaper showing some gorgeous gal, au natural. And don't look for photos of Oregon politicians guilty of inappropriate sex. This isn't about sex. This is about something far more controversial: science.

Yes, believe it or not, competent science is again deemed a threat to humanity by daring to doubt the global warming paradigm. It is as though we are back in 1925 Tennessee, where fundamentalist followers of an old time religion were up in arms about evolution replacing creationism.

Today the issue is competent science versus catastrophism.

Competent science is that messy business where perpetually skeptical scientists argue the vital details of a very complex subject, in this case the Earth's climate.

Catastrophism is the pretend science of the Prophet Gore and his fanatical followers. It is far simpler. Whatever the question, the answer is that diabolical gas, carbon dioxide. It comes from burning fossil fuels, but not from breathing! It has ruined our climate.

But wait, there is still time to save the planet, if we vote for Democrats, enact carbon taxes and ban troublesome scientists who stubbornly maintain that "it's not true."

Mainstream religions have long since made peace with science, recognizing that these two human pursuits can coexist to great mutual benefit, as long as one does not pretend to be the other. Some who study the history of science recognize that religion has been vital to science by teaching the value and necessity of telling the truth. The fervent pursuit of the whole truth (not just a political or religious truth) led the Puritans of the 17th century to form the first scientific society, the British Royal Society, with the motto "Take no one's word for it."

Thus began 400 years of magnificent scientific progress, greatly assisted centuries later by Jews looking for an escape from the ghettos of Europe. From Albert Einstein to Richard Feynman, most of the great physicists of the 20th century were Jewish. Among Feynman's famous lectures was one calling for "utter honesty," a concept now largely forgotten in a scientific world dominated by presidential policy statements, vast amounts of cash and careerism.

The new "green religion" of Al Gore sadly demands only belief, not competence, good behavior or honesty. Gore's followers try to silence heretics.

That silencing has been going on for a long time in Oregon. Former Gov. Ted Kulongoski forced Oregon's best state climatologist, George Taylor, to retire and replaced him with one of the faithful. Scientists with advanced degrees are excluded from our schools in favor of Gore disciples like former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, who lacks even the college education required for teachers but still lectures on global warming.

What will Portland children miss with all this political interference? They will miss science entirely — not just climate science. Propagandized children never learn that science is much more than a good story told by their elders. They will never learn that science is completely determined by logic and evidence, not by the "authority" and "consensus" preached by "Warmers." They will miss the wisdom of our greatest scientists.

Albert Einstein's famous words — "One man can prove me wrong" — are surely blasphemous. That is dangerous doubt in a postmodern world. Today, it takes a political earthquake to topple politically correct pseudoscience. Students may even miss reading the voluminous United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that are the foundation of the climate scam. They dare to express the doubt now banned in Portland.

We are back to 1925, with the modern version of creationism winning once again over science. Pitiful.

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Australia scrubbed from UN climate change report after government intervention

Some Green/Left horror below.  There's nothing "threatened" in Australia any more!  What they are carefully not mentioning is that corals periodically undergo bleaching events and rapidly recover.  So a portrayal of the GBR as bleached would be an unfair depiction of the reef as it usually is.  Most "threatened" natural features stay that way for a long time so it is reasonable to depict them in their threatened state.  But that is not so with the GBR.  

And the claim that the bleaching is the result of "climate change" is false, so putting it into a climate change report would be wrong.  The warming events of late 2015 and early 2016 were contemporaneous with a CO2 STASIS.  Below are the CO2 levels at Cape Grim for the relevant period.  The first two columns give month and year and the 5th column gives CO2 levels.  So NO PART of the warming events at that time were due to a rise in CO2.  They were all due to El Nino




All mentions of Australia were removed from the final version of a Unesco report on climate change and world heritage sites after the Australian government objected on the grounds it could impact on tourism

Every reference to Australia was scrubbed from the final version of a major UN report on climate change after the Australian government intervened, objecting that the information could harm tourism.

Guardian Australia can reveal the report “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate”, which Unesco jointly published with the United Nations environment program and the Union of Concerned Scientists on Friday, initially had a key chapter on the Great Barrier Reef, as well as small sections on Kakadu and the Tasmanian forests.

But when the Australian Department of Environment saw a draft of the report, it objected, and every mention of Australia was removed by Unesco. Will Steffen, one of the scientific reviewers of the axed section on the reef, said Australia’s move was reminiscent of “the old Soviet Union”.

No sections about any other country were removed from the report. The removals left Australia as the only inhabited continent on the planet with no mentions.

Explaining the decision to object to the report, a spokesperson for the environment department told Guardian Australia: “Recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of world heritage properties impacted on tourism.”

As a result of climate change combined with weather phenomena, the Great Barrier Reef is in the midst of the worst crisis in recorded history. Unusually warm water has caused 93% of the reefs along the 2,300km site to experience bleaching. In the northern most pristine part, scientists think half the coral might have died.

The omission was “frankly astounding,” Steffen said. [What would be astounding would be if Steffen told the full truth about global warming]

SOURCE

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