Wednesday, December 29, 2010

King Parrot in the wild

Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting

Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting

Male Australian King Parrots are the only Australian parrots with a completely red head.

This King Parrot was photographed in Killcare (Central Coast, New South Wales).

** If you enjoyed this post please also check out:

Saving the Superb Parrot

Orange Bellied Parrot

Australia's Biodiversity and Climate Change
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Comments are always welcome, so please leave a comment!

Saturday, November 27, 2010

Random Man on Planet Earth reaches 10,000 hits


Random Man on Planet Earth would like to have a look back at some of the highlights over the life of this blog which started back on the 20th of March 2007.

See the first 'Welcome post' here

Anyway, here are some of the most popular posts (in no particular order).
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Biodiversity
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxPhoto: PAJ Environmental Consulting
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If you enjoyed this post, please check out the Random Man Top 10

Hopefully, there will be many more hits to come on Random Man on Planet Earth!!!

**Please leave a comment!
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Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Some lizards from Cuba

Here is a selection of the different lizards found in Cuba.
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If anyone knows more about these wonderful lizards please let me know.
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Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting

Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting
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Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting
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Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting .


**If you enjoyed this post, please check out:
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Orangutans of Kuta Kinabalu
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2010 International Year of Biodiversity
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Polar Bear
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Comments always welcome!
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Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Bill McKibben on Letterman


Here is Bill McKibben speaking with David Letterman about:

  • his new book Eaarth,
  • 350.org and
  • his campaign to get the Whitehouse to reinstall solar panels on 10/10/10.

I have another post on Bill McKibben (available here); from when I went to see him speak in Sydney, last year.

Comments always welcome!

Wednesday, August 04, 2010

United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany


The conference runs from Monday, 2nd August to Friday, 6th August 2010.
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Christina Figueres (UNFCCC Executive Secretary) stated that governments can build on progress in five key areas:
  1. they need to resolve what to do with their public pledges to cut emissions
  2. governments seem on track to agree to a comprehensive set of ways and means to allow developing countries to take concrete action
  3. industrialized nations can turn their funding pledges into reality
  4. countries want to see that what they agree with each other is measured, reported and verified in a transparent way
  5. governments agree that pledges need to be captured in a binding manner but they need to decide how to do it
Click here for more information on the conference (including reports and background readings).
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**If you enjoyed this post, please check out:
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Comments and questions always welcome!
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Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Humpback whales off Sydney Harbour

Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting

Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting

Photo supplied by: PAJ Environmental Consulting
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Here are some photos taken of some Humpback whales that were heading north - past Sydney Harbour - for the breeding season.
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**If you enjoyed this post, please also check out:
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Comments always welcome!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Climate Change Indicators suggest a warming world

The annual State of the Climate Report has just been released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the year 2009. Over 300 scientists from 48 countries were involved. The report examines data for ten indicators of a warming world (as seen below).
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Of these ten indicators, seven are expected to increase in a warming world (Air Temperature Near Surface (Troposphere), Humidity, Temperature Over Oceans, Sea Surface Temperature, Sea Level, Ocean Heat Content, and Temperature Over Land). The data for each of these indicators does trend up, suggesting we are living in a warming world.


Finally, three indicators are expected to decrease in a warming world (Snow Cover, Glaciers and Sea-Ice). The data for each of these indicators does trend down, suggesting we are living in a warming world.


Conclusion: Climate change is "unequivocal".

Both the full report and an easy to read 10 page summary of the report is available here.

Reference:

Arndt, D. S., M. O. Baringer, and M. R. Johnson, Eds., 2010: State of the Climate in 2009. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 91 (6), S1-S224.

The 2007 IPPC report was released in April 2007 in Paris. It is available at:

IPCC (WG2) Climate Change Report 2007

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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Reframing climate change into a public health issue

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New research carried out by Maibach et al (2010) from George Mason University suggests that framing climate change in terms of a public health issue - rather than an environmental issue - helps a wider spectrum of people to see climate change as personally relevant, understandable, and significant.
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"Re-defining climate change in public health terms should help people make connection to already familiar problems such as asthma, allergies and infectious diseases, while shifting the visualisation of the issue away from remote Arctic regions and distant peoples and animals."


A better healthier future for everyone is a positive framing that may help to better engage the public with climate change.
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"Many leading experts have suggested that a positive vision for the future, rather than a dire one is precisely what has been missing from the public dialogue on climate change so far."

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For the press release for this research see here
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Or for the full paper see here

For more on this, please check out:
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Comments always welcome!.

Please tell us what you think.

Friday, March 19, 2010

An Open Letter from Scientists in the United States on the IPCC

Here is the start of the letter:

Many in the popular press and other media, as well as some in the halls of Congress, are seizing on a few errors that have been found in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in an attempt to discredit the entire report. None of the handful of mis-statements (out of hundreds and hundreds of unchallenged statements) remotely undermines the conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” and that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. Despite its excellent performance for accurately reporting the state-of-the-science, we certainly acknowledge that the IPCC should become more forthcoming in openly acknowledging errors in a timely fashion, and continuing to improve its assessment procedures to further lower the already very low rate of error.

It is our intention in offering this open letter to bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world. We first discuss some of the key messages from climate science and then elaborate on IPCC procedures, with particular attention to the quality-control mechanisms of the IPCC. Finally we offer some suggestions about what might be done next to improve IPCC practices and restore full trust in climate science.

More here

** If you enjoyed this post please also check out:

The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report

Climate change in Australia: website and report

Estimated cost of adapting to climate change

Overcoming barriers to beat climate change

COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME !!


So please, tell us what you think!

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Green or Greenwash?


Today's Sydney Morning Herald had a front page story on how two of LG Electronics fridges were found to be not as energy efficient as they claimed. In fact the story suggested that they had installed a devices that activates an energy saving mode when the fridge detects room conditions similiar to those of a test laboratory.
Green fridge labelled a fraud

LG Electronics has agreed to compensate potentially thousands of consumers after two of its fridges - models L197NFS and P197WFS - were found to contain an illegal device that activates an energy-saving mode when it detects room conditions similar to those in a test laboratory.

It is the third time LG Electronics has been caught making false claims about the environmental credentials of its products. In 2008, it had to repay $3 million after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission ruled it had inflated the energy-efficiency star rating of five models of air-conditioner. Source (SMH)

I wondered what other greenwash had been 'discovered' in Australia. After a very quick google search, I found the following:
GreenPower retailer led investors astray: ACCC
Global Green Plan Ltd, using the name GreenSwitch, was deregistered from the national GreenPower program in September 2008 for failing to buy enough renewable energy certificates, but it continued to trade through its website until November. The company will now have to buy 4000 renewable energy certificates to make up the shortfall. ''The ACCC investigated the GreenSwitch activities and found the numbers didn't match up,'' the acting chairman of the ACCC, Michael Schaper, said. ''To take money from customers and not use it as it was intended is simply unacceptable.''    Source (SMH)

          Greenwash: company guilty of misleading claims
A carbon credits company, Prime Carbon, has been found guilty by the Federal Court of Australia of making misleading green claims. Prime Carbon is a private company that produces and trades carbon credits created through soil enhancement and carbon sequestration programs.  Source (SMH)

Regulator demands muscle on 'green' ads
Graeme Samuel, the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said a sharp rise in complaints about green advertising claims - from almost none two years ago to about 500 since early 2008 - was ''very unusual''.

''Five hundred suggests there's more than a moderate problem,'' Mr Samuel said. ''It's a new area and in some cases marketers don't understand - but in most cases marketers do understand and they are overselling.''   Source (SMH)

ACCC warns about 'green' marketing
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said as companies push to appear greener, it's becoming difficult to find products that do not promise some kind of environmental benefit. "Companies risk breaching the Trade Practices Act if they give an overall impression to consumers their product is environmentally friendly when it isn't," ACCC deputy chair Louise Sylvan said in a statement.   Source (SMH)
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I also found this:

The Six Sins of Greenwash

In December 2007, TerraChoice, an environmental marketing company in North America , released the findings of a study titled 'The Six Sins of Greenwashing'. The company, a leader in green marketing, found that 99% of the 1018 common 'environmentally friendly' consumer products randomly surveyed for the study were guilty of greenwashing. The findings of the report were alarming and from it the company created the six sins of greenwashing, which it believes will help equip consumers with the tools to figure out the truth about environmentally friendly products. They define the six sins as:
Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off: eg, 'Energy-efficient' electronics that contain hazardous materials.
Sin of No Proof: eg, Shampoos claiming to be 'certified organic', but with no verifiable certification.
Sin of Vagueness: eg, Products claiming to be 100% natural when many naturally occurring substances are hazardous, like arsenic and formaldehyde.
Sin of Irrelevance: eg, Products claiming to be CFC-free, even though CFCs were banned 20 years ago.
Sin of Fibbing: eg, Products falsely claiming to be certified by an internationally recognised environmental standard like EcoLogo, Energy Star or Green Seal.
Sin of Lesser of Two Evils: eg, Organic cigarettes or 'environmentally friendly' pesticides.

So the message is very clear.

Beware of making 'greenwashed' claims for your products or you may end up on the front page of a major newspaper!!

That would not make good business sense.

If anyone finds any more examples of this type of thing, please let me know and I will add the company to the list of shameful behaviour. It is great to see people are making complaints when they see this type of thing ("from almost none two years ago to 500 complaints since 2008").

** If you enjoyed this post please also check out:

ACCC probing more 'green' ad claims

COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME !!
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So please, tell us what you think.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Climate change in Australia: website and report

The Climate change in Australia website was developed by Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) in partnership with the Australian Greenhouse Office through the Australian Climate Change Science Program.

Climate change in Australia is based upon international climate change research including conclusions from the IPCC's fourth assessment report. It also builds on a large body of climate research that has been undertaken for the Australian region in recent years.
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Climate change in Australia
provides essential tools for government, industry and the community to understand the likely magnitude of climate change in Australia and the possible impacts.

The Climate Change in Australia report is available for download from the Technical Report page of their website.


Figure 1: Trends in annual mean Australian temperatures (left) and rainfall (right) since 1950.
Source: Summary brochure (page 2)

If you are short on time, I would suggest you at least check out the Summary brochure of the Climate change in Australia Report.

Well worth a read!


** If you enjoyed this post please also check out:


The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Climate Science Report

Changing finance - Financing change

Overcoming barriers to beat climate change

New Green Jobs ??


Top 10 Environmental Posts

COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME !!

So please, tell us what you think.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Nanotechnology - both risks and benefits

Some of my thoughts on nanotechnology:
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When it comes to nanotechnology, there are both possible benefits and risks involved. Those that are pro-science tend to push the benefits (and the nanoproducts) and those that are against science tend to push the risks of nanotechnology and nanopollution. Will nanotechnology help to solve environmental issues or will dangerous nanopollution and nanoweapons be the result? Will nanoscience help to reduce human suffering for many (or few) people? Or will it increase suffering? Will it boost human lifespans and lifestyles or reduce them? And who will benefit or suffer as a result of the new science and technology and its products and effects? Well, that depends on what 'society' does with the new science and technology it now increasingly has at its disposal.
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"There are many people, including myself, who are quite uneasy about the consequences of this technology of the future"

Eric Drexler.


Above: Microscopic faces of Barack Obama made using nanotechnology, and imaged using a scanning electron microscope. Each face consists of millions of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes, grown by a high temperature chemical reaction. Image source here
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Lets have a look at the benefits first.
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Benefits of nanotechnology
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Nanotechnology is already being used in many applications. For example, in modern medicine, nanotechnology is being used for fluorescent biological labels, drug and gene delivery, tissue engineering and MRI contrast enhancement. The benefits of these improved medical diagnostic methods and treatment options could be huge for those that are sick with a range of illnesses and diseases such as cancer. Those that support nanotechnology suggest the amazing possibilities of nanotechnology are almost endless.
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Strong proponents believe that, with further research and development (and funding), nanotechnology could be used to help solve a wide range of environmental and social problems including: climate change; water/air pollution; and even world hunger. However, the hype and marketing surrounding nanotechnology makes it difficult to separate what is technically possible and what may one day be available.
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It is also important to consider who will benefit. Can people access or even afford it when they may need it? Who owns, and therefore profits and controls nanotechnology? Much of the debate coming from the global 'South' in climate change, centres around the need for technology transfer, but will nanotechnology solutions be shared?
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Risks of nanotechnology
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Consider the case of the nanosock which has nanosilver particles in them to prevent bacteria and foot odor. Preliminary results from research being conducted by Troy Benn (an Arizona State University doctoral student) were presented at the American Chemical Societies 2008 conference. The research found that nanosilver particles would come out of the sock in the wash and therefore be released into the environment. This raises serious issues, such as what happens when bacteria killing particles are released into the environment? Science cannot yet answer that question adequately so we should remember the precautionary principle (PP) and be very careful until we can. Arguments over whether a strong or weak precautionary principle should be used then begin. Those that push for less regulation argue that a strong PP would limit the pace of discovery and therefore hold back the benefits of nanotechnology to those that may really need then now (i.e. the sick or the elderly). While those that want stronger regulation believe that the unknown risks out weigh the possible benefits and slowing the pace makes it safer.
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New nanoproducts should be tested for safety before going onto the market, but currently the risk research lags behind the new products. Some of this is because we are only beginning to 'see' some of the possible risks of nanotechnology.
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Molecular nanotechnology may allow the creation of self-replicating machines and the problem of ‘grey goo’. [See: the sci-fi book 'Prey' by Michael Crichton] Is this idea of nanotechnology 'getting out of control' only 'science fiction'? Or is it a very real nasty future that awaits?
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Nanoweapons could be created, given almost half of all scientific research is for military purposes, there is a good chance that researchers will look towards nanoweapons that could deliver bioweapons – like a nanobot mosquito with a nasty toxin such as botulism). The development of nanoweapons could lead to a nanotechnology arms race, between nanotechnology superpowers or even smaller rogue states or terrorist group. There could be a large number of states with nanoweapons and because of there size they would be difficult to find and easy to smuggle which means they could be easily transported. There is also the possibility that a black-market for banned nanomachines could occur and because of the size of future nanomachines, it would be difficult to find them.
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Microscopic surveillance devices raise serious privacy concerns because individuals, governments or businesses could misuse them and it would be very difficult to deal with negative antisocial uses of the technology e.g. hidden cameras in private places such as bathrooms, or used for industrial or government espionage.
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Nanotechnology could have unintended consequences that could cause serious harm to society or the environment. Technocratic science has ‘blind-spots’ that result from its disciplinary and reductionist nature. These blind-spots could include unanticipated new illnesses, unintended negative environmental effects or major negative social change. These unintended consequences could also cause the public to lose of confidence in nanotechnology and this could effect funding.
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A lack of effective regulations to deal with the unintended consequences of nanotechnology could allow dangerous risks to be placed upon society. I believe a precautionary approach is therefore needed. It is also important to consider who owns and controls the technology, and who can have access to it (when and where it is needed).
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Having said all this - scientists actually working in fields of nanotechnology and nanoscience are increasingly aware of both the possible benefits and the possible problems. The example of genetically modified food has demonstrated to many scientists, some of the possible battles ahead. Good policy needs to stear through the minefield of the different assumptions and views on 'science' itself.
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Will the public trust nanoscience if it is found being used for weapons or polluting the environment? What if it is providing much joy and saving many lives? Many governments (including the US Government, the European Union and the Australian Government) have began to investigate the question of what should society do with nanotechnology.
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In conclusion, because there are many different values and worldviews in our society (e.g. anthropocentric, ecocentric and ecofeminism) and these values and worldviews are often conflicting, there is no one correct way of answering all the difficult ethical and environmental questions raised by rapidly progressing nanotechnology.
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Therefore, there needs to be a dialogue between all the key stakeholders, rather than a narrow group of experts. In order for the public to gain some control over the technology (Habermas question), they need to be involved in the problem definition, problem framing, discussing of options, etc. It must be a bottom-up rather than the typical top-down decision (leave it to the 'experts' i.e. scientists and economists).
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This could be achieved using a citizen’s jury (as they did with the UK nanojury). This is needed because nanotechnology has the potential to affect almost all aspects of modern society, so all people have a stake in their future and should help decide what risks they are prepared to take rather than having them thrust upon them without been consulted.
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by Random Man
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Comments most welcome, what do you all think about nanotechnology??
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For more on nanotechnology see:
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History of Nanotechnology
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What is nanotechnology?

Environmental Nanotechnology

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COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME !!

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So please, tell us what you think.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

PAJ Environmental Consulting

"Providing interdisciplinary solutions to enhance and sustain the natural, built and social environment"


PAJ Environmental Consulting provides environmental and natural resources management consulting services to help individuals, businesses and organisations adapt and move towards a sustainable future.


If you require any advice or further information, please get in touch today to see how you can save money, time and the environment.


Specialising in:



Interdisciplinary understanding of environmental issues


Capacity to problem solve

Capacity to communicate complex ideas to a wide audience


Research and consultancy skills

Climate change science and policy advice

Sustainable development

Public participation and decision making

Environmental Sociology

Enviromental Psychology



"Providing interdisciplinary solutions to enhance and sustain the natural, built and social environment"


Comments and enquiries always welcome.

2010 - International Year of Biodiversity


This year is the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity.

Here is the welcome:

The United Nations declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. It is a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives. The world is invited to take action in 2010 to safeguard the variety of life on earth: biodiversity




So this year, have a think about the effect humans are having on biodiversity.



Note: last year (2009) was the United Nations International Year of the Gorilla


** If you enjoyed this post
please also check out:

Poor Turtle

Don't forget me . . .

Australia's Biodiversity and Climate Change

Blue tongue lizard

Polar Bear Begs

Penguin Protest

COMMENTS ALWAYS WELCOME !!