Australian Politics
Spending Hundreds of Millions to Make a 0.1 Percent Difference to the Great Barrier Reef
Hard-working Aussie fishermen, and all the people who depend on them, are about to suffer severe restrictions on their production. And all based on dubious science.
The barramundi fishery mostly operates in the creeks and rivers, or very close to shore. Our out-of-touch government ministers have never explained how catching a barra in a creek somehow damages the Reef, which is far from shore—mostly 40 to 100 kilometers (25 to 62 miles).
But worse is to come as governments cast their net further afield.
As part of the UNESCO demands, the federal government has announced that it is now restricting fishing in the southern Gulf of Carpentaria to “save the Reef.”
That area of the Gulf is 700 kilometres from the Reef and on the wrong side (to the west) of Cape York Peninsula. How can catching a barra near Mornington Island affect the Reef? Was this really demanded by UNESCO or is it being used as a convenient tool by our government to further enforce extreme green environmental policies?
If killing the barra fishery seems like a scientific folly, the recent letter from Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to UNESCO asking that the Reef not be listed as endangered contains an even bigger indication that the government, and the science institutions upon which they base their dubious decisions, have lost the plot.
Ms. Plibersek’s letter proudly states that government schemes costing hundreds of millions of dollars have stopped 140,000 metric tonnes of sediment reaching the Reef from farms and cattle stations in the last decade.
That 140,000 figure sounds like a lot of mud. But in a decade, the rivers in question carry roughly 1,000 times more sediment than that out into the ocean.
So, they reduced the sediment to the Reef by a meagre 0.1 percent—and they made it a big deal!
Before I was fired by James Cook University after calling for better quality assurance of Reef science, my group worked extensively on the impact of sediment.
We invented some of the instrumentation for doing this work. We took more measurements than all the other groups combined. We showed that mud almost never reaches the Great Barrier Reef, which is far offshore. And even when it does, it is in minuscule quantities for only short periods of time. Even the inshore reefs, such as around Magnetic Island near Townsville, are barely influenced by mud coming directly from the rivers fed by tropical monsoon rains.
Government-funded scientists and managers have thus spent hundreds of millions to make 0.1 percent difference to a non-problem.
We must hope that they do not try to scale-up their effort and completely solve a problem that does not exist. At this rate, it would cost roughly 10 percent of Australia’s yearly GDP just to manage this one environmental factor.
Strangely, Ms. Plibersek conveniently forgot to mention that data from the Australian Institute of Marine Science show that, since records began, the reef has never had more coral than in the last two years. People might think that Ms. Plibersek was on UNESCO’s side and doing their bidding.
The time has come for a forensic audit of the science that is being used to smash the livelihood of hardworking Aussie farmers and fishers. The government is in effect picking off industries one at a time in a classic “salami” tactic.
The Australian Environment Foundation is organising a coalition of affected small industries to fight back, and top of the list is to audit the science.
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ABC health expert Dr Norman Swan admits some Covid vaccines had serious side effects after largest ever study released
See
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X24001270?via%3Dihub#s0090
ABC health expert Norman Swan has admitted the Covid vaccines produced unexpected side effects but considers them to be akin to 'winning the lotto three times in your lifetime'.Dr Swan was commenting on the largest ever study done into adverse reactions from Covid vaccines which was published last week.
'They uncovered side effects they hadn’t quite expected and they did show up as a signal there,' Dr Swan told ABC interviewer Jeremy Fernandez on Monday.
However, Dr Swan stressed that the side effects seen in the study's 99million subjects who received Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca shots were 'rare'.
He said Guillain-Barre syndrome was a side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine that received particular attention in the study.
He described it as a 'descending paralysis of the body that affects the nervous system'.
'Usually in most people it is a temporary phenomenon but it can be quite serious at the time,' Dr Swan said.
An unexpected side effect of the Moderna vaccine was acute disseminated encephalomyelitis.
'So, this is essentially a brain inflammation usually seen in children but in this case in older people, these are largely 20 to 60-year-olds,' Dr Swan said.
'He described the condition as 'self-limiting and quite nasty'.
Dr Swan said that this condition was still extremely rare with only seven cases seen out of 10million injections.
He likened the probability of getting it to 'winning the biggest lotto three times in your lifetime'.
Asked how applicable the study was to Australians, Dr Swan said it included Aussies and people from similar countries such as Canada.
Dr Swan has been a strong advocate for getting the Covid vaccines despite initially dismissing their likely efficacy and saying those who took them were 'guinea pigs'.
In July 2022 the Scottish-born medical commentator revealed he had caught Covid for the second time despite having four jabs.
The study Dr Swan was citing involved an international coalition of vaccine experts who looked for 13 medical conditions among 99million vaccine recipients across eight countries.
They confirmed that the shots made by Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are linked to significantly higher risk of five medical afflictions including Guillain-Barre syndrome.
But the study also warned of several other disorders that they said warranted further investigation, including the links between a brain-swelling condition and the Moderna shot.
However, the team says the absolute risk of developing any one of the conditions remains small.
They said 13billion doses of vaccines had been administered and there have only been 2,000 cases of all conditions.
Their research was published in the journal Vaccine.
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Fact checkers fall out
The ABC has ended its partnership with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) FactLab, with which it has operated the ABC RMIT Fact Check project for the past seven years.
On Tuesday afternoon ABC news director Justin Stevens notified staff via email that the national broadcaster would replace the partnership with an internal fact-checking team, known as “ABC News Verify”.
Stevens said Verify would be a “team of specialists with the ability to scale up to support our special coverage in times of crisis. It will be part of the Investigative Journalism and Current Affairs team led by Jo Puccini.”
“In parallel with our decision to establish our own specialist verification team we have also taken the decision to not extend our current participation in ABC RMIT Fact Check when our current agreement expires in the middle of the year,” he wrote.
Crikey understands RMIT management felt blindsided by the decision from the ABC, with sources saying it appeared that the ABC had concerns over pressure from fact-checking politicians.
One source told Crikey that the relationship between RMIT and the ABC had become one-sided in recent years, with the university taking a lot of criticism from conservative media over the Fact Check project.
It comes as the partnership and the ABC have come under significant pressure in recent months over accusations of bias following the Voice to Parliament referendum. In May, RMIT FactLab published a fact check of itself, refuting claims that the organisation was being “used” by proponents of the Yes campaign to “rig the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum”.
The organisation’s participation in Meta’s fact-checking program was briefly suspended last year after its accreditation with the International Fact-Checking Network lapsed.
The Australian reported last year that the ABC had spent $165,000 a year on the RMIT partnership since 2020, according to figures released in Senate estimates.
In budget estimates this year, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts asked ABC managing director David Anderson about the make-up of ABC RMIT Fact Check in relation to the Voice referendum.
Anderson responded on notice that of the 17 articles published between June 1 and September 29, RMIT ABC Fact Check published two articles focusing on claims made by the Yes campaign or proponents, 10 on the No campaign or proponents, and five on claims made by proponents of both sides.
Anderson said “checkable claims more frequently surfaced from proponents of No arguments than from proponents of Yes arguments” in the ABC’s media monitoring process.
“When a Yes claim surfaced which was checkable and important to the national debate, Fact Check made sure it was covered in a timely manner.”
A spokesperson for RMIT said in a statement that the university was “proud of the long-standing partnership” with the ABC.
“The partnership between RMIT and ABC will conclude at the end of the current agreement [on June 30, 2024]. RMIT is committed to upholding the integrity of public information and will continue to do this through a range of activities,” the spokesperson told Crikey.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/02/21/abc-rmit-fact-check-partnership-abc-news-verify/
*********************************************Australia on the brink as iron ore, nickel, lithium prices collapse
CBA Mining and Energy Commodities Research Director Vivek Dhar says the collapse of Chinese property developer Evergrande “underscores” the issue with China’s property sector.
Australia prides itself in being the world’s quarry. But China is its biggest buyer. Now the collapse of the nickel industry reveals a supermarket-style price manipulation scandal is being played out on a grand scale.
Competition is great. Until you get a winner. And that winner’s been taking performance enhancers …
Canberra is having to fork out billions of dollars in emergency corporate aid and surrender royalty income after a slump in global nickel prices. They have fallen more than two-thirds – from a high of $US50,000 per metric ton in 2022 to about $US16,500 this week.
Thousands of jobs are on the line as big multinational mining companies urgently review the viability of their operations across Australia.
Mining giant BHP reported an 86 per cent slump in half-year net profit on February 20, 2024, hit by a writedown of its nickel assets and costs related to a 2015 Brazilian mining disaster. Picture: William WEST / AFP
Mining giant BHP reported an 86 per cent slump in half-year net profit on February 20, 2024, hit by a writedown of its nickel assets and costs related to a 2015 Brazilian mining disaster. Picture: William WEST / AFP
But the nickel industry isn’t the only mineral facing massive market disruption.
Steel and iron ore prices have collapsed. As has lithium.
The cause is the same across the board: China’s dumping huge quantities on already depressed markets.
And that makes it unviable for competitors to continue competing.
“Far from a hypothetical, Beijing has already used its near-monopolistic global supply-chain control of (rare earth elements) to strategic advantage against the US and Japan,” warns the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
Nickel is not just any mineral. It’s critical for producing high-capacity batteries, stainless steel and many other advanced alloys.
It’s one of a host of difficult-to-mine and expensive-to-refine materials (generally classified as rare earth elements and critical minerals) that play central roles in modern electronics and high-performance technology.
These are central to the global race to combat climate change – and rebuild militaries in the face of the territorial ambitions of Russia and China.
But Beijing’s willingness to subsidise every step of production and bear the environmental fallout of chemical and energy-intensive processes means it’s now the source of about 80 per cent of the rare earths processed worldwide. That includes 90 per cent of lithium, 70 per cent of gallium, and 70 per cent of germanium.
China refines about 35 per cent of all nickel output. And last year, it took control of a further 15 per cent once new Chinese-owned-and-operated plants in Indonesia came online.
“Its incredibly low cost of processing and competitive labour market gives it an almost unassailable advantage, turning suppliers into price takers rather than price makers,” says Monash University critical minerals analyst Associate Professor Mohan Yellishetty.
‘Dig it and ship it’
Australia is notorious for selling off the farm and failing to value-add its food and mineral produce.
China, however, has for decades had a single-minded focus on building market dominance.
It’s invested heavily in building advanced industries, such as silicon chip and clean energy technologies.
As a result, it’s now the world leader in the entire lithium extraction, refining and production chain – among others.
“It has paid substantial environmental costs through trial-and-error innovation and has now developed dominant advantages in not just the scale of mass production, but also green technologies used in lithium processing,” Dr Marina Yue Zhang of the Australia-China Relations Institute argues in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter. “It is debatable whether that cost should be repeated by other countries.”
Likewise, Indonesia moved to value-add its nickel production in 2014. It went so far as to restrict exports – triggering a global price spike – while comprehensive new Chinese-owned and operated facilities were being built.
“China also financed supporting infrastructure needed for nickel processing. Many coal-fired power plants, on which nickel smelting depends, were set up in Indonesia through China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI),” policy analyst Dr Teesta Prakash says in the Australian Institute of International Affairs’ Australian Outlook.
“Before the ban, Indonesia only supplied raw nickel ore, valued at US$6 billion in 2013. By 2022, this figure increased to US$30 billion due to refinement.”
Competitive chokehold
“We should strengthen the production and supply of food and strategic mineral resources, and build a strategic base to guarantee the supply of important primary products for the country,” Chairman Xi Jinping proclaimed shortly before restricting refined gallium and germanium exports in July last year.
Trade restrictions, embargoes and sanctions are nothing new on the world stage.
But China seems especially willing to use its new-found economic superpower status to coerce its customers.
Australian exports of coal, barley, wine and seafood were banned after Canberra suggested an international inquiry be conducted into the source of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In October last year, Beijing imposed export restrictions on graphite. And that followed similar restrictions on gallium and germanium earlier in the year.
It’s just part of an ongoing tit-for-tat trade war with the United States and the European Union. They’ve been steadily increasing restrictions on the export of advanced semiconductors – one last technological weakness China is determined to overcome.
“Together, these announcements have been met with alarm given the dominant role China plays in the production of these minerals, as well as the minerals’ important role in the semiconductor industry and the clean energy economy,” says Atlantic Council think-tank analyst Reed Blakemore.
Left in the dust
“Perhaps the most pressing of these challenges is the global crash in lithium value,” ASPI warns. “Prices of lithium — Australia’s second largest commodity in committed capital expenditure through to 2030, surpassing even iron ore — collapsed in the last 12 months.”
Australian governments have leapt at the prospect of becoming the Western world’s quarry in response to growing concerns over China’s reliability.
Last year, Canberra committed an additional $2 billion in subsidies for miners – and processors – of critical minerals to set up shop here.
The stated goal was to reduce reliance on China and support US attempts to revive its own neglected processing facilities.
But the unfolding metals market price collapse is casting a long shadow over the economic viability of this strategy – without further heavy subsidisation by Western governments.
“Judging from the supply side, Australia enjoys a powerful position in lithium,” adds Dr Zhang. “On the demand side, however, because power is concentrated in a single large buyer – China – this is a vulnerability for Australia.”
That vulnerability is being seen in regional Australia.
The Finniss lithium mine in the Northern Territory suspended operations in January. Other closures are expected to follow.
BHP has written off its Nickel West division in WA as worthless. It’s preparing to suspend operations.
Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest is also shutting down all his WA nickel mines.
Meanwhile, Australian lithium producers and steel refineries are also reviewing their economic viability.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Evelyn Rae, a conservative Australian political commentator
Margo Robbie -- a beautiful australian
My son Joe at ANU
One of the happiest pictures ever -- Cleo Smith, aged 4
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