Category Archives: Podcast

Catching up on my week and ‘Are you backing up?’

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Other than strata inspections during the day, I have been reworking my essay ‘Discovering English’. A discursive ramble through what I know about my only language, and how I, and others, communicate in English. I will post this in sections as I am satisfied with the text.

Today’s podcast

Yarnbombing: when Granny gets punk

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2011/3296728.htm

 Have you wandered about town and been surprised by a piece of knitting adorning a lampost or a tree or a car? If so, you have stumbled upon a growing phenomenon known as yarnbombing. It’s a kind of knitted graffiti, where the grandmotherly art of knitting has been given a punk edge.

I have been passing this interesting piece every day – it has been there since Christmas and now realize it’s street art. More photos on Artworks and the podcast is well worth a listen (the Vatican was yarnbombed!).

Backing up and restoring

I have always been an advocate of regular backups of my various computers. When I ran the computing facilities at CQU Sydney, we backed up to tape every night and were competent at restoring files. At Unilodge with an array of servers, this discipline continued and despite some awful disk crashes, we never lost any critical data.

When I dropped out of these activities and had a couple of Macs to tinker with, I continued backing up using Carbon Copy and again, never really lost a file. With OS 10.6.x came Time Machine, which backed up every hour to a dedicated desktop hard drive. Very cool! However, when my MacBook Pro fainted and I needed to move files to my MacMini, “Sorry, this is a different machine. No can restore!”. I finally got the MacBook back up and immediately returned to Carbon Copy and backed up the hard drive. Nothing like a failed restore to shake one up.

Planning ahead of the replacement with a 27 inch iMac and a 13 inch MacBook Pro, I bought a 3Tb Seagate GoFlex desk drive which worked twice then bombed. Seagate support was, despite the stress of having stored irreplaceable images on the drive, laughable. Their recommended dagnostic was Seatools – Windows ‘Yes, DOS ‘Yes’, Mac ‘NO’ even though the drive was Mac specific. DOS? – where have these people been? They basically refused to help other than replacing the drive without my data. I eventually got it working (dud power supply), and duplicated the critical data on to a LaCie desktop drive.

The current config is Carbon Copy backing up to the Seagate at 04:30 and the LaCie at 05:30 every day. The automatic backup occasionally fails so I check the logs regularly. I synchronise the Imac and the Macbook regularly so the Macbook files are safe.

The point of this note is to strongly recommend testing your backup (if you are doing one) with a restore. I note that one of my highly respected technical Facebook friends (they shall remain unnamed) lost their hard drive and publicly grieved. It can happen at anytime – an analysis by Google of their many thousands of hard drives found that 10 per cent failed in the first 12 months. I also note that Apple had a recall of MacBook Pro machines with failing Seagate drives – it can happen to anyone.

Saturday

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White bells

Internet Censorship in China and Australia

With Secretary of State Clinton’s speech on Thursday (USA time) added to the Google challenge of China’s net filtering, I wanted to look at the overall situation and then what we experience here in Australia. I was surprised to discover considerable local political censoring. The videocast from the New America Foundation offers an initial overview of the current situation.

My notes from “Authority, Meet Technology: Will China’s Great Firewall Hold?” http://www.newamerica.net/events/2010/authority_meet_technology

Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation, Office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

  • 31 per cent of world lives under internet censorship.
  • Do we want to live in a world where knowledge is based on the whim of censors?
  • Thomas Jefferson said the only foundation for legitimate government is the will of its people and to protect its free expression should be its first order.
  • There are now honour killings of women in the Middle East when they use social media

Rebecca MacKinnon, Fellow – Open Society Institute, Co-Founder – Global Voices Online

  • The internal filtering in China is only one aspect of censoring. Domestic ISPs are held responsible for their content and if not performing will lose their licence. Censorship is outsourced to the private sector.
  • Circumvention technology can only be used to access external websites.
  • ISP providers are awarded self-discipline awards if they follow the internal policy.
  • Censorship is spreading worldwide. It is not just a China problem. Google is concerned about the loss of free and open internet.
  • Governments such as France, Italy and Australia are considering ‘filtering’.
  • A Google executive who criticized Italy’s policy is now charged with a criminal offence.
  • Google.cn has acquiesced to government control and this is now being cited by other countries wanting filtering.
  • However, Google.com has always been available within China.
  • In the long term, China’s ability to innovate and prosper is suffering from censorship and control.
  • The central government is flummoxed by Google’s public stand. There are internal debates within the patchwork of ministries.
  • The internet has forced us to consider governance and cross-border allegiances.

Evgeny Morozov, Contributing Editor – Foreign Policy Magazine, Yahoo! Fellow, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy – Georgetown University

  • The Chinese government is not a reliable business partner.
  • Cyber attacks will continue if Google.cn shuts down because dissidents have useful information in their email accounts.
  • Russia is the major source of attacks followed by Brazil.
  • Software piracy is being used by governments to crack down on NGOs. If they don’t have licensed Windows, they get shut down.
  • Russia censors the internet less than Australia. Egypt has no censorship but activists are threatened with violence.
  • Activists are endangering themselves by having a web presence in many countries.

Tim Wu, Schwartz Fellow – New America Foundation, Professor of Law – Columbia  Law School, Contributing Writer, Slate

  • In China, the media is a regulated industry.
  • Establishing Google.cn was worth trying and over the 5 years, there has been controversy within Google.
  • Filtering can be considered a trade barrier. The WTO will now challenge China over filtering because internal providers are being favoured.
  • The world is moving towards a set of national internets away from the previous global network.

Comments from the floor

  • No training for analysis and students are unable mentally to access the information. Education is China’s greatest weakness because of the lack of freedom.
  • There is a lack of interest in alternative points of view – it is anti-Chinese.  But in the USA there are people who only believe Fox News.
  • Most Chinese citizens welcome filtering

Several paragraphs from Google’s Australian blog.

“Our views on Mandatory ISP Filtering”, Official Google Australia Blog, News and notes from Google Down Under, 16 December 2009, http://google-au.blogspot.com/2009/12/our-views-on-mandatory-isp-filtering.html

At Google we are concerned by the Government’s plans to introduce a mandatory filtering regime for Internet Service Providers (ISP) in Australia, the first of its kind amongst western democracies. Our primary concern is that the scope of content to be filtered is too wide. We have a bias in favour of people’s right to free expression. While we recognise that protecting the free exchange of ideas and information cannot be without some limits, we believe that more information generally means more choice, more freedom and ultimately more power for the individual.

Some limits, like child pornography, are obvious. No Australian wants that to be available – and we agree. Google, like many other Internet companies, has a global, all-product ban against child sexual abuse material and we filter out this content from our search results. But moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information.

Worth reading the rest. So it was with surprise that I found censoring of the internet is flourishing here.

“Internet censorship in Australia”, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

In 2008, the Australian Labor Party introduced a policy of mandatory Internet filtering for all Australians. While the policy has not yet come into force, it has generated substantial opposition, with only a few groups in support. The Labor Party does not have enough votes in the Senate to enact any legislation to support the filter, so that the filter has “effectively been scuttled” unless the government is able to implement the filter by other means.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) maintains a blacklist, since leaked, of websites which would form the basis for the mandatory filter. It has issued a take-down notice and threatened fines of $11,000 per day to at least one website hosted in Australia which contained a link to material on this blacklist.

On Tuesday 15 December 2009, it was announced that new legislation, entitled “Measures to improve safety of the internet for families”, would be introduced to support mandatory Internet filtering.

Enforcement

In 2002, New South Wales Police Minister Michael Costa attempted, without success, to shut down three protest websites by appealing to the then-communications minister Richard Alston, The Green Left Weekly stated these were Melbourne Indymedia and S11 websites, and that the Australian Broadcasting Authority cleared them of breaching government regulations on 30 October 2002.

Also in 2002, and under the terms of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the Federal Court ordered Dr Fredrick Töben to remove material from his Australian website which denied aspects of The Holocaust and vilified Jews.

In 2006, Richard Neville published a “spoof” website that had a fictional transcript of John Howard apologising to Aboriginal Australians. The website was forcibly taken offline by the government with no recourse.

In March 2009, after a user posted a link to a site on ACMA’s blacklist on the Whirlpool forum, Whirlpool’s service provider, Bulletproof Networks, was threatened with fines of $11,000 per day if the offending link was not removed. The same link in an article on EFA’s website was removed in May 2009 after ACMA issued a “link-deletion notice”, and the EFA took the precautionary step of also removing indirect links to the material in question.

After the Australian government announced plans to mandate Internet filtering in Australia in December 2009, an anti-censorship website hosted on stephenconroy.com.au … was taken offline by auDA after only 24 hours of being published online

Topics targeted for censorship

Euthanasia: On 22 May 2009 it was disclosed in the press, citing wikileaks.org, that the Australian Government had added Dr Philip Nitschke’s online Peaceful Pill Handbook (hosted at www.yudu.com), which deals with the topic of voluntary euthanasia, to the blacklist maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority used to filter internet access to citizens of Australia.

Video Games: In June 2009, it was confirmed that the Government’s proposed internet censorship regime would block downloadable games, flash-based web games and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard, such as Ebay and Amazon.

Racism: In January 2010, the Encyclopedia Dramatica article “Aboriginal” was removed from the search engine results of Google Australia, following a complaint that its content was racist. George Newhouse, the lawyer for the complainant, claims the site is “illegal” and should be blocked by the mandatory internet filter. A search on terms related to the article will produce a message that one of the results has been removed after a legal request relating to Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

GetUp! … launched a campaign in Australia to raise awareness of the Australian Government’s flawed plans to introduce internet censorship. The campaign impersonated the Australian Federal Government by presenting internet censorship as a mock consumer product branded as Censordyne, a parody of the toothpaste brand, Sensodyne.

GetUp! raised over $45,000 in donations from the general public during July 2009 to see the Censordyne commercial on TV and on Qantas flights during the month of August 2009, where all Australian politicians would be travelling to Canberra. Following the Censordyne campaign launch, Qantas chose to censor the anti-censorship campaign from their flights. It was later revealed that David Epstein, the Qantas executive who stopped the Censordyne campaign from running on Qantas flights was the former chief of staff for the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

So, internet censorship here is targeting political issues rather than the stated ‘protect children from porn’. I will look further into this issue especially as internet censoring may become a trade barrier issue..

Today’s Podcast

Cathleen Schine, “Growing Up Female”, When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins, Little, Brown.

Cathleen Schine

In When Everything Changed, Gail Collins picks up the saga of women and their role in the culture, economy, and political life of the United States where she left off in America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines (2003). That exhilarating earlier volume began with the Mayflower and ended in the Seventies. Lively, always entertaining, and frequently enlightening, When Everything Changed is a worthy sequel. Its subtitle is “The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present,” and amazing it is. In half a century, Collins shows us, everything really has changed. And yet…

http://media.nybooks.com/012110_schine.mp3

Friday

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Not as spectacular as the 5 October 2009 photo but quite stately (at our back door)

Public Transport

The Lane Cove Tunnel is now under administration – traffic forecasts were optimistic. Corruption is apparently still rife at the State Rail Authority. The head of Sydney Ferries has apparently run up huge personal charges on his business credit card. The Metro is on-again off-again. There is very little positive news on our public transport and public-private infrastructure.

When I worked in the City, I used CityRail to get to Circular Quay, Town Hall or Central and at times it would test my patience but overall I usually got to work and back home. Since September 2009, I have been using a combination of rail, bus and ferry to get about and I am impressed. The key to successful arrival is the two internet sites, CityRail (http://www.cityrail.info/timetables/#landingPoint) and Sydney Buses (http://www.sydneybuses.info/timetables.htm) that are linked.

Example 1: To be at Dover Heights by 09:30 during the pre-Christmas period. I estimated driving would take a minimum of 90 minutes due to the bottlenecks that form trying to get across Southern Cross Drive. I caught the train to Redfern, train to Bondi Junction and then bus to my destination – total time, 55 minutes which made me early so had time to look at the Pacific Ocean. And the bus driver let me know when I was at my destination.

Example 2: To be at Harbord by 11:00. The website recommended two choices, train to Chatswood and then bus, or train to Circular Quay then ferry and bus. I choose the ferry option and:

  1. I was surprised at the number of bicycles wheeled off the Manly Ferry at the Quay;
  2. I was surprised at the number of bike racks on the ferry;
  3. I was very surprised by the several hundred bikes locked into the racks at the Manly ferry terminal; and,
  4. I thoroughly enjoyed the stretch-out comfort and the work-tables so I could finish my report.

The bus arrived on time and again; the driver dropped me off at the right stop.

Example 3: Last week I had to go to Liverpool and normally it’s a reasonably quick train ride but the rail was closed from Fairfield to Campbelltown for upgrading so bus connections were from Fairfield. With some apprehension I chose public transport rather than driving and was impressed by the bus service. It was regular, well organized and efficient. No hassles with tickets and plenty of busses. The additional time was of no consequence as I was able to enjoy the amazing multi-ethnic range of travelers at Liverpool. And I arrived at my appointment on time.

Example 4: Yesterday at Newtown, the driver waited for me to run up the street to return to Xanadu. I really appreciated his courtesy especially as the bus was air-conditioned.

I have these positive experiences every day and thoroughly enjoy the mix of train, bus and ferry. And because of the efficiency of Sydney’s public transport I can see letting go the second car is becoming more painless.

However, regarding busses, I am not struggling with a pusher and a child on foot, I am still agile enough to handle the multi-step entry on some of the older busses, and I am not attempting to get on with a full shopping trolley. For a number of people, bus travel can be difficult but more of the new busses are designed to cope with these needs.

Today’s Podcasts

“Authority, Meet Technology: A Slate/New America Foundation discussion about China, Google, and Internet freedom”, Slate, 21 January 2010, http://www.newamerica.net/events/2010/authority_meet_technology

Western media companies have long been faced with ethical challenges in order to access the vast Chinese market. But after accepting Beijing’s censorship and a series of attacks on its network, Google announced last week that it has had enough, and it is threatening to pull out of China.  China aspires to be considered a trustworthy global economic leader, but plenty of companies doing business in that country share Google’s frustration at having to abide by different rules in the Middle Kingdom.

How will the China Internet skirmish shake out? What lessons or cautionary tales does China’s experience offer repressive governments and their tech-savvy opponents in places like Iran and Cuba? What, if anything, should the Obama administration do to keep the Web free, worldwide? On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to outline the administration’s plans in a major address on Internet freedom.

What startled me was the mention of Australian censorship in the forthcoming legislation. I will check this out further tomorrow.

Thursday

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Defintely a geranium with those ordered petals.

A Day In The Life Of…

Some light journalizing after the Climate Change review.

04:00   Arose and had an espresso. Cleaned up last night’s dinner residue and the kitchen.

04:30   Walked dogs. Incredibly quiet this morning with crickets and a sprinkler at Wilkins Public School the only noise (and the occasional vehicle). I haven’t heard a sprinkler for months so wondered what they were watering there at 4:30am. Wilkins hosts a Community Garden and I hope is drawing its water from a bore.

05:30   Wasted 30 minutes reading The Australian and the SMH. The cup of tea was enjoyable though.

06:00   Emptied the compost bucket. Not sure what I will do with the amount of compost we are now manufacturing. Normally, I spread it about the garden early spring and in the past only just enough but now we seem to have about 25 per cent more.

06:30   Cut more branches off the collapsed peach tree overhanging the street. It is rotten and a major branch broke on Tuesday. Over the next few days will gradually cut it down.

07:30   Filleted a chicken for tonight’s Thai Green Chicken Curry and then made chicken stock. An efficient way to empty the fridge of marginal vegetables. Madeleine (the cat) gets the chicken’s wings, we get the stock and the dogs love the residue.

08:00   Caught up with email, Facebook and edited the Cook-book Glossary. I just have to keep working on getting rid of the many inconsistencies.

10:15   Left by bus for Newtown to do a strata inspection for O’Connors Property Reports (http://www.opr.com.au/).

14:00   Back to Xanadu to finish the report

14:30   Off in the CO2 belching Range Rover for vegetables and wine. Learned that brown onions are best stored in direct sunlight – it keeps them dry.

15:30   Lunch of curried vegetables and followed by a nap. Discovered that Beryl will be out until late so postponed the chicken curry until tomorrow night.

16:30   Check for OPR job tomorrow, get Google map of strata manager’s office, get bus timetable, catch up on Facebook, email, news and weather.

18:00   Waiting for outside temperature to drop – currently 33C – and writing this. Will then catch up on a few podcasts – one from Slate, “Authority, Meet Technology: A Slate/New America Foundation discussion about China, Google, and Internet freedom” – sounds interesting.

A normal day.

Today’s Podcast

“Games for Good”, FutureTense, 21 January, 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2010/2720213.htm

‘Serious Games’ or ‘Games for Good’ have a greater purpose than just entertainment — they’re being used to help us understand and solve current problems as well as to identify future threats.

Tuesday

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At the front gate -- Geranium or Pelargonium?

Geranium or Pelargonium?

Local gardeners, when talking about “Geraniums”, are almost certainly referring to members of the genus Pelargonium. Long ago they were included in Geranium, but today the pelargoniums have their own genus. One of the distinguishing features is that all the petals of the Geranium flower are similar and are arranged evenly around the centre. On the other hand, the individual Pelargonium flower has an uneven distribution of petals, although this may be a little difficult to observe in some garden cutivars. http://www.calyx.com.au/pelargonium.html

Climate Change – Responses and Action

New South Wales responses are being coordinated by the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water. In summary:

DECC’s wide range of climate change programs include:

  • strategies to reduce emissions, encourage efficient use of water and promote adaptation to climate change impacts
  • research to better understand the effects of climate change on biodiversity and conservation planning
  • development of a resilient system of protected areas to help minimise the effects of climate change on the environment
  • the Sustainability Advantage Program, which assists business to improve environmental performance.

The broader whole-of-government approach to reducing the impacts of climate change is outlined in the NSW Greenhouse Plan, the NSW State Plan and the Climate Change Action Plan, which is currently under development. Key initiatives include:

  • progressing a national emissions trading and a mandatory renewable energy through the Council of Australian Governments (COAG)
  • providing financial support to households, schools, business and industry for water, energy and emission savings through the Climate Change Fund and establishing the NSW Energy Savings Scheme
  • ensuring homes and units are designed to use less potable water and create fewer greenhouse gas emissions by setting energy and water reduction targets through the Building Sustainability online planning tool
  • reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production and use of electricity through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme and establishing new energy efficiency targets under the scheme
  • implementing the $150-million NSW Energy Efficiency Strategy.

Find out more on the following topics on DECC’s climate change website

  • An introduction to climate change, its causes and evidence
  • Information on how climate change will impact NSW
  • Reports and publications on climate change
  • Local, national and international action to combat climate change

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/climatechange/index.htm

Moving from the ‘govspeak’ above is a series of 30 case-studies on greenhouse reduction action featured on the Local Government and Shires website, http://www.lgsa-plus.net.au/www/html/1917-nsw-regions.asp?intSiteID=2

These are encouragingly proactive; curbing emissions and waste and saving money.

In 2008, The Nature Conservation Council of NSW coordinated a series of training workshops for LGA council staff and residents to:

…deliver local forums in urban, rural, coastal and inland locations across NSW. The input of forum participants has informed local council about the views of a diverse mix of the community who have worked together with local experts and facilitators and considered the issue of climate change in detail.

http://nccnsw.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2488&Itemid=1133#How%20will%20workshop%20participants%20be%20recruited%20and%20selected

Coming home to Marrickville Council, their ‘Environment’ page at http://www.marrickville.nsw.gov.au/environment/climatechange.htm concentrates on energy (electricity) and oil reduction. This is not a thorough coverage for at the community and individual level, the Council:

  • Has free trees for households suitable for this Cooks River catchment,
  • Has free garden mulch
  • Supports community gardens
  • Operates the “Sustainable Water Planning with Local People” program that aims at reducing imported water and water leaving the catchment. Together with Sydney City, operates the shop front ‘Watershed’ in Newtown for advice on water conservation.
  • In the ‘Business Program’, provides useful advice on reducing energy and waste.
  • And in the “Sustainability in Your Home” page, provides much information on rebates and reducing our environmental footprint (http://www.marrickville.nsw.gov.au/MARRICKVILLE/INTERNET/me.get?site.home&PAGE2237).

Local Government is making the practical advances in contrast with the embarrassing Commonwealth political squabbling and the Koala suited protestors blockading mines, chaining themselves to locomotives and climbing light poles. Since beginning this review on 16 January, I have learnt much and feel I need no longer bother with the media reporting on Climategate, Glaciergate, the IPCC, COP15, anthropogenic global warming, climate skeptics, et al;  CO2 emission reduction, waste reduction, water harvesting and energy reduction is occurring.

Today’s Podcast

“A dinner date with the olympics (2010 version)”, Deconstructing Dinner, 14 January 2010, http://www.cjly.net/deconstructingdinner/011410.htm

On February 23, 2006, Deconstructing Dinner aired a one-hour feature titled “A Dinner Date With the Olympics”. The episode was produced alongside the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin. The show focused its attention on two of the Games major sponsors (Coca-Cola and McDonald’s). When we think of the Olympic Games, the athletes, the events, we think of human beings at the peak of performance, in optimal physical and psychological states. Sports do after all evoke images of health and well-being. So when two of the Games major sponsors are Coca-Cola and McDonald’s (perhaps the two most targeted food companies in the world for their unhealthy food and their environmental, social and animal welfare practices), it sparked that 2006 episode which deconstructed this seeming hypocrisy. On this 2010 Version of that original broadcast, we revisit with the episode and add some much-needed 2010 updates.

Saturday

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Trephina Gorge, Central Australia

Climate Change – First Principles

After reading many badly written media reports I am going back to first principles of Climate Change. This began with Andrew Campbell, 2008. Managing Australian Landscapes in a Changing Climate: A climate change primer for regional Natural Resource Management bodies. Report to the Department of Climate Change, Canberra, Australia (downloadable from the author’s website, http://www.triplehelix.com.au/). Campbell is a firm believer in the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ driven by CO2 emissions and whether one is a skeptic, or agrees with the CO2 effect, he offers practical suggestions for mitigating climate change.

But first, some definitions.

“Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and numerous other meteorological elements in a given region over long periods of time.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate

Climate change is the variation in global or regional climates over time. It reflects changes in the variability or average state of the atmosphere over time scales ranging from decades to millions of years. These changes can be caused by processes internal to the Earth, external forces (e.g. variations in sunlight intensity) or, more recently, human activities. In recent usage, especially in the context of environmental policy, the term “climate change” often refers only to changes in modern climate, including the rise in average surface temperature known as global warming. In some cases, the term is also used with a presumption of human causation, as in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Climate models use quantitative methods to simulate the interactions of the atmosphere, oceans, land surface and ice. They are used for a variety of purposes from study of the dynamics of the weather and climate system to projections of future climate. The most talked-about models of recent years have been those used to infer the consequences of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, primarily carbon dioxide (see greenhouse gas). These models predict an upward trend in the global mean surface temperature, with the most rapid increase in temperature being projected for the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate#Climate_change

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-twentieth century and its projected continuation. Global surface temperature increased 0.74 ± 0.18 °C (1.33 ± 0.32 °F) between the start and the end of the 20th century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

The trend shown below from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology confirms that we are experiencing increasing temperatures. Additional data and definitions are on http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/.

However, when checking out the ‘Annual Mean Temperature Anomaly’, I found slightly different information where the trend line is not so ominous.

See http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/amtemp.shtml

What is the cause?

External forcing of climate refers to processes external to the climate system (though not necessarily external to Earth) that influence climate. Climate responds to several types of external forcing, such as radiative forcing due to changes in atmospheric composition (mainly greenhouse gas concentrations), changes in solar luminosity, volcanic eruptions, and variations in Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Attribution of recent climate change focuses on the first three types of forcing. Orbital cycles vary slowly over tens of thousands of years and thus are too gradual to have caused the temperature changes observed in the past century.

The greenhouse effect is a natural warming process of the earth. When the sun’s energy reaches the earth some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed. The absorbed energy warms the earth’s surface which then emits heat energy back toward space as longwave radiation. This outgoing longwave radiation is partially trapped by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour which then radiate the energy in all directions, warming the earth’s surface and atmosphere. Without these greenhouse gases the earth’s average surface temperature would be about 35 ° Celsius cooler.

Australian BOM

Human activities such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels have increased the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/climch/clichgr1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

In summary, the surface temperature of Australia is rising and greenhouse gasses are increasing. The greenhouse proponents sress that the two are linked. I now need to review why the sceptics dismiss the CO2 connection.

Today’s Podcast

There is a small controversy over school gardens in the USA. Caitlin Flanagan, “Cultivating Failure”, The Atlantic, Jan-Feb 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201001/school-yard-garden has provoked comment with her thesis that school gardens are teaching students work skills that their migrant parents in California want to leave behind. School should be for better test scores and graduating on to college and a less labour intensive working life.

“The Edible Acre Project”, Agroinnovations, 11 January 2010, http://agroinnovations.com/index.php/en_us/multimedia/blogs/podcast/ is an interesting example of how school gardens have been woven into the curriculum rather than simply picking lettuce.

In this episode we continue with the theme of school gardens and farms. I am joined by Debbie Hillman of the Edible Acre Project, a project in a suburb just outside of Chicago Illinois. Debbie discusses the origins and implementation of the project, the role of a the farm/garden in education, and practical strategies for those looking to develop similar projects in their communities.

Friday

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On my way to Randwick this morning.

Climate Change

The Opposition Leader has delivered his first policy on Climate Change. The full text is, surprisingly, unavailable on the web as yet, so any comment will have to wait. Reaction has, however, been swift with derision from Labor governments and this ‘Analysis’ in SMH. Cubby successfully hides any analysis with the the overused cliché. My comments are in italics.

Ben Cubby, “Combative Abbott turns green message on its head”, SMH, 15 January 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/combative-abbott-turns-green-message-on-its-head-20100114-ma8b.html

TONY ABBOTT’S plan to mobilise a ”green army” and seek battle with the Federal Government over climate change has the ring of a death-or-glory mission: brave, bold and with a minimal chance of success. Abbott knows if he loses he may well be among the casualties.
In what I have read on-line and on paper, missed any hint of ‘battle’, ‘ring of a death-or-glory mission’ and ‘Abbott knows…among the casualties’ .Analysis or hyperbole?

But some clever tactics are evident in the speech he gave at the Sydney Institute last night. It is a pitch to what he perceives as a sensible, middle-ground environmentalism that is more concerned with preserving parks and planting suburban nature strips than transforming the economy to run on renewable energy.
The ‘pitch’ as I read it in Abbott’s summary (SMH, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/protecting-the-planet-needs-to-begin-in-our-backyard-20100114-ma09.html) is about mobilizing Australians to re-green the country which does include ‘suburban nature strips’ and to get the rivers flowing.

It relegates climate change and environmental politics to a second-order issue, a view many people familiar with the four terms of the Howard government will be comfortable with. Abbott is betting his credentials on the theory that most people don’t think climate change requires serious action.
I detect a different thread; I doubt Cubby’s view that, “…most people don’t think climate change requires serious action. My colleagues and acquaintances are deeply concerned, a group includes a broad selection of Australians. Many of them are actively cutting their carbon footprint (at some expense).

Yet the world’s most relevant science academies and its best researchers are convinced climate change is a vast and urgent problem.
Clearly Cubby is a prisoner of his ideology to be repeating this discredited dogma – the debate became overheated recently as doubt regarding the analyses and data collection increased.

The Coalition is now way out on a limb, sharing the trembling branch with some US Republicans, Canadian Conservatives and Saudi Arabian princes. And Abbott’s speech would have received the stamp of approval of Coalition climate sceptics.
Analysis? One definition is, ‘the separating of any material or abstract entity into its constituent elements. These two sentences represent the SMH’s intellect; little wonder I increasingly glance only at the headlines.

He acknowledges that ”many scientists think” that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a good idea, but does not follow through the logic that this admission entails. Human-induced climate change is a binary issue: it’s either happening or it’s not. If it’s not, why bother reducing emissions at all? If it is, there’s little point in half-serious solutions. Abbott’s new take on environment is an attempt to straddle this divide, simultaneously dog-whistling to climate sceptics while foreshadowing ”direct action” to reduce emissions. There is no mention of tackling the source of emissions and no hint that the appeasement of heavy-polluting industry will end.
‘Dog-whistling’ – “Dog-whistle politics… is a term for a type of political campaigning or speechmaking which employs coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics). I must be outside the ‘targeted subgroup’

His speech perpetuates the fiction that Australia is in danger of leading the world in climate change action. In fact, Europe has a well-established emissions trading scheme that has little or no impact on jobs and wealth.
I understand that the Cap and Trade policy in place in the UK has driven up electricity prices and power utilities profits and is heavily resented.

But Abbott is on safer ground with his criticism of the Federal Government’s lack of effective action on climate change. The speech is an attempt to present Abbott as a plain speaker, and an antidote to the ”rhetorical overkill” of Kevin Rudd. The public can expect to hear more about Abbott’s practical, hands-on, tree-planting persona in coming weeks.

This ‘analysis’ is a collection smart-arse clichés, hyperbole and inaccuracies. Despite my instincts, I detect a whiff of leadership from the Right, which is refreshing after the hysterical diatribe recently issued in the names of Wong and Garrett.

Today’s Podcasts

“The end of fish”, RearVision, 13 January 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/stories/2010/2767858.htm

We seem to have eaten all the fish in the sea. We caught them because we could; we had the means to do it, with technology that made it physically possible and economically viable.  First broadcast 22nd July 2009. Rear Vision explores the role played by technology in the disappearance of wild fish and looks at some of the reasons why attempts to control it have had limited success.

I bought three Sea Mullet last week, the first fish we have bought for months, principally due to ‘the end of fish’. And they were delicious. On attempting to find out the sustainability of this very cheap fish I discovered http://www.nicechoice.org.au/ which lists Sea Mullet. A useful resource which I understand is no longer maintained due to lack of funds.

Thursday

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King Street, Sydney

Climate Change – The Debate Rolls On

From today’s The Australian, a request for leadership in place of rhetoric and point scoring. Selectively quoted with added comment.

Richard Denniss, “Rudd should never have tied carbon cuts to Copenhagen”, The Australian, 7 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/rudd-should-never-have-tied-carbon-cuts-to-copenhagen/story-e6frg6zo-1225816748842

In 2007, the then opposition leader declared: “Mr Howard has a responsibility to act . . . on climate change. This is a challenge which goes beyond national boundaries . . . If we are to get countries like China and India to accept global targets themselves then developed countries must act . . . Australia must show leadership.” (My emphasis).

It’s unlikely we’ll ever know what the Prime Minister was thinking, but he was right then and is wrong now. Without the leadership Rudd once advocated, there is little chance of achieving a meaningful international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Diplomacy aside, it’s in Australia’s interests to cut emissions as quickly as possible. … So where should Australia start? Surely it makes sense to stop paying the polluters before we implement a polluter pays scheme.

The second thing the government needs to do is to start shutting down Australia’s brown coal-fired power stations, which are among the most polluting in the world. …What we should do is increase the size of the renewable energy target and start building gas-fired power stations on the sites of the existing brown-coal power stations. This is simplistic; shutting down brown coal fired power and replacing with gas fired will take years and cause regional economic disruption hence will be politically unachievable.

Third, we should start taking energy efficiency seriously, in homes and commercial buildings. Ever wondered why there aren’t any doors on supermarket fridges and why it is so cold in the store? Coles and Woolworths know the answer; people buy more food when they are cold and when they don’t have to open doors. Given that Australians threw out $5 billion worth of food last year, perhaps redesigning retail spaces to reduce Australia’s energy use wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Frozen food and a number of other cabinets we observe do have doors; chilled food such as meat and dairy is in open cabinets. As an ex-Woolworths logistics person it is easier to restock open cabinets. And I have yet to see the research linking ‘cold to more purchasing and $5 billion in waste food.

Australia’s homes are the largest in the world. Every year, we build tens of thousands of homes with black-tile roofs, vast amounts of glass facing the afternoon sun and no shade trees. Who needs shade when you can air-condition? Does anybody really believe we are doing everything we can to tackle what the Prime Minister once called the moral challenge of climate change? An overblown paragraph; why weaken a sound argument with hyperbole?

Finally, we need to tackle the politically difficult task of introducing a carbon price. … No serious economist disputes the need to introduce a carbon price but there is much division about the how, what, when and where, and that is just among the economists. So, rather than argue about where we should end up in 2020, why not focus on where we should start? Denniss provides his own answer, no one can agree.

The CPRS legislation proposes that we begin with a fixed pollution permit price of $10 a tonne…. The advantage of a $10 starting price is it would raise revenue to invest in efficient technologies and send a signal to new investors that the old days are over, while not being so high that it would have a significant effect on our so called emission-intensive trade-exposed industries.

In the past year, the government has consistently linked the need to pass the CPRS with the need to get a binding agreement at Copenhagen. Rather than focusing on the real dangers of climate change and the benefits of early action, the government chose to suggest the fate of the world’s climate negotiations was in the hands of the Coalition. Now it is blaming the Coalition for blocking the domestic legislation and the Chinese for not negotiating in good faith in Copenhagen. When will it be time for the government to take some responsibility? Rudd was right before the last election. It is in Australia’s interests to reduce emissions quickly. Now is the time to stop hiding trivial domestic politics behind bad policy and get on with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Denniss has quite a pedigree hence my disappointment in his shift from analytical thinking to journalistic hyperbole. However, at last, it is a call for leadership. Check Denniss out on https://www.tai.org.au/

Today’s Podcast

“Mona Lisa: the history of the world’s most famous painting”, Artworks, 3 January 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/artworks/stories/2010/2712810.htm

Today the story of the rise and rise of the Mona Lisa to world fame. The London-based historian Donald Sassoon is taking us through this five-hundred-year-long story. How did the portrait of the plain wife of a small-time nobleman rise to such celebrity and fame?

Wednesday

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Tianjara Falls, Moreton National Park

Climate Change – New Data, Same Arguments

In today’s SMH and The Australian are several articles written around the release of the “Annual Australian Climate Statement 2009” by the Bureau of Meteorology, http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/climate/change/20100105.shtml

Issued 5th January 2010, 2009 will be remembered for extreme bushfires, dust-storms, lingering rainfall deficiencies, areas of flooding and record-breaking heatwaves. Second warmest year for Australia

This has been interpreted by our Federal Government as clear evidence that CO2 is causing the temperature rise. The Opposition is advocating change-action to halt the CO2 instead of a tax on emissions.

Rosie Lewis And Ben Cubby, “Heatwave shows need for carbon deal: Garrett”, SMH, 6 January 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/environment/heatwave-shows-need-for-carbon-deal-garrett-20100105-lses.html

THE Federal Government has said climate data showing last year was Australia’s second-hottest on record means the Senate should pass the emissions trading scheme next month. The Opposition said it was cynical to link the data to the emissions trading legislation, and said if emissions needed to be cut then ”direct action”, such as changing soil composition to absorb more carbon, would suffice.

But the Government claimed science was on its side. “It’s up to the Senate and Mr Abbott to recognise that climate change is real, to recognise that for Australians warming is happening,” the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, said yesterday. The report was consistent with the “unequivocal science view” that global warming was happening as a consequence of human activities, “and it’s in our economic and environmental interest to arrest it”, he said. “The Australian public expect decent climate change policy from the Leader of the Opposition. At the moment all they’re getting is mistakes and thought bubbles.”

And then there was this (quoted selectively):

Christopher Monckton, “Mr Rudd, your misguided warming policies are killing millions”, The Australian, 6 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/mr-rudd-your-misguided-warming-policies-are-killing-millions/story-e6frg6zo-1225816411782

You say “formal global and national economic modelling” shows “that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of acting”. Yet, every economic analysis except that of the now discredited Lord Stern, with its near-zero discount rate and its absurdly inflated warming rates, comes to the same ineluctable conclusion: adaptation to climate change, if necessary, is orders of magnitude more cost-effective than attempts at mitigation. In a long career in policy analysis in and out of government, I have never seen so cost-ineffective a proposed waste of taxpayers’ money to stop the tide from coming in.

You led a delegation of 114 people to Copenhagen to bring back a non-result. Half a dozen were all that was really necessary. If you and your officials are not willing to tighten your belts, why should the taxpayers tighten theirs?

Millions are already dying of starvation in the world’s poorest nations because world food prices have doubled in two years. That was caused by a sharp drop in world food production, caused by suddenly taking millions of acres of land out of growing food for people who need it, to grow biofuels for clunkers that don’t. … At a time when so many of the world’s people are already short of food, the UN’s right-to-food rapporteur, Herr Ziegler, has rightly condemned the biofuel scam as “a crime against humanity”.

Yet this slaughter is founded upon a lie: the claim by the IPCC that it is 90 per cent certain that most of the “global warming” since 1950 is man-made. This claim – based not on science but on a show of hands among political representatives, with China wanting a lower figure and other nations wanting a higher figure – is demonstrably false…. Nor is the IPCC’s great lie the only lie in the official documents of the IPCC and in the speeches of its current chairman, who has made himself a multi-millionaire as a “global warming” profiteer.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Monckton,_3rd_Viscount_Monckton_of_Brenchley for background. The florid writing added to the ‘millions starving because of bio-fuels’, plus this background, has me placing him out on the ‘wacky’ fringe.

And then there was this (again selectively quoted):

Natasha Robinson, “Sceptics use temperatures to cast doubt on carbon theory”, The Australian, 6 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/sceptics-use-temperatures-to-cast-doubt-on-carbon-theory/story-e6frg6nf-1225816385293

THE weather bureau’s latest climate statement has nothing to suggest that warmer temperatures are the result of increased carbon dioxide emissions, climate change sceptics say. And despite the new figures indicating that the past decade was the warmest since record-keeping began, the sceptics point to the fact that there has been relatively little upward shift in temperatures since the 1980s.

Meteorologist William Kininmonth, a former head of the Bureau of Meteorology’s National Climate Centre, said yesterday the globe was still coming out of the Little Ice Age. “The globe has been warming for the past 300 years and so it is not surprising that the recent decade is probably warmer than anything else we have experienced in the last century,” he said.

Engineer and climate modeller David Evans yesterday blamed an “urban heat island” effect on thermometers, as well as the location of many thermometers at airports, for the higher temperature data. He also claimed that the weather bureau’s unadjusted raw data showed a cooling trend of temperatures. “It’s pretty clear that global warming is not predominantly due to carbon dioxide,” Dr Evans said. But National Climate Centre climatologist Blair Trewin said yesterday that the latest data indicated that long-term warming was probably the result of increased carbon emissions.

“It’s pretty solid evidence that warming trends that we have seen over the last century globally are consistent with what we would expect given the change that has happened in the atmosphere,” Dr Trewin said. A lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, University of Melbourne meteorology professor David Karoly, said yesterday there was no doubt the increased temperatures recorded were the result of human factors. “It is clear that there will be ongoing warming globally and in Australia, and that that warming will accelerate due to increased emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” he said.

With the release of new data the two camps have reacted flamboyantly which leaves me wondering what politics Rudd and Abbot will play when parliament resumes? It would be useful to now see some climate-change opinion polls for a glimpse of what a sample of Australians think about this issue..

Today’s Podcasts

For someone influenced by Bach’s music, this adds much to my appreciation.“Bach, the Evangelist”, Encounter, 27 December 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2009/2783278.htm

Silver medallist at the New York Festivals, this Encounter finds Johann Sebastian in his upstairs apartment at St Thomas’ School, a ‘cantata factory.’ Seemingly oblivious to beasts in the town square, students in the corridors, and at least eight offspring at home, he produced the world’s greatest music.

And having spent much time in the arid north this inspired me to go back to some of those isolated jewels of red earth.

“The Composition of Souls”, Encounter, 3 January 2010, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/encounter/stories/2010/2750959.htm

Ludwig Leichhardt

In 1993 a group of men and women in the tiny township of Yowah in far Western Queensland told Encounter of their response to a vast and jewelled country of opals, red earth and heat. How did their response to land compare with the journals of explorer Ludwig Leichhardt who had travelled nearby and who is also represented in Patrick White’s Voss? This Encounter won a Silver Medal in the New York Radio Festivals for its reflections on European responses to remote Australia.

Tuesday

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Ginger in the front garden -- burst out on Sunday.

There are so many varieties of ‘Ginger’ that I can’t find any botanical details on this one.

Climate Change

Dan Harrison And Ben Cubby, “Hunger strike drives further wedge into Coalition”, SMH, 5 January 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/national/hunger-strike-drives-further-wedge-into-coalition-20100104-lq7j.html

This article is an indication of how the ‘Climate-Change Debate’ is widening. Preserving vegetation is a climate change issue but it is now setting the scene for our first Australian martyr. If he dies Rudd will lose considerable support and Joyce could be elevated to our rural Messiah (particularly in Queensland).

Mentioned in the article is, “A former ABC radio science presenter, Joanne Nova, also known as Joanne Codling…. She runs a Perth-based climate skeptics website.” I followed this up; it has a smattering of data but more interesting is the skeptics’ rhetoric in the comments to her blog, http://joannenova.com.au/

And then there is this, “An imperative read for a successful future.” Leonardo Dicaprio promoting  “Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science”, at http://www.desmogblog.com/skeptics-handbook-carbon-dioxide-climate-change which in critiquing Nova’s The Skeptics Handbook, left me wondering why I wasn’t able to read a succinct  ‘clearance of the “PR Pollution”’ instead of screens of  the usual attack English.

Note: Reading text on screens takes effort and interface designers have long recommended short text sequences interspersed with graphics. Nova has this skill; Jeremy Jacquot has missed this point. And I wonder about Leonardo Dicaprio’s climate change credentials.

Conclusion: Understandable data and clarity of analysis is still not forthcoming. Whoever draws this information together with unemotional language and understandable results will win much gratitude.

And here are some gobbledygook figures to further confuse the debate.

Kate Clark, “Old houses are environmentally-friendly”, SMH, 4 January 2010, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/old-houses-are-environmentallyfriendly-20100103-ln83.html

The Bureau of Statistics tells us that one in seven houses built in Australia simply replaces an existing house (which is only 14 per cent). … Think of all the energy that goes into those new buildings replacing the old. The building industry is a significant contributor to global resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, along with household energy use. Building construction consumes 32 per cent of the world’s resources, including 12 per cent of its water and 40 per cent of its energy. Buildings also produce 40 per cent of the waste that goes to landfill dumps and 40 per cent of air emissions. Household energy use contributes about 9.5 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse emissions.

Today’s Podcast

“The Romantic Movement and rock music”, The Philosopher’s Zone, 2 January 2010,  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/stories/2010/2759561.htm

Romantic ideas and philosophy live on in certain strains of modern rock music, according to this week’s guest, Craig Schuftan, author of Hey Nietzsche – Leave them kids alone. David Bowie, The Cure, The Smiths, Queen, and more contemporary bands like My Chemical Romance and Weezer share some seriously Romantic tendencies with people like Byron, Schopenhauer, Wagner and even Nietzsche – and it’s not just because they all viewed the world through the same gloomy prism.