Tag Archives: Climate Change

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.

Monday

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The environment for The Bleed – the film I have been involved in.

The environment for The Bleed – the film I have been involved in.

Notes from Xanadu

The filming continued yesterday – 10:00 to 17:00 with a break for lunch. It is hard work being an aged mute with a crook leg living alone, let alone for the others; my estranged son who had a lot of lines, and the team. All hand-held camera work with basic lighting and equipment, and again, I was surprised at their discipline – it wore me out.

A paradox was how they concentrated on making a very short, very good film, yet during the breaks at the motel and at the support house, they reveled in TV schlock. One was affronted when I told him the choreography in An American in Paris (which I watched at the motel) was repetitive and unrepresentative of the marvelous dance that developed in the USA. Frankly I thought the dancing in An American in Paris was crap, fluffed up with a lot of effects, myth and advertising. Gene Kelly is an impressive dancer let down by bad choreography. I am a Merce Cunningham, Alvin Alley, Martha Graham person so being taken back to this Hollywood rubbish was a shock; I had forgotten how bad it is.

I look forward to seeing the final production of The Bleed and would love this team to get a Tropfest award; they deserve one for discipline and creativity.

Climate Change

A summary of how the Climate Change data has been interpreted by some in the press. The trend is now ‘anti-climate change’ but with the same unsubstantiated ‘pro-climate change’ rhetoric we were subjected to pre-Climatgate and Copenhagen.

“Another bad year for predictions of global warming”, Cut & Paste, The Australian, 4 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/another-bad-year-for-predictions-of-global-warming/story-e6frg6zo-1225815745712

UK Met Office long-term forecast, September 25, 2009:
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.

Britain’s The Daily Telegraph on Saturday:
BRITAIN is bracing itself for one of the coldest winters for a century with temperatures hitting minus 16C, forecasters have warned. They predicted no let-up in the freezing snap until at least mid-January, with snow, ice and severe frosts dominating. And the likelihood is that the second half of the month will be even colder. Weather patterns were more like those in the late 1970s, experts said, while Met Office figures released on Monday are expected to show that the country is experiencing the coldest winter for up to 25 years.

Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times:
CALL me a cynic, but wasn’t it a bit premature of the climate change monkeys to have called 2009 the “fifth warmest year on record” back in November? We have now had the coldest December since Surrey was home to mastodons and pterodactyls and mammoths stalked the Lincolnshire Wolds….

Christopher Booker in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday:
What is not generally realised is that the UK Met Office has been, since 1990, at the very centre of the campaign to convince the world that it faces catastrophe through global warming. Its then director, Dr John Houghton, was the single most influential figure in setting up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the chief driver of climate alarmism. Its Hadley Centre for Climate Change, along with the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, was put in charge of the most prestigious of the four official global temperature records…. The “Climategate” documents from the CRU, along with further revelations from Russian scientists, have shown the CRU-Met Office alliance systematically manipulating temperature data to show the world growing warmer than the evidence justified. And those same computers used to predict temperatures 100 years ahead for the IPCC have also been used to produce those weather forecasts that prove so consistently wrong. …. It is a state of affairs so bizarre that it cries out for political intervention. Yet our politicians…are so in thrall to this new religion that they cannot see evidence staring them in the face. How many more winters and summers will it take before sanity finally breaks in to put an end to this scandal?

Conrad Black in this week’s The Spectator:
What possessed [Malcolm Turnbull] and [Kevin] Rudd to sign on to this climate change rubbish? Global warming is not occurring; carbon emissions have nothing to do with it when it does occur; man doesn’t produce climate change fluctuations, trivial as they have been in the last 50 years. And Australia is a cameo player and brings little to this party, which it should not have attended and [which] has effectively ended in shambles. Copenhagen proved to be an unmitigated fiasco of pompous charlatans purporting to reach an agreement all will thankfully ignore, while the Chinese and Indians graciously pointed out the absurdity and hypocrisy of the whole exercise. Baron Black of Crossharbour is in a Florida prison convicted of criminal fraud.

And then there is this where he has ‘found himself’, (selectively quoted and my emphasis):

John Cox, “Modern green romanticism is misanthropic”, The Australian, 4 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/modern-green-romanticism-is-misanthropic/story-e6frg6zo-1225815743545

…I find myself nearly always opposed to the viewpoints taken by the modern greens who seem to trace their roots back to the 19th-century romantic period, which was a reaction against the scientific rationalism of the 18th century. This romantic view of nature has lead to the pervasive influence of an ecocentric rather than an anthropocentric life view in today’s world and was manifest in the Traveston Dam decision to put the possible effects of this dam on a few species ahead of the interests of hundreds of thousands of human beings.

I consider that India and China have been morally correct in their decisions to put present economic growth and the elimination of poverty ahead of possible future environmental benefits.

In my transport field I find myself coming up against environmentalists who cannot see the economic and environmental benefits of putting more traffic on freeways that have 30 per cent less fuel and greenhouse emissions, 50 per cent less particulate emissions, 70 per cent fewer crash fatalities and 30 per cent lower economic vehicle operating costs than on stop-start arterial roads.

I also find myself up against public transport advocates who cannot admit that the motor car has given people the freedom to work, travel and live where they want. They cannot admit that the car is the most equitably distributed form of transport that Australia has seen and that it was a major instrument for the promotion of gender equity in the 20th century.

It is also not well known that cars are a more sustainable form of transport than public transport as the cost of a car trip, including externalities, is lower than a public transport trip including government subsidies.

I also find myself in the camp of the sceptics with respect to anthropogenic global warning.

Today’s Website

An updated Australian Style guide – I am initially uncomfortable with it but it is worth exploring.

“Correction!” , Lingua Franca, 2 January 2010

The ABC Radio National website has an online content style guide, to provide rulings on spelling, punctuation and language usage to those who publish material there, but also for the many listeners who take standards of language expression seriously. http://style.radionational.net.au/about-guide

New Year’s Day 2010

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Mount Connor (Atila) is a 700 million year old sand and rock mesa west of Uluru.

From the Kitchen Window

Currawong — Marr Playground

Climate Change

This article is a useful indicator of why the USA will not adopt Climate Change protocols in the near future. As usual, selectively quoted.

Tom Switzer, “Don’t expect too much down Mexico way”, The Australian, 1 January 2010, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/dont-expect-too-much-down-mexico-way/story-e6frg6zo-1225815087091

There are many reasons for the changing climate in Washington. Here are four of them:

First, both Congress and the White House remain pre-occupied with other policy priorities from overhauling the healthcare and immigration systems and increasing 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to implementing new Wall Street regulations and tackling double-digit unemployment and skyrocketing debt and deficit.

Second, polls and surveys Pew, Gallup, Zogby, Rasmussen show Americans are quickly losing faith in the science of man-made climate change. A Harris Poll found that those who believe that carbon dioxide leads to global warming have dropped from 71 per cent two years ago to only 51 per cent today. And this poll was conducted before Climategate erupted.

It may be the case that the thousands of leaked emails and documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit do not disprove the science of man-made global warming. But it is also true that the uproar over allegations that some IPCC scientists manipulated data, hid inconvenient evidence and tried to silence dissenting views has led to calls for government inquiries and congressional hearings into the scandal. After all, US tax dollars fund many climate scientists.

Third, world leaders are recognising that reaching a global consensus on climate change is even more difficult than reaching a global consensus on multilateral trade. China and India insist they won’t be part of what they see as an economic suicide pact. In Canada, a Kyoto signatory that has increased its emissions much faster than the US, the ETS bill is stalled in legislative limbo. In Australia, the conservative opposition parties just defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. In the EU, cap and trade has not only been the victim of fraudulent traders; emissions from the 27 member states have increased by nearly 2 per cent since the ETS was implemented in 2005.

Fourth, this year is an American election year. A huge new energy tax that threatens to cut wages and jobs unnerves politicians facing a mid-term vote. And not just Senate Republicans either. “Blue Dog” Democrats from the South as well as “Brown Dog” Democrats from the Midwest and Great Plains, whose states are dependent on coal and manufacturing, are uneasy about the administration’s energy policies.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says the US will help raise $US100 billion ($111bn) a year to defray the cost of climate-change mitigation in the developing world. But although the idea that rich nations should pay for poor nations to adapt to non-carbon technology may be accepted wisdom at Harvard University and The New York Times, it is hardly a vote winner in middle America during a recession. Imagine a Democrat senator from a Rust Belt state telling his coal mining constituents that they should pay higher taxes to help China become more energy efficient and more economically competitive.

Review

Geraldine Brooks  (2005), March, Harper Collins

This is a story of cruelty that I found difficult to finish. Brooks writes of floggings, murder, shocking medical procedures, post traumatic stress syndrome, pillage, slavery, incest and the US peoples’ treatment of African Americans during a year in the Civil War that swamps her ‘Little Women’ backdrop. Four of the six reviews below range from negative to somewhat supportive of the story of the missing Father from Little Women (which I have not read) and barely touch on the shock of Brooks’ narrative. I was left thinking that the hidden agenda in some of these reviews was that this Australian doesn’t know enough about the USA to write such a novel.

  • Christian Science Monitor review by Ron Charles
  • Washington Post review by Karen Joy Fowler
  • St. Petersburg Times review by Mindi Dickstein
  • January Magazine review by Sue Bursztynski (an exception – March is an entertaining tale with some interesting original characters as well as some reinterpreted Alcott characters, but there are a few gruesome scenes — my emphasis).
  • New York Times review by Thomas Mallon.
  • http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/march/ to read the above reciews.
  • Peter Pierce, The Age, 2 April 2005, http://www.theage.com.au/news/Reviews/March/2005/04/01/1112302217831.html. This is a distinguished book, a masterly reworking of what fiction and history have afforded Brooks’ vibrant and questing imagination.

It is a ‘distinguished book’ which, due to the superb writing, was disturbing. Well worth the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2006.

Today’s Podcast

This is an excellent warning about stereotyping our fellows.

“Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at the Sydney Writers Festival”, TheBookShow, 24 December 2009, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2588360.htm

Thursday

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Uluru, Central Australia

Uluru, Central Australia

According to the Anangu traditional landowners of Uluru, the world was once a featureless place. None of the places we know existed until creator beings, in the forms of people, plants and animals, traveled widely across the land. Then, in a process of creation and destruction, they formed the landscape as we know it today. Anangu land is still inhabited by the spirits of dozens of these ancestral creator beings which are referred to as Tjukuritja or Waparitja.”

One account has Uluru built up during the creation period by two boys who played in the mud after rain. When they had finished their game they travelled south to Wiput. Another tells of serpent beings who waged many wars around Uluru, scarring the rock. A third tells of two tribes of ancestral spirits who were invited to a feast, but were distracted by the beautiful Sleepy Lizard Women and did not show up. In response, the angry hosts sang evil into a mud sculpture that came to life as the dingo. There followed a great battle, which ended in the deaths of the leaders of both tribes. The earth itself rose up in grief at the bloodshed, becoming Uluru. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uluru

Climate Change

I have just searched this weblog for ‘Climate change’ and recent postings show substantial confusion. When I read back over these comments and quotes, I can see a lobbying pattern emerging where the participants are:

Climate Change caused by CO2 emissions
  • Science activists
  • Green activists
  • Politicians
  • Coal activists
  • The esoteric – Lovelock
  • Affected industry spokespeople – insurance
CO2 Skeptics
  • Science activists
  • Politicians
  • The esoteric – Sunspots
  • Affected industry spokespeople  — resource extraction, electricity generation, et al.
  • The public

It would be foolish to attempt any predictions for the 2010 so I will continue watching and accumulating information that may eventually clarify the debate.

This article caught my attention:

“John Prescott defends China’s role at Copenhagen climate summit”, guardian.com.uk, 28 December, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/28/john-prescott-defends-china-copenhagen

John Prescott has defended China’s role in the climate change summit, saying the blame for its flawed outcome must lie with the United States and Barack Obama. The former deputy prime minister helped negotiate the Kyoto protocol in 1997, and was in Copenhagen acting as an informal bridge between the Chinese delegation and others.

In a letter to the Guardian, Prescott criticises the US climate change special envoy, Todd Stern, who “said at Copenhagen emissions weren’t about ‘morality or politics’, they were ‘just maths’, with China projected to emit 60% more CO2 than the US by 2030″.

… Prescott claims that Stern’s arguments “ignored the more transparent measure of pollution per capita, which shows the US emits 20 tonnes per person every year, compared to China’s six tonnes, whilst America’s GDP per person is almost eight times greater than the Chinese”. He also attacks President Barack Obama for suggesting there had been a period of “two decades of talking and no action. That might have been true in America, which refused to sign up to Kyoto, but not in the case of China or Europe, who followed a lot of that protocol’s policies. … Prescott is climate change convenor for the Council of Europe, with the role of exploring how to keep the talks on the road.

According to the lengthy defence of China’s actions, European nations repeatedly tried to impose secret drafts, unscheduled meetings and a hidden agenda on China and other developing nations.

Social Media

James Harkin, “Going Tweet and saying nothing”, SMH, 31 December, http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/going-tweet-and-saying-nothing-20091230-ljtm.html

Far from delivering a ”wisdom of crowds”, social networking sites create only a deafening banality, writes James Harkin.

In 2003, in an elaborate joke on New York’s media-savvy, empty-headed hipsters, a journalist called Bill Wasik sent around an anonymous email suggesting that they congregate at a department store at the same time and stare at a rug. The event was an enormous success, and became the world’s first documented example of a ”flash mob”. By the end of the decade, however, the joke was on all of us. Faced with any kind of group activity, our first response is: do any of them know how to use Twitter?

How did we get here? In the past decade, ideas about how society works have been treated to a glamorous new outing. It all began in 2000 with the publication of Malcolm Gladwell’s beautifully crafted bestseller The Tipping Point. Gladwell argued that, given the right kind of push, ideas or products can suddenly gain traction and pass around from person to person like a virus. In its wake came a slew of new thinking about how information and ideas cascade around the place and gather momentum. Then there was the influential idea that we can raise ourselves to a kind of collective intelligence – the so-called ”wisdom of crowds” – by arriving at our decisions independently and punching our best guesses into a computer.

Most of these new ideas took their cue from the time we’ve been spending online. In an age of rapid change in the way we’re communicating, that’s hardly surprising. It helped that many of these new ideas-entrepreneurs made excellent writers and talkers, capable of expressing their theories with more flair and less pomposity than the traditional homme serieux (Comment: Google has let me down – I cannot get a translation for this phrase). It would be churlish not to admit that there was something in their ideas, too. Online is a fantastically efficient way of sending a message out, and taking a pop at established industry authorities.

But the hard part is to find a message worth sending – it’s not good enough, as the internet gurus do, just to blow hard about the joys of a new medium. A succession of breathless internet evangelists have told weird and wonderful stories about young people who were using Facebook and Twitter to organise a whole new kind of politics. From Iran to Moldova, it was claimed, a new generation of activists had armed themselves with Twitter and were using it to fight political repression. ”You cannot have Rwanda again,” argued Gordon Brown in June, referring to the ”Twitter revolution” in Iran. ”This week’s events in Iran are a reminder of the way that people are using new technology to come together in new ways to make their views known.”

It all turned out to be wildly overcooked. Among activists and dissidents, Twitter and other social networking sites were useful in getting messages out of the country, but they turned out to be just as handy for the authorities who were trying to track them down. In any case, since only a tiny number of Iranians use Twitter – a mere 0.027 per cent, according to a forthcoming report from the British Council – it was never going to be much use in organising demonstrations.

I access Facebook several times a day, more in wonderment at the postings than for seeking the goings-on of ‘friends’. Here are some of my ‘friends’ postings:

  • SPA reunion lunch tomm. (Dec. 31) at Clay Oven, Green Park, New Delhi @ 2PM. Everyone’s welcome – please spread the message and join us :)
  • xxxxxx was tagged in a photo.
  • xxxxxx and yyyyyy are now friends.
  • My friend xxxxxx & yyyyyy have a baby girl .All ar well.
  • xxxxxx and yyyyyy are now friends (these two people have been in a rich partnership so becoming ’friends’ is a revelation).
  • xxxxxx Going to Perth shortly. Looks like another beautiful sunny day ahead (I have no idea how I became friends with this person).
  • xxxxxx must…discipline myself…write…WRITE!!! WRITE!!!!!!!!!!!!.
  • xxxxxx Just finished his … film treatment…last minute much!!?
    • yyyyyy  YAY YOU. Hey I’m editing mine this week…you never told me what you thought of the script

Methinks it may be time to look further into this new English that is developing.

Today’s Podcast

Unfortunately no longer downloadable but the transcript is available. I have often labeled Ramona Koval as an ill-disciplined blabber-mouth but her choice of guests over this holiday period has been exceptional; to the point where I need to relax my commentary.

“In conversation with Richard Holloway”, TheBookShow, 21 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2009/2570367.htm

Richard Holloway is the controversial former bishop of Edinburgh and author of 25 books. In 2000 he resigned as bishop of Edinburgh in the Scottish Episcopal Church and now describes himself as a ‘Christian agnostic’. He was Gresham Professor of Divinity in the City of London and remains a Fellow of the Royal Society. Now in his mid-70s, Richard Holloway has written on morality and religion for many newspapers in Britain and is a mainstay on BBC Radio Scotland and BBC TV.

His many, many books include On Forgiveness (2002), Looking in the Distance (2004), Godless Morality (1999) and Doubts and Loves (2001). His latest book is Between the Monster and the Saint. Ramona Koval interviewed Richard Holloway at the Sydney Writer’s Festival.

Tuesday

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Mount Sondar, Central Australia

Mt Sondar, Central Australia.

Living under the flight path

Emirates A380

Notes from Xanadu

Cook-book

Posting to the weblog has been intermittent over the Christmas period. First came the excellent Colleen McCullough and yesterday, I worked on the cook-book. More recipes added and then sorted into menu types –- Starters, Soups and Frittatas, Lamb, Vegetables are some examples –- and bought a large new folder for better storage.

It has now got to the stage where I need to back-up and store off-site as I begin the test cooking. And the text requires much editing to conform to the style I have established. Received the ‘thumbs down’ on over-use of fish sauce in one vegetable dish so have added a cautionary note.

The garden

Several days of steady, light rain have done wonders to the garden. The basil and tomatoes have put on a great spurt. And we need to clear out one of the fish ponds which has been overgrown with papyrus and wisteria. Later today? Striped marsh frogs tok tokking away and also heard one in a neighbouring street this morning when walking the pooches – – perhaps one of ours migrating?

Climate Change

Another article by Michael Asten continues to strengthen the search for wider causes of global warming and climate change than the focus on CO2. As usual, quoted selectively.

Michael Asten, “More evidence CO2 not culprit”, The Australian, 29 December, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/more-evidence-co2-not-culprit/story-e6frg6zo-1225814230258

THE Copenhagen climate change summit closed two weeks ago in confusion, disagreement and, for some, disillusionment. When the political process shows such a lack of unanimity, it is pertinent to ask whether the science behind the politics is as settled as some participants maintain. Earlier this month (The Australian, December 9) I commented on recently published results showing huge swings in atmospheric carbon dioxide, both up and down, at a time of global cooling 33.6 million years ago.

Paul Pearson and co-authors in a letter (The Weekend Australian, December 11) took exception to my use of their data and claimed I misrepresented their research, a claim I reject since I quoted their data (the veracity of which they do not contest) but offered an alternative hypothesis, namely that the present global warming theory (which was not the subject of their study) is inconsistent with the CO2-temperature variations of a past age.

Some senior scientists, who are adherents of orthodox global warming theory, do not like authors publishing data that can be used to argue against orthodoxy, a point made by unrelated authors with startling clarity in the Climategate leaked emails from the University of East Anglia. In the scientific method, however, re-examination of data and formulation of alternative hypotheses is the essence of scientific debate. In any case, the debate on the link between atmospheric CO2 and global temperature will continue since it is not dependent on a single result.

… we have two geological examples and two satellite data studies pointing towards a lesser role of CO2 in global warming. This argument does not discount the reality of global warming during the past century or the potential consequences should it continue at the same rate, but it does suggest we need a broader framework in considering our response. The Copenhagen summit exposed intense political differences in proposals to manage global warming. Scientists are also not unanimous in claiming to understand the complex processes driving climate change and, more important, scientific studies do not unambiguously point to a single solution. Copenhagen will indeed prove to be a historic meeting if it ushers in more open-minded debate.

Review

This review fostered further thinking about the USA. Finally, some sort of health care legislation has been passed by both chambers but what a shambles it is. From the country that promotes itself endlessly, a review of the legislation leaves me wondering, ‘what can they be thinking’? How can it be that it costs $US35,000 to have a baby. Perhaps the answer lies in something I read from Peter Singer –- the legislature is corrupted by lobbyist funding and to get the finance for their re-election Congress and Senate members have to toe the lobbyists’ line. I sense that we are witnessing the decline of the USA and selective quotes from this review give my feeling substance.

Jonathan Raban, “Sarah and Her Tribe”, New York Review of Books, 14 Januaty, 2010, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23532

  • Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin, Harper, 413 pp., $28.99
  • Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar, by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, PublicAffairs, 301 pp., $26.95

There’s a moment of near rapture in the video of Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention in St. Paul on September 3, 2008. It begins in the eleventh minute, after her Westbrook Pegler quote (“We grow good people in our small towns…”) and before her “lipstick” quip about hockey moms and pit bulls. Following a nervous start, she is now entirely at ease in front of the biggest crowd of her speaking life, and riding high on the chants of “Sarah!” “USA!” and “Drill, baby, drill!” Her smile looks ecstatic, as she allows herself a snuffling chuckle at the acerbity of her own wit, then shows off her repertoire of little nods of self-approbation, complicit left-eye winks from behind her glasses, and lips smugly pursed to signal that an unanswerable point has just been made. When the camera cuts to the crowd, face after face is a joyful mirror image of Palin’s own, as if transfigured by a shared triumph.

Her nasal voice, pitched in the upper register, with the upsy-downsy, singsong delivery of a kindergarten teacher, became, rather improbably, a great electoral asset. Her diction and accent were shaped more by class than region, and spiced with faux-genteel cuss words like “dang,” “heck,” “darn,” “geez,” “bullcrap,” and “bass-ackwards.” It was a voice unspoiled by overmuch formal education and boldly unafraid of truisms and clichés; a perfect foil for Obama’s polished law-school eloquence.

Going Rogue is stuffed with dubious quotations from Famous Authors, among them one often attributed, but never reliably sourced, to Pascal: “the God-shaped vacuum in every human heart.” Unfortunately, there does seem to be a Palin-shaped vacuum in the heart of the American electorate, and it’s not hard to see why. After the ritual brandishing of the flag and her shout-outs to her fellow Christian fundamentalists, Palin’s core message is, as it always has been, about fiscal policy.

Palin’s general economic theory, so snugly adapted to Twitter’s 140- character limit, carries great weight. At a time when everyone should be clipping coupons, tightening belts, and buying generic peanut butter, Obama (Columbia and Harvard), Larry Summers (MIT and Harvard), Tim Geithner (Dartmouth and Johns Hopkins), and Peter Orszag (Princeton and London School of Economics) are out on a spending spree that is “baffling,” “nonsensical,” and “obscene.” But then what did we expect of the East Coast elites?

Against their transparent profligacy should be set the record of Sarah Palin (University of Idaho, School of Journalism and Mass Media). She made Wasilla hum, while putting an end to personal property taxes. … She not only makes economics perfectly comprehensible at the level of the kitchen table, she makes it work brilliantly in practice.

She’s much more deeply in touch with her followers than Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, or any other recent candidate who’s tried to court the same constituency. (Admittedly, they also lacked her flirty sex appeal.) She has the knack of turning public debate sulfurous with a phrase, as she did last summer with her remark that Democrats want “death panels” in their health plan. She is a catalyst around whom the Tea Party movement is growing alarmingly in size and strength,

Having hoisted her banner of Commonsense Conservatism, and campaigned across the country by Lear jet and tour bus to promote Going Rogue, she’s unlikely to assuage her compulsion to be a winner merely by selling more books than anyone else during 2009′s holiday season.

A search on Google for ‘Tea Party’ brought up http://teapartypatriots.org/Default.aspx where ‘Taxed to Death’ is the theme and http://taxdayteaparty.com/ which is going to storm the Senate.

Today’s Podcast

A highly witty discussion on heaven.

“Stairway to Heaven”, The Spirit of Things, 27 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2009/2777507.htm

Stairways, ladders, tunnels or rainbows: the way to heaven has been imagined since the beginning of time, and for some who’ve nearly died it’s been experienced. But for others, heaven isn’t a place so much as a state of mind or a state of soul. St John’s Anglican Church in East Malvern, Melbourne, is the venue for a discussion on heaven with guests, the Rev Dr Roger Ferlo of Virginia Theological Seminary, Indigenous writer Lillian Holt, and Senior Rabbi of Melbourne’s Temple Beth Israel, Fred Morgan

Christmas Day

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Contemplating the ducks -- Sydney Park

Christmas Lights

Christmas

Christmas and Climate

Several day’s late due to a riveting Colleen McCullough, (2009), Too Many Murders, Harper Collins in my Santa Sack – just too good to put down and attend to daily matters such as weblog, dogs, garden, the outside world. The rain was a useful excuse to remain reading until my eyes failed.

We began the birth-celebration at Sydney Park at 07:00 with some family and dogs. Such a great place: the rejuvenation of a rubbish tip into a super and very popular parkscape. And then on to Duncan and Alison’s for a celebratory lunch – a pleasant day.

On Christmas Eve we went to Double Bay for an evening with Kathy and Ken and friends; a splendid time with the fresh southerly sharpening the night. Bringing realism to our enjoyment Ken sent me this comment:

World population 6.2B – (4.2B live in Asia Pacific Region and over 1B people have no electricity – sun and dung)

  • 80 per cent of the world population live on less then $US10 per day
  • 20 per cent of world population have 75 per cent of the wealth
  • It follows that the 80 per cent poor have the other 25 per cent of “wealth” and these are the people who will “save” the world from global warming?

Almost 25 per cent of world population has crap water supply – 2/3 of these people are amongst the poorest on the globe and earn less than $2 per day with 1/3 on less than $1 per day – and these are the people who will “save” the world from global warming?

The Aviation Industry is one of the few global Industries to set ambitious carbon reduction targets. The industry aims to have carbon neutral growth by 2020. This means that the effects of expansion of aviation will be offset by carbon reduction strategies. Consider this in the context of growing economies and perhaps 2 or 3 per cent a year move into the air travel affordability bracket? Three per cent of 4.2B in our area is a big number of aircraft. Between now and 2020 the industry aims for 1.5 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions year on year.

And from “List of countries by carbon dioxide emissions per capita”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita,  which supports Ken’s observations.

Region

Annual tonnes CO2 emissions per person
Qatar

56
USA

19
Australia

18
Denmark

9
New Zealand

7
China

4
India

1
Chad

0

Post-Copenhagen, blame for a non-binding treaty has been laid upon China, India, Sudan and Tuvulu which in view of the above table is quite unfair. These people deserve water, elctricity, longevity and the pleasures we take for granted..

Today’s Podcast

Maintaining the ‘we need to do our part’ theme in reducing pollution is this:

“Not cheap, just frugal!”, FutureTense, 24 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2009/2719979.htm

Consumerism could prove a difficult habit to break, but there are those who have already started to change their approach to life. The frugality movement has been with us for some time. So given all the economic woe that’s befallen us, could this be the movement’s time in the sun?

Thursday

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Butterfly in the Buddlea

This was taken in April 2004. The current blooms are wispy white with the purple yet to arrive

Riding the Rails

Ugly railways

Why are our railways so ugly? Would more people be tempted to use CityRail if the views were not so full of rubbish?

Climate Change – Where are we?

Copenhagen is over. I thought the most useless activity was Greenpeace people climbing light poles. Or was it the press complaining of being locked out in the cold for 8 hours while the activists caused some security problem?

This email sparked more thinking about where we are in the climate change ‘debate’.

“The Copenhagen backlash begins”, Foreign Policy Review Daily email, 22 December.

Top Story: Just days after countries agreed to a face-saving agreement at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen, accusations have begun to fly about who was responsible for the disappointing conference. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva criticized the United States for failing to commit for emissions reductions. South African negotiators, who participated in the drafting of the final agreement, nonetheless attacked it as “not acceptable.”

E.U. environment ministers will meet today to discuss how to proceed in the wake of the Copenhagen “disaster.” Writing in the Guardian on Sunday, British climate secretary Ed Miliband accused China of having “hijacked” the proceedings for its own goals. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman responded that Miliband’s accusations were just a way “to shirk responsibilities that should be assumed towards developing countries.”

At least one minister seemed happy with how the talks turned out. Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh told parliament that India had been able to resist international pressure to agree to binding emissions cuts. The markets were less upbeat with carbon prices plunging on the European exchange on Monday.

There is no clarity.

I thought this morning as I walked the dogs and listened to how 37 per cent of Copenhagen’s commuters travel by bicycle, I would attempt a summary of the current situation. But on reading the daily press, snippets of news on the internet and listening to some podcasts I remain perplexed. The attacks are increasingly irrational, the reports increasingly data-free and the analyses more infrequent. The situation is beginning to present the scenario for the arrival of a climate-change Messiah: somewhat akin to Germany in the 1930s, China in the 1940s, Russia in the 1920s.

On the 22 December I selectively quoted Barry Cohen’s interview with a philosopher (which Cohen tended to diminish). If an accomplished philosopher is unable to unravel the twisted threads, what hope have we lay people. Hence my concern that climate-change fascism may be lurking in the wings.

Tuesday

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Elaeocarpus reticulatus (Blueberry Ash) at Hyams Beach

Elaeocarpus reticulatus (Blueberry Ash) at Hyams Beach

Riding the Rails

Carlton Station

Climate Change

Some comments extracted from this article:

Barry Cohen, “Abbott taps into a climate of confusion”, The Australian, 22 December, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/abbott-taps-into-a-climate-of-confusion/story-e6frg6zo-1225812552415

More and more people were starting to ask questions because they didn’t understand the issues. They were confused because, while most elite scientific opinion supported human-induced global warming and climate change, some disagreed. Those who asked questions were called climate change sceptics or, worse, deniers. Most, however, were “don’t knowers” who resented being sneered at and patronised by those who had no more qualification to pass judgment on the issue than they did. After my last column, when I confessed I was a “don’t knower”, an old friend called and admitted he was of the same view.

I asked, “Do you know what ETS means?” “Only vaguely,” he replied. “And cap and trade?” “Not a clue.” “How about CPRS [the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme]?” “Zilch.” He added, “For a long time I read everything about global warming and climate change, but as the government wasn’t adequately explaining the problem, I stopped reading.”

Now fervent believers in climate change will write off such comments as those of an ignoramus but the gentleman referred to is anything but. He is a professor at one of Australia’s leading universities; true, a professor of philosophy, but I can assure readers he is of above average intelligence, well informed and active on a range of political issues. If the professor has given up trying to understand what the debate is all about it’s not surprising there are many like him.

Technical Note

WordPress 2.9 is now functioning – see my sidebar page “WordPress and Open Source”

Today’s Podcast

“Animal rights”, The Law Report, 22 December, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lawreport/stories/2009/2764558.htm

Our attitude to animals is contradictory. Many of us share our homes with pets, yet most of us eat meat. The law at least is consistent: animals are property, nothing more.

But US lawyers are trying to push the envelope through the courts: guardians have been appointed for animals and the best interests of the pet considered in family law disputes.

Meanwhile, in Spain the parliament wants to grant legal personhood to primates.