“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed”
“The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives”
“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Friday, March 30, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
let them ride bikes: Parisians to hit roads
March 26, 2007
PARIS: On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place.
By the end of the year, there should be 20,600 bikes at 1450 stations - or about one station every 250 metres across the entire city. Based on experience elsewhere - particularly in Lyon, France's third-largest city - regular users of the bikes will ride them almost free.
"We think it could change Paris's image - make it quieter, less polluted, with a nicer atmosphere, a better way of life," said Jean-Luc Dumesnil, an aide to the Mayor, Bertrand Delanoe.
Anthonin Darbon, director of Cyclocity, which operates Lyon's program and won the contract to run the one in Paris, said 95 per cent of the roughly 20,000 daily bicycle rentals in Lyon are free because of their length.
Cyclocity is a subsidiary of the outdoor advertising behemoth JCDecaux. London, Dublin, Sydney and Melbourne are reportedly considering similar rental programs.
The Cyclocity concept evolved from utopian "bike-sharing" ideas tried in Europe in the 1960s, most famously in Amsterdam. But in the end, the bikes were stolen and became too beaten-up to ride.
JCDecaux developed a sturdier, less vandal-prone bike, along with a rental system to discourage theft: each rider must leave a credit card or refundable deposit of about €150 ($250). In Lyon, about 10 per cent of the bikes are stolen each year, but many are later recovered.
To encourage people to return bikes quickly, rental rates rise the longer the bikes are out. In Paris, for instance, renting a bike will be free for the first half-hour, €1 for the next, €2 for the third, and so on.
In a complex, 10-year public-private partnership deal, JCDecaux will provide all the bikes and build the pick-up/drop-off stations. Each will have racks connected to a centralised computer that can monitor each bike's condition and location. In exchange, Paris is giving the company exclusive control over 1628 city-owned billboards.
The Washington Post
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Ice Epidemic ??????????
Subject: School of Population Health, University of Melbourne podcast - The Ice Epidemic
The Ice epidemic is of major concern to governments around Australia. This podcast episode analyses the so-called "Ice" methamphetamine epidemic. Through an analysis of the available survey health data we conclude that the recent hype around crystal methamphetamine is misplaced.
Methamphetamine use, while of concern, is not increasing. Indicators of drug use in Australian drug-using populations suggest that the use of methamphetamine has been stable since 2001. At a time when governments around Australia are preparing responses to the so-called epidemic this podcast reviews the evidence, the media coverage and some health promotion approaches to methamphetamine use. The podcast is an essential listen for drug and alcohol service providers, policy makers and news makers who are concerned about evidence-based approaches to social and drug policy. The pod cast may be accessed at:
http://www.nspresearch.unimelb.edu.au/dose.html
For further information please contact: Dr John Fitzgerald
Andrew Dare
Research Fellow Centre for Health Programs Policy and Evaluation School of Population Health
The University of Melbourne
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Saturday, March 17, 2007
6 sixes in an over - by HH Gibbs
End of over 29 (12 runs) - South Africa 178/2 (RR: 6.13)
JH Kallis 75* (84b 8x4 1x6)
HH Gibbs 32* (30b 3x4 1x6)
LP van Troost 1-0-12-0
DLS van Bunge 3-0-20-0
29.1
van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Violence! Gibbs charged down the track and hoicked it over long on.
29.2
van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Murder! Floated on the leg and middle stump line and Gibbs sends it soaring over long-off.
29.3
van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Carnage! Flatter one this time but it makes no difference to Gibbs. He just stands there and delivers. This one also has been sucked over long off
29.4
van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Wah Wah! Low full toss and guess where this went Yep. A slap slog and it went over deep midwicket! He is going to go for 6 sixes in this over!
29.5
van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, Short in length, on the off stump line and Gibbs rocks back and swat-pulls it over wide long off. SImply amazing. What a batsman. This is pure violence!
29.6
van Bunge to Gibbs, SIX, He has done it! One-day record. No one has hit six sixes in a row. Gibbs stands alone in that zone. And the minnow bashing continues! Full and outside off and bludgeoned over deep midwicket
End of over 30 (36 runs) - South Africa 214/2 (RR: 7.13)
HH Gibbs 68* (36b 3x4 7x6)
JH Kallis 75* (84b 8x4 1x6)
DLS van Bunge 4-0-56-0
LP van Troost 1-0-12-0
Commentry from http://content-aus.cricinfo.com/wc2007/engine/current/match/247462.html
Friday, March 16, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Balance? Don't ask an economist
Ross Gittins
March 7, 2007
SMH
In all the interviews I've done to publicise my new book, Gittinomics, only one interviewer has come close to saying the obvious: you have to be pretty egotistical to name an -omics after yourself. So what's so special about my version of economics?
All capitalist economics seeks to explain how the capitalist system works. I guess what's different about my take on the subject is its emphasis on making sure you're a master of the system, not a victim. Making it work for you, not you for it. To that end, the first thing to understand is the need to keep economics in perspective and economists in their place.
Economists are experts in one important but limited aspect of life: the material. No one knows better than they do how best to maximise our production and consumption of goods and services. When a community follows their advice - as we pretty much have been for the past 25 years - it gets rich.
Trouble is, sensible people don't maximise the material aspect of life, they optimise it. That is, they balance it against other, non-material objectives.
For instance, most economists know little about the question of fairness and, for the most part, ignore it. Press them and they'll tell you frankly that it's outside their area of competence.
Likewise, they're largely oblivious to the social and spiritual aspects of life. Will the policies they advocate damage family life, for instance? Sorry, never given it any thought. Why don't you consult a social worker or a priest?
Why not, indeed. Economists' advice is one-dimensional. When we give that advice primacy and fail to meld it with the advice of experts in other areas, we risk becoming a richer but more socially dysfunctional society. And what applies at the national political level also applies in our everyday lives.
Most of the things capitalism has to offer us are good - provided we don't overdo them. Trouble is, the system is usually pressing us to overdo them.
Take the ready availability of credit. Thanks to financial deregulation and our return to low inflation, interest rates are lower and the banks are anxious to lend.
When we use that credit to buy our own home, we're generally better off. But when we use credit cards or home equity loans to buy consumer goods we can't afford, we risk becoming victims.
Credit cards don't remove the need to save for the things we buy. Since debts have to be repaid, they merely allow us to do the saving after we've acquired the item rather than before.
The trick is that you also have to pay a lot of interest. So when we allow our impatience to get the better of us, we end up devoting much of our income not to buying things but merely to paying interest.
And if carrying a lot of debt on top of our mortgage makes us feel continuously weighed down - I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go - that's another strike against our being masters, not victims.
It's great to live in such a successful capitalist economy, where not all but most of us enjoy a fair degree of comfort. But when we take the advertising too seriously and start deluding ourselves that buying more stuff will make us happy, we risk becoming victims.
Our politicians venerate the "aspirational voter", but when our aspirations run exclusively to the material we're setting ourselves up for a state of recurring dissatisfaction.
To be masters of the system we need to control our aspirations, learning to be more content with what we've got and aspiring to be better gardeners, better golfers, better at our jobs, better partners, better parents, better human beings.
The capitalist system has ways of taking money from the poor, but also of doing down the comfortably off. Really? How? By selling the illusion of social status - and it doesn't come cheap.
The middle class spends an enormous amount of money keeping up with the Joneses and trying to demonstrate how well we're doing by the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the homes and suburbs we live in, the schools we send our kids to and much else.
Almost by definition, the possessions that most impress people are the ones that cost the most. There are too many cases where, provided they get their image and market positioning right, firms can defy the laws of demand and supply and sell more of their product by putting up their price.
What makes this game an illusion is that it's like an arms race. People are always catching up and passing you, requiring you to earn more and spend more to regain your place.
But if you've got the money, what's wrong with spending it on big boys' toys? Nothing - provided keeping your place in the status race doesn't lead you to money stress, overwork, a feeling of being trapped or neglect of relationships that matter most. If it does, you're a victim.
And here's a good test of whether you are: how much do you enjoy your job?
If you're just doing it for the money, and feel constrained by your financial commitments from moving to a lesser-paid but more satisfying job … well, you don't need me to tell you you're not master of your destiny. But your cage is of your own making.
How can you escape to a better job or cut back the long hours you're working? By reducing your financial commitments. How? By controlling your material aspirations and stopping trying to buy status. Is that too tall an order? Then don't complain about being trapped by the system.
But wouldn't the capitalist system collapse if we all cut our spending and did less work so we could spend more time enjoying our relationships? No, of course it wouldn't.
The economy would just grow at a slower rate. And that would be a cheap price to pay for lives that were less harried and where our relationships were more rewarding.
I guess that's what Gittinomics is driving at.
Gittinomics, by Ross Gittins, is published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $26.95
March 7, 2007
SMH
In all the interviews I've done to publicise my new book, Gittinomics, only one interviewer has come close to saying the obvious: you have to be pretty egotistical to name an -omics after yourself. So what's so special about my version of economics?
All capitalist economics seeks to explain how the capitalist system works. I guess what's different about my take on the subject is its emphasis on making sure you're a master of the system, not a victim. Making it work for you, not you for it. To that end, the first thing to understand is the need to keep economics in perspective and economists in their place.
Economists are experts in one important but limited aspect of life: the material. No one knows better than they do how best to maximise our production and consumption of goods and services. When a community follows their advice - as we pretty much have been for the past 25 years - it gets rich.
Trouble is, sensible people don't maximise the material aspect of life, they optimise it. That is, they balance it against other, non-material objectives.
For instance, most economists know little about the question of fairness and, for the most part, ignore it. Press them and they'll tell you frankly that it's outside their area of competence.
Likewise, they're largely oblivious to the social and spiritual aspects of life. Will the policies they advocate damage family life, for instance? Sorry, never given it any thought. Why don't you consult a social worker or a priest?
Why not, indeed. Economists' advice is one-dimensional. When we give that advice primacy and fail to meld it with the advice of experts in other areas, we risk becoming a richer but more socially dysfunctional society. And what applies at the national political level also applies in our everyday lives.
Most of the things capitalism has to offer us are good - provided we don't overdo them. Trouble is, the system is usually pressing us to overdo them.
Take the ready availability of credit. Thanks to financial deregulation and our return to low inflation, interest rates are lower and the banks are anxious to lend.
When we use that credit to buy our own home, we're generally better off. But when we use credit cards or home equity loans to buy consumer goods we can't afford, we risk becoming victims.
Credit cards don't remove the need to save for the things we buy. Since debts have to be repaid, they merely allow us to do the saving after we've acquired the item rather than before.
The trick is that you also have to pay a lot of interest. So when we allow our impatience to get the better of us, we end up devoting much of our income not to buying things but merely to paying interest.
And if carrying a lot of debt on top of our mortgage makes us feel continuously weighed down - I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go - that's another strike against our being masters, not victims.
It's great to live in such a successful capitalist economy, where not all but most of us enjoy a fair degree of comfort. But when we take the advertising too seriously and start deluding ourselves that buying more stuff will make us happy, we risk becoming victims.
Our politicians venerate the "aspirational voter", but when our aspirations run exclusively to the material we're setting ourselves up for a state of recurring dissatisfaction.
To be masters of the system we need to control our aspirations, learning to be more content with what we've got and aspiring to be better gardeners, better golfers, better at our jobs, better partners, better parents, better human beings.
The capitalist system has ways of taking money from the poor, but also of doing down the comfortably off. Really? How? By selling the illusion of social status - and it doesn't come cheap.
The middle class spends an enormous amount of money keeping up with the Joneses and trying to demonstrate how well we're doing by the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the homes and suburbs we live in, the schools we send our kids to and much else.
Almost by definition, the possessions that most impress people are the ones that cost the most. There are too many cases where, provided they get their image and market positioning right, firms can defy the laws of demand and supply and sell more of their product by putting up their price.
What makes this game an illusion is that it's like an arms race. People are always catching up and passing you, requiring you to earn more and spend more to regain your place.
But if you've got the money, what's wrong with spending it on big boys' toys? Nothing - provided keeping your place in the status race doesn't lead you to money stress, overwork, a feeling of being trapped or neglect of relationships that matter most. If it does, you're a victim.
And here's a good test of whether you are: how much do you enjoy your job?
If you're just doing it for the money, and feel constrained by your financial commitments from moving to a lesser-paid but more satisfying job … well, you don't need me to tell you you're not master of your destiny. But your cage is of your own making.
How can you escape to a better job or cut back the long hours you're working? By reducing your financial commitments. How? By controlling your material aspirations and stopping trying to buy status. Is that too tall an order? Then don't complain about being trapped by the system.
But wouldn't the capitalist system collapse if we all cut our spending and did less work so we could spend more time enjoying our relationships? No, of course it wouldn't.
The economy would just grow at a slower rate. And that would be a cheap price to pay for lives that were less harried and where our relationships were more rewarding.
I guess that's what Gittinomics is driving at.
Gittinomics, by Ross Gittins, is published by Allen & Unwin, RRP $26.95
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Global warming: An inconvenient truth or hot air?
4 March 2007
The Independent
Geoffrey Lean reports
Everyone agrees global warming is a terrible fact of life. Right? Wrong. A film to be screened this week ridicules the Al Gore orthodoxy.
After two decades, the long scientific and political debate over whether human activities are warming up the Earth is finally over. Or is it? The world scientific community says so. Even the most recalcitrant governments, including the Bush administration, reluctantly agree. But the British media is characteristically unwilling to let an old row simply fade away.
On Thursday, Channel 4 will screen what it calls a "polemical and thought-provoking documentary" - The Great Global Warming Swindle - by one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures, film-maker Martin Durkin.
It follows hot on the heels of a decision by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, to send a copy of Al Gore's box-office hit, An Inconvenient Truth - which this month won two Oscars - to every secondary school throughout the country.
And the debate continues in the printed media with the Daily Mail and the Telegraph printing regular articles by sceptics and even The Independent, which - with this newspaper - presses for action to control climate change, giving space to the columnist Dominic Lawson, who rejects much of the green lobby's case. Yet, while contrarians remain common in broadcasting studios and newspaper offices, they are becoming increasingly hard to find in laboratories or governments.
Last month, the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - which brings together almost all the world's leading scientists in the field and all its governments - published the first instalment of its latest massive "assessment report", concluding that it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are heating up the planet. The conclusion was all the more authoritative as the IPCC is a cautious body that acts by consensus; all governments, including the United States, have to agree its conclusions.
Some scientists still disagree - that is the nature of science - but their numbers are diminishing, and few are leaders in their fields. A recent survey of 928 published scientific papers found not one that dissented over the reality of global warming. Even President Bush admitted - through gritted teeth - in January's State of the Union speech that the climate change presented "a major challenge".
Yet more recently, his main ally against the Kyoto Protocol, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, has been forced into a U-turn by a massive Australian drought and an approaching election, announcing a ban on energy-wasting incandescent light bulbs.
And Mr Bush's best hope of a replacement - the Canadian premier, Steven Harper - has been forced by public opinion into a similar conversion.
But if environmentalists thought they could finally give up arguing, and focus entirely on promoting action, they can think again. For the clash between the Oscar-winning film and the Channel 4 production is likely to spark new public debate. Both are produced by controversial figures. Al Gore last week came under attack for hypocrisy, after it was revealed that he spends £15,000 a year heating his home, 20 times more than the average American house. And, as The Independent on Sunday has repeatedly pointed out , he failed comprehensively to practise what he preaches when in Government.
Martin Durkin, for his part, achieved notoriety when his previous series on the environment for the channel, called Against Nature , was roundly condemned by the Independent Television Commission for misleading contributors on the purpose of the programmes, and for editing four interviewees in a way that "distorted or mispresented their known views".
Channel 4 was forced to issue a humiliating apology. But it seems to have forgiven Mr Durkin and sees no need to make special checks on the accuracy of the programme. For his part, the film-maker accepts the charge of misleading contributors, but describes the verdict of distortion as "complete tosh."
His programme uncovers no startling new information, any more than does Mr Gore's film. The documentary repeats many of the arguments put in Britain by, among others what appears to be be something of a family cottage industry.
Standing with Dominic Lawson on the sceptic's barricades are his father (or to give him proper deference, Lord Lawson of Blaby) and his brother-in-law Christopher Monckton, Lord Monckton of Brenchley. Surprisingly, there is much common ground between sceptics and the environmentalists. Lord Lawson, for example, says that there is "little doubt that the 20th century ended warmer than it began".
He adds, similarly, that "there is no doubt that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased greatly" during it.
He even agrees that it is "highly likely that carbon dioxide emissions" have played a significant part" in heating up the Earth.
He could hardly do otherwise. The measurements of what has happened are clear, and the basic science has been established, unchallenged for 180 years. Instead, the debate is about precisely what contribution to warming the pollution has made, whether it will continue and what to do about it.
The row concentrates on often arcane points of science, frequently delving far back into history. Three of them, raised in this week's documentary, are described above; in each the sceptics have a point, but fail to give the whole picture and so draw the wrong conclusions. Other arguments have been discredited.
Similarly, they emphasise that temperatures in Britain, Greenland and parts of Europe were warmer in the Middle Ages than they are now. That may or may not be true - since no accurate measurements were taken it is hard to be certain.
But, if so, it was only a regional effect: measurements of ice from the poles on which the sceptics place great reliance for other arguments (see table) show it did not happen worldwide. They also claim that tackling global warming would hurt the world's poorest by denying them fossil fuels. But renewable sources of energy should also be the poor's salvation.
They are abundant in the Third World and don't need costly distribution networks to get them to village. And even if the sceptics are right, and the bulk of the world's scientists wrong, there is still a compelling reason for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. For, as often reported in this newspaper, rising levels of the gas - in an entirely separate process - are killing the world's oceans by turning them acid.
Temperature
DURKIN SAYS: Studies of gases in bubbles of air in polar ice sheets reveal that in prehistoric hot periods temperatures began rising before C02 levels. So increasing concentrations of the gas are the result, not the cause of global warming.
GORE SAYS: "It's a complicated relationship, but the most important part of it is this: when there is more C02 in the atmosphere, the temperature increases." He shows two graphs of rising temperature and C02 levels over the past 600,000 years and says they "fit together".
WE SAY: Temperature and C02 are bound together. When one goes up, the other will follow. In prehistory temperatures often started rising 800 years before levels of the gas, and Gore evades this point. But it is irrelevant to what is happening now, because for the first time ever enormous amounts of extra C02 are being released.
The Arctic
DURKIN SAYS: Recent reports of how the amount of ice in the Arctic is shrinking have been exaggerated. The Arctic has always contracted and expanded over history.
GORE SAYS: The Arctic is a "canary in the coal mine". Since the 1970s ,the extent and thickness of its ice cap has "diminished precipitously". If we continue as we are, it will disappear during summers, profoundly changing the climate.
WE SAY: The amount of the ice ebbs and flows with natural warmings and coolings of the climate, and part of this shrinking is probably due to that. But this is being increased by global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases, and these continue to go up. The Arctic is likely to be free of ice by 2050, for the first time in millions of years.
The sun
DURKIN SAYS: The sun is the main cause of global warming. The sun's activity increases from time to time, with increased solar flares, cutting down on cloud formation and raising temperatures on Earth. This activity correlates well with warmer periods over the past several hundred years.
GORE SAYS: The culprit is humanity's emissions of "huge quantities" of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which trap more of the infrared radiation of the sun that would otherwise escape out into space.
WE SAY: Variations in solar activity may have been responsible for past warm periods, though it's hard to be entirely sure because we have been taking good measurements of it only since 1978. But recent solar increases are too small to have produced the present warming, and have been much less important than greenhouse gases since about 1850.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2326210.ece
The Independent
Geoffrey Lean reports
Everyone agrees global warming is a terrible fact of life. Right? Wrong. A film to be screened this week ridicules the Al Gore orthodoxy.
After two decades, the long scientific and political debate over whether human activities are warming up the Earth is finally over. Or is it? The world scientific community says so. Even the most recalcitrant governments, including the Bush administration, reluctantly agree. But the British media is characteristically unwilling to let an old row simply fade away.
On Thursday, Channel 4 will screen what it calls a "polemical and thought-provoking documentary" - The Great Global Warming Swindle - by one of the environmentalists' favourite hate figures, film-maker Martin Durkin.
It follows hot on the heels of a decision by David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, to send a copy of Al Gore's box-office hit, An Inconvenient Truth - which this month won two Oscars - to every secondary school throughout the country.
And the debate continues in the printed media with the Daily Mail and the Telegraph printing regular articles by sceptics and even The Independent, which - with this newspaper - presses for action to control climate change, giving space to the columnist Dominic Lawson, who rejects much of the green lobby's case. Yet, while contrarians remain common in broadcasting studios and newspaper offices, they are becoming increasingly hard to find in laboratories or governments.
Last month, the official Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - which brings together almost all the world's leading scientists in the field and all its governments - published the first instalment of its latest massive "assessment report", concluding that it was 90 per cent certain that human activities are heating up the planet. The conclusion was all the more authoritative as the IPCC is a cautious body that acts by consensus; all governments, including the United States, have to agree its conclusions.
Some scientists still disagree - that is the nature of science - but their numbers are diminishing, and few are leaders in their fields. A recent survey of 928 published scientific papers found not one that dissented over the reality of global warming. Even President Bush admitted - through gritted teeth - in January's State of the Union speech that the climate change presented "a major challenge".
Yet more recently, his main ally against the Kyoto Protocol, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard, has been forced into a U-turn by a massive Australian drought and an approaching election, announcing a ban on energy-wasting incandescent light bulbs.
And Mr Bush's best hope of a replacement - the Canadian premier, Steven Harper - has been forced by public opinion into a similar conversion.
But if environmentalists thought they could finally give up arguing, and focus entirely on promoting action, they can think again. For the clash between the Oscar-winning film and the Channel 4 production is likely to spark new public debate. Both are produced by controversial figures. Al Gore last week came under attack for hypocrisy, after it was revealed that he spends £15,000 a year heating his home, 20 times more than the average American house. And, as The Independent on Sunday has repeatedly pointed out , he failed comprehensively to practise what he preaches when in Government.
Martin Durkin, for his part, achieved notoriety when his previous series on the environment for the channel, called Against Nature , was roundly condemned by the Independent Television Commission for misleading contributors on the purpose of the programmes, and for editing four interviewees in a way that "distorted or mispresented their known views".
Channel 4 was forced to issue a humiliating apology. But it seems to have forgiven Mr Durkin and sees no need to make special checks on the accuracy of the programme. For his part, the film-maker accepts the charge of misleading contributors, but describes the verdict of distortion as "complete tosh."
His programme uncovers no startling new information, any more than does Mr Gore's film. The documentary repeats many of the arguments put in Britain by, among others what appears to be be something of a family cottage industry.
Standing with Dominic Lawson on the sceptic's barricades are his father (or to give him proper deference, Lord Lawson of Blaby) and his brother-in-law Christopher Monckton, Lord Monckton of Brenchley. Surprisingly, there is much common ground between sceptics and the environmentalists. Lord Lawson, for example, says that there is "little doubt that the 20th century ended warmer than it began".
He adds, similarly, that "there is no doubt that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide increased greatly" during it.
He even agrees that it is "highly likely that carbon dioxide emissions" have played a significant part" in heating up the Earth.
He could hardly do otherwise. The measurements of what has happened are clear, and the basic science has been established, unchallenged for 180 years. Instead, the debate is about precisely what contribution to warming the pollution has made, whether it will continue and what to do about it.
The row concentrates on often arcane points of science, frequently delving far back into history. Three of them, raised in this week's documentary, are described above; in each the sceptics have a point, but fail to give the whole picture and so draw the wrong conclusions. Other arguments have been discredited.
Similarly, they emphasise that temperatures in Britain, Greenland and parts of Europe were warmer in the Middle Ages than they are now. That may or may not be true - since no accurate measurements were taken it is hard to be certain.
But, if so, it was only a regional effect: measurements of ice from the poles on which the sceptics place great reliance for other arguments (see table) show it did not happen worldwide. They also claim that tackling global warming would hurt the world's poorest by denying them fossil fuels. But renewable sources of energy should also be the poor's salvation.
They are abundant in the Third World and don't need costly distribution networks to get them to village. And even if the sceptics are right, and the bulk of the world's scientists wrong, there is still a compelling reason for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. For, as often reported in this newspaper, rising levels of the gas - in an entirely separate process - are killing the world's oceans by turning them acid.
Temperature
DURKIN SAYS: Studies of gases in bubbles of air in polar ice sheets reveal that in prehistoric hot periods temperatures began rising before C02 levels. So increasing concentrations of the gas are the result, not the cause of global warming.
GORE SAYS: "It's a complicated relationship, but the most important part of it is this: when there is more C02 in the atmosphere, the temperature increases." He shows two graphs of rising temperature and C02 levels over the past 600,000 years and says they "fit together".
WE SAY: Temperature and C02 are bound together. When one goes up, the other will follow. In prehistory temperatures often started rising 800 years before levels of the gas, and Gore evades this point. But it is irrelevant to what is happening now, because for the first time ever enormous amounts of extra C02 are being released.
The Arctic
DURKIN SAYS: Recent reports of how the amount of ice in the Arctic is shrinking have been exaggerated. The Arctic has always contracted and expanded over history.
GORE SAYS: The Arctic is a "canary in the coal mine". Since the 1970s ,the extent and thickness of its ice cap has "diminished precipitously". If we continue as we are, it will disappear during summers, profoundly changing the climate.
WE SAY: The amount of the ice ebbs and flows with natural warmings and coolings of the climate, and part of this shrinking is probably due to that. But this is being increased by global warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases, and these continue to go up. The Arctic is likely to be free of ice by 2050, for the first time in millions of years.
The sun
DURKIN SAYS: The sun is the main cause of global warming. The sun's activity increases from time to time, with increased solar flares, cutting down on cloud formation and raising temperatures on Earth. This activity correlates well with warmer periods over the past several hundred years.
GORE SAYS: The culprit is humanity's emissions of "huge quantities" of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which trap more of the infrared radiation of the sun that would otherwise escape out into space.
WE SAY: Variations in solar activity may have been responsible for past warm periods, though it's hard to be entirely sure because we have been taking good measurements of it only since 1978. But recent solar increases are too small to have produced the present warming, and have been much less important than greenhouse gases since about 1850.
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2326210.ece
China goes for green before growth
Rowan Callick,
China correspondent
March 06, 2007
The Australian
CHINA has announced a sweeping program to shut some of its most polluting factories in a green initiative that is likely to cut its economic growth this year to 8 per cent from 10.7 per cent last year.
Premier Wen Jiabao used his state of the nation address yesterday to unveil environmental initiatives that would close a massive section of China's old heavy industry.
The initiatives also ban the wasteful use of land, including building golf courses and free-standing homes.
Launching the annual session of the National People's Congress, Mr Wen said future economic growth would hinge on "environmentally friendly industries".
Projects would be assessed for "energy consumption and environmental impact". Those that failed to meet such standards would be stopped. Mr Wen said China would close "backward" iron foundries with a production capacity of less than 30 million tonnes and "backward" steel mills that could produce 35million tonnes.
Source
China correspondent
March 06, 2007
The Australian
CHINA has announced a sweeping program to shut some of its most polluting factories in a green initiative that is likely to cut its economic growth this year to 8 per cent from 10.7 per cent last year.
Premier Wen Jiabao used his state of the nation address yesterday to unveil environmental initiatives that would close a massive section of China's old heavy industry.
The initiatives also ban the wasteful use of land, including building golf courses and free-standing homes.
Launching the annual session of the National People's Congress, Mr Wen said future economic growth would hinge on "environmentally friendly industries".
Projects would be assessed for "energy consumption and environmental impact". Those that failed to meet such standards would be stopped. Mr Wen said China would close "backward" iron foundries with a production capacity of less than 30 million tonnes and "backward" steel mills that could produce 35million tonnes.
Source
Monday, March 05, 2007
Industry closes anti-coal website
Wendy Frew,
Environment Reporter
March 5, 2007
SMH
THE mining industry has used copyright laws to close an anti-mining website launched by a small protest group in Newcastle.
The NSW Minerals Council has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a TV, print and billboard advertising campaign and launched a website extolling the virtues of mining. The campaign's slogan is "Life: brought to you by mining".
The anti-coal group Rising Tide created its own website sending up the campaign with comments such as "Rising sea levels: brought to you by mining".
The website's hosts were forced to remove it within 24 hours of its launch, after the Minerals Council issued a notice under the Copyright Regulations 1969 complaining the content and layout infringed copyright.
Rising Tide remade the website, using its own photographs and layout. However, the council lodged a second complaint.
"They are trying to silence us," said a Rising Tide member, Steve Phillips. "We have issued a counter-notice rejecting the Minerals Council's spurious claims. [It] now has 10 days in which to take the matter [to court]."
There is growing public concern about coal's contribution to climate change, and mining's threat to underground and above-ground water supplies.
The council's chief executive, Nikki Williams, said its complaint was not an attempt to silence Rising Tide. "They have to abide by the [copyright] laws," she said. However, she admitted she had not seen the revised website, and did not know if the council would take the matter to court.
Dr Williams disputed claims by Rising Tide that the council was running the campaign to counter growing concern about coal.
"It is a community awareness campaign … it is about establishing a fair voice for the mining industry; it is simply a matter of the facts," she said, referring to the benefits flowing from the industry such as jobs, cheap electricity and export revenue.
Links
http://www.miningnsw.com.au/
vs
http://www.nswmining.com.au/
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Friday, March 02, 2007
Interesting things !!
A man who was found dressed in latex and handcuffs brought a donkey to his room in a Galway city centre hotel, because he was advised “to get out and meet people,” the local court heard last week.Thomas Aloysius McCarney with an address in south Galway was charged with cruelty to animals, lewd and obscene behaviour, and with being a danger to himself when he appeared before the court on Friday. He was also charged with damage to a mini-bar in the room, but this charge was later dropped when the defendant said that it was the donkey who caused that damage.Solicitor for the accused Ms Sharon Fitzhenry said that her client had been through a difficult time lately and that his wife had left him and that his life had become increasingly lonely.“Mr McCarney has been attending counselling at which he was told that he would be advised to get out and meet people and do interesting things. It was this advice that saw him book into the city centre hotel with a donkey,” she said. She added that Mr McCarney also suffered from a fixation with the Shrek movies and could constantly be heard at work talking to himself saying things like “Isn’t that right, Donkey?”Supt John McBrearty told the court that Mr McCarney who had signed in as “ Mr Shrek” had told hotel staff that the donkey was a family pet and that this was believed by the hotel receptionist who the supt said was “young and hadn’t great English.”Receptionist Irina Legova said that Mr McCarney had told her that the donkey was a breed of “super rabbit” which he was bringing to a pet fair in the city. The court was told that the donkey went berserk in the middle of the night and ran amok in the hotel corridor, forcing hotel staff to call the gardai. McCarney was found in the room wearing a latex suit and handcuffs, the key to which the donkey is believed to have swallowed. He was removed to Mill St station after which it is said he was the subject of much mirth among the lads next door in The Galway Arms.He was fined €2,000 for bringing the donkey to the room under the Unlawful Accommodation of Donkeys Act 1837. Other charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.
http://www.galwayfirst.ie/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=114&Itemid=99999999
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Still time to save the world, scientists say
March 1, 2007
SMH
WRENCHING worldwide climate changes can no longer be avoided, but there is still time to stave off the worst consequences of global warming, an international research team says.
The scientists from 11 countries urged sweeping conservation measures to hold the expected increase in temperatures to no more than an average of 2 degrees globally - less than half the expected increase if emissions of greenhouse gas and soot continue unabated.
The scientists called for dramatic actions ranging from carbon taxes and a ban on conventional coal-fired power plants to an end to all beachfront construction worldwide. The researchers were funded by the non-profit UN Foundation and the research society Sigma Xi.
To meet the scientists' goal, global carbon dioxide emissions must level off by 2015 and then drop by two-thirds by 2100.
They urged stricter fuel efficiency standards, as well as fuel taxes, registration fees and rebates that favour more efficient transport, which today is responsible for 40 per cent of the world's carbon emissions.
The researchers also recommended expanded use of biofuels to reduce dependence on the oil that accounts for one-quarter of the world's carbon emissions. They endorsed broader use of nuclear power, if it can be made safer.
In addition, the scientists called for improved designs of appliances and office equipment and "greener" buildings. Taken together, heating, cooling and lighting buildings accounts for almost 30 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Los Angeles Times
SMH
WRENCHING worldwide climate changes can no longer be avoided, but there is still time to stave off the worst consequences of global warming, an international research team says.
The scientists from 11 countries urged sweeping conservation measures to hold the expected increase in temperatures to no more than an average of 2 degrees globally - less than half the expected increase if emissions of greenhouse gas and soot continue unabated.
The scientists called for dramatic actions ranging from carbon taxes and a ban on conventional coal-fired power plants to an end to all beachfront construction worldwide. The researchers were funded by the non-profit UN Foundation and the research society Sigma Xi.
To meet the scientists' goal, global carbon dioxide emissions must level off by 2015 and then drop by two-thirds by 2100.
They urged stricter fuel efficiency standards, as well as fuel taxes, registration fees and rebates that favour more efficient transport, which today is responsible for 40 per cent of the world's carbon emissions.
The researchers also recommended expanded use of biofuels to reduce dependence on the oil that accounts for one-quarter of the world's carbon emissions. They endorsed broader use of nuclear power, if it can be made safer.
In addition, the scientists called for improved designs of appliances and office equipment and "greener" buildings. Taken together, heating, cooling and lighting buildings accounts for almost 30 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
Los Angeles Times
International panel presents U.N. with climate change plan
By CHARLES J. HANLEYAP
Special CorrespondentPublished:
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – An international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan on Tuesday to combat climate change – a challenge, it said, “to which civilization must rise.”Failure would produce a turbulent 21st century of weather extremes, spreading drought and disease, expanding oceans and displaced coastal populations, it said.“The increasing numbers of environmental refugees as sea levels rise and storm surges increase will be in the tens of millions,” panel co-chair Rosina Bierbaum, a University of Michigan ecologist, told reporters.
After a two-year study, the 18-member group, representing 11 nations, offered scores of recommendations: from pouring billions more dollars into research and development of cleaner energy sources, to mobilizing U.N. and other agencies to help affected people, to winning political agreement on a global temperature “ceiling.”Their 166-page report, produced at U.N. request and sponsored by the private United Nations Foundation and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, was issued just three weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, made headlines with its latest assessment of climate science.The IPCC expressed its greatest confidence yet that global warming is being caused largely by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from man’s burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. If nothing’s done, it said, global temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
Temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Tuesday's report said the world’s nations should agree to limit further rises this century to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.Beyond that, “we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on human well-being would rise very rapidly,” said panel member John P. Holdren, director of Massachusetts’ Woods Hole Research Center.The experts panel said global carbon dioxide emissions should be leveled off by 2015-2020, and then cut back to less than one-third that level by 2100, via a vast transformation of global energy systems – toward greater efficiency, away from fossil fuels, and toward biofuels, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
That changeover would be spurred by heavy “carbon taxes” or “cap-and-trade” systems, whereby industries’ emissions are capped by governments, and more efficient companies can sell unused allowances to less efficient ones.Such schemes _ already in use in Europe under the Kyoto Protocol climate pact _ have been proposed in the U.S. Congress, but are opposed by the Bush administration, which rejects Kyoto.The White House points to what it says is spending of almost $3 billion a year on energy-technology research and development as its major contribution to combatting climate change. But Holdren said other calculations put spending at under $2 billion, and it's "far from proportionate to either the size of the challenge or the size of the opportunities."
Tuesday's report said such research budgets worldwide are badly underfunded, and require a tripling or quadrupling, to $45 billion or $60 billion a year.Billions more should go toward work on cellulose as a biofuel, overcoming the problems of nuclear energy, reducing solar electricity's cost, and developing other cleaner energy sources, Holdren said. He said intensified research is particularly needed for carbon capture and sequestration _ technology to capture carbon dioxide in power-plant emissions and store it underground.In fact, the experts panel urged governments to immediately ban all new coal-fired power plants except those designed for eventual retrofitting of sequestration technology.
The panel's other co-chair is biodiversity expert Peter H. Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden director and past president of Sigma Xi.
Special CorrespondentPublished:
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
UNITED NATIONS (AP) – An international panel of scientists presented the United Nations with a sweeping, detailed plan on Tuesday to combat climate change – a challenge, it said, “to which civilization must rise.”Failure would produce a turbulent 21st century of weather extremes, spreading drought and disease, expanding oceans and displaced coastal populations, it said.“The increasing numbers of environmental refugees as sea levels rise and storm surges increase will be in the tens of millions,” panel co-chair Rosina Bierbaum, a University of Michigan ecologist, told reporters.
After a two-year study, the 18-member group, representing 11 nations, offered scores of recommendations: from pouring billions more dollars into research and development of cleaner energy sources, to mobilizing U.N. and other agencies to help affected people, to winning political agreement on a global temperature “ceiling.”Their 166-page report, produced at U.N. request and sponsored by the private United Nations Foundation and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, was issued just three weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists, made headlines with its latest assessment of climate science.The IPCC expressed its greatest confidence yet that global warming is being caused largely by the accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, mostly from man’s burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels. If nothing’s done, it said, global temperatures could rise as much as 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
Temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. Tuesday's report said the world’s nations should agree to limit further rises this century to no more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.Beyond that, “we would be in a regime where the danger of intolerable and unmanageable impacts on human well-being would rise very rapidly,” said panel member John P. Holdren, director of Massachusetts’ Woods Hole Research Center.The experts panel said global carbon dioxide emissions should be leveled off by 2015-2020, and then cut back to less than one-third that level by 2100, via a vast transformation of global energy systems – toward greater efficiency, away from fossil fuels, and toward biofuels, solar, wind and other renewable energy sources.
That changeover would be spurred by heavy “carbon taxes” or “cap-and-trade” systems, whereby industries’ emissions are capped by governments, and more efficient companies can sell unused allowances to less efficient ones.Such schemes _ already in use in Europe under the Kyoto Protocol climate pact _ have been proposed in the U.S. Congress, but are opposed by the Bush administration, which rejects Kyoto.The White House points to what it says is spending of almost $3 billion a year on energy-technology research and development as its major contribution to combatting climate change. But Holdren said other calculations put spending at under $2 billion, and it's "far from proportionate to either the size of the challenge or the size of the opportunities."
Tuesday's report said such research budgets worldwide are badly underfunded, and require a tripling or quadrupling, to $45 billion or $60 billion a year.Billions more should go toward work on cellulose as a biofuel, overcoming the problems of nuclear energy, reducing solar electricity's cost, and developing other cleaner energy sources, Holdren said. He said intensified research is particularly needed for carbon capture and sequestration _ technology to capture carbon dioxide in power-plant emissions and store it underground.In fact, the experts panel urged governments to immediately ban all new coal-fired power plants except those designed for eventual retrofitting of sequestration technology.
The panel's other co-chair is biodiversity expert Peter H. Raven, Missouri Botanical Garden director and past president of Sigma Xi.
Climate change 'a campaign of alarmism'
By Denis Peters
February 28, 2007
Article from: AAP
A CONCERTED and well-organised campaign has created alarm over human-induced climate change, industrial magnate Sir Arvi Parbo says.
Sir Arvi also said today key international reports warning of climate change, including Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, are biased and scrutiny of them has been suppressed.
The former head of Western Mining Corporation, BHP and Alcoa Australia, is the keynote speaker at a gathering of climate change sceptics being hosted by Western Australian Liberal MP Dr Dennis Jensen, at Parliament House.
It also is supported by the Lavoisier Group, an Australian organisation set up as a base for climate change sceptics.
One of the founders of the Lavoisier Group is former WMC chief executive Hugh Morgan, one of the businessmen who have formed a company to look at building Australia's first nuclear reactor.
The occasion will also serve as the launch of a new book, entitled Nine Facts About Climate Change, by former Institute of Public Affairs head Ray Evans.
Sir Arvi said he had kept an open mind through 20 years of listening to debate about climate change but was now witnessing a "semi-religious fervour" overshadowing it.
"One must admire the skilful way in which the public has been led to believe that there is no longer any uncertainty, and that disastrous climate change caused by humans is imminent," he said.
"The appointment of Mr Al Gore as adviser to the UK Government on climate change is a good example.
"I am not aware of Mr Gore's ranking as a climate scientist but he has undoubted credentials as a politician and someone who knows how to influence public opinion.
"His film, The Inconvenient Truth has been widely publicised, has been seen by, and has influenced millions of people around the world.
"It has been severely criticised for deliberately and grossly exaggerating and distorting the issues and I understand that the recently published summary for policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contradicts a number of Mr Gore's major contentions.
"This, in contrast, has had virtually no publicity and no effect on the public."
Sir Arvi said the review of the economic impact of climate change by former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern had been found to be biased and alarming and neither accurate nor objective by a review of distinguished scientists.
"As far as I am aware, this criticism has not been answered," he said.
"An uninvolved observer has to conclude that there has been a concerted and well-organised campaign to create worldwide apprehension and alarm.
"Reading and listening to the media and to political discussion, this campaign has succeeded. In fact it may have succeeded too well."
Greens climate change spokeswoman Senator Christine Milne later described the forum as "the last gasp of the Dad's Army of sceptics". "What they try to do is give the impression that climate change science is uncertain," she said.
"They've been reasonably successful because they've been well funded, as with the tobacco industry before them.
"Now this group of people is trying to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.
"They are backed by the coal industry and the oil industry."
She said the Lavoisier Group was associated with the Liberal Party and right-wing bodies such as the HR Nicholls Society.
"They are a joke in terms of climate science but they are actually a cost to future generations because they confuse the public when there is now no doubt about the science."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21303658-1702,00.html
February 28, 2007
Article from: AAP
A CONCERTED and well-organised campaign has created alarm over human-induced climate change, industrial magnate Sir Arvi Parbo says.
Sir Arvi also said today key international reports warning of climate change, including Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, are biased and scrutiny of them has been suppressed.
The former head of Western Mining Corporation, BHP and Alcoa Australia, is the keynote speaker at a gathering of climate change sceptics being hosted by Western Australian Liberal MP Dr Dennis Jensen, at Parliament House.
It also is supported by the Lavoisier Group, an Australian organisation set up as a base for climate change sceptics.
One of the founders of the Lavoisier Group is former WMC chief executive Hugh Morgan, one of the businessmen who have formed a company to look at building Australia's first nuclear reactor.
The occasion will also serve as the launch of a new book, entitled Nine Facts About Climate Change, by former Institute of Public Affairs head Ray Evans.
Sir Arvi said he had kept an open mind through 20 years of listening to debate about climate change but was now witnessing a "semi-religious fervour" overshadowing it.
"One must admire the skilful way in which the public has been led to believe that there is no longer any uncertainty, and that disastrous climate change caused by humans is imminent," he said.
"The appointment of Mr Al Gore as adviser to the UK Government on climate change is a good example.
"I am not aware of Mr Gore's ranking as a climate scientist but he has undoubted credentials as a politician and someone who knows how to influence public opinion.
"His film, The Inconvenient Truth has been widely publicised, has been seen by, and has influenced millions of people around the world.
"It has been severely criticised for deliberately and grossly exaggerating and distorting the issues and I understand that the recently published summary for policymakers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change contradicts a number of Mr Gore's major contentions.
"This, in contrast, has had virtually no publicity and no effect on the public."
Sir Arvi said the review of the economic impact of climate change by former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern had been found to be biased and alarming and neither accurate nor objective by a review of distinguished scientists.
"As far as I am aware, this criticism has not been answered," he said.
"An uninvolved observer has to conclude that there has been a concerted and well-organised campaign to create worldwide apprehension and alarm.
"Reading and listening to the media and to political discussion, this campaign has succeeded. In fact it may have succeeded too well."
Greens climate change spokeswoman Senator Christine Milne later described the forum as "the last gasp of the Dad's Army of sceptics". "What they try to do is give the impression that climate change science is uncertain," she said.
"They've been reasonably successful because they've been well funded, as with the tobacco industry before them.
"Now this group of people is trying to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry.
"They are backed by the coal industry and the oil industry."
She said the Lavoisier Group was associated with the Liberal Party and right-wing bodies such as the HR Nicholls Society.
"They are a joke in terms of climate science but they are actually a cost to future generations because they confuse the public when there is now no doubt about the science."
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21303658-1702,00.html
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