Powershift 2009

Earth to Senator Fielding – Are you for freaking real !?

There has been a dreadful sense of deja vu this last fortnight as Australia’s lone Family First senator (and local village idiot) jets back and forth the planet on a one man mission to uncover the truth about global warming.

It would be gut-achingly funny if it wasn’t so heart-breakingly serious.

Here are some recent quotes from our man Steve:

It is absolutely crazy for Australia to go it alone.

Sheesh! There is absolutely no risk that Australia, the world’s largest per capita polluter, will step forward alone!  Much of the developed world is already streets ahead and are tracking downwards with respect to emissions.

We need to see what the rest of the world are going to do, and then Australia can respond.

You selfish, petty, miserable man.  He is suggesting here that Australia, with one of the highest standards of living in the world, should wait for poorer countries to act first.  Progress is never made in this way.  The only way to convince others to join the party is to act quickly and boldly.

I’m not a climate change sceptic, I’m not a climate change extremist, what I am is very open minded.

A bit too open minded Steve.  Becoming fixated on the minority views of partisan bit-players rather the great weight of scientists internationally.  Your open-mindedness causes policy paralysis and endangers us all.  Like the open-minded parent of a child with suspected meningitis.  Sure, let’s not act until we’re %100 certain.

As an engineer, I have been trained to listen to both sides of the debate in order to make an informed decision about any issue. Any scientist worth their salt will tell you that in order to form a conclusive view about any topic, you need to properly explore all available possibilities.

C’mon mate. You’re sounding as if you’re the first one to tackle these questions.  Scientists have been looking at these things for decades Steve.  The problem is not that we haven’t debated all the issues, the problem is that THIS IS ALL WE HAVE DONE!

Has the Minister seen modelling which shows that solar radiation is highly correlated to global temperature changes?

Steve, there is no upward trend in solar radiation in the last few decades.  Moreover nights are getting warmer faster than days, and winters faster than summers.  This is not consistent with solar radiation causing global warming.  IT’S NOT THE SUN, DUDE ! IT’S US !

None of this means that I support the current Emissions Trading Scheme legislation before the Australian Parliament.  I tend to sympathise with the Greens on this issue.  I feel that it is more important that we take a target of 40% below 1990 by 2020 to Copenhagen, and we need to state that up front.

Oh Steve, what shall we do with you?

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown at a weekend climate rally

Is Melbourne our greenest city?

Images from the recent climate change protest on St Kilda beach in Melbourne made me ponder this question.   A city that capitalises on trams and a walkable CBD and one that holds an annual sustainability expo.  Just a few signs that Melbourne may be Australia’s greenest city.

Click image to enlarge.  More coverage here.

St Kilda beach protest

Twitter jumps the shark

from flickr user: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten

I’ll readily admit I’m often behind the times when taking to the latest internet fad. I never really took much notice of Twitter. While blogging may seem like the ultimate vanity, the idea behind Twitter seemed to take this one step further. I don’t believe people care terribly about “what you’re doing right now…”.

My views on this have hardened further this week. I noticed a “follow us on Twitter” sign at the local swim school that my child attends. OK, so I might be a little bit interested in what celebrities or pre-eminent people are doing. But I couldn’t give much of a rats about what the swim school is up to in terms of hourly updates.

There’s been a noticeable upsurge in coverage of Twitter in the press this last week or two. All this is evidence enough for me that this particular fad has “jumped the shark“.

Ronald Wright on civilisations, progress and the future of humanity

Ronald Wright

Rarely have I heard someone speak so clearly and comprehensively about the future of the planet, the growth=progress paradigm and why we need a completely new understanding of how to organise societies.

Take a listen:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2548406.htm

You know it must be bad when……..

Shell urges Turnbull to pass climate scheme

Raj Patel on food, power and why the WTO should be abolished

Listen here (from ABC radio national)

Robert Manne chastises the Australian’s Plimer-worship

Some points go to the Oz for printing a critical view from Robert Manne:

Cheerleading for zealotry not in the public interest

LAST week, The Weekend Australian published three pieces enthusiastically welcoming the publication of Ian Plimer’s new anti-climate science book, Heaven and Earth – Global Warming: The Missing Science: an overwhelmingly favourable editorial, a lengthy interview with the author and a column by Christopher Pearson of gushing praise. In these three pieces not one word of criticism of Plimer was to be found.

It might have been supposed that the editors of this newspaper would wonder about the capacity for fair-mindedness of a geologist who describes the entire climate science community as “the forces of darkness”; who recently told Adelaide’s The Advertiser that his book would singlehandedly “knock out” not one or several but “every argument we hear about climate change”; and who, in earlier work, had spent considerable energy trying to prove that Noah’s Ark was a myth, the intellectual equivalent of a zoologist seeking to dispose of the belief that the serpent in the Garden of Eden could really have spoken to Eve.

Yet apparently, despite such obvious signs of zealotry, the editors at this newspaper experienced no doubts

Continued here.

Ian Plimer – Heaven and Earth

Though the book has only just hit the book shelves, mainstream science is debunking Plimer’s “Heaven and Earth“.   Check out Barry Brook’s early impressions.