Wanderings of a gunzel.....

Poorest of the poor ask why Copenhagen failed to listen

2010-01-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Shorbanu Khatun of Bangladesh stood out among the thousands of suited negotiators in Copenhagen. Khatun's husband was killed by a tiger when their land was parched by extended dry seasons and flooded with salt water, forcing him to venture into the jungle to feed his family.

Then in May, Cyclone Aila destroyed Khatun's home, along with those of 500,000 others, forcing her to live in an internally displaced persons' camp on an embankment with thousands of other survivors. At high tide, they are flooded up to their chests. It is hard to imagine a more arduous existence.

Khatun describes her experience over five years: "Everything seems to have changed. It is suddenly too hot. There is a severe scarcity of rain. Because it is too hot, fish have reduced significantly in the river. Skin diseases, headache and diarrhoea have become regular phenomena . . . I want justice for my life; for my children's lives and livelihoods."

But it's hard to see how the Copenhagen Accord delivers justice to people in poor countries that are least responsible for climate change but suffer its impacts right now.

The accord is an empty political statement, shredding two years of negotiations down to 2½ pages of purely aspirational goals.

While it recognises the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be kept below 2 degrees, it does not set out a trajectory for achieving this.

In February, countries will list their emissions reduction targets, which will be voluntary. They will have little to do with climate science and everything to do with the political climate in capitals around the world. If this is all the world can muster, we can expect a world that is 3.9 degrees warmer, year-round droughts in southern Africa, and water shortages affecting up to 4 billion additional people.

The promised $US100 billion a year by 2020, aimed at helping poor countries reduce their emissions and adapt to a changing climate, is less than half the amount needed. And the sad reality is the most vulnerable people will be lucky to get even a fraction of this amount, with rich countries likely to divert cash from existing aid commitments.

Nor is it clear how much will come from the public purse. But unless it does, there is no guarantee it will reach the right people in the right places. Crucially, the accord excludes the innovative revenue-raising mechanisms that could guarantee predictable flows of public money.

Developing countries were faced with an impossible choice between endorsing this inadequate compromise or watching the talks collapse.

Access to money was offered only to those countries that agreed to the accord. But the accord is not legally binding, nor does it set a timeline for reaching a legally binding agreement. It has as much chance of being honoured as a New Year's resolution. We have no choice but to continue negotiating as soon as possible. A fair, safe and legally binding agreement must be reached in early 2010.

The Australian Government should see this accord as a floor, not a ceiling. It will be hard to encourage countries such as the US and China to make real progress on climate change, if our ambitions remain low.

Australia, as one of the highest per-capita polluters in the world, and the developed country most at risk from climate change, must increase its target to a science-based 40 per cent by the February deadline. We must also contribute our fair share of climate finance, based on our historical responsibility for emissions and our capacity to pay. With Treasurer Wayne Swan yesterday lauding Australia's 19th consecutive year of growth, we can afford to do this.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd must make clear to Australians that significant changes - in our economy, our society and our relationships with the rest of the world - are needed to meet the climate change crisis.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has been irresponsible in simplifying the complex debate to trite sloganeering. As the alternative leader of our nation, he needs to understand that an effective response demands change, and this will have some costs now.

As numerous studies have shown, the cost of inaction will be far greater - it will cost the Australia dearly if we see a drop in agricultural yields in the country's food bowl, or have to cope with a rise in the number of catastrophic bushfires and severe weather events.

Globally, 300,000 people die each year from climate change and that number is rising. People like Khatun are not victims; they are finding solutions. But they need the support of the rich countries that are responsible for three-quarters of the carbon in the atmosphere.

Khatun has now headed back to the camp she and other victims of Cyclone Aila have called home for seven months. "How do I tell them their misery has fallen on deaf ears?" she asks.

Andrew Hewett is executive director of Oxfam Australia.

Source: The Age

Philippines storm death toll nears 100

2009-09-27T13:49:00.001-07:00

Philippines News.Net
Sunday 27th September, 2009 (IANS)

Nearly 100 people were killed as tropical storm Ketsana battered a wide area in the Philippines, dumping record rainfall on the capital that caused the worst flooding in 40 years, officials said Sunday.

Fifty people were also missing in floods and landslides following rains that exceeded what Hurricane Katrina dumped on New Orleans in August 2005, local officials and military spokesmen said.

Authorities rushed rescue and relief efforts to thousands of people who spent the night on the roofs of submerged houses in Manila and surrounding provinces. Some were trapped in their cars on flooded streets.

Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said soldiers and volunteers rescued more than 5,000 drenched people from rooftops as the weather improved and floods receded in affected municipalities on Sunday.

'Our target is to finish the rescue operations before dark today,' he said. 'We have mobilized our air assets to find the people who need help and direct our forces there. We will continue our rescue operations until everyone that needs help is reached.'

The US government dispatched a helicopter and additional rubber boats to help in the rescue operations. Various UN agencies also donated funds to assist relief operations.

Rizal province east of Manila was one of the worst hit. One municipality in the province, Cainta, was almost completely submerged in floodwaters and still unreachable on Sunday.

At least 56 people died in floods in the province, provincial Governor Casimiro Ynares III said.

'Forty-five are still missing,' he said. 'We really need more rubber boats. We can't get through roads that are flooded. In some areas, the roads are blocked by stranded vehicles.'

Lieutenant Colonel Noel Detoyato, a civil military operations officer, said soldiers recovered 30 bodies in the town of Tanay alone in Rizal. The other fatalities drowned in the towns of Angono, Baras, Rodriguez, Teresa and San Mateo.

At least 11 people drowned in the Manila suburb of Marikina. The bodies were laid out on the streets as rescuers struggled to reach some isolated areas.

Thirty more people either drowned, were electrocuted, buried in landslides, struck by fallen trees and collapsed walls or suffered a heart attack in Manila, as well as the provinces of Laguna, Batangas, Quezon, Cavite and Apayao.

Detoyato said the fatalities in Laguna included two soldiers and three government militiamen who were dispatched to rescue flood victims in Pami town.

'The ill-fated team rescued more than 20 people before they were swept away by the strong current,' he said. 'Two other militiamen were missing.'

The weather bureau said the rainfall recorded Saturday in Manila was the capital's heaviest since 1967.

Nilo Prisco, head of the weather bureau, said the storm dumped 410.6 mm of rain in Manila in just nine hours, which was almost double the rainfall brought about by Hurricane Katrina.

The amount also exceeded the average monthly rainfall of 391 millimetres and the 1967 record of 331 millimetres.

'We can only attribute this to climate change,' Prisco said.

School classes in all levels were suspended for tomorrow (Monday) in Manila and the affected provinces to allow unhampered relief operations.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council said more than 290,000 people were affected by Ketsana, which has strengthened as it moved away from the Philippines. More than 47,000 were in evacuation centres, it added.

The weather bureau said the storm was packing maximum winds of 105 km per hour (kmph) and gusts of up to 135 kmph. It was moving west-north-west at 24 kmph towards the South China Sea.

Doom is lurking forth! Fresh for you today!

2009-09-25T15:33:00.000-07:00

Water wars forecast as feeding India's hungry leaves the land thirsty.

September 26, 2009

Farmers who can no longer irrigate fear nothing will be left to drink, writes Matt Wade.

BALAWAS VILLAGE, Haryana: India is destined for water wars, one of its leading environmentalists has concluded after studying the effects of modern agriculture for more than 20 years.

''In a decade India could look like Darfur in Sudan,'' says Dr Vandana Shiva, a nuclear physicist turned environmental activist. ''When you run out of water it's a recipe for killing. Water really makes people so desperate.''

A patchy monsoon on the subcontinent this year has hit crops, particularly rice, highlighting the region's vulnerability to water shortages. But the problem is much bigger than one poor wet season.

In Haryana and Punjab, two states crucial to India's food security, farmers are drawing too much groundwater. Dubbed the subcontinent's breadbasket, this region has been the heartland of the country's green revolution since the mid-1960s. The high-yielding crop varieties grown here have enabled the country to feed its huge, fast-growing population. But the hybrid crops of the green revolution require a lot of water, as well as fertiliser and pesticides.

Farmers in Punjab and Haryana are now drilling deeper and deeper for water and the crop yields that once rose year after year have stagnated.

Last year the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, told an international agriculture conference there was a ''persistent feeling that the first green revolution has run its course … we need a second green revolution''. But a second resource-intensive agricultural revolution is not sustainable.

An analysis of NASA satellite data taken over north-western India from 2002 to 2008 found aquifers were disappearing at an alarming rate. The study warned of the potential ''collapse of agriculture'' and severe shortages of drinking water in the region unless things changed.

Associate Professor Raj Kumar Jhorar, a soil and water specialist at Haryana Agricultural University, says too many farmers have switched to water-intensive crops such as rice, wheat and cotton. His research shows that the area of rice under cultivation in Haryana has risen by about 430 per cent since the late 1960s, cotton by 230 per cent and wheat by more than 200 per cent. ''This just isn't sustainable,'' he says.

A Punjab Government draft water policy document published last year said the state's water was being polluted by industrial waste, sewage and excessive pesticide use in agriculture. ''This can adversely affect the health of the populace and may cause diseases like cancer, skin diseases and miscarriage cases,'' it said.

These reports only confirm what local farmers already know.

Chatan Singh, a farmer in Balawas, has planted two crops in his fields since June but both have failed because of the scanty monsoon. A few years ago this would have been unthinkable because tubewells and a nearby canal could have made up for any shortfall in rain. But the canal recently ran dry and the tubewells are suddenly spewing out unusable saline water.

When this year's rains went truant, Chatan Singh's crops withered, leaving the father of eight deep in debt.

''This is new,'' he says. ''Once there was good water from the rains, the canal and the tubewells, but now it's scarce.''

He and his neighbours now drink the saline water that comes from the ground. Tests by a local university showed it was not fit for regular consumption but the villagers keep drinking. They have no alternative.

Shiva says water shortages could split communities along deeply entrenched divisions of caste and religion.

''What we will start seeing is localised conflicts over water,'' she says. ''As livelihoods evaporate, along with water, you will see all sorts of cracks opening up in society.''

Conflict is also possible between the majority rural population and the bursting cities.

''People with power live in cities and as the water crisis is deepening what remains is being increasingly delivered to the cities,'' Shiva says.

She is monitoring eight big river diversions to provide cities with more water.

Farmers in Balawas do not quibble with her prediction of violent conflict about water.

''Our wives already squabble over drinking water so when it gets to agricultural water there will be a much bigger fight,'' says one farmer, Jai Singh Sharma. His family owns 16 hectares of land in Balawas but he now plants crops on less than half a hectare because of a lack of water.

''Our wells are no longer giving us what we need,'' he says. ''If our water supply keeps receding at this rate we will see violence.''

At Dauatpur village, about 50 kilometres from Balawas, the farmers are just as pessimistic.

Kulbhushan Sharma, whose family owns six hectares, says he has been forced to drill his wells deeper, especially in the past five years.

''Slowly, slowly, year by year, things are going from bad to worse,'' he says.

''If this goes on it will be the end. Forget water for farming - we won't even have any to drink. The whole of India will be affected.''

There have been bitter fights recently about the dwindling supply of canal water in Dauatpur.

''The violence has started,'' Sharma says. Last month a gang of farmers at Aurangabad in the poverty-stricken state of Bihar gained nationwide publicity when they took up arms to guard their watered fields. They said people from nearby villages were trying to divert water towards their fields. They were ready to kill or be killed to protect their water.

''We don't want a fight but if someone diverts the canal water then how will we irrigate our fields?'' one of the armed men, Narendra Singh, told a local TV station.

The Government has been urged to manage water more effectively and to improve the patchy maintenance of the country's vast canal systems. The Punjab Government recently banned farmers from planting paddy rice until after the monsoon arrives in an attempt to save water.

However, political imperatives have stifled sensible reforms. Water is not priced appropriately and most farmers have free electricity to run their groundwater pumps. This encourages waste.

As if India's water problems were not enough already, global warming threatens to make them much worse. Scientists predict the annual monsoon, on which about 40 per cent of farmers depend, is likely to become more unpredictable as the country adds more than 20 million new mouths to feed every year. It is no wonder some locals are starting to fear the worst.

Distracted...

2009-09-19T13:52:00.000-07:00

Yes for a moment, lets take a small break from all the negativity about. At times it is good to pause from the daily diet, thrust down our gaping gullets, of stabbings, massacres, abuse, homeless crazies, violent sportsfans, shootings, ram raids, out of control teenagers, useless politicians, scientology nuts, artificially impregnated marsupials, etc etc.
Yes, pull up a pew, forget your mind numbing, brain deadending job, and just watch what wanders by....
For a change...!

Populate and perish: Sydney's time bomb

2009-09-19T13:39:00.000-07:00

As one can see, quite clearly, Sydneys population is going to, and allready expanding in some quite fearsome ways.
Again, hornbag photography comes to our rescue, in showing in a best practice, ISO 9002 way, just how these changes are going to affect us all, in these 2 shots sauced only minutes apart.

PAUL BIBBY, MATTHEW MOORE AND JACOB SAULWICK

September 19, 2009
SYDNEY in 2049 will be a vast urban sprawl stretching from Newcastle to Wollongong that as many as seven million people will call home, experts say.

Yesterday's revelation by the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, that Australia's population will swell to 35 million in 40 years has forced a reconsideration of whether Sydney can cope.

Demographers from the Australian National University predicted Sydney's population could grow to 6.9 million by 2049, an increase of 2.6 million.

The director of the Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute, Peter McDonald, said the natural constraint of the Blue Mountains would force the city to spread to the north and south, until it eventually met growing populations in Newcastle and Wollongong.

''I think you will see the coming together of those three cities into a single urban area,'' Professor McDonald said.

''It isn't simply that the Sydney metropolitan area will continue to grow. I think at some point people will actually choose Wollongong and Newcastle over Sydney to avoid the crowding and congestion and the cost of living.

''But the end result is that they will probably end up living in a larger metropolitan area anyway, with Sydney at its centre and a continuous urban link to those regional centres.''

Planners and experts in health and sustainability said a 50 per cent increase in Sydney's population would require tens of thousands of additional hospital beds and nearly a million new homes. The amount of water consumed for household use would increase from 1.3 billion litres a day to 2.1 billion litres, requiring a far greater utilisation of water recycling or a new dam.

''In the Sydney basin we may not be able to sustainably meet this population increase,'' said Dr Chris Dey, a sustainability expert from the University of Sydney. ''We need greater diversification - more harvesting, recycling, more reuse of waste water.''

Stuart White from the University of Technology's Institute for Sustainable Futures said public transport and housing would be greater challenges. ''These are major pieces of infrastructure that must be integrated into the city on a mass scale and that is an extremely difficult task, particularly when you're starting from the position we're in now.''

While the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, welcomed the population increase, Labor backbencher Kelvin Thompson said Australia was ''sleepwalking into an environmental disaster''.

''Another 13 or 14 million people will not give us a richer country, it will spread our mineral wealth more thinly and give us a poorer one,'' Mr Thompson said. ''It will make a mockery of our obligation to pass on to our children a world in as good a condition as the one our grandparents gave to us.''

Freak tornado' kills 14 in Argentina, Brazil

2009-09-11T01:52:00.000-07:00

Ah yes, some hornbags of various shapes, sizes and colours, causing tornadoes, and freak storms, of various intensities in their local area.
Well, at least to some blokes anyway
Beware, strange weather coming to a street near you, soon!
If not, at least hornbags provide some temporary distraction.
Until the roof caves in, is blown away, or collapses into a gaping cavern.

Posted Wed Sep 9, 2009 10:00am AEST

A violent storm described as a "freak tornado" has shredded hundreds of houses and killed at least 14 people in the southern part of South America, officials said.

Northern Argentina and southern Brazil, and the small countries of Uruguay and Paraguay wedged between them, were hit by a fierce atmospheric mass packing rain, hail and winds over 120 kilometres per hour.

In northeastern Argentina, 10 people died, including seven children, authorities said.

More than 50 others were injured, and trees and power lines were toppled in the towns of Santa Rosa, Tobuna and Pozo Azul, said Ricardo Veselka Corrales, head of the local civil defence office.

Witnesses and local media described the storm as a tornado.

Meteorologists were wary, although the US National Climatic Data Centre said the area is the only place in South America with a likelihood of experiencing the high-speed spinning tubes of destructive wind.

"It could have been a tornado," said Jorge Leguizamon, of Argentina's National Meteorological Service.

"The phenomenon still hasn't been classified, experts will have to evaluate the damage."

What was clear was that "it's not normal for this area," said the provincial minister, Daniel Franco.

"We've always had very strong winds and torrential rains here but this was a phenomenon never seen before. Houses were completely destroyed," he said.

The devastation was "incredible," said the mayor of San Pedro, Orlando Wolfart, noting that several homes had been wiped from their foundations.

Television images showed a destroyed landscape, with several homes levelled and others still standing but with their roofs ripped off.

In the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, similar devastation occurred from what the region's civil defence service agreed was "a probable tornado."

Four people died when winds ravaged 37 towns and villages, knocking over more than 100 homes and blasting others with hail big enough to puncture roofs, it said in a statement.

At least another 64 people were hurt, 40 of whom were hospitalised.

One town in the state, Sao Domingos, was isolated, while several others had water and electricity supplies cut.

Flooding was widespread.

The head of the civil defence service, Major Marcio Luiz Alves, said "the real extent of the damage will be known in the next few hours."

In Sao Paulo, Latin America's biggest city, the storm turned the sky so dark that it appeared to be night, with occasional bolts of lightning and the persistent rumbling of thunder.

Heavy rain submerged 28 spots around the city and brought traffic on normally congested roads to a standstill.

Many flights were delayed at Sao Paulo's main domestic airport and pilots were being forced to rely on instruments because of zero visibility.

In Paraguay, hail stones peppered roofs and damaged some 700 rural properties.

"Damage was registered in the areas of Neembucu, San Pedro, Paraguari, Cordillera, Canindeyu and Caaguazu. Many crops were damaged," said the risk manager for the country's emergency service, Aldo Saldivar.

The change in weather saw temperatures in the capital Asuncion suddenly plunge from 35 degrees Celsius to 12 degrees.

More fresh and steaming doom!

2009-09-05T00:11:00.000-07:00

It is good to see hornbags coping with the impending doom that is laid before us.
In fact, as one can see with the HB in white boots, she is firmly giving her tongue out as a vibrant opinion to what she thinks about the impending doom, in our lifetime, of all that we know and value.
So, lets look to world class, best practice hornbags, to make void all these doom merchants who know nothing, wish to purvey before us.
After all, what would a Korean who happens to be head of the UN, and visited the Arctic at first hand, know?
Yes indeed!

World heading for abyss on climate change: UN chief.

The world is accelerating towards an abyss on climate change, the UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday, urging rapid progress in troubled talks to cut emissions and tackle global warming.

"Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss," the United Nations Secretary General said in a speech to the World Climate Conference.

Ban, who earlier this week visited the Arctic to witness first hand the changes wrought by global warming, warned that many of the "more distant scenarios" predicted by scientists were "happening now."

"Scientists have been accused for years of scaremongering. But the real scaremongers are those who say we cannot afford climate action -- that it will hold back economic growth," he said.

"They are wrong. Climate change could spell widespread disaster," Ban warned.

The UN Secretary General pinned his hopes on a summit of world leaders in New York to discuss climate change in two weeks' time. Talks on extending the Kyoto agreement on emissions cuts in time for December's Copenhagen conference had been too limited and slow, he said.

"We have 15 negotiating days left until Copenhagen. We cannot afford limited progress. We need rapid progress," he added.

"In New York, (I) expect candid and constructive discussions. I expect serious bridge building. I expect strong outcomes," Ban told delegates and ministers from some 150 countries at the meeting in Geneva.

Australia enjoys warmest winter ever

2009-08-26T23:34:00.000-07:00

Weather records have been smashed from one end of the country to the other as Australia swelters through its warmest-ever winter.

The Bureau of Meteorology has taken the unusual step of issuing a "special climate statement", confirming what many of us already knew - this winter has been very mild.

"Abnormal heat" has seen some temperature records broken by more than five degrees.

Some regions had their warmest 2009 day in the winter month of August - hotter than any summer day.

Nationally, the average winter maximum temperature is more than 1.6 degrees Celsius above average.

"Average winter maximum temperatures over Australia are likely to be the highest on record," said the Bureau's statement, issued on Wednesday.

And August was particularly warm - more than three degrees above average across the country.

"August 2009 has seen highly abnormal heat over large parts of Australia," the statement said.

The mercury soared above 37 degrees Celsius in some areas during August.

The Bureau says the hot weather was caused by a lack of cold outbreaks bringing air from the Southern Ocean, as well as clear skies and a lack of moisture.

And it's not over yet. The Bureau says the new temperature records may be broken afresh when more hot weather hits later this week.

Spring is also set to be hot.

Almost all of the country is forecast to be warmer than normal, with northern and western regions to be hardest hit.

It's also expected to be a drier spring than usual, especially in the south of the country.

Hot August nights set Australian records

2009-08-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

As one can see these hornbags have coped very well with impending dramatic climate change, sending temperatures soaring everywhere.

Australia is having a winter day of extremes as temperatures peak, winds whip, and fire threatens.

Brisbane sweltered through its hottest August day ever, while strong cold winds howled through the southern states.

The record day temperatures and strong winds in the north have fire authorities on high alert, while night temperatures have also been unusually warm.

Brisbane's August maximum temperature record of just under 33 degrees Celsius was smashed as the temperature soared to 35.4 degrees at 4.20pm (AEST) on Monday.

And the high temperatures are set to continue.

"It's an unusual event for August," Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) weather forecaster Janine Yuasa told AAP.

The hottest temperature in Queensland, according to the BoM, was 36.4 degrees at Amberley, west of Brisbane, and in the state's northwest Mount Isa reached 35.7 degrees.

"The highest minimum we've ever had in August was 17.8 back in 1950, if we get 18 degrees (on Monday night) it will be the warmest night on record so far," Ms Yuasa said.

In Canberra, 12 degrees also set a new record for the hottest August night.

Meanwhile, in Sydney a cold front expected for Monday night is in stark contrast to the previous evening when the mercury remained above 20 degrees - double the average August minimum of 8.9 degrees.

Evans Head, on the NSW north coast, recorded the state's top daytime temperature at 36.8 degrees.

Sydney's maximum temperature of 25.4 degrees was recorded just before 10am (AEST) on Monday before gales brought the temperature down along with trees and roofs in Sydney's west.

Gusts of more than 80km/h were recorded at Sydney airport and Badgery's Creek, and more than 2,300 Sydney homes were left without power.

The northeast of NSW is expected to remain hot.

Meanwhile, Victorians have been asked to be storm-ready as the state braces for three days of damaging winds and rain.

A severe weather warning has been issued and wind gusts up to 110km/h are predicted as a cold front moves across Victoria.

Hundreds of South Australian homes have lost power, as strong winds and steady rain batter the state.

After gusts of almost 100km/h blew across the state, BoM duty forecaster Simon Ching said SA had overcome the worst of the wild weather and that he expected the winds to ease.

Tuesday would remain windy, Mr Ching told AAP.

A combination of global warming and El Nino have climate experts predicting this year could be Australia's warmest in more than a decade.

BoM climatologist Karl Braganza said the temperatures this week had been very unusual with temperatures about 10 to 15 degrees above average, breaking many records.

"Some of the locations in parts of Queensland and northern NSW are recording some of the warmest temperatures in 2009 so far, including summer, so it's really quite extraordinary," Mr Braganza told AAP.

"The two factors precipitating these warmer temperatures are global warming and the El Nino in the Pacific at the moment ... when combined together lead to record temperatures.

"What's happening in the north is extraordinary ... we're smashing the August records."

Doom, allready in a town near you!

2009-08-15T16:28:00.000-07:00

Seen yesterday, this hornbag is embracing all that climate change has to offer, by lurking under a bridge in somewhat reduced clothing, performing best practice climate change embracing, moving forward.

Study links drought with rising emissions

Melissa Fyfe
August 16, 2009

DROUGHT experts have for the first time proven a link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and a decline in rainfall.

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed that the drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.

Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative said the rain had dropped away because the subtropical ridge - a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country's south - had strengthened over the past 13 years.

Last year, using sophisticated computer climate models in the United States, the scientists ran simulations with only the ''natural'' influences on temperature, such as differing levels of solar activity.

The model results showed no intensification of the subtropical ridge and no decline in rainfall.

But when human influences on the atmosphere were added to the simulations - such as greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone depletion - the models mimicked what has been observed in south-east Australia: strengthening high pressure systems and the significant loss of rain.

''It's reasonable to say that a lot of the current drought of the last 12 to 13 years is due to ongoing global warming,'' said the bureau's Bertrand Timbal.

''In the minds of a lot of people the rainfall we had in the 1950s, '60s and '70s was a benchmark. A lot of our [water and agriculture] planning was done during that time. But we are just not going to have that sort of good rain again as long as the system is warming up.''

Dr Timbal said that 80 per cent of the rain loss in south-east Australia could be attributed to the intensification of the subtropical ridge. The research program covers the Murray-Darling Basin, including parts of NSW, all of Victoria and parts of South Australia.

Monash University’s Neville Nicholls, a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who has also published work on the subtropical ridge, said he believed the research program’s results were right.

"We did think that the loss of rain was simply due to the [rain-bearing] storms shifting south, off the continent," Professor Nicholls said. "Now we know the reason they have slipped south is that the subtropical ridge has become more intense. It is getting bigger and stronger and that is pushing the rain storms further south."

The scientific results have implications for many State Government water programs and drought funding, some of which factor in climate change and some of which do not. Projections for the water coming to Melbourne in the north-south pipe, for instance, are based on the assumption that Victoria will return to rainfall levels of last century.

The Victorian Farmers Federation new president, Andrew Broad, said he would not speculate about whether there was a connection between drought and climate change.

"I have a healthy scepticism for scientists," he said. "But I will say that the doomsday people in climate change are robbing people of hope at a time when that’s all they’ve got left."

Melbourne’s dams get roughly a third less water than they did before the drought began in October 1996.

We are stewing in our own oven

2009-07-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

Yes today again proving that global warming is at a train station near you, these stewing hornbags were sauced by one's BIG lens, in a somewhat heated state, in keeping with the situation...you have been warned! Or warmed as the case may be!

You, reader, live in a primitive city. In a hundred years from now, the society we are building will look back and marvel at how little we really understood about the world we have constructed for ourselves.

We are stewing in our own juices.

Last Wednesday, a night of driving rain, I attended a seminar where more than 100 professionals, a standing room-only crowd, had gathered to learn about practical, cheap, achievable ways of stopping Sydney's pot from simmering. These were not wide-eyed utopians. In purely parochial terms, the heating of our biggest cities is even bigger than the global warming debate. Because the rise in temperature is mostly and demonstrably caused by outdated thinking.

The story starts on Observatory Hill, at the southern end of the Harbour Bridge, where weather records have been kept daily since 1860. What the observatory has recorded is a rise in the average temperature at the centre of Sydney from 20.5 degrees to 22 degrees. As Sydney grows, Sydney slowly heats.

At last Wednesday's seminar we learnt why - 27 per cent of the surface of the metropolitan area is covered by bitumen, the black tar which soaks and retains heat and thus changes the city's climate.

Nearly all the rainwater run-off on this 27 per cent of the city is lost to productive use, flowing into Sydney Harbour because it is designed that way. The city's rooftops also gather heat. Roads and pavements maximise the waste of arable land. Tree-planting is stunted for legal reasons. Topsoil is "scalped" by roadworks. The increasing use of air-conditioners is creating more energy. More heat begets more heat.

It is not just a Sydney story. The most telling detail lost amid all that was written and broadcast about the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, which killed 173 people, was that more people died from heat stress in Melbourne than in the fires. During the oven-like temperature peak (three consecutive days above 43 degrees) Melbourne saw a spike of 1400 emergencies requiring an ambulance.

An extra 374 people died in Victoria that week compared to the average week. Most were heat stress related.

"To break this heating cycle we don't need more money, we need more intelligent use of what we already have," says the person who organised Wednesday's seminar, Michael Mobbs, the creator of Sydney's most famous experiment in sustainable housing. He was stunned by the size and quality of the turnout. The room was full of planners from councils across Sydney. He was especially pleased that the gathering was addressed by Arjan Rensen, a senior executive from ARRB, the company which writes the specification guidelines for all the road agencies in Australia.

"It was hugely symbolic having him there, willing to be associated with what we're trying to do," Mobbs told me. "It means the road authorities are at last starting to deal with the impact their roads are having on our cities."

The roads are Mobbs's starting point for reform, because they take up so much room and are so taken for granted. "We should just use existing bitumen and gravel but choose pale gravel, and mix it so that the gravel shows through the bitumen," Mobbs says. "We could also use dyes like those used in bus lanes, but paler than green or red. These were first used in the Harbour Tunnel, which was privately owned, because the owners wanted to cut the cost of their electricity bill. On streets with low traffic volume, these dyed surfaces will last 15 to 20 years."

Then there is the overlooked space, the humble pavements. They should be planted and widened where possible because of the cooling powers of plants and trees. Fruit trees and vegetable gardens should also be grown in public space such as roadsides. The practice is common in Germany.

Planners have started listening to Mobbs because, having transformed his own home into a dwelling with self-contained power, water and sewerage systems, he is busy converting his street, Myrtle Street, Chippendale, into the sort of micro-environment that, if replicated across the city, would cool it, slash energy consumption, and massively increase carbon sequestration.

In the block where Mobbs lives, much of the pavement is covered in mulch and supports a variety of plants, including fruit trees. The fruit is available to anyone. Large public compost bins store debris, each collecting three tonnes of food waste a year to create one tonne of compost. Pipes have been manipulated to retain rainwater run-off.

All this is so simple yet so innovative. Councils and planners have been trying to do their best with what they have inside a system they have inherited. What has been lacking is a sense of the whole, of the potential for policy symbiosis, a greater realisation of what Sydney looks like on Google Earth rather than on planners' maps. Google Earth shows a city that acts as a heat trap and an energy sink, especially in the sprawling, spreading western suburbs, away from the cooling salvation of the coast.

But when I asked Mobbs if he had received council approval for his innovations on public space on Myrtle Street he replies, "not quite".

The local authority, Sydney City Council, has an ambivalent attitude. It is on his side but it is also a bureaucracy operating under the morass of laws and regulations that sits like an oppressive weight on innovation in society. Says Mobbs: "It's all been done with the delicious sense of doing something without approval."

Saucing hornbags lah

2009-07-22T16:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, once again I have sauced best practice h'bs for you, moving forward.

Global warming making fish smaller: study

2009-07-22T16:37:00.000-07:00

Lets hope that global warming does not cause hornbag shrinkage. However it is allready being experienced here. Before there was three hornbags, by the time this photograph was sauced there was two. More proof that global warming is indeed at work in our daily lives, and, er hornbag photography.

Fish have lost half their average body mass and smaller species are making up a larger proportion of European fish stocks as a result of global warming, a study has found.

"It's huge," said study author Martin Daufresne of the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France.

"Size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity - the capacity to reproduce."

Smaller fish tend to produce fewer eggs. They also provide less sustenance for predators - including humans - which could have significant implications for the food chain and ecosystem.

A similar shrinking effect was recently documented in Scottish sheep and Mr Daufresne said it is possible that global warming could have "a significant impact on organisms in general."

Earlier research has already established that fish have shifted their geographic ranges and their migratory and breeding patters in response to rising water temperatures. It has also been established that warmer regions tend to be inhabited by smaller fish.

Mr Daufresne and his colleagues examined long-term surveys of fish populations in rivers, streams and the Baltic and North Seas and also performed experiments on bacteria and plankton.

They found the individual species lost an average of 50 per cent of their body mass over the past 20 to 30 years while the average size of the overall fishing stock had shrunk by 60 per cent.

This was a result of a decrease in the average size-at-age and an increase in the proportion of juveniles and small-sized species, Mr Daufresne said.

"It was an effect that we observed in a number of organisms and in a number of very different environments - on fish, on plankton, on bacteria, in fresh water, in salt water - and we observed a global shrinking of size for all the organisms in all the environments," he said.

While commercial and recreational fishing did impact some of the fisheries studied, it "cannot be considered as the unique trigger" for the changes in size, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found.

"Although not negating the role of other factors, our study provides strong evidence that temperature actually plays a major role in driving changes in the size structure of populations and communities," the study concluded.

Ah yes some more hornbags..

2009-07-08T03:10:00.000-07:00

Sauced from around Cirularrr key and the Opperraa house lah....

Poor face disaster from global warming

2009-07-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

A hornbag who has managed to escape to our sunny country, from the worst places to be affected by climate change in the near future.

MOST of the gains made by the world's poorest countries over the past half a century will be lost unless action is taken on climate change, Oxfam says.

A report by the international aid agency says up to 375 million people may be affected by climate-related disasters by 2015.

"Climate change is becoming quite rapidly the central issue to do with poverty today", Oxfam Australia's chief, Andrew Hewett, told the Herald. "That also raises deep ethical dilemmas because the people least responsible for this crisis have the least resources to deal with it, and they are also those who are on the front line."

Oxfam is publishing the report, Suffering The Science-Climate Change, People And Poverty, today before this week's meeting of world leaders at the Group of Eight summit in Italy, where climate change and food security will be high on the agenda.

On the side of the G8 meeting there will also be a forum of leaders and ministers from the biggest polluting world economies, which the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, will attend.

A key issue at both meetings will be whether the US President, Barack Obama, publicly embraces the scientific goal of keeping the world's temperature from rising above 2 degrees Celsius in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

Britain's Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and European leaders have been urging the US to embrace the goal, and Reuters has reported that the 2-degree target has been included in the draft communique.

If Mr Obama supports the scientific goal he will raise expectations that the United Nations global climate talks in Copenhagen in December will be able to achieve an ambitious outcome. Including the 2-degree goal in the G8 communique also puts pressure on Japan, Canada and Russia to agree to tougher action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Oxfam report stresses the importance of the scientific goal, arguing that even a 2-degree temperature rise will have serious consequences for people living in poverty.

With advancing climate change, several big cities dependent on the Himalayan and Andes glaciers will face crippling water shortages within decades, the report says. The two most important world food crops, rice and maize, will also be reduced even under mild climate change.

Hunger caused by climate change may be the defining human tragedy of this century, the report argues, and if global warming is allowed to proceed unchecked the true cost "will not be measured in dollars but in millions or billions of lives".

Oxfam argues that developing countries, especially poor ones, will need at least $US150 billion ($188 billion) a year to cope with climate change and shift to greener energy

Another little of nature's belly burps...

2009-06-18T00:40:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know the wierdo weather is still about, and coming soon to a place near you.....

Freak Beijing storm turns day into nightABC June 16, 2009, 3:46 pm Send

June 17, 2009, 11:21 pmChina correspondent Stephen McDonell and ABC cameraman Rob Hill saw day turn into night as a freak storm swept across the capital Beijing today.

"It was pitch black outside and you could see people looking out from the office towers across the road from us," McDonell said.

"In a couple of the photos you can see a clock in the distance showing it was around 11:30 am local time."

The storms were expected to affect western and northern Xinjiang, most part of Inner Mongolia, north-east China and north China.

Today's extreme weather follows yesterday's hail storms across eastern China's Anhui province, which killed 14 people and injured more than 180, AFP reports.

Anhui's Civil Affairs Bureau said that more than 10,000 people were evacuated and nearly 9,700 houses collapsed in yesterday's severe storm.

Anhui was struck by hail and winds of up to 104 kilometres per hour, causing $82 million worth of damage.

A similar hail storm struck the region in the first week of June, killing 23 people and injuring more than 200.

Officials have warned residents that more dangerous weather could follow.

First hard evidence found of a lake on Mars

2009-06-18T00:32:00.000-07:00

This Japanese hornbag will find it hard to survive if climate change has it way here and sauces the Martian best practice experience.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A long, deep canyon and the remains of beaches are perhaps the clearest evidence yet of a standing lake on the surface of Mars -- one that apparently contained water when the planet was supposed to have already dried up, scientists said on Wednesday.

Images from a camera called the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate water carved a 30-mile-(50-km-)long canyon, a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder reported.

It would have covered 80 square miles (200 sq km) and been up to 1,500 feet deep, the researchers wrote in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

There is now no dispute that water exists on the surface or Mars -- robot explorers have found ice. There is also evidence that water may still seep to the surface from underground, although it quickly disappears in the cold, thin atmosphere of the red planet.

Planetary scientists have also seen what could be the shores of giant rivers and seas -- but some of the formations could also arguably have been made by dry landslides.

"This is the first unambiguous evidence of shorelines on the surface of Mars," said Gaetano Di Achille, who led the study.

"The identification of the shorelines and accompanying geological evidence allows us to calculate the size and volume of the lake, which appears to have formed about 3.4 billion years ago," Di Achille said in a statement.

Water is key to life and scientists are looking desperately for evidence of life, past or present, on Mars. Having water on the planet could also be useful to future human explorers.

"On Earth, deltas and lakes are excellent collectors and preservers of signs of past life," said Di Achille. "If life ever arose on Mars, deltas may be the key to unlocking Mars' biological past," Di Achille said.

"Not only does this research prove there was a long-lived lake system on Mars, but we can see that the lake formed after the warm, wet period is thought to have dissipated," assistant professor Brian Hynek said.

The lake probably either evaporated or froze over after abrupt climate change, the researchers said. Its waters would have turned into vapor. No one knows what turned Mars from a warm, wet planet into the frozen, airless desert it is now.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Jellyfish threaten to 'dominate' world's oceans.

2009-06-08T17:00:00.000-07:00

Giant jellyfish are taking over parts of the world's oceans due to overfishing and other human activities, researchers say.

Nomura jellyfish are the biggest in the world and can grow as big as a sumo wrestler. They weigh up to 200 kilograms and can reach 2 metres in diameter.

Dr Anthony Richardson and his colleagues from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research says jellyfish numbers are increasing, particularly in South East Asia, the Black Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea.

"We need to take management action to avert the marine systems of the world flipping over to being jellyfish dominated," says Dr Richardson, who is also a marine biologist at the University of Queensland.

He says the Japanese have a real problem with giant jellyfish that burst through fishing nets.

He says other researchers are experimenting with different ways of controlling jellyfish, including using sound waves to explode jellyfish and using special nets to try and cut them up.

Overfishing

Dr Richardson and his colleagues reviewed literature linking jellyfish blooms with overfishing and eutrophication (high levels of nutrients).

Jellyfish are normally kept in check by fish, which eat small jellyfish and compete for jellyfish food such as zooplankton, he says.

But with overfishing, jellyfish numbers are increasing. Jellyfish feed on fish eggs and larvae, further impacting on fish numbers.

To add insult to injury, nitrogen and phosphorous in run-off cause red phytoplankton blooms, which create low-oxygen dead zones where jellyfish survive, but fish cannot.

"You can think of them like a protected area for jellyfish," Dr Richardson says.

The researchers say climate change may also encourage more jellyfish and they have postulated for the first time that these conditions can lead to what they call a "jellyfish stable state", in which jellyfish rule the oceans.

Taking action

The team recommends a number of actions in its paper, published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution and released to coincide with World Oceans Day.

They say it is important to reduce overfishing, especially of small pelagic fish like sardines, and to reduce run-off.

They also say it is important to control the transport of jellyfish around the world in ballast water and aquariums.

Jellyfish are considered simple jelly-like sea animals, which are related to the microscopic animals that form coral.

They generally start their life as a plant-like polyp on the sea bed before budding off into the well-known bell-shaped medusa.

Jellyfish have tentacles containing pneumatocyst cells, which act like little harpoons that lodge in prey to sting and kill them.

The location and number of pneumatocysts dictate whether jellyfish are processed for human consumption.

While dried jellyfish with soya sauce is a delicacy served in Chinese weddings and banquets, not all kinds of jellyfish can be eaten, Dr Richardson says.

According to Dr Richardson, the species increasing in number are not generally eaten.

Latest doom sauced for you....

2009-06-01T13:44:00.001-07:00

Yes sauced from the daily news of doom and despair.....see it now, before its too late lah!

Scientists warn acid is killing oceans
Email Print Normal font Large font Deborah Smith Science Editor

June 2, 2009

RISING carbon dioxide emissions are turning the oceans acidic in an irreversible process that threatens coral reefs and food security, the world's scientific academies have warned.
Seventy academies, including the Australian Academy of Science, urged governments meeting in Bonn for climate talks to tackle the issue in the new United Nations treaty on climate change to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.
In the past 200 years the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities, and the current rate of acidification is much more rapid than at any time during the past 65 million years, the scientists said in a joint statement.
Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society in Britain, said that unless global carbon dioxide emissions were cut by at least 50 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050 there could be an "underwater catastrophe" and loss of marine life.
"The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging local economies that may be least able to tolerate it," Professor Rees said. "Copenhagen must address this very real and serious threat."
As carbon dioxide dissolves it alters ocean chemistry, leading to an attack on the carbonate building blocks needed by marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish, to produce their skeletons, shells and other hard structures.
"Ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years," the scientists said.
Although it was a global problem, some areas, including the tropical waters around the Great Barrier Reef, would be more affected than others.
Terry Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council Centre for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, said the effects have already been observed. "We have clear evidence that the growth rate of corals is slowing because of ocean acidification."
The Great Barrier Reef was under stress as well from higher water temperatures, said Professor Hughes, who contributed to the academies' statement.
"Unless the world can sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the combination of repeated bouts of bleaching, more extreme storms and slower growth due to acidification will have a severe impact on coral reefs and the tourism and fisheries industries they support," he said. "We only have a narrow window of opportunity to prevent further severe damage to coral reefs before it's too late."
Will Howard, an oceanographer at the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre in Hobart, said the issue of acidification was independent of debates about possible effects of global warming.
"The impact is happening now in nature, not in computer simulation or in laboratory manipulation, and can be directly attributed to carbon dioxide emissions," Dr Howard said.
If carbon dioxide levels, now at 387 ppm, were stabilised at 450 ppm, more than 10 per cent of the world's oceans would be affected by acidification, including more than 90 per cent of all tropical and subtropical coral reefs.
Stabilisation at 550 ppm could result in coral reefs "dissolving globally", the scientists said.
Adding chemicals to the oceans to try to counter acidification was likely to be expensive, only partly effective at local sites and could pose unknown risks.

Doom from on the road.....

2009-04-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

A scarier, colder vision of the climate change future
Bob Beale
April 25, 2009

So the sea ice around Antarctica is growing, not shrinking. Hurrah! We're all saved from the misguided, mistaken and self-interested prognostications of those fiendish, bearded, white-coated climate scientists.

Er, no. The sea ice in Antarctica is growing because of the hole in the ozone layer, not because the planet is getting cooler. It's a localised effect, not a planet-wide phenomenon. If it was, the Arctic ice cap would not be shrinking.

In any case, we've banned CFCs, the chemicals that created the ozone hole, so as it gradually repairs, the Antarctic sea ice will shrink again. Likewise, all the soot, dust, smoke, aerosols and aircraft exhaust we've been pumping out have dimmed the atmosphere a little.

In short, science says the muck we have put into the atmosphere has been masking the long-term warming trend. As we clean up our act, it will become more painfully obvious.

Climate change sceptics are in for a rude shock if they seek consolation from Professor Ian Plimer about the threats posed by global warming. A geologist's perspective is cold comfort.

Plimer's much talked-about new book - Heaven And Earth: Global Warming And The Missing Science - may already be a best-seller, but another of his books, A Short History Of Planet Earth , published in 2001, made it plain where he thinks the planet is heading.

He may differ with colleagues about why the climate is changing but he does not contest that it certainly is and even he thinks the consequences are potentially alarming.

Sea levels have been rising in an erratic stepwise pattern for the past 18,000 years, and will continue to do so, according to his earlier book. "In the West Antarctic the recession rates of the fast-flowing rivers of ice indicate a rapid erosion of the slow-moving inland ice sheet driven by the same factors that drove the 120-metre sea level rise over the last 14,700 years.

"It would not be surprising if sea level rose a few metres over the next century causing untold suffering in low-lying areas such as Bangladesh, Holland, north Germany and many non-coralline islands … Low-lying parts of England, where many atomic reactors are sited, will be inundated."

He might have added that fair chunks of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth wouldn't be looking too flash either.

That won't be the end of it. The collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which began about 7000 years ago, means the sea "has another six metres to rise". At least he agrees with the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, on that. Sea levels are not affected when sea ice grows or shrinks, because it's already in the water, but the melting of sheet ice on the land matters a lot.

A six-metre rise will "disrupt coastal populations" and "if global warming occurs and sea level further rises" worse will follow, he wrote, but there's a bright side, at least after the global mayhem subsides. "Warmer, wetter times have led to great renaissances in human history."

No one should be complacent because global warming may, ironically, switch off the North Atlantic Drift. It brings warm water and air to northern Europe, and he warns that its halting may cause temperatures to plunge by more than 5 degrees. Even if that doesn't happen, Plimer has another vision of the future, scarier than that of the climate change scientists.

He uses the history of recent climate change to suggest Earth will "soon lurch into another glaciation, possibly only in 300 or 400 years time but certainly before 2800". The same history shows such a change can occur very rapidly, in less than a human lifetime. "Past ice ages have led to famine, disease, population reduction and warfare, but have not led to the extinction of humans. Depopulation will occur by disease pandemics. As in the past, urban communities will drift into subsistence agriculture and cities will be vacated."

If the next ice age is as bad as the last one, ice sheets - kilometres thick across much of the northern hemisphere - will cover 60 per cent of the land now occupied by humans, and the sea level will drop 120 metres.

Two-thirds of Australia's trees will die. Centuries of cold dry winds will follow. The east coast will be smothered in dust and sand as massive dune fields resume their smothering slow-motion march around the continent's centre.

The abandoned ruins of Sydney will be atop a craggy ridge, overlooking a deep valley where the harbour used to be. A coastal plain will stretch 40 kilometres to the east before it reaches the sea.

Plimer is a geologist and good geology does not make good policy. His vision reinforces the fact that humans are deeply vulnerable to climate. And it underscores our failure to face up to the collective need to change the way we live. We need to keep our options open and give our environment and our society as much resilience as we can muster.

The evidence that humans can change, and are changing, our climate is incontrovertible. The Antarctic ozone hole vividly demonstrates this, but as Plimer says civilisations do exist by grace of geology, subject to change without notice.

This time, though, we have notice. A decade ago, the boffins warned us about future heatwaves, droughts, severe weather and loss of sea ice in the Arctic. Where will we be in 10 more years?

Bob Beale is a science and environment writer.

And some here too......

2009-04-01T01:49:00.000-07:00

Over 100 dead, thousands displaced in African floods
Saturday March 28, 2009 - 10:00 EDT

Southern African countries have been hit by the worst floods in years, killing more than 100 people and displacing thousands, as a tropical storm threatened to bring more pain on the weekend.

As Mozambique braced for the arrival of a strengthening tropical storm Izilda, record river levels across the region threatened to exacerbate floods which have already affected hundreds of thousands of people.

Namibia's Government declared a state of emergency last week in areas where floods have affected more than 350,000 people, 13,000 of whom were displaced, according to numbers released by the United Nations.

Another 160,000 people have been affected in Angola.

The Zambezi River, along Namibia's north-eastern Caprivi Region, rose to 7.8 metres this week, its highest level in 40 years, before slightly dropping.

"We have large areas submerged by water and access to several villages is cut off," Caprivi governor Leonard Mwilima said.

Namibia's flood coordinator Erastus Negonga said the death toll stood at 112. Nearly 200 schools have closed, while one hospital and 19 clinics remain cut off due to floods.

In Zambia, 21 districts have been affected by flooding and the army has been called in to assist the worst affected region of Shang'ombo, where they are also helping reconstruct a bridge connecting it to the rest of the country.

"The Zambia Air Force has been engaged to transport food and fuel to the affected districts," said Davies Sampa, permanent secretary in the vice-president's office.

In northern Botswana, rain has caused the Okavango, Zambezi and Chobe rivers to swell, leaving 430 people displaced and submerging eight villages.

Last year, heavy rains in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi caused flash flooding in Mozambique that displaced tens of thousands of people and destroyed almost 100,000 hectares of crops.

Mozambique is no stranger to weather-related disasters. In 2000 and 2001 about 700 people were killed in one of the country's worst floods when torrential rains hit the south-eastern African country.

A little bit more extreme weather for you.

2009-04-01T01:46:00.000-07:00

Flooded NSW areas now disaster zones

April 1, 2009, 5:49 pm
Too much, too quick and too soon after February's devastating floods - that's how Coffs Harbour mayor Keith Rhoades describes the latest deluge.

The regional hub on the NSW mid-north coast is mopping up after torrential rain isolated the town.

Coffs Creek peaked at 6.15pm (AEDT) on Tuesday just below the 1996 flood level of 5.43m, after copping 450mm of rain in a 24-hour period.

About 100 Coffs Harbour residential properties and businesses were affected, with 420 people evacuated, including 300 school children and residents of aged care facilities.

Coffs Harbour, along with the local government areas of Bellingen and Nambucca, were on Wednesday declared natural disaster zones, after the once-in-a-century storms.

It is the second time in just six weeks that parts of the region have been declared disaster zones, with heavy rains in February still fresh residents' minds.

Mr Rhoades said the downpour was "a simple case of too much, too quick".

"No matter what system you have in place in regards to mitigation, you would not have been able to cope with what came down," he told AAP.

"(Coffs Harbour business people) all told me that you actually stood there and saw it coming, and there wasn't a thing you could do about it - that's how quick it was."

The State Emergency Services (SES) said 1,600 Bellingen residents were still isolated, as were 500 people in nearby Darkwood, after heavy rain pushed the Bellinger River to a peak of 8.6 metres on Tuesday night.

They are likely to be isolated for two to four days.

South of Coffs Harbour, the Nambucca River peaked at 10.25m, just 0.25m below the record level of June 1950, at 10.30pm on Tuesday.

Nearby Bowraville and surrounding farmland remained isolated, the SES said.

The rail line between Kempsey and Casino was closed, after flooding washed away rail ballast and caused landslides.

Coffs Harbour residents and businesses were now mopping up after just recovering from the previous deluge.

"Basements in buildings are being hosed out today to get the silt and mud out," Mr Rhoades said.

"Residents are trying to salvage what they can of possessions that have been washed out of their garages, car ports, and some times, out of their houses.

"You've just got to feel for these people, because it is heartbreaking."

Mr Rhoades compared Tuesday's floods with those of 1996, which caused $140 million in damages and killed one woman.

"Looking at the 1996 flood and what that cost, I would put this one in the tens of millions of dollars for people to get to back to where they were," he said.

"There is damage to stock in businesses, homes that have had water go straight through them.

"I saw premises last night that weren't even within 50 metres of previous flood levels (but) that were affected last night, that have never before been affected."

The Insurance Council of Australia has urged people to make their claims as quickly as possible.

The SES received more than 940 calls for assistance across NSW due to the heavy rains, with the majority coming from the Clarence and Nambucca areas.

Emergency Services Minister Steve Whan said 100 people had to be rescued by emergency services, 65 in Coffs Harbour.

More than 800 people spent the night in evacuation centres in Coffs Harbour, Bonville, Macksville and Urunga, with most returning home after floodwaters receded.

Despite fears that further rain on Wednesday might exacerbate the flooding, the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said the mid-north coast had seen the worst of the falls.

However, flood warnings were still current for rivers along the NSW coast, including the Orara, the Bellinger, Nambucca, Manning and Hastings rivers, and the Williams River near Newcastle.

"It's backed off into a shower situation, rather than the constant heavy rain we had yesterday," BoM duty forecaster Ewan Mitchell said.

"The problem is, with the saturated ground due to the recent rain, any further falls can fairly quickly give you some further heavy runoff and local flooding problems."

The wild weather has also seen the closure of most beaches along the NSW coast with waves topping three metres, Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) said.

However, the heavy rain in the past 24 hours has brought relief for Sydney's dams.

Sydney's Warragamba catchment received about one-sixth of its average April rainfall on the first day of the month, with 14mm falling in the 24 hours to 9am (AEDT) Wednesday.

The Upper Nepean and Woronora catchments had almost half their median monthly rainfall, recording falls of 41.6mm and 49.5mm, respectively

Some more hornbags...

2009-03-28T18:30:00.001-07:00

Yes, time to enhance the hornbag experience. Once again I have been saucing, and moving forward, in the area of hornbag best practice. Please enjoy, while going forward, in your own quintessential seachange in hornbaginess.....
Please note, if you dont understand what I wrote neither do I. Apparently to be in touch with modern managerilism, and droppings from the adminisphere, you have to enjoy percussive maintainence on one's bodily parts to get by in today's society.

Hornzelling!

2009-03-15T01:45:00.000-07:00

Yes, once again I am pleased to purvey to my discerning readers, some more hornbags for you.
Please sit down with a cup of tea, a quiet ale, and enjoy forthwith.

Shipping pollution more than a drop in the ocean

2009-03-09T04:16:00.000-07:00

Monday March 9, 2009, 8:09 pm

A US scientific study is pointing the finger at the global shipping industry as a major contributor to climate change.
The study has found that the one hundred thousand commercial ships which travel the world's oceans emit almost half as much particle pollution as the world's 600 million cars.
The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
And the lead author is calling for an improvement in the quality of shipping fuels.
In the past, ships running under flags of convenience have been exposed in reports like the Ships of Shame inquiry as being unsafe for crews and polluting the ocean.
Now scientists have put a figure on exactly how much air pollution is emitted by the world's shipping fleet.
US-based scientist Daniel Lack, who works for a US government agency called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has found every year commercial ships emit 1 million kilograms of particle pollution into the air.
"These particles that are coming out are about equivalent to half the particles that are produced from all road traffic in the world," he said.
"What's interesting with ships is that they're in international waters most of the time so the pollution doesn't really get noticed by people.
"But these ships are actually burning really low-quality fuels. They're literally burning the bottom of the barrel. After oil refining, there's a black sludge left and that's what ships are burning, so they're burning a really dirty fuel."
Professor Lack worked on his report with another scientist, James Corbett from the University of Delaware.
It was Professor Corbett's job to find out what effect the pollution from the ships has on human health.
"We're talking about organic carbon materials and we're talking about these very small black carbon particles," he said.
"These particles are small enough to be breathed in to human lungs and they have been shown by epidemiological studies to be associated with increased incidences of breathing illnesses, heart illnesses and even premature death."
The harmful particles released into the air, including sulphur, carbon dioxide and soot, are also damaging the environment.
"If dark particles land on snow, they can accelerate the melting of snow in the north, perhaps the Arctic," he said.
"They interact with water vapour in the atmosphere to help produce brighter or longer lived clouds and the dark particles can absorb energy and retain heat and contribute to global climate change."
It is the first time a large scale study has found exactly how much and what kind of air pollution is released by ships.
Professor Lack says his study exposes shipping as a major polluter and more regulation is needed to ensure the industry cleans up its act.
But he acknowledges, as with the car industry, some shipping companies are seeing an upside in green innovation.
"There's a company in Seattle which has just built the first hybrid tugboat," he said.
"The port of Los Angeles, they're starting to make ships hook up to shore power, which is much cleaner than the power from burning fuel.

Rumblings of doom, some more to edify and uplift..

2009-03-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

CO2 levels thinning out ocean life: study

There is alarming evidence that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are harming ocean-based animal life.
When CO2 enters the atmosphere it is absorbed by the ocean, causing increased acidity in the water.
A new study has found a link between this process and a decrease in the shell-making ability of microscopic marine organisms.
Dr Will Howard of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre and colleagues report their findings today in the journal Nature Geoscience.
"The ocean is currently taking up somewhere in the neighbourhood of a third of our fossil fuel emissions," the palaeo-climatologist said.
Scientists have predicted this absorption of carbon dioxide would boost the acidity of oceans and interfere with the ability of some marine species to build their shells.
"It was predicted and now we're seeing it," Dr Howard said.
"This is not an issue for the future any more. This is an issue for now."

Changing chemistry

The researchers studied the shells of a protozoa called foraminifera (Globigerina bulloides), in the Southern Ocean south of Tasmania .
They collected current-day foraminifera as they fell to the bottom of the ocean and compared them to foraminifera dating back in time, taken from cores taken from the sea bed.
"[The method] gives us access to times when the carbon dioxide chemistry in the atmosphere and the ocean has changed measurably and noticeably, and we can see how the organisms responded," Dr Howard said.
He and colleagues linked changes in shell formation with the amount of carbon dioxide around at the time.
"[The foraminifera] have more heavily calcified shells during intervals when carbon dioxide content was lower and thus the pH of the ocean was higher," Dr Howard said.
By contrast, the researchers found modern shells were 30 to 35 per cent lighter than those formed prior to the industrial period.
"When you're looking at the modern counterparts, they're making thinner shells than anything in the cores," he said.
He says the team has evidence that modern shells are thinner than at any time in the past 200,000 years.

Fossil fuel signature

Dr Howard says previous research has confirmed the carbon dioxide affecting the shells has a unique isotopic signature which confirms it is from fossil fuels.
"We know independently that the carbon dioxide that they're picking up is at least partly anthropogenic," he said.
He says calcium carbonate shells of foraminifera, which fall to the bottom of the deep sea when they die, are a major vehicle for removing carbon from atmospheric circulation.
"One of the things we're concerned about is that if their shell-making ability is compromised that we might be reducing the efficiency of the ocean carbon pump," he said.
Dr Howard says that over time, the ocean may be able to counteract acidity by dissolving accumulated shells of dead marine organisms on the ocean floor, thus raising ocean pH and its ability to take up CO2.
But he says this will take a long time and come at the cost of living marine organisms.
"The buffering mechanisms in the ocean are quite slow compared to the rate at which we are putting fossil fuel carbon into the atmosphere and into the ocean.," he said.
The research was funded by the Australian Government's Department of Climate Change.

Yes for your joy....

2009-03-05T15:37:00.000-08:00

More hornbags, sauced from the places where they enjoy a free range lifestyle!

Wildlife on the attack as Indonesia backs logging

2009-03-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

THE Indonesian Government has approved a big increase in logging of its tropical forests, a decision that will lead to a rise in carbon emissions and, most likely, lead to further deadly attacks on villagers by tigers and elephants.

The end of a 14-month moratorium on logging comes amid a spate of macabre maulings of Indonesians by animals struggling to survive in their dwindling habitats.

On Wednesday, an 83-year-old man on the island of Sumatra was killed after 30 wild elephants stampeded through his village. The death followed a month of elephants running amok in the village, which is close to a trail commonly used by the threatened species.

"The elephant routes are almost gone," said Johny Mundung, the co-ordinator for the Indonesian environmental group Wahli in the Sumatran province of Riau, where the attack occurred.

Four people have died in Sumatra in the past 3½ months due to wild elephant attacks. However the deaths caused by Sumatran tigers have been even more dramatic.

The death by mauling of an illegal logger in Sumatra on Wednesday was the ninth in five weeks. About half of Sumatra's forests have been destroyed, the trees logged and, in some cases, replaced with palm oil and pulp plantations.

All the deaths caused by elephants and tigers occurred in areas where such plantations abound.

Indonesia's deforestation has earned it the title of the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the United States. More than 80 per cent of the emissions are caused by deforestation.

Indonesia has destroyed more than 28 million hectares of forest since 1990, much of it on swampy, densely forested peatlands that are the world's most potent carbon sinks, absorbing greenhouse gases spewed out by a rapidly industrialising world.

In 2007, the Indonesian Government announced it would stop the clearing of the peatlands, shortly before Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono pledged to reduce carbon emissions from forests by 50 per cent in 2009 and 95 per cent by 2025.

But last month, Indonesia's ministry of agriculture quietly announced it would issue permits for the destruction of another 2 million hectares of peatlands.

"SBY's goal is now mission impossible," said Yuyun Adradi, a Greenpeace forests campaigner.

A sharp fall in palm oil prices has led to calls from the industry, many of them substantial political donors, for more land concessions.

Officials from the agriculture ministry said the new permits would be carefully managed and represented only 8 per cent of the remaining peatlands.

But Greenpeace said that the logging will lead to a huge increase in carbon emissions, as much as 10 times the annual emissions from fossil fuel consumption in Indonesia.

The logging of marshy peatlands creates a environmental triple whammy. The cutting down of the forests and draining of the peat destroys the carbon sinks. Then the oxidisation of the exposed peat - created from thousands of years of organic matter composting - emits more carbon gases.

The third climate change calamity is caused when the denuded and drained peatlands catch fire during the dry season.

Peat is highly combustible and the fires typically burn underground and cannot be doused with traditional firefighting methods, creating smoky haze that drifts across the archipelago and neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia for months.

Time to chill from the doom, some further hornbags..

2009-02-26T11:49:00.000-08:00

Yes, once again I am pleased to purvey some more fotographic efforts, compliments of Amsterdam Bier, and some brand of Vodka I,er, forgot.
Lah.

Poles apart but warming greater than thought

2009-02-26T11:31:00.000-08:00

Marian Wilkinson Environment Editor

February 27, 2009

A TWO-YEAR research effort by the world's leading scientists has uncovered evidence of global warming's widespread effect.

Snow and ice continue to decline in the Arctic and parts of Antarctica, affecting sea-level rise and weather patterns, as well as human, animal and plant life.

The findings of International Polar Year, a global research project involving 60 nations, were released yesterday. They confirmed that warming in Antarctica was greater than previously understood and the rate of ice loss from Greenland was increasing.

Dr Ian Allison, of the Australian Antarctic Division, who co-chaired the project told the Herald the effect of global warming in Greenland was clear.

"In Greenland the rate of ice loss is getting greater over the last 10 years and the surface [ice] melt is definitely related to the warming," Dr Allison said.

The project's scientists summed up their findings, saying: "It now appears certain that both the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass and thus raising sea level, and that the rate of ice loss from Greenland is growing."

They also warned "the potential for these ice sheets to undergo further rapid ice discharge remains the largest unknown in projections of the rate of sea-level rise by the [United Nations] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change".

Projections for the NSW coast released by the State Government suggest sea levels are expected to rise up to 40 centimetres by 2050 and 90 centimetres by 2100. One centimetre of sea-level rise can have erosion effects of up to one metre in low-lying areas.

The popular belief that Antarctica may be resistant to global warming has been undercut by International Polar Year's research. Data from satellites and weather stations confirmed that for the past 50 years it has been warming at the same rate as the rest of the planet.

Until recently it was only the fragile Antarctic Peninsula that juts up from West Antarctica, which was considered vulnerable to global warming. The peninsula is warming more rapidly than much of the rest of the world with temperatures rising 2.5 degrees in the past 50 years and ice loss increasing 140 per cent in the past decade.

The recent research confirms the Arctic sea ice shrank last year to its second-lowest extent since satellite monitoring began in 1979. The previous low was the summer of 2007. Some scientists are predicting there will be an ice-free Arctic in summer by 2012.

Since the findings by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, it has been widely accepted that the planet's warming is almost certainly due to greenhouse gases being released from the burning of fossil fuels, land clearing and cement manufacturing.

The new research warns greenhouse emissions could rapidly increase from the Arctic warming. The Arctic contains large amounts of greenhouse gas that has been locked in permafrost and below the Arctic Ocean.

Time to relax, some further hornbags..

2009-02-21T02:19:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year in town, and a few quick grab shots whilst taking a somewhat circular route to the pub.

Climate change may be even worse: expert

2009-02-14T17:20:00.000-08:00

No, and expert is not the Prophet of doom himself...he's only bringing the message lah...
Read on!

It seems the dire warnings about the oncoming devastation wrought by global warming were not dire enough, a top climate scientist warned.

It has been just over a year since the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a landmark report warning of rising sea levels, expanding deserts, more intense storms and the extinction of up to 30 per cent of plant and animal species.

But recent climate studies suggest that report significantly underestimates the potential severity of global warming over the next 100 years, a senior member of the panel warned.

"We now have data showing that from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected," said Chris Field, who was a co-ordinating lead author of the report.

This is "primarily because developing countries like China and India saw a huge upsurge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal", Field said in a statement ahead of a presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Without decisive action to slow global warming, higher temperatures could ignite tropical forests and thaw the Arctic tundra, potentially releasing billions of tons of carbon dioxide that has been stored for thousands of years.

That could raise temperatures even more and create "a vicious cycle that could spiral out of control by the end of the century."

"We don't want to cross a critical threshold where this massive release of carbon starts to run on autopilot," said Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at Stanford University.

The amount of carbon that could be released is staggering.

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and estimated 350 billions tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) has been released through the burning of fossil fuels.

The new estimate of the amount of carbon stored in the Arctic's permafrost soils is around 1,000 billion tons. And the Arctic is warming faster than any other part of the globe.

Several recent climate models have estimated that the loss of tropical rainforests to wildfires, deforestation and other causes could increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 10 to 100 parts per million by the end of the century.

The current level is about 380 parts per million.

"Tropical forests are essentially inflammable," Field said. "You couldn't get a fire to burn there if you tried. But if they dry out just a little bit, the result can be very large and destructive wildfires."

Recent studies have also shown that global warming is reducing the ocean's ability to store carbon by altering wind patterns in the Southern Ocean.

"As the Earth warms, it generates faster winds over the oceans surrounding Antarctica," Field explained.

"These winds essentially blow the surface water out of the way, allowing water with higher concentrations of CO2 to rise to the surface. This higher-CO2 water is closer to CO2-saturated, so it takes up less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."

Field is co-chair of the group charged with assessing the impacts of climate change on social, economic and natural systems for the IPCC's fifth assessment due in 2014.

The 2007 fourth assessment presented at a "very conservative range of climate outcomes" but the next report will "include futures with a lot more warming," Field said.

"We now know that, without effective action, climate change is going to be larger and more difficult to deal with than we thought."

AAP 15/2/09

Record rain in Bourke, floods to hit

2009-02-13T19:32:00.000-08:00

A record 200mm of rain has fallen in Bourke as the top end of NSW prepares for floods.

The weather bureau has issued a flood watch and a severe weather warning for the area, just days after flooding claimed lives and forced dozens of evacuations in Queensland.

Heavy falls are expected to continue over the central north of NSW on Saturday, followed by a deluge over the mid-north coast.

Bourke experienced the brunt of the storm conditions on Friday night with more than 200mm falling, causing flash flooding in the district, a State Emergency Service spokeswoman said.

But half of the calls made to the emergency service were from people in Sydney's metropolitan area, she said.

"We've had approximately 40 requests for assistance across the state," the spokeswoman told AAP.

"Approximately 20 of those came from the Sydney metropolitan area - they were related to trees down."

There were no injuries reported and no threats to property, but the worst is still to come, she said.

Heavy rain was expected to hit towns such as Walgett, while further south, Tamworth and Inverell could also be affected, the manager of the Bureau of Meteorology's Flood Warning Centre Gordon McKay said.

Heavy rain was also expected on Saturday and Sunday on the mid-north and north coasts, with the area between Coffs Harbour and Kempsey likely to see falls of 150-200mm.

"We expect over the weekend a low pressure cell to develop off the coast of northern NSW, and that's likely to lead to very heavy rainfalls," Mr McKay said.

Update Mon 16/2/09 from the Sydney Morning Herald lah...............

The heavy weather has also hit some parts of the state inland. Drought-ravaged Bourke woke on Saturday morning to find itself knee-deep in water.

Residents said a thunderstorm dropping hailstones as large as golf balls had swept in on Friday evening, followed by rain that did not let up for 12 hours.

The town got 200 millimetres of rain overnight - a third of its annual rainfall, and the biggest single fall any of the residents could remember.

"I think the previous record was about five inches [125 millimetres] in one go but this has well and truly superseded this " said a local SES controller, Stephen Walsh.

The mayor, Andrew Lewis, said it was a "one-in-120-year event".

Jonathan Roe, a reporter for the The Western Herald, said some children were swimming in the streets on Saturday morning. Other residents were out in their cars touring the flooded areas, and marvelling at the sight of parts of the town submerged.

The rain cut several major highways out of town and paradoxically left residents short of drinking water. Flooding had overwhelmed the pumps that extract the town water supply from the Darling River.

The SES was still working late yesterday to clear water from 25 houses.

Farmers had mixed responses to the downpour.

A cotton grower, Ian Cole, said some of his neighbours had suffered heavy damage to cotton crops, particularly from hail. Another reported that his 1500 sheep were now having to be extracted from " black mud".

But generally graziers were happy as the rain would mean good winter grasses for stock and a "flushing out" of the Upper Darling all the way down to the Menindee Lakes.

The weather left Bourke residents scratching their heads about what would come next.

"Floods up north, and bushfires in Victoria, and here we are in a massive drought and we get two-thirds of our annual rainfall in 12 hours," Mr Walsh said. "We hope we're not going to go without for the next 12 months."

The end of certainty

2009-02-13T11:10:00.000-08:00

All signs point to the climate becoming more extreme, write Marian Wilkinson and Ben Cubby.

When hundreds of small, grey-headed flying foxes began falling from the sky at Yarra Bend in suburban Melbourne, for some it heralded the awful events that would later unfold. It was Wednesday, January 28, one day into the ferocious heatwave that would wax and wane before returning with terrible intensity last weekend.

That first day, calls began pouring into Wildlife Victoria. As the bats were dying en masse in the city, ringtail possums were falling out of trees in the bush and distressed kangaroos, too weak to jump, were baulking at fences.

"It was just unbelievable," said Fiona Corke, a Wildlife Victoria rescuer. "The animals were behaving very strangely. We were telling people to leave dishes of water by the side of the roads."

By January 30, Melbourne's temperature topped 45.1 degrees. A climate scientist, Dr David Karoly, noticed the city's plane trees had begun to shed their leaves under the stress of the heat.

In Tasmania, half the state recorded its hottest day on record. Launceston Airport hit 39.9 degrees, well over two degrees higher than its last record temperature.

In Adelaide, in the early hours of January 29, the city experienced its hottest night on record, 33.9 degrees.

Just north of the city, the air base at RAAF Edinburgh recorded an extraordinary 41.7 degrees at 3am. "Such an event appears to be without known precedent in southern Australia," the Bureau of Meteorology said.

People began turning up in the public hospitals, felled by the heat. As the days wore on and on, heat-related hospital admissions would ultimately reach more than 700.

To climate scientists and professional forecasters, it was clear that Australia was experiencing "an extreme weather event". But few among the public realised at the time, these first awful days would be just phase one of the heatwave.

As the weather bureau would later report: "After a slight drop in temperature during the first few days of February, extreme heat returned to the south-east on February 6. Temperatures rose sharply in South Australia and western Victoria on the 6th but it was the 7th which saw the most exceptional heat of the whole event."

As the nation reels from the toll in the bushfires, climate scientists are trying to carefully assess what lessons can be learnt from the unprecedented heatwave of 2009 and the deadly fires that accompanied it.

While state authorities focus on the crucial investigations into arson, emergency advice, town planning and tree clearing, looming over all these is what role human-induced climate change is playing in Australia's weather patterns. And, critically, how much of country will become more at risk from bushfire because of climate change?

The Victorian Premier, John Brumby, bluntly acknowledged this week that climate change cannot be ignored in the future debate over the bushfires.

"There is clear evidence now that the climate is becoming more extreme," Brumby told The 7.30 Report. And, announcing a royal commission on Australia's worst natural disaster, he insisted it would look at all aspects of the events. "I want everything on the table."

On the day the bushfires started claiming lives, Melbourne reached a record 46.4 degrees for the first time in 154 years of record-keeping, overshooting the high set on Black Friday, January 13, 1939 by 0.8 degrees and far exceeding the temperature on Ash Wednesday in 1983.

Climate scientists who spoke to the Herald this week repeatedly stressed that, despite these extraordinary temperatures, one extreme weather event cannot be taken as evidence of climate change.

But nearly all made the following points. Australia has experienced a general warming trend over the past 50 years which is consistent with human-induced climate change. The south-east of Australia is also experiencing a long period of unusually dry weather which may also be related to climate change.

Both these trends will increase the number of days where the bushfire risk will be more extreme and bushfires will be more intense. Most importantly, unless global greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, these trends will get worse over the next decades.

"The projections are based on climate models which include increases in greenhouse gases and that tells us that we can expect higher temperatures and much drier conditions over southern Australia," a CSIRO bushfire researcher, Kevin Hennessy, told the Herald.

"They are two of the critical elements that are needed to create a fire. The other two are low humidity and high wind speeds. Not only are we estimating there will be an increase in the frequency of extreme fire danger days but the duration of the fire season will be longer and the intensity of some of the biggest fires may increase."

Mr Hennessy co-authored a landmark report on the increased risk of fire weather due to climate change in 2007 which was cited in the Garnaut Climate Change Review. The study defined two new categories of fire weather - "very extreme" and "catastrophic". Under a "no mitigation scenario", in which no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there would be between five and 25 more days each year when Australians face extreme fire dangers by 2013, compared to the baseline year of 1990.

And the threat would rise quickly. By 2030, it may rise to between 15 and 65 days a year. In 2067, when Australia's average temperature may be 2.9 degrees hotter than in 1990, there would be between 100 to 300 days of extreme fire danger each year. "This effect increases over time but should be directly observable by 2020," the report noted.

The soaring heatwave temperatures last weekend, while unprecedented, are consistent with a general warming trend as a result of growing global greenhouse gas emissions. The 1990s were the warmest decade ever recorded instrumentally, and the last 100 years were the warmest of the millennium.

In 2007, Victoria recorded its warmest year on record, 1.2 degrees above the average. In the decade before, it experienced its driest years on record. Then, briefly, the end of 2007 promised relief. It was supposed to be a cooling, "La Nina" year. Rain fell in spring last year and temperatures dropped, but this summer hopes were dashed. From January 4 to February 7, virtually no rain fell in Melbourne, "equal to the second-longest dry spell on record for the city", according to the Bureau of Meteorology.

The mighty forces determining Australia's climate are complex and only partly understood, but research published in the past month has added significantly to the stock of knowledge. It also overturns some of the popular understanding of the "La Nina" influence.

The University of NSW research showed that the Indian Ocean Dipole, a swirling current that circulates warm water off Australia's north-west coast, appears to have a major influence on our weather and can override La Nina.

Dr Caroline Ummenhofer and Professor Matthew England at the university's Climate Change Research Centre showed that when "positive" dipole cycles send unusually hot, dry winds down to south-east Australia, drought is often the result. The big dry that straddled the start of the 20th century and ruined thousands of outback pioneers corresponded to a positive dipole, and so did the drought that spanned World War II.

The severe drought across southern Australia, the backdrop to this week's fires, has been accompanied by a run of three positive dipoles. The researchers believe this is why the La Nina event in the Pacific in 2007-08, which traditionally brings rain, was unable to break the drought. Three consecutive positive cycles is unprecedented, Ummenhofer said. Whether this is linked to human-induced climate change needs further investigation, the researchers say. And the El Nino-La Nina cycle of warm and cool atmospheric phenomena in the Pacific will still have a major influence over Australia's climate, even though not as much as previously thought.

Another, separate force driving weather patterns in southern Australia is the haze of air pollution over Asia. The aerosol haze, a stew of industrial output, fires, exhaust fumes, dust and plankton respiration, cools Asia, acting like a shield for the sun's heat and keeping much of Asia a degree or two cooler than it would otherwise be. This can actively force changes in wind and ocean currents by changing the distribution of solar heat on the Earth's surface, said the lead researcher, Dr Leon Rotstayn, of the CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric team.

The aerosol haze forces more heat into the monsoon winds which douse Australia's north-west. But it also contributes to a build-up of high pressure which may contribute to less rainfall across southern Australia, according to new research released by the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Human-induced climate change, while separate to these overlapping forces, has the power to exacerbate them. CSIRO's Dr Penny Whetton says the long-term trend in Australia includes about 0.9 of a degree warming through the 20th century. Australia is looking at a warming of about 1 degree by 2030 and 1.5 to 4-5 degrees by 2070 unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.

"You can't say we expected a 46 degree day in Melbourne this year but we would expect that it is getting increasingly easy to set new records compared to the past because of the underlying warming trend that's occurring," Whetton said.

The causes for the big dry over southern Australia are, she says, more complicated.

"The drying trend over the last 10 to 12 years is consistent with the rainfall change we are projecting using climate models. It's actually a more severe decrease than the models are projecting. At the moment it's too early to say whether its climate change-related. In all likelihood it's some combination of some influences of long-term climate change and natural fluctuations of the climate system."

Whatever the immediate causes of the bushfires, for many Australians it is a reminder of the potential risks of uncontrolled climate change.

As the Climate Change Minister, Penny Wong, put it last year,"As one of the hottest and driest continents on earth, Australia's economy and environment will be one of the hardest and fastest hit by climate change if we don't act now."

Hornbag interlude

2009-02-12T19:05:00.000-08:00

In a somewhat soothing moment from all the doom, I thusly present some recently sauced local hornbags for ye enjoyment.
But stay tuned, more doom will be coming your way soon!

A deadly reminder that we must tackle climate change

2009-02-12T13:21:00.001-08:00

Tim Flannery
February 12, 2009
The day after the great fire burnt through central Victoria, I drove from Sydney to Melbourne. Smoke obscured the horizon, entering my air-conditioned car and carrying with it that distinctive scent so strongly signifying death, or, to Aboriginal people, cleansing.

It was as if a great cremation had taken place. I didn't know then how many people had died in their cars and homes, or while fleeing, but by the time I reached the scorched ground just north of Melbourne, the dreadful news was trickling in. And the trauma will be with us forever.

I was born in Victoria, and over five decades I've watched as the state has changed. The long, wet and cold winters that seemed insufferable to me as a boy vanished decades ago, and for the past 12 years a new, drier climate has established itself. I could measure its progress whenever I flew in to Melbourne. Over the years the farm dams filled less frequently while the suburbs crept further into the countryside, their swimming pools oblivious to the great drying.

Climate modelling suggests the decline of southern Australia's winter rainfall is caused by a build-up of greenhouse gas, much of it from coal burning. Victoria has the most polluting coal power plant on earth, and another plant was threatened by the fire.

There's evidence that global pollution caused a significant change in climate after the El Nino of 1998. Along with the dwindling rainfall has come a desiccation of the soil, and more extreme summer temperatures.

This February, at the zenith of a record-breaking heatwave, Melbourne recorded its hottest day ever - a suffocating 46.1 degrees, with even higher temperatures in rural Victoria.

This extreme coincided with exceptionally strong northerly winds, followed by an abrupt change to southerly. This brought a cooling, but it was the shift in wind direction that caught so many in a deadly trap. Such conditions have occurred before. In 1939 and 1983 they led to dangerous fires. But this time the conditions were more extreme, and the 12-year "drought" meant plant tissues were bone dry.

Despite narrowly missing the 1983 Victorian fires and then losing a house to the 1994 Sydney bushfires, I had not appreciated the difference a degree or two of extra heat and a dry soil can make to the ferocity of a fire. This fire was different from anything seen before.

Australia is in shock at the loss of so many lives. But inevitably we will look for lessons. The first, I fear, is that we must anticipate more such terrible blazes, for the world's addiction to burning fossil fuels goes on unabated. And there is now no doubt that emissions pollution is laying the conditions necessary for more such fires.

When he ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, described climate change as the greatest threat facing humanity. Shaken, and clearly having seen things none of us should see, he has now witnessed proof of his words. We can only hope Australia's climate policy, which is weak, is now significantly strengthened.

Rudd has said the arsonists suspected of lighting some fires are guilty of mass murder, and the police are pursuing the malefactors. But there's an old saying among Australian firefighters: "Whoever owns the fuel owns the fire".

Let's hope Australians ponder the deeper causes of this horrible event, and change their polluting ways before it's too late.

Tim Flannery is a scientist at Macquarie University and author of The Weather Makers: The History And Future Impact Of Climate Change. This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in The Guardian.

Temperature records smashed across the state

2009-02-09T13:33:00.000-08:00

Marian Wilkinson Environment Editor

February 10, 2009

THE heatwave that accompanied the bushfires on Saturday smashed records, as much of Victoria, including Melbourne and 20 other centres, registered unprecedented highs, the Bureau of Meteorology says.

Melbourne reached 46.4 degrees on Saturday, the highest in 154 years of record-keeping, overshooting the previous high set on Black Friday - January 13, 1939 - by 0.8 degrees and far exceeding the temperature on Ash Wednesday in 1983, which was 43.2 degrees.

"We've never seen anything like this in Victoria's history," David Jones, from the bureau's National Climate Centre, said yesterday. "You don't usually break records by much. You might beat it by point one of a degree or point two."

The bureau accurately predicted the heatwave but it forecasters were still in shock yesterday over the loss of life. Soaring temperatures were accompanied by strong winds and very low humidity which created the extreme fire danger.

A review of the weekend temperatures by the bureau found many site records were set on Saturday. Geelong had a record high of 47.4 degrees compared to the old record of 44.8, which was set days earlier.

Nearly 90 per cent of the state recorded the highest February temperatures ever.

"Records being broken by that much are just unheard of," Mr Jones said. "You just don't break records with that kind of margin in a stable climate. It's an extraordinary event, this one."

The heatwave has struck southern Australia in two phases, beginning on January 28, when it lasted three days, and then returning over the weekend. Melbourne has experienced three of the hottest days on record in this recent event, according to the bureau, which has been tracking increased heatwaves across the south of the country.

"We've known it was coming," Mr Jones said. "We've had repeated, highly unusual heatwave activity in Australia in the last 10 years". In the first stage of the heatwave in January, record temperatures were set in Tasmania, when Flinders Island Airport recorded 41.5 degrees. Nearly half of Tasmania had the hottest day on record on January 30. In Launceston, three of the four warmest days on record were recorded during the heatwave, which has also been responsible for seven of the eight highest temperatures on record in Tasmania.

Extreme conditions in late January also affected Victoria, southern NSW and South Australia. Adelaide experienced its warmest night on record on January 29 when the temperature stood at 33.9 in the early hours of the morning. When the heatwave returned at the weekend, Renmark in South Australia set a February record of 48.1 degrees.

While no overall state temperature records were broken in NSW, several all-time records were set for some centres, including Wagga Wagga, where the temperature reached 45.2 for the first time.

The 2009 heatwave has also been exceptional because of its duration. Both Adelaide and Melbourne set records for the most consecutive days above 43 degrees.

Most importantly for the fire danger, the heatwave was accompanied by very dry conditions in Victoria and South Australia. Melbourne had no real rain for over a month, from January 4 to February 7, equal to the second-longest dry spell on record for the city.

Scientists warned us this was going to happen

2009-02-09T12:32:00.000-08:00

If seeing is believing, then it's time to accept climate change, writes Freya Mathews.

IT IS only a couple of years since scientists first told us we could expect a new order of fires in south-eastern Australia, fires of such ferocity they would engulf the towns in their path.

And here they are. The fires of Saturday were not "once in 1000 years" or even "once in 100 years" events, as our political leaders keep repeating. They were the face of climate change.

They were the result of the new conditions that climate change has caused: higher temperatures, giving us hotter days, combined with lower rainfall, giving us a drier landscape. Let's stop using the word "drought", with its implication that dry weather is the exception. The desiccation of the landscape here is the new reality. It is now our climate.

People are comparing last Saturday to Ash Wednesday and Black Friday. But this misses the point. We should be comparing these fires to the vast and devastating fires of 2002-03, which swept through 2 million hectares of forest in the south-east and raged uncontrollably for weeks. They have been quickly forgotten because, being mainly in parks, they did not involve a large loss of human life or property. But it is to this fire regime, the new fire regime of climate change, rather than to the regimes of 1983 or 1939, that the present fires belong.

Saturday's events showed us the terrifying face of climate change. The heat was devastating, even without the fire.

Wildlife carers reported many incidents of heat stress and death among native animals. This means that out in the bush, unreported, vast numbers of animals were suffering. We can all see the trees and other plants dying in our gardens and parks. Our local fauna and flora have not adapted to these extremes. With wildfire, heat death becomes a holocaust, for people, for animals and for plants.

The Government is wondering how to stimulate the economy. It is planning to give away much of the surplus from boom times in handouts. It has made the usual token allocations to climate change mitigation, allocations that will in no way deflect the coming holocaust.

The Prime Minister weeps on television at the tragedy of Saturday's events. He looks around uncomprehendingly, unable to find meaning. But there is meaning. This is climate change. This is what the scientists told us would happen. All the climatic events of the past 10 years have led inexorably to this. And this is just the beginning of something that will truly, if unaddressed, overwhelm us.

As the events of Saturday showed, the consequences of climate change will make the financial crisis look like a garden party.

Yet there is a synchronicity here that must not be missed. The extraordinary economic measures for which the financial crisis is calling provide a perfect opportunity to fund the energy revolution for which the crisis of climate change is calling. If the Government does not seize it, then the terrifying world into which we were plunged on Saturday will become the world we will have to inhabit.

Freya Mathews is honorary research fellow at the philosophy department of La Trobe University

King tide set to compound Townsville's woes

2009-02-07T04:06:00.000-08:00

Residents in the north Queensland city of Townsville are being urged to take precautions with Sunday's king tide expected to be half a metre higher than forecast.

The Townsville Council is urging residents in low-lying areas to move their belongings to higher ground.

Mayor Les Tyrell says tide measurements this week show an abnormal increase in height.

He says experts are unsure what is causing the change.

"It's something that struck us at the last lot of king tides," he said.

"We had no warning of that and it's something that we're very keen to have a look at and see if it's a normal phenomenon or exactly what causes it.

"People did get caught out a little bit last time, so the expectation is this time that it could be up to 500 millimetres higher."

Rumblings of doom...

2009-02-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

Soon these hornbags could also be facing doom, lets hope they have been taking swimming lessons!

Antarctic shelf collapse could tilt Earth's axis: researchers

By Dan Karpenchuk in Toronto

Posted Fri Feb 6, 2009 7:00pm AEDT

A new study in Canada suggests that the collapse of a large portion of the Antarctic ice shelf would shift the very axis of the planet.
Geophysicists at the University of Toronto looked at the possible effects on the earth if sea levels rise because of a collapse of the west Antarctic ice shelf.
The Toronto researchers say the melting of the ice sheet will actually cause the earth's rotation to shift dramatically - about 500 metres from its current position if the entire ice sheet melts - and that would result in much higher sea levels in some areas than previously expected.
The researchers say the melting would change the balance of the globe in much the same way that tsunamis move huge amounts of water from one area to another.
They say that could mean water migrating from the southern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north toward North America and into the southern Indian Ocean.
The research has been published in today's issue of the journal, Science

Bushfires...the bad news just keeps coming lah!

2009-01-28T23:19:00.000-08:00

Bushfires 'to burn up climate.... AUSTRALIA is sitting on a time bomb when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions: bushfires.

Researchers said bushfires can release as much carbon pollution as the whole of industry combined.

While bushfires are not officially counted towards Australia's emissions, researchers said they will be in the future and it could cost billions.

The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre says the problem will snowball because climate change will cause more bushfires, which will release more carbon pollution, which makes climate change worse.

"Bushfires pose an enormous threat to Australia's carbon balance," said Mark Adams, a centre researcher who is based at the University of Sydney.

"In a bad fire year ... the scale of emissions from forest fires in southern Australia was of the same order as industrial emissions."

A bad fire could release 30 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

"That is far far more than we're ever going to be able to sequester from planting trees or promoting carbon capture," he said, in reference to burying emissions from coal-fired power stations underground.

Authorities should actively manage forests into the future to minimise the threat of bushfires, Prof Adams said.

Burn-offs had to be used to reduce fuel loads and the intensity of fires.

He predicted the international community would include emissions from forests in a post-Kyoto climate pact, which could be signed as early as this year.

"Not to do so is to ignore one of the biggest threats to the global atmospheric pool of CO2," he said.

The centre also has warned that many householders and communities are not ready for a bushfire, and current management practices won't work into the future.

More people are moving to fire-prone areas on urban fringes but don't realise the risks, the centre said.

And more fires are on the way as southern Australia becomes hotter and drier because of climate change.

Adelaide swelters through record night

2009-01-28T15:16:00.000-08:00

A few hornbags just to show how hot things are really getting!

January 29, 2009, 9:44 am

Adelaide has sweltered through its hottest night on record with the temperature only dipping to 33.9 degrees.

After a top temperature on Wednesday of 45.7c, the weather bureau said the overnight minimum came just after midnight (CDT).

The previous record was the 33.5c recorded on January 1, 1982.

By 5am the mercury had climbed back to 37c, on the way to a forecast top for Thursday of 44.

It will be Adelaide's third day in a row above 40c, with the city expected to have three more before the temperature dips into the high 30s.

That will be the longest run of consecutive days above 40c for more than 100 years.

Emergency services remained on high alert with a number of fires sparked by the conditions over the past 24 hours.

Public transport services were also thrown into chaos with the heat buckling both tram and train lines.

A number of blown transformers across the city has also cut power to some residents.

With the hot conditions persisting, SA Unions on Thursday urged employers to be flexible and to allow workers respite, particularly those without air-conditioning.

State secretary Janet Giles said it also made commonsense that there should be no outdoor work in such conditions.

"On days like these, the construction industry practically closes down, and for good reason," she said.

"Really good employers understand the toll that the heat can take and should even allow workers the flexibility to collect their children from school or tend to the needs of elderly relatives."

Sell the beach house: Antarctica is melting

2009-01-21T21:34:00.000-08:00

January 22, 2009 - 7:42AM

MORE of Antarctica is heating up than scientists had thought.

A large part of West Antarctica, not just the peninsula area, has warmed during the past 50 years, a study shows.

The issue of climate change on the frozen continent has been controversial because East Antarctica has been cooling and temperature records are sparse.

Eric Steig, of the University of Washington, said his research showed that, overall, warming had outweighed cooling.

"The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling. But it's more complex than that," Professor Steig said. "Antarctica isn't warming at the same rate everywhere and, while some areas have been cooling for a long time, the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer."

Warming in West Antarctica exceeded 0.1 degrees a decade during the past 50 years, similar to the rest of the world, the study, published in the journal Nature, said.

"Significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported," Professor Steig said.

The research was based on 50 years of temperature measurements from weather stations, 25 years of satellite observations and a statistical analysis of the link between the two sets of data.

Professor Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide, said the finding was alarming because it suggested the ice sheet in West Antarctica was at greater risk of melting.

Along with the Greenland ice sheet, a complete melt of both sheets would raise sea levels by 14 metres.

"Even losing a fraction of both would cause a few metres this century, with disastrous consequences," Professor Brook said. "I worry, with the observed polar warming over the last few decades and more in the pipeline due to lags in the climate system, that their large-scale melt is now a fait accompli."

Professor Steig said that the hole in the ozone had contributed to the cooling of East Antarctica but that it could close up by the middle of the century.

"If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world."

Another study, also published in Nature, has found that the seasons are starting about a 1.7 days earlier on average around the globe than during the first half of the century.

AAP reports: "[It's] bad news if you live near the Australian coast," Professor Brook said.

"In some areas where you've currently got housing, you'd probably have to abandon those areas."

He said the sea would penetrate up to one kilometre inland in flat areas such as South Australia's lower lakes.

Large areas which don't see flooding now would get flooded by king tides.

House prices for coastal areas would probably drop, Professor Brook said.

Climate Change, The Environment, Resources And Conflict

2009-01-06T17:25:00.000-08:00

RISING sea levels could lead to failed states across the Pacific and require extra naval deployments to deal with increases in illegal migration and fishing, a Defence Force analysis says.

"Environmental stress" has increased the risk of conflicts over resources and food and may demand greater involvement by the military in stabilisation, reconstruction and disaster relief, the analysis, prepared by Defence's strategic policy division, says.

It warns there is a risk of a serious global conflict over the Arctic as melting icecaps allow easier access to undersea oil and gas deposits.

In Australia's northern waters, "climate change is expected to change the location of South-East Asian fishing grounds, causing an increase in illegal fishing," says a summary of the analysis. "This may raise demand for ADF patrols in these regions."

The warnings emerged as a leading NASA scientist, James Hanson, used an open letter to the US president-elect, Barack Obama, to single out Australia's coal exports as a significant cause of climate change.

"Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet," Dr Hanson said.

The Defence analysis, titled Climate Change, The Environment, Resources And Conflict, was completed in November 2007 for the head of strategy, Michael Pezzullo, a deputy secretary who has since been appointed to oversee the preparation of the Defence White Paper.

"Environmental changes will reinforce existing concerns regarding land availability, economic development and control over resources," it says.

"Rising sea levels will affect states and islands with low-lying coastlines around the world … Food sources are also vulnerable to environmental changes."

A summary, obtained by the Herald under freedom of information laws, says: "Environmental stress, caused by both climate change and a range of other factors, will act as a threat multiplier in fragile states around the world, increasing the chances of state failure. This is likely to increase demands for the ADF to be deployed on additional stabilisation, post-conflict reconstruction and disaster relief operations in the future."

Defence refused to release the full 12-page analysis, saying its publication could damage Australia's defence capability and international relations.

The paper says climate change may lead to increases in refugees from Pacific islands, but says few are likely to be able to reach Australia.

"From a defence planning perspective, we don't know how quickly these changes will occur, exactly what their impact will be, or how states and societies will react," it says. "Nevertheless, climate change may affect security by increasing stress on fragile states, state and societal competition for resources, environmental threats to ADF infrastructure and increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events.

"Climate change is unlikely to increase the risk of major conflict, although there is one exception. The Arctic is melting, potentially making the extraction of undersea energy deposits commercially viable. … Conflict is a remote possibility if these disputes are not resolved peacefully."

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, described climate change as a "fundamental" challenge last month when he released his national security statement.

Dr Hanson, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said Australia was making "honest efforts" to tackle climate change but failing.

Carbon trading schemes such as that proposed by the Federal Government would slow the rate of greenhouse emissions too slowly, Dr Hanson said.

"This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat," he said. "It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity."

Australia is the world's largest exporter of black coal, shipping about 230 million tonnes a year to supply just over a quarter of world export demand, according to the Australian Coal Association.

It is the nation's biggest export earner, but when burned overseas Australian coal generates more than half a billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions each year, or more than all emissions generated within Australia.

More of that so called freaky weather chaos lah..

2008-11-25T20:48:00.001-08:00

54,000 evacuated in Brazil flooding

At least 84 people have been killed and more than 54,000 forced to flee by flooding from heavy rain that has pounded southern Brazil for nearly two months, regional Civil Defence officials said Tuesday.

With the latest figures released Tuesday the death toll climbed from 67 to 84, and the number of evacuees from 52,000 to more than 54,000.

The region faces "the worst weather tragedy in history," Santa Catarina Governor Luiz Henrique da Silveira told reporters on Monday.

Making matters worse, torrential rain hitting the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina actually has intensified in recent days, officials said.

Civil Defence workers, firefighters, soldiers and police across the area have been busy for weeks rescuing people trapped by the flooding.

Civil Defence officials also said the death toll could rise considerably as casualty reports come in from rural areas.

More than 1.5 million people have been affected by the heavy rains, and eight cities remained cut off by waters and blocked roads. The region has been under a state of emergency since Saturday.

The most heavily affected towns are Ilhota (population 22,000, 18 dead) and the tourist town of Blumenau (population 297,000, 20 dead) where many German immigrants settled.

The head of Santa Catarina Civil Defence operations, Marcio Alves, said that most people were killed by landslides. "Most deaths happen when the rain stops and people go out believing that all is well," he said.

Another Civil Defence official, Robert Guimaraes, said "nearly 80 percent of the region is under water," though levels were dropping.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has ordered six military helicopters and 350 soldiers to the area to help in relief operations.

The latest flooding resulted from freak rains on Sunday that delivered a month's amount of precipitation in just five hours.

Boats were the only means of transport in many areas, and witnesses spoke of the bodies of dozens of drowned cows littering the road near Blumenau.

"We heard people crying for help. We also heard explosions. With the ground saturated, several gas pipelines exploded," one Santa Catarina resident forced to leave her home, Beatriz Heusi, 30, told AFP by telephone.

More than 160,000 people were without electricity and fresh water supplies were cut to several towns.

Other southern Brazilian states, principally Rio Grande do Sul and Espirito Santo were affected to a lesser extent by flooding and mudslides.

Surprise for you! Hornbags!

2008-10-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Yes one again, one's local suburb turns out the hornbags for you, me, and everyone!
Enjoy!

Today's doom for you...floaties r us!

2008-10-26T23:33:00.000-07:00

Sea levels to rise by one metre: experts
October 27, 2008, 3:23 pm

Sea levels will rise by one metre this century, according to German scientists who warn that global warming is happening faster than previously predicted.

Citing UN date on climate change, two senior German scientists say that previous predictions were far too cautious and optimistic.

Earlier estimates predicted a rise of 18cm to 59cm in sea levels this century.

That estimate is woefully understated, according to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects, and Jochem Marotzke, a leading meteorologist.

"We now have to expect that the sea level will rise by a metre this century," said Schellnhuber in Berlin.

He said it is "just barely possible" that world governments will be able to limit the rise in average global temperatures to just two degrees Celsius by the end of the century, if they all strictly adhered to severe limits in carbon dioxide emissions.

Those restrictions call for halving greenhouse emissions by 2050 and eliminating CO2 emissions entirely by the end of the century.

But the German researchers said the resulting limited increase in temperature is predicated on strict adherence to those restrictions without exception, and even then there are many variables which could thwart the goals.

Schellnhuber, who is official adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate-change issues, said the new findings employed data unavailable to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its most recent global warming report.

The two experts said the IPCC report had been based on data up to 2005 only but since then ice loss in the Arctic had doubled or tripled.

Schellnhuber charged that 20 per cent of the loss of the ice sheet on Greenland could be directly linked to the added carbon dioxide emissions from new Chinese coal-fired power stations.

The new sea level predictions, according to Schellnhuber, are based on studies of melting Himalaya glaciers and the shrinking Greenland ice cap.

He blamed the rapidly diminishing size of the Greenland ice cap on soot particles from Chinese coal-fired power plants.

"That is truly a global effect," he said.

Soot settles on the ice, preventing the ice from reflecting as much sunlight back into space.

The result is that the ice absorbs sunlight rays, raising the temperature of the ice and causing it to melt.

"Air pollution plays a massive role in the accelerating pace of climate change, he said.

Doom...coutesy of Lateline ABC lah!

2008-10-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

Action on climate change more urgent than ever
Print Email
Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 23/10/2008

Reporter: Margot O'Neil

Scientists are concerned that the will to tackle climate change has waned in the midst of the financial crisis, with the latest data showing climate change is moving more rapidly than they ever expected.

Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Well as governments remain transfixed by the financial crisis, some of Australia's top scientists are concerned that the will to tackle the potentially more dramatic global nightmare of climate change may be waning.

Well tonight they tell Lateline how the latest data shows climate change is moving more rapidly than even their worst expectations.

In a moment we'll be joined Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the world's preeminent scientific body on climate change.

But first Margot O'Neill reports on the rapidly rising levels of anxiety among some of Dr Pahcauri's colleagues in Australia.

MARGOT O'NEILL, REPORTER: Meet three of Australia's, and the world's, top climate change scientists. Each of them shared in last year's Nobel Prize for their work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And each is usually most comfortable with cautious, measured public discussion. Well, not any more.

PROF. ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS, MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY: A lot of people like myself, and I believe many, many scientists now, who are frantically, hysterically worried.

PROF, DAVE GRIGGS, MONASH UNIVERSITY: Another one of these facts comes in that catches even you unawares and you think, "Oh shit! Not another one! I wasn't expecting that."

PROF. DAVID KAROLY, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: The only way that I could see the climate system in 50 years time or 100 years time being cooler than at present is if the earth got hit by an asteroid and basically human civilisation was destroyed.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Australia's climate change scientists are stirring, goaded by inaction in the face of a potential cataclysm, they're picking up megaphones because they need everyone to know it's speeding up.

From the loss of Arctic sea ice to early signs of melting permafrost, to sea level rises, to carbon dioxide emissions. Many of the projections contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just a year ago are being overtaken.

DAVE GRIGGS: When we made predictions a couple of years ago that the Arctic sea ice might disappear by the end of the century people were sceptical. Now people think, "Well, it actually might be gone by mid-century."

And if you talk to the scientific community people are just, "Oh, yeah, yeah, we know that now. That's gone." And only a few years ago that was a really dramatic and controversial finding because it was something that was so far beyond our concept.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Dave Griggs now leads Monash University's new Sustainability Institute after heading up the British Government's Hadley Institute and the IPCC's Science Working Group.

What most of us don't understand, he says, is that no matter what we do, the planet is now locked into dramatic temperature and sea level rises by 2050 because of the greenhouse gasses already trapped in the atmosphere. A two-degree temperature rise was once projected towards the end of the century and regarded as a tipping point for dangerous climate change. It's now likely to occur in our lifetime.

DAVE GRIGGS: Maybe two, two to three degrees by mid-century.

MARGOT O'NEILL: I mean, that almost is the end for the Great Barrier Reef.

DAVE GRIGGS: Inherently scientists are very conservative, and they won't come out and make a statement in public unless they are very confident about it. But the kind of sort of thing that are going around in private, you know, oh, the Barrier Reef's gone, the Murray Darling's gone.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: We should be exercising triage. We should be looking at the parts of the world that are already dead, they're just still walking around. And we just need to leave them alone, and maybe the Murray Darling Basin is one of those.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Ann Henderson-Sellers returned to Australia last year after heading the UN's World Climate Research Program in Geneva. She believes it's time for climate scientists to break ranks with the consensus science of the IPCC.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: It is not true that all scientists agree with everything that is in the IPCC fourth assessment report. Some of us, including me, think that it is worse, it is more frightening, more dangerous, happening faster. And I now think that we perhaps have not done the right thing in seeming as if we're of a single mind, a single view. We did it for all the right reasons, for wanting not to open up a "Well, this scientist says one thing and this scientist says something different." But now I don't think that that's right any longer.

MARGOT O'NEILL: She also wonders how the next IPCC report can be any more persuasive.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: We've now said for four reports the world is getting warmer, this is a serious concern. The world really is getting warmer. This is a quite serious concern, and the time for action has already passed. What will we say in the fifth IPCC report? I simply don't know, I have no idea how we can couch the terms anymore. What degree of anxiousness can you add to that?

DAVID KAROLY: We can't say whether this is due to climate change but it is exactly what you'd expect for some of the moral predictions for like 50 or 100 years time, but we're seeing it now.

DAVID KAROLY: David Karoly returned to Australia last year from the University of Oklahoma after working as a lead author on the 2007 IPCC Report. He says it can be difficult and exhausting continually battling governments, big business and climate sceptics, but his lowest point came during negotiations in 2007 when news reports revealed that China, Russia and Saudi Arabia tried to derail even the conservative scientific consensus of the IPCC. David Karoly says he almost walked out.

DAVID KAROLY: There were clear, vested interests from some countries that were lying, raising scientific misinformation. And I was prepared, as were a lot of other scientists at that meeting, prepared to give up. The system was so close to being broken. The system fortunately didn't break.

MARGOT O'NEILL: The current financial turmoil has proven the world can act quickly when faced with a crisis, the scientists say. The same drastic intervention is the only solution for global warming.

Margot O'Neill. Lateline.

A break from the doom...hornbags lah!

2008-10-19T23:37:00.000-07:00

Once again, mwah has been out and about, sourcing world's best practice, quintessentail ISO 9002 hornbags for you to enjoy, purvey, and perhaps get a little bit steamed over!

Arctic on thin ice

2008-10-17T16:52:00.000-07:00

Oh dear, start packing those floaties, soon every house will have a water view!

October 17, 2008 - 11:10AM

Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers have claimed.
"Obviously, the planet is interconnected, so what happens in the Arctic does matter [to the rest of the world]," Jackie Richter-Menge of the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory said in releasing the third annual Arctic Report Card.
The report, compiled by 46 scientists from 10 countries, looks at a variety of conditions in the Arctic.
The region has long been expected to be among the first areas to show impacts from global warming, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is largely a result of human activities adding carbon dioxide and other gases to the atmosphere.
"Changes in the Arctic show a domino effect from multiple causes more clearly than in other regions," said James Overland, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, Washington.
"It's a sensitive system and often reflects changes in relatively fast and dramatic ways."
For example, autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 5 degrees Celsius above normal.
The report noted that last year was the warmest year on record in the Arctic, leading to a record loss of sea ice. This year's sea ice melt was second only to that of last year.
Rising temperatures help melt the ice, which in turn allows more solar heating of the ocean.
That warming of the air and ocean affects land and marine life and reduces the amount of winter sea ice that lasts into the following summer.
The study also noted a warming trend on Arctic land and an increase in greenness as shrubs move north into areas that were formerly permafrost.
While the warming continues, the rate in this century is less than in the 1990s due to natural variability, the researchers said.
In addition to global warming, natural cycles of warming and cooling occur, and a warm cycle in the 1990s added to the temperature rise.
Now with a cooler cycle in some areas the rise in temperatures has slowed, but Overland said he expects that it will speed up again when the next natural warming cycle comes around.
Asked if an increase in radiation from the sun was having an effect on the Earth's climate, Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Centre in Columbus, Ohio, said that, while it was important, increased solar output accounts only for about 10 per cent of global warming.
"You can't use solar to say that greenhouse gases are not a major factor," Overland added.
Other findings from the report include:
- The Arctic Ocean continued to warm and freshen due to ice melt. This was accompanied by an "unprecedented" rate of sea level rise of nearly 0.25 centimetres a year.
- Warming continued around Greenland last year resulting in a record amount of ice melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost 101 cubic kilometres of ice, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.
- Reindeer herds that had been increasing since the 1970s are now showing signs of levelling off or beginning to decline.
- Goose populations are increasing as they expand their range within the Arctic.
- Data on marine mammals is limited, but they seem to have mixed trends. They are adapted to life in a region that is at least seasonally covered in ice. There is concern about the small numbers of polar bears in some regions. The status of many walrus groups is unknown. Some whales are increasing, others declining.
"This is a very complicated system and we are still working diligently to sort out its mysteries," Richter-Menge said.
In addition to Richter-Menge, Overland and Box, lead authors of the report included Michael Simpkin of NOAA and Vladimir Romanovsky of the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Some early morning doom to ease into the day...

2008-09-28T14:06:00.001-07:00

Climate change 'sinking Pacific nation'
September 28, 2008, 5:30 pm

An immigrant from a tiny Pacific Ocean nation is appealing to the Australian government to assist in evacuations because she says her homeland is sinking under rising sea levels.

Currently bedridden with pneumonia, Kiribati Australia Association member Wanita Limpus in a statement told the Climate Emergency Week rally outside Queensland's Parliament House how climate change was destroying her home nation.

Ms Limpus said since she left Kiribati in 1976 to marry her Australian husband, she had returned to see clear signs of rising sea levels in 1991, 2004 and 2005.

"In 1991 I was having breakfast in my sister's home one morning when there happened to be a king tide and waves crashed over a retaining wall and swept into the house and we found ourselves up to our ankles in sea water in the kitchen," she said.

"I was shocked at this, but my sisters were laughing ... they were used to it.

"In 2004, when I returned I had to move my grandfather's grave from its resting place, and bury him more inland."

Mrs Limpus called on the Australian government to help Kiribati begin the evacuation process, saying the land would become uninhabitable long before it was submerged.

"Salt water is mixing with the groundwater and contaminating wells. Soon vital food providing plants and trees are going to die.

"Our people are inevitably going to have to abandon their land. They will be scattered, families will be split.

"(We need) to prepare the evacuation in a way which is the least traumatic for both them and the countries that will receive them."

"Kiribati, pronounced Kiribas, is a small nation of just over 100,000 people scattered across 33 coral atolls in the Central Pacific Ocean," she said.

"The coral atolls of which Kiribati consists, are flat, just a few hundred metres wide and no more than a metre above sea level."

She said Kiribati was the place of origin of the Hawaiian skirt and was the scene of the Battle of Tarawa, a major World War II battle between the United States and Japan .

Her husband Leonard Limpus said while Kiribati still had a few decades left, things like education had to be altered to make integration easier.

"But you can't put a timetable on it because things seem to be happening a lot faster than they are being forecasted for," he said.

Climate Emergency Week organiser Paul Benedek said the Kiribati people were just one of many being affected by climate change and more needed to be done than "weak" emissions cut talks.

"We have heard those in positions of power calmly talking of giving up on the Great Barrier Reef ; we see growing evidence of our major river systems dying and permanent drought; and Arctic ice is near its lowest level on record," Mr Benedek said.

"We are rallying to demand a massive shift to renewable energy, to public transport and to sustainability."

Yes, more of those hornbags.....

2008-09-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

Local hornbags, at work, play, and er, whatever goes on in hornbaggeryland lah...

Huge ice sheet breaks loose in Canadian arctic

2008-09-04T03:38:00.001-07:00

'Shocking event' another sign of warming in polar frontier, say scientists.....
Above...Large pieces of ice float off after separating from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf July 29. That shelf has lost about eight square miles and the Serson shelf 47 square miles as the Markham Ice Shelf has separated and gone adrift.
TORONTO - A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.
Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.
"The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic," said Mueller.
Mueller also said that two large sections of ice detached from the Serson Ice Shelf, shrinking that ice feature by 47 square miles — or 60 percent — and that the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has also continued to break up, losing an additional eight square miles.
Mueller reported last month that seven square miles of the 170-square-mile and 130-feet-thick Ward Hunt shelf had broken off.
Greenland glacier also threatened.......
This comes on the heels of unusual cracks in a northern Greenland glacier, rapid melting of a southern Greenland glacier, and a near record loss for Arctic sea ice this summer. And earlier this year a 160-square mile chunk of an Antarctic ice shelf disintegrated.
"Reduced sea ice conditions and unusually high air temperatures have facilitated the ice shelf losses this summer," said Luke Copland, director of the Laboratory for Cryospheric Research at the University of Ottawa. "And extensive new cracks across remaining parts of the largest remaining ice shelf, the Ward Hunt, mean that it will continue to disintegrate in the coming years."
Formed by accumulating snow and freezing meltwater, ice shelves are large platforms of thick, ancient sea ice that float on the ocean's surface but are connected to land.
Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s. All that is left today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 299 square miles.
Martin Jeffries of the U.S. National Science Foundation and University of Alaska Fairbanks said in a statement Tuesday that the summer's ice shelf loss is equivalent to over three times the area of Manhattan, totaling 82 square miles — losses that have reduced Arctic Ocean ice cover to its second-biggest retreat since satellite measurements began 30 years ago.
"These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present," said Mueller.
During the last century, when ice shelves would break off, thick sea ice would eventually reform in their place.
'Scary scenario'"........
But today, warmer temperatures and a changing climate means there's no hope for regrowth. A scary scenario," said Mueller.
The loss of these ice shelves means that rare ecosystems that depend on them are on the brink of extinction, said Warwick Vincent, director of Laval University's Centre for Northern Studies and a researcher in the program ArcticNet.
"The Markham Ice Shelf had half the biomass for the entire Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf ecosystem as a habitat for cold, tolerant microbial life; algae that sit on top of the ice shelf and photosynthesis like plants would. Now that it's disappeared, we're looking at ecosystems on the verge of distinction,' said Mueller.
Along with decimating ecosystems, drifting ice shelves and warmer temperatures that will cause further melting ice pose a hazard to populated shipping routes in the Arctic region — a phenomenon that Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to welcome.
Harper announced last week that he plans to expand exploration of the region's known oil and mineral deposits, a possibility that has become more evident as a result of melting sea ice. It is the burning of oil and other fossil fuels that scientists say is the chief cause of manmade warming and melting ice.
Harper also said Canada would toughen reporting requirements for ships entering its waters in the Far North, where some of those territorial claims are disputed by the United States and other countries.

Hornbags in abundance!

2008-08-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Lots of random net hornbags, found, located, examined, and generally got a little bit worked up over.

Today's doom for you...Time is running out lah.

2008-08-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

Voyage into the Arctic as summer ice vanishes...

THE vast Arctic sea ice which spreads across the North Pole could disappear during the summer within a decade or two - or even by 2013 - leading scientists are warning.
The Canadian Coast Guard's strongest icebreaker, the Louis S. St Laurent, took the Herald and an ABC Four Corners crew with a team of scientists going to the Arctic at the beginning of this summer's melt in July to explore the extraordinary changes there first hand.
Only a few years ago, climate modellers predicted the sea ice would not disappear in summer until at least the end of the century.
"Then they said 2070, and then they said 2050 and then they said 2030," said Robie Macdonald, a leading Canadian oceanographer on board the Louis.
"Not only do I see the change, but it's like they're moving the goalposts toward me and it's an amazing thing," he said.
The team on board the Louis are some of the thousands of scientists from 60 nations working to draw attention to the rapid changes in the Arctic and Antarctic during International Polar Year.
The icebreaker's route took us through thick sea ice at the entrance to the fabled Northwest Passage where over the centuries many navigators perished, most famously Sir John Franklin, a former governor of Tasmania.
Last year the Northwest Passage was virtually ice free for the first time in memory when the Arctic sea ice shrank to its lowest level since satellite observations began.
The US Interior Secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, announced in May the drastic loss of Arctic sea ice had forced him to list the polar bear as an endangered species because their populations could collapse within a few decades.
Hopes the sea ice would return to robust levels after last year's record low are unlikely to be realised, according to the latest figures from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre. While this year's melt is not expected to shatter last year's record, the sea ice is already significantly below average as the melt season peaks.
"We might see an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2030 - within some of our lifetimes," said Mark Serreze, a geographer at the snow and ice data centre.
"There are some scientists out there who think that even might be optimistic."
The loss of the sea ice in summer would be unprecedented in human history, said Don Perovich a geophysicist with the US Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory.
"As near as we can tell looking at the historical record, there's been ice in the Arctic in the summer for at least 16 million years," he said.

"There's a group that makes a very strong case that in 2012 or 2013 we'll have an ice-free [summer] Arctic - as soon as that. It's astounding what's happened," said Dr Ted Scambos, a glaciologist from the snow and ice data centre.
The melt is leading Arctic nations, including Canada, Russia and the US, to seriously examine new shipping routes through the Arctic - including the Northwest Passage - and the potential expansion of huge oil and gas fields.
"As the ice recedes, it's opening up not only the Arctic passage but all the resources in the Arctic Ocean," said Scott Borgerson, from the US Council on Foreign Relations.
Last year's melt was produced by a "perfect storm" of natural weather patterns and rising temperatures in the Arctic caused by global warming. The Arctic is warming at twice the average rate of the rest of the planet and the sea ice is considered by many scientists to be crucial for monitoring the speed of global climate change.
The more the bright white sea ice melts, the more the dark Arctic Ocean absorbs sunlight, in turn melting more sea ice and feeding back into global warming.
The disappearance of the sea ice could have serious ramifications for the earth's climate and weather patterns, scientists say, explaining it would be like leaving the refrigerator door open on the planet.
"We could think of the Arctic as the refrigerator of the northern hemisphere climate system," Dr Serreze said.
"What we're doing by getting rid of that sea ice is radically changing the nature of that refrigerator. We're making it much less efficient. But everything is connected together so what happens up there eventually influences what happens in other parts of the globe."
Scientists are rapidly working to understand how much the loss of the summer sea ice might change weather patterns amid fears it will cause extreme storms and rainfall in some regions and prolong drought in others.
"The Arctic really can feed back into the global climate system," said Dr Macdonald, who has worked with the UN's peak scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "You know what happens when you get feedbacks - you get surprises and we don't like surprises."
The Louis' ice specialist, Erin Clark, explained that much of the ice at the entrance to the Northwest Passage this July was "first-year ice", frozen over just last year, and it would be prone to melting. The extent of this year's melt will not be known until September and scientists are worried that with six weeks still left in the melt season, this thin first-year ice could be vulnerable to rapid loss.

"A race has developed between the waning sunlight and the weakened ice," the report of the national snow and ice data centre for the end of July explains.
Despite a colder winter in parts of the Arctic and cooler temperatures in late July, the size of the sea ice is expected to shrink to levels close to the second or third lowest on record by September, according to the centre.
Researchers are trying to understand how much of the melting is due to the extreme natural variability in the northern polar climate system and how much is due to global warming caused by humans. The Arctic Oscillation climate pattern, which plays a big part in the weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, has been in "positive" mode in recent decades bringing higher temperatures to the Arctic.
Dr Igor Polyakov, an oceanographer from the International Arctic Research Centre in Fairbanks, Alaska, explained that natural variability as well as global warming is crucial to understanding the ice melt. "A combination of these two forces led to what we observe now and we should not ignore either forces" he said.
The consensus among scientists is that while the natural variability in the Arctic is an important contributor to climate change there, the climate models cannot explain the rapid loss of sea ice without including "human-induced" global warming. This means human activity such as burning fossil fuels and land clearing which are releasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
"There have been numerous models run that have looked at that and basically they can't reproduce the ice loss we've had with natural variability," said Dr Perovich. "You have to add a carbon dioxide warming component to it."
As the sea ice fails to recover, there are concerns it will become one of the "tipping points" pushing the planet to faster climate change.
A number of scientific papers are raising concerns that global warming, especially in the Arctic, will begin to thaw some of the vast areas of permafrost in the Arctic regions, especially in Siberia and Alaska.
If that happens infrastructure including roads, railways, bridges and pipelines could begin to collapse. More importantly, scientists say, it's possible that large amounts of the carbon dioxide and methane that are trapped in the permafrost will be released into the atmosphere, producing another feedback that will increase global warming.
The Arctic is a sentinel of change, Dr Macdonald explained on board the Louis, and urged everyone to take notice. "We should care in the sense that what happens here is coming to us and sometimes, you know, a warning is a helpful thing to mobilise people," he said.
"If it takes the iconic polar bear for people to say maybe we need to do something, that's a good thing

Somewhat attractive Virgins, in a most pleasing way..

2008-08-01T19:36:00.000-07:00

Yes besides enjoying the delights of these lovely ladies, if one was convinced enough to partake of a "Virgin mobile"...not sure if that means a phone, or one of these roller skating lovelies, apparently you could also eat as many pies as you wanted, at Harrys pie shop next door.

With appetites enlarged by all the pleasing scenery, a good feed is allways in order.

Sexpo 2008...

2008-07-29T17:32:00.000-07:00

A few pictures from this, er, fascinating event, forthwith.

Thankfully we also had a few hornbags in attendance of our own, that were somewhat shocked at times on what was on offer.....

Considering the normal saucy things that are purveyed by these fine ladies, we were somewhat amused by their sudden shyness in the presence of so much joyful smut and sexiness.

Just shows that life can still hold some surprises...

More random hornbags from one's wanderings...

2008-07-25T22:20:00.000-07:00

Singapore and Indonesia lah!

Good old human interaction, working well with nature again..

2008-07-25T22:15:00.000-07:00

Starving bears eat Russian guards
MOSCOW: Bad weather is thwarting efforts to rescue a group of mine workers trapped by hungry bears in Russia's wild far eastern region of Kamchatka.
The bears have already eaten two of the workers.
The bears - apparently starving - killed the men on July 17, it was reported in Russia. As many as 30 bears have surrounded a platinum mine. Both victims worked at the mine as security guards.
About 400 geologists and miners are refusing to return to work, afraid of further attacks. Attempts by local officials to fly to the scene by helicopter and shoot the bears have so far failed because of poor weather, it was reported.
Kamchatka, 12,000 kilometres east of Moscow on Russia's Pacific coast, is one of the world's last great natural wilderness areas. The remote volcanic peninsula is home to the rare Steller's sea eagle, puffins, and brown bears that roam its geysers and snow-covered collapsed volcanoes.
Kamchatka's 12,000-strong bear population is the largest in Eurasia. Recently, however, the bears have faced unprecedented ecological pressures.
Poaching has led to a dramatic decline in the bear's main food source - the Pacific salmon.
Kamchatka is home to a quarter of the world's salmon, but they are disappearing. Poachers have cleaned out entire species by netting rivers.
Last year hunters shot dead at least 300 bears - picking off most of the large ones. At least another 600 were killed illegally, conservationists estimate.
"It's always the bear's fault," said Laura Williams, the director of WWF's Kamchatka office. She said she was seeking further details of the stand-off at the mine amid reports that hunters had been sent in an sports utility vehicle to the region to kill the bears.
About 10 bears have also been seen near the village of Khalino, sniffing fish remains and other garbage.
A village official, Viktor Leushkin, told Itar-Tass that a team of hunters would be sent to shoot or chase away the bears.
"These predators have to be destroyed," he said. "Once they kill a human they will do it again and again."

Siti, a bit of an Indonesian hottie

2008-07-10T18:31:00.001-07:00

Yes, it would appear that Siti is well used name in those parts...hearing it mentioned here, and there, whilst grubbing about, one would turn and look for the one we have to come know here in Sydney, and be surprised, by, well, another.This one was encountered with her family in Bogor, and of course put on fine display of cuteness, and tingling in one's netherparts.However, she possessed keen intelligence, perfect English, and is studying to a vet, you know one of them animal doctor type people...That could be a slightly wasted occupation in Indonesia, as wherever there are people, there is a distinct lack of animals.Except for, well, dogs, cats, and rats, all in various states of starvation.This not include the house rat of the infamous backpacker's dive, The Scumbag Vermin, or the Pension Firman to give its real name.The rat in question is exceptionally sleek, and well fed, and delights in taking a shower with unsuspecting western women in the outdoor dunny.Anyway, after, um, all that, here is Siti, forthwith.

More warnings from those, who, well can.

2008-07-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

Mainstream debate about global warming has moved on from the question of what needs to be done to when it needs to be done. There is broad agreement that heat-trapping emissions need to be cut. That is prompted by the science. But there is furious argument over when to start doing it. That is an especially tricky one because it's where the science ends and politics and economics take over.
And while science may be imprecise and incomplete, it is usually a better guide than politics, which Ambrose Bierce defined in his 1911 classic The Devil's Dictionary as "a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles". And physical science is generally more dependable than economics, the so-called dismal science. As George Bernard Shaw said: "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."
Yet these are the disciplines, or perhaps indisciplines, that societies are obliged to work with. So what do they tell us in answering this question - should a country act unilaterally and cut its carbon emissions even if other countries do not?
Modern history gives us two models for weighing the merit of unilateral action in a highly interdependent world.
One is from the world of military strategy and the other is from trade policy. In the case of military strategy, the Cold War posed the question of whether one of the superpowers should start cutting its nuclear arsenal even if the other did not.
The argument in favour of unilateral disarmament said that doing so would break the cycle of confrontation and escalation, ease tensions, save money, and move the superpowers to a better relationship.
But reality showed otherwise. Unilateral disarmament turned out to be the equivalent of surrender. The Soviet Union abandoned the arms race and lost its empire. The lesson here is clear - unilateral action is a bad idea.
In the case of trade, one of the big questions of the last century was whether a country should cut its protective tariffs even if other countries did not.
We shouldn't cut the tariffs on our car industry, for example, unless other countries do. Because if we did lower our protective barriers unilaterally, other countries will flood our market and ruin our industry. To this day, global trade negotiations are based on this concept of reciprocity - I will if you will.
But in the real world, experience showed that it doesn't work that way. Even if other countries keep their protective barriers in place, the country that liberalises its trade reaps big benefits of efficiency and competitiveness. So the experience from trade is that unilateral action is generally a good idea.
How do these examples help us understand whether to start cutting carbon emissions unilaterally?
The eminent economist Ross Garnaut, the man appointed by the Rudd Government to report on the economics of climate change, put it to me this way: "With trade liberalisation, you are going to benefit whatever the rest of the world does. With unilateral disarmament, you open yourself to a security risk, but at least you save money in the national budget.
"With climate change, it's even worse than unilateral disarmament - if you are the only country to move, there is only cost."
If Australia were to impose a significant price on the right to emit carbon and other countries did not, companies here would be put at a disadvantage.
Some, like the electricity companies, are stuck and would have to sit tight and put up with it. But the ones that sell so-called tradeable goods could just take their factories overseas, and their jobs with them.
And if Australia managed to curb its greenhouse emissions as a result, so what? Accounting for all of 1.5 per cent of global carbon output, it would make no discernable difference whatsoever. Australia would have punished itself economically for no good purpose environmentally.
In his report to the Federal Government released last week, Garnaut likens this to the prisoner's dilemma.
Consider: Two people are arrested for a crime. They are questioned separately. Each may give evidence against the other, or say nothing. If both say nothing, both go free for lack of evidence. But if one rats on the other, he goes free and the other is severely punished. If both give evidence, both are severely punished.
Not knowing or trusting what the other may do, the best individual - or local - strategy is to give evidence against your friend. In climate change, this translates into a strategy of allowing other countries to act while you do not. Or as Garnaut puts it: "With climate change, a country can be rewarded for cheating."
But the best overall - or global - strategy for the prisoners is for them to each trust the other and for neither to give evidence. This way, both go free. Or, in climate change terms, for all nations to agree to act at broadly the same time in roughly the same manner.
This was the aspiration that Kevin Rudd voiced at the G8 meeting in Japan this week, urging the developing countries and the developed to act in unison. But the response from China and India starkly revealed that, even with the US signing up to a communiqué that supports the idea of cutting emissions in half by 2050, the two biggest emerging economies are not interested in acting at the moment.

So does that mean Rudd should take Brendan Nelson's advice and not even start the emissions trading scheme he has pledged to begin from 2010?
Rudd's thinking is that he will proceed with the program. How is this good politics? With the Greens and the environmental movement clamouring for more action from Rudd, and the Liberal Party urging less, Rudd will position himself in between these voices of the Left and the Right at what he calls the responsible reforming centre of Australian politics.
The emissions trading system can start off assigning a low price to the right to emit a tonne of carbon. The Government can set out on a gently-sloping upward trajectory of carbon-curbing. This would keep all Australia's options open as international negotiations proceed.
The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change, including firms such as BP, Westpac, Origin Energy and Visy, has urged the Government to act swiftly because "the longer we delay acting, the more expensive it becomes for business and for the wider Australian economy".
Similarly, an impressive group of 1700 US scientists and economists, including six Nobel laureates, has told the US Government that "the longer we wait, the harder and more costly it will be" to curb carbon emissions.
"The most risky thing we can do is nothing," they wrote.
This is true, but, as Garnaut points out, "only if other countries act eventually". And if not, we should forget unilaterally cutting carbon emissions and start unilaterally building seawalls.
Peter Hartcher is the Herald's political editor.

Today's doom for you...Antarctic ice shelf again, update

2008-07-10T13:47:00.000-07:00

Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread': European scientists
July 11, 2008 - 3:57AM
New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.
Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.
"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.
Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s.
Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island.
The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs.
Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event, ESA added.
The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.
But this latest stage of the breakup occurred during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest.
One idea is that warmer water from the Southern Ocean is reaching the underside of the ice shelf and thinning it rapidly from underneath.
"Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years," researcher David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said.
"Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within 30 years. The truth is, it is going more quickly than we guessed."
In the past three decades, six Antarctic ice shelves have collapsed completely -- Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.

Singapore stunnas lah

2008-07-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

Singapore hornbag photograpy, can!For wondrous, glamerous and world class, best practice China girls...oh dear...Best one save for one's ticket while still can...Because after carbon emissions trading, one cannot afford....

Australia's harsh reality: adapt or perish

2008-07-07T17:47:00.000-07:00

Rivers run dry … the once-thriving Murray River wetlands at Mildura, Victoria. Under Professor Garnaut's worst-case scenario, the rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin could deteriorate to a trickle by 2050. "By 2100, 97 per cent of agricultural production will be lost."
Latest related coverage

AUSTRALIANS must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll, economic loss and the eventual destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, the snowfields, Kakadu and the nation's food bowl, the Murray-Darling Basin.
That is the stark ultimatum presented yesterday by Professor Ross Garnaut in the first comprehensive assessment of the impact on the country of climate change.
Arguing that Australia must introduce an emissions trading scheme in 2010 to discourage the use of polluting forms of energy, Professor Garnaut said the more forms of energy encompassed by the scheme, the lower the price rises would be. This included petrol and other transport fuels.
He said the impact on petrol prices would not be as large as that being caused by the present oil shock and argued against compensating motorists at the pump by reducing fuel excise.
Offsetting the price by "a few cents would not destroy the scheme" but "it weakens the message", he said.
His 537-page report, commissioned by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and released yesterday, says: "Climate change is a diabolical policy problem. It is harder than any issue of high importance that has come before our polity in living memory."
He warns that, as well as environmental degradation, taking no action would by the end of the century result in $425 billion being wiped each year from the economy and a reduction in wages of almost 8 per cent.
The report recommends adopting an unconstrained emissions trading scheme from 2010.
This would involve charging high-polluting industries such as coal-fired power stations for each tonne of carbon they emit. They would have to buy permits to emit greenhouse gases and the costs would be passed on to consumers, encouraging them to use less and driving everybody to look for cleaner energy sources.
Professor Garnaut said Australia alone could not have any significant impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but, unless the developed countries moved first, the polluters in the developing world would not act.
"Any effective remedies lie beyond any act of national will, requiring international co-operation of unprecedented dimension and complexity."
It would be delusional to argue for a delay based on scientific uncertainty and only cost more in the long run.
He criticised the lack of action by the Howard government, saying it should have moved years ago and that Australia had given the US an excuse to do nothing.
The Government will respond on July 16 with a green paper that will indicate for the first time the shape of the scheme it proposes.
The Garnaut report recommends starting the scheme in 2010 but gives an option that would allow a transition to a full scheme in 2013. If there were a transition period, the Kyoto Protocol would define Australia's emissions reduction target and permits would be sold at a low, fixed price. These years would be used to pursue effective international global agreements.
But the Government is unlikely to opt for a delay and will probably start the scheme in 2010, an election year. Sources told the Herald there were ways to soften the immediate impact of the scheme, such as setting a low initial target to reduce carbon emissions. This would result in a low carbon price and only small increases to energy and consumables.
The report warns that current high prices will create political difficulties.
"The emissions trading scheme is likely to be introduced into an environment of recent and perhaps continuing large increases in fuel, electricity and fuel prices - precisely the goods and services whose prices will be affected most by the scheme," it says.
The price increases caused by the scheme will be lower than those being caused by current factors, but consumers will not know what is causing what.
"Households will not be able easily to distinguish between the varying sources of price increases, while agitators against the scheme will be busy spreading disinformation," the report says.
The Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, said the report "makes it absolutely clear that the time for playing short-term political games is over".
She backed Professor Garnaut's recommendation that all the billions to be raised by auctioning permits should be returned as compensation.
"Every cent of revenue that we gain through the introduction of an emissions trading scheme will be invested to ensure we assist families, households and Australian businesses to adjust to the impact of a carbon price," Senator Wong said.
The report recommends half the money should go to those on low incomes through tax cuts or social security payments.
Another 30 per cent would go to industries disadvantaged against unconstrained international competitors, and 20 per cent would be invested in developing and commercialising low-emissions technology.
Professor Garnaut said bipartisan support was essential.
But the Opposition Leader, Brendan Nelson, demanded yesterday it be delayed by at least a year so it was not botched.
He repeated that the impact on petrol prices should be offset by a reduction in petrol excise because "$1.70 a litre is a significant price signal for the average Australian motorist".
"To further increase taxes as a result of climate change policies without some other kind of off-set is something that will be opposed by the Opposition".
Professor Garnaut says that in the next 20 years climate change will affect Australia in familiar ways - longer, drier periods, with city people forced to cope with water rationing and country people worried about the ability of the land to remain productive.
But then it will get much worse, he warns. By 2050 the snowfields will be all but gone and the Great Barrier Reef will barely be hanging on.
By the end of the century the Murray-Darling Basin will have collapsed as a food-producing region and people will be moving away. "By 2100, 97 per cent of agricultural production will be lost."
Professor Garnaut said climate change held a serious threat to tourism. "With unmitigated climate change, on the basis of the mainstream science, we won't have much, if any, of the Great Barrier Reef, of Kakadu, of a number of our great environmental assets that are important attractions for international tourists."

Oh yes! More good old Aussie stupidity!

2008-06-21T08:29:00.001-07:00

In the 1920s in Sydney, Bradfield designed the railway system with 50 years of capacity into the network.....
Since the 1970s we have had scumbag governments think that oil will go on forever, and every stupid twat will want to drive a car.
And of course in recent years we have had Carr for cars, Iemma, and Costa the railway hating bald headed, chrome dome filthhead.
He used to be a fireman on the railway at Enfield, and by all accounts was a useless, lazy, bludger, and has maintained an anti rail stance ever since.
So, suck on this you loosers, this is where your pro road policies have got us...
We need to learn from our betters, the Asian countries.

Stuck in traffic? Get used to it, Sydney

Linton Besser Transport ReporterJune 21, 2008
THE equivalent of 14 Lane Cove tunnels would need to be built every year for the next five years just to stop traffic getting any worse, a study by the University of Sydney has found.
Sydney's car addiction is so chronic that if traffic grows at the same rate as it has in the last couple of years, the number of car trips in the morning peak will climb 83,000 to 250,000 by 2013.
The road space needed to accommodate the extra cars is "equivalent to adding 21 M2 motorways over the next five years [just to] maintain traffic congestion as it is at present".
The report, by Peter Stopher and Camden FitzGerald, from the Institute of Transport and Logistics Studies at the university, urges state and federal governments to scrap all car-related taxes such as registration and petrol excise, and instead impose a calibrated congestion tax on Sydney's roads.
The stunning assessment of just how choked Sydney's roads are becoming is echoed by the Roads Minister, Eric Roozendaal.
"There's an extra 1 million vehicles on our roads and an extra 600,000 drivers since 1996," he told the Herald.
But Mr Roozendaal dismissed the findings as "armchair advice from academics in ivory towers".
The report found that so many cars are clogging the city that to accommodate the growth "the capacity expansion required is in the order of 14 Lane Cove Tunnels per year".
"Contrasted to the population and car growth, one can see clearly that the rate of growth of vehicle kilometre trips is far outstripping additions to the road network," it says.
"If we consider that the roads in Sydney are congested today, then by 2031 we will be looking at a much more severe situation."
The authors do not, however, recommend large-scale road expansion. They say that road construction simply induces more traffic. Instead, they suggest that only targeted public transport services will reduce road congestion, but are pessimistic that even huge investment would be successful.
At least $225 million would need to be spent on 450 new buses, and rail would have to absorb 36,000 more passengers in the morning peak, "or the equivalent of about 45 more trains per peak period", the report says.
However, it also says that even doubling the number of rides on public transport "would realistically do no more than absorb the growth in peak period travel".
In several cities around the world, such as London, a congestion charge has helped cut non-essential car trips into city centres, and a similar scheme should be adopted in Sydney, the study recommends.
A charge that varies depending on the length of the journey and the time it is made is needed, it says. "It would penalise more heavily those who travel in the peak periods, thereby leading to some flattening of the peaks."
This, combined with staggering school starts and work hours, and focused improvements to bus and train services, would mean congestion would not worsen significantly as the population increased.
Mr Roozendaal said he understood motorists' frustration, but insisted there was no "silver bullet". "We need commonsense solutions," he said.

Another realistic individual tells it like it is!

2008-06-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

A world of worries to chew on
Ross Gittins
June 18, 2008
Among all the problems besetting us at present, which is the most pressing and most important: the soaring price of oil, the global food crisis, the rise of China and India, or global warming?
Sorry, it was a trick question. When you delve into them you find that three of those problems - rising oil prices, the food crisis and global warming - have the fourth, the rapid industrialisation of China and India, as their most fundamental cause.
It was Marx who famously observed that everything is connected to everything else. If we want to make sense of all the good and bad things the world is doing to us, it helps to see how those connections run. Let me see if I can sketch them for you.
At its most elemental, the world price of oil is rising because demand for the stuff is outstripping supply. Temporary disruptions to supply add to the price from time to time and speculative investment in oil futures contracts by pension funds may be adding to demand - though I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that price "bubble" to burst.
Existing reserves of oil are running down and not many new reserves are being discovered. But the biggest factor putting upward pressure on the price is the huge growth in demand from China, India and other developing countries. These countries consume half the world's energy and accounted for 80 per cent of the growth in the demand for oil in the first half of this decade.
That growth is almost certain to continue and keep prices rising over the years to come. Martin Wolf, of The Financial Times, summarises the outlook for oil with three facts: it's a finite resource, it drives the global transport system, and if emerging economies consumed as much oil as Europeans do, consumption would jump by 150 per cent.
Next, the global food crisis. Across the world, the basic cost of food has risen by more than half in the past year, with grain prices the worst affected. Rioting over food prices has occurred in more than 30 developing countries.
The most fundamental explanation is that rapid economic growth in China and other emerging economies has raised consumers' purchasing power, generating rising demand for food and shifting food demand away from traditional staples towards higher-value foods such as meat and milk. This dietary shift is leading to increased demand for grains to feed animals.
But this is now a long-term trend and doesn't adequately explain the recent price surge. It's more convincingly explained by the effect of the United States' and other countries' diversion of grains towards the production of ethanol and other bio-fuels, and by the loss of wheat production caused by adverse weather conditions in key production areas, particularly the drought in Australia.

So, China not responsible for the food crisis after all? Sorry, not that simple. Why are the Americans subsidising their farmers to shift into growing maize for ethanol? Because they're reacting to the high price of oil - which would be higher than it is had they not done such a (dubious) thing. Then, of course, we've got the high price of oil adding to the costs of farm production, via transport costs, the cost of mechanical cultivation, and the cost of fertilisers and pesticides. Some dirt-poor farmers have had to give up planting crops.
As for adverse weather conditions, while we can't prove our exceptionally long drought is a product of global warming, there's a fair chance it is.
Quite apart from its effect on oil and food prices, the rapid industrialisation of China and India - the two most populous countries, accounting for almost 40 per cent of the world's population - is an event of huge consequence for all the economies of the world.
When Britain and the United States were industrialising in the 19th century, it took them about 50 years to double their real income per person. China keeps doubling every nine years and India is only a bit slower.
This is shifting the centre of global economic gravity from the developed economies towards the developing economies, which now account for more than half the world's annual production of goods and services.
China's emergence as a major exporter of manufactures has been exerting downward pressure on the world prices of computers, cars, clothing and many other manufactured goods. India is doing something similar for computer-related services.
The export-oriented growth of the emerging economies is adding about 1.5 billion people to the global labour force, doubling its size. This is forcing a lot of painful change in the structure of the developed economies.
As a country that exports mainly primary commodities and imports mainly manufactures, Australia has benefited mightily from China's emergence, in marked contrast to most other developed economies. This year China will overtake Japan as our major trading partner. Even so, our economy is also undergoing painful restructuring.
China's pivotal role in global warming needs to be explained carefully. Greenhouse gases have been building up in the atmosphere for several centuries, taking the stock of gases close to the point of causing irreversible warming. Clearly, the economic activity of the rich countries has contributed the great bulk of this stock, with the contribution of the poor countries being minor.
But when we look at the annual addition to this stock - an addition that's growing faster than we expected just a few years ago - the lion's share is coming from China, not the rich countries. That's because China is so big, its economic growth is much more energy-intensive and its energy use more emissions-intensive.
At the very least, the rise of China and India will continue creating serious adjustment problems for the rest of the world, including us.
At worst, this (eminently fair) attempt to have 40 per cent of the world's population, formerly among the poorest, rapidly approach the material living standards long enjoyed by the richest 15 per cent will bring us to the limit of the environment's ability to absorb economic growth. Doesn't sound like fun.

Better start pumping up those floaties...

2008-06-19T23:27:00.001-07:00

Sea warmth rise worse than was thought....soon every house will have a water view!
Deborah Smith Science EditorJune 19, 2008 - 5:48AM

OCEANS have heated up much more rapidly in the past four decades from global warming than scientists had thought.
An Australian and American research team found that between 1961 and 2003 the rate of warming of the upper ocean layers was about 50 per cent higher than was estimated in last year's report by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A CSIRO scientist, Catia Domingues, of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, said her team's finding helped solve a big problem for climate researchers.
They had been unable to fully explain why sea levels had risen so rapidly in this period, but this could now be largely attributed to the expansion of the warming oceans. "For the first time we can provide a reasonable account of the processes causing the rate of global sea-level rise over the past four decades," Dr Domingues said.
Sea levels rose about 1.6 millimetres a year between 1961 and 2003.
John Church, of CSIRO Marine Research, said the study, published in the journal Nature, increased scientists' confidence in their climate-change models of sea-level rise.
The CSIRO team reviewed millions of measurements of ocean temperatures, taken from instruments probing the upper 700 metres of the ocean, to assess the contribution of the thermal expansion of the upper layers to overall sea-level rises.
Contributions from melting glaciers, melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, and thermal expansion of the deep ocean were also analysed.
"We now have a good match between observations and models," Dr Church said.
Last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report predicted that by 2100 sea levels would rise 18 to 59 centimetres, with a possible additional 10-20centimetres if flow from melting ice sheets sped up.
A lead author of the report, Professor Nathan Bindoff, of the University of Tasmania, said an increase in sea level by one metre by 2100 was "completely plausible".

Well,as if we didnt know..........

2008-06-10T22:52:00.000-07:00

Scumbags Hawke and Keating have a lot to answer for. Besides allowing all that politically correct filth to take over our society, along with stifling of free speech, not to mention deregulating the banks so the thieving mongrels can help themselves to whatever fees, and charges, they doeth please..
And did I mention the outcome of this is a revolting, greedy, user pays society where any sort of "service" has a cost attached to it?
Your legacy is as such that a large, knobbly vibrator would not do you two justice for the killing of old Australia.
And now........this...............

Govt 'knew about' climate change in 1984

June 11, 2008 - 1:59PM
he Hawke government knew about the risks of climate change 25 years ago but did little about them, according to Labor heavyweight Barry Jones who was a federal minister at the time.

Dr Jones cast himself as an Australian version of climate campaigner Al Gore in a speech to a Canberra conference on Wednesday.

He said he was the first politician to sound the alarm on global warming, as science minister in 1984.

But his cabinet colleagues did not listen.

"Of course I wish I'd been listened to," the former national president of the ALP told AAP.

"The response from my political colleagues in Canberra was distinctly underwhelming.

"I think some of them were persuaded by (industry) lobbyists to say sooner or later a technological fix will come up."

Dr Jones said the danger of increased carbon dioxide emissions was raised with him in 1983 when scientists were worried about ice depletion caused by global warming.

He spoke publicly on climate change in 1984, put it high on his agenda, and oversaw extensive publishing in the field.

"Talking about climate change was an isolating factor," Dr Jones told the conference.

Some of his government's efforts on climate change were feeble, he added.

"We were seen as understanding (climate change) and going along with it but not doing very much about it," he said.

An obstacle to tackling climate change was vested interests such as the coal industry and unions, Dr Jones said.

"Our politicians are too much influenced by vested interests in every area," he told AAP after the speech.

"Vested interest tends to win out."

Dr Jones said he did not want to target past Labor governments over climate change.

There had been a feeling Australia could achieve little by acting alone, and he also criticised the previous Howard government for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

Dr Jones told the conference - Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth - climate change posed a great challenge to democracy and pluralistic values.

He said it could inflame fundamentalism and tribalism, lead to wars over food and water, and cause mass migration.

It could also lead to a "revolt against reason" of the kind society's thinkers had battled against since the Enlightenment in 18th century political thought.

The conference, organised by the cultural and scholarly centre Manning Clark House, continues at the Australian National University on Thursday.

More harbingers of the end of our existance..

2008-06-10T22:48:00.000-07:00

Atlas shows effects of climate change on Africa

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The United Nations environment agency unveiled a new atlas Tuesday that shows what the agency says are the dramatic effects of climate change on Africa.

The nearly 400-page publication features over 300 satellite images taken in every African country. The before and after photographs, some of which span a 35-year period, appear to show striking environmental changes across the continent."The atlas clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of people in the region to forces often outside their control," Achim Steiner, executive director, for the United Nations Environment Program said at a meeting of African environmental ministers in Johannesburg. "It is an indication of how serious the situation has become."Although Africa produces only 4 percent of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions, its inhabitants are expected by some officials to suffer most from the consequences of climate change."Africa is one of the regions least responsible for climate change, and is also least able to afford the costs of adaptation," said Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, South Africa's minister of environmental affairs and tourism.According to the atlas, Africa is losing nearly 10 million acres of forest every year — twice the world's average deforestation rate. Some areas of the continent are losing over 55.12 tons of soil per 2.5 acres each year, the atlas says.The atlas also appears to illustrate that erosion as well as chemical and physical damage have degraded about 65 percent of the continent's farmlands. The migration of refugees is causing further pressure on the environment, the atlas says.Besides well-publicized changes, such as Mount Kilimanjaro's shrinking glaciers, the drying up of Lake Chad and falling water levels in Lake Victoria, the atlas offers documentation of new or lesser known environmental changes.These include the disappearance of glaciers in Uganda's Rwenzori Mountains and forests in Madagascar, and the loss of Cape Town's unique 'fynbos' shrubland vegetation.The atlas shows the swell of gray-colored cities over once-green countryside, the tracks of road networks through forests and the erosion of deltas.It shows the dramatic expansion of cities such as Senegalese capital Dakar, which has grown over the past 50 years from a small urban center at the tip of the Cap Verde Peninsula to a metropolitan area with 2.5 million people spread over the entire peninsula.The compilers of atlas say it will be used as tool by policy makers as well as educators."The atlas is a way of bringing local information to a global audience," said project director Asbindu Singh. "If one action is taken on the basis of this report, it will be a huge success."The atlas also highlights some positive signs in protecting the environment and reversing damage."There are many places across Africa where people have taken action — where there are more trees than 30 years ago, where wetlands have sprung back, and where land degradation has been countered," Steiner said. "These are the beacons we need to follow to ensure the survival of Africa's people and their economically important nature-based assets."

Times running out, how long until total system crash....

2008-06-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

No explanation needed, how long can? Wah lah!

Ecosystems can't keep up with China: WWF

China is now consuming more than twice as much as its ecosystems can supply sustainably, having doubled its needs since the 1960s, a new WWF report said.
China now utilises 15 per cent of the world's total biological capacity, said the report, which is published jointly by the World Wildlife Fund and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development.
The report found that the Chinese had an average ecological footprint of 1.6 hectares in 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available.
This means that each person needs 1.6 hectares of biologically productive land to support their lifestyle demands.
While this is still lower than the world average of 2.2 global hectares per person, it "nonetheless presents challenges, considering China's large population and the robust economic development", said the report.
"If China were to follow the lead of the United States, where each person demands nearly 10 hectares of productive area, China would demand the available capacity of the entire planet.
"This is likely to be a physical impossibility for China, and for the other nations of the world," said the report.
If on the other hand China could, in its development, also balance environmental needs, it could "lead the way for the world as a whole," the report added.
"It's a critical period in the coming 20 years for China to realise its sustainable development, which is determined by important indicators including the balance between the utilisation efficiency of natural resources and the Earth's regeneration capacity improvement," said Zhu Guangyao, secretary general of the Chinese council.

Yes, more of that freaky weather....

2008-06-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

Old mother nature, is expressing her displeasure to we, the dominate species on the planet..
The USA, one of the world's top polluters, is coping a right hiding of late....

Floodwaters wash away homes as freak weather hits US

A home near Lake Delton in Wisconsin collapses as flood waters breach the bank on Monday. Three houses were washed away.
Photo: AP

Latest related coverage

Homes washed away
Waterfront homes are carried away by high waters brought on by severe flooding in Lake Delton.

Mother Nature lands one on USA's chin

Floodwater washed away three houses and threatened dams in Wisconsin as military crews joined desperate sandbagging operations to hold back Indiana streams surging toward record levels.
The East Coast simmered through temperatures climbing toward the century mark.
Ten deaths were blamed on stormy weekend weather, most in the Midwest.
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle declared an emergency for 29 counties and President Bush on Sunday declared a major disaster in 29 Indiana counties.
Iowa Governor Chet Culver said nearly a third of his state's 99 counties need federal help.
Rivers in several parts of the Midwest swelled with the runoff from heavy weekend rainfall, topped by the 11 inches that fell Saturday in Indiana.
Water was pouring over the top of Wisconsin's Dell Creek Dam on Lake Delton in Sauk County, and had swept away three houses, county emergency management director Jeff Jelinek said. He was not sure whether there were any injuries, but said people had been told to evacuate the area, which is about 50 miles north of Madison.
A couple of thousand people in Columbia County, about 30 miles north of Madison, were urged to evacuate below the Wyocena and Pardeeville dams, said Pat Beghin, a spokesman for the county's emergency management.
The Wyocena Dam's spillway had washed out, and workers were sandbagging to try to save the dam, Beghin said. The Pardeeville dam was overflowing, creating a risk for the nearly 10,000 people downstream in Portage, he said.
The Upper Spring Dam in Palmyra was failing, state emergency management officials said. But only one house in the rural area was in danger, Palmyra town chairman Stewart Calkins said.
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources engineers were being sent across the state to survey other dams.
Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle had declared states of emergency for 30 counties. At least 130 inmates from the Department of Corrections were helping sandbag in nine areas, according to the state emergency management. The Red Cross had 11 shelters open across the state and was preparing a 12th, officials said.
A new storm system was headed toward the Ohio Valley from the southern Plains on Monday and the weather service posted a tornado warning for south-central Illinois and a severe thunderstorm warning for Indiana.
While the Midwest fought to cope with flooding, the East was locked in a sauna. Heat advisories were posted Monday from the Carolinas to Connecticut, with temperatures expected to hit 100 from Georgia to New York, the National Weather Service said. Raleigh-Durham, N.C., hit a record 101 on Sunday.
"It's just crazy. ... It's really, really hot," said New York City street worker Jessica Pena as she swept a midtown Manhattan street at around 8:15 a.m. The temperature already was in the upper 80s.

Trains versus cars, only WA is really doing it right!

2008-05-31T03:19:00.000-07:00

Compared to the basket case that is "Railcorp, we are" etc etc, finally somewhere in Australia is showing to can be done.
Now why cant the bunch of self interested loosers in charge of NSW do it thusly?

Western Australia has a lot to teach the nation about learning to live with rising petrol prices. But its FuelWatch - or should that be FuelBotch - scheme to be launched federally, is the least of it. Some Perthites apparently like FuelWatch - though I have yet to meet one prepared to drive out of their way to save a couple of cents a litre.
At the very time political leaders should be bold, preparing us for the high fuel and energy bills that climate-change policies necessitate, and finding ways to shield the poor, Kevin Rudd toys with lowering the GST on the excise on petrol, and adopts a scheme from WA of dubious merit.
The pity is WA has much better ideas to offer the nation. It has done more to tackle an entrenched car culture than any other state. Its hyperactive and hyperbright Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, Alannah MacTiernan, has not just talked about getting people out of their cars, improving public transport and building railways. She's done it.
While Bob Carr and Morris Iemma have announced, then abandoned, a series of public transport strategies over 11 years, and delivered instead tollways and tunnels, crushing traffic congestion, and diminished train services, MacTiernan has almost doubled the size of the Perth railway network in seven years. Her crowning glory is the 72-kilometre Perth-Mandurah rail link through Australia's fastest-growing urban region, that opened in December. She launched the project and six years later rode the first train.
Under her watch, Perth has also got an extension and spurs to the northern suburban rail line that was built in the 1990s by the previous state Labor government; a series of gleaming new stations, including one in the city that makes our Town Hall station seem even worse; an integrated ticket system, still a pipedream in Sydney; and an enviable $80 million investment in a bicycle path network.
Perth also has free city buses, paid through a levy on parking spaces. And its TravelSmart scheme is now franchised around Australia and overseas to help people reduce their car use. (Part of it involves personal phone calls to new residents in a suburb to see if they want to participate in the scheme; if they do, they get appropriate information about public transport options and timetables). That scheme alone has led to annual reductions of 30 million car trips, and seven million more hours of cycling or walking.
If ever there was a car-dependent city, it was Perth. I should know. I grew up there, a non-driver right until I left in my 20s. My most miserable memories are of waiting endlessly at suburban Perth bus stops. Buses were a bit like Godot. The (Charles) Court Liberal government was so dismissive of public transport, it shut down the train line that ran from Perth to Fremantle in the late 1970s. When I left Perth to live in Manhattan, I thought I had landed in heaven: a city of non-drivers who walked or used the brilliant underground subway system.
The challenge MacTiernan faced, given Perth's car culture and its mindset, could hardly have been greater. Just about the only thing she is not responsible for in WA is FuelWatch. Her planning and infrastructure roles, which she has held since 2001, have put her at the centre of WA's boom, and she was determined to make a difference.
Back in 1995, she came to the realisation that demand for oil would inevitably outstrip supply. (It was a book called The Decline Of The Age Of Oil by West Australian Brian Fleay that convinced her long before most of us had heard about "peak oil"). Climate change as well as the need to combat Perth's sprawl stiffened her resolve to provide the city and suburbs with first-class public transport. "Practically and financially it's unsustainable to rely on fossil fuel," she said.
Like a prophet in her own land, MacTiernan has gone through hell. The West Australian, the city's only daily newspaper, and the local ABC, were virulent critics of the Perth-Mandurah train line, aided and abetted by a coterie of Tory engineers and militant unionists. Nothing was off-limits to the critics, including MacTiernan's hairstyle. From China, where she was celebrating on Thursday the delivery of the first iron-ore shipment from Andrew Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group, she likened herself to a "soldier at the Somme; you go over the hill, dodge the bullets, regroup and fight another day". Now Perthites love the train, and MacTiernan said that on taking the inaugural trip two days before Christmas, she felt she "had done something right".
It is possible FuelWatch is useful at the margins in providing consumers with information. But it's inconsequential compared with weaning people off petrol, reconfiguring our cities, and supporting the less advantaged in outer suburbia. MacTiernan got it - Perth is on the way; Carr and Iemma missed the boat; Brendan Nelson doesn't get it. And Rudd has crumbled. Urban planning, public transport and cultural change are critical, not knocking a cent or two off the petrol price.

You would think we would learn by now.....

2008-05-31T03:15:00.000-07:00

But no...............
Good old human stupidity, and short sighted greed is at it again.
No wonder we have no viable future in our present form of society!

PLANS for a huge expansion of longwall coalmining under the Sydney water catchment have emerged as a leaked NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change report urged the Government to confront the state's coalmining industry.
The proposals, part of a presentation to the Australian Stock Exchange earlier this month by Indian-owned resources company Gujarat NRE, call for longwall mining to within 500 metres of the wall of Cataract Dam near Wollongong.
The proposal, currently being assessed by the State Government, could cause widespread surface damage and endanger Sydney's water supply, says a coalition of green groups. Longwall mining operations similar to the Gujarat plans have led to subsidence that has damaged homes, dried up rivers and led to surface gas leaks.
The chairman of Gujarat NRE, Arun Kumar Jagatramka, did not reply to Herald questions about the project.
The NSW Minerals Council reacted angrily to the draft report from the climate change department. "The mining industry has been defending itself against misinformation for a long time," said the council's director of external affairs, Lancia Jordana.
Subsidence from longwall mining, in which the removal of slabs of coal hundreds of metres long causes the surface to crack and sag, was a problem being addressed by industry, Ms Jordana said.
"Where cracking occurs, you may have an area that runs dry but the independent science [shows] there is no loss of water quality, that there is in fact no loss of water at all. It flows back into the river a bit further down."
The draft climate change report said subsidence was a "major issue" causing environmental damage in the southern coalfields, and regional staff did not have the expertise to assess properly its impact.
Gujarat NRE plans to expand longwall operations in the Sydney Water Catchment beneath the Cataract River, which ran dry in 1994, largely as a result of longwall mining, but now feeds the Cataract Dam again.
Gujarat NRE acquired Elouera Colliery from BHP in December and merged it with neighbouring Avondale Colliery to create a single giant mine.
The company's documents say it intends to extract 350,000 tonnes of coking coal this year, rising to 1.3 million tonnes in 2010, with longer-term targets of 2.5 to 3 million tonnes a year, by mining areas close to the dam.
The NSW Government is yet to approve the mine extension plans, though approval has been granted for access tunnels.
It commissioned an inquiry into mining in the southern coalfields in December 2006, with the findings likely to be released next month. In its submission, the Sydney Catchment Authority said it feared 91 per cent of the catchment area would be undermined.
"The impact of the scheme will be enormous," said Jeff Angel, director of the Total Environment Centre. "It will lead to more serious cracking, more damage to river and stream beds, more damage to swamps, more cliffs collapsing, less groundwater, and a threat to the dam itself."
Environment groups, including the National Parks Association of NSW, Rivers SOS, the Colong Foundation, the Nature Conservation Council and the Wilderness Society, say longwall expansion will continue to damage rivers and drain upland swamps.

Ah yes! And what a surprise, hb's for you and me!

2008-05-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

Well what can one say?

Perhaps, experiencing sobriety this morning I am a little lost for words.

So enjoy one's efforts again from a photgraphic filum session, lah.

More small signs of our impending doom..Sydney!

2008-05-30T02:34:00.000-07:00

Sydney's weather see-saw continues
Richard MaceyMay 30, 2008 - 3:48PM
It almost seems as if Sydney's weather is chasing some meteorological see-sawing record.
This month has been the city's driest May since records were first kept 150 years ago.
By this afternoon just 2.8 millimetres of rain had fallen over Observatory Hill, far short of May's average of 121.5.
The shortage of clouds also made it Sydney's fourth sunniest May. The city has been bathed in 7.7 hours of daily sunshine, well up on the average of 6.1.
"We have ended up with a dry autumn," said the weather bureau climate technical officer, Mike De Salis.
Despite receiving little more than half the season's normal rain, this autumn has only been "the 30th or 40th driest on record."
While March too was dry, receiving less than half normal expectations, autumn failed to come close to setting any dry spell records because April was wet.
It is a pattern Sydney adopted before Christmas.
"December was wet," said Mr De Salis.
"January's rain was well below average. February was wet, March was below average, April above and May has been very dry. It's been back and forth."
While autumn has been dry, "we had a reasonably wet summer."
He blamed May's troubles on a high pressure system. "It drifted over NSW for the whole month. They bring stable air and you get no rain."
The see-sawing pattern may continue into winter, which begins on Sunday.
"There is a low off the Queensland coast that is going to drop a lot of rain on Brisbane and the north coast of NSW," said Mr De Salis.
"It may reach Sydney by the weekend."
The bureau is predicting possible showers from Sunday until Thursday. Besides being dry and sunny, May's daily maximum temperatures have been 0.4 degrees above average.

Praise be! More hornbags for thee!

2008-05-25T03:40:00.000-07:00

Again in abundance, lots of rather attractive locals about their daily wanderings, and h-bag type activities!

It is, a wonderful world some days, with all these little rays of sunshine about, to gladden the dark, and fungus infested, parts of one's being.

Rather bootylicious.........

2008-05-25T03:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, every normal bloke ejoys a bit of those FMB's, whilst going to the mall, the fish and chip shoppe, or on all fours while on yet another return trip from the bottlo.

So, enjoy thusly.

Random net hornbags...

2008-05-21T23:17:00.000-07:00

Thusly, whilst one has been under the joys of inebriation, the following hornbags have been "sourced"...yes, what a suckful word that is....by, um, myself.

Due to alcoholic influence, Im really not sure.

However, dont let that bother you, enjoy anyway.

Preferably, with beer.

Tokens of doom: mascots seen as signs of times

2008-05-17T18:21:00.000-07:00

HONG KONG: Superstitious bloggers have linked China's earthquake disaster and other recent misfortunes to the five Olympic mascots, a Hong Kong newspaper reported yesterday.
Gossip sites are full of speculation that four of the five cartoon mascots have fulfilled prophesies of doom with one more, connected to the Yangtze River, still to come, the South China Morning Post said.
The five Olympic mascots are Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, Nini and Beibei. Jingjing, a panda, is the animal most closely associated with Sichuan province where the earthquake struck.
Huanhuan, a cartoon character with flame-red hair, is being linked by bloggers to the Olympic torch that has been dogged by anti-China protests on its round-the-world tour.
Yingying, an antelope, is an animal confined to the borders of Tibet, which has been the scene of riots and the cause of international protests against China, the bloggers say.
Nini, represented by a kite, is being viewed as a reference to the "kite city" of Weifang, in Shandong, where there was a deadly train crash last month.
That leaves only Beibei, represented by a sturgeon fish, which online doomsayers suggest could indicate a looming disaster in the Yangtze River, the only place where sturgeon is found.
A Peking University sociologist, Xie Xueluan, told the newspaper: "Chinese see major calamities as divine intervention … The absence of religion reinforces this trend."
Other online prophets of doom say the recent disasters have come on days that are related to the normally lucky Chinese number eight. The Tibet riots (14/3) and the earthquake (12/5) happened on a date whose digits add up to eight.
This bodes ill for the opening day of the Beijing Olympics - August 8, 2008 - which was chosen for its auspicious abundance of China's lucky number.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

2008-05-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet ShawcrossSunday, 15 April 2007
It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.
The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.
The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.
CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.
Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.
Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."
The case against handsets
Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.
Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.
Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting.
Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

China earthquake tragedy...

2008-05-15T18:50:00.001-07:00

I remember reading something about the potential of the Three Gorges Dam, some years ago, to create siesmic havoc. With the aid of the internet, here is the article reproduced forthwith..
In a project reminiscent of the Great Wall, the Chinese are building another of the world's largest structures. When they finish the Three Gorges Dam, the Chinese will have built a wall across the third largest river in the world, created a reservoir almost 300 miles long, and tapped an electrical source equal to 18 nuclear power plants.
Water held by the dam also may trigger earthquakes that could threaten millions of people. Two scientists at the Geophysical Institute are working together to help the Chinese assess the earthquake risk of Three Gorges Dam. Born in the mountains of the Tibetan Plateau, the Yangtzi River flows almost 4,000 miles to the ocean, making it the third longest river in the world after the Nile and the Amazon (the Yukon is half the length of the Yangtzi). Hoping to harness the power of the river, the Chinese government began building the dam a few years ago, expecting to finish by 2009. When the mile-wide, 600-foot high dam is complete, the flooding upstream will begin. As the water rises, it will drown more than 1,400 rural towns and villages abandoned earlier by government decree. The water rising behind the dam will power 26 huge turbines to provide electricity, and will allow people to control a river that has killed 300,000 people by flooding during the 20th century.
No one knows how local seismic faults will react to the incredible mass of water behind Three Gorges Dam. Like heavy snow on an overloaded roof, the weight of water blocked by dams can cause existing cracks in Earth's crust to slip, resulting in earthquakes. Faults tend to slip more often when a nearby giant reservoir is filled with water. The largest was a magnitude 6.5 triggered by the Konya reservoir in Turkey. That earthquake killed 200 people in December 1967.
NASA funded Jeff Freymueller and Shusun Li of the Geophysical Institute to help the Chinese determine the seismic risk of Three Gorges Dam. Millions of people downstream from the dam are at risk should an earthquake damage or destroy it. "A catastrophic failure of the dam would be perhaps the single most destructive event in human history," said Freymueller, a professor of geophysics. He added that the chances of the dam being destroyed by an earthquake are small, but because the consequences are so severe any seismic activity induced by the reservoir has to be taken seriously.
Freymueller and Li will study movement of Earth's crust around the dam site before and after the dam is built. Freymueller will use global positioning satellites, the same tool he used to determine that Seward and Homer are creeping in opposite directions by a few centimeters a year. GPS receivers placed at various points in the Yangtzi River basin by Chinese scientists will tell Freymueller how much the ground has subsided due to the weight of the reservoir. Li, a professor of remote sensing, will use a different type of satellite to view the river basin. A synthetic aperture radar satellite sends radio pulses to the ground and records the time it takes them to return. The satellite will allow scientists to get a wider view than that allowed by the GPS receivers on the ground. Combining the technologies may allow Freymueller and Li to measure the sinkage of the new river basin, which will probably be less than 20 centimeters, about the length of a man's hand.
Both researchers hope their findings on ground subsidence around the dam will allow an accurate assessment of how seismic faults will react to the load of water. Li has added incentive to find the seismic effects of the Three Gorges Dam. His hometown, Shanghai, is downriver.

Human Vermin behaviour.

2008-05-15T16:52:00.000-07:00

The world is certainly in a rather sad way, as we, the dominating and all destructive species on the planet, keep treating all that gives us life, as something similar to one of those dingy toilets, in a less than salubrious part of town.
This would be of course where them queer blokes meet up, for, well social activities, and macrame sessions....
Read on!
The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan
By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel HowdenTuesday, 5 February 2008

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.
The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.
Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.
He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"
Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.
Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was "no reason to doubt" Algalita's findings.
"After all, the plastic trash is going somewhere and it is about time we get a full accounting of the distribution of plastic in the marine ecosystem and especially its fate and impact on marine ecosystems."
Professor Karl is co-ordinating an expedition with Algalita in search of the garbage patch later this year and believes the expanse of junk actually represents a new habitat. Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half-a-century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere," said Tony Andrady, a chemist with the US-based Research Triangle Institute.
Mr Moore said that because the sea of rubbish is translucent and lies just below the water's surface, it is not detectable in satellite photographs. "You only see it from the bows of ships," he said.
According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.
Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic,
Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. "What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple," said Dr Eriksen.

Banks are barstards... dont we all know!

2008-05-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a well written, and informed article, about the scumbag behaviour of banks, and their greedy behaviour.
Having been a victim of NAB in the past, and their absolute greed, and ruthlessness in recovering a percieved debt...."Yes sir, you failed in your card security by daring to go to the shop for 15 minutes, and allowing thieving mongrels to raid your house" type stuff, I think the banks suck.
With a passion forthwith.
So, choke on your endless lust for greed, and profits, you pack of human vermin, you.....
As small banks innovate, the big four salivate
When I first joined St George, the biggest building society in the late '80s, it was a strange place to work. People smiled, everyone wore name badges, and you were just as likely to chat with the managing director in the lift as the mailroom manager. The company mascot was a big lizard who danced with a cabaret singer … and this was a place to invest your money?
There were two important people you had to impress to get any proposal through - the managing director and Betty Blacktown. I never met Betty; she was a fictional embodiment of our customers. The branch staff were more loyal to their regulars than to any head office directive.
And they still are.
St George and mid-tier banks such as Advance Bank are important to banking. They had to innovate to overcome the price advantage the big four held. For instance, St George was among the first to extend branch opening hours, and launch ATMs, the Visa debit card and a call centre that approved personal loans. It introduced Home Loan Centres, Sunday trading and split-rate loans. Its pensioner account surpassed anything the others reluctantly offered.
Reverse mortgages were available at Advance in the early '90s; line-of-credit equity loans were introduced by Citibank before renovating became a ratings winner. State Bank's All-In account was the best transaction account ever. And smiling John Symonds had them coming with mortgages to your home.
At St George we looked at what Advance and State Bank were doing for motivation and overseas for inspiration. The big four were only a source of disgruntled customers.
When the treasurer Paul Keating stepped forward to protect the four monolithic pillars, NAB started to circle. It set up the mid-tiers as appetisers, and St George was an attractive target. It had a major market share of home loans in NSW. And although the high level of training and service meant its staff-to-cost ratio was ridiculously high, profits kept climbing.
It seemed only market analysts didn't value service, although people did. In customer service ratings, Advance and St George were about 20points ahead of the fatuous four, and we laughed when ANZ had to offer people money to prove they could be served while still standing.
They were heady times as the CEO, a banking pugilist, Jim Sweeney, fought tooth and nail to protect Julie and the Dragon from disappearing. NAB's CEO Don Argus wouldn't return his calls, and the reality of survival meant merging with Advance Bank.
Changes affect a corporation's culture. When St George converted to a bank, Betty died a quiet death. Mediocre middle managers pursued fee income instead of efficiency. After the merge with Advance, staff ratios were driven down; new ideas were carefully costed and had to go past a committee of financial scrutineers, who would ask, "No one else is doing this. Why are we?"
Branches were closed, Julie took her singing to the clubs and Happy Dragon now works for the footy team. St George acted like a big bank; they were just so much nicer about it, and a lot of that comes back to its customer-driven ethic.
If you look over the banking landscape of the last decade, it is hard to find new products, but you won't be surprised at their source: no-deposit loans came from St George, low-doc loans came from mortgage brokers, reverse mortgages were popularised by Bluestone.
The big guys' focus has been on innovating with channels (read: websites) and their wealth creation arms (read: financial planning) who only talk to those with a few hundred thousand in assets. Competition now comes from new players, like ING and BankWest.
Of the big four, Westpac is the best placed to handle banking's happy dragon land.
The Commonwealth produces innovative ads and little else. ANZ's innovative claim is to reopen the branches they once closed. NAB has managed to slip from first to second seamlessly, and their culture was described as arrogant and deceptive during the Forex trading fiasco. They once looked to St George with a view to ruthlessly cutting its costs, although some say it was because they wanted to learn how the dragon did it.
I doubt Mrs Kelly would be splurging on a strong brand to gut it back to its bones. Shareholders will be bigger winners than customers, but that is the way for banking these days. Branches will surely close once computer systems are integrated, and many HR bunnies will go once some retrenching is done, as well as the usual overlapping back room functions.
From experience, Westpac has a similarly family-friendly culture to the old dragon, and it didn't take long for Mrs Kelly to see the profit in combining strength with its customer-friendly ways.
The question is whether Westpac milks it, or mines it. With good service in short supply let's hope it's the latter. Even shareholders like a smile.
Con Nats worked at St George from 1989 to 1996. He is a freelance marketing and finance writer

Yet more local hornbags for ye to enjoy, and delight in theroff

2008-05-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

As can be seen, the streets continue to be filled with lots of sights, and views, to gladden the heart, and pulse of the average bloke.

Life need not end, when one goes away from the trackside, the station platform, or one's well thumbed, and slightly grubby railway magazine collection.

So, become aware of the joys out one's door, and down the street, forthwith!

And more fun for all concerned!

2008-05-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

Our beloved Maria goes the grope, and looks to be enjoying it!

Er, very muchly!

Gina, our wonderful Gina, looking very much maternal with her new little one, to occupy her that more, rather than perhaps one's Tanduay.....

And here we have our two hornbags, hard at work learning the Aussie lifestyle, by slaving forth over the BBQ. As can be seen by the somewhat serious expressions, the following can be deduced thusly...

That BBQs are hard work, and there is a distinct lack of alcohol involved...

Honeybuns and other delights!

2008-05-13T23:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, once more a gathering of hornbags, and, er other sorts, took place at a residence of a well known dribbly foamer. No, not yours truely. And of course, alcohol was consumed, groping took place, hopefully a bit of inner lemony scents was aroused, and, um, other stuff.

Anyway lets commence with the gallery of glamour that occured forthwithy.

Firstly we have Honey in the white. Yes that is her real name, so no bad jokes or other smutty remarks, this is a PG rated blog you know.

And thence, we have the wonderful Nesa, in the red, with a rather wicked gleam in her eye.

Who knows what evil could be being contemplated there?

And of course Annabelle, what more be said while she enjoys a slight grope of sorts...

Ah, and then we have at the top, Anna doing a very good impression of a young hornbag, certainly the sort that would attract the lens of the Colonel ( Copyright reserved etc), in her natural abode, the kitchen.

Oh no, Terrance old chap has lost complete control, and has to go the grab on Anna.

Judging by Terry's somewhat glazed look, and Anna's facial expression of unutterable fear and loathing, our Terry's effort to source some best practice, ISO 9002 hornbag, is not going particularly well I fear....

So, who do we have here?

It's Annabelle of course, putting her best foot, and, er, other parts in a rather fetching tiny miniskirt forward.

Yes, well, so how can we normal blokes ignore such a fine offer?

Just ask Annabelle, she will give more than an adequate reply to all concerned...

Ah..Grandma, on the left, who believe it or not..really is a Grandma. She strikes a fine, yet civilized pose, beneath some suspect pictures that try to set the mood for such gatherings.

If they dont work, what's on the back shelf does...

A quiet stroll....

2008-05-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

Some days back the evil "Spadge" put in an appearance, so work could be performed on our gunzel e-zine, "The Lubricated Flange"..

However, it seemed a pleasent day for some perambulations in the morning sun.

Whilst our Spadge was having a quiet bunzel, next thing, these two local lovelies, very clearly close friends to all that purveyed them, put in a surprise appearance.

Thankfully for all concerned, one's camera was close at hand, and loaded for "bear"...

The results are, thusly, most pleasing.

And now for something totally different....

2008-05-09T04:32:00.000-07:00

Lynchings in Congo as penis theft panic hits capitalKINSHASA (Reuters)
Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic, and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.
"You just have to be accused of that, and people come after you. We've had a number of attempted lynchings. ... You see them covered in marks after being beaten," Kinshasa's police chief, Jean-Dieudonne Oleko, told Reuters on Tuesday.
Police arrested the accused sorcerers and their victims in an effort to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 suspected penis snatchers were beaten to death by angry mobs. The 27 men have since been released.
"I'm tempted to say it's one huge joke," Oleko said.
"But when you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it's become tiny or that they've become impotent. To that I tell them, 'How do you know if you haven't gone home and tried it'," he said.
Some Kinshasa residents accuse a separatist sect from nearby Bas-Congo province of being behind the witchcraft in revenge for a recent government crackdown on its members.
"It's real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny," said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Koalas are bolloxed, climate change does it again!

2008-05-07T21:47:00.001-07:00

Read below, of the imminent demise of one of Aussie's icons. I will try to "source" a "quintessential" picture of a koala, so you can remember how they were in a "best practice" natural enviroment...
Read on...and tremble lah!
The koala is under threat from climate change, according to new research which shows rising carbon dioxide levels are killing nutrients in the plants they eat.
Lab tests have revealed that global warming is stripping the goodness from eucalypt leaves, and theUniversity of Sydney researchers behind the study saythe koalas that rely on them don't have enough time to adapt to the change.
"What currently may be good koala habitat may well become, over a period of not so many years at the rate that carbon dioxide concentrations are rising, very marginal habitat," lead researcher Professor Ian Humesaid."I'm sure we'll see koalas disappearing from their current range even though we don't see any change in tree species or structure of the forests."Prof Hume will present new research at a major science conference in Canberra showing that increases in CO2 decrease levels of "good" nutrients and increase toxic nutrients in eucalypt leaves.
This change will mean eucalypt species with high protein content will become unbeneficial to the koalas, the so-called "anti-nutrients" such as tannins bind the protein making it unusable.
"If there is a significant rise in CO2 concentrationin the atmosphere, which we're already seeing, that's going to push the ratio of nutrients to anti-nutrients even lower, by increasing the concentration of these carbon-based anti-nutrients," he said.
When asked how long it would take for koalas to be affected, he said: "I would've thought a few years ago when we first did these experiments that you might sees omething in a hundred years.""But at the rate at which things are going, I suspect that we might see changes within our lifetimes," ProfHume said.
He will tell the Academy of Sciences conference that koalas had "nowhere near enough time" to adapt to the changes in nutrient content.They may be forced to travel in search of more nutrient-rich species, increasing their risk of being hit by vehicles or eaten by predators, the researchers warned.The team believes the eucalypt will also be affectedby rising temperatures, with some so sensitive to heat that even a one-degree shift will affect their growth.The marsupials could be left with less temperature-sensitive species that are not suitablefor koala feed.
The group studied the four marsupials that eat eucalypt foliage - koalas, the greater glider, common ringtail possum, and common brushtail possum - and found koalas most sensitive

By special request...

2008-05-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, another purveyor of hornbags, and a good all round deviate, has been placing considerable pressure on one's netherparts for this photo.

For further twisted behaviour, and some other unnatural activities, you may visit one of his many blogs...however the one that is some interest, and concern to us...is here at...

http://manila-downunder.blogspot.com/

Otherwise, enjoy these fine ladies here and now, about their daily stroll, whilst the shadow of dark and evil looms over them....

And just to keep his Spadginess happy, here is a bonus K-girl, just for him. Anyone else is also welcome to drool as such.

Gunzel time...A week on the main south...

2008-05-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

In the last week of April, and very early May, I was able to experience, to my great joy and dribbly bonerfacation, working between Goulburn, Braemar, and Yass Junction.

Many opportunities presented themselves to work one's gunzelly filum device extremely hard, and in some rather nice locales.

So, fetch a carton or two, crack some ales, pull up a pew..and enjoy some fine photos of down that way in New South Wales....

More piccies will be added as time goes on, lah.........

To start, here we CLP 12, an unknown EL, and CLF 1, blasting, and certainly producing those special feelings only a gunzel can know, through the former station site of Carrick, between Goulburn and Marulan, on Fri morning, 2 May 2008 on a QR National service between Melbourne, and Brisbane.

And above this, we have NR's 34 and 42 on their way to Victoria, coasting down grade, again at Carrick, passing over the Wollondilly River and the fine bridges therein.

In fast failing light, at a rather gunzelly hack spot on a classic old overbridge, down comes NR's 107 and 23, at the point of "go home" lighting....a little after 5.00pm, Weds 30 April 08.

Oh what a feeling! Having a good feeling of, well, er, something, whilst a Medway quarry train throbs in an intense fashion up Werai Bank, between Moss Vale and Exeter, in perfect afternoon light. In an obvious fashion 81 class fans will be worked up, as 8150 and 8152 be pulling...the load of empties that is.....3.15 pm, Weds 30 April 08.