Oz Politics

[PeterSibley]

There was a book of these published last year ??? Title ??

[The Bigfella]

There was a book of these published last year ??? Title ??

Don't know... but that one was Kate... yesterday. She's not the whippiest brain on the front benches.

[PeterSibley]

There was "Weasel Words" , but that was Brit wasn't it ? There was a local version .

[PeterSibley]

I've been wondering about Minchin's attitude to GW .He has never explained his attitude ,is it that he has specific problems with the science or is it a religious or philisophical problem ?

I have a few neighbours who know it can't be true because the End of the World is specified in the Bible ...and there is no mention of GW or similar .

[shamus]

Of course this whole extraordinary scheme, which would do so much damage to Australia, is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming… The Rudd government arrogantly refuses to acknowledge that there remains a very lively scientific debate about the extent of and the main causes of climate change, with thousands of highly reputable scientists around the world of the view that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are not and cannot be the main driver of the small degree of global warming that occurred in the last 30 years of the 20th century…

I tink that's what he thinks.

[PeterSibley]

hehehehe thousands ?

My neighbours KNOW it's not right ...it aint in der book .

[shamus]

it aint in der book .

__________________
I remember when it was in all the reading matter I was reading, and I thought it was unarguable. I don't think it is so clear cut now.

[shamus]

I might make a start on some of these soon

450 peer reviewed papers supporting skeptical views-

http://www.populartechnology.net/200...upporting.html

[PeterSibley]

I hope you are as critical of them as you are of the other

[skuthorp]

I'd be very happy if it turns out that we all have been panicking about nothing like ther Y2K bug, but, apart from the biblical 'end of the world' mob, surely the cautionary principle should apply.
Interestingly people seem to equate 'end of the world' with similar effects as 2012 which is playing badly now, rather than the 'end of species' as the dominant one or the end of our present civilisation. Like imperial Rome or the Third Reich, they think that the present state will go on forever. We don't learn much do we?

[WX]

The local Daily News ran double satellite photo of the The Northern End of the Tweed Valley on the front page. One photo shows the valley as it is, the other shows the valley with 1.1 metre increase in mean sea level plus a 1 in 100 year storm surge...very very big difference.

[shamus]

I'm always fairly critical of what I read, in so far as I have the capacity to understand it. It is depressing not knowing enough maths and being unable to understand stuff that is expressed in that form.
You know it was Tony Hunt who really started me thinking when he told me the models are not intended to be predictive.
Yet we are always being told 'According to the models the temperature will rise by (make up a number) by (choose a date).'

Jeff: I agree with the precautionary principle up to a point. I'm doing all I can personally, at the moment, to limit my production of CO2. I expect to do more.

[WX]

This is the after photo enhanced of course.
http://media.apnonline.com.au/img/me...ter_171109.jpg

[shamus]

Living at 340 m above sea level, I don't have much personal concern about sea level rise. Very selfish no doubt, but I expect it will happen pretty slowly and we'll adapt.

[WX]

I expect it will happen pretty slowly and we'll adapt.

Let's hope it's slower than the speed at which the worlds concerned governments are acting eh.

[The Bigfella]

Gazza.... by the time you and I are in the next parallel universe, the oceans won't have risen by more than 30 maybe 40mm. Its a long, long time till its up that much.

[WX]

So you figure on a steady rise of around 1mm per year then Ian?
We shall at least get to check that much out...Insha'Allah.

[Duncan Gibbs]

I'm hoping for 6-8m in quick order: I'll have my own little harbour then!

Absolute waterfront... Who'da thunk it?!?

JG Ballard will be the new God and "Drowned World" will the new Bible.

[The Bigfella]

Gee, isn't Kevvie coming in for it? No special deal indeed. Letters to the editor claiming he's a bigger liar than Howard ever was.

On that related matter... I was a captive passenger in a tradesman's car yesterday... he was vitriolic about Rudd and the economic migrants. We were travelling through an area with a high level of Somalian refugees... and he had nothing but positive comments... "unlike these bastards who rort the system".

[Duncan Gibbs]

Gee, isn't Kevvie coming in for it? No special deal indeed. Letters to the editor claiming he's a bigger liar than Howard ever was.

And he would still mince Turnbull and the Libgnats in a double dissolution. Letters to the editor can claim all they want.

The second part of your post... Hmmmm... "Informed" comment again huh?!

[The Bigfella]

its just as informed as your electoral view

[GaryK]

You know it was Tony Hunt who really started me thinking when he told me the models are not intended to be predictive.
Yet we are always being told 'According to the models the temperature will rise by (make up a number) by (choose a date).'

Shamus, you must have miss heard him or something, it is a little like a contradiction. Models are a fundamental in science and practically their sole purpose is to enable prediction.

[shamus]

Well perhaps I did. Tony was making the point that the intention of modelling was to test ideas about how things work, in complex systems.

Here's what he said:

Modellers of complex systems are very clear about what their models are and are not. They are not "forecasts"

,
Yet we see forecasts in the media all the time based on someone's interpretation of the models.
Tony did go on to say that models could be used to predict the "possible outcomes" of changing parameters.
I read something interesting the other day along the lines that if you choose climate models which show particular skill at reproducing the observations of some particular period, they show less accuracy than the average of all models over subsequent periods. This would seem to indicate there is some way to go.

Anyway, the point is, that the damage was done. His remark made me go looking for myself, since I had believed that they had this stuff nutted out. I have a fair bit of faith in science generally (funny way of saying it). My old man had a doctorate in Physics (DSc) - but dinner table conversations was as close as I got. "Watch those baked tomatoes, children, they have low specific heat"

[PeterSibley]

I wish to report confusion, I spent half the day stuffing around with an ancient 3/4" IBC pump ,set it up on a block with a 1/2hp motor and belt drive .

I looked up my 1955 IBC bible and set the speed at 2400 rpm ,supposedly 20 gal per minute ...90 l/min .Set up in and out pipes .Set it over a 44 of water ....turn it on .Nothing ??? !!
Check for air leaks , fill the pump body with water , turn on motor ....no flow ...really bloody nothing,a quiet guggling !

I can't work it out .Split the casings , had a look ,all appears pump like , the inpeller is a hollow one and its free of obstructions .

I started to doubt my reasoning ability about this time and took it down to my mate at the garage ......"This is a paying job!" Make the bloody thing go !

I came home and mowed the grass ..I can do that ! It was 38 in the shed while I was playing with it , maybe my brain was malfunctioning .

yours,
Pissed off and Confused in the Tweed .

[The Bigfella]

Its a Labor Party pump .... the only way it can be got working is to prime it with dollars

[PeterSibley]

I tried that ,they just rattled around inside the Obarrel .

[The Bigfella]

Didn't mount it back the front did you? Sorry, but I was still thinking about a couple of Labor bods when I came up with that idea.

[PeterSibley]

There's a nice big cast arrow on the case showing direction of rotation ...it's going that way .All I can think is some prat may have pulled the imeller of at some stage and put back on in reverse .It looked right and I haven't pulled it , I don't think I could ,it's pretty solid .

I have put my trust in employed expertise !

[PeterSibley]

Has Ebay changed it's bidding procedure ? There seems to be no auto bid function ...something that you can put a max bid on and have it run for you dollar by dollar .The page I just opened was only a simple "place bid " .

[The Bigfella]

I haven't bought anything for a month or so. That seems to be the way its always worked though.... you bid what you want to spend to, it ratchets up against any other bids in the system. The person may already have bid up to $50 and its sitting at $20.... until you lodge your bid, then he/she gets it unless you are $51 or more

I only ever bid in the last 5 seconds... and up to what I'm prepared to pay. I don't go back for second bites.

[PeterSibley]

There used to be a function at the bottom of the page , left side ,where you could enter your max and it would bid for you .It's not there now .

[The Bigfella]

Never used it, don't remember it.

[hansp77]

nothing seems to have changed for me Peter, I just checked by almost bidding on something,
have you changed/updated any software or anything?
Is it a normal ebay bid- ie for a regular ebay auction and not one of those other options...? (multiple items available, best offer, etc, etc,)

either way, I believe nothing has actually changed for you other than how the thing might look- the central ebay function of doing auto bids for you up to your maximum that you set could not IMO have changed.
At this point, that would likely be international news

[The Bigfella]

This is an interesting one from the Oz. I wonder what the result would have been had the leaked emails been known about? What gets me is that only 71% believe it will result in higher electricity prices. Wonder what the other 29% think?

MORE than 50 per cent of Australians want to delay the introduction of an emissions trading scheme until after global climate change talks in Copenhagen, a new survey suggests.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is using the figures to urge the Government and the Coalition to hold back on legislation presently before Parliament.

Negotiations are underway to get an amended form of the government's carbon pollution reduction scheme through the Senate before parliament rises for the year on Thursday.

But 54 per cent of Australians would rather wait, according to the survey.

The public had various concerns about the government's scheme, with 71 per cent believing it will result in higher electricity prices.

Almost every second person believes it will cost jobs, should Australia be one of the few countries to move on the climate change issue.

And 82 per cent felt the Government had not given them enough information about the scheme to allow them to make an informed decision.

The chamber's chief executive Peter Anderson said it was a warning to the Government and the Opposition not to rush the legislation.

"There is a good deal of caution being expressed by the public to our political leaders to take a deep breath, act cautiously rather than act as a result of the political moment," he said.

The priority was to get the scheme right and to act globally, otherwise Australians faced great risks, Mr Anderson said.

Of the 1052 people surveyed during the past weekend, 34 per cent wanted to pass the ETS legislation, while 12 per cent remained uncommitted.

The survey was commissioned by the chamber.

[WX]

The public had various concerns about the government's scheme, with 71 per cent believing it will result in higher electricity prices.

Given the amount of power the average household wastes, I think it is too cheap. Put the price right up and people might get into the habit of not leaving all their lights on.

[GaryK]

All the lights we use the most are 8 and 5W (those eco thingies). Power bill is still not cheap, I guess there's no getting away from the cost of heating water and a room in winter
..& cooking..
.. & aircon in summer (struth, this list is getting long)
.. & the power tools to build me boat..

[PeterSibley]

It's supposed to put the price of power up , a hard sell .Pay more ..get less .

[The Bigfella]

It's supposed to put the price of power up , a hard sell .Pay more ..get less .

Take a look at Lomborg's suggested approach. Yes, it includes a carbon tax, but unlike our mad bureaucrat, it actually involves some logical thought too...

http://www.lomborg.com/faq/

Incidentally.... add the price of the likely increases from Wong's pounding to the recent increases in NSW and you will easily have a 60% price rise. Let's see how that translates to the polls.

[GaryK]

Electricity will go up anyway, when the Indian and Chinese consumers start consuming even more. I thought one of the ideas of the ETS was to make alternatives look better, and avoid the fossil fuel extortion of the future.
Making this into a short term petty political argument makes us as bad as the Americans.

[PeterSibley]

Worse , we have higher per capita emissions than the Yanks .

[Duncan Gibbs]

As I'm suggesting in my other thread the cost of power, oil and everything we base our consumer economy on will go up: It will be the natural inflationary move based on the level of debt we owe the environment, in exactly the same way monetary debt can lead to higher inflation. Pay more now or pay even more later.

[The Bigfella]

Worse , we have higher per capita emissions than the Yanks .

Because we export more. A lot of out emissions are due to mining and agricultural products that are consumed overseas.

[PeterSibley]

Take a look at Lomborg's suggested approach. Yes, it includes a carbon tax, but unlike our mad bureaucrat, it actually involves some logical thought too...

http://www.lomborg.com/faq/

Incidentally.... add the price of the likely increases from Wong's pounding to the recent increases in NSW and you will easily have a 60% price rise. Let's see how that translates to the polls.

Except that $2 to $14 will be almost no disincentive .Business as usual .As things stand nothing will ever be cheaper-than-fossil-fuel technologies while they can dump their waste into the atmosphere .

."Q: Does he believe we should do anything about global warming?

A: Yes. As Bjorn Lomborg argues in 'Cool It', we should focus on the smartest solutions to the problems that the world faces, whether we're dealing with climate change, communicable diseases, malnutrition, agricultural subsidies, or anything else. Lomborg finds that the smartest way to tackle global warming is to invest heavily in R&D in non-carbon emitting technologies, which will enable everyone to switch over to sooner and thus dramatically reduce the 21st century emissions. Specifically, he suggests a ten-fold increase in R&D in non-CO2 -emitting energy technologies like solar, wind, carbon capture, fusion, fission, energy conservation etc.... This is entirely in line with the top recommendation from the Copenhagen Consensus 2008, which includes some of the word's top economists and five Nobel Laureates.

Lomborg also supports a CO 2 tax comparable with the central or high estimates of CO2 damages. That means an estimate in the range of $2-14 per ton of CO 2, but not the unjustifiably high taxes of $20-40 implicit in Kyoto or the even higher ones ($85) suggested by the Stern report or Gore ($140). "

[PeterSibley]

Because we export more. A lot of out emissions are due to mining and agricultural products that are consumed overseas.

No objections to the exports , it how we produce them that is the worry .We get the income so they are our responsiblity to produce cleanly .

[GaryK]

The US exports too. The US were close to or were the world's biggest exporter in 2006, (depending whose list you read)... and, Australia's CO2 emission calculation does not include the the CO2 contained within the exported materials.

[Mrleft8]

Would you guys please just piss off? You're making me nervous about the status of the PUB!

[PeterSibley]

Think of us as a non competitive discussion group

[Duncan Gibbs]

Cripes Doug! Just take it like a man... Laying down preferably!

[Mrleft8]

You all stop in for a pint, and stop Shane from giving you a bad rep, and I'll let you live! OK?!

[shamus]

What's Lefty doing here? Has he got a visa?