Sunday 28th of April 2024
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praying for rain...

smokey sun

As a special church service was held in Springwood, in the lower Blue Mountains, near Sydney, one can only decry the futility of praying for rain... More effective of course would be to plead to Tony Abbott to keep the carbon pricing...

It's not going to improve unless we reduce our emissions of CO2... It's as simple as this... And we have to reduce these emissions to NIL, NADA, NOTHING, ZIP... We have to find ways to stop using fossil carbon. If one does a comparison between the past and now, global warming has removed about two months of winter and added two months of summer in this country...

Praying for rain is as useful as pissing into the wind... WE NEED TO TAKE CARE OF THIS PLANET on which humanity was created out of nature... We're in charge of our destiny. let's not fuck it up...

the next god...

 

Can we give the Greens a break? For yonks they've been saying if we don't look after the planet there will be hell to pay, and so, when that hell on earth arrives - most lately in terms of these unseasonal devastating bushfires - it is quite legitimate for the likes of Adam Bandt to draw attention to it, and advocate a change in policy. In the words of Barack Obama, denying the reality of climate change is the equivalent of belonging to the Flat Earth Society.

The carbon tax was demonstrably successful in reducing emissions. So when the Prime Minister says the previous government should ''repent'' bringing it in, even as we break yet another month's temperature record, and the bushfires take hold, it is reasonable for Bandt to put an alternative view. He is not disrespecting those who have lost their homes, nor those heroes fighting the fires. He's saying what needs to be said, to try to do something so fewer people lose their homes in the future. The problem is not that he's pushing his ''political agenda''. It is that his agenda - actually doing something to preserve the planet - is not shared by us all. Fire at will.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/adam-bandt-has-every-right-to-get-fired-up-20131019-2vt3e.html#ixzz2iFYIeaqs


2047... Only 34 years from now... This is when the very conservative computerised calculations have shown the entire world climate will flip. What does this means... It means that much of the seasons as we know them will disappear and new climatic conditions on the warm side will rule... I place this date at 2032.
What does this all means?... Presently there is enough EXTRA carbon dioxide pumped in the atmosphere from human activity since the industrial revolution to definitely raise the temperature by 4 to 6 degrees Celsius — according to the record and to the calculations by Arrhenius. 
Why isn't it so hot "yet"? As mentioned many times on this site we're looking at a very FAST change in terms of geological time but in human timeframe there is elasticity in the reactivity of such a large feedback mechanism as the surface of the planet...
Pray for Tony to change his mind once more and accept the carbon pricing as an effective way to reduce CO2 emissions... Pray for the carbon raiders of this earth to stop NOW...  And tell them you are doing so... Sing and sign petitions! That would be more useful than praying to god for some rain that has anyway been predicted by the Bureau of met by next Wednesday... But it may come or not come...
Global warming is the next god...
Gus

 

banning denialists' letters...

 

Letters editors rarely make the news. This month the Los Angeles Times letters editor, Paul Thornton, did just that with a story on letters from climate-change deniers. He said he would not print letters that asserted "there is no sign humans have caused climate change" because "it was not stating an opinion, it's asserting a factual inaccuracy". This attracted headlines declaring "Los Angeles Times riles climate-change sceptics by banning letters". Unsurprisingly, we've been asked how we treat letters from climate change deniers.

Herald editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir recently reiterated the paper's stance on global warming. "The Herald believes unequivocally in human-induced climate change," he told an audience at David Suzuki's City Talk. "It is an established fact. What we are much more interested in is not the sideshow over whether this phenomenon exists or not, but on how it should be tackled."

We do not ban writers whose views suggest they are climate change deniers or sceptics. We consider their letters and arguments. But we believe the argument over whether climate change is happening and whether it is man-made has been thrashed out extensively by leading scientists and on our pages and that the main debate now is about its effects, severity, and what society does about it.

Climate change deniers or sceptics are free to express opinions and political views on our page but not to misrepresent facts. This applies to all our contributors on any subject. On that basis, a letter that says, "there is no sign humans have caused climate change" would not make the grade for our page.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/climate-change-a-note-from-our-letters-editors-20131021-2vvjd.html#ixzz2iJ1S7pui


According to your letter writers, reducing the global temperature by the infinitesimal amount likely through the carbon tax would prevent bushfires (Letters, October 19-20).
I'm impressed.

David Lambert Long Beach

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/heroic-volunteers-deserve-to-be-australians-of-the-year-20131020-2vuy8.html#ixzz2iJ1jSLIX
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Well Mr Lambert, this is the story so far: We need to do something urgent to reduce our carbon emissions... We HAVE NO CHOICE. On probabilities, more carbon dioxide, more heat, more bushfires, bigger storms, more sudden floods...
The Carbon pricing is one way that can help reduce our emissions and would (will) be extended across the board to all manners of using fossil fuels... So far the carbon "tax" has been less seen on the hip pocket than people realise and yet has managed to reduce this country's emissions by around 20 million tonnes of CO2. 
WE NEED TO DO MORE and do more we'll have to do, but the dicky solution of Abbott (a religious dithering denialist) and Greg Hunt (a lap dog) is just that: a dicky solution that will do nothing except exasperate those who know something more effective than tarring the carbon "tax" has to be done...
Should all the countries of the world reduce their emissions in the same proportion as Australia, humanity will be on the way to tackle this mega-problem we call climate change or global warming for a more accurate description...
By 2025 though we will have to stop using fossil fuels... FULL STOP. END OF STORY... We should have stopped in 1996 to limit the damage at a 2 degrees Celsius rise by 2100.

Picture at top: smoke haze over Sydney in the afternoon — looking west. Pic by Gus.

 

charity versus help...

 

Having raised more than $10 million in bushfire appeals, charity groups face an unexpected problem: Blue Mountains fire victims are too stoic to ask for help.

Salvation Army spokesman Major Bruce Harmer said some people were unwilling to claim cash assistance, instead relying on family support and their own resources.

Since October, the Salvation Army has raised $7.1 million. It has distributed $1.7 million in retail vouchers and pre-loaded EFTPOS cards to families and businesses in the Blue Mountains, central coast and the southern highlands.

''They've been slow coming forward,'' Major Harmer said. ''There are people who feel they aren't as bad off as others. We've started door-knocking to try and reach out that way.''

Blue Mountains resident Susan Templeman, whose house on Emma Parade was destroyed on October 17, said Winmalee in the Blue Mountains was a ''middle class suburb'' where residents were ''used to giving to charities, not receiving from them''.
''This is a community with high levels of employment and there is a feeling that we shouldn't need to accept help. We can afford the basics. None of us feel entitled.''
Major Harmer said that for some people hesitation comes ''from a sense of pride''.

''They are used to providing for their families and when faced with a natural disaster they struggle to reach out.''

With strict new regulations governing rebuilding in bushfire zones, Ms Templeman said residents might only ask for help when they realised they were under-insured. ''It's tricky stuff because some people really need help and may not be seeking it.''

She said the support of the charities has been ''tremendous'' but the generous donations from friends and strangers ''can be overwhelming''.

Sydney University's Professor Ed Blakely, who helped run the recovery of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, said this reluctance can be caused by fear of losing financial independence...

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/true-blue-mountains-of-cash-go-begging-20131114-2xjqw.html#ixzz2keds79L1
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Gus: may be the cash the Salvation Army can't get rid off could be used to toot the advantages of the Carbon Pricing... That would do far more good that staying in its bank account gathering dusty interest... Sometimes receiving charity can appear degrading while getting discreet or friendly help is a way to share without strings attached. Of course insurance companies also have their role to play, but there are more strings attached to insurance moneys than ropes holding a cruise liner at Circular Quay....

 

doing it tough...

 

From  the town burghers:
In Blackheath businesses have been doing it tough since the October fires. Some businesses have experienced a 70% reduction in bookings.We have thus decided to do what we can do ourselves to counter the negative publicity surrounding the recent fires. Please spare a couple of minutes to watch the short video titled “Three Sisters Mountain Report”. In it three Blackheath youngsters make their television debut. This video and others shown promoting our village, were all made without any financial support. We’ll continue making others as long as we can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r47REfMmRoo