THE Australian Bureau of Meteorology and the Australian National University will spend $30 million on two new supercomputers that will more accurately predict cyclones, tsunamis and the effects of climate change. Read more here.
Archives for March 2009
De-Development and Australian Agriculture
NO Longer is it enough to talk about growing intelligently or using technology to meet long-term problems. Instead, scarcity politics seeks to slow and even reverse material progress through what President Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, calls “de-development.”
That’s according to an article by Joel Kotkin recently published in Forbes which laments, in particular, restrictions on the capacity of those who manage water in the Central Valley of California. Like the Murray Darling Basin in Australia, the Central Valley has been experiencing drought, and this has been exacerbated by the politics of “de-development”.
[Read more…] about De-Development and Australian Agriculture
Timber Losses from Victorian Bushfires
VicForests estimates that $600 million of timber and economic activity related to its harvesting was lost. Read more here.
Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect Falsified, Again
According to a new paper in the International Journal of Modern Physics by showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33 degrees Celsius is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.
There is a freely available post-print version of the technical paper entitled, ‘Falsifcation Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics’, by Gerhard Gerlich
And Ralf D. Tscheuschner, available from the preprint server of the Cornell University, click here.
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Michael Hammer came to a similar conclusion, click here.
Sign the Petition Against the ETS
Sign our petition against the Emission’s Trading Scheme, click here.
Coal4Breakfast: Update from Geoff Hewitt
LAST year Queensland farmers were informed that the Government had granted Tarong Energy a mineral development licence over the Haystack Road coal deposit on prime agricultural farmland. The farmers are running a campaign against it. Here’s the latest update:
It was pleasing to see the very public commitment on the front page of the Toowoomba Chronicle on Saturday, 7th March, from party leader Lawrence Springborg committing his party, should they win government, to the protection of the iconic farming areas of Haystack Road and Felton, and to the introduction of a planning process to identify and protect other areas of prime farm land in Queensland. Mr Springborg said, in releasing the policy commitment, that it was not an anti mining policy, and that LNP recognize the need to protect our prime farm land for future generations. LNP should be congratulated for recognising the importance of this issue.
A few days earlier, the Queensland Greens had announced that they too would protect areas of prime farm land from unnecessary mining development. During the following week, a number of notable independent candidates also stated a commitment to this policy.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.