FEAR of global warming is a preoccupation of western societies at the beginning of this 21st century. This fear is usually explained in terms of changes in the surface temperature of the earth as averaged from varying numbers of thermometers from around but the world. But given the many disputes concerning how this data is collected, compiled, adjusted and averaged (see notes and links below), it would perhaps be better if there was some agreement to focus on the temperature as measured from one or just a few sites.
Tim Curtin has suggested that as carbon dioxide concentrations are reported for Mauna Loa, Hawaii, why not also focus primarily on this site when discussing global warming? [Read more…] about Let’s Stop Averaging Global Temperatures (Part 1)
Archives for August 2009
Hippos Roaming Free in Colombia
BOGOTA – African zoologists are in Colombia to advise local authorities on what to do with dozens of hippos roaming around the abandoned zoo of late drug lord Pablo Escobar in the north of the country. Read more here.
Join the Climate Sceptics: A Note from Michael Rowley
THE Climate Sceptics Party of Australia have been actively generating enough members to be able to register as a political party to contest elections in Australia. With the considerable efforts of President Leon Ashby, Anthony Cox and others we are fast approaching the required 500 members. As of today we need 26 more. [Read more…] about Join the Climate Sceptics: A Note from Michael Rowley
Electric Taxis for Tokyo
THE company promoting the mass adoption of electric cars, Better Place, has just received an award from the Japanese government to conduct a pilot project in Tokyo for the world’s first electric taxis with switchable batteries.
Not so long ago the company got some money to make Canberra Australia’s first city with an electric vehicle infrastructure.
The Tokyo electric taxi pilot will involve the construction of a permanent Better Place battery switch site in Central Tokyo. This project will allow for testing of battery switching duration, vehicle range, and vehicle battery life under heavy use operating conditions. [Read more…] about Electric Taxis for Tokyo
High Fashion and the Climate Crisis
VOGUE is an exclusive magazine about what is really fashionable. This month Vogue Australia has a feature on the ‘Climate Crisis’.
Australian Green’s Senator Christine Milne explains in the article that unless we change our ways there may be no polar bears in the wild and Australia will lose its natural icons. The Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the snow caps on the Snowy Mountains will apparently be gone by 2030. Also, our beaches will have eroded and many Australian cities will be in managed retreat.
The solution, according to the Senator, is for women to “roll up their sleeves just as our great-grandmothers did in the Women’s Land Army during World War 11” and reduce our personal impact on the climate by one tonne of carbon dioxide in a year.
The fashionable way to achieve this is through simple choices including turning the airconditioner down a notch, catching the train once a week and reducing, reusing and recycling what we buy.
It can’t be easy getting a story in Vogue. It is testimony to the widespread appeal of this doom and gloom issue that it is featured in this month’s issue. Of course almost all of what is written is untrue, but then fashion has never been about the truth.
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Extraordinary times call for extraordinary action. By Senator Christine Milne pg 339-340. Vogue Australia. September 2009.
Vogue images are all copyright. So my daugher, Caroline, provides a fashion theme for this blog posting … she was on the catwalk at a hair fashion event a few years ago.
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.