PRIME Minister-elect Tony Abbott today announced his new Ministry [1]. There were few surprises. Again a South Australian will be responsible for water. Indeed Simon Birmingham as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, Greg Hunt, has been given special responsibility for water. 
[Read more…] about Tony Abbott’s New Ministry Announced: South Australian Simon Birmingham to Enforce Corrupt Basin Plan
Archives for September 2013
Can Cathy McGowan Fix the Travesty of National Water Reform?
MOST of the federal electorates within the Murray Darling are held by MPs from either the Liberal or National Parties. Over recent years, however, major water policies instigated by federal Coalition governments that directly impact these electorates have been to their long-term detriment. It makes no sense, until one realises that the Coalition has assumed it could take these electorates for granted, in particular that it has been implicit Coalition policy that the representatives from these electorates put the politics of the party machine first for fear of losing votes in South Australia. 
Read more here…
http://www.mythandthemurray.org/water-politics-has-traditionally-put-indi-last-and-last-can-cathy-mcgown-change-that/
Arctic Sea Ice Back
Various media have been reporting that in the Arctic about a million more square miles of ocean are covered in ice this August than just last year. This is apparently an increase of 60 percent. 
August is usually a low point in the annual cycle, and not so many years ago some were predicting the Arctic would be ice free by August of this year, by 2013.
But if you consider the longer millennial-scale temperature trends as detailed in the technical literature, it is one of summer insolation declining through the Holocene, summer temperatures being generally cooler and the area of Artic ice expanding. [Read more…] about Arctic Sea Ice Back
Open Thread
We must abandon completely the naive faith that school automatically liberates the mind and serves the cause of human progress; in fact, we know that it may serve any cause. [It] may serve tyranny as well as truth, war as well as peace, death as well as life . . . whether it is good or evil depends, not on the laws of learning, but on the conception of life and civilization that gives it substance and direction. In the course of history, education has served every purpose and doctrine contrived by man. If it is to serve the cause of human freedom, it must be explicitly designed for that purpose.
— George S. Counts
Remembering Appalling Policies Introduced by Previous Coalition Governments (Part 1)
POPULAR sceptical blogger, Jo Nova, has responded to Labor’s defeat in yesterday’s Australian federal election with the headline ‘Voters crush the carbon tax and corruption – worst Australian government gone’. 
I’m not so sure. It remains my view that the previous Coalition Government lead by John Howard was a disaster, particularly when it came to mismanagement of both the economy and the natural environment.
Indeed the Howard government, of which our new Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was a senior Minister, was instrumental in introducing a raft of very damaging legislation.
Top of the list is perhaps the renewable energy certificate, an ongoing economic disaster as detailed in an article by Ray Evans and Tom Quirk entitled the ‘The Ruinous Privileges of Renewable Energy’:
“THE mechanism through which electricity consumers pay greenmail to the owners of windmills and solar panels is the mandatory Renewable Energy Certificate, introduced by John Howard in his 2001 MRET legislation. As James Delingpole explained in the Australian on May 3, writing about the ghost town of Waterloo in South Australia (now depopulated by the impacts of the sub-audio frequency vibrations generated by the nearby wind farm), a 3-megawatt wind turbine, costing $6 million, will be lucky to generate electricity worth $150,000 in a year, but will receive $500,000 in RECs, paid for by the hapless electricity consumer.
[Read more…] about Remembering Appalling Policies Introduced by Previous Coalition Governments (Part 1)
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.