LABOR must win back voters lost to the Greens by advocating stronger action on climate change and supporting gay marriage, according to a secret internal review of the party’s performance that also urges the government to do more to court votes in immigrant communities. The Australian.
Opinion
Big Bang Rebuttal, Part 1: A Note from Joseph A. Olson
SUPERSTITION has exerted a powerful force on human psyche and history. Strengthened with a few facts, a superstition becomes accepted reality until new perceptions can reopen debate. That is an exciting possibility in today’s Nouveau Renaissance. Humanity’s new course needs a road sign: “Caution, Falling False Paradigms Ahead”.
Climategate has shown that even the most well funded science can be wrong. All objective, science trained minds have left the Global Warming station. Well meaning scientists are already doing damage assessments and future hazard avoidance studies. It is now a perfect time to reassess another possibly defective theory on the origin of the universe.
Celestial Spheres
The ‘Flat Earth Theory’ required an explanation of cyclic visible planetary movements of the then know members of our solar system. The Sun rose over the Earth everyday in a predictably variable pattern. The moon waxed and waned between full and new. The inner orbit planets, Mars and Venus arose predictably and briefly as morning or evening stars. The outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn crossed the complete sky and then disappeared for long and varying periods of time.
Fourteenth century scientists struggled to explain these readily observable events and attempted to explain them as nested spheres, driven by great gears, which were below the flat Earth and thus invisible. Mechanical clocks were just then being perfected and animated character clocks made this seem plausible to the masses.
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A Real Opportunity for the Australian Greens to Be the Farmers’ Friend
In the lead up to the NSW State Election some Australian Green’s candidates have been claiming they are the farmer’s friend (Wolves’ ain’t so bad, Jeremy Bradley, February 10, The Land, pg. 26). Certainly there is no reason for continued conflict between conservationists and farmers in a land so vast and resource rich as Australia.
However, I have noticed that the Australian Greens have a tendency to demonise farmers – particularly irrigators and particularly over the Murray River.
Most dramatic stories have these three important characters and the Australian Greens tend to tell the story thus: the river is portrayed as the victim of over-extraction by the villain, the greedy farmer. Meanwhile, the Australian Greens paint themselves into the story as the rescuers.
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Environmental Elements that Cause Illness: A Note from Krista Peterson
Pesticides, plastics, and VOCs are some of the numerous chemicals that come to mind when we think about pollutants. However, not all substances that can contaminate our air and water are manmade. Many materials found in nature can become pollutants if we misuse them.
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What to Listen to, and Read, this Week
Consider this an open thread. Let other readers of this blog know what you are listening to, and reading, this week by way of a comment.
And consider donating to the continued operation of this blog. There is an orange button at the top right hand corner of this page.
This blog is about community, and access to information. Information that is not politically correct or even fashionable… But hopefully well considered.
A Profitable Discharge of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: A Note from Nasif S. Nahle
Abstract
OSRAM is one of the leading manufacturers of light bulbs in the world. They claim their OSRAM Tungsten light bulb is an “ecological” lamp3 because of a reduction in losses due to thermal radiation.
In particular, they claim that due to a sophisticated coating on the bulb the thermal (infrared) radiation is reflected and the heat emitted from the filament is reflected back to the filament. As a result, the filament is heated further. This means that less electrical energy has to be supplied to the filament.
This is the equivalent argument used by proponents of the man-made global warming hypothesis, that is that a cooler system (the atmosphere) can reflect radiation back and heat up a warmer system (the Earth’s surface).
These claims violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Scientific analysis, not of the misleading marketing blurb from OSRAM, but of the physical Tungsten light bulb, however, show that there is no violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nature behaves as she always does, even in the case of these artificial devices.
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.