Jennifer,
I really like your blog and visit it a lot. Perhaps you and your readers would enjoy a bit of levity at the expense of extremist activists! And of course, I’d appreciate the attention.
http://activismhumor.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Eric Baumholder
Dear Jennifer,
You might be interested in my recent Blog entry ‘Long term reduction in Australian deaths from, bushfires, cyclones and heatwaves’.
The next entry down ‘Is massive UHI warming in China distorting Jones et al gridded T data ?’ is reporting stunning differences between Jones and satellite gridded data. I thought the warmers were muttering some mantra that there is little difference between the datsets now.
I am hoping to be a bit more active on the Blog.
The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) had a good week with media comment on their open letter to MP’s calling for a Royal Commission into IPCC science and how it is affecting NZ economy.
I have just added a general entry re the NZCSC open letter last week at the blog. Also one highlighting a simplistic and unworthy statement from NIWA in a May media release commenting on NZCSC. For me, a welter of activity and there is much much more in the pipeline.
Have a great weekend.
I asked Libby Eyre for some information on modern large mammal extinctions and this was her list in reply:
Steller’s sea cow,
sea mink and Carribbean monk seals,
the Thylacine,
Toolache wallaby and lesser bilby,
the Falkland Island fox,
aurochs (stunning bovines),
tarpans (a type of wild horse) and quaggas (amazing ‘half zebra, half-horse’ animals),
the Barbary and Cape lions,
the Bali,
Caspian and Java tigers,
the Caucasian moose,
Irish elk and European ass,
the Atlas bear,
Guam flying fox (not really very big),
the Arabian gazelle, and
the Wisconsin cougar.
Other readers might like to comment on, and add to this list.
I’ve just been sent some publicity for Al Gore’s new movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. It’s an apocalyptic tale about climate change opening in Australia from 14th September with screening times to soon be available at the films new Australian website: www.aninconvenienttruthmovie.com.au .
I could organise a group booking for Brisbane-based readers of this blog at the Palace Centro in Fortitude Valley on the afternoon of Sunday 17th September? Send me an email if you are interested (jennifermarohasy@jennifermarohasy.com).
I was also sent this poster:
Does it mean that the Antarctic could become desert if we don’t change our ways, or that penguins could conceivably live in deserts?
The Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) is preparing a “comprehensive interactive on-line study guide” for the movie.
Was it former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, Australian Democrat Senator Andrew Bartlett or Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull?
Who convinced Queensland’s Premier Beattie to change his mind on recycling sewage as a source of drinking water?
They have each visited my home town of Brisbane over the last week and each publicly announced their support for the concept.
Now the Premier says he’s going to put the idea to the people of Brisbane.
That is quite a back flip.
Until recently Peter Beattie had been promising new dams, desalination plants and even piping water over 1,000 kms from the Burdekin to fix Brisbane’s water shortage, but had ruled out waste water recycling. Now he says recycling is a possibility – that he will make it an election issue.
You can read about Andrew Bartlett’s petition in favor of recycling at his website and Mikhail Gorbachev and Malcolm Turnbull’s comments in The Australian here, here and here.
I attended the Brisbane Institute last night to hear Malcolm Turnbull speak and he really was eloquent. On the subject of recycled water he suggested that:
“We must learn to judge water by its quality, not its history”.
He also commented that permanent water restrictions in Brisbane make no more sense than would permanent electricity restrictions. He indicated that the current water restrictions reflected a lack of investment in infrastructure by state governments and spoke about the referendum on waste water recycling in Toowoomba this Saturday.
I wrote in support of sipping sewage in last week’s The Land and blogged on the issue last August.
I’ve been sent links to www.dipetane.net.. According to the website you add dipetane to your petrol or diesel and you get a 10-17percent efficiency increase and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.
According to Wikipedia* it’s a fuel enhancer that improves the quality of combustion of any liquid fuel and it reduces emissions of CO2 up to 25%, CO up to 9.5%, NOx from 28.8% and SOx from 19.9%.
So why aren’t we all using it?
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update 9am, next day
* Apparently this link was to a Wiki user page rather than the Wiki proper and the information was ‘commercial content’ and so John Quiggin has had the information removed, so the link no longer works, see comments from John below. And I’m wondering whether the ‘commercial content’, as repeated in this blog post, is factually correct or not?
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.
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