Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Orange-thighed Tree Frogs

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Xanthomera.jpg

Confined to tropical Northern Queensland rainforests, between Cooktown and Townsville, Orange-thighed Tree Frogs (Litoria xanthomera) live in the upper-canopy and descend to the ground only to breed. Emerging only after heavy rains, these beautiful tree frogs can be conveniently observed only four or five nights of the year.

Courting rituals are very noisy and may be heard for hundreds of metres through dense rainforest. Only males vocalize and it would seem to be the smaller males that out-compete for the affections of the females through their higher frequency, more energy-efficient and sustained serenading.

UK Judge: Schools Must Warn of AIT Film Bias

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Reported in the Daily Mail today:

Schools must warn of Gore climate film bias

Schools will have to issue a warning before they show pupils Al Gore’s controversial film about global warming, a judge indicated yesterday.

The move follows a High Court action by a father who accused the Government of ‘brainwashing’ children with propaganda by showing it in the classroom.

Stewart Dimmock said the former U.S. Vice-President’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and ‘sentimental mush’.

He wants the video banned after it was distributed with four other short films to 3,500 schools in February.

Mr Justice Burton is due to deliver a ruling on the case next week, but yesterday he said he would be saying that Gore’s Oscar-winning film does promote ‘partisan political views’. This means that teachers will have to warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film.

Black Google Would Save Energy

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From Luke Walker:

Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-Hours a Year

From the lights out department – did you know that a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor uses about 74 watts to display an all white web page, but only uses 59 watts to display an all black page? Yes, there all still plenty of these still in use, particularly in China and Latin America. Worldwide, about 25 percent of the monitors currently in use are cathode ray tubes, which means that they waste energy displaying white backgrounds. This can add up for sites with a global audience.

Take at look at Google, for instance, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s about $75,000/year, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

Survey: Climate Change as Much a Concern as Terrorism

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Another one from Luke:

From Australia’s equivalent of the BBC (not a compliment!):

Climate change as much a concern as terrorism: survey

A major survey has found that an overwhelming majority of Australians believe global warming is at least as serious a threat to the nation as terrorism.

Sydney University’s US Studies Centre has released one of the most comprehensive surveys ever undertaken on Australian attitudes to America.

The survey reports that 76 per cent of people believe global warming is now equal to or more serious a threat than Islamic fundamentalism.

That supports another recent report by the Lowy Institute for International Policy which also found that global warming had become the top concern……………………….

Defiinition of a survey or opinion poll:

Method of measuring the effectiveness of propaganda.