Posts tagged with "environment"
Sunday, 28. June 2009, 23:03:27
environment, climate, society, Australia
Environmentalists have an unchanging modus operandi. They find an environmental problem and then blame people for causing it. Decades later true science finds that it's a natural cycle, and often what is thought to be a bad thing turns out to be a good thing.
Remember dry land salinity? It was going to destroy our agricultural land and make huge swathes of the country a desert. It was caused, we were told, by extensive land clearing. State governments, responding to what they were assured was incontrovertible science (we didn't yet have "scientific consensus", brought in draconian laws banning removal of native vegetation.
It turns out it was all wrong, but don't expect any apologies, or even changes in the law.
From the SMH:
Higher rainfall holds key to salinity
Ben Cubby Environment Reporter
June 29, 2009 CLIMATE and rainfall, not land-clearing, have emerged as the main drivers of salinity in south-eastern Australia, in a study that could overturn decades of research.
By studying historical records for thousands of water bores across NSW, researchers from the NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change and the University of NSW have shown that salinity is traceable to rising groundwater levels.
This means that the salinity crisis that threatened thousands of farms in the 1980s and '90s is now in retreat as the land dries out as a result of drought and climate change. Higher groundwater levels mean more water interacts with friable, sandy soil and forms the crust of salt that can accelerate erosion and destroy agricultural productivity.
"The mistake we made in the past was to assume that the kind of rainfall we were seeing from the middle of the 20th century was normal, whereas it was actually quite wet by historical standards," said Professor Ian Acworth, a University of NSW hydrologist who worked with the environment department researcher Aleksandra Rancic.
Long-term rainfall variability, separate from human-induced climate change, is expected to mean that slightly drier conditions will up to the middle of the century, followed by another period of higher average rainfall.
"Dry land salinity is not going to be a problem as much in the first half of this century than it was in the last half of the previous century," Professor Acworth said.
Full articlce
Thursday, 21. May 2009, 05:51:38
environment, Australia, bushfires
From the ABC:
Bushfires as 'powerful as atomic bombs'
The Royal Commission into Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires has heard the fires were as powerful as 1,500 atomic bombs the size of the one dropped on Hiroshima.
Fire ecologist, Dr Kevin Tolhurst from the University of Melbourne prepared a report for the commission that mapped the progression and severity of the February 7th fires.
His report found the fires gave off the energy equivalent to that used by Victoria in one year.
Bushfires as 'powerful as atomic bombs' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Sunday, 10. May 2009, 05:11:04
environment, fear, climate, society
...
As I've noted in several posts, we live in a culture of fear- whether it is swine flu or global envirnomental acopalypse, there are whole industries dedicated to keeping you afraid.
Frank Furedi gives us this field guide to the fear mongers:
The protagonists in today’s market of fear have forcefully sought to demonise flu as a threat to the world, as something that might even be turned into a weapon of mass destruction. The prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology now advertises a course on ‘Pandemics and Bioterrorism’. It claims that ‘swine flu is only the most recent of the challenges posed by threats of bioterrorism and global pandemics’. The casual manner in which the threat of bioterrorism is introduced into the discussion of swine flu, by one of the most respected scientific institutions in the world, provides disturbing evidence that fearmongering has become a respectable pastime and pursuit.
Today, fear entrepreneurs come in all shapes and sizes. Some are moral crusaders who genuinely believe that the very fabric of society is threatened by evil forces. At the other end of the spectrum are the salespeople and hustlers of the market of fear. It is useful to distinguish between the different species of scaremonger, so here is your ‘Guide To Spotting The Different Actors In The Dramatisation Of Fear’.
Read full article
here:
Wednesday, 22. April 2009, 07:49:53
population, environment
You may have heard today of calls for Australia to introduce a "Sustainable Population Policy" modelled on China's "one child" policy.
Lately any crackpot cause can get recognised by putting the word sustainable in its name. The frenzy generated by the global warming religion of doom is the excuse for the latest idea.
The environmental movement is all based on the assumption that huans are evil and the world would be better off without us. Sadly very few of these peopletake their beliefs to the logical end of removing themselves from the world- the environmental religion is based on the ideas that action should be taken by someone else.
Contrary to this notion is the christian idea that God loves His creation, especailly people, and that we are called to share with God in the process of caring for and perfecting the creation. God loves the people of the world so much that he sebnt his one and only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Here is an article about the reality of China's "One Child" policy.
Cases of Forced Abortions Surface in China
by Louisa Lim
Morning Edition, April 23, 2007 · During the past week, dozens of women in southwest China have been forced to have abortions even as late as nine months into the pregnancy, according to evidence uncovered by NPR.
China's strict family planning laws permit urban married couples to have only one child each, but in some of the recent cases — in Guangxi Province — women say they were forced to abort what would have been their first child because they were unmarried. The forced abortions are all the more shocking because family planning laws have generally been relaxed in China, with many families having two children.
Liang Yage and his wife Wei Linrong had one child and believed that — like many other couples — they could pay a fine and keep their second baby. Wei was 7 months pregnant when 10 family planning officials visited her at home on April 16.
Liang describes how they told her that she would have to have an abortion, "You don't have any more room for maneuver," he says they told her. "If you don't go [to the hospital], we'll carry you." The couple was then driven to Youjiang district maternity hospital in Baise city.
"I was scared," Wei told NPR. "The hospital was full of women who'd been brought in forcibly. There wasn't a single spare bed. The family planning people said forced abortions and forced sterilizations were both being carried out. We saw women being pulled in one by one."
The couple was given a consent agreement to sign. When Liang refused, family planning officials signed it for him. He and his wife are devout Christians — he is a pastor — and they don't agree with abortion.
The officials gave Wei three injections in the lower abdomen. Contractions started the next afternoon, and continued for almost 16 hours. Her child was stillborn.
"I asked the doctor if it was a boy or girl," Wei said. "The doctor said it was a boy. My friends who were beside me said the baby's body was completely black. I felt desolate, so I didn't look up to see the baby."
Medical sources say fetuses aborted in this manner would have been dead for some time, so the tissue is necrotic and thus dark in color.
"The nurses dealt with the body like it was rubbish," Wei said. "They wrapped it up in a black plastic bag and threw it in the trash."
Full article
Saturday, 28. March 2009, 20:25:40
environment, climate
From the SMH, proving that warming equals cooling and kills off the wildlife:
THE broad-headed snake doesn't like too much bush.
Unlike much of Australia's wildlife, endangered as a result of land clearing, this wild animal may be in trouble because there are too many trees.
A 17-year study suggests that tree growth on the fringes of Sydney may pose the biggest threat to what may be Australia's rarest venomous reptile.
Numbers of the snake have been falling for 65 years. Today it can be found in just a handful of population pockets, all within 200 kilometres of the city.
It survives on the warmth of thin, plate-like rocks that flake off sandstone shelves. The rocks heat quickly in the midday sun and provide warm homes for the snakes as they wait for prey. "They will spend several weeks curled up, moving very little," said Rick Shine, from the University of Sydney's school of biological sciences. "They just sit and wait for velvet geckos."
Professor Shine and his university colleague, Jonathan Webb, along with researchers from Stanford University in California, have found a surprising clue to the snake's demise.
They compared aerial photographs from the 1940s and 1970s of Morton National Park, 160 kilometres south of Sydney, with satellite images taken in 2006. Published in the online British Journal Of Applied Ecology, the images revealed an increase in the number of trees.
"The critical thing is how warm the rock is in the later afternoon," said Professor Shine. While rocks in sunshine may average 30 degrees, "a rock in shade may not get above 22 or 23". As it cools "the snake slows down" until it can no longer catch prey.
Professor Shine said the forests may have grown denser due to the end of the Aboriginal custom of burning bush, or because of global warming. The snake "is in trouble", he said.
Article
Thursday, 26. March 2009, 23:02:18
environment, climate
From Andrew Bolt:
Professor Bjorn Lomborg finds another reason to wonder if Earth Hour worshippers have any idea what they are doing or why:
When asked to extinguish electricity, people turn to candlelight. Candles seem natural, but are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light globes, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. If you use one candle for each extinguished globe, you’re essentially not cutting CO2 at all, and with two candles you’ll emit more CO2. Moreover, candles produce indoor air pollution 10 to 100 times the level of pollution caused by all cars, industry and electricity production.
Article:
Wednesday, 25. February 2009, 23:39:50
environment, church
Andrew Bolt writes:
Start your own It says something about the emptiness of the New Age faiths that so many of its priests need to hijack real churches:
The Socialist Alliance posters outside St Mary’s Catholic Church in Brisbane said it all. “Dump Intolerance, not Father Kennedy.” “Who would Jesus sack?” The father in question is Peter Kennedy, the 70-year-old Catholic priest who is being forced out of the church he has turned into a green-leftist New Age drop-in centre…
Footage of Mass - or whatever it is - at St Mary’s on ABC-TV this week showed a pony-tailed man - not a priest - in a bright shirt waving around a giant Communion host in a haphazard way, while people sat on the floor at his feet. It looked more like a yoga session, with meditation and lay people taking to the pulpit to give “sermons” which have nothing to do with the Bible.
A weekend newspaper report recounted the “sermon” at one St Mary’s service which consisted of a reading from a letter from a supporter of Kennedy’s: ”I don’t come to St Mary’s because it is a Catholic place of worship. I come because it has everything I seek in my own life - love, truth, authenticity, integrity, justice, unity, compassion, openness and friendship.” Quite a smorgasbord. The only problem is that St Mary’s is a Catholic place of worship - and has been since 1864.
UPDATE
Frank Furedi says Baal is back in church:
Britain’s Energy Minister Ed Miliband has joined forces with two Church of England bishops to call for a “carbon fast” this Lent. Speaking as a true penitent, Miliband acknowledges that the carbon sin he’ll miss most is “driving short distances into town”. But he hopes his sacrifice will “easily become part of everyday life and help tackle dangerous climate change"… His ecclesiastical mates also possess an unusual idea of what constitutes a sacrifice. James Jones, the Bishop of Liverpool and a fervent advocate of waging a struggle against carbon sin, has indicated he plans to install a solar hot water system in his house…
The carbon fast represents a semi-conscious attempt to transform environmentalism into a caricature of a religion… There was a time when a sin really meant something. They used to be called deadly sins because they led to spiritual death and thus to damnation. These days some theologians, including the advocates of a carbon fast, wouldn’t recognise a mortal sin if they bumped into one… They are frequently joined by modernisers in the Catholic Church, who believe it is easier to make people feel guilty about their impact on the environment than about committing one of the seven deadly sins…
In the name of protecting the environment a moral crusade has been launched to consume less, have less babies, even to stay married. Steve Fielding, at a Senate environment hearing, praised marriage as superior to the resource-inefficient lifestyle represented by a divorce. Once upon a time warring parents were advised to stay together for the sake of the children; today for the environment.
Start your own | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog
Thursday, 12. February 2009, 00:26:49
Australia, environment
Miranda Devine reveals the true culprits behind the devastating bushfire crisis in this piece from this morning's SMH:
Green ideas must take blame for deaths
Miranda Devine
It wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn't arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.
So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.
Governments appeasing the green beast have ignored numerous state and federal bushfire inquiries over the past decade, almost all of which have recommended increasing the practice of "prescribed burning". Also known as "hazard reduction", it is a methodical regime of burning off flammable ground cover in cooler months, in a controlled fashion, so it does not fuel the inevitable summer bushfires.
Read the rest of the article
here
Friday, 6. February 2009, 04:37:32
environment, climate
Remember when nuclear power was the big bogey man in Green Religion? That was before we knew about how EVIL carbon the building block of life really is. Now a new generation is fighting the new "devil" with an old one.
From Andrew Bolt:
Lesson learned, but swiftly forgotten
One green scare starts, another quietly dies:
NUCLEAR reactors are to be built in Sweden for the first time in nearly 30 years after the Government decided to abandon a decades-old commitment to phase out the power source.
Sweden joins a list of EU countries that have chosen nuclear energy under pressure to diversify from fossil fuels and meet tough climate-change targets for cutting CO2 emissions.
The dramatic policy switch showed that even in a country where popular opinion has been against nuclear power previously - and one with extensive hydroelectric resources - atomic generation is seen as part of an emissions-free energy strategy.
Article
Tuesday, 13. January 2009, 22:43:02
environment
The self-styled environmental "experts" are very good at prescribing what needs to be done to fix things up.
At the moment we have a whole industry dedicated to "saving the planet" from catastrophic climate change which is nearly upon us.
So here's a story of just how wrong they can get it, especially when they focus on one "problem" and not a whole system... just like the CO2 hysteria. Macquarie Island is a sub-Antarctic wilderness half-way between Tasmania and the Antarctic.
When the cat's away rabbits devastate island sanctuary
Andrew Darby in Hobart
January 14, 2009
THE last cat to die on Macquarie Island was an elusive tabby, shot after an 86-hour-hunt through the mid-winter darkness of 2000.
The cost of its death to taxpayers was estimated at $500,000 but now that seems to have been money ill-spent.
Scientists have concluded that the sub-Antarctic wildlife refuge's ravaged ecosystem is a textbook example of the wrong way to eradicate pests.
The cats were keeping a lid on other pests and a federal-state plan to eradicate rabbits, rats and mice will now cost about $24 million.
"It's very sad down here now," an Australian Antarctic Division ecologist, Dana Bergstrom, said from the island yesterday. "There was such optimism in the 1990s when the vegetation was coming back. Now it's been reversed."
Rabbits were down to fewer than 10,000 at the time the last tabby died but since then they have exploded to number more than 130,000.
They have munched through many of the island's rare megaherb fields, to change 36 per cent of the total vegetation on the World Heritage-listed, 128 square kilometre island. The rats and mice are also chewing their way through flower heads to take the seeds.
Landslips are increasing around the island, sometimes hitting penguin colonies, and ground-nesting sea-birds are being exposed to predatory skuas.
After the cats went, it had been hoped that continued application of myxoma virus would be enough to control rabbit numbers. But Dr Bergstrom said this assumption was wrong.
"With the luxury of the wisdom of hindsight, we can suggest that the current situation arose as a consequence of inadequate recognition of top-down control of rabbits by a population of only 160 cats," she concludes in an article published in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology.
Instead, she argues for pest eradication to be habitat-based, rather than taking out species one at a time.
Dr Bergstrom said funding bodies such as government agencies often wanted to seek success a step at a time before awarding money to deal with a problem. "Really, what would be better is that a broad ecology view should be taken," she said.
It is hoped the rabbit and rodent eradication program on Macquarie planned for the winter of 2010 will accomplish this.
Helicopters will saturate the island with poisoned baits, and this will be followed up by teams of hunters.
Dr Bergstrom said she was confident the dire unintended consequences of the cat removal program would not be repeated on native wildlife.
Penguins showed no interest in the baits in tests and most of the wildlife will be away at sea. The few remaining wandering albatross chicks will have their own rangers to protect them.
Article
Sunday, 9. November 2008, 22:59:09
climate, environment
It's amazing that setting up an artificial market for products that don't really exist to solve a problem that isn't really there doesn't really work for very long. And strangely enough, whether it's esoteric financial derivatives or CO2 emission permits, the result is pretty much the same- the worker drones at the bottom of the food chain get shafted.
From Andrew Bolt:
The world’s only multinational emissions trading scheme has fallen through the floor, and falling with it is the scheme’s ability to actually slash emissions:
The price of carbon has collapsed. In only three months, life has become a lot cheaper for polluters. The financial cost of warming the planet has plummeted in Europe’s emissions trading system (ETS) and the effectiveness of such a volatile market mechanism in curbing carbon is being questioned…
Europe’s larger companies are allocated permits to emit CO2, and these allowances, called EUAs, can be traded on exchanges… In July, the right to spew out one tonne of CO2 from a chimney would have cost a power generator E29.33, but yesterday it could be bought for only E18.25 ($34.14)...
Carbon’s falling price spells companies going bust, the loss of jobs and the shredding of political reputations. Over the next year, no politician with re-election hopes will back a policy that would triple the price of carbon for industry and raise consumers’ energy costs.
Article
Thursday, 11. September 2008, 04:35:35
politics, environment, Australia
Eco-terrorists continue to chip away at the economic fabric of the nation.
Today, the Federal and NSW Governments announced they have purchased Toorale Station near Bourke to use as a National Park. This apparently will free up 20 Gigalitres to the Murray-Darling River system and "even more in flood years."
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The property has a licence to use up to 20 Gigalitres of water from the river, but it can only do so when the water is there to use. This purchase will not magically put more water into the river. It will only stop people from taking it out.
And it is good that when the river is in flood they will be able to still not take any water out. In a flood year, 20 Gigalitres is nothing, it is just a fraction of what goes past. And in a flood year there is so much water that it doesn't make that much difference to anyone.
But by taking a big rural company out of production they will be decimating the economy of Bourke, throwing dozens of employees and contractors out of work.
But who cares? It's only people.
To put this into perspective, it is like cleaning up Sydney's air pollution by closing down the CBD. Yes it might clean up all that air, remove tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, and solve all those traffic problems, but it would stuff up the economy of Sydney.
But the Bourke is on the wrong side of the Great Divide, so their welfare doesn't matter that much.
Sorry I'm being so cynical, but I get really angry when city-based politicians pursue policies that will eventually kill the rural parts of this country, just to please city-based environmentalists.
Friday, 11. July 2008, 00:22:25
environment, oil
If you've survived all the fear mongering of climate change (we're all going to die by 2018!) then the latest rubbish about the price of petrol will finish you off.
A report put out by the CSIRO claims that petrol "could" reach $8 a litre by 2018, coincidentally the year we all die of heat stroke, bubonic plague, malaria, dehydration and famine.
Of course that's the worst case scenario. The good news is that Carbon Trading will only account for 25 cents of that. Yay!
I have only read the headlines and not the full report, so i can't criticise the report as such- but I can criticise the journalists who quote it and the people who made the "Worst case scenario."
How do they come up with such a figure? Well it's easy- you extrapolate current supply and demand trends and it's easy to come up with that.
But people at the end of the 1800s were predicting that the price of hay would put transportation out of the reach of all but the richest by the year 1935 and that London would become unlivable because of the sheer quantity of horse droppings on the streets.
Oh look! We invented technology! Why did the price of hay drop to affordable levels? We found another form of transport which had a fuel that was in plentiful supply and over time became so cheap that even people in relatively poor countries could afford to use it.
That technological change itself produced a quantum leap in living standards right around the globe. I'm no expert on horses, but I have noticed hay advertised at $3.50 a bale in the past. I don't know how many kilometres to the bale a horse gets, but if you think back to what your grandparents used to tell you $3.50 (or perhaps 2 pounds) was once an astronomical amount of money. Now it's the price of a decent cup of coffee-- or 2 litres of unleaded. And most of us will go through our entire lives without buying a bale of hay.
We are once again at one of those technological change points. The doomsayers once again fail to see how the real world operates.
Petrol is going up in price because the demand is greater than supply. High school economics tells you as price rises demand falls. In the worst case scenario if you have to spend all your money on getting to work and then the price of petrol goes up again, you have to cut back your petrol use.
High school economics also teaches us that as the price rises supply increases. Those Arab nations will pump out oil faster when they can get $150 a barrel than then they can only get $50. But not only that, at $150 a barrel it becomes worth while to open up oil fields that are not profitable at $50. Even better, it suddenly becomes economical to go looking for oil in new and exciting places, to use new technology to get oil from deep under the ocean.
But it gets better still because as petrol gets to over $2 a litre people start thinking about converting coal to oil- we already have the technology to do that thanks to the oil embargoes against South Africa in the 1970s. And of course running cars on LPG and compressed natural gas starts looking good. And that's not even counting real technology jumps such as electric cars, fuel cells, solar cars etc.
So petrol MAY reach $8 a litre, but I doubt it, unless there are major supply disruptions such as a Middle East war. But even if it does, will it matter? We will by then be well on the way to finding alternatives, so it won't matter any way.
So be happy and in the words of the Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy- Don't Panic!
Saturday, 5. July 2008, 06:49:14
environment, climate
Did you hear the reports this week that flat screen TVs are responsible for far more greenhouse gases than coal fired power stations? Sadly it was only partly true. In fact the gas mentioned in involved in all kinds of electronic devices,
including solar power panels!Here's an article from Andrew Bolt:
The Sydney Morning Herald finds another global warming scare to hype - and, revealingly, focuses on the symbol of modern affluence in this wicked consumer society:
THE rising demand for flat-screen televisions may have a greater impact on global warming than the world\u2019s largest coal-fired power stations, a leading environmental scientist has warned.
Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions. As the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4000 tonnes.
As a driver of global warming, nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide...
But, of course, it's a beat-up by ideologues. Physical Insights explains:
This has got nothing to do specifically with manufacturing plasma TVs, and everything to do with manufacturing semiconductor devices and materials such as polycrystalline silicon. One has to wonder what the emissions of sulfur hexafluoride, perfluorocarbons and/or nitrogen trifluoride are for the manufacturing of a typical plasma TV, and how it compares to the emissions of sulfur hexafluoride, perfluorocarbons and/or nitrogen trifluoride over the manufacturing of, say, one typical solar photovoltaic panel. Obviously a photovoltaic panel has got much more polycrystalline silicon in it than your TV
Article
Wednesday, 9. April 2008, 06:23:51
environment, politics, society, Australia
Every culture, every group of people, and every individual has a set of beliefs. Some of those beliefs are true and others are false.
For example, many people believe they are in some ways unlovable. They feel inferior and are prone to feel rejected or ashamed of who they are. this can happen from straight out abuse or it can come from what is called an orphan heart- a sense of not being adequately loved by one or more parents.
Another commonly believed lie is the opposite "I'm as good as the next person."
Read more...
Sunday, 23. March 2008, 05:07:48
environment
Appropriate for Easter Day I guess. It's amazing how environmentalists keep telling us how fragile ecosystems are, and that reefs are among the most fragile, yet God has built into them these nifty preservation systems!
From the ABC:'Rabbit fish' saving Australia's reefs
A small, brown and relatively boring fish could be the answer to improving damaged parts of the Great Barrier Reef off eastern Australia.
Professor David Bellwood from the Centre for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in far north Queensland says "rabbit fish" have been filmed eating the weed that can sometimes smother young corals and destroy reefs.
He says they worked at 10 times the rate of other weed eaters such as parrot and surgeon fish.
Professor Bellwood says populations of rabbit fish in Australian waters are still in relatively good shape but it is vital they are looked after.
"The best thing we can do to help them out is to protect their environment," he said.
"We don't fish these fish in Australia but we can certainly destroy the habitat that they need to survive and a lot of that is going to be impacted by costal development so we should be careful."
Article
Thursday, 20. March 2008, 10:56:26
environment
Tim blair points out the irony of Earth Hour:
A fine letter to the SMH:
The advice on candles in the Earth Hour supplement may not be as green as you claim. Every standard-sized candle, when burnt completely, releases 15 grams of carbon dioxide whether it is beeswax, soy or paraffin-based. The lady depicted is burning 28 candles, creating more than four times the CO2 supplied by coal power to light one old-fashioned 100-watt bulb for an hour.
Paul Roberts
That’s the problem with my planned Illumination Hour (scheduled for 8pm on March 29, coincidentally). Even the grandest and most excessive power-eating gesture is unlikely to deliver a larger carbon footprint than generated by the average Earther. We’ll have to work hard, people! Further reason from Contrail:
Is there any greater example of green stupidity than Earth Hour?
The whole stunt requires people to turn off efficiently made and distributed energy - electricity - and replace it with alternatives - candles and gas barbecues - that have to be transported by oil-burning ships, trucks and cars to the point where they are to be set fire to in the open air without any means of capturing emissions.
It’s insanity if the aim is to reduce CO2. And what makes it worse is that Fairfax media is behind it 100%. If the same degree of thought is going into its other business decisions, sell your Fairfax shares while you can.
I wonder if it’s possible to buy Fairfax shares with carbon credits.
I noticed that they have been promoting Earth Hour with a hot air balloon in the shape of a compact fluorescent light bulb... so we promote reduced CO2 emissions by burning off fossil fuels
Wednesday, 5. March 2008, 22:38:03
environment, world-view
Just when you think you've got the green arguments sorted out....
Towards the end of the article she points out that plastic bags are made out of ethylene which would otherwise just be burnt at the natural gas production fields, adding to the dreaded CO2! So save the planet and get as many shopping bags as you can!
From smh.com:
Ban on bags can't carry weight
Plastic bags are under siege, pilloried globally as a menace to the environment and a symbol of man's conspicuous consumption, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
Without plastic bags we would all buy less, goes the thinking. But, of course, we won't. Hence you have the ludicrous situation at Bunnings where a customer buys a small, but nonetheless unwieldy bag of potting mix (in dirty plastic wrapping), a tape measure, a paint-sample pot, marker pens, pest oil and a bottle of Thrive, and is expected to carry it all out of the store in her arms, thus making filthy her white shirt, because Bunnings is a good environmental citizen and no longer provides plastic bags, or only reluctantly and for 10 cents a piece.
Australia's chief bag-slayer is our Environment Minister, the lantern-jawed former rock god Peter Garrett, who has little of substance left in his portfolio after the meaty bits were handed to Penny Wong. But his caged activist persona is just perfect for the kind of empty symbolism which has marked the Rudd Government's first 100 days. When it comes to evil Japanese whalers and plastic bags, Pete's your man. His first big act in office has been to declare bags would be banned or taxed into oblivion by year's end, and he has convened a summit of the nation's environment ministers next month to achieve that end.
Jumping the queue on Sunday was South Australia's Premier, Mike Rann, who announced a ban on bags from next year. "I am urging all states to follow this important step in ridding our environment of these bags that contribute to greenhouse gases, clog up landfill, litter our streets and streams as well as kill sea life."
All very virtuous-sounding, except none of it is based on fact. The Productivity Commission did a cost-benefit analysis in 2006 on the merits or otherwise of plastic bags, and found they comprise just 2 per cent of litter and it was not certain if they damaged animals.
The commission claimed plastic bags may be eco-friendly in solid landfill, because of their "stabilising qualities, leachate minimisation and minimising [of] greenhouse-gas emissions".
Three-quarters of us recycle the bags as bin-liners, pooper-scoopers or carry bags, thus confining stuff that might otherwise become litter.
But, as usual, green hysteria obscures the truth. For instance, Planet Ark's founder, Jon Dee, was quoted in 2006 saying he had been "inundated" with calls from farmers whose calves had died after swallowing plastic bags. But the National Farmers Federation has never heard of such a thing, a spokesman said yesterday. Nor has the Cattle Council of Australia had a single report.
Full article:
Thursday, 21. June 2007, 00:12:00
government, society, environment
From the SMH:
With mounting horror, customers at the Candana Designs fancy bathroom shop in Woollahra read the large sign erected in the toilet section: "To comply with Australian Standards all toilets are required to flush with a maximum of six litres of water. In order to comply with this regulation, manufacturers have reduced the size of the 'throat' inside the toilet pan. In most cases this necessitates using a toilet brush after flushing and flushing a second time."
In other words, to flush a toilet properly, you'll need to flush twice and use 12 litres of water - which is more than the amount used by the old nine-litre toilets with wider "throats", which are better at ingesting potential blockages.
Thousands of years of sanitation and a drought have brought us to this point: toilets that don't do what toilets are supposed to do. That famous 19th-century British pioneer of sanitary plumbing, Thomas Crapper, would be rolling in his grave.
Thanks to new federal regulations which came into force on January 1, it is now illegal to install a toilet that does not have a six-star water efficiency rating.
According to Marc Reed, managing director of Candana Designs, the feeble flush of the new eco-friendly toilet has made a lot of customers hopping mad.
"We've had numerous complaints from people who … are paying $2000 for a toilet … and say it's not flushing. The old toilets used to flush everything away. But with the six-litre, it only takes 80 per cent of the waste away and you have to flush it again - which means you're using more water than you used to."
As a result, Reed says, there is now a growing market for second-hand toilets.
Which just shows what happens when governemnts try to excessively regulate people!
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