Wednesday 1 October 2008
Richie Williamson elected Clarence Valley Council mayor
Just when I thought election hype couldn't get any weirder, along comes an Ohio corn farmer....
A 16-acre corn maze near the town of Whitehouse has been carved in Palin's likeness, complete with her familiar updo hairstyle and eyeglasses.
Farmer Duke Wheeler says that Palin created a lot of excitement in the campaign and that he was hoping to generate some for this year's maze.
Wheeler says it took an artist from Idaho at least eight hours to mow down stalks for the maze.
WhiteHouse corn maze here.
Meanwhile out in the real world......
Gallup Daily: Obama Maintains 8-Point Lead
From Crikey on 30 September
And here is what Possum Comitatus makes of it all
:The Obama surge is continuing in both the markets and the polls, and the change in the markets is not only on the headline probabilities and a handful of States, but is general Obama push across nearly all States as we can see if we look at the current State probabilities and their change over the past week:
Graph from PollyticsGarnaut gives his final opinion; but will the Rudd Government hear only the low 2020 emissions target and the politically easier options?
The arithmetic of Chapter 3 about the new patterns of global growth takes away the time we may once have thought we had for experiment, talk, and leisurely decision making.
It tells us that business as usual is taking us quickly towards what the science tells us are high risks of highly disruptive climate change.
So fateful decisions are to be taken at Copenhagen.
The analysis of the current international situation in chapters 8, 9 and 10 tells us that a good outcome is not assured.
The international community is on a course plotted before the implications of the current era of growth we call the Platinum Age had been absorbed into its decision-making framework.
It is on a course plotted before humanity had absorbed the implications of the acceleration of economic growth in the early 21st century; the concentration of that growth in economies at the stage of development when growth absorbs huge amounts of energy; and in countries where coal is the cheapest and most convenient energy source.
New knowledge changes the calculus.
The old calculus said that there was time—time for all developed countries to take the early steps in mitigation, and then for all developing countries to join at a later unspecified date.
The old calculus said that it was good enough for the developing countries to begin to contribute through the Clean Development Mechanism and in other ways that made no additional contribution to the global mitigation effort, beyond commitments that the developed countries had already made.
The Review's updated projections show that approaches based on the old calculus will not hold the risks of dangerous climate change to acceptable levels.