Third Friday the 13th in 2009

While many countries close the gender gap Australia continues to mark time in 2009

The World Economic Forum has released its Global Gender Gap Report for 2009.

"Women and girls make up one half of the human resources available to the world and it will be imperative that they are educated, empowered and integrated for a rapid economic recovery"
Saadia Zahidi, Director and Head of Constituents, World Economic Forum

This is Australia's ranking in the 2009 Gender Gap Index:

Australia 2009 20 (rank out of 134 countries) 0.7282 (score) 20 (2009 rank among 2008 countries)

Australia 2008 21 (rank out of 130 countries) 0.7241 (score)

Australia 2007 17 (rank out of 128 countries) 0.7204 (score)

Australia 2006 15 (rank out of 115 countries) 0.7163 (score)

(The Global Gender Gap Index 2009 rankings: Comparisons with 2008, 2007 and 2006)

The Index reports that two-thirds of the 115 countries covered since 2006 have improved markers used to measure gender inequality, but Australia is clearly lagging according to these figures. Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, South Africa, Denmark, Ireland, Philippines, Lesotho, Netherlands, Germany,Switzerland, Latvia, United Kingdom, Sri Lanka, Spain, France, Trinidad and Tobago all have a better record in 2009 than Australia.

Country profile for Australia here.

Full report here.

According to its own website: The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a foundation in 1971, and based in Geneva, Switzerland, the World Economic Forum is impartial and not-for-profit; it is tied to no political, partisan or national interests. (www.weforum.org)

Flacco tells Cardinal George Pell a thing or two **

Talking an amble down one digital pathway I came across this in ABC National Radio's archives for the Science Show:

"Flacco: Now, it has come to my attention that Archbishop George Pell has threatened to excommunicate Catholic MPs if they support therapeutic cloning, and this has made me wonder how the church stands on the subject of cloned foods, for it is no secret that no matter what your faith (or lack of it), you've been eating cloned fruit all your life. Bananas, oranges, even Eve's apple was a clone, not to mention giant strawberries. You see, these foods have been modified over 6,000-odd years of agriculture.

So would this mean that Catholic vegetarians could be excommunicated for eating therapeutically cloned fruit? Basically I think that George Pell is a therapeutically cloned fruit. And perhaps there is more behind this anti-cloning crusade, for it is only hunters and gatherers who eat anything close to food in its original form, and without foods being genetically modified, well, the planet could only support a few odd million human inhabitants.

So perhaps it is George's plan to rid the planet of all non-Catholics and a few excommunicated upstarts, therefore leaving the Earth cleared for Pell and his cronies as opposed to us clonies. So to counter this and prevent further bad puns like that I suggest the unreligious must stand up for the clones, we must build an ark to house all our cloned flora and fauna and then lead them one by one onto this ark to be flung to a new planet to self-replicate in peace.

And it occurs to me that perhaps God himself is the original therapeutic clone; he lives alone, no need for a relationship, made us all in his image. We are all clones of God! How about that, George! If you yourself are a therapeutic clone of God, then perhaps you will have to excommunicate yourself. Not such a bad thing really, for if the Catholic Church would stop all this excommunicating it could then feel free to indulge in its opposite. And the opposite of 'excommunicate' is to communicate. Amen.

Robyn Williams: And it starts this week of course. Monsignor Flacco being typically inconvenient and annoying."

** This post counts as my contribution to North Coast Voices efforts to keep Monsanto & Co.'s blog monitor in full-time employment. Yup, I'm laffing at you Mista Missie Mons!

Mary Valley celebrates Garrett's decision to veto Traveston Dam proposal

It has been a long fight against the proposed Traveston Dam for Mary River catchment communities in Queensland, and they now have what is hopefully a long respite from any talk of new dams with Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett's announcement rejecting the dam on solid environmental grounds.

Everyone who took part in this marathon lobbying deserves congratulations - from the Save the Mary River co-ordinating committee and those who turned out at protest rallies right down to anti-dam letter writers and tweeters. Collectively they have been a pattern card of perseverance in the face of tremendous political pressure.

NSW Northern Rivers residents will remember that the 2006-07 proposal to dam the Clarence River was at one time linked to Queensland Government plans for water security in the south-east of that state.

The Courier Mail said it all early today:

THEY screamed, they hugged, they danced and tears of joy rolled down their cheeks.

After an eerie few moments of silence as more than 100 protesters and supporters put down their glasses and held their breath to watch federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett deliver his verdict on the Kandanga Hotel's bar television, complete pandemonium erupted as soon as he said the word "no".

Nobody heard any more of his speech. The cheers almost lifted the roof off the pub as farmers, business folk, mums, dads and kids were swept up in the moment of joy after 3½ years of fighting the proposed $1.8 billion Traveston Crossing Dam.

The overwhelming feeling was one of relief – and disbelief.

Hard-core protesters who had spent the morning grimly putting more "no dam" information into mail-outs and arranging protest signs for tourists passing by on the Mary Valley Rattler steam train had to pinch themselves.....

Most had expected the dam would get the green light, with even more conditions added to the 1200 already imposed by the Queensland Co-ordinator General. Secretly they had prayed for the best but expected the worst.

NSW public servants have too much time on their hands?

NSW State Water Corporation has an e-tendering training page on its website and someone down south obviously thought it would be hilarious if the example contract used on the page was for a Clarence Dam.

Yes, very funny.
Folks on the NSW North Coast get the joke after spending so much time and effort repelling water raiders wanting to dam our coastal rivers - in particular the Clarence River.
Not so sure those down at Lithgow would be amused though - given their own problems with a "Clarence Dam".

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This is the Training version of the NSW eTendering system.

The records found on this website are not real.

Please visit https://tenders.nsw.gov.au/ for current tender opportunities and contract records.

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Archived Tender Detail View - SWC99999

Clarence Dam

RFT ID SWC99999
Publish Date 14-May-2009
Close Date & Time 14-May-2009 12:45pm

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CERN's Large Haldron Collider being fired up again for full run in early 2010

The Times online last month reported that:
"After starting it with a bang, which promptly turned into a whimper, scientists have quietly powered up the Large Hadron Collider for a second time.
The preliminary run was low key compared with the ill-fated switch-on in September last year, but CERN scientists said the first beams suggested that the £3.6 billion experiment in Switzerland was finally under way again. “It’s the beginning of a very well-planned and cautious switch-on,” Brian Foster, a particle physicist from the University of Oxford, said.......
The accelerator is being ramped up to full energy gradually to minimise the chances of a repeat of the failure that led to a year of repairs. The first particles to be sent around the whole ring are scheduled for mid-November and the first collisions in the new year."
Unfortunately in its related article link the newspaper also displayed the 13th October 2009 headline:
Haldron Collider physist Adlene Hicheur charged with terrorism.
More fuel to the fire for those with a penchant for mini-black hole end of the world predictions.
Perhaps that intrepid Oz pollie, Steve Fielding, needs to rush to the nearest telephone box and change......

Want to swim in that pretty little lake in Yamba? First check for sharks!

I received a phone call this morning from a long time resident of Yamba at the mouth of the Clarence River.

He had been checking out Kolora Lake on the edge of town, as a possible alternative free still-water swimming pool due to the Main Beach rock pool being indefinitely closed because of structural damage.

All was going well as he walked this pretty little lake's bank until.......
he spotted a young shark (about two and a half to three feet long) calmly cruising by.

Now before he puts a toe in the water he wants to know if Mumma Shark is nearby!

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month - Lest We Forget

In remembrance of the many who fell and all who suffered during war

Poster from Zazzle

Are we in danger of entering a new faith-inspired Dark Ages or are we witnessing conservative right-wing religion's last hurrah?

The media quite often throws up quotes by religious leaders on the subject of global warming and some journalists have a penchant for picking those clerics who are most likely to be firmly anti-science.

So, are we in danger of entering a new faith-inspired Dark Ages or are we witnessing conservative right-wing religion's last hurrah? Now there is a question which itself smacks of as much wishful thinking on my part as that demonstrated by climate change sceptics within the clergy.

I don't think that there is any danger of paternalistic traditional religion fading away or its right-wing cadres disappearing into thin air. It's much more likely that when climate change descends on the heads of these faith-based sceptics we will all be told chronic water scarcity, food shortages and all our violent weather woes are God's punishment for our manifest sins.

Still, egged on by certain dominant groups and paid lobbyists, those against the idea that there is any such thing as catastrophic man-made global warming are now firmly entrenched in the religious arena. It would be folly to ignore the ability of religious groups to influence government policy, particularly in the role of stalking horse for big business.

Recent shifts in COP15 2009 rhetoric from binding legal agreements to non-binding political agreements being the goal for Copenhagen this December are no coincidence, as the alliances forged between anti-science groups supported by polluting industries and right-wing religious groups are emerging into the light.

On the U.S. faith-based Cornwall Alliance website currently there is a copy of An Open Letter to the Signers of"Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action"and Others Concerned About Global Warming which states:

In the accompanying document, "A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming," we present extensive evidence and argument against the extent, the significance, and perhaps the existence of the much-touted scientific consensus on catastrophic human-induced global warming. Further, good science–like truth–is not about counting votes but about empirical evidence and valid arguments.

The website also features The Cornwall Stewardship Agenda and is listed by that secular anti-global warming group The Heartland Institute as one of its 2009 conference co-sponsors.

Even Australia is not immune - for years Catholic Cardinal George Pell has been a member of the anti-science chorus and been quoted in media as saying that he is not convinced that climate change poses a threat, which shores up Monbiot's theory that many of the vocal global warming denialists appear to be middle aged to elderly.

While Christian right-wing political parties Family First and the Christian Democratic Party have both frequently taken highly sceptical, contradictory and often unreasonable positions on the existence of man-made warming. Although these two political parties are not alone in their desire to deny. The Liberal-Nationals Coalition is also riddled with anti-science sentiment as illustrated by the recent ABC Four Corners episode Malcolm and the Malcontents [Program Transcript and Reports and Resources].

It would not surprise me if findings of the October 2009 Pew Research Centre survey on attitudes to climate change were mirrored in Australia (this American survey found that the belief that global warming was a very serious problem had fallen by 27 percent within the combined 50 years of age and over groups and only 9 percent within the combined 49 years of age and under groups. These changes occurring in a sixteen month period). Indeed the summary of The 2009 Lowy Institute Poll appears to indicate that this is possible, however the 1,003 respondents do not appear to have been differentiated across all age groupings - at least for public consumption.

I suppose it doesn't surprise that anti-asylum seeker venom is starting to seep out in viral emails

It is hard to imagine where all this hate comes from.

Last weekend's sad little venomous, error-ridden, misspelt, viral email doing the rounds on the NSW North Coast and in Queensland:

Let Me See Why This Is So.

If you cross the North Korean border illegally, you get 12 years hard labour.
If you cross the Iranian border illegally, you are detained indefinitely.
If you cross the Afghan border illegally, you get shot.
If you cross the Saudi Arabian border illegally, you will be jailed.
If you cross the Chinese border illegally, you may never be heard from again.
If you cross the Venezuelan border illegally, you will be branded a spy and your fate will be sealed.
If you cross the Cuban border illegally, you will be thrown into political prison to rot.

However, if you cross the AUSTRALIAN border illegally, you get a job, a driver's licence, a social security card, welfare benefits, food stamps, credit cards, subsidized rent or a loan to buy a new house, free education, free health care, a lobbyist in Canberra and, in many instances, you can VOTE.

Why is this so?

Because we voted for incompetent polititians !!!

A bunch of pansies !!!

That is why !!!

NSW North Coast begins to wonder what may happen if goverment doesn't get climate change coastal planning provisions right

One can almost see the shape of a looming battle between Northern Rivers communities, local & state governments and developers over how to proceed with climate change adaptation and growth.

The NSW Government trying to appease big political donors and the building industry, councils trying to expand their rate bases to cover costs and please local developers, communities lobbying hard to ensure that risk levels are not increased by the burden of higher populations on vulnerable land and individuals fighting tooth and claw to protect that family home, expensive retirement 'castle' or superannunation investment.

Excerpt from NSW Government NSW Sea Level Rise Policy Statement, October 2009:

In simple terms, sea level rise will raise the average water level of oceans and estuaries. As the average water level rises, so too will high and low tide levels affecting the natural processes responsible for shaping the NSW coastline. Exactly how the coast and estuaries will respond is complex and often driven by local conditions but, in general, higher sea levels will lead to:

• increased or permanent tidal inundation of land by seawater

• recession of beach and dune systems and to a lesser extent cliffs and bluffs

• changes in the way that tides behave within estuaries

• saltwater extending further upstream in estuaries...........

The sea level rise planning benchmarks can be used for purposes such as:

• incorporating the projected impacts of sea level rise on predicted flood risks and coastal hazards

• designing and upgrading of public and private assets in low-lying coastal areas where appropriate, taking into account the design life of the asset and the projected sea level rise over this period

• assessing the influence of sea level rise on new development (see below for further details)

• considering the impact of sea level rise on coastal and estuarine habitats (such as salt marshes) and identifying valuable habitats at most risk from sea level rise

• assessing the impact of changed salinity levels in estuaries, including implications for access to fresh water.

The Northern Star reported on 6 November 2009:

COASTAL erosion problems at Lennox Head will be as bad as those at Belongil in less than 20 years, an environmental engineer has warned.
GeoLINK's Charlie Hewitt yesterday hosted a field trip to coastal hazard zones between Ballina and Lennox Head as part of the NSW Coastal Conference.
He said Lennox Head was 'on the emergency radar'.
"Planning and processes can't keep up with what science is discovering about climate change," he said.
"In 20 years, or less, we will be having the same problems in Lennox that Belongil is having now.

Also from The Northern Star; Crunch time for coastal erosion .

Meanwhile developers complained about the Draft NSW Coastal Planning Guideline: Adapting to Sea Level Rise in The Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday:

PROPERTY groups have criticised a planning policy aimed at limiting development in coastal regions, raising fears it has the potential to prevent construction in huge areas. As the Planning Minister, Kristina Keneally, defended the draft policy to stop development in areas subject to sea-level rises, developers said it went too far and could unfairly restrict the right to build in many areas. The Urban Development Institute of Australia's NSW chief executive, Stephen Albin, said he was worried that hazard lines to be drawn up by councils based on predicted sea-level rises of 90 centimetres by 2100 could determine which projects were allowed to proceed. "We would be concerned if the 2100 hazard line becomes the default planning control," he said.

NSW Dept. of Planning 05 Nov 09 - Draft Sea Level Rise Guideline - have your say.

An environmentally friendly domestic cat and a dog promoting GMO Red List chocolate

From Montreal Gardens Topiaries

Cadbury's Glass and a Half chocolate advertisement

The leafy cat and garden friends are quite colourful and innocuous. However, the poor dog is lumbered with not only promoting a company which won't guarantee that it will not use genetically modified ingredients in its products - the advertised chocolate is poisonous to all domestic dog breeds.
DON"T FEED YOUR DOG CHOCOLATE!

Morrow putting the boot into Rudd and other enjoyable pieces of political theatre

"The Chasers War On Everything" co-founder Julian Morrow during his 2009 Andrew Olle Media Lecture televised by Auntie last Sunday night:

"At this point I want to take a gratuitous swipe at the Prime Minister. And I want to make very clear, I'm going out of my way to do this as an act of petty personal revenge because he went out of his way to criticise us, especially as he hadn't seen it. To me Kevin Rudd's enthusiasm for buying in on any cultural controversy - from Bill Henson to The Chaser to Gordon Ramsay - is a bit unseemly, and at risk of sounding old-fashioned, not very Prime Ministerial. Frankly, I was stunned a few weeks ago that Mr Rudd wasn't tweeting alternative names for Vegemite's iSnack2.0, or phoning Indonesia to see if as well as those poor Sri Lankans, they'll also give asylum to the poor bastard who came up with the one name in Australia less popular than "Kyle Sandilands".

Kevin Rudd clearly fancies himself as an intellectual leader of this country. But being a true intellectual leader means more than tossing off the odd economics essay for The Monthly between nanosleeps on your weekend off. It means setting the tone for the national discourse and resisting, rather than inciting, hysteria."

Former PM John Howard also had this very nasty habit of running off at the mouth on anything and everything in the hope of scoring brownie points with voters, but it's still good to see Rudders being called on this.

********************

Otherwise Kevin Rudd had a good week himself, socking it to climate change sceptics and deniers everywhere during an address to the Lowy Institute (but specially to homegrown opposition):

"As we approach the Copenhagen conference these groups of climate change deniers face a moment of truth, and the truth is this: we will need to work much harder to reach an agreement in Copenhagen because these advocates of inaction are holding back domestic commitments, and are in turn holding back global commitments on climate change.
It is time to be totally blunt about the agenda of the climate change skeptics in all their colours – some more sophisticated than others.
It is to destroy the CPRS at home, and it is to destroy agreed global action on climate change abroad, and our children’s fate – and our grandchildren’s fate – will lie entirely with them.
It’s time to remove any polite veneer from this debate. The stakes are that high.
The first category of those opposed to action is the vocal group of conservatives who do not accept the scientific consensus. This group believes the science is inconclusive and does not provide an evidentiary basis for anthropogenic climate change.
In Australia, before the 2007 election, this group was thought to be relatively small. There appeared – for a time – to be bipartisan consensus on the need for action on climate change. In recent times, this bipartisan support has frayed.
As one Liberal Member of Parliament said to Phil Coorey of the Sydney Morning Herald last year:
“[at the last election we supported an ETS because] we were staring at an electoral abyss. We had to pretend we cared.”
(SMH, 28 JULY 2008)
More recently that pretence has been increasingly cast aside. Would-be Liberal leader Tony Abbott said in July this year that “the science … is contentious to say the least”.(27 July 2009)
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi said:
“I remain unconvinced about the need for an ETS given that carbon dioxide is vital for life on earth”.
Liberal Senator Alan Eggleston said:
“Levels of carbon dioxide have risen in the world, but whether or not this is the sole cause or just a contributor to climate change is, I think, unanswered.”
(11 AUGUST 2009)
Liberal Senate leader Nick Minchin said this year:
“CO2 is not by any stretch of the imagination a pollutant… This whole extraordinary scheme is based on the as yet unproven assertion that anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are the main driver of global warming.”
(11 AUGUST 2009)
Alternative Liberal leader Joe Hockey – who knows better – has been drawn into the same sort of doublespeak, remarking on the Today Show in August:
“Look, climate change is real Karl, you know whether it is made by human beings or not that is open to dispute.”
(12 AUGUST 2009)
Even the leader of the Opposition, once Minister for the Environment, Malcolm Turnbull, has flirted with this doublespeak, telling Alan Jones on 2GB: “I think most people have at least some doubts about the science.”
(19 JUNE 2009)
The tentacles of the climate change skeptics reach deep into the ranks of the Liberal Party, and once you add the National Party it’s plain the skeptics and the deniers are a major force."

********************

Leader of the Libs Malcolm Turnbull gave a few people a good belly laugh last week when (with fingers crossed behind his back) he repeatedly fronted the microphones saying that he didn't want to do a running commentary, make the task harder for, or give off-the-cuff advice to the Prime Minister in relation to the possible use of force to remove asylum seekers on board the Ocean Viking. Of course making life difficult is the Opposition's raison d'être and something Truffles has been doing with gusto ever since these asylum seekers first propped and bucked.

Graphology is a load of crap

... however, if the handwriting on a prescription is illegible, you have a good doctor, and if your job applicant's writing is uneven and they overuse phrases like "I really love you", they are drunk.

A reader wrote to Jim Bright (professor of career education and development at ANU) who writes a column in My Career in Saturday editions of The Sydney Morning Herald and asked, "Do you see how it (graphology) forms a useful tool in recruitment? Would you professionally agree it may have a place in the industry?"

Bright's reply was a ripper.

Bright noted that:

* on the British Institute of Graphologists' website, it is noted that "large writing can mean almost anything connected with greatness."

* according to a BBC report in 2005, about 3000 businesses in Britain use graphology in their recruitment processes.

* in one well-known example, graphologists made a series of confident interpretations about "Tony Blair's writing", only to later discover it was Bill Clinton's.

The British Psychological Society conducted a thorough review of the ability of graphology (and other techniques) to determine personality. It concluded it had "zero validity".

One absurd response to this finding was that graphology's French heritage might have led to a British bias. Well, bad news, the latest peer-reviewed study to damn graphology, which was conducted last year, was French.

The reader claims graphology may not predict intelligence but might be useful in predicting emotional performance.

Bright's conclusion: There is no evidence to support this contention. There is a caveat, however. If the handwriting on a prescription is illegible, you have a good doctor, and if your job applicant's writing is uneven and they overuse phrases like "I really love you", they are drunk. Other than that, all the reliable peer-reviewed evidence concludes that graphology is, to put it technically, a load of crap. Click: Boom. Boom.

Source: My Career, SMH, November 7-8, 2009

Run For A Safe Climate passing through Byron Bay and Lismore on 11 & 12 November 2009

Runners taking part in Run For A Safe Climate will be passing through Byron Bay and Lismore on 11 and 12 November 2009 respectively.
Show you care about these emergency workers putting their feet where their hearts are and give a big wave if you see them passing down our roads on the North Coast leg of this 6,000km run.

What is Run for a Safe Climate?
- 6,000km run from Cooktown to Melbourne to highlight the growing threat of global warming to the social, economic and ecological health of our country.
- The route will take runners through capital cities, regional centres and rural towns, engaging with all levels of these communities.
- The runners will meet leading scientists tracking a range of increasingly dangerous and destructive impacts of global warming affecting Australiaʼ s communities, water and food security, coastal settlements and world famous ecological icons.
- The run will highlight energy resources and technologies – including geothermal, biomass, solar thermal, wind and smart grid technologies – which can be harnessed to hasten the move to a clean-energy economy, and emerging techniques that can be deployed to safely sequester carbon from the atmosphere.

Who is participating in the run?
- The team includes 25 Australian emergency service workers including serving police, a nurse, firefighters, paramedics and CFA volunteers.
- Emergency workers are the ʻfirst respondersʼ to extreme weather events and our first line of defence in dealing with global warming.
- All runners are donating a month of their annual leave to participate in this project. They are donating their time, and are receiving no financial benefit through their participation in the Run for a Safe Climate.

When?
- Runs from Monday 2 November 2009 until Sunday 29 November 2009.

Where?
- The Run starts in Cooktown and follows the coast through Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane, Sydney, and Canberra to Albury on the Victoria/NSW border.
- It will then follow the Murray River west to Mildura, then on to Adelaide and the Coorong.
- The final leg to Melbourne is via Apollo Bay, Ballarat, Kilmore and the towns most affected by last summerʼ s devastating fires, to finish with a community run along the last two kilometres of the run at St Kilda beach.

Follow on www.twitter.com/Run4SafeClimate

Become a Facebook fan of ʻRun for a Safe Climateʼ

Follow the blog and news on http://www.runforasafeclimate.org/