Climate change: how Australia's oceans are faring

The CSIRO has released Marine Climate Change Impacts & Adaptation: Report Card Australia 2009.

Based on the science it is stated with confidence that ocean temperatures have become warmer since the first half of the 20th Century and are expected to become even warmer over our lifetime and beyond, there has been a thirty percent increase in hydrogen ion (acid) concentration in sea water over the last 250 years, sea levels rose 20cm between 1870 and 2004 and are expected to keep rising (with every centimetre of rise expected to take one metre of vulnerable land), ocean wave processes are becoming more variable in certain instances, coastal estuary habitat is starting to change and fish population spatial distribution is also altering, first observations of sea birds beginning to react to changes in temperature and food availability, the East Australian Current is becoming stronger while the Leeuwin Current on the other side of the continent appears to be weakening.
Climate change is happening now.

Report Card PDF download

That's not at house. THAT'S a house!

Largest house in Australia. Share accommodation. Owner seeking new tenants for right-wing suites.

Aussies are supposed to be living in the world's largest homes if all you're counting is floor space.
New homes are now averaging 214.6 square metres and free standing houses are coming in at a record average of 245 square metres.
So why are bathrooms and loos still so small in this country if living and sleeping areas are obviously getting bigger?

Peter Martin takes a hard look at Joe Hockey and Turnbull's approval rating plunges further

Peter Martin writing in his blog of the same name reminds Australia that Joe Hockey has a more than spotty record as a minister in the Howard Government and a mixed record in the current shadow ministry.

When one looks at the three candidates (Hockey, Abbott and Andrews) posited as replacements for Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party Leader and thus Opposition Leader, Malcolm almost begins to look an attractive proposition - almost being the operative word.

That he is unpopular with voters is not an issue for the latest Newspoll results show Turnbull's approval rating has fallen to 14 per cent. Yet another nail in his political coffin.

Alternative names for the position of deputy leader are also quite frankly appalling. Peter Dutton for heavens sake - I seem to remember that he was one of those parliamentarians who walked out at the start of the Apology to the Stolen Generation and later he tried to abandon his electorate when redistribution made this seat unwinnable. As the current shadow minister for health and aging he has almost been a non-event when it comes to alternative policy.

None of the Liberal front bench have covered themselves with glory in this political bloodbath and the entire situation only highlights a lack of substance at the heart of the party.

While their Coalition partner, the virtually leaderless National Party, continually exposes itself as belonging to the lunatic fringe, which contains minor political parties on the Australian scene such as the rabidly intolerant Christian Democratic Party.

Today and tomorrow should provide an interesting and at times amusing spectacle, as the amended Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and associated climate change bills come before the Senate.

It is hard to see an overall electoral win for the Coalition at the next federal election unless Labor is involved in a monumental scandal.

Photograph from ABC News

Is this your house? Mapping predicted sea level rise (2)

Before and after a 1 metre sea level rise affecting one of the coastal rural areas within Clarence Valley local government area. Latest official 'worst case' predictions are for a 1.1 metre sea level rise in NSW coastal zones, occurring from
2009 onwards and peaking anytime up to 2100.
Click on images to enlarge.

Google Earth now has a sidebar function which allows the plotting of predicted sea levels rises due to climate change.This is a chance to get a visual appreciation of just how your home may be affected in light of the Rudd Government's recent report Climate Change Risks to Australia's Coasts.