This is the beginning of a letter sent in relation to an 18 year-old Texan’s 11 January 2016 alleged killing of two Whooping Cranes protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Read the rest of this sad letter here.
found at
Sunday, 31 January 2016
Saturday, 30 January 2016
Quote of the Week
Mr Abbott is more than a lightning rod for internal party dissent; he is an instigator of it and an aggressive leader of the hardline conservatives.
[Paul Bongiorno writing about former Australian prime minister & current MP for Warringah Tony Abbott in The New Daily, 26 January 2016]
Tweet of the Week
This one was especially tweeted for Liberal MP for Flinders and Australian Minister
Are Cardinal George Pell & the Vatican flipping the bird at Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse?
Is Cardinal George Pell really so ill he genuinely cannot travel? Or is it a smoke screen allowing him to hide from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse?
Only his doctors would know with any certainty, because his very active life in Rome gives no indication.
What Pell and the Vatican are saying.....
What Pell and the Vatican are saying.....
The Guardian, 28 January 2016:
Australia’s most senior Catholic, Cardinal George Pell, is still too unwell to fly and will address a philanthropic Catholic organisation in the US on Thursday via video link from Rome.
It comes days before Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse is due to hear from Pell’s lawyers about whether he will be well enough to appear in person before the commission in February, when hearings are due to continue in Ballarat.
Pell angered Australian child sexual abuse victims in December when he cancelled his flight to Melbourne days before he was due to appear before the commission. The Vatican said Pell was too ill to travel although his specific medical condition was not disclosed.
A directions hearing will be held by the royal commission in Sydney on Friday 5 February to hear whether Pell will appear in person when hearings resume.
What the world is seeing.....
What the world is seeing.....
Cardinal George Pell, front row, centre left, Monday 18 January 2016
Image from The Global Foundation
Cardinal Pell celebrated official Rome Forum mass in the afternoon of Sunday 17 January 2016.
He also gave a 10-page (3,713 words) Keynote Address at an official forum dinner in evening of 17 January.
UPDATE
The Guardian, 5 February 2016:
The cardinal won’t be coming. It’s his heart. A fresh medical report from Rome says it would be “difficult” for Cardinal George Pell to take the long flight home to give further evidence to the royal commission into the institutional responses to child sexual abuse.
“It doesn’t preclude his travel,” observed the commissioner Peter McClellan. “It doesn’t say he can’t come.” But McClellan has accepted the verdict of Pell’s medicos that a journey home at this time might have “serious consequences” for His Eminence’s health.
It’s an unhappy outcome all round. McClellan wants him to give evidence in person. Abuse victims are keen to confront the man in the flesh. And the cardinal, it seems, may never walk the streets of his native Ballarat again.
Just how sick he is remains a mystery. Pell is keen to keep the finer details of his heart problems secret.
His counsel, Alan Myers QC, argued against releasing the medical reports in full: “All it would do is provoke some sort of debate in the press about the medical condition of Cardinal Pell. There is no public interest in that.”
Under strict secrecy, McClellan allowed four barristers to read the latest report. Unimpressed was Paul O’Dwyer SC who told the commission the two-page document revealed “common or garden problems in a man of the cardinal’s age”.
Yamba Triathlon Festival and Yamba Colour Run, Saturday 27 February 2016
This annual triathlon caters for all ages. From 7-9 year old competitors in the miniman up to adults running in standard, enforcer, sprint and enticer distance events.
Details of race event locations and start times here:
http://www.eliteenergy.com.au/event/yamba-triathlon-festival/#start.
A word from the sponsor Elite Energy:
Yamba is becoming NSW’s own North Coast festival with a difference and 2016 will be no exception with the ever popular triYamba returning to Yamba Bay.
With stylish village charm, pristine beaches, national parks and award winning restaurants, Yamba is a unique holiday or lifestyle experience for the family. Explore the myriad of waterways, stroll the uncrowded beaches, go swimming, fishing or surfing but most of all discover Yamba’s friendly hospitality all year round.
Yamba is situated at the mouth of the Clarence River in Northern NSW, the biggest river on the east coast of Australia.
Location, location, location. Located just hours from Brisbane, and even closer from the Gold Coast and only a 2 hour flight from Sydney (via Grafton), this sea side town has a relaxed lifestyle with access to all services and is within easy reach of Ballina, Lismore and Grafton.
This year the Yamba Triathlon Festival has a Facebook page at:https://www.facebook.com/YambaTriathlonFestival/.There on 31 December 2015 Elite Energy announced:
In 2016, our team is excited to partner with Color Me Rad (the worlds 2nd largest event of its type). Color Me Rad is currently the only global colour event that combines both colourful gel and powder. We are looking forward to our national regional tour kicking off in the colourful and vibrant town of Yamba 28th February. Pre-sale entries opening 11 Jan - register your interest at http://www.colormerad5k.com.au/location/Yamba.
Friday, 29 January 2016
Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan makes a bit of a dill of himself over NSW North Coast petrol prices
On 23 January 2016 Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan was in The Northern Star newspaper crying foul with regard to a 20 cent difference in unleaded petrol prices between Ballina and Casino on the NSW Far North Coast.
He also complained that: while crude oil prices had fallen 20% this year to about $28 a barrel and were almost at a 15-year low, the cost wasn't being passed on to consumers.
Hinting at local collusion Hogan stated he had written to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) seeking an official inquiry.
The first point to remember is that by June 2015 there were only an est. 6,000 service stations across Australia, down from 20,000 in 1970, and the average customer base per service station is around 2,000 people in regional areas (and well below in many towns) whereas metro/city sites have a customer base of around 4,000 to 5,000.
The second point to remember about the oil industry in Australia is that between 2014-2015 three of the nation’s seven refineries have closed or are in the process of doing so, creating Asia’s biggest fuel-import market in this country.
In its December 2015 petrol report the ACCC tells us that:
Price movements in regional locations generally lag behind movements in the five largest cities.
This is due in part to a lower volume of sales in these locations, and hence slower replenishment
of fuel stocks by wholesalers and retailers....
Retail petrol prices in the five largest cities in Australia move in cycles. These price cycles
generally do not occur in Canberra, Hobart and Darwin, or in most regional locations....
As in the five largest cities, movements in retail petrol prices in regional locations are largely driven by changes in international refined petrol prices and the AUD–USD exchange rate.
However, prices are generally higher in regional locations.
A number of factors may contribute to these higher prices: a lower level of local competition; lower volumes of fuel sold; distance/ location factors; and lower convenience store sales.
The influence of these factors varies significantly from location to location.
This means that there may be substantial differences in prices between specific regional locations......
However, given that Australia is now a significant importer of refined petrol it is the Singapore MOGAS 95 price of unleaded petrol per barrel (volume approx. 159 litres as the unit of measurement) which directly influences local unleaded retail prices not the price of crude oil.
On Thursday 21 January 2016 the market price of unleaded petrol was est. A$68 per barrel (US$47.77) and, the distribution (terminal) cost per litre (inclusive of GST) was 102.4c (Sydney & Brisbane) and 101.9c (Melbourne) on Friday 22 January.
On Saturday 23 January the retail price per litre price of unleaded petrol at the bowser (based on 7 day rolling averages) was:
Casino – 108.6c
Tweed Heads South – 114.7c
Grafton – 119.9c
Lismore – 121.6c
Murrwillumbah – 128.5c
Ballina
– 129.4c
[https://motormouth.com.au/ & http://www.mynrma.com.au/motoring-services/petrol-watch/average-petrol-price.htm for Tweed Heads South & Murwillumbah].
One other thing to remember about retail petrol prices is that unleaded petrol (regular or premium grades) and diesel the price you pay includes Australian Government excise of 38.60 cents per litre (effective10 November 2014) as well as a consumption tax (GST) of 10 per cent.
Which results in this price breakdown per litre of unleaded petrol on 23 January 2016:
Casino – $1.08 (includes 49.46c in federal government
taxes)
Tweed Heads South – $1.14 (includes 50.07c in federal government taxes)
Grafton – $1.19 (includes 50.59c in federal government
taxes)
Lismore – $1.21 (includes 50.76c in federal government
taxes)
Murrwillumbah – $1.28 (includes 51.45c in federal government taxes)
Ballina – $1.29 (includes 51.54c in federal government
taxes).
So on 23 January as Kevin Hogan looked for a service station conspiracy this was the actual situation:
* up to 45.45% of the price of a litre of unleaded petrol in these six regional centres was
made up of federal taxes, probably making tax the biggest single individual component of
the bowser price;
* both taxes and refined petrol market price are beyond the control of the retailer; and
admin and marketing costs, and service station running costs like wages, rent and utilities and a retail profit margin it is unlikely that even a Ballina service station owner/operator or franchisee will die inordinately wealthy.
As for Kevin Hogan's request for an ACCC inquiry into petrol pricing on the NSW Far North Coast - he appears to have forgotten that Ballina, Murwillumbah, Lismore, Grafton, Tweed Heads South and Casino are six of the 190 Australian regional centres that it already monitors regularly, with price observations on at least 75 per cent of days in the month/year in 2014-2015 [ACCC, Quarterly report on the Australian petroleum industry—December 2015, pp.25-26]
When ACCC staff read Mr. Hogan's letter I suspect that they are going to have to stifle an urge to laugh out loud.
An examination by Dr. Sophie Lewis of Tony Abbott's climate change denialism first as a shadow minister, then as Opposition Leader and finally (albeit briefly) as Prime Minister
In addition to showing that the perception-based understanding of climate change and extremes adopted by Abbott (i.e., the Natural Variability Concept) is not fully consistent with the observed time series, I also show that it cannot be internally consistent….
It should however, be noted, that I have taken a subset of representative quotes by Prime Minister Abbott to constitute a simplified mental model of climate change, and Mr Abbott has provided many opinions of the physical science behind climate change in addition to the small selection of quotes used here.
[Lewis, S.C., Can public perceptions of Australian climate extremes be reconciled with the statistics of climate change? Weather and Climate Extremes (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2015.11.008i]
Some of the Abbott quotes discussed at length in the study and set out briefly here:
* During the record-breaking spring temperatures in Australia in 2013, Abbott said, "… the thing is that at some point in the future, every record will be broken, but that doesn't prove anything about climate change. It just proves that the longer the period of time, the more possibility of extreme events". Other public comments by Prime Minister Abbott about climate change and variability include that the argument behind human-caused climate change is "absolute crap", that "there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s" and that the link between climate change and extreme Australian climate events is "complete hogwash" (Readfearn, 2014).
Former Prime Minister Abbott's understandings of climate change and variability are not unique. Rather, these provide an encapsulation of a widely held view that the longer the period of time under consideration, the greater the possibility of extreme events. Abbott's comments are selected here for exploration as they demonstrate a widespread mental model of understanding and are capable of being highly influential. These personal understandings of climate change arise from several causes. First, the manifestation of climate change in weather and climate is typically poorly understood (Trenberth, 2011). In general, people have difficulty perceiving changes in the physicals climate system above the natural variability of local climate (Myers et al., 2012)…..
* On October 30 2013, Prime Minister Abbott stated, "… the thing is that at some point in the future, every record will be broken, but that doesn′t prove anything about climate change. It just proves that the longer the period of time, the more possibility of extreme events".
A statistical interpretation of this statement is that the sequence of observed temperatures fails to satisfy the assumption of being identically distributed and independent. If the assumption of IID were the case, then the "possibility" of an extreme would be less likely in 2013, and in 2014, than in the early part of the observed sequence…..
* In October 2009 Prime Minister Abbott stated that the argument behind human-caused climate change was "absolute crap." Later in December 2009, Abbott stated that "there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s" and in July 2007 that "there may even have been a slight decrease in global temperatures (the measurement data differs on this point) over the past decade".
That is, in these statements Abbott rejected that an increasing trend in temperatures has occurred in the sequence of observations in recent years. Hence, these particular statements by Prime Minister Abbott are in apparent contradiction in terms of explaining the increase in record-breaking in the later part of the observational record. If climate change is "absolute crap" and "there doesn't appear to have been any appreciable warming" then the probability of recent record breaking should be lower with an increasing length of temperature time series.
* Prime Minister Abbott concluded in October 2013 that the link between extremes (in this case bushfires) and climate change was "complete hogwash" and that "I'm not one of those people who runs around and says every time there's a fire or a flood, that proves climate change is getting worse. Australia has had fires and floods since the beginning of time. We've had much bigger floods and fires than the ones we've recently experienced. You can hardly say they were the result of anthropic [sic] global warming."
Hence, to hold an internally consistent viewpoint within the Natural Variability Concept, the increase in the rate of record-breaking requires either a change in the shape of the temperature probability distribution with time that can be attributed to natural climate mechanisms, or requires that record-breaking rates have increased because temperatures are auto-correlated due to natural physical climate mechanisms such as thermal feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere, sunspots and volcanic activity (Bassett, 1992).
* This does not, however, suggest that understandings developed under the Natural Variability Concept can be readily changed by simply viewing this conceptualisation as a deficit of knowledge. For example, former Prime Minister Abbott said in July 2009 that he was "…hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change".
Hence, this mismatch between an individual's perceptions of the climate change and extremes, and the physical evidence of the observed and modelled climate system, is undoubtedly complex and cannot be resolved simply with a singular approach…..
Interested readers can go to http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212094715300293 and view or download an open access full copy of the 10 page study with diagrams.
What the author1 said about this study in The Guardian on 23 January 2016:
The first way to understand Abbott's claim is that in any system, the longer you wait, the more often you will see records fall.
But Lewis points out that the exact opposite is true.
In a system without any sort of trend, such as a random string of temperatures, the first one will be a record-breaker, by default.
The second one will have a 50% chance of being a record-breaker.
The third has a one in three chance of being a record breaker … and so on.
In a very long temperature series, you should see very few records being broken, and they will break less often over time.
Unless, of course, there is a warming or cooling trend.
Alternatively, Abbott might simply have meant there was no connection between extreme heat records and climate change.
Instead, natural variability might be to blame: natural variability includes things such as the El Niño phenomenon, which push temperature around year-to-year.
To test if that might be the case, Lewis ran a series of climate models in which the greenhouse effect was removed – so all that was left was natural variability. Unsurprisingly, in those models, high temperature records were less common than they are in reality. In other words, the record-breaking that we have seen cannot be explained by natural variation.
"It drives me mental that these sorts of statements go unaddressed," Lewis says.
She says scientific literature generally tries to simply explain what is happening, ignoring misunderstandings in the public sphere.
"This was an attempt to bridge that gap."
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