FIGHTING BACK AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE DENIALISM: a hit, a palpable hit!

Putting the fallacious argument against lowering Australia's greenhouse gas emissions into perspective.......

The Age, letter to the editor,17 December 2019, p.20:

Best Feel Good Tweet of 2019

Do you remember Nina Jongen, whose family home burned down in the Nymboida fires? She just won a tiny house. #NSWFires pic.twitter.com/WOILmnxTx1

— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) December 18, 2019

The house, which arrived with a stocked pantry, a Christmas tree and presents, was moved to their family property at Nymboida on Wednesday. It will allow them to return home for Christmas.....The house was supplied by Aussie Tiny Houses.

Meme of the Year

Photoshop image: @janeyhasmoved

Cartoons for the Festive Season

@FionaKatauskas

@Broelman

Clarence Valley regional economy tops $2.13 billion in 2018-19

Clarence Valley Independent, 18 December 2019:

Clarence Valley is outperforming the rest of regional NSW, according to the latest gross regional product figures for the year ending June 30, 2019.

“Gross regional product (GRP) is the equivalent of gross domestic product (GDP), but for a smaller area,” the .idcommunity demographic resources update states on Clarence Valley Council’s (CVC) website.

The CVC local government area’s GRP was $2,134m as of June 30, 2019.

The valley’s GRP grew by 3.1 per cent, which followed 1.3 per cent growth in 2018; whereas regional areas of NSW, overall, went backwards by 0.5 percent in both 2018 and 2019 – another national study, released this week by SGS Economics and Planning, rates GRP for the NSW regions as falling by 0.3 per cent......

In 2019 there were 18, 854 jobs in the valley, up by 3.1 per cent on 2018’s 18,288 jobs.

However, it is likely that the infrastructure builds in the valley have inflated that figure.....

Read the full article here.

The 2019-20 financial year may be a different story come end of June 2020, as bushfires have devastated much of the Clarence Valley's natural assets which attract a high number of visitors to the region and prolonged drought has bitten deeply, with the entire local government area impacted by drought & just over 88 per cent by intense drought as the year ends.

Facebook Inc. agrees to pay News Corp millions annually for news service content

Australian Newspaper History Group Newsletter, No 105, December 2019, p.6:

105.2.1 Facebook’s news service

The launch of Facebook’s news service is a “powerful precedent that will echo around editorial departments”, News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson has declared (Australian, 28 October 2019). Thomson said it had been a difficult decade for journalism, but Facebook’s service was an important step. He said, “Great journalism will only be sustainable at scale if there is a fundamental change to the digital ecosystem. This announcement is an important step on the road.”

News Corp’s deal with Facebook — which covers the New York Post and Dow Jones publications such as the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch and Barron’s — will generate licence fees reaching into the double-digit millions of dollars a year, people familiar with the agreement said. “Of itself, it begins to change the terms of trade for quality journalism, both in establishing the principle of payment, and in allowing news organisations a clearer opportunity to generate advertising revenue on their terms,” Thomson said. He has led a global battle against Facebook and Google over issues including opaque algorithms, digital advertising dominance and a failure to pay for journalists’ work.....

Facebook’s news service launched with a test audience of 200,000 US users, but the platform plans to roll it out beyond the US early next year. A date for launch in Australia has not been announced.

Level 1 water restrictions now in place for Clarence Valley

As of Friday 13 December 2019 Shannon Creek Dam had fallen to 82.3 % of its total capacity.

So from 16 December 2019 Level 1 water restrictions apply in addition to existing permanent water conservation measures.

So:

• No outside garden watering between 9am and 4pm
• No sprinklers or unattended hoses
• Water efficient drip or spray systems – 15 minutes every 2 days*
• Hand held hoses - 1 hour every 2 days*
• No restriction on commercial/industrial use

* If your house address is an even number you can water on even numbered days. If your house address is an odd number you can water on odd numbered days.

NOTE: Breaching water restrictions is an offence under Section 637 of the Local Government Act.  Action may be undertaken against consumers who are detected breaching water restrictions in accordance with Council’s Enforcement Policy. Fines can apply to such breaches.