Youth Decide: they may not all have the vote yet but politicians ignore at their peril

Click on snapshot to enlarge

Youth Decide wasn't just a vote. It's a movement. And the next step is to deliver these results to all Federal politicians.

Over thirty-four thousand young Australians taking part in a recent survey opted for a national and global response to climate change which actually reduced greenhouse gas levels beyond the green wash currently being proposed by most politicians.

Twitterverse is tittering at PETA

There's been a lot of re-tweeting out there on Twitter since someone discovered the phonetic resonance of the name given by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to its blog - The PETA Files.

If nothing else it should give Aussie graziers and woolgrowers a bit of a laugh - as well as possibly falling foul of one or two overly sensitive filtering software programs.

Perhaps I should send a memo to the Minister for Censorship and Rememberance of Children, ol' Stevo Conroy.......

Penny Wong talks to Asia Society about Copenhagen and beyond - 11pm [AEST] Wednesday 23 September 2009 webcast, listener questions

The Asia Society wants to let you know about an upcoming webcast, Copenhagen and Beyond – The Post-2012 Agreement.

Senator the Hon. Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water will be speaking with Asia Society's own Orville Schell, the director of the Center on US-China Relations, tomorrow at Wednesday, September 23, 2009 from 8:30-9:30 a.m., ET (New York).

We hope that you will join us online by visiting our website www.AsiaSociety.org, and following the directions there.

The webcast will be available 30 minutes before the program begins.

Listeners will also have opportunities to send their questions in to moderator@asiasociety.org, where they will be addressed during the program.

Policy Programs,

Asia Society

Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at live dot com dot au to submit comment for consideration.

How did your pet get its name?

Contributors to The Sydney Morning Herald's Column 8 provide insights on naming family pets.

John Barselaar, of Coffs Harbour, ''My local vet is a man of fine humour and a pundit like myself, but I have to take my hat off to his recent repartee in the surgery. A woman came in with two dogs feeling poorly. When asked the dogs' names she replied Beethoven and Bach. Immediately he saw the problem, and advised her they were feeling Lisztless!'' (Monday 21/9)

''Naming family pets after famous composers is not all that unusual,'' writes Steve Zervos of Abbotsford (Column 8, yesterday). ''We named our kitten Beethoven because just after we picked him up and brought him home, he made his first movement on the piano.'' (Tuesday 22/9)

''Beethoven the cat,'' writes Michael Morton-Evans (Column 8, Monday), ''puts me in mind of Tyson the dog. A friend many years ago bought a dachshund and named him Tyson, after the Lancashire-born fast bowler Frank 'Typhoon' Tyson. When asked why, he explained: 'Because he has four short legs and his balls swing both ways.'' (Wednesday 23/9)

'Losing to win' a pandora's box for bowls

Here's Iluka resident Jim Brigginshaw's take on allegations that Kiwi lawn bowlers folded in a game against lowly-ranked Thailand in last month's Asia-Pacific championships in Malaysia to ensure rivals Canada would be eliminated.

Brigginshaw, who has a regular column in The Northern Star, wrote:

IF, as Bowls Australia chief executive Dalrymple is reported as saying, there's nothing in the rules of bowls to stop a team deliberately losing a game, it's time there was.

Assuming he's been quoted correctly, his wishy-washy response to allegations against the New Zealand national team is less than reassuring that this blot has no place in our sport.

Attributed to him are comments such as 'hard to find fault', 'people willing to push the limits', and the top clanger of all, 'there's a question of whether it's in the spirit of the game'.

A question? There's no question - if bowls has degenerated to the stage where we have to think whether to ask questions about the legality, or even propriety, of what clearly is a breach of sporting integrity, heaven help us.

The difficulty, of course, is deciding when a team is not performing to its ability. But if there is obvious evidence of it, the culprits should have the book thrown at them.

The New Zealand team says it was a legitimate loss. The official inquiry will have difficulty proving otherwise.

These allegations gave Bowls Australia an opportunity to take a strong stance against deliberately losing a game. Instead, we got a weak-kneed response.

Source: The Northern Star

Images from abc.net.au and bowlsnz.co.nz

A phone, a phone. My kingdom for a phone! [or the dubious joy of living in a regional blackspot]

The children have grown and moved to cities across Australia, however they were all back for a family gathering recently.

We had a great time; the only thing that caused problems was the mobile phone reception or more correctly the chronic lack of phone coverage.
Though since they all had different carriers I thought for sure someone should get a signal.

The first symptoms of phonitis appeared within 4 to 6 hours of arriving. "I’ll just pick up any messages from work", friends etc; then the cold sweat, and the realisation of no reception.

It was like a snowball affect, as soon as one discovered they could not use their phone you could see the panic in the eyes of the others. They all stampeded to their phone lifelines.

The youngest daughter discovered that if she squeezed herself under my desk and held the phone at a 45 degree angle pointing north she could get one bar of coverage. Just enough to receive SMS. The look of relief on her face was classic. So much so I could not resist and took a photo to record the event.

The others headed outside, showing great faith in their various phone companies. Then looks of horror on their faces when none received a signal.

One headed for higher ground where he eventually found reception over 1 km away at the left front gate post. If he stood on the post he could talk on his phone. Mind you it did drop out quite a bit.

The younger son who is not much on exercise decided that he would go up to the third floor of the house. This was not enough, so by trial and error he discovered that if he hung out of the east facing window on the third floor and held the phone in one hand and the TV aerial cable in the other he was intermittently in contact with the outside world.

The eldest girl showed great calm and headed for my computer. The facade of calm was shattered when she realised that it was dial-up and only marginally faster than snail mail.

When the neighbour's hazard reduction burn accidentally set fire to the telephone junction box and the landline went out, then smoke from the fires interfered with what little signal they had, it all became too much. They all headed into town for Maccas and 'real' phone coverage.

Graphic: Google Images

There's no getting away from it - high political office changes the family

Not long after his inauguration US President Barack Obama flew a chef from St Louis to Washington so that he could have pizza with the boys.
Then his kids were seen jetting off for an upmarket overseas holiday with Dad and Mum via Air Force One.
But none of that really pointed to the unreality of life in The White House until Michelle Obama went shopping for food in September 2009 while many ordinary Americans were still reeling from the global financail crisis.
Yes, this recent Washington Post article shows the wrong side of Chicago is now truly a lifetime away.

"The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens.

Then, and only then, could Obama purchase her leafy greens. "Now it's time to buy some food," she told several hundred people who came to watch. "Let's shop!"

Cowbells were rung. Somebody put a lei of marigolds around Obama's neck. The first lady picked up a straw basket and headed for the "Farm at Sunnyside" tent, where she loaded up with organic Asian pears, cherry tomatoes, multicolored potatoes, free-range eggs and, yes, two bunches of Tuscan kale. She left the produce with an aide, who paid the cashier as Obama made her way back to the limousine.........

Obama, in her brief speech to the vendors and patrons, handled the affordability issue by pointing out that people who pay with food stamps would get double the coupon value at the market. Even then, though, it's hard to imagine somebody using food stamps to buy what the market offered: $19 bison steak from Gunpowder Bison, organic dandelion greens for $12 per pound from Blueberry Hill Vegetables, the Piedmont Reserve cheese from Everson Dairy at $29 a pound. Rounding out the potential shopping cart: $4 for a piece of "walnut dacquoise" from the Praline Bakery, $9 for a jumbo crab cake at Chris's Marketplace, $8 for a loaf of cranberry-walnut bread and $32 for a bolt of yarn."

Time to get real, M'chelle!

Photographs from Google Images

Senator Fielding accidentally produces a little light relief in the international climate change policy debate

I opened my browser yesterday morning to find the Herald-Sun giving a few online centimetres to this:

A CROSSBENCH senator who doubts the science of climate change says he may back an Australian Government plan to let developing countries propose their own cuts to carbon emissions.

Mirth immediately took over for several minutes.
What on earth is Steve Fielding talking about? Any idiot can tell that a matter of government foreign affairs policy which will not require legislation to implement does not need endorsement from the only Family First party member to make it into federal parliament.

The man and his constant need to be in the political limelight is a national embarrassment.
The only consolation is that published print versions of his opinions will quickly disappear into the recycler's maw or landfill, while digital versions on the Internet will eventually lead to data mining results like this from Personas which actually appear to reflect his lack of credibility:

TECHNORATI SEARCH: STEVE FIELDING IS A CREDULOUS DOPE STEVE FIELDING IS A VEXING SUBJECT
STEVE FIELDING IS JUST A MEDIA TORTE
STEVE FIELDING IS RENOWNED FOR HIS PUBLICITY STUNTS
WHETHER HE CAN SPELL OR NOT, STEVE FIELDING IS AN IDIOT

River deltas sinking across the globe except in Australia and Antarctica?

A study was published in Nature Geoscience this month on the vulnerability of river deltas and finally there was some guarded good news for Australia in relation to flooding and rising sea levels.

Many of the world's largest deltas are densely populated and heavily farmed. Yet many of their inhabitants are becoming increasingly vulnerable to flooding and conversions of their land to open ocean. The vulnerability is a result of sediment compaction from the removal of oil, gas and water from the delta's underlying sediments, the trapping of sediment in reservoirs upstream and floodplain engineering in combination with rising global sea level. Here we present an assessment of 33 deltas chosen to represent the world's deltas. We find that in the past decade, 85% of the deltas experienced severe flooding, resulting in the temporary submergence of 260,000 km². We conservatively estimate that the delta surface area vulnerable to flooding could increase by 50% under the current projected values for sea-level rise in the twenty-first century. This figure could increase if the capture of sediment upstream persists and continues to prevent the growth and buffering of the deltas.

Worst hit will be Asia, but heavily populated and farmed deltas on every continent except Australia and Antarctica are in peril, it says according to SBS World News.

Revenge of the wrinklies!

Sometimes cyberspace produces an antidote to life's little irritations.

This time it threw up a bit of sweet payback for all those bluidy undisciplined televised Federal Parliament Question Times since November 2007.

These pics are from a campaign by industry body Aged & Community Services Australia which can be found at Kevin 87. There are lines and wrinkles here enough for all those insults offered to voter intelligence and failure to grasp the national health care nettle. Pity there's no pics of Pyne and Abbott.

Growing old is manda-
tory; growing up is optional. ~Chili Davis

Are national economic concerns winning out over global environmental crises?

World leaders are gathering in Pittsburgh USA for a G20 summit, which officially commences on 24 September 2009 with an aim to review the progress made since the Washington and London Summits and discuss further actions to assure a sound and sustainable recovery from the global financial and economic crisis.

Two days have been set aside to cover this topic and calls to commit to further government intervention in international banking and commerce.
If recent media coverage cited on www.g20pittsburghsummit.org is any indication, then the minds of world leaders are firmly fixed on their national economic woes.

It is easy to suspect that global warming will continue take a backseat to the global financial crisis, despite the fact that a UN meeting on climate change is taking place tomorrow ahead of the G20 summit.

It is a real possibility that very little progress will be made this week towards the Copenhagen agenda on climate change, despite the Rudd Government's reported behind-the-scenes work on the legal framework for a new climate change treaty, and ways to finance poorer countries' efforts to adapt to a low-carbon world, could become a crucial contribution in breaking the impasse on a greenhouse treaty.

Immediate national economic imperatives appear to be winning the hearts and mind battle at the expense of addressing very real environmental crises.
Yesterday The Guardian reported:
UN chief Ban Ki-Moon and negotiators say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action, it will be very hard to reach a credible and enforceable agreement to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.

The Australian has an online poll underway which asks the question:
Do you expect any concrete progress to be made at the November climate change summit in Copenhagen?

Most of those who have taken part in this poll so far (pictured) are not optimistic about the possibility of concrete progress.

Indeed many people are becoming very cynical about global and government response to climate change. On the NSW North Coast this has manifested itself in a number of ways, including this black humour view of Yamba's problems at the mouth of the Clarence River:
* When asked what strategies were in place to provide support in the event of a major flood of West Yamba, one SES worker is reported as to have said "We'll stand on the edge of Yamba Hill and toss life jackets to people as they float by". [Climate Change Australia,Clarence Division, Submission on Draft Sea Level Rise Policy Statement by the NSW Government,March 2009]