Talk to the hand...

... 'cause the face don't wanna hear it!

This view is somewhat depressing.
But isn't it true that advertising campaigns have effects without people needing evidence? Or is that only when you can be easily convinced that you need something, or something is in your best interest?

Useful reference on global temperatures

See Brave New Climate on 21 November 2009, for a post on global temperatures by James Hansen.

If you ever find yourself at a dinner party with one of those annoying people who are in denial about the whole global warming thing, get their email address and send them this post. It has graphs showing temperatures, and explains where the data is from. It offers insights into the sorts of problems that arise when analysing large data sets, and how mistakes can be made, and exploited by those hoping to cast doubt in people's minds about whether the world is warming and what is causing it, and how they are inundated with "Freedom of Information" requests from people who aim to dispute the conclusions drawn from their data. This research group now publishes their data in a private domain first, so that they can check the data thoroughly before going public on the internet - they learned the hard way that their mistakes are siezed upon.

Bamboozled, and the OSM

I've thought it odd since moving into our current residence - part of a strata complex - how much good stuff just gets thrown out when people move out or put their houses up for sale and cull stuff for the inspection. So far, we have nabbed a few largish canvases (which we'll paint white and use for something else), a perfectly good plant pot, a watering can, and the odd bit of furniture. But this takes the cake. They were was left in our common courtyard, and after a few months of promising to collect these, the owner finally admitted she didn't want them after all, and anyone was welcome to take them.

See picture. The pots alone probably cost around $100 each. We have been thinking for a while that we'd like to get some larger pot plants as a bit of a privacy screen, as you can see right into our neighbours living room when you stand to the far left of this picture. It was a major effort to move them into our courtyard, but I'm glad we did. The bamboo itself needs work. They are overgrown, and need thinning at the roots, which will be a major effort (anyone want to offer their assistance?!). There is a third pot like this which has cracked right down the length of the pot, obviously because the roots have multiplied too many times. But I like them, I like that we finally have some substantial greenery to soften our courtyard, and that I can use some of our waste water a 2nd time rather than have it go down the drain! Let's see if I can get them growing well without killing them off!

The "Oh S**t!" moment
One of Crikey's blogs had a story about the "OSM", where readers were encouraged to write in about the moment when they realised fully that climate change was due to carbon pollution, and that the effects on the climate were going to be significant. Makes interesting reading, although some respondants do go off the point a bit.

Where Sydney's water goes...

When I have looked closely on the star rating (energy or water) on washing machines, I've been stunned to see that they are based on daily usage on a certain setting. "Well really!" thought I, "who does 7 loads of washing a week?!". I thought that surely these people were obsessive compulsive clean freaks.

And now I am one of them. Not an obsessive compulsive clean freak, but someone who does at least 5 loads of washing a week. Our whole family re-wears clothes until they are dirty/smelly enough to need a wash, we use towels multiple times before washing, we wash sheets once a forthnight (I really can't be bothered doing them weekly...), I use bibs and cloths on my baby and 3 year old to save outfits. But all this washing adds up now that there are 4 of us, even though our machine is a 7.5kg capacity (rather large). Kids have accidents, babies vomit, wipe their grottly little hands and lips on your clothes

I'm trying my hardest to save water in other ways - watering pot plants for e.g. - but not having a garden to throw extra water into means that a lot of waste water sadly goes down the sink. And past attempts to accumulate water in a bucket has just resulted in attracting mozzies...

Climate fighting chicks

http://www.1millionwomen.com.au/index.cfm

This campaign challenges 1 million (Australian?) women to reduce their carbon emissions by a tonne.

Also some discussion forums where people share tips on being green. Early days yet, but it looks good. Sign up, and get your employer to sponsor/be a partner!

Denial all around us...

I'm trying not to get too depressed about the lack of government action on climate change. I'm trying not to get too worried about how easy it is for climate change denialists to convince most average and many well educated people that climate change has nothing to do with atmospheric carbon. What sort of world am I bringing children into? (and please don't point out overpopulation to me... am aware of this, and at least I am stopping at 2 children - everything going well).

So what am I doing in my own "backyard"? Well we currently have silly European-style (except not double glazed) push-out windows. We've been looking into how we could put insect screens in, so we can leave windows open for ventilation without the bother of mosquitos and flies. The best solution, all things such as blinds considered, was to convert them to wind-out windows. The other benefit of this conversion is we can now lock our windows slightly open, without worrying about certain little people working out how to climb up and falling out. Next step: insect screens some time before September, which is when the nocturnal mozzies started bothering us last year....

Second - am investigating the retrofitting of ceiling insulation on behalf of our unit complex. More than half of the units have uninsulated corrugated iron rooves (the rest are underneath other apartments). They planned to insulate at the time of building 10 years ago, but Shonky Bros builders didn't manage to get around to installing. Or something. People are putting in air conditioning to micromanage their climates, but some of us would rather insulate and use fans and better ventilation. So far, have investgated the Govt rebate scheme, clarified how strata units are eligible, and now I need to get quotes (some rooves are v high up, some ceilings have down lights, no ceilings have internal access...).

Third - I have a tub of borax under my sink. Haven't managed to use it yet, but it's there!!

Fourth - have worked out how to hang my sheets out to dry without having to use the dryer.

So much more I could do...

What's more important? Global meltdowns of the financial or ice-shelf kind?

I seem to be becoming a regular reader of Crikey's Rooted Blog, which has an almost daily update on selected environmental issues of all kinds.

This latest post, by Greenpeace's John Hepburn expresses better than I could the frustration I feel about politicians who are dilly-dallying about whether or not to introduce some sort of carbon reduction scheme now or delay it yet again:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/rooted/2009/02/27/financially-panicked-morally-bankrupt/

Also, can someone remind me what we actually have to do now Australia has signed the Kyoto Protocol?

In case you were left with any doubt...

...that southern Australia is warming, the BOM's report on the recent heatwave is summarised and paraphrased here. Yikes!

The Brave New Climate blog is written by Prof Barry Brook - Director of Climate Science at The Environment Institute, University of Adelaide.

Inferno

Along with everyone else, I have been horrified whilst following TV, internet and radio coverage of Victoria’s bushfires.

I was further horrified with people* writing drivel like this: “Our national character will emerge stronger from this disaster…” . I can’t really stand breakfast TV, but I did notice they sent the “big guns” (Kochie and Mel) down from Sydney to the Bushfire (as if Melbourne doesn’t have its own TV “personalities” to whom they could cross to, live…) Just like the media circus that went down to the sleepy Tasmanian town of Beaconsfield after the last National disaster we had. I don’t want to be insensitive so soon, but the only reason most of us will remember the date is that each year, the so called news networks will pull it up from their databases of anniversaries, and remind us that it happened a year, five, ten years ago, and they can pull up archive footage and use up a minute of the news bulletin instead of paying journalists to go out there and report on real news.

*Who are they?!! No explanation who this opinion piece was written by!

I am fortunate to have no loved ones or friends (that I know of) who are affected by these fires. I’ve met the odd person over the years who had properties burnt in SA’s Ash Wednesday fires.

But this whole experience has been bringing back memories for my Mother, who was just starting her nursing training when Hobart had devastating fires in 1967. She remembers the injuries and burns of the patients admitted to hospital, and parts of the city grinding to a halt… power cuts… the damaged electric tram lines never to run again and instead replaced by buses. My Nanna’s sister lived on the city’s outskirts on an orchard. At one stage she was literally running away from a fire with 2 little ones in tow, and her family lost their house and everything in it and their orchard. It took 3 days before my Nanna and Poppa could get down there to see if they were alive. They lived in a packing shed for 18 months while their town rebuilt. It took Mt Wellington a long time to look post-card pretty again.

Eco patent commons

Thought I'd share this site with you - the Eco Patent Commons was set up on January 2008, and is hosted on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) website.

Interesting idea - the rationale is to create a way for companies (or IP owners) to share patents for usage to enable energy efficient and environmentally sustainable processes to be adopted widely and quickly. Also, companies in similar industries can share and improve on each other's processes.

Why not publish the invention and make it public domain and free for all? I suppose this is a way of allowing the company to still exploit their monopoly on the IP for other uses or if it starts to have large commercial potential in the future, yet still get the environmentally friendly applications out there and used quickly.

The legal side of this is a bit difficult to understand in parts - especially the idea of when the non assert clause can be revoked should a company sue you for something else unrelated to the usage of the eco-patent. I would have thought an easier way of doing this would be to give a royalty free license to other companies to use the patent for the stated purpose only, but there may be legal implications to this I just don't understand. I assume this also is based on the Creative Commons, which I know even less about - maybe the Eco Patent Commons is based on some tried and tested legal systems used there.

Anyway, have a surf around the site to see examples of which patents have been pledged to the commons so far (31, mostly from IBM) - the Q&A section is quite good at clarifying some bits.

Whatever happened to the Coorong?

For those of you with East-coast-centric school geography behind them, the Coorong is the massive lagoon at the end of the Murray River, just south of the where the river exits the sea, and the setting of "Storm Boy" - the novel and film written by Colin Thiele in the 70's.

But I digress. The Coorong is a national park, and is rich with bird and aquatic life. You know, an important breeding ground for birds and all that. I've been there several times, once on a Summer Holiday bird survey trip, and some other times for short camping trips.

Sure it has always dried up from time to time in summer, but it's been dry for quite a while. The picture above is the Coorong taken two weeks ago. The recent flooding and rains in the Darling/Murray River catchments has all flown into relatively empty dams (ie some of Adelaide's drinking water is sourced from a large dam downstream) and has been taken up by irrigation allocations that Qld, NSW and Victoria aren't really reducing as much as they should.

In fact, the river has stopped flowing for a while now (again, drought plus irrigation overuse), which has lead to sand banking up at the Murray mouth, and Lake Alexandrina (below left, with dust storm), a deeper lake to the North of The Coorong, is drier than anyone remembers.

Someone I know is doing sampling and surveying down this way and has made many trips to the region recently. On one trip, there were lots of dead, stinky fish lying on the dried up ground.

Very depressing, and I'm hoping that our climate change and water Minister - who is South Australian - will do the right thing by our poor, backward-flowing river system. Let's wait and see, shall we?