It’s time again for weekend reflections, which makes space for longer than usual comments on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language please.
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John Quiggin 
@Jill Rush
LOL Salient. I couldnt help myself – Louis’s icon looks so much like Louie the fly! In fact Im sure it is…
What else is there to do but to sing the theme song..LOl
“I’m bad, I’m mean and mighty unclean and Im afraid of no-one… except the man with the can of Mortein…..”
Unable to refute the science, Quiggins quols do the expected.
Just in case anyone has any doubt about the effectiveness of Mortein…
Using scientific research methods of a similar calibre to the refuters, I have ascertained it is indeed Louis the fly that appears above
http://www.mortein.com.au/louie_the_fly.php
well, it proves one thing, Quiggin’s trolls are expert in ad hominems, and incompetent in the argument. As Forrest Gump pointed out, stupid is as stupid does.
Thanks John,
Surely only AGW deniers can be trolls on warmist blogs? All seems a bit precious from someone who’s chosen Australia’s most famous pest as an icon!
“There are millions of amperes entering in and out of the earth via the polar Birkeland currents…”
To give readers an idea of the vast magnitude of electric charge we’re talking about here, to get a current of one million amperes would require 96 AA batteries.
[My emphasis and ellipsis]
I’d love to see the results of your cliimate model with these effects included. Even a theoretical model that allows incorporation of this electrical energy would be good. Heck, how about a set of measurements of the net flux into the Earth system, as a starting point? Then we can compare it with all of the other known net fluxes and see if it is of the right magnitude to be relevant…
@Donald Oats
I just re-read this, and…, no, I can’t say it, it is too cruel.
@Donald Oats
I cant help myself Don – Louie the Fly, Louie the Fly – straight from rubbish tip to you…
Where do the come from?
@Alice
I reckon that must be Mortein’s most enduring ad, in one incarnation or another. Gee, I remember that on the old valve B&W TV (yes, we kept B&W until everyone else had colour, or at least it felt like it).
It was a good one Don (Louie the Fly ad) ! I think we did too (keep the B&W a while) – I watched colour in the shop when it first came in and remember the colour was pretty psychedelic. Sunset scenes were very orange.
If you want to see the cause of climate change just review today’s ABC Inside Business episode.
All of it was about exporting billions of dollars of gas and drilling for new coal resources, and calls for high rates of immigration to underpin the size of new projects. Naturally all this will be funded by foreign ownership, according to economist Adam Carr – “we are the lucky country” he opined – “we will bullet proof the economy”.
Has Inside Business ever considered the CO2 emissions of of the troupe of corporate executives they constantly parade in front of us?
So they bullet proof the economy by cooking the climate.
Maybe we would be better off bullet proofing the climate and changing the economy.
I’d like to retract what I said about delusionists and market supremacy theory. I’ve obviously missed the point.
Here’s an article that shows Obama’s healthcare plan was touted as a good idea by a conservative think-tank a few years prior. More evidence that conservatives and social democrats are just two factions of the same “Big Government” political grouping.
Poor dead Louie…he couldnt get away… (someone stop me)
“I am currently wasting the maximum power I can for human achievement hour.” It isn’t an exact analogy but not bad. I live on a farm, with my only source of water a tank fed by what rain I can collect on my roof. Just as well I am not a “rationalist” or during Water Week I would celebrate human achievement by turning on all my taps for a day or two, just to show that, being a mighty human, if I choose to drain my water tank I will, and those anti-human greenies better not try to stop me.
Not an exact analogy of course, to make it more exact the water would need to run down into the valley and flood my neighbour’s homes.
But what is wrong with these Bernardi groupies? Why the utter contempt for the world we live in? What on Earth does someone mean by calling himself “Rationalist” and then deliberately choosing to waste energy? On what possible level is this rational behaviour?
@David Horton
I find it very telling.
It has been observed often enough that the anti-mitigation delusionals repeatedly project onto us all of their own worst traits. They say we cherrypick data because that is what they do to get their way and cannot conceive otherwise. They say we are corrupt because they are. They say we oppose western civilisation and want to return to the usages of the pleistocene because they oppose community and favour every man for himself as a theory. They say this is a scam to make Al Gore rich because they fear their patrons will become less rich.
Here in their response to Earth Hour with “Human Achievement” hour, we see the full flowering of this tendency. Energy is not to be consumed for its utility but for the cultural claim it makes. Energy consumption and its pernicious consequences are presented as an intrinsic good — as existential. You’re not truly human if you don’t waste stuff and foul your nest.
At a time when the frontier between hominid and human was still murky, the creatures who were our ancestors probably worshipped the sun, bowing before it as the source of life, and yielding it burnt offerings to secure their lives. Much later on the timeline, animal and sometimes human sacrifices were offered to god consumed in fires thought to be a microcosm of the bounty of the almighty. And in today’s secular world, dupes and dissemblers alike avow that we should mark human achievement by acting to serve those whose asset it is — their patrons amongst the privileged filth merchants on the planet.
They say AGW is a religion, but does their exist anywhere on the internet a clearer and more compelling admission that the claim of the misanthropic enemies of rational policy joins the most primitive metaphysical cultural origins of humanity to the ill-disguised commercial interests of the world’s filth merchants? I haven’t seen one.
Where human achievement is to measured in filth, harm and loss to humanity, only the language of Orwell is apt.
The body of knowledge that now exists about climate is a human achievement of the greatest order. Dismissing the greatest issue of our age, attacking it’s solutions and celebrating the ability to make things worse looks to me like contempt for human achievement. And not all that rational.
On Landline today it looks like some of the farmers in NE Victoria might be coming round to the realisation that AGW is in fact a reality. Laughably though, politics still prevents some farmers from admitting what they know is true – it is okay to say yeah climate change is real after all and we just have to get on with adapting to it, but it isn’t okay politically to go the next step and say that if the scientists got that right then maybe they are right that this time we are having an affect on the global climate. Whew!
I’d better get the extra strength Mortein out 🙂
LouisH@1/39,
Hey Louis, I think that you are hissink into the wind, there. Sir Ian Axford the man who did much of the research and calculation that defines our understanding of the magnetosphere, the core of your anti argument, spent a great deal of his later years promoting awareness of Accelerated Global Warming and the immense dangers that our civilisation faces. His particular concern is for the immense amount of methane now being released from arctic thawing permafrosts. If Sir Ian is concerned to the extent of writing books and articles, I think that you should allow yourself a little room for doubt.
@Donald Oats
Extra strength Mortein needed Don and if that fails I suggest NAFF OFF.
PS NAFF is short for No Ability in Facts or Figures.
Donald, I don’t think it’s particularly fair to suggest farmers are a uniform block of climate change deniers. plenty of farmers are deeply concerned about the issue – in fact, considering their average age, race and politics, I would suspect they’re well ahead of their city cousins.
Back to high rise versus urban sprawl – this is a fallacy of the excluded middle. Good urban design to encourage compact cities should gravitate towards 3-6 storey housing.
@wilful
Only if the transport is invested in as well Wilful – problem with State labor – it was all about stamp duty on real estate deals and not much more – nothing about accommodating the increased density Sydney has seen in the last ten years…thats why they are getting booted out soon (when even Roozendahl has been making dough from his developer mates its time for that bunch of self interested flies to get an extra strong dose of Mortein).
“plenty of farmers are deeply concerned about the issue – in fact, considering their average age, race and politics, I would suspect they’re well ahead of their city cousins.” – afraid not Wilful. They have been badly led and badly advised, by people who invite, for example, Plimer to address their conferences. They are also constantly told that this is not climate change, just another drought. And that they are tough rugged Ozzie farmers who have dealt with droughts before.
As well as the advice from farmers federations and National Party politicians, deniers to a man (and woman), and neoconservatives to a woman (and man), they also have a psychological block. Well, two. If it is just another drought, well then, what of it, they have the experience to get through another one. If it is a fundamental change in the climate then their whole world is going to irrevocably change (a scary prospect for anyone). And second, if they were to admit that climate change was a problem they would have to admit their own role in contributing to it, most notably through land clearance. And they certainly won’t do that. If you give yourself a dollar for every farmer you find who is a climate change denier you will be a very rich person very quickly.
@wilful
That’s pretty much the height ceiling I was considering — much above six stories and you start running into entry and egress problems. Moreover, you start losing the sense of community and ownership of the space and it becomes too remote — and suddenly you’ve got Corbusier-style high-rise with nobody in particular engaged with maintenance of the space.
About 5000 people is big enough to get the economies of scale you would want to support onsite services such as (laundry, childcare, perhaps a pre-school, convenience store, GP/Dentist), and social diversity.
Fran – if I might say so – in Sydney in middle rings there has been little thought given to open space needs, diversity in terms of eg dentists, shops, or childcare – in fact I would suggest there has been total lack of attention to planning except for land size requirements. Schools have been raized, university grounds have been raized, playing fields have been raized in favour of medium (some would call it high denisty development) – one can see this so obviously on the North Shore Pacific Highway corridor and on the Northern Beaches – with not one road widening or traffic solution offered.
Its the planning Fran – it has been up the creek without a paddle. Its all been about robbing the public, using the land and environment court to steamroll local councils and ordinary citizens, using Landcom to do it, offering nothing in return to accommodate the higher densities and increased congestion and actively working against small strip amenities and shops (thanks to Mr Sartor – many residents are now corralled to congested “malls.” – but Mr Lowy is happy and thats all that counts for State Labor).
You might have guessed by now – I hate them (NSW state labor) – but then so do lots of other people – I am not alone!
@Alice
{regular spello: razed = levelled, from the Latin for scraping and shaving think razor, rashers of bacon etc …}
I quite agree. If we are going to have quality housing with minimal transport for energy purposes and minimal car usage we need to have services close. Local laundry means an occasional facility can be intensively used and shared, reducing the space and plumbing per person (and complexity). Local childcare means that short trips are reduced and kids get more benefit from local peers. Local medical means more quality control and convenience.
And yes I agree, the ALP is rubbish — though I understand they are trying a local older person’s housing project near the centre of Fairfield.
Well done Fran – Alice you can raze a school, but not a ground or a field.
And yes, the NSW ALP is rubbish, but wait till you see the neoconservatives of the Liberals and Nationals in power. You want buildings razed? You’ll get it. You want councils bulldozed, planning short circuited? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
@David Horton
Thats why I think the electorate is predominantly stupid David – if they werent stupid they would leave tribalism behind and vote independants and greens in – but it wont happen. They obviously need another round of incompetence.
@Fran Barlow
Congratulations Fran – you win the spelling bee.
@Fran Barlow
Fran – NSW labor is also busy renting out public housing in the dept of public housing to the private sector when the waiting lists from people in real need are getting longer and longer – what else would you expect from a bunch of right wing self interested prigs?
Oh yeah – it velongs to the government and people of NSW. Now how can we make a private buck from it to tip into our budget of incompetence (after we sold all revenue generating assets). I suppose the prigs still want income for their superannuation dont they?
@Alice
Alice, I’ve suspected this for some time in the public housing near where I live (Sydney). Can you say more?
Its in the news today Alicia…its a damn disgrace.
Old news…tip of the icerberg..
http://www.nswalp.com/blog/732/more-properties-in-millers-point-for-auction
http://www.smh.com.au/national/private-tenants-offered-public-housing-despite-long-waiting-lists-20090607-bzvc.html
Oh and this one Alicia – that they couldnt answer questions about likely because NSW Labor stamped “commercial in confidence” all over the paperwork and then denied FOIs.
http://sydney-central.whereilive.com.au/news/story/housing-nsw-cashes-in-on-private-rents/
Hissink Says:
An ampere is not a measure of energy. It is a rate of electron flow. 6.2E18 electron per second equals one ampere.
There is no motive force for the Earth’s rotation. It doesn’t need one. Newton’s first law, and conservation of angular momentum keep the earth rotating all by itself.
I don’t think you’re in any position to judge. You don’t appear to understand any science at all, even at the simplest levels. What do they teach you geologists these days?
@wilful
No, they aren’t uniform in their views; I know several who have an appreciation of a changing climate and what it is meaning to their farm livelihoods. The multi-generational farmers who have kept good records and who apply meteorological considerations are probably the ones best positioned to “get it”. There are still some farmers in my family, and it is fair to say that they have fairly different opinions upon the matter (I won’t say more otherwise I’ll be putting words in their mouths).
I get a little annoyed when short-term self-interest displaces longer term interests. This is something that seems to happen a lot among agriculture participants, perhaps because politicians perpetually promise and provide relief for what is really just part of the risk of agriculture as a business. Perhaps as farmers lose their children to other occupational pursuits, the notion of business continuity and long-term planning becomes moot. I don’t know. Ironically, the manner in which Maywald got shafted in the recent South Australian election is an illustrative case of agriculture participants cutting off their collective nose to spite their face – going for what they thought was a short term gain. Is a now safe opposition member really going to get the attention of the Rann govenrment and buckets of cash to Maywald’s old seat? There is no leverage now, so I think not.
@SJ
Mind you, the said currents do provide the nice light shows in the polar skies. At least some part of the `Plasma Universe’ idea has some connection with reality, but that in no way justifies attempts to throw it out there as the new replacement for the original “it’s the sun” mantra, now that solar variation has been pegged fairly accurately. Once this one is put to bed I’m curious what will be next? Quantum coherence? Kaluza-Klein theory? The Mayans? Pyramids? Oh, the possibilities are endless.
Jill Rush @ page 1 #15 wrote:
In reality, both urban sprawl and high-rise are bad for the environment.
Intuively it seems that the costs in energy and natural resources of building high rises as well as operating them must be enormous, so whether high-rises are less environmentally damaging than bulldozing the habitat of our critically endangered koalas is unclear.
If Prime Minister Rudd was not so intent in rapidly increasing our population we would not have to face this impossible choice.
@David Horton
Farmers are no different to anyone else in regard to their responsibility for climate change. The NFF sees it as an important issue. Farmers spend quite a bit on research and a fair amount of this on research relating to climate change and environment; the R&D agencies as well as the industry organisations all see climate change as a priority issue. The GRDC for example is setting up a network of ‘climate champions’ who are farmers. The dairy industry is looking at farm management techniques suited to 2050 in a changing climate, when Victoria will be hotter and water more scarce.
Farmers might be a soft target for some people. The farm sector might include many people who are conservative by nature, but it also includes a lot of people who care about and for the land, and who know they are being first affected and the hardest hit by climate change.
(Among other measures, Australian farmers plant over 20 million trees each year, soley for conservation purposes.)
In keeping with the spelling bee, that last line should read: ‘…solely for conservation purposes.’ 😀
@daggett
It’s not the least bit unclear.
Silly. Rudd is not responsible for human population on a world scale. While we should certainly help create a contrext in which population stabilises and declines, we should also take our share. That might well be part of it, but it won’t happen quickly.
For those of you who engaged in symbolic gestures with your lights at home for Earth Hour, perhaps you might like to help the HIA out with a response to the following email I just sent them for their technical advice-
I note in the article in Housing, the new requirement for a lighting plan to comply with the new 6 Star Energy Rating whereby it states- “All homes will also need to have a lighting design prepared which shows that the living areas of the home have a maximum of 5watts/m2, with 4watts/m2 permitted on verandahs and balconys and 3watts/m2 in garages.”
Now in my garage/workshop at home I presently have installed 4 double fluoros, albeit on 2 separate switches ie 2 double fluoros to light each side of a 6 X 6 metre garage which is largely used as a workshop. Now that is an area of 36 squ metres with 8 X 36 watts of lighting, or 288watts in all, when the new Code would only allow 36 x 3 or 108 watts in total. Even with one bank switched on, 144 watts would exceed the new Code, but presumably I can have any amount of lighting plugged into as many power points as I like, not to mention any particular electrical equipment I desire. What is the point of such nonsensical rules for new housing, when I can get an electrician to fill the ceiling with any amount of lighting I desire, not to mention any I choose to attach to power points? Or will it become the case that in future no electrician will be able to install any more lighting that exceeeds the new Code? I ask because my son is an electrician working in my business. If that becomes the new rule of law for electricians, I can easily forsee what will occur in an electrical industry that is currently busy meeting the new consumer demand to fill home ceilings with a myriad of downlights. Electricians will simply install all the facilitating outlet plugs in the ceilings, even cutout the holes and leave the downlights with insulation covers attached, ready for the owners to plug them in and attach them as the electrician normally would, explaining how he is not permitted to exceed the Code’s new parameters. In fact this service could easily be offered to the new home buyer, whereby their planned layout is simply reduced in size for Building Approval, while their real plan is installed ready to go. This is a patently absurd situation.
As an afterthought I forgot to ask what would be the situation whereby a home is filled with downlights exceeding the new Code, but is programmed under C-Bus type automation not to exceed the Code, but is quickly reprogrammed on key handover? You do have to wonder at the intelligence of the Earth Hour mindset in the corridors of power these days or are we to have a new plethora of lighting police knocking on doors?
@Sou
LOL Sou – I ma the spelling bee looser here! (Really)
Of course, koalas aren’t considered critically endangered at all, despite the intensive, fact-free lobbying of the Australian Koala Foundation.
It was Christopher Alexander in A pattern language that advocated for human scale but dense developments, of not more than four to six storeys. An applied construct of his ideas is in J.H. Crawford’s Car free cities, which I find idealistic, but inspiring.
Fran Barlow @ 41 (writing in response to 38),
We just may have irreconciliable differences here.
For my part, I believe that the citizens of every sovereign nation should have the democratic right to determine their own population numbers and how many people from elsewhere should be allowed to settle on their territory. Clearly you, in common with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as well as former Prime Ministers Howard, Keating and Hawke, do not.
In 1993, former Prime Minister Bob Hawke explicitly articulated the view to the contrary that you seem to have put here when he boasted to the Bureau of Immigration Research’s National Outlook Conference in Brisbane that his government had enforced “elite as opposed to popular views on immigration.”
The biggest lie of immigration is that those pushing it are motivated by some form of altruism that the selfish and unenlightened majority of this country do not possess. This recent advertisement:
http://investmentmentor.com.au/events/slipstream-population-growth/ [1]
… for a seminar of land speculators gives a much more accurate idea of who it is that is selfish and who it is that is more likely to be acting out of altruism. It is only one of many examples of many I could give. To quote from Nick Lockhart, the featured speaker at a nationwide series of seminars, now underway, which commenced on 9 March and will end on 26 May:
The claimed necessity for increasing population, that is, of an aging baby boomer workforce is an obvious self-serving lie cooked up by the property lobby to justify endless population growth. After all, who will look after the immigrants when they retire?
The costs we are paying now for population growth — increased electricity and water charges and council rates, parking costs, road tolls, fines for traffic infringements, registration, the $15 billion Queensland fire sale, the accelerating depleting of our endownent of natural resources, despoliation of natural habitat and water catchments and underground aquifers, etc., etc. — not to mention housing costs already hyperinflated in the past to line the pockets of the likes of Nick Lockhart and his adherents, are vastly more than what we would need to pay for the expected larger numbers of retirees.
Dr Jane O’Sullivan has torn the economics used to justify population growth into tiny shreds in her Online Opinion article “The downward spiral of hasty population growth” of 8 Mar 10.
When we cast aside the “aging baby-boomer” argument and other fraudulent economic and ethical justifications for population growth and the claimed lofty “Big Australia” an “Population is Destiny” (www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26093478-16382,00.html) motivations, we are confronted with the stark, ugly underlying truth about population growth: It is no more than the crudest and grubbiest imaginable device to allow a selfish greedy minority to profit at everyone else’s expense.
In “Overloading Australia” Mark O’Connor explained it thus:
And, as I mentionend above, we all pay a lot, lot more to give this unconscionable minority in our midst the priviledge of being able to line their pockets at their expense.
The unsettling reality of today is that virtually all but a few of our political representatives are there to serve this minority, rather than the broader community.
And if this is not changed, most of us will find ourselves little better off than impoverished citzens of a crowded Third World countries.
Those who advance so-called humaitarian and equity justifications for high immigration, whether they realise it or not, are merely helping to maintain the smokescreen that allows this looting operation to continue.
Footnotes
1. Note: the above web page, in spite of appearing to be text is all jpeg images, necessiting my having to manually type it out.
Well I happen to think that population debates are essentially unresolvable, because there are excellent, but almost unprovable, arguments from both camps. daggett, you have completely failed to grasp the moral debate from the other side, that is unconscionable for Australia to have such a small but affluent population sitting here complacently lecturing the world. There are plenty of people on the left who think it is a matter of solidarity to welcome as many immigrants as possible.
(me personally, I’d like Australia to manage for a slow curve to 28 million and round off about there, sitting on the fence or in the sensible middle of the debates.)
@wilful
And as per form, Daggett is off on a gish gallop. Of course, in principle, we should have “democratic control” over the population we have, but what could this mean in practice? You can’t/shouldn’t enforce birth control. You can’t and shouldn’t stop people visiting, or opt out of humanitarian commitments. Moreover, in what way does it serve humanity that one lot of people should have privileged acccess to resources when another lacks them?
Anyone with a serious regard for the wellbeing of humanity and an attachment to equity should support every jursidcition sharing the burdens of looking after humanity. If the most cost effective way is to bring a share here, so be it. for all his radical posturing, the logic of Daggett’s position is that of the xenophobic Potemkin Village.
Like many who love conspiracy, Daggett reads backwards from interest to motive. If property developers benefit from population increase, then this muust be the motive for having it. If one doesn’t like them, then this suffices to oppose it. It doesn’t occur to him that it is property development that should be restrained.
Curious chap.
I don’t believe Daggett has failed to grasp anything. He is dealing with the domestic overpopulation and who is to blame domestically for the current population growth. I can’t see anywhere in his posts where Australia ‘complacently lectures the world’.
The fact is that the baby bonus plus immigration account for pretty much all of Australia’s population growth and both are government policy and the government has within it’s power to un-make them government policy.
There is no moral dilemma in Australia having a so called small population because in the context of the arid and infertile nature of most of the Australian continent and the surrounding seas, we do not have a small population.
The real moral debate needs to be about the theft of resources and quality of the natural world from future generations because our generation is too damned greedy and indolent to make sensible and disciplined choices about our over population and it’s effect on the natural world.