It’s time for another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
More signs that academic economics is collapsing:
http://archive.is/Vu6NL
As Mish’s Global Eco blog suggested:
There is no point trying to stimulate demand in a domestic economy when supply comes from everywhere.
So several voices now are predicting deflation – (of which there is no end).
The latest UN and IPCC statements on climate change are probably worth a “Discussion Pit” or Sandpit. Can we have one, John?
Here’s the background to the “Conservative Arsehole of the Day” Award: a husband and wife in the US are both in the workforce. The wife gets fired as soon as her pregnancy becomes noticeable. The husband is a manager in a failing business and is watching his hours cut over time. The baby is born and the man expresses joy that he is eligible for aid to purchase formula and nappies, since as he points out, they have no chance of being able to afford everything on just the one small income (he puts the cost of formula at about $150/month). The first comment presented more or less word-for-word: “I know how much they are per month, because I actually pay for them.” Congrats random anonymous internet guy, you win the prestigious Conservative Arsehole of the Day Award!
Why is cycling in the news so much all of a sudden? I see that Queensland has enacted new laws to protect people on bikes, but that seems to be a response to the media storm, not vice versa.
We have two decades to put in place effective measures against AGW or the game’s up is my reading of the IPCC report.
I’m proud to mention that my daughter yesterday continued a proud family tradition of NVDA by trespassing in the Leard state forest, NSW, for which she was arrested and charged.
Time to stop talking and engage in an unending campaign of disobedience.
Daily updates on the actions are provided by Margo Kingston at ‘no fibs’ http://nofibs.com.au/ Of particular interest is the way the Police have closed the state forest to almost ll access including to local residents apparently even searching car boots looking for contraband protestors.
As others have alluded to, the IPCC report is pretty blunt about the climate science data and what it indicates we are in for. Meanwhile, our (good ol’ Australian) PM Abbott parades a determined ignorance, dismissing the report by saying that in Australia flood and drought have always happened, or words to that effect, more or less. Since it is virtually impossible he could have read it in time for that comment (shown on ABC 24) to have been informed by the material presented, I call Abbott out on it. Does PM Abbott apply this same approach to other matters of national and international importance? I certainly hope not. As a matter of consistency, why doesn’t he accept the professional judgement of the people who are the experts in the subject matter on climate change? After all, who else is going to know as much about it, to be able to speak for the current body of research into climate and climate change, especially Anthropogenic Global Warming? I really want to know where he gets his advice on climate change from, and why he values it above whatever the IPCC reports have to say. For goodness sake.
The PUP’s number one WA Senate candidate, Yeo Wang, failed to appear at the WA Senate candidate’s forum on renewable energy policy on Monday night. That’s the second candidate’s forum in a row the PUP candidate hasn’t shown up at. Strange.
That should have read Dio Wang. My apologies to Mr Wang.
Meanwhile, in the good ol’ USofA they’re killing people for being homeless:
Welcome to your future, Australia.
This is what our ALP/LNP fascist duopoly plans for this country.
An overview of the effect that politics has had on science wrt planning in coastal areas.
Bad policy decisions will no doubt come back to haunt those LNP members who acted against expert opinion.
@Donald Oats
Donald, Abbott has form for not reading important documents he then comments on. Why should he bother to inform himself about anything? It would break the habits of a lifetime.
@jungney
My opinion (which some will argue is not scientifically supportable) is that we should have commenced greenhouse gas emission reduction in about 1990. In other words, I think that far from having another two decades to get this problem sorted, we should have started well over a decade ago. Because of the overshoots, delayed and built-in effects etc., the position is now very dire.
I think we are now thrown into the “adapt or die” zone. Lack of food security and water security will be the big issues for large regions of the planet. Heat and water stress on humans and domesticated animals and plants will be a big issue. For sure, we should still implement greenhouse gas emission reductions but we will now also have to budget for large adaptations of residential stock, infrastructure and farming methods, and also migrations, to meet climate change and sea level rise.
@Ikonoclast
There’s no doubt that we have no choice but to adapt to the warming that’s already built into the system. That’s already happening, to some degree. In WA, for example, Perth now gets more than 50% of its water supply from (very expensive) desalination plants (with the percentage only likely to increase in future), and the northern end of WA’s wheat-growing zone is being progressively abandoned by agriculture.
I think Cuba-style food production will become increasingly important. We will have less semi-desert grain production using massive inputs of diesel and fertiliser or centre pivot irrigation using up precious river water. Instead we’ll drink expensive tap water from desal plants and mountain dams. After that has passed through our kidneys it will be recycled to grow vegies in covered tunnel houses. Sewage sludge will be used to replenish soil in small furrowed plots tilled by 15 hp tractors not the 200 hp giants we see in the wheat belt.
This could happen in what are now golf courses and recreation areas or former suburbs in the case of Detroit. Uni graduates who were white collar success stories in a previous life will bicycle to the urban farm from their public housing flat. Their income will be dole payments supplemented by vegies from the farm. A bit far fetched? It’s already happening on an increasing scale.
Can someone please explain to this Climate Change Layman something?
The Deniers often talk about ‘No warming in 15 years’. But doesn’t the current level of average yearly world temperatues constitute ‘heating’? That is, if the level of average temperatures remains the same for the next 100 years, wouldn’t the sea levels still rise?
If so, why the hell hasn’t anyone taken the Deniers to task on this?
Savvas, here is the problem in one graph:
Only a person who is not connected to reality, which is one definition of insane, could look at that and conclude that warming as stopped. People do take deniers to task on this, however they do not pay attention and remain disconnected from reality. Or to put it another way, they are nuttier than a lumpy chocolate bar.
@Ikonoclast
Yeah, those calculations are probably right. My poor bloody kids and all the others as well. Mass internal migration, but to where?
@JQ, I’m curious if you read Ian McAuley’s Six Impossible Things About Privatisation?
Seemed a fantastic summary of the issue for me (and my simple-minded neo-con colleagues/friends).
So if survivors from the Malaysian Airlines flight 370 made a raft out of their crashed plane and paddled it to Australia, would they be put in detention because they arrived by boat, or would they retain their freedom because they would be considered to have arrived by plane?
@Ronald Brak
My position on IMAs is unambiguous but snipes of this type are silly. Presumably, they wouldn’t be claiming asylum and would seek repatriation — which the Australian regime would quickly furnish.
Brak
You may like to reflect on the inanity of your statement.
Its the intention of the arrivals that is the critical function.
Steve Keen, the rational man theory and monetary equilibrium …
The American Conservative magazine looks at the strange situation in which the Republican Party in the USA has been totally captured by the Zionist Lobby and Sheldon Adelson,self described as the “richest Jew in America”has held what the media are calling a “money-fest”In Las Vegas,where leading Republicans fell over themnselves to get a handful of Adelson’s money
The Repubs have gone from being strongly-pro-Israel…to being totally dominated at the line that the most hardline zionist like Adelson adopts
He spoke of using a nucleur weapion against Iran…albeit on an uninhibated desert region,,,the first time…then on Tehran if needed
A kinhttp://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/the-gop-and-israel/ of madness one has to think
This got a standing iovatikon,from an audience of mainlinbe Republicans
Ken Harvey has been appointed as an adjunct Associate Professor at Monash after quitting La Trobe in protest at the university accepting funding or sponsorship (not quite sure which) from Swisse.
Ken Harvey has been absolute fighter for honesty in health claims, equally from Big Pharma and from alternative medicines. Good on him and good on (my department at) Monash for giving him a home.
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