One of the new elements in the Garnaut Review’s final report is an analysis of “Transforming rural land use” in chapter 22. It’s a tour of some of the ways in which agricultural and forestry practices might change to increase the amount of carbon sequestered in our forests, woodlands, and our soil. It’s one of the most positive chapters in the entire report; changing the way Australia uses its land offers some enormous opportunities to absorb carbon at relatively low cost.
There’s a lot of possibilities in there; I’ll just pick one. As our vegetarian friends regularly remind us - Andrew Bartlett has pointed the issue out again - one of Australia’s biggest contributors to our greenhouse emissions is the methane-laden burping of our cattle and sheep. One solution would be to join Bartlett and make a mass switch to vegetarianism, or at the very least eat less meat. Or figure out how to stop ruminants producing methane, which is a nice idea but has proved to be rather difficult in practice (and may well involve genetic engineering). Alternatively, we could switch to pork or chicken, the production of which releases far less CO2. But for the truly committed carnivore, nothing replaces the taste of a nice red steak. So, if we can’t stop cows burping, farting, and poohing methane, what do we do?
Continue reading ‘Throw another roo steak on the barbie’
The current mayor of the City of Melbourne, John So, has become a bit of a cult figure down here - almost a modern-day Emperor Norton of the United States. Frankly, much of his appeal probably derives from the fact that the mayor of Melbourne doesn’t have much more actual power than Norton did; by many reports, what little power he does have isn’t wisely used. For those actually affected by the smooth running of central Melbourne’s municipal council (which covers the CBD and a few of the innermost suburbs) there’s probably a fair bit of relief that he’s not seeking a third term. This article introduces the field so far. Former state Liberal leader Robert Doyle is a likely candidate; ALP members running include Will Fowles and Peter McMullin. Adam Bandt of the Greens is running, and it appears that the Greens are making a serious push to expand their representation on the City of Melbourne Council.
The hottest political issue across the entire Melbourne metropolis at the moment is transport. Melbourne’s freeways, trams, and trains are full to capacity, and the state government is preparing a “major transport statement” (their fourth, I believe, in about as many years) which will likely propose a number of major transport construction projects. One of those proposals, canvassed in the earlier Eddington report, is a road tunnel under the inner-northern suburbs (some of which are in the City of Melbourne) linking the Tullamarine and Eastern Freeways. Unsurprisingly, Bandt, and the Greens more generally, think this is a lousy idea, and instead believe that the new transport infrastructure required is lots of public transport.
Continue reading ‘Interactive transport plans’
Today’s Crikey asks a rather rude question:
An Australian citizen currently languishes in jail in a foreign country, having been seized from an aircraft on the basis of an arrest warrant issued in a third country. The crime alleged to have been committed by the man relates only to the fact that he has repeatedly expressed views deemed unacceptable by that country.
Yet to date no one, not even the usual conservative suspects, has spoken out about the treatment of Frederick Toben, arrested at Heathrow while en route from the US to Dubai on a German warrant for Holocaust denial. Toben’s only supporters have been the appalling David Irving and the grotesque Lady Michele Renouf, a sort of Mitford-style far-right socialite.
Continue reading ‘Defending the odious’
Well, it may have been a miserable week on the ground, particularly if you’re trying to borrow money or are close to collecting your super pay out, but it’s been a great couple of weeks for being out of the Earth’s atmosphere.
It’s like the heady days of the Space Race in China at the moment. They’re having parades for the astronauts (I refuse to use the abomination “taikonaut”) who successfully completed China’s third crewed space mission, and the first space walk. From a western perspective, this isn’t all that impressive - they purchased a lot of the technology straight from the Russian space program, who’ve been doing this since 1965 (the first American spacewalk followed a couple of months later). But even re-implementing known space technology is pretty damn difficult. The bigger question is what the Chinese are likely to try in the future. Beating NASA back to the moon is a distinct possibility.
Meanwhile, perhaps the most scientifically important achievement of NASA crewed space program, the Hubble Space Telescope, has had the world’s most fortuitously timed fault. A final shuttle mission to service the Hubble was due to launch a couple of weeks from now. However, one of the Hubble’s systems responsible for transmitting scientific data back to Earth failed. There’s a backup component, but, unsurprisingly, NASA wants to replace the system, so they’re modifying the mission to include the replacement. On the downside, it’s also pushed the mission back to February next year. But better a failure now, when it can be fixed, than one later, when the shuttle won’t be available to fix it.
Continue reading ‘Snow on Mars, and Chinese walks in space’
I recently heard Hugh Mackay give a talk on his forthcoming book, Advance Australia…Where?. Amongst his many claims was the idea those thirstysomethings and fortysomethings without children are becoming increasingly separated from those with them. To paraphrase, the child-free find the child-inflicted’s endless stories about their children’s bowel movements incredibly dull, the child-blessed find their child-deprived peers’ endless jaunts rather self-indulgent.
But it was not until Melbourne Business School economics professor and econoblogger Joshua Gans sent me his latest book Parentonomics to review that this point really sank home. Intellectually, I can imagine myself in his shoes. But the issues about which he writes are ones I haven’t directly experienced since I went through them from the other end of the stick.
Continue reading ‘Parentonomics’
If this is true, we’re in even deeper climate trouble than we thought:
The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.
The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.
As the Wikipedia explains, there is a lot of methane locked up as frozen methane clathrate under the arctic ocean. Methane is a short-lived, but very potent greenhouse gas. If the clathrates are warmed up enough, they will release that methane, and possibly quite quickly. The upshot? Global warming going a lot faster and further than the IPCC models.
This is far scarier than a little trouble with the LIBOR…
Australia’s total greenhouse emissions, assuming a 450ppm target and “backstop technology”. Source: Garnaut Review Final Report, Figure 23.6
Continue reading ‘Emissions vs. Allocations’
Here we go again. From the Oz:
CRIMTRAC’s planned automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system could become a mass surveillance system, taking as many as 70 million photos of cars and drivers every day across a vast network of roadside cameras.
State and federal police forces want full-frontal images of vehicles, including the driver and front passenger, that are clear enough for identification purposes and usable as evidence in court.
But it gets better:
According to a privacy consultation paper issued in June, all ANPR data collected would be made available to participating agencies in real time, and retained for five years for future investigations.
Continue reading ‘Wholesale surveillance’
The Australian government is going to start buying mortgage-backed securities:
Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says he has directed the Australian Office of Financial Management (AOFM) to invest in residential mortgages.
The decision follows the chaos in the United States housing market, but Mr Swan says it is a good news announcement because it will increase competition in the mortgage market.
Continue reading ‘Oz government gets back into the mortgage business’
George W. Bush - or whomever is actually running the shop - is a rather busy lame duck. As well as the credit crunch, there’s there are all manner of foreign policy challenges which at any other time would be making headlines.
Number 1 cab off the rank is North Korea, who seem to be planning to fire up their nuclear infrastructure again. The Arms Control Wonk seems to think it’s because they’re peeved they haven’t been taken off the list of states that sponsor terrorism. Meanwhile, the US-led, NATO-labelled occupation of Afghanistan is sailing into rather interesting times. The pursuit of militants near - and possibly over - the Afghanistan-Pakistan border isn’t exactly thrilling the Pakistani government or the army. So much so, in fact, that they’ve started firing on NATO (which I assume means American) helicopters.
Whomever wins the US Presidency in November is going to have a pretty full slate.
UPDATE: I can has good grammar when I wantz… 
According to The Guardian, the British government is apparently proposing to revise the Act of Settlement, which governs succession to the British throne. In essence, the proposal seeks to remove the primacy of male heirs over female ones. Secondly, it aims to remove the provision requiring the monarch to be a Protestant, and requiring their spouse not to be Catholic. The impetus for the change (aside from the sheer ridiculousness of these requirements in 2008) is likely the realization that William and Kate might put the tabloids out of their misery, get hitched, and start a family soon. If there’s to be a change in the line of succession so that their first-born, regardless of gender, is next in line, would best be done beforehand.
What makes it of direct relevance to Australia is that “Any change in legislation would, among other things, require the consent of member nations of the Commonwealth.” That is, because the Australian monarchy is legally a separate creature to the British one, we’d have to pass our own amendments to the Australian version of the Act.
The biggest political issue raised by the changes in Britain - the role of the various national Anglican churches in the modern UK - is not an issue here given that Australia does not have an established church. However, it will be interesting to see how the Australian government deals with this one - and, more to the point, the reminder that the republican issue is still around - if the UK government does indeed act to make the change.
While it’s good that a decision to spend billions of dollars is getting lots of attention, the quality of that attention leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. The decision, of course, is in regards to what kind of fighter plane Australia should buy to replace its aging F-18 Hornets in the next few years. This has been enormously controversial ever since the Howard Government signed us up as a partner in the development of the Joint Strike Fighter program with the USA. While there were a lot of questions about the way the program has been handled, with the new government the key question is whether the JSF is up to the job Australia needs it to do, including dealing any possible airborne threats, and, specifically, any Russian-made Sukhoi fighters that might be purchased by other nations in the region (read Indonesia, carrier-borne Indian aircraft, or possibly China if it acquires an aircraft carrier).
Somebody at the ABC has apparently got hold of a RAND Corporation (a US defence think-tank with a long and colourful history) report that says that the “the Joint Strike Fighter cannot compete in close combat with Russian-made Flanker jets.”, which has set off a series of comments from both the Government -stating that the government is monitoring the purchase and will only buy if it lives up to expectations - and the Opposition - who are absolutely convinced the JSF is the greatest thing since sliced bread and want the government out singing its praises. The annoying thing about all of this is that the news reports tell us very little we didn’t already know.
The report says that the JSF has “inferior acceleration, climb, turn capacity and a lower top speed than Russian and Chinese fighters”. That’s not news to anyone. The question is whether these advantages are rendered moot because the JSF’s advantages in avionics, missiles, and stealth would ensure that said foreign fighter planes, up to no good, would be shot out of the sky before they ever see a RAAF aircraft. That’s what the backers of the JSF believe; skeptics don’t. That’s of course aside from whether “Russian and Chinese fighters” will ever show up in any substantial number anywhere near Australia, given that Indonesia has a grand total of two of them. I have no idea whether the RAND corporation report has anything useful to add to the first question; nor am I competent to evaluate its conclusions if it does. But without some more context, the news reports don’t tell us anything we haven’t known for years, and thus nothing that gives us any more indication as to whether the JSF is a good use for $16 billion or so.
As noted, the Victorian abortion law reform bill has sailed through the (lower) house, and Archbishop Dennis Hart is throwing a massive tanty about it:
CATHOLIC hospitals might close their maternity and emergency departments if a proposed new abortion law is passed in Victoria next month, Melbourne Archbishop Denis Hart has warned….”Catholic hospitals cannot be part of any abortion. That has to be respected in the community. Even providing a referral is a co-operation in evil, and that impacts very strongly on us as Catholics,” he said.
Lauredhel has summed up the Bishop’s position quite succinctly: he’s prepared to let women die for his anti-abortion beliefs. Charming, and, as she says, all the more reason for the bill to be passed.
What I’d like to know is what the actual medical practice in Catholic hospitals around Australia. Does the Archbishop’s hardline position (which, as I understand it, is in line with the Catholic Church’s official position) actually get followed in Australian hospitals?
Recent comments
Paul Norton, Katz, David Rubie, stuart, Pappinbarra Fox, Shaun [...]
Robert Merkel, wizofaus, David Rubie, patrickg, TimT, wizofaus [...]
joe2, Joe, Sam Clifford, Kim, danny, Kim [...]
Paul Burns, Ambigulous, Paul Norton, Lefty E, Ambigulous, Lefty E [...]
Nancy, MarkL, Graham Bell, Katz, Nabakov, MarkL [...]
Ambigulous, Nanuestalker, Nanuestalker, Mark, Nanuestalker, Nanuestalker [...]
patrickg, Kim, OldSkeptic, Lefty E, Kim, Ambigulous [...]
Kim, Helen, Stephen Hill, Graham Bell, Paul Burns, Mark [...]
Mercurius, silkworm, Adrien, Ambigulous, Adrien, Adrien [...]
Chris (a different one), FDB, Chris, ken, Lefty E, ken [...]
Kevin Rennie, Megan, paul walter, Mark, Fine, Paul Norton [...]
GregM, FDB, via collins, paul walter, jinmaro, Adrien [...]