New Deputy PM Michael McCormack (Mick Mack) is a garden variety climate denier according to Paddy Manning at The Monthly:
Barnaby Joyce as National Party warrior and Deputy PM has flamed out, and to mix metaphors is politically washed up for now, perhaps forever. The one certainty is that his pay will be sliced by about $200k. However, there is no easy agreement as to what has really happened and what it all means.
Phillip Coorey in the AFR said it was the end of the Barnaby Joyce experiment and his exit shows politics has changed:
Most of us would like to be able to travel when, where and how we want to and for the transport system to be managed in such a way that there will always be enough capacity to allow us all these choices. The problem with this “capacity management” approach is that a lot of money would have to be spent providing capacity that is only used for a very limited time of the day. Without this extra spending we still have to continue putting up with congested roads and overloaded public transport during peak hours.
Required capacity could be reduced by managing the “when”, “how” and “where” choices. This post looks at some “demand management” strategies that might be used to reduce peak capacity requirements These strategies offer rapid, low cost ways of getting more from the transport infrastructure we already have. It was concluded that a rapid, low cost doubling of capacity is not an impossible dream.
Continue reading Boosting Transport Capacity by Managing Demand
ABC RN excellent Rear Vision program took a look at the growth of economic inequality in modern times.
Actually they gave us the full history. Inequality started with settled societies and property ownership. It reached a peak during the Roman Empire, but suffered a remarkable setback during the Black Death in the 14th century. In simple terms capital and property survived but the workers died in large numbers making labour scarce and expensive. Continue reading Saturday salon 24/2
Did you know that an average of 119 ships have been lost on the high seas each year, according to insurance firm Allianz?
In the last decade around 100 large ore-carrying ships have sunk (98 between 2007 and 2017 to be exact) including four in one 36-day period leading up to Christmas 2010. Many of these sank in calm seas, so what is going on? Continue reading Shipping industry in troubled waters
Just before the Joyce affair broke and occupied all the media space, Guy Rundle at Crikey wrote an excoriating piece in which he stated that Turnbull is the most contemptible modern prime minister we’ve had. At least in the last 15 years. Continue reading Simply the worst: Rundle on Turnbull as PM
Waleed Aly in a piece written presumably just before Turnbull announced his changes to ministerial code of conduct suggested Turnbull’s effort in furthering the Uluru Statement from the Heart and in responding to the Close The Gap report was limp and routine:
Like Labor, Turnbull and the Liberal Party had so far regarded Barnaby Joyce’s relationship with former staffer Vikki Campion as a private matter. As long as everything had been done within formal regulations, it didn’t matter that jobs had been found for Campion when her presence in Joyce’s office was no longer viable. It didn’t matter that a mate had given him free accommodation in Armidale, or that he had spent 50 nights in Canberra at taxpayers expense when parliament was not sitting.
All that changed when Turnbull launched a withering attack on his morals, his judgement and his character, and went on to say that forthwith no minister will have sex with a staff member under the new ministerial code of conduct. Moreover, Joyce was sent to the naughty corner to think about his position and his future by being sent on leave, rather than act as prime minister when Turnbull is overseas next week.
It was more than a vote of no confidence. As Mark Kenny said in the SMH, the message was that Joyce’s position as Deputy PM was not viable. Continue reading Turnbull launches a withering attack on Joyce
The UK Met Office has warned that temperatures could break through the 1.5°C threshold within five years.
The UN Environment Program in its annual emissions gap report, published last October, said government commitments were only a third of what was needed. Continue reading Climate clippings 222
I’ve just noticed that last September I followed CC 214 with CC 115. My bad.
That is according to an updated study by Stanford University professor Mark Jacobson and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley and Aalborg University in Denmark summarised by Giles Parkinson.
On the 13th of January this year the following message was texted out to mobile phones in Hawaii:
“BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”
It was a mistake, someone had hit the wrong button. The impact was considerable. Children were helped into a drain and there was panic in paradise. Continue reading Saturday salon 10/2
Last Monday the ‘cosmic ray’ theory of climate change struck again when Amanda Vanstone at ABC RN’s Counterpoint found:
It has been a standard myth, debunked at Climate Skeptic. Now Svensmark and others have conducted new research published in Nature, which got this billing at Science News:
