As linked by zoot on the last CC, pathogens are emerging as the permafrost melts, some capable of becoming active after long periods of time, even millions of years. There has been one case of anthrax becoming active after being frozen in a dead reindeer for 75 years. Continue reading Climate clippings 206
Turnbull met Trump on the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid with smiles all around.
“We had a great call,” Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Trump said the US had a “fantastic” relationship with Australia.
“I love Australia. I always have,” he said.
“Greg Norman is here today, a friend of ours. We have a lot of friends here tonight.”
Andrew Norton from the Grattan Institute says the modest university ‘reforms’ signalled for the budget will entrench the status quo, and will affect universities more than students.
George Morgan says the universities are drifting to mediocrity, and these cuts will not help.
The headline figure is a saving of $2.8 billion over the forward estimates, and a 7.5% increase in student fees over the period. Total Commonwealth Government payments to universities over the next four years amount to of $74bn, so the impact of this $2.8bn reform package is less than 4% of the revenues to universities from taxpayers and students, according to Simon Birmingham. Continue reading University funding: drifting to mediocrity?
Phillip Adams recently talked to Laura Tingle about her Monthly Essay Wicked Problems: What are the real reasons behind the rise and stall of Malcolm Turnbull? (locked content). Turnbull has aged 10 years in the last 20 months. He feels the weight of the whole government’s fortunes on his shoulders and does not get enough sleep.
He has lost his sharp tongue and tendency to anger, but has become a transactional politician, chair of the committee. He became prime minister and maintains continued support simply because he is not Tony Abbott.
Recently he has resolved a number of issues which have dogged the government since the horror budget of 2014, but will it add up to a narrative that changes his party’s electoral fortunes? In the latest education changes Simon Birmingham may have become the “fixer” Christopher Pyne claimed to be and may have neutralised one of Labor’s strengths, by stealing Gonski. Continue reading Gonski 2.0: will it help the Turnbull government?
Blessed be the poor sounds like a quote from the Bible, but it’s not. I just liked it as a title.
Many say that the old divisions between left and right, and of social class, are no longer valid. These divisions are not as clear-cut as they once were. However, it is undoubtedly true that while some are wealthy enough to go anywhere and do what they please, at the other end of the wealth scale some are stuck in a place and struggle daily with finding the basic needs of shelter and sustenance.
During the first quarter of a century after World War II Western society generally achieved for the first time in history a situation where most households could own a car and take an annual holiday of several weeks on pay. Tony Judt in his Postwar: a History of Europe Since 1945 tells how German per capita GDP from 1950 to 1973 more than tripled in real terms. In France it improved by 150%, while Italy, from a low base, did even better. In Britain in 1957, PM Harold Macmillan told the people:
“Let us be frank about it: most of our people have never had it so good.”
The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has come out with their monthly and seasonal climate outlook for May-June. This is May rain:
Yassmin Abdel-Magied found out that speech in Australia is not free if the political right do not agree with what you say, or when you choose to say it. She does some part-time work for the ABC, so it was front page on the Daily Tele and:
Acting PM Barnaby Joyce said the ABC should take “further action” against Abdel-Magied. The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has labelled her a “disgrace”, Senator Eriz Abetz called her comments “reprehensible” while Liberal MP George Christensen called for her to be sacked, adding that “self-deportation should also be considered”.
What did she do to deserve this? Continue reading Saturday salon 29/4
The Climate Council issued a report on the future of gas-fired electricity just after Easter – Pollution and Price: The Cost of Investing in Gas.
Gas is often thought of as a ‘transition fuel’ from coal to renewables. Their advice is clear:
And:
Moreover, we should leave most of our gas reserves in the ground. Continue reading Gas has got to go
I think I ignored Anzac Day last year, on the blog, that is. I think I grew up as patriotic as the rest of the community, despite being embedded in a community of ‘German’ farmers, who were mostly third generation Australians. Anyway their services were definitely not required even in the Second World War. Indeed I understand that my father may have been involved in some Dad’s Army type exercises in case of a Japanese invasion. But when the authorities discovered there were Germans involved, that was the end of that.
However, apart from those of German origin very few Australian families escaped losing relatives on the battlefields of northern France and Flanders, our extended family by marriage amongst them.
The Australian War Memorial frames Passchendaele as an almost universal experience where in a concentrated area in three and a half months around a million and a half men experienced war. Total casualties are estimated at about 275,000 British and Commonwealth and about 200,000 German. All for a gain of 8 kilometres in the line, which was later given up. Continue reading The Battle of Passchendaele
In the comments thread of the post Is methane hydrate out-gassing going to kill us all? BilB linked to an article The Global Impacts of Rapidly Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice by Peter Wadhams, who is professor emeritus of ocean physics at Cambridge University, a sea ice specialist with 46 years of research on sea ice and ocean processes in the Arctic and Antarctic with more than 50 expeditions to both polar regions under his belt.
He worries about what is happening in the Arctic, and after revisiting my post Reconciling estimates of climate sensitivity, I worry too. Not so much about the extinction of the human race, or about abrupt catastrophic climate change, rather how the earth system is going to end up in the long term after we extract much of carbon sediments deposited over hundreds of millions of years and inject them back into the atmosphere within the space of about a century. Continue reading Climate change and the Arctic: we should worry
She didn’t need to, so why did she, especially after promising absolutely definitely that she wouldn’t?
Given a lead of about 20% in the polls, she possibly sees a chance of decimating Labour and governing virtually as a one-party state for the next five years.
However, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight warns that the British polls are basically not worth a cracker. Their abysmal performance translates into a margin of error of 13 to 15%. Continue reading Saturday salon 22/4
Recently we’ve linked to a couple of scary posts, ie. The Methane Threat and Warning of mass extinction of species, including humans, within one decade, both at the Arctic News blog.
This is alarming to say the least.
The first thing I did was look up the Climate Plus archives tag for Methane. Continue reading Is methane hydrate out-gassing going to kill us all?
