Australia & accelerating global carbon emissions

Posted by hil

Logo_gcp

A new analysis by Global Carbon Project scientists shows that carbon intensity in the world economy is increasing. While emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are accelerating worldwide, we are gaining fewer economic benefits from each tonne of fossil fuel burned. A study being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows that CO2 emissions increased by 1.1 % per year through the 1990s but the rate of increase jumped to 3 % per year in the 2000s.

In Can climate change get worse? it has The Age looks at the implications for Australia from the same data, quoting Dr
Michael Raupach (senior CSIRO scientist and co-chairman of the Global Carbon Project, who led the international research).

The Age: CO2 emissions speed up over 2000: study
AM: Carbon emissions rise at twice the world rate (audio interview and transcript)
SMH: Australia’s carbon dioxide emissions twice world rate

Update:

The CSIRO media release provides a summary of the Australian focus in Background: Australia’s CO² Emissions in the Global Context:

Australia, with 0.32 per cent of the world population, contributes 1.43 per cent of CO² emissions from fossil fuels. In a global context, and particularly in comparison with other developed regions (the USA, European Union and Japan), these emissions rank as follows:

    • Australia’s per capita emissions in 2004 were 4.5 times the global average, just below the value for the USA.
    • Australia’s carbon intensity of energy (amount of carbon burned as fossil fuel per unit of energy) is 20 per cent higher than the world average, and 25 to 30 per cent higher than values for the USA, Europe and Japan. Therefore, the energy efficiency of fossil fuel use is significantly lower in Australia than in these other developed countries.
    • Australia’s carbon intensity of GDP (amount of carbon burned as fossil fuel per dollar of wealth created) is 25 per cent higher than the world average. It is a little higher than the USA and nearly double that of Europe and Japan. Therefore, the overall carbon efficiency of the economy, per unit of fossil fuel used, is about half that for
      Europe and Japan.
    • Over the last 25 years, the average growth rate of Australian emissions was approximately twice the growth rate for world as a whole, twice the growth rate for the USA and Japan, and five times the growth rate for Europe.
    • The rate of improvement (decline) in the carbon intensity of GDP for Australia is lower than in the USA and Europe.

(Disclaimer: Michael is my husband)

Rambling

Posted by hil

Orange and blue

Not sure why I thought of this photo this morning. It was taken about 18 months ago at Middleton in South Australia, and I love the washed out summer look with the orange and blue.

I had the pleasure of having lunch with fellow Canberra blogger Ampersand Duck a couple of days ago. I really enjoyed it — thanks, AD!

That day I also picked up a copy of Northern Lights, the first in Philip Pullman‘s trilogy His Dark Materials. I’ve been intending to read it since blogging about the theatrical production which featured puppetry daemons designed by Michael Curry, and now by the news that it’s being made into a film, The Golden Compass, which has a release date at the end of this year. I’ve already dived in, and I’m finding the story engrossing.

I wonder how the daemons will be done in the film?

Bent Objects

Posted by hil

Bent

Terry at Bent Objects makes these lovely whimsical figures and scenes with wire and everyday objects. They remind me of the wire figues in Calder’s Circus, and I can imagine them being brought to life as puppetry.

Kite

(via Craft Magazine)

The Model Family

Posted by hil

Model family kit

A 1956 family in model aeroplane kit form, Guy Bottroff’s cool sculpture The Model Family, at the Helpmann Academy Graduate Exhibition in Adelaide this last March. A few more photos here.

Model family kit

That one!

Posted by hil

I want one of these hybrid electric bikes. Seriously.

Then there’s the George Bush Solar Powered Walking Chariot! The robotic rollerblading leg movement is very good.

(via Celcias)

Flying ducks again

Posted by hil

Painting

The ducks have progressed to the painting stage, and I should finish them today. When the paper mache dried fully, it somehow warped the necks and top wings slightly, so that the ducks didn’t sit flat against the wall, so I had to do a bit of surgery, making a cut in each tension point, and filling it to push the part back. I also spent quite a lot of time smoothing the surface and sanding and filing the feather shapes, as the paper mache doesn’t allow fine shaping, and dries just a little bumpy. It’s also proving tricky to get the glazed translucent look that the ceramic ducks have. I am putting a lot of hope in the final varnish!

Update:

This is how they turned out. They are for “1 in A 100”, a play about mental illness (synopsis here) written by Mary Rachel Brown, directed by Carol Woodrow, design by Imogen Keen, at Canberra’s Street Theatre in May 2007.

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Breakfast reading 5.10

Posted by hil

Murdoch turning his empire green: ‘Although some of his newspapers were once sceptical about global warming, he said that although he was no scientist, he knew how to assess a risk. “This one is clear. Climate change poses clear,
catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction,” he said.’

Diggers speak about Iraq ambush: Did anyone else see this last night? Its been covered in the papers too. It seemed like something new to me, interviewing soldiers giving accounts of their activities as if they were policeman, sportsmen or celebrity. I can’t quite work out why I found it so disquieting – anyone else feel it was inappropriate or different?

The fine print in the university endowment scheme: The Howard government proposes centralised control of universities with a view to privatisation. It has wedge politics written all over it, too. Chilling.

Blogging Was Just the Beginning: Women’s Voices are Louder Online: Chris Nolan on political commentary and feminism online. (via Doc). I hope to get to other articles in S&F Online’s Blogging Feminism issue, too.

The SMH ran true to bumbling form (when it comes to its coverage of new media) the other day with this ‘lesson’ about blogging, which conflated the opening question “Isn’t blogging just for people who are stupid and lonely?” with women bloggers, gender inequity and ambivalence in Australia! “Of the 8000 women’s blogs listed at BlogHer.org, just 96 are of Australian or New Zealand origin. By comparison Canada, a country with 36 per cent more people, lists 82 per cent more women’s blogs.” I think its silly to take membership of BlogHer as a real statistic on the ratio in Australia. I’m not listed at Blogher, for instance.

Doc, who always gets a real buzz out of flying and seeing whats below, has some wonderful photos of Greenland from the air. Check out his other sets for Scotland, the Hebrides, England and others, too.

Sam Jinks

Posted by hil

Jinks

I went to the National Portrait Gallery’s recent exhibition Truth and Likeness because it had one of Sam Jinks’ sculptures on display, one of his son as a very new baby. It’s lovely, and wonderfully detailed, but disquieting at the same time, because its larger-than-life scale acts against the usual instinct to coo over a tiny new born. I also felt an implication – something about the eyes – that this little boy, like all babies, was a secret package, a whole strong personality present in there, just waiting to emerge and be discovered by others over time. I liked that.

Sam Jinks is the artist whom Patricia Piccinini collaborated with to make some of her sculptures, such as The Young Family, but his name has been less well known in the past. It’s cool that he is now exhibiting in his own right. An exhibition of his recent work opens at the Boutwell Draper Gallery in Sydney this week, and you can see some work-in-progress making pictures at that link.

Jinks2

From previous exhibitions:
West Space Inc: 2005 photos
Sam Jinks, Distortions: review of his 2005 West Space exhibition
Carnal Knowledge: about Jinks, and how he thinks about his sculptures
J Arts Crew:: Sculpting the body

Breakfast reading 5.05

Posted by hil
  • Turnbull says IPCC report backs government position: The government asserts black is white (again). Breathtaking. Peter Garret, the Opposition Environment Minister, is not hitting back hard enough with things like this. I’m not sure why, because he is articulate and knows his stuff. On present form his predecessor, Anthony Albanese would be better. I was quite impressed with how well Albanese had a handle on global warming before he was replaced.
  • Turnbull’s hypocrisy on climate: Ian Dunlop (formerly a senior international oil, gas and coal industry executive; Chair of the Australian Coal Association in 1987-88; and the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading from 1998-2000) pulls no punches.
  • Schwarzenegger signs a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Victoria to share environmental expertise. “Sometimes if the federal government is a little slower than the states are, then we have to step up to the plate and we have to create the leadership. It is common that a lot of times the states provide the leadership and then eventually the federal government picks up with it and carries it on. So, what we are doing basically is in California we want to show the leadership and we want other states to join us in the United States, but also overseas.”
  • To treat the dead: An intriguing new theory that after a heart attack people don’t die from irreversible cell damage due to lack of oxygen, but rather from an active biochemical event triggered by the resumption of oxygen supply. The cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with
    oxygen, and triggers the death of the cell.
  • In a flat world imagination is the key: edited version of a speech by Thomas Friedman (from The New York
    Times)     to the Sydney Institute. “The world is flat – it has been flattened. We are going from a
    world of vertical silos of command and control to a world where value is created horizontally by who you connect and collaborate with… In this new flat world, there is one iron rule of business and one rule only. When The World is Flat, whatever can be done will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you.”
  • Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace: Danah Boyd (2006) looks at how and why kids use MySpace, a welcome voice of reason amid the hyped MSM coverage of MySpace following the tragedy of the Victorian girls. I like her analysis that relates it to public and private space.