climate change

Penguin masks and earth hour

Posted by hil

penguin masks

These penguin masks, being worn outside the UN Framework of Climate Change Conference in Bali last November, interested me because I liked the way the coarse gauze was so effective, while not hiding the faces. The photo is taken from our newspaper at the time, via Associated Press.

I’ve always thought a cool way of making a penguin character would be to have a head mask, but then wear a tuxedo as the rest of the costume, letting people make the penguin suit connection themselves. However no-one has ever taken me up on the suggestion!

We turned our lights off for Earth Hour tonight. It was a beautiful clear starry night.

FlickrFan for funerals?

Posted by hil

These days images are often shown at funerals. It is usually grainy old family photos looping on a roll-down portable screen. Imagine, instead, the church having a HDTV, and that you can stream chosen image feeds to it from your computer. If family and friends wanted to, they could contribute feeds that would become part of the source material for the screen display. This is one great use I can see for Dave Winer’s new product,  FlickrFan.

Used in a more private setting, its easy to see it being useful for family photo viewing and so on. I have reservations about it being used as a way to provide an ambience in one’s living room. I find image (and especially moving image) too arresting to treat as part of the background in a social situation, unless I’m inured to the footage. So it might either highjack conversation, or at the other extreme become like muzak. I also worry if it will be pitched by some as a great solution to having an acre of black flat screen in your lounge.  I think those big flat screens chew up a lot of energy, and to have them running a screen saver all the time only increases the energy usage. As far as the planet is concerned we have to be learning to turn things off more, rather than keeping them on in the background.

Walk against warming

Posted by hil

null

The Walk against Warming on Sunday drew about 9000 people in Canberra. It felt substantially bigger than last year. As yet neither of the major parties are addressing the issue with the seriousness it deserves, which has surprised me in a way. I thought it might be the clincher issue for a Labor victory. The tubeman above was at the side of the crowd, encouraging us to keep industrial relations rights in mind when we vote. This puppet was perhaps, but not conclusively, a John Howard?

I had some fun looking at Flickr for other WaW puppets. By far the most interesting to me were four big puppets at the Adelaide walk: Al Gore, Albert Einstein, Vandana Shiva, and Mikhail Gorbachev. I’d like to know who made them. Here is a selection of others:

Countering the swindle

Posted by hil

Sharpe

(Illustration credit: Ian Sharpe, Canberra Times)

Michael had an opinion piece about the Great Global Warming Swindle film published in the Canberra Times.

CSIROpod also has a podcast interview with him; here is a direct link.

Climate change is a tragedy of the commons

Posted by hil

World Unity is crucial to the climate: Michael’s article on climate change as an archetypal tragedy of the commons is in The Age today. Read it – its good stuff!

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)

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)

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.