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The Forum > Article Comments > Poor countries' media must tackle climate change > Comments

Poor countries' media must tackle climate change : Comments

By James Fahn, published 24/9/2008

Climate change reporting in developing countries is woefully inadequate because too often editors and writers lack expertise.

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Perhaps the uncomfortable truth that no-one likes to admit is that many Asian countries have too great a population relative to their resource base. For example China's annual 2.5 billion tonne coal consumption is 10 times Australia's world leading exports. If as predicted that coal production cannot be sustained for much longer then China's economic boom may disappoint those with high expectations. Even in the west NGOs like the World Bank suggest a country like Bangladesh is 'entitled' to greater emissions if it wants to catch up. I'd ask why is Bangladesh 'entitled' to 150m population and not 15m perhaps more in line with its resources? Sea level rise, unstable rainfall patterns and depletion of all fossil fuels sooner than we expect is going to set off a huge international blame game.
Posted by Taswegian, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 8:53:20 AM
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I suspect you mean Man Made Climate Change reporting is inadequate, as opposed to Natural Climate Change reporting, the type that's been going on for billions of years. Not a lot of mileage or attention in reporting things are normal, climate change that is, and the natural cycle is continuing?

Is it fair to say that you're in the business of training folks to be able to alarm others more efficiently? So this is, like a sales pitch? You're complaining there is not enough hysteria, so more folks need to be trained in places where it is thin, so we should pay you to do it? Or do you want rational debate, I doubt it, you've already stated what you want reported. I'm probably going to be sprayed with sewerage now by some of the extreme folks who believe religously in the AGW thing.

I think we can always clean up our act somewhat and not pollute as much, which is what your example in China is about. But I don't buy into the AGW arguments, nor the hysterical or somewhat questionable manner (e.g. Al Gore's powerpoint film) in which it is portrayed. I saw all the previous scare's during the last 40 years, and have read about scares going back thousands of years - you know, back then, they stoned false prophets - that would make things a little more serious wouldn't it - if you were held to account for what you reported. If you weren't able to be objective and were part of the story, causing panic, would you agree to be accountable if what you're reporting is deemed later to be spurious and damaging?
Posted by rpg, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 9:31:52 AM
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rpg: "some of the extreme folks who believe religously in the AGW thing" [sic]

I don't labelling the following peak science organisations of the world as "extreme" and "religious" (the same sort of language used by the Flat Earth Society against mainstream science) lends much to your credibility:

NASA, CSIRO, The InterAcademy Council, the national science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, National Research Council (US), European Science Foundation, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Federation of American Scientists, World Meteorological Organization, Royal Meteorological Society (UK), Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, International Union for Quaternary Research, Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London, International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, International Union of Geological Sciences, European Geosciences Union, Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences, Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union, American Astronomical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, American Chemical Society, Engineers Australia (The Institution of Engineers Australia), Federal Climate Change Science Program (US), American Statistical Association, International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, American Association of State Climatologists, The Network of African Science Academies, The Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Posted by Sams, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 9:46:45 AM
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I agree sams....AGW deniers will graps at any straw they can find, and casting doubt on the scientific community just because they don't agree with them, does a lot of harm to their credibility...if they have any left.

Unfortunately our own media lack the scientific expertise to properly evaluate the deniers' claims and often get seduced by the thought of a quick story aimed at sounding sensational and grabbing readers. It's not only developing countries media that has a problem.
Posted by Phil Matimein, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 10:21:36 AM
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Does anyone know a good bookie that will take bets on climate change?

Sure the climate has changed, but I doubt extremely strongly that it is man made, for the simple reason that this planets climate has changed in the past without the influence of man.

So the changes that are occuring are part of the natural cycle of this planet.

So any attempts by mankind to try and prevent it will be as effective as trying to turn back a hurricane.
Posted by JamesH, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 11:32:49 AM
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JamesH. Just because natural climate change exists, does not mean that pumping large amounts of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gasses *dos not* have an impact.
Looking at our climate history also tells us that disaster is inevitable (Dino-killer, super-volcano, etc) and humans have a very small window to learn to live in space, or at least not spoil our cradle. Assuming "not in my lifetime" is an extinction strategy that appeals to nillhists and religious folk. (No responsibility in this life, all part of Gods plan!)
Also, yes there was a "global cooling" fear based on the natural ice ages and interglacials. There is even a chance that we have avoided an ice age by releasing all the stored carbon. This is confusing for the non-scientist (Complete opposites predicted) and does not necessarily make it a good thing! At besst it is a dangerous, destructive experiment, at worst it will bring on some *very* rapid changes that will be extremely painful and deadly.
As someone who has been reading about the science for the last 15 years, there was healthy skepticism from the scientific community, not to mention career pressure from funding sources *not* to come to the conclusion they have. (public funding of research is dismal, private sources have assets to protect) It is because the evidence (and there is a lot of extremely detailed evidence from different sources) no longer allows any other conclusion. In short: science has come to a consensus in a scientific manner. Lately they have even been allowed to publish results in the middle zone, whereas previously only the most conservative ("safe") results were publishable.
It is the deniers that are practicing political bias and/or ignorance of the real science.
I personally believe we have already passed the tipping point socio-economically if not physically. To prosper through the inevitable weather turmoil we must start living smart instead of allowing Bankers and Clerics to set government policy. Homo Sapiens? Yeh right!
Posted by Ozandy, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 12:14:01 PM
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I like what ‘rpg’ said about the perfectly natural process of climate change. We have to adapt to the present change and, if it changes again while the planet is still populated, there will have to be more adapting.

Sams doesn’t believe in adapting; he merely pulls out THE LIST. Perhaps he thinks reproducing it is going have some effect. He drags it out every time climate change is mentioned. I suppose it fits in with the black magic ‘fix’ of the Rudd Government.

Our media is interested only in hysterical scare campaigns; they never mention the scientists who rebuff the man-made-nasty-emissions theory of climate change. We are in no position to concern ourselves with the Third World media.

Our know-nothing politicians of all persuasions have grabbed the man-made theory in panic; but the the current annual intake of immigrants is to be 190,000, while almost half a million home-grown characters sit on their backsides getting the dole.

We are going to pay more for everything with no effect on the natural phenomena of climate change if politicians continue to listen to the ‘consensus’ of scientists looking to get their hands on our money via ignorant politicians.

The Rudd Government’s determination to increase the previous Government’s already too-high immigration intake proves that they don’t know what they are doing.
Posted by Mr. Right, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 12:21:08 PM
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I don't propose to slog my way through the whole of Sam's list but just a couple of the names caught my eye.

While there are undoubtedly significant elements in NASA who buy the whole story, I don't agree that NASA as an organisation has said, or is able to say, that they have a view this way or that. But more importantly, the Russian Academy of Science (which is on the list) has just recently come out specifically saying the IPCC has got it wrong. This is after they had advised Putin a year or two back not to sign Kyoto because it was all rubbish.

I suspect if we went through the whole list we'd find quite a few similar examples. Often these lists are put together using the criteria that if the group doesn't specifically say that AGW is a load of bollocks then they are counted as being on side.
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 1:22:36 PM
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It seems that the developing world is poorer for not having expert journalists like those telling us that the debate is over.

Well given that there remains significant research into idea that the sun is the possible (likely?) cause of all recent and past warming I wonder how one can say the debate is over. And given that over 9000 PhD's have signed up to partitions saying that CO2 isn't the culprit then I wonder what level of expertise is required to say there is no debate.

Perhaps the poor countries are to be envied for their lack of such expert journalists.
Posted by mhaze, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 1:28:24 PM
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James, perhaps they don't report this stuff to your satisfaction, because they are actually journalists, you know ones who report the facts.

Perhaps they were not trained in our great journalist factories, run by, & for the "B" grade academics who inhabit such places.

Perhaps they weren't trained to pick up every press release, issued by some ministerial adviser, an NGO spokesperson, or an academic, & handle it with the reverence due to these words of god. I suppose its even possible that they actually wright their own stories.

They may even think for themselves. Something that is most definately missing in the mothers club, our ABC has become, these days. They might even expect some reasonable proof, to back these press releases.

It's quite possible, really. After all, not many of them were unlucky enough to have been "educated" in the Queensland system. You know the one, it actually achieved better results than the NT one.

That shouldn't be too hard, half the NT pupils don't bother to attend school, or so our journalists tell me. Wait a minute, perhaps those NT non students smarter than we thought, just like these "poor country" journalists.
Posted by Hasbeen, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 1:49:43 PM
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I agree with rpg and JamesH. I give the CO2 alarmists 5 years at most and the whole human induced climate change thing will fall into a heap much like the millenium bug did.
Posted by Sniggid, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 1:55:33 PM
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Sams - you quote me out of context, I said "I'm probably going to be sprayed with sewerage now by some of the extreme folks who believe religously in the AGW thing."

Which is exactly what happened isn't it? By yourself and Phil Matimein, and that's OK, I can deal with folks having a different opinion.

So I didn't label any of your favorite list anything - I merely stated what I see as the usual response of NCC (Natural Climate Change) deniers, like yourself to anyone with a different point of view.
Posted by rpg, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 2:14:37 PM
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This discussion gives me the opportunity to thank Andrew S for his interesting comment on my ‘One hundred years of drought and flooding rains’ article (the last comment at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7865 ). It is useful to know that the ‘support’ that puts the Institution of Engineers on Sams’s list ‘is by no means by popular vote or peer review amongst the members ... [but] has been unilaterally forced upon [them] by the management team.’ I know that this is also true of some of the other bodies on the list.

A minor point on the first comment on this article - the World Bank is not an NGO (non-governmental organisation), but an intergovernmental organisation. And of course the IPCC is also an intergovernmental organisation - or, strictly speaking, a subsidiary of two intergovernmental organisations
Posted by IanC, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 2:16:19 PM
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Mr. Right: "Sams doesn’t believe in adapting; he merely pulls out THE LIST. Perhaps he thinks reproducing it is going have some effect. He drags it out every time climate change is mentioned."

The list will indeed be "dragged out" each time someone drags out the same old tedious propaganda that there is no consensus on anthropomorphic climate change, or that it is a "religious" or "extremist" view. It is both accurate and appropriate, and saves time quashing the dogma.

mhaze: "I don't agree that NASA as an organisation has said, or is able to say, that they have a view this way or that."

I think it is pretty clear:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/ ... "'Global warming stopped in 1998,' has become a recent mantra of those who wish to deny the reality of human-caused global warming. The continued rapid increase of the five-year running mean temperature exposes this assertion as nonsense"

mhaze: "But more importantly, the Russian Academy of Science (which is on the list) has just recently come out specifically saying the IPCC has got it wrong."

If you could just link to their official statement then? In June 2008, the national science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, *Russia*, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed this joint declaration support the findings of the IPCC:

http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/climatechangestatement.pdf
Posted by Sams, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 2:42:19 PM
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Human Capital (and Social Capital protection) is neglected by business and government agenties world-wide. They create the "knowledge and capacity gaps" which result in a dis-empowerment of people living in communities (stuck) with poor resources.

While I was on assignment in Vietnam I found the traditional services in Primary Health, Agriculture and Education at village levels highly in tune with what is needed to emancipate and sustiain well-being. Vietnam is a perfect example because the nation's people, particulary in the south have the most innovative, creative energy and enthusiaism (compared to many other places I have been) on the planet.

So I agree James Fahn, There are millions of people with knowledge and a wealth of potential journalists out there eager.... 'It's time to help them.'

"There are plenty of ways to assist... New media organisations can be established to focus specifically on climate change and its impacts, particularly using digital platforms. Working journalists can be trained", and senior editors need to be better persuaded, to improve their coverage."

For example, below is a link Mohammad Ziaul Ahsan, someone I know from Bangladesh. He has some Law studies behind him and a wealth of inspiration and knowledge yet... he struggles to put his energy into productive areas where he can influence and draw a wage. There is just no proper framework, serious follow through except through training opportunies in some areas indirectly funded by NGO agencies associated with the UN.... but nothing after that.

http://profiles.takingitglobal.org/osduy

It is my view that the West has alot to learn from the under-developed world and in terms of capacity, we need to get the energy of administrative business and governemnts to focus from the ground-up. It is a systemic cultural problem in many parts of the world, be it in the developed or developing regions.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Posted by miacat, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 2:48:58 PM
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A good article and a new perspective. Unfortunately as some replies here show, there's no point having an informed and literate community when willful ignorance is rife.

Environmental awareness in the developing world is sorely needed. Witness the unconstrained development taking place in sensitive areas in much of South America (unauthorised logging and clearing of land), Asia (industrial development with no allowance made for the health of nearby residents), India (where nuclear plants leak and waste is unchecked), and so on. Lack of environmental awareness is a large problem and reflects the level of education generally.

The era of treating your surroundings like a giant magic pudding are over, peoples.

In Australia and much of the developed west where general awareness of environmental issues is strong, we can afford the luxury of supporting a degree of ignorance in the community - OLO being a good example.
Posted by bennie, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 3:40:14 PM
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Sams, seems only able to deliver the subconscious message of “simply believe, and it will be so” with his lists that indicate only man vs message and never the message vs evidence. What this attitude creates is nothing more than a cultural codification of ancient magical thinking where it becomes a heresy to ask for evidence. Evidence simply becomes irrelevant, meaning that something like water vapour coming from a cooling tower gets exaggerated in the media as CO2 emissions to scare the Oz public. This is such a serious issue and if there is no evidence then it is a giant hoax and if evidence is falsified it is fraud.

AGWers cannot concentrate on the message vs evidence because there is NO evidence. Our legal system can only work on evidence and just about everything else works this way because we live our lives continually immersed in cause and effect situations.
Posted by Keiran, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 4:33:32 PM
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It's about more than CO2 Keiran, but if you're interested to see when CO2 levels began rising you can correlate it to humans starting to burn fossil fuels as part of the industrial revolution. The rise is far greater than any other rise in the last 800,000 years or so.

Check out the data from Arctic ice-cores

http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/Closer_Look/index.html

It's pretty clear that we are experiencing a very dramatic increase that started at around 1800. No science is perfect, but the evidence certainly points to a large human contribution to this.

Our CO2 emmissions and our reduction of the forests of the world, which help maintain the balance, has now got to the point where the artic ocean is warming (it is far more sensitive than the Antarctic, but if you check Antarctic ice-cover you will see that it is already reducing early and is well below average) and this is releasing trapped methane from the sea-floor that is bubbling to the surface in numerous places throughout the arctic. So, the argument about who made the CO2 is becoming irrelevant, as it is pretty likley that the warming of the arctic will now continue under its own steam (thanks to us).

To stand up and say it wasn't us, flies in the face of when the CO2 rise started, the sources of CO2 that have existed only after the industrial revolution and the increasing use of fossil fuels, the reduction of natural CO2 sinks such as forests, and what we know about how CO2 contributes to the warming of the atmosphere, is like someone being caught red-handed with stolen gear and saying "it's got nothing to do with me, yer Honour."
Posted by Phil Matimein, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 4:59:04 PM
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Clearly it isn't enough to simply measure and then report the increasing polar temperatures, Keiran. When saying there's no evidence are you referring to some accepted source or are you playing troll?

Sams included authoritative links to support his post. Try it sometime!
Posted by bennie, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 5:04:46 PM
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Bloodly good point Bennie. "Environmental awareness in the developing world is sorely needed....". (agree...)

I found however that environmental issues around forest milling and similar industries are exactly like the illegal drug trade when you consider who gains what....

Timber for example is a capitalistic industry. The workers on the other hand are often as vunerable as those poor farmers caught-up in harvesting opium... These farmers are not the owners and work for less than adequate wages, in usually poor work conditions just to feed "whole" families and sometimes "whole" extended families.

I find the business cultures - owners of the resource assets, do in the developing world exactly as they do world-wide.

Worse is the multi-national companies with permission of the host governments DO get away with this. Money is worth more than humanity, and idea's of sustainablity is more often reduced to subsistance at household village productive levels, which more often rest on organic farming methods.

Look at us, ourselves. Look at the problems in fertiser sales, a corrupt market place that our farming industries along side many others trade in regardless of the equity issues that make it in some cases illegal. (ie: People starve while we eat!)

Consider the plight of the Sarahawi people in the Western Sahara. ie: the refugue camp at Tindorf where even water is trucked in by the UN.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THIS?

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Saharawi&btnG=Google+Search&meta=

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=Saharawi+Fetilisers&btnG=Search&meta=

and I have the odd link on miacat.com.

My point, imagine "trying" to ask our Australian National Party and the Liberals to "care" enough, to help find a real strategy to CLEAN-UP THIS MARKET MESS?

A crux problem, our dinner-table is so obviously more important than those living in the refuge camps that we avoid finding a better solution... one that might benefit the owner's of the resource rather than leaving them completely in excile.

Until business, farmers and governments unite... and recognise that 'Every act of corruption is a deliberate act by someone in a position of authority'... you and me and others must just persist with the global citizen calls.

http://www.miacat.com/
.
Posted by miacat, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 7:18:10 PM
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Now that global cooling and global warming seems to be dead we can probably congratulate ourselves here in Australia that we have made such a huge impact. Sam's list is one of 'scientist' whose careers depend upon towing the line (similar to the flat earthers).
Posted by runner, Wednesday, 24 September 2008 10:32:53 PM
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IanC, thankyou for your valued contribution - can we now move on?
Posted by Q&A, Thursday, 25 September 2008 12:07:01 AM
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Journalists reporting facts?

since when?

In fact many journalists are just like a (to modify a quote) a school of fish, they have a tendency to, as a group follow one and other, until one notices something different, then they will swim off in the direction that that fish(journalist) took.

The aim of journalism is to make money and they do this by modifying stories and playing of the biases and prejudices of their sheep (readers).

Journalist(most) just regurgitate information given to them, without any indepth investigation.
Posted by JamesH, Thursday, 25 September 2008 11:09:04 AM
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Sam,
GISS is not NASA. That GISS endorses the warming story is hardly a surprise. Run by Hansen, they could hardly do otherwise. They are committed to the cause and the cause isn't necessarily the facts. But GISS is a division of NASA and can't talk for NASA. It would be the equivilent of saying Sydney University accepts creationism because the religious faculty does.

I suspect many of those on your list are in a similar vein. Someone or some part of a body makes the right noises and the entire group goes into the 'true believer' column.

As to the Russian Academy of Science your can look here...
http://www.russia-ic.com/education_science/science/breakthrough/709/

or if your read Russian...
http://nkj.ru/news/12622
Posted by mhaze, Thursday, 25 September 2008 4:07:18 PM
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Thank you for an excellent article James Fahn. People in developing nations need to be better informed on climate change, for those who are denied knowledge, are a danger to society.

These people need to understand that anthropogenic carbon emissions have desecrated their oceans, their lands, their air and their health.

What is intriguing in the developed world is the mindset of deniers where there appears to be consensus on:

A: Global warming is not man-made

B: Pollution is man-made

Therefore, deniers would agree that their perceived strategies for A & B would be:

A: Do nothing - business as usual

B: Mitigate pollution. Strategy to mitigate pollution: Reduce A/carbon emissions.

Am I missing something here?
Posted by dickie, Thursday, 25 September 2008 5:05:16 PM
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mhaze: "As to the Russian Academy of Science your can look here...
http://www.russia-ic.com/education_science/science/breakthrough/709/"

So you can't link to any official statement. This media piece of little known provenance pre-dates the signing of the declaration of support for the IPCC findings by the Russian Academy of Science, so that kind of blows it out of the water.

mhaze: "GISS is not NASA."

It is the one of the main parts of NASA relevant to atmospheric science.

mhaze: "I suspect many of those on your list are in a similar vein."

Vague suspicions are no substitute for fact. Most of the other organisations have explicitly signed declarations in support of the IPCC. You are just trying to pick the weakest case and apply it to everything. However, there is in fact there is plenty of support for IPCC, human-caused climate change, etc. in all NASA areas, including the Langley and Goddard research centres, as would be apparent to anybody that actually made the slight effort to go and look. For example, Google:

ipcc site:larc.nasa.gov

and evidence abounds.
Posted by Sams, Thursday, 25 September 2008 6:03:52 PM
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James, do you really think that climate change reporting in developing countries is woefully inadequate because too often editors and writers lack expertise ? I would of thought that they are more in tune with their climates environment than the protected western species sheltered in their air conditioned crčche,office,car,and house therefore stuck in a climate controlled psycho dilemma wanting a spring clean to clear out the cobwebs and stale human condition called boredom while confined in an insipidly constantly stifling,socially regulated catch 22 degrees.I could understand why being locked up for so long would deny western intelligence a few degrees of personal pleasure in feeling the natural changing weather and its effect on human emotions which run hot and cold as natural change occurs daily let alone over a longer period.
Posted by Dallas, Friday, 26 September 2008 3:09:29 AM
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Dallas: "stuck in a climate controlled psycho dilemma"

Luckily we don't have aircon, I don't drive a car, and I work from home surrounded by bushland, so hopefully I have escaped the "psyco dilemma", although I did see some rabid looking wallabies :-)

Dallas: "wanting a spring clean to clear out the cobwebs and stale human condition called boredom"

I could do with some boredom, but too many interesting things to do. My recent trip to Ethiopia was a bit too exciting.

Dallas: "while confined in an insipidly constantly stifling,socially regulated catch 22 degrees"

Er, I have a 180 degree view of the trees - does that count? If you want to see a regulated society, try out China or Ethiopia for size.
Posted by Sams, Friday, 26 September 2008 8:34:29 AM
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Happy Semisesquicentennial (minis V) anniversarius, Aunty. I heard you're having a 70 year old party.

Braccae illae virides cum subucula rosea et tunica Caledonia-quam elenganter concinnatur! - Those green pants go so well with that pink shirt and the plaid jacket!

http://www.yuni.com/library/latin_1.html

Yes, its there for LateNightLive... where Phillip Adams is serenading a complimentary performance to mark and honor the civic purpose of the media and its craft.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2008/2375407.htm

Special Guests include Panel; Paul Murray, Michael Stutchbury, Sandy Aloisi, Jonathan Holmes, Mark Davis, Margo Kingston who put backbone to what it is like to try and work between the emerging media cultures, and the barriers which adds real insight to the content in this forum, especially with editors and management.

My jump is on the costs and locations for the end user given we need power surge protectors, the technology, ISP fees, Line fees, software, all the membership fees... before we have real access or advice to news-grab or can produce/particpate from the bush....

I am proud of the ABC and with SBS... especially recently (three years) in their efforts to improve content polices and diversities.

I just wish we could get some of the billing and technical issues sorted given the demise of regional independant ownership (especially papers) due to the limited access to local forums with room for progressive focus and cross-platform debate.

A community needs to understand the media before it feels safe to openly practice..... in anything strategic thats got long-term benefit.

http://www.miacat.com/
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Posted by miacat, Saturday, 27 September 2008 2:44:55 AM
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The global warming crusaders have shot themselves in the foot!
For short term political gain, they’ve campaigned hard on the platform that “it’s all the West’s fault”.

Is there any wonder that now we are seeing senior developing world figures throw their lines back at them “global warming , its nothing to do with us!”
Having been granted the moral high ground, the developing world need do nothing–except, wait for the handouts!
Posted by Horus, Saturday, 27 September 2008 6:08:39 AM
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Horus

You state: “Having been granted the moral high ground, the developing world need do nothing–except, wait for the handouts!”

I must disagree with your perception.

Despite vital information being unavailable to people in developing countries, China, as an example, is now the 5th largest producer of wind power (and catching up fast) where by the end of this year, will see that country providing some 10 gigawatts of windpower, 30 GWs by 2010 and 100 gigawatts of windpower by 2020.

On a global scale, India is in fourth place though I predict, soon to be overtaken by China.

Spain, with a population of some 40 million provides 16 gigawatts whilst (surprisingly) the US is now considered the world's fastest growing market for wind power. Last year 5 gigawatts of new wind power were installed, and 2008 will break the record again with 8 new gigawatts under construction.

We Australians can hang our heads in shame since this country provides a miserable one gigawatt of windpower – an extremely feeble effort in reducing carbon emissions and an embarrassing one.

I am not endeavouring to mitigage the seriousness of China’s carbon emissions, however, all companies building new coal fired plants in that country, must first decommission an old one, including oil fired plants.

Therefore, one could hardly accuse developing countries of waiting for "handouts."

Since I'm not a political animal, I’m wondering what you mean by:

"For short term political gain, they’ve campaigned hard on the platform that “it’s all the West’s fault”.

How will crusaders gain politically in the short term? Please explain.
Posted by dickie, Saturday, 27 September 2008 2:50:41 PM
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Dickie,

Re China:
It was rather tricky, Dickie, that you should have tried to bum-steer me down the road to the wind farm. Since as we both (should) know that China’s core energy source is, and is likely to remain for a very long time, COAL.

In fact so enamoured are the Chinese with COAL that they are building COAL power stations at the rate of “two large power stations a week” [ source: BBC] and so proficient at COAL production are they that while that environmental -pariah nation- the USA increased CO2 production (2006-7) by only 1.4% , China did so by 9% [:source: The Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency]

Any percentage increases in production from wind farms (& solar power) sound impressive, but since it is from/on a very small base is statistically misleading, and wind is likely to remain in the realm of a small secondary … hobby farm activity.

But we shouldn’t point the finger, it’s not China’s fault .It’s the fault of all us Western’s foisting our dirty polluting industries on China [source: John Sauven, Green peace UK]

And if the Chinese would just remove that dastardly one-child-policy and get into reproducing in numbers, their per capita carbon footprint would simple fade away…[ source: :Horus]
Posted by Horus, Sunday, 28 September 2008 6:38:07 AM
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Dickie,

Re Politics:
Had you been on OLO pre-federal election 2007 you would have been surprised by the number of environmentally conscious posters bewailing our need to act now.

Had you been on the streets of any of the suburbs in Bennelong, pre-federal election 2007, you would have been charmed by Green groups handing out free ice-creams and giving you a spiel about the need to act now.

In fact almost anywhere you looked the message was the same.
The USA and Australia had made themselves -pariah nations- by holding out on Kyoto, and as the biggest producers of CO2s by volume, and by per capita, respectively, they had to be roped into line.

But now that election has passed and a more ‘enlightened’ govt have been elected
And now China is the No.1 producer of CO2s and India is not far behind . But the environmentally conscious mob while still around are somewhat subdued.[ Is it just my imagination or were the bulk of them using environmental issues as a flagellum to beat their political opponents?]

And now, when the plumbers, drainers & fitters of climate change approach the developing world re reducing pollution they are increasingly told “No, No Its nothing to do with us.We’ve read your press releases.Oh by the way , we want compensation, our island is sinking!”.
Posted by Horus, Sunday, 28 September 2008 6:50:25 AM
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Thank you Horus.
Posted by dickie, Sunday, 28 September 2008 9:36:59 AM
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