Hi Plant,

Thank you for confirming my assertion above :)

Belly,

Applying my crude 'max-max/min-min' criterion over this past week, it has cracked out at about even - just as many 'highest maximums' over this last twelve years as 'lowest minimums'.

During the week, an article was published detailing how General Electric is pocketing hundreds of millions in subsidies from the federal government for developing wind-farms.

But isn't that how it's going to work ? That if capitalism can make a buck out of clean energy, then they will push it for all it's worth ? If pubic hair was worth as much as gold, some capitalist firm or other would develop pharmaceuticals to grow the stuff by the bag-load, as my Grandma used to say. They would probably put it in our water ;)

Cheers,

Joe

Tell me again why GW is a bad thing. I forget. Can you list the reasons so I can understand them please.

Hi Jayb,

I think the worry is that Tasmanian winters might be four degrees warmer in a hundred years, and that any buildings built on Australian shorelines now will be a foot closer to being underwater by then. As well, rainfall across the north will dramatically increase, changing soil profiles and river hydrology.

Pretty scary stuff :(

Cheers, Joe

Loudmouth: think the worry is that Tasmanian winters might be four degrees warmer in a hundred years, and that any buildings built on Australian shorelines now will be a foot closer to being underwater by then. As well, rainfall across the north will dramatically increase, changing soil profiles and river hydrology.

Tassie winters, Well that would be great for Taswegians wouldn't it. Ditch the big woolly coat for another 4 weeks a year.
Aussie shorelines, under water by a foot. Well that'll only worry the millionaires on the Gold Coast. Although we might lose about 100 metres in the Gulf, but that would be good for the mangroves & the fish.
Northern rain & soil profiles. No I don't think so. The north’s used to heavy rains every year anyway.
River Hydrology, Hmm, more water for the interior. You can grow anything on the Black Soil Plain. So that would be a good thing.

Well so far I don't see any downside at all. Except for the milionaires on the Gold Coast. Is this what this is all about?

Hi Plant,

"Thank you for confirming my assertion above :)

Joe, you know its not that simple.

JayB......The climate will always change, its just the programs this planets has for all life, and not just us. We are the only species that pumps new chemicals into what has been balanced for 100's of billions/millions of years......and our numbers ( IMO )...is cutting our time short.

Joe...I see a spade as a spade, Iam probably the last of my kind, and with that, the hunt for the dollar is just not worth it. I have NO delusions of what I can see, and you know what they did to Jesus Christ as the books tell us. Humans are not as smart as they think they are, and just to pull as much lies as we do, will mean our lives do hang in the balance by our own doings.

The clock is still ticking for all on this planet, but in the end..............the planet wins.

As soon as we understand this, the longer we live.

Its just not the trees that are dieing, its all things that matters to all of us. The world economies that we made with our brilliance's, are now warning us.....and the answer is so simple......NO MORE BABIES for just ten years, and that gap alone will see that we can control our own destinies, and that will prove we are the smart apes after all:)....if not:).....all we are doing, is just gambling with everything we don't understand.

7 billion stories and counting.

cc

Hi Plant,

As a sort-of-Marxist, I have confidence in the genius of seven billion people, that they are neither puppets, nor merely a burden on the earth: between them, they will come up with something.

But in the meantime ('the trees are dieing' ?!), take a trip out to your nearest national park - are the trees really dying ? Or is that just rhetoric for the Leichhardt soy-lite-latte set, with barely a tree in sight ?

There is an article in today's paper which might be right up your alley, on Japan's imminent population decline: women are getting far better educated, and bucking the cultural dictats that have, for thousands of years, submitted them to hard labour and many children (isn't culture wonderful ?). The Japanese replacement rate is negative and at current rates, they could all die out in barely a few hundred years, after living extra-long lives. Perhaps in a shorter time, if the Fukushima reactor blows. That should brighten your day.

No, I don't subscribe to the reactionary notion that people are nothing but a burden on the earth (from which analysis I presume you except yourself ?) I'm confident that the strengthening of women's rights, and particularly their higher education opportunities, all around the world, will have the effect of cutting birth-rates back to replacement rate and below.

If that happens, populations may peak in a few decades, then very slowly decline, perhaps at 0.1 % p.a., i.e. 2-3% per generation, or maybe 8-9 % in one's lifetime.

So the current seven billion may grow to eight or nine billion, before higher levels of education for women kick in, birth-rates fall, and the population drops back a billion or so every century.

Well, that's the theory :)

Cheers,

Joe