Friday, October 31, 2008
Dumb Wars
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Beauty is there if you look
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Sun and Global Warming
Ive been frightening myself all week by reading "Climate Code Red: the Case for Emergency Action" by David Spratt and Phillip Sutton. On the back cover it says "This meticulously documented call-to-action reveals extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than officially indicated- and that we're almost at the point of no return" Whats really frightening is that things appear to be changing more rapidly than was predicted even as recently as last year when the IPCC Report was issued, but it is that IPCC Report which Governments like our own here in Australia are using as a guide to plan their response to Global Warming.
On the websites and Blogs that Ive been trawling all week for material for my next Blog, I frequently came across Warming Denialists who rubbish the IPCC saying its just a political body and couldnt produce anything other than whatever its masters deemed was politically correct, so they breezily dismiss its recommendations. But what is the IPCC?
The IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects and options for adaptation and mitigation. Its first Report was issued in 1990. Its assesment reports are written by hundreds of scientific experts from many fields, and represent over 40 countries. These reports are required to be Policy "Neutral" and contain no recommendations. Each report takes more than 3 years to prepare and goes through multiple stages of independent expert and government review, "the most thorough review process undertaken for any scientific assesment" acccording to Professor David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology in the school of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. So Governemnts are right to take the IPCC Report seriously - it is an important and authoritative document - except for one thing: its Five years out of date! Its out of date because it takes a year or two to do the research, another year or so to get the research published and then another three for the IPCC to scrutinise it and analyse it along with all the other material and eventually write a report that everyone agrees on. There are many environmentalists who regard this process as not only too slow but too subject to the need for consensus and compromise resulting in a report that is too weak. Hence the need for books like Climate Code Red which attempt to speed up that process.
What I was going to do was condense some of the central issues into a few blogs - but I realise now that its an impossible task- for me at least - the issues are huge and interconnected and there is much thats unresolved. Instead I submit this Introduction and link to an excellent Review in New Scientist called " Climate Change: A Review for the Perplexed
"Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors.
Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.
Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds could slow the warming or speed it up.
With so much at stake, it is right that climate science is subjected to the most intense scrutiny. What does not help is for the real issues to be muddied by discredited arguments or wild theories.
So for those who are not sure what to believe, here is our round-up of the most common climate myths and misconceptions.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Hitler and Global Warming
Maybe that's what you re thinking too, but consider these words from "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer, a book only just published that I bought on Saturday:
Monday, September 29, 2008
Pastors and Priests
Work that out!
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Climate Change denialists are so Wrong
The first thing I realized was that Climate Deniers are an extreme minority, but they make a lot of noise, make arguments that are simple and sound plausible to most of us, and thereby create an impression that there is still an argument going on about whether or not Global Warming is happening and is a threat. The trouble is most of us are not scientists, and we can easily be impressed by glib arguments and have no way of knowing if theyre really valid. The same thing happens with creationists who try to give the impression that in Science there is still room for doubt about the fact of evolution : there is none - but which of us is actually qualified to know that, for example their often repeated claim that evolution must be wrong because human and dinosaur footprints can be found together is simply not true? There are also people who still believe that the Earth is Flat - its not- but try to unravel the arguments they make! There are others who believe that "9/11" was a US Government Conspiracy- try and argue against that monstrous lie and see where you get against fanatics whose agenda is not about Truth but about being Right!
Sunday, September 21, 2008
This ones not for Everyone
I was amazed because that seemed like quite an accurate summing up of what being a Jesus Freak was all about for me and my friends back then. Particularly the bit about the radical nature of Jesus message, something I took so seriously that I renounced all my worldly ambitions and left school and home on a search for the Truth, a search for God and the Ultimate meaning of existence.
My mother described one of my mentors at the time as "the man who destroyed my son" but at that stage the story was only just beginning. The thing that got me through and stopped me from being destroyed was that more than anything I really wanted to find out "the Truth" about everything. Thats why in the end, though my journey took me deep into fundamentalist christianity, and along some embarrassing detours, in the end I came out the other side, having learned a lot, but most importantly that "The Truth" was definitely not anywhere in that direction. I think its important that I was a radical christian not a moderate one, because , to use a yachting analogy I took my religion out into the deep sea and gave it a thorough testing, whereas the moderates paddle around in the shallows where faith never gets properly tested, and the cracks and faults never get a chance to leak. So I still have a kind of respect for Fundamentalists of any kind because they at least have the courage of their convictions and are prepared to let the radical beliefs of their religion correspond to radical action in their lives. In that, they have integrity.
The problem is that all religious explanations fail, especially once they moving away from a vague sort of mystical view about the human spirit and start filling in details like which kind of animal you can eat and what should be done with the foreskin or facial hair, or womens clothing. The crazy thing is that every religion, every variety and subset and sect of every religion proudly declares that everyone elses silly rules are all wrong but their ones are right. Dont drink that tea! Cover your face! No Blood transfusion! All these ridiculous stories, apalling rules and silly rituals make religion look as if its really about people - and particularly men - controlling other people - particularly women - but also gays and everyone else who's not in the In Crowd- and the reason it looks like that is because thats exactly what it is. No sensible Creator would be bothered with all that nonsense. Or ask us to believe it as a sign of devotion to "It"
So believers lose my respect however in their abandonement of that greater search for Truth, preferring dogma and blind allegiance to one narrow explanation of reality over the continuing quest for knowledge. These are people who are not interested in the Truth but in being right. And they'll argue and even fight and kill to prove it. Hence the mess the world is in today. And its not just war, its the whole failure of much of humankind to turn away from blind faith and look for a greater vision, maybe one with fewer answers but at least more compassion and tolerance and understanding.
But back to the man I sent to Prison for six years. The ironic connection between him and being a jesus freak, is that one of the Big Problems I eventually could not reconcile with christian religion was the problem of sufferring, the Problem of Pain as the CS Lewis' book that I read called it. I'm afraid the scenario I often saw in my mind was an innocent child being abused,raped or sodomised behind closed doors and happening right now - yes actually right now at this very moment as you are reading this, there are countless hundreds, maybe thousands of little girls and boys being abused in this way, raped and abused - and the Christian God supposedly all knowing and powerful watching this horror and doing nothing. I always said that if it was in my power to do something I would, I could not stand by like the christian God who acording to christian apologists is making a stand on some principle of individual liberty and the price of free will and doing nothing - if I had the power I would stop it.
The thing is about a year ago I did exactly that to a man on a Sydney street. He was exposing himself and physically sexually molesting a 5 year old girl and I leaped out of the car and stopped him. I took his wallet off him and dragged him down to a house and called the Police. And he's been behind bars ever since, and was sentenced last month to 6 years. And while Ive been thinking about this whole tragic scenario it occurred to me that the christian god didnt just abandon the little girl - he abandoned that poor damaged abuser, probably also a victim himself. And I also wondered why anyone can believe that god chose not to create a world where such things never happened , where sexual urges were not so violent and difficult to control or subject to corruption, a world where innocent children at least were safe from this ghastly fault in the human makeup. Its not that impossible to imagine we could have been made a little differently- after all humans dont have the ability to hear sounds that dogs can hear, so if hearing could be different why not sexuality? Given the world that we have, one wonders how it can be that people believe not only that the christian god chose to create it that way, but that god is a good one.
So what are the answers? I'm still looking and wondering...
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Update
Update 1: Congratulations to the fabulous All Blacks and Richie McCaw who must be NZ Man of the Year. The decider last Saturday night was nail biting stuff, and a great win - the Tri Nations for the fourth year in a row and the Bledisloe for Five in a row.
Monday, September 8, 2008
The Event of the Century
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Three things I wasnt going to Buy
Leaf Blowers, car GPS navigation systems and widescreen TV's - to me these were commodities that were made before there was a market for them and then the advertising agencies and glossy mags got going and created a demand, which in all cases has taken off. So now everyone has one. Or is being persuaded to get one for fathers day.
But me ? Well I heroically get out the old Broom (remember those quaint old fashioned cheap sort of stick thing with a whole lot of hairy stuff at one end - and much bigger than a tooth brush - ) and would labour away on the drive and turning circle in front of the garage, get rid of all the eucalypt leaves and sticks that blow in constantly and have a very nice clean drive at the end of it. And then I could go round all the verandahs and do the same. Good exercise, great to be out in the fresh air, didnt wake up the neighbourhood or pollute the atmosphere...yup,environmentally PC. And then Sue just went and got one, which I refused to use of course, noisy petrol powered plastic and junk metal chinese thing. Except that one day I really needed to clean up the drive in a huge hurry and I used it. And in five minutes I had cleaned the entire drive, the turning circle, the verandahs and the cobwebs, the detritus and half rotted litter clagging up the garden, the old hedge clippings and dried duck poo, and it all looked fantastic!
As for the widescreen TV well we already had three old TVs that worked. Admittedly the one we usually watched responded only intermittently to the remote - yes Ive used the remote for years but there was a time...- and for a second or two every few minutes the sound would stop but we hardly ever watch TV anyway. So Sue went and got a widescreen TV - shes great like that, very pragmatic. And now I watch TV like I used to watch TV when it first came in, in the 60"s, just to watch it and to marvel at the crystal clarity of the images and the sound, the realistic life-like colour, the feeling that you really are looking at reality rather than at a TV image, .....
And as for the In Car Navigation systems, whats wrong with the old "Gregory"s" - the inch and a half thick Aussie softcover road atlas book that everyone has in their car glove box? Most of us only ever drive to and from work, or the same shops or the same relations and friends, the same Pub and footy ground and only rarely ever venture out into new territory - and we always got by with the Road Signs, the Gregorys and the occasionaal winding-down-of-the-window-and asking-a-chap-walking-along-the-street-how-to-get-to-wherever.
It wasnt important that the chap usually didnt know where it was either, or if he did the instructions were too confusing and you got lost again and had to ask someone else. The point was you're out there, its one of lifes challenges and you're using your brain for once to work it out, youre meeting people and interacting with them, and at the end you get that huge proud sense of achievement when you finally arrive. Who cares if the wedding is already over?
No way am I ever getting one.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Parents on the Run
Friday, August 22, 2008
Biomagnetic Therapy
I thought it was nice of the ACCC to include that bit about "it was never their intention to do so" "Yeah right" was my thought! Later in their judgement they extracted the following undertaking:
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
All Blacks 19 Springboks Nil
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I nearly killed myself again
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Time for a Laugh
1. Two times a week we go to a nice restaurant, have a little beverage, good food and companionship. She goes on Tuesdays, I go on Fridays.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Let the Games Begin
Sunday, August 3, 2008
All Blacks 39 Wallabies 10
They did much more than that, though. The All Blacks administered an old style belting - the kind where the receiver feels the humiliation more than the pain.
They restored some pride, showed there is a depth of emotion with regard to what the jersey means, and that Robbie Deans, for all his ability and tactical knowledge, can't work any magic when faced with the fury of an All Black side wanting revenge.