New Gambling Laws

"Won't work" has become the new black. Carbon tax? Won't work, says the Coalition. Plain cigarette packaging? Won't work, say retailers and the tobacco industry. Poker machine reforms? Won't work, says the gambling industry. No proof is required; it's enough to stare into the camera, look earnest and say forcefully, "It. Won't. Work."

The above is the first paragraph of a great piece on the drum today. I have often posted pieces on this blog by experts etc. about various topics that are currently effecting Australia. This time is similar and it's about the new gambling laws being brought in by the government. This guy is definitely an expert. Not unbiased but definitely an expert. Tom Cummings is a former problem gambler who has turned his attention to gambling reform and the industry in general.

My favourite part though is his description of the genesis of his addiction.

But something clicked inside my head the very first time I played the pokies. It was the start of years of addiction, years in which I pissed away close to $100,000 and destroyed the trust of everyone I knew. I was a poker machine addict, and no matter my intentions, I simply could not stop playing. Suicide became an option I seriously contemplated, and it took discovery, exposure and the loss of everything I had to finally force my hand and give me the ability to step away. Yet while I was playing the pokies, I wasn't gambling on anything else... and in the years since I stopped, no other form of gambling has interested me. It wasn't about the gambling; it was about the pokies and nothing more.

Tom gives a first hand account of what pokie addiction is like and how he thinks the new laws will affect pokie addiction. It is a very illuminating piece of writing and well worth a read considering the current advertising campaign from Clubs Australia.

Climate Doubt

Below I have embedded a great video on how doubt has been created, where none really exists, about climate change.

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

Italian Disgrace

A Quick warning this post might get a bit sweary right at the end!

Perusing the ABC website I found a story about Italian scientists being charged with Manslaughter. It caught my interest and I clicked on the link expecting to see a story about scientists who had been trialling a dodgy drug and people had died.

What I found however was a story about a panel of 6 Geologists. WHAT? How did Geologists cause people to die? The First paragraph explained it all it out to me:

"A group of Italian scientists have gone on trial accused of manslaughter over the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake that killed more than 300 people."

No... Actually wait that doesn't really explain it at all. What these scientists Caused the Earthquake through ill advised geology experiments? Lets see what the rest of the story had to say:

"Prosecutors allege the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake and say residents around L'Aquila should have been warned to flee their homes in the days before the quake..... The defendants were members of a panel that had met six days before the April 6 quake to assess risks after hundreds of tremors had shaken the medieval city in Italy's mountainous Abruzzo region. At that meeting, a committee analysed data from the low-magnitude tremors and determined the activity was not a prelude to a major earthquake. The experts had made it clear that it was not possible to predict whether a stronger quake would occur but had recommended stricter enforcement of anti-seismic measures, particularly regarding building construction."

So the scientists analysed the data and failed to predict and earthquake so they are charged with Manslaughter. Just Like everyone else in Italy they failed to predict the earthquake. Just like every person ever to have lived so far they failed to predict an earthquake. They did mention in their statement that " it was not possible to predict whether a stronger quake would occur" and the recommended that "stricter enforcement of anti-seismic measures, particularly regarding building construction".

Vincenzo Vittorini, a doctor who founded the association "309 Martyrs" and lost his wife and daughter in the disaster, said: "No-one expected to be told the exact time of the quake. We just wanted to be warned that we were sitting on a bomb". Wait just a fucking second. Earlier in the story it mentioned that the scientist had assessed the risks after HUNDREDS of minor earthquakes. How can you not know your "sitting on a bomb" when you can feel the Ticking through your ass? You live in an earthquake zone plan for it and build or renovate your house accordingly. Don't be a Cockhead and try and ruin someone else's life just because you FAILED to look after yours. I live in a Cyclone area and I have planned extensively for cyclones including an evacuation plan for the bigger ones. Now you will not know that a earthquake is coming, BECAUSE NO-ONE CAN PREDICT AN EARTHQUAKE, but you can still have an evacuation plan in your house and have designed safe areas in your house where you will survive if the house falls apart.

In an open letter sent to Italian president Giorgio Napolitano, more than 5,000 scientists said the defendants essentially face criminal charges for failing to predict quakes, even though this remains technically impossible. I would like to see Scientists and people from all over the world sign a petition in support of these poor guys being victimised by the Italian government.

It's not just about bike lanes

The Following article by Jan Garrard was published over on the ABC website.

It has long been recognised that urban planning and transport policies in Australia encourage car use and discourage cycling and walking. But what has been less well-recognised is that our road safety policies and practices are also car-oriented. This is arguably a more serious bias, because it results in unacceptably high levels of death and serious injury among unprotected road users such as cyclists.

Australia prides itself on having achieved a relatively low traffic crash fatality rate of 6.8 fatalities per 100,000 population. World's best practice (3.8 fatalities per 100,000 population) is not that far away, and we aspire to achieve it. But Australia's overall fatality rate hides an inconvenient truth - our cyclist fatality and serious injury rates are several times higher than world's best practice, and increasing. 

Cycling accounts for about one per cent of daily trips in Australia, but cyclists comprise two per cent of road transport fatalities and 15 per cent of serious injuries. Serious injury rates for cyclists are increasing as bicycle use increases (by 47 per cent from 2000 to 2007), while for most other road users rates are steady or declining. The relative risk of injury per kilometre travelled is several times higher for a cyclist than for a person in a car.

Improving cycling safety is a key factor for increasing everyday cycling, particularly for the 'missing' cyclists in Australia: women, children, adolescent girls and older adults. It is also important to recognise that perceived safety is as important as actual safety. Most people don't know the relative risk of injury for a bike trip compared to a car trip, but they know how it feels, and cycling in Australia feels risky. 

Cycling safety and cycling prevalence go hand in hand. Not only does the Netherlands have one of the highest rates of cycling in the developed world (27 per cent of daily trips are by bicycle), it also has the lowest cyclist injury rate (1.4 per 10 million kilometres cycled). These figures highlight the potential for a win-win-win-etc scenario. More cycling trips mean more health; cleaner air; less traffic congestion; and more liveable cities; and, if we get it right, fewer road traffic injuries. Achieving high levels of safe cycling begins with acknowledging that cycling is a legitimate form of transport. In Australia we begrudgingly tolerate cyclists on our roads, but the high-cycling countries of Western Europe actually prioritise cycling over driving for the numerous short to medium-distance trips that are a part of daily life. 

The implication of accepting cyclists as legitimate road users is that people who ride bicycles have a right to complete their journey safely. Citizens in high-cycling countries are protected by road safety systems that acknowledge that the greatest risk to cyclists comes from motor vehicles and the way they are driven. The protection is multi-faceted - safe cycling infrastructure is complemented by ethical, moral and legal environments that protect vulnerable road users. In several European countries, the higher standards of duty-of-care for more vulnerable road users include the legal responsibility for car drivers to avoid collisions with cyclists and pedestrians. In these countries the onus is on drivers to prove no-fault when in collisions with pedestrians and cyclists. 

"I just didn't see her", "He came from no-where", or "It was raining/foggy/dark/glary" are not legitimate excuses for colliding with people on bikes or on foot. A driver is expected to anticipate the presence of cyclists and pedestrians on the road, and take action to avoid injuring them. In contrast, drivers in Australia, the USA and UK are far less likely to be held accountable for injuring cyclists and pedestrians, including when the driver clearly is at fault. An analysis of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities in New York City found that most pedestrian and cyclist deaths were caused by dangerous driving (90 per cent), but few of the drivers responsible (26 per cent) received summonses for traffic violations. No comparable analysis has been conducted in Australia, but numerous instances have been reported that demonstrate a similar social and legal tolerance of the harm caused by drivers to cyclists and pedestrians.

The flip side of our reluctance to hold drivers responsible for injuring cyclists and pedestrians is our predilection to blame cyclists themselves. In a classic case of victim-blaming, cyclists are said to be "asking for trouble" by putting themselves in harm's way by cycling on public roads. The implication is that it is cyclists who should avoid hazardous drivers - not the other way around. Australia's National Cycling Strategy (pdf) aims to double cycling by the year 2016. Achieving this target will require investing in good cycling infrastructure. But constructing bike paths and lanes is not an effective stand-alone strategy for achieving high levels of safe cycling. We also need to invest in 'soft infrastructure' in the form of driver and cyclist education and training, and equitable (and equitably enforced) road rules. High levels of safe cycling are underpinned by a culture of respect for the rights of all road users to a safe and comfortable journey regardless of whether their vehicle of choice is a car or a bicycle.

The route to high levels of safer cycling is well-developed, clearly sign-posted, and not particularly difficult, it's simply that it can feel a little alien to a nation whose personal mobility is so all-pervasively car-oriented.

Discoveries

I have discovered Geoff Lemon. When I say discovered I don't mean found a raw talent and introduced him to the world. It's more in the sense of a great independent writer that is already out there but I'm just reading for the first time.

There is something special when you find a writer that can capture ideas well and express them in a fluent way. I follow Marieke Hardy on twitter and she expressed rather a fondness for his writing.

I then followed a link over to Heathen scripture only to find that Geoffs popularity had risen so much since writing his article titled 'You shut your goddamn carbon-taxin’ mouth' that he had to move his blog over to a wordpress account. I found a sometimes rude but mostly funny blog with some true gems. Anyway shut you carbon taxin mouth and the couple of articles that follow are really quite fun to read. I particularly like the following paragraph that he wrote in his article 'Australiar and the f*cking idiot dilemma'

Net result: people will always sulk about what they’ve got if they think that maybe they could have had something better. But a billion dollars is still a billion dollars, regardless of what-ifs in either direction. A business that is even turning a profit, any profit, is doing well, and should be thankful in the scheme of things. A business turning profits in the billions of dollars should just shut the hell up and eat its ice-cream.

Please head over to Heathen scripture and have a little read.

On the Should... Hu Hum... Pedals of Giants

Nearly every bike company on the planet sponsors professional riders. They do this to get their brand name known and to get a bit of a following. The professional riders also provide feedback about the bikes that the company make and aid in the development of next years models. This is all very good and I think everyone can see the importance of this type of marketing/development model.

It doesn't directly interact with everyday riders though. To do that you need to have a program like the one that Giant have just introduced.

I think this is a great idea and will hopefully win Giant a bit extra following. I have never owned a Giant bike but Min has and it was a fun little bike for her and quite cheep in comparison to other brands of Mountain bikes.

Carbon Tax

Finally Australia has decided to join the rest of the world and actually do something about the amount of CO² we are putting into our atmosphere. As always though, the devil is in the details. According to leading economic and law experts over at The Conversation the details, while not suiting all people or all thing, are pretty good.

So what does the carbon tax actually mean to most Australians? Well I think that Get up explained it very well in their 2 minute video, check it out below.

Something every "Straylian" should watch

Unfortunately I missed the first episode of SBS's new documentary which aired last night. 'Go Back to Where You Came From' is an excellent piece of television, a show that can restore some of the faith in the ability of TV to tackle important issues and amazing stories.

As I said unfortunately I missed the first episode, lucky for me though it is freely available on the SBS website. I highly recommend that everyone go there and catch up on last nights episode and tune in tonight and tomorrow night at 8:30 pm.

One thing that truly amazed me was how 'proud Australian' has become synonymous with 'horrible racist'. Such a shame for our country.

New Ideas

Weather you believe in it or not most people seem to think that climate change is a new idea. The problem is it is not a new idea. It was in 1896 a Swedish scientist (Svante Arrhenius) published a new idea. As humanity burned fossil fuels such as coal, which added carbon dioxide gas to the Earth's atmosphere, we would raise the planet's average temperature. This "greenhouse effect" was only one of many speculations about climate change. Scientists found technical reasons to argue that our emissions could not change the climate. Indeed most thought it was obvious that puny humanity could never affect the vast climate cycles, which were governed by a benign "balance of nature." In any case major change seemed impossible except over tens of thousands of years.

The way that the scientific community works, someone comes up with a theory, gathers evidence and then publishes a study says that his/her new theory could explain some part of the world. Then most other scientists rubbish the theory and try and disprove it. To disprove it they need to either gather data that says the original result was out for some reason or they have to point out a flaw in the methods. Once this happens either the original theory is revised or if completely off is thrown out. The important point here is that you must have evidence to back up your statements/theorems. As a theory is revised and more data gathered it becomes more robust with less shortcomings.

This is exactly what has happened to the theory of human induced climate change. For over 70 years after the theory was proposed various people worked on it. In the beginning there was allot of skepticism and allot of argument, most scientists thought the idea was rubbish. However as others gathered data, often to disprove his theory, the idea gained merit. The mounting evidence reached a critical mass in about 1980 and the was serious amounts of work started to happen in the climate change arena.  In 1985 a joint UNEP/WMO/ICSU Conference on the "Assessment of the Role of Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gases in Climate Variations and Associated Impacts" assessed the role of carbon dioxide and aerosols in the atmosphere, and concluded that greenhouse gases "are expected" to cause significant warming in the next century and that some warming is inevitable. The worries first caught wide public attention in the summer of 1988, the hottest on record till then (Most since then have been hotter) when James E. Hansen made one of the first testimonies in front of the US Congress that human-caused warming had already measurably affected global climate. Both the UNEP and WMO had followed up on the 1985 Conference with additional meetings. In 1988 the WMO established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with the support of the UNEP. The IPCC continues its work through the present day, and has issued a series of Assessment Reports and supplemental reports that describe the state of scientific understanding at the time each report is prepared. The earliest report was issued in 1990.

Scientists from many and various fields have studied climate change and in the last 10 year there has not a single published peer reviewed paper that has any evidence that climate change is not happening. Even scientists who are deniers, once given the data and told to analyse it, tend to give in to the weight of evidence. The rest of this paragraph is from this piece in the New York Times. "Prof. Richard Muller of Berkeley, a physicist who has gotten into the climate skeptic game, has been leading the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, an effort partially financed by none other than the Koch foundation. And climate deniers — who claim that researchers at NASA and other groups analyzing climate trends have massaged and distorted the data — had been hoping that the Berkeley project would conclude that global warming is a myth. His climate-skeptic credentials are pretty strong: he has denounced both Al Gore and Tom Friedman as “exaggerators,” and he has participated in a number of attacks on climate research, including the witch hunt over innocuous e-mails from British climate researchers. Not surprisingly, then, climate deniers had high hopes that his new project would support their case. Instead, however, Professor Muller reported that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend “very similar to that reported by other groups.”"

People try to say that there is no consensus amongst scientists however this is not true. There is some argument about minor details of the climate models such as the degree to which aerosols will help mitigate the affects of climate change. There is no argument as to weather climate change is happening or who caused it! to drive home the point is a well written concise statement by the National Research Council. "Although the scientific process is always open to new ideas and results, the fundamental causes and consequences of climate change have been established by many years of scientific research, are supported by many different lines of evidence, and have stood firm in the face of careful examination, repeated testing, and the rigorous evaluation of alternative theories and explanation."

We is Australia have people that provide expert advice as well. The Australian Climate Change Commission was set up by the federal government to synthesize the latest science and provide the best advice that scientist have to offer with regards to climate change. Here is a link to the Key messages from the Australian Climate Commission.  Climate change is real and we are at a critical juncture and we need to make moves to reduce our Carbon Dioxide output. The Climate is not a belief system it doesn't care weather we believe it is behaving differently. The climate is not a democratic system you cannot vote for it to stay the same. What affects it is physical factors and the major one at the moment is the amount of CO₂ we pump out into the Atmosphere. If Australia and the rest of the world want to avoid the worst effects of climate change then we need to curb our CO₂ output.

CO2 from car

One good calculator of your personal CO₂ is http://www.reversetheeffect.com.au/ but I have used many different ones to get a good idea of my personal CO₂ output.

Use the Green car guide: http://www.greenvehicleguide.gov.au/ to figure out your vehicle and transports output.

The green car guide calculate about 3.9  tons of CO₂ annually for the both of us. I then used 1degree: http://www.1degree.com.au/ to calculate other CO2 output Household 2.18 tonnes of CO₂ and Flights 1.13 tonnes of CO₂

So that gives 4 + 2.2 + 1.2 for a grand total of 7.4 tonnes of CO₂ for the both of us or about 3.7 tonnes each. Given that each person should be aiming for under 3 tonnes of CO₂ per year Min and I are about 1.4 (0.7 each) tonnes away from our goal output.

I'll try and write a piece soon about how to reduce our output. In the meantime check out the one degree website for your own calculations along with great ways you can reduce your personal CO₂ output.

Cyclone Yasi

There was a very tense mood in Townsville before cyclone Yasi. There was a quiet expectancy, a nervousness that you couldn't quite put your finger on. Everyone actually took it quite seriously, which was good considering the size and power of the storm. Nearly everyone was busy clearing yards tying down bits and pieces (like sheds and roofs) in the yard and packing emergency kits and vital documents. Lots of people where out taking photographs of houses yards favourite places etc so that there were before and after photo's.

Min and I were busy with all of these things as well. We had the added drama of a 80 year old house and no rooms that were small and well protected. Our nervous energy before the storm fuels and whirlwind of packing and moving, of which that house had never seen the like, either before or since. It was decided that the Dinning room would be our last retreat. It is definitely the safest room as it is completely internal and surrounded on all sides by other rooms.

The lounge room was emptied completely except for my canoe which came in from outside. All clothes and nick-nacks were packed into cupboards and then the cupboards were ratchet strapped down. Emergency clothes, documents and other essential items (such as the computer backup) were packed into a Nally bin each. This was for grabbing on the way out if we needed to run at any stage  All pictures were taken off the walls and packed under the bed in the spare room. The outdoor furniture was turned over and ratchet strapped down to the deck. The table and chairs from the dinning room were moved into the spare room and the lounge chairs were moved into the dinning area. the mattress from our bed was also moved into the dinning area as a last ditch protection method. The Idea being that the lounge chairs would be our walls and the mattress our roof if the roof of the house went.

Once everything was racked, packed and stacked there was not much to do but wait, wander around and look for things to put away or strap down. One problem that we had was the Car. There was nowhere to put it so it was decided that it would be left out on the street.

The other thing that could be done was religiously follow the cyclone tracking map and warnings from the BOM. The Map above shows how big the storm was but it also shows the direct hit on Tully. 24hrs before this the tracking map showed a direct hit somewhere just south of Ingham, which needless to say would have been much more devastating for us here in Townsville.

I saved 3 of the tracking maps that the BOM put out on the day before TC Yasi. These maps become really important to you when something like Yasi is heading towards you.

This was the final map I was able to get. it was 6pm the night that Yasi was about to hit and as you can see from the map it was already quite windy. We lost the Power a couple of hours after this 6pm map.

With our house prepared and maps looked at all that was left was to ride out the storm. Min and I decided that the Puppies should come inside in the cement area beside the Kitchen/dinning area where we were. while outside the dogs would be quite stressed but once they came inside they were as calm as anything not worried at all. Their bed food and water were all inside. The water actually presented a problem due to Bear drinking the water all the time and having to pee. Bear had to pee but wouldn't go outside without me, so I would have to run out into the yard squat down and shelter from the wind as best I could then call to Bear to get him to come outside. No the most fun I've had but at least we only experienced the equivalent to a category 2 cyclone.

Other than Bear's little expeditions the night was reasonably uneventful. I was tweeting until the power went out so that people knew how we were. We were expecting the power to go we just didn't know when it would happen. It happened just after 10pm, so we just shut down the mobile phones to conserve power and gave up on reading. After that the noise was more noticeable and the house would occasionally hum with vibrations from the wind. I think that Min's place though is sheltered from the worst of it by Castle Hill. The worst thing about the cyclone was the heat. Stuck in a closed up house with no fans was a problem. The Next night was without power as well and I had to leave the front and back doors open and lay in the breeze way between them to get to sleep. It's the things your not ready for that get you the most I suppose.

The next day was also a bit of a surprise as it was still really windy. Min and I didn't start the clean up till a couple of days after due to the wind. On the note of the clean up I would like to say that Ergon Energy did a great job in restoring power. The Townsville City Council during it's cleanup produced 10 years worth of Mulch in just over a month.About 200 trucks an hour were dumping green waste at Lou Lister park, producing over 120 cubic meters of mulch an hour for 3 weeks. Townsville's streets and back yards started to look bare with an estimated 63,000 trees destroyed or damaged by Cyclone Yasi.

All in all we were lucky and came through relatively unscathed. Our sympathy and best wishes are with the people of Tully and Cardwell who were the hardest hit and are still trying to rebuild.

Historical Note

It's always worth noting where names came from, it's not always high on the priority list but if you come across an interesting tit bit it is usually worth noting.

We currently live on Plant st in West End. How would a street get a name like plant.

Well I just came across a report titled "Highways and Byways" which states as follows.

Plant St, West End. The Street was originally two streets known respectively as Hodel and Newman Streets. They were combined to form one street in 1919, which was named after Lieutenant Colonel Plant, the commanding officer of the 31^st Infantry Battalion, First A.I.F.

A fact that one day may be worth knowing!

Another Video Worth Watching: Sir David Attenborough

I love David Attenborough. I grew up watching his documentaries and no other narrator quite says "Nature Documentary" like Sir David Attenborough. He gave a speech to the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, it is well worth a listen.

Wall Clocks

I've been thinking that Min and I should get a wall clock to replace the clock we have. The clock we have is nice and all buuutttt... The problem as I see it though is that all wall clocks are essentially the same, a round dial with hands pointing out the time. the only real difference is in the trimmings. In Short, They're boring!

So I searched the interwebulons for something different. I found a few that quite appealed to me, and some that were at least different.

The above clock would have to be my favorite. Very Steam Punk just need a few of the cogs to be made of brass. While it's still round it reverses the movement in most clocks with the face moving around the hand.

This one rotates and the ball tells you the time. At 12 the ball goes through the hole in the middle and comes out the bottom to start the cycle again. Very Ingenious!

Now we have what would have to be my second favorite. Each of the little white sticks rotate. Each group will line up every 12 hours to form a word that correspond to the time. In the picture above the time would either be 4am or pm and you can see a messy 'three' and 'five' above and below the current time. Unfortunately this is a One off art project, so it's a little hard to get a hold of. Considering it has 180 different rotating pieces each with it's own movement it's also hard to make yourself.

Penultimately it a wall clock that is probably not great at being a display piece but might be handy, say, in the kitchen somewhere.

Finally we have the Vertick. This would be a nice display and tells you the time accurately. I do wonder what happens at 12:59 though.

New Look

Hey All,


Well I thought with a new year I should try a new look. I had a look through the design templates that Blogger has and this is what I came up with.

Let me know what you think of the new look.

Airlie beach

Well the Airlie Beach regatta has come and gone again. As usual it seems the women were the stellar performers coming third in the marathon and sprint. Also Jan smashed the OC1 race finishing her 6km race in just over 35 minutes to place first in the master women. Sue and Loren finished second and third respectively in the senior masters women.

I finished my OC1 race in 40 min 40 sec. This is not a great time I need to work at it more and get my times down to about 31 min. I got a very bad start to the race  and was in last place but I gathered myself at the first turning buoy and I ended up passing quite a few people through the race. I ended up finishing 6th in the open men category. After Talking to Jan I found out she paddles 8 times a week. Unfortunately at the moment I cannot commit that much time to paddling. I have a unit to paint still. Once that is finished and I have started to pay down my debt I should be able to have a proper crack at paddling.

I should use this year to lose weight and get fit then extend that in the last half of this year and do some of the longer OC1 races that are on offer, like the Marlin Coast Challenge.

In the Mixed races we didn’t produce any medals for Maggie but they were good fun races and some great experiences for our newer paddlers. Hopefully we will see more of the people new to the club at the next regatta. Thanks go to Outrigger Whitsunday for hosting such a great regatta year after year.

The northern Zone has been exceptionally active and already posted the results from last weekend up on their website – Here.

Also on display at the regatta was a new to Australia brand of paddles, Viper Va’a. They seemed like excellent paddles, some of the examples on display seemed like factory seconds with marks and some (probably just Cosmetic) defects. The shape and style of the paddles though made them well worth a look if your interested in the Tahitian style of paddles. In addition to paddles they sell some accessories that our rudderless paddlers could be very interested in carbon Iakos.

An interesting January

I have spent January up until the 26th renovating one of my units. It was finally finished and rented out on Australia Day. It is awesome not to have to worry about at least one of my units and to have a break from renovating. I have been working until 8:30 om every night of the week and it got very tiring by the time it was finished.

I've meant to be taking a break but since Australia Day but We have had a Cyclone menacing us since then. Tropical Cyclone Anthony turned out to be a bit of a fizzer. I even went out for a paddle on Sunday afternoon and the water was dead flat and there was no wind or rain. It would not have been so much fun down near Bowen though.

As soon as TC Anthony came and went though we started looking at TC Yasi. Yasi is a whole different beast to TC Anthony. Anthony was only a category 1, Yassi is going to be a minimum Cat 4 and is about 1000km wide. So even if it does follow it's present course and hit Cairns it won't be much fun here. If it turns South and hits near us it could be devastating.

Under current advice I want to put out a message to my friends in Cairns. Be safe and careful, My best wishes go out to you guys.

So with all of that said I have taken some photo's as a bit of a before and after. Hopefully my photo's will show very little change!

Earth Systems science

From the ABC website 10 Jan 2011

For most scientists working in the relatively new area of Earth System Science, talk of the earth “growing a brain” trivialises the growing body of knowledge about the functioning of the whole-earth system. Critically, it misses the point that changes are taking place to this system and that we must understand and monitor these changes for the sake of humanity’s continuing viable development and progress.

While the Gaia hypothesis, first popularised by British scientist James Lovelock as a metaphor of “the living Earth”, has been given religious overtones by some, most scientists, including Lovelock himself, do not assert that the Earth is “alive”. To observe that the earth has some self-regulating features that are similar to those found in living organisms is not to say that it is in fact a living being with a consciousness.

It is also important that the Gaia hypothesis is not confused with Earth System Science, which is in fact a major new development of formal science, embraced by CSIRO and many Australian universities and building on studies of global environmental change, environmental sustainability, economics, complex system science and more.

Earth System Science emphasises the interactions and feedbacks between changes in the earth’s various components - the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, the ice-caps and the biosphere comprising all living things - interactions which can fall through the cracks between traditional scientific disciplines. This is important because many of today’s human-induced changes to the earth’s environment are affecting each other and coalescing to become issues of major global concern.

Climate change, the future of energy and water resources, food production, and decline in biodiversity stand out as much discussed examples of such interacting processes that have a strongly global character.

A critical feature of Earth System Science is to recognise that human activities now form a major interactive part of the functioning and evolution of the entire planet. This is a significant departure from the past where humans have been studied separately from the environment around us. We have been regarded as villains impacting the planet’s natural systems, and victims suffering from the way the planet reacts, for example through changing climate.

This new approach means that the natural science of global environmental change must be linked with social science, economics and the humanities, that is, “global environmental change” must become “global change”.

It also means that the research encompassed by Earth System Science spreads beyond the traditional concerns of environmental sustainability to consider factors as diverse as the psychology of denial or the institutional and political arrangements that can lock societies into behaviours incompatible with long term societal aspirations on this finite planet.

Activity in Earth System Science is going through a growth spurt both in Australia and internationally. In December the Australian Academy of Science, with support from the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, ran the First Australian Earth System Outlook Conference. At this conference a decadal plan for the new science in Australia was launched by the Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett: To Live within Earth’s Limits: An Australian Plan to Develop a Science of the Whole Earth System.

This document was four years in the making by the National Committee for Earth System Science. Overseas, the International Council for Science working with the International Council on Social Sciences, has just released a major document, based on an open web-based consultation, entitled: Grand Challenges for Global Sustainability Research. That document is providing the framework for a major revamping of the international global environmental change research programs, which have been running since the 1980s.

With these Australian and international programs getting under way in the coming year or two, we can anticipate a substantial increase in the information that science can bring to inform people, businesses and governments about the limits and opportunities that the earth provides for the growth, development and well-being of present and future generations.