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.