Dennis Argall: October 2013

15 October 2013

a walk in the city

Weekend 12-13 October: From lunchtime in Marrickville then after dinner walk in King St Newtown, through the campus of Sydney University, from which both of us graduates, then Glebe Rd next morning; finally, back in Helen's wondrous front yard in Gerringong.


Lunch was at '2204' - cafe in Addison Rd, Marrickville. Great look, great coffee and food.


Wall detail 2204

The Australian Union Choir, see blog entry below

Enmore Rd

The writing on is on the wall, King St

This is a view through the fence from where I took the last photo, 3 second exposure, hand held

Entry to the quadrangle, University of Sydney

Well, the left door led, 50 years ago, to Anthropology, from whence Dennis's honours degree

Breezy exit from the quadrangle, view to city


Out in the dark, we found (by ear) one of the several pianos in the open around the university, family delight

Glebe Rd is somewhat upmarket from King St

refined in the morning as well as evening, thank you. Redheads roolz!

on opening bedroom door in hotel, Sunday morning

and back to Helen's front yard

where the mulberry is being manipulated

a chance encounter with the Australian Union Choir

In Sydney Saturday 12 October:

10 October 2013

timeline for climate 'tip'... strategic issues will be many...

Climate studies have spoken of how things might be in 2050, 2100, etc.

A study published in Nature today takes a different approach, endeavouring to pin down dates on which particular places may tip into a 'new normal' of hotter and wilder (including hotter, colder, more persistently extreme and violent) climate.

Reuters offered summary here, but it is worth looking at the openly accessible bits in Nature, including the three Figures at the bottom. All sobering.

Where on the maps there is the slightest suggestion that in some ways Australia (and Argentina) may lag a bit behind in the timeline, we will already be caught up in the many international strategic consequences as other places begin to suffer.

No discussion of this at APEC this week (but there is a reference to 'investment climate'), nor at the East Asia Summit, where the big background issue is sharing or not sharing oil under the South China Sea.

A small contest compared with those arising from climate change.

It's thirty years since surveys showed that the majority of young Australians expected to experience a nuclear war. Perhaps that, and the fact that it didn't happen, contributed to some generational attitudes including expectation that climate change won't happen or if it does, there's nothing to be done about it. There's sort of a hole in that thinking, in that even if one argues that itty bitty contributions by people in one country (albeit the richest in the world with one of the highest carbon footprints per capita) individual adjustment to big future problems at family and community level deserves forethought! Somewhere though, back in that period 25 years ago, we learned to look no further than the next 12 months in business planning. John Elliot, in the days when he presided over the Liberal Party in oblivion, knocked dead a series of his acquisitions, keeping only profit centres defined as being able to turn a whacking profit in the next 12 months with no view beyonder. While adding sugar to beer to draw in the young palates, more sugar in the IXL jam to make it cheaper.

Lord Krebs, President elect of British Science Association, in The Guardian today writes of the inadequacy of 'nudge' policies to change social attitudes. Would that we had nudge in Australia, land of fudge and not-budge.

--

I've saved my garden (I hope) from extravagant heat today (anticipated 38 degrees C, hottest October day on record) with water early in the morning.

And have been researching electric bikes. The electric bike industry reminds me of the PC industry about 25 years ago, with a hectic array of labels and qualities, back when still a lot of people liked to take the computers apart and put them together again (like cars, in 1910) and the really big challenge among bike options now, as for those things before, is to find one you don't have to improve and fiddle with and that's really fit for significant future outside the scrap heap. I think I may have found one, wait and see... :-)

04 October 2013

Climate gets real

I found this report of the climate scientist who reached the point of emotional realisation that it related to his own life very reassuring.

We have reached a point with the fifth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) where it's just dumb to pretend it's not real, to pretend major damage to the planet is not happening... and dumb just to keep nagging the academic truth. So good to see a scientist shift from earnest constant assertion to act like the doctor prepared to take the pills herhimself.

Of course it's not just the air, the weather. It's the sea, the soil and water generally. And things like bees. Bees? Yes, no bees, no pollination, no food. Pretty much, slow almost full stop.

Until fairly recently we had the prospect of sanity developing via price mechanism, with peak oil. But coal seam gas has pushed that off, while at the same time complicating the imperative of practical as well as moral realisation that if we burn all we have to burn, it will include our own species, pretty much. How to shift from mad consumption, with so much of 'advanced' civilisation employed marketing crap and self-indulgence.

I have to begin to resolve things myself. Though at 70 I am not going to see the 'catastrophe' 30 years from now.

Japan, China, Indonesia all now have carbon reduction goals far better than Australia's. The new Australian government disassembles climate policy; many Australians say we can't shift first.

But we can look at our leading responsibility given huge coal resources.

In 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) acknowledged that, in the absence of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, more than two thirds of coal, oil and gas reserves cannot be burnt before 2050 if we are to have a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 2°C. These are not great odds
of landing the plane safely.

[source: http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/verve/_resources/Unburnable_Carbon_Australias_Carbon_Bubble_finalreport.pdf]

for there to be an 80 per cent chance of achieving internationally agreed targets of limiting global warming to 2°C, only 20-40 per cent of existing coal, gas and oil reserves can be burnt. - See more at: http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/articles/media-releases/www.climateinstitute.org.au/unburnable-carbon.html#sthash.re3LZuJh.dpuf

And the same document noted this - it's also a business sense issue, if people at board tables and heading programs in resource industries can think beyond the next promotion or bonus:

Reviewing all the measures in the key export markets for Australian coal indicated that all are taking action to reduce emissions. These countries in fact rank fairly high up the scale of effort. Notably, China has recently announced its plan for energy consumption to peak at 4 billion tonnes coal equivalent within the current five year plan. The IEA projects China’s coal consumption will peak within the next 10 years (assuming all policies currently announced are actually implemented). Beyond this, there is a global trend of a tightening regulatory framework for the coal sector, whether it be driven by concerns around cost, air quality, water availability, or climate change. This has resulted in heightened competition as coal producers are displaced from their traditional markets (eg the US). Technological advances and policy support measures are also seeing alternatives such as wind power become cheaper than coal generation, including in Australia itself now.

I have written some more relevant to this at my sustainable home food forest blog, link in sidebar.