Someone telling truth about Australia - without intent

Recently searching Google I found this article about advice for Englanders on where to settle.

Though it never intended to be done this way (the article aims to compare various palces to live including non-English speaking ones), the following extract if taken in isolation is a remarkably accurate description of Australia. The way its weather is trending nobody in a few years will be saying Australia has better weather than England - the truth is that on average and over the whole Holocene Australia never had weather superior to England's. It was the result above I got straight from google and I liked it so much - agreeing with the notion that Australia really has worse weather than England - that I could not resist making a short post.

A childhood memory that RMIT made me recall and re-read

As a child, virtually my only reading apart from nonfiction was Choose Your Own Adventure and Time Machine books. When I realised the stories were childish and ridiculous, I moved on quite literally and forgot about them.

However, when I had to review books I had read for an RMIT course titled Recreational Literature for Young People, I have had to recollect these books. In the case of Time Machine, I remembered the first few so well I could map them for Demian Katz without re-buying them, but re-reading them did show I had forgotten much. The work I enjoyed so much that I have tried to recall what I still regard as a childish obsession, especially as sites like Wikipedia give me a job to do in the process.

A few days ago I discovered Demian had collaborated on a list of the Top 20 CYOA adventures. I will list them below:

20. Your Code Name is Jonah (1980): This Cold War tale of secret agents has you right in the mix as American and Russian spooks try to unlock the mysteries of a secret whale song. Next find out what's cooler than the soothing mating calls of whales being associated with espionage.

19. The Cave of Time (1979): This first book in the series takes you on a time travel epic from the Ice Age to 3700 A.D., courtesy of series creator Edward Packard. Next find out what's cooler than battling dinosaurs, then later partying with robots.

18. The Abominable Snowman (1982): Frequent series contributor R.A. Montgomery penned this story about your search for the elusive Yeti. Next find out what's cooler than trouncing around Nepal looking for hairy snowbeasts.

17. The Deadly Shadow (1985): In this espionage yarn, you must track a dangerous man named Dimitrius, who has the ability to become a shadow thanks to sinister Russian experiments. Next find out what's cooler than Reagan-era Cold War propaganda for kids.

16. Trouble on Planet Earth (1984): This story has you investigating why aliens may or may not be stealing the world's oil supply. Most fans of the series describe the plot as completely incoherent. Next find out what's cooler than stories that are so bad they're good.

15. Inside UFO 54-40 (1982): In this adventure, you need to escape from aliens who are trying to put you in their zoo. Next find out what's cooler than subtly teaching kids that zoos are oppressive hellholes.

14. The Forbidden Castle (1982): This is a sequel to "The Cave of Time," where must solve a riddle in medieval Europe to find a secret, dare we say, forbidden castle. Next find out what's cooler than slaying dragons, while spending your downtime with the local peasant girls.

13. Prisoner of the Ant People (1983): Here's the deal: You're part of the Zondo Quest Group II looking to destroy the Evil Power Master. Fortunately, you've got a buddy that's like R2D2. Next find out what's cooler than battling huge killer anthropomorphic ants.

12. The Magic of the Unicorn (1985): You've got to find a way to purify your village's water in the year 1507, and since Britain hasn't been invented, it's going to take a horse with a horn to do it. Technically nothing is cooler than a unicorn.

11. The Horror of High Ridge (1983): This story has you and your pals Ricardo and Lisa coming face to face with the ghosts of the clashing Indians and settlers of High Ridge. Next find out what's cooler than children's books that recall bloody land disputes.

10. The Mystery of Chimney Rock (1980): A common adventure-spurring device - a trip to see family - leads you to an investigation of a haunted house occupied by a deceased woman's mysterious cat. Next find out what's cooler than demonic house pets.

9. Mystery of the Maya (1981): Even though you're a kid, you're tasked with determining what wiped out the Mayan civilization. Next find out what's cooler than Guns, Germs, and Steel for kids.

8. Supercomputer (1984): You win a contest and get to hang with a computer (though it's more of a robot), but its incredible power is also incredibly dangerous in that incredibly dated 1980s sort of way. Next find out what's cooler than pretending you're Matthew Broderick in "War Games."

7. Survival at Sea (1982): In this story, you're asked by series regular, Dr. Vivaldi, to investigate the sighting of a dinosaur out in the ocean. Next find out what's cooler than a Loch Ness monster that's got the good sense to not live in a lake.

6. Rock and Roll Mystery (1987): The hippest installment of the series has you trying to rescue abducted members of your rock band, who strangely aren't involved with drugs or obsessive groupies. Next find out what's cooler than rocking in a turtleneck.

5. Outlaws of Sherwood Forest (1985): At summer camp, you find a ring that transports you to Robin Hood times. At one point, you come across a version of yourself that has made different choices. Next find out what's cooler than a CYOA that seems to have been written by Charlie Kaufman.

4. Deadwood City (1980): This Wild West yarn has you mosey into the town of Deadwood City looking for a job, before things start getting interesting. Next find out what's cooler than a good old adventure in the Wild West, free of sketchy brothel encounters.

3. You Are a Shark (1985): During a hike, you come across a forbidden temple, are turned into an animal, and must survive several reincarnations to get to the end. Next find out what's cooler than book titles that get straight to the point.

2. Mountain Survival (1984) This one's plain and simple: You've survived your plane crashing into a mountain; now don't get eaten by a bear or freeze to death. Lastly find out what's cooler than a book that allows you to put all that mandatory reading of Jack London to good use.

1. Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? (1981) In this mystery, you go to the house of a rich man and soon become involved in a suspected murder case filled with a lot of ins and outs and what-have-yous. Basically, it's "The Big Lebowski" for 10-year-olds, and seriously, what's cooler than that?

Of this Top 20, I as a child read #18, #17, #14, #9, #8, #7 and #2. It is true though that even as an extremely immature child I was repelled by some of the books here, but I was certainly fascinated by Survival at Sea and Mountain Survival, re-reading both many times and enjoying them. As an immature child I felt I learned something from them, too.

I find it odd that Escape was not included, nor was anything by Jay Leibold like Grand Canyon Odyssey (I'm sure it's cooler to meet up with John Wesley Powell or Don Pizzaro or an Indian medicine woman than some of the adventures here). The other major writer unrepresented was Louise Munro Foley, whose Danger At Anchor Mine certainly betters #10 and #4 for an adventure in a remote area (northern Ontario). Moreover, from the perspective of this writer it must be cool to search an old gold mine. Again, Richard Brightfield's The Secret Treasure of Tibet could easily have been among the top few. Its complex tale involves the protagonist as a private investigator seeking a remote monastery where monks levitate but being simultaneously targeted by a violent gang who wants that monastery's gold. These two stories interact with an anthropologist called Sylvia Morrison who specialises in the protagonist's research topic. As a Himalayan tale it betters those included, whilst the side of the book about battling criminal art dealers is unrepresented in this selection.

How past climates show Australia's south coast is heading towards desert status

Although I have long been convinced that global warming will turn Australia's south coast – including southwestern Australia and western and central Victoria – into an arid zone, the weather of the past two and a bit months has made me sure not only that it will happen, but that it is happening now.

Although I have for a long time been very concerned for the fate of southern Australia and for the world's other mediterranean-climate regions because of their biodiversity, it is only now that I am realising that the present carbon dioxide level of 380ppmv is too high for the survival of mediterranean climates. Global warming will also desertify some areas on the fringes of mediterranean climates, such as southeastern Australia and parts of the American West.

Nonexistence of mediterranean climates outside full ice ages is usually explained in terms of absence of cold ocean currents. However, both the arid (BSh, BWh) and warm temperate (Cf) climates that occur on the equatorward and poleward sides of historic mediterranean climates are known throughout geological history regardless of polar ice levels. This means the absence of mediterranean climates implies failure of westerlies to shift equatorward during the winter. Given we know that the temperature changes associated with winter equatorward westerly wind movement still existed during even the warmest epochs (though they were massively less marked), there must have been another factor preventing equatorward movement of the polar lows.

This can be found in a much tighter polar vortex resulting from cooling of the stratosphere. It is known that cooling of the stratosphere results from increased carbon dioxide levels because less heat reaches the stratosphere from the Earth's surface. Those acquainted with polar ozone holes will realise that a cooler stratosphere means ozone is destroyed more efficiently by natural or anthropogenic chlorine and bromine. Thus, during periods when carbon dioxide was much higher than now, global stratospheric ozone concentrations would have been considerably less than the 320 Dobson units observed in the Quaternary. Because ozone losses would have been greatest over the poles, this would have meant that whilst the surface of polar regions in the Mesozoic was up to 40˚C (72˚F) warmer than today, at the tropopause where weather is generated it would have been colder. In the winter, absorption of heat by greenhouse gases in the lower polar atmosphere would have meant even less heat than today for the polar tropopause, which would have kept it as cold as the equatorial tropopause and pushed the jet stream and polar front rainfall close to the poles.

The net result of this tight polar vortex would have been and will be a shift of twenty or so degrees in the location of the subtropical dry belt – turning it into a “midlatitude dry belt”. Along with it would come very warm conditions in the poles as the dry air absorbs heat whilst moving over the dry midlatitudes and picks up moisture which is turned into dense clouds in the high latitudes.

Combined with a powerful monsoon that would be expected from high greenhouse levels, the net result is that areas historically covered by mediterranean climates form the arid zone, whilst historically arid regions become monsoonal. Some evidence actually indicates the arid belt even at mildly higher carbon dioxide levels moves to between forty and fifty degrees from the equator. For instance, there is evidence of savanna (monsoon) climates as far north as Turkey in the Miocene when carbon dioxide was only around 400 ppmv. This suggests that we must expect basically no winter rainfall in southern Australia from this year onwards – and in the absence of summer rainfall years passing without rain, creating deserts more extreme than any in historic Australia right in the middle of major population centres like Melbourne and Perth, plus possibly Hobart, Canberra and Adelaide.

The grassroots are showing no leadership

In a very sensible new article about runaway climate change and the failure of our major parties to take the initiative in reducing emissions, there is a serious fault that people concerned really must grasp.

The article says “Until now, the real leadership on climate change has been coming from the grassroots”. That is bluntly wrong. It is the “grassroots” who support the coal, light metal and car industries in their quests to prevent anything remotely approaching the binding zero emissions target that should have been set Australia the moment negotiations began on the issue back in the 1990s. The deeply-knit communities of outer suburban Australia are not the ones protesting at the terrible government energy and transport policies that have caused the present Victorian fires and Queensland floods. The “grassroots” is, indeed, the group who supports such policies because they are exceedingly effective at lowering the “grassroots”’ housing, petrol and electricity prices to a level that no other country can come close to matching.

The people who organise so-called grassroots protests are in fact wealthy students and academic professors who know far, far too well where Australia is headed if carbon dioxide concentrations are not merely stabilised but reduced.

As I have pointed out in my discussion of Michael Woolridge’s excellent essay on pages 182 to 185 of Two Nations, this deep breach between academia and the rest of the population is one of Australia’s most pressing problems today. As I know from personally living in Keilor Downs and Ashwood from 1987 to 1997, outer suburbanites are never aware of major scientific research that has a critical impact on our future climate.

The manner in which some significant CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology researchers present their findings about rainfall changes to the public seems intended to calm the population by invariably finding a culprit other than man-made greenhouse gases. The evidence of recent climate patterns suggests that this policy might come dangerously close to sedative propaganda.

Those who publish news scientific findings in Australia’s mass media have in current circumstances the gravest imaginable responsibility. It is not their duty to do something intended merely to calm the population and they should not be in any sense displeased if they provoke anger or outrage from the public as they might if they were less willing to pass the buck away from human-produced greenhouse gases.

Radio stations should stop calling it a natural disaster

Today on TRIPLE M, there have been joyful announcements about the amount of money raised to deal with what already ranks as Australia’s worst ever bushfire disaster. It has been surpassed quite a number of times in North America, e.g. the 1871 Peshtigo fire and the 1825 Miramichi fire. The latter fire got closer to destroying the New Brunswick capital of Frederickton than any fire has got to substantially destroying an Australian capital city – even the 2003 Canberra bushfires or the March 1919 fires near Perth.

The problem is that, as I have been saying lately, the current bushfires are not a natural burning of vegetation that occasionally occurs even in wet eucalypt forests. Rather, they are an adjustment to a climate shift that occurred in October 1996 to move vegetation zones poleward or uphill to regions that currently (not before October 1996) have suitable climates.

The point about possible arson and that the frequency of arson is increasing is a question I am willing to discuss, but I will not tolerate dissociation of the basic fact that the fires are an adjustment to global warming that is twelve years and five months late.

The really bad thing, of course, is that even the current bushfires will not be a sufficient adjustment. People are extremely sensibly talking about the prospect of 47˚C or 48˚C days occurring with high winds and fuel even drier than it has been for the past three years. Under such conditions, it would be very easy to imagine such firestorms as are occurring now with not one act of arson.

Whilst I am not ethically opposed to charities to relieve fire victims, if we want to say “polluter pays” then the major carbon dioxide emitters should be the ones to pay the cost of a fire they must be deemed responsible for. It is a pity nobody except me and fringe socialists like GLW are saying anything like this.

During the hottest days, the radio stations were, in contrast to their current over-joyful mood, a little more reasonable about how dreadful the weather was than they usually have been. Perhaps it is unfortunately far too much to ask radio stations to be as blunt about global warming as they ought to be in this situation!