On the ABC today is an article which gives one the impression that Australia could face starvation from climate change. Whilst I have heard (and know) that Australia will face agricultural problems as a result of man-made global warming, if it really is true that Australians do not want forty million people here in a country that can sustain about two million without its surfeit of mineral resources, then such a majority must overcome its passivity to protest to eliminate subsidies to water and energy use.
People do not realise that, in ecological terms, water in Australia should cost far more per unit than it does in Europe or North America or New Zealand. Owing to the need for dense proteoid root systems, Australian rivers have extraordinarily low runoff ratios compared to those of comparable climates overseas. Because these low runoff ratios reflect a requirement of around 300 millimetres (twelve inches) of rain before the dense rooting systems allow any runoff at all, variability in Australian streams is twice as high or more as those with the same rainfall and identical precipitation variability in Eurasia, North America, or New Zealand. Thus, for the same size of storage in Australia, only around a fifth as much water can be yielded even when reservoir evaporation is ignored.
This would require Australian water prices uniformly at least five times those of Europe, North America or New Zealand. Given the dryness of Australia's climate south of the nineteenth parallel, one could argue ten times Northern Hemisphere prices as more reasonable.
The trouble is that in a free market any increase in prices would fail to disturb the enormous economic advantage Australia's farmers have. In a free market, entrepreneurs would know they could gain much by building a pipeline from the relatively well-watered portion of the continent north of the nineteenth parallel to allow farming on the dirt-cheap land in southern Australia. It is indeed very easy to see that this – or large-scale desalination – could be the way the world feeds itself unless people see an ecological duty to not eat Australian-grown foody.
The consequence of reversing a natural hydrology typical of the Mesozoic rather than the Quaternary, however, will be drastic for all Australia’s freshwater and terrestrial systems. Even those that survive man-made global warming will be destroyed if all the water from the well-watered north is turned to irrigate the arid south. How the northern rivers’ ecology would change from such moves is not known, but it would be very likely to destroy most species who are adapted to the extreme climate of the drought/flood tropics.
Monday 25 January 2010
Saturday 23 January 2010
South Africa tracks down rhino poachers
According to International News, poachers in South Africa have killed one hundred and twenty-two rhinos rhinos since the start of 2009.
News of growth in rhino poaching has been prominent over the last year, as the economic crisis means that people can no longer make money by licit means and so they turn to an extremely valuable resource. Although rhino horn is nothing like so expensive as cocaine ($3 per gram as against around $200 per gram), it is still in sufficient demand that people can gain more money from killing a rhino than they can from years of work at other jobs available in Africa. This problem is made worse because many poachers can very easily cross the borders from impoverished Zimbabwe and Mozambique to poach rhinos in world-famous Kruger National Park.
Authorities in South Africa indeed say that rhino poachers are indeed part of very large groups who are involved in a great variety of crime activities from prostitution to drug smuggling to even the illegal trafficking of people. This makes solving it very hard, but hopefully we will see a repeat of the recent arrests in Kenya whereby at least a dozen poachers have been killed.
News of growth in rhino poaching has been prominent over the last year, as the economic crisis means that people can no longer make money by licit means and so they turn to an extremely valuable resource. Although rhino horn is nothing like so expensive as cocaine ($3 per gram as against around $200 per gram), it is still in sufficient demand that people can gain more money from killing a rhino than they can from years of work at other jobs available in Africa. This problem is made worse because many poachers can very easily cross the borders from impoverished Zimbabwe and Mozambique to poach rhinos in world-famous Kruger National Park.
Authorities in South Africa indeed say that rhino poachers are indeed part of very large groups who are involved in a great variety of crime activities from prostitution to drug smuggling to even the illegal trafficking of people. This makes solving it very hard, but hopefully we will see a repeat of the recent arrests in Kenya whereby at least a dozen poachers have been killed.
Triple M's Top 100 Albums -a familiar list in an odd order
Today, I found that Triple M have made a list of the Top 100 Albums of All Time.
It is the first time for a while I have found a list I want to report, though this time (unlike most cases I will confess) I had no expectations for anything unusual.
It is the first time for a while I have found a list I want to report, though this time (unlike most cases I will confess) I had no expectations for anything unusual.
What is a little odd, as the notes suggest, is the way in which the list is ordered. Whilst one cannot question Back in Black being number one on any rock albums list in terms of its musical and cultural influence. In fact, I wonder why Benjamin Wiker and similar people do not discuss AC/DC because the whole history of the Baby Boomers in Eurasia, Blue America, Canada and New Zealand can be seen as a desire to purify Epicureanism from the influence of Christianity. In this quest, AC/DC were, along with such philosophers as Richard Dawkins and Peter Singer, the absolute "vanguard". However, when one moves even lightly down the list, it seems odd. It is hard to understand why Pearl Jam should be at number three: neither in popularity or influence can they compare with Nirvana or perhaps even Soundgarden. The same could be said to be true of
- Live
- Supertramp
- solo Sting
- Kings of Leon
- Back in Black - AC/DC
- Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd
- Ten - Pearl Jam
- Rumours - Fleetwood Mac
- Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen
- Bat out of Hell - Meatloaf
- The Joshua Tree - U2
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
- Kick - INXS
- Nevermind - Nirvana
- East - Cold Chisel
- Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zepplin
- Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits
- Odyssey No.5 - Powderfinger
- Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
- Hysteria - Def Leppard
- What's the Story Morning Glory - Oasis
- Purple Rain - Prince
- Blood Sugar Sex Magik - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
- Diesel and Dust - Midnight Oil
- Hotel California - The Eagles
- Smash - Offspring
- Achtung Baby - U2
- Slippery When Wet - Bon Jovi
- Thriller - Michael Jackson
- Throwing Copper - Live
- For the Working Class Man - Jimmy Barnes
- Dookie - Green Day
- The Swing - INXS
- A Rush of Blood to the Head - Coldplay
- Appetite for Destruction - Guns 'N' Roses
- The Beatles - The Beatles
- Metallica - Metallica
- Graceland - Paul Simon
- Who's Next? -The Who
- The Wall - Pink Floyd
- Breakfast in America - Supertramp
- Use Your Illusion II - Guns 'N' Roses
- Whispering Jack - John Farnham
- 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - Midnight Oil
- A Night at the Opera - Queen
- Urban Hymns - The Verve
- T.N.T - AC/DC
- True Colours - Split Enz
- Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix
- So - Peter Gabriel
- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John
- Listen like Thieves - INXS
- Vulture Street - Powderfinger
- Human Frailty - Hunters & Collectors
- The Doors - The Doors
- Crowded House - Crowded House
- American Idiot - Green Day
- Business As Usual - Men At Work
- Grace - Jeff Buckley
- Little Creatures - Talking Heads
- Abbey Road - The Beatles
- Circus Animals - Cold Chisel
- Automatic for the People - REM
- Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
- Dream of the Blue Turtles - Sting
- Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie
- 1984 - Van Halen
- Living in the 70's - Skyhooks
- Use Your Illusion I - Guns 'N' Roses
- Blue Sky Mining - Midnight Oil
- Sticky Fingers - Rolling Stones
- Mars Needs Guitars - Hoodoo Gurus
- The Stranger - Billy Joel
- War - U2
- The Colour and the Shape - Foo Fighters
- Synchronicity -The Police
- Cosmo's Factory - Creedance Clearwater Revival
- Shabooh Shoobah - INXS
- Californication - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
- Scarecrow - John Mellencamp
- Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morrisette
- Full Moon Fever - Tom Petty
- MTV Unplugged - Nirvana
- Cats and Dogs - Mental As Anything
- Yourself and Someone Like You - Matchbox Twenty
- L.A. Woman - The Doors
- Sirocco - Australian Crawl
- Frampton Comes Alive - Peter Frampton
- Only by the Night - Kings of Leon
- Stop Making Sense - Talking Heads
- Harvest - Neil Young
- Internationalist - Powderfinger
- Keep the Faith - Bon Jovi
- Woodface - Crowded House
- Dire Straits - Dire Straits
- Imagine - John Lennon
- Cut - Hunters and Collectors
- Ghost in the Machine - The Police
- Gossip - Paul Kelly and the Coloured Girls
- Get Born - Jet
- Reckless - Bryan Adams
- Slowhand - Eric Clapton
- The Lonesome Jubilee - John Mellencamp
- Destroyer - Kiss
Saturday 2 January 2010
Kyōto: a radically different Japan
After going to Mount Fuji, we returned to Tōkyō for our last night and prepared for a final look at the city and a 400 kilometre trip on the bullet train (shinkansen) to Kyōto, one of three major centres in Japan’s second-largest conurbation, Ōsaka-Kōbe-Kyōto, also known as “Kansai”, which means “west of the barrier” (a reference to the central mountains of Honshū).
The trip on the shinkansen was remarkably easy and a shame to every citizen of ecologically fragile Australia who has allowed the road lobby to waste billions on freeways and highways not a single one of which was remotely needed in a flat country like Australia whose terrain suits rail so well!
Entering Kyōto was as much a new experience as entering Japan itself. Whereas Tōkyō epitomised the modern, high-tech Japan on an amazingly grand scale, Kyōto was another world. The city was quite spacious – at least apart from the residential areas of which I saw very few – and in accordance with Japan’s very wet climate extremely green even during the fresh winter weather. Even the houses I did see amongst the large streets were very traditional – made of wood, an extremely abundant resource in hilly, fertile and wet Japan. Our hotel, in perfect accord with this, was very traditional and lacked the comforts we had had in Tōkyō, but it was actually less uncomfortable from merely a little more space. Inside, the room was dark and quiet, which rather suited me, and I enjoyed the relaxing experience and not having to worry about the Internet – which has led me to unhealthy obsessions which tend to cause unpleasant reactions dating from many years ago.
The second day in Kyōto was spent walking round the historic heart of the city, and much more memorably a number of royal gardens dating from when Kyōto was the imperial capital of Japan. These were the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: the houses in the garden were so well-arranged as to give a great surprise, and so was the walking path.
So good were Kyōto’s gardens that there was never time to have a look at shopping in the city – which did not bother me as I had enough to read in my email and to look at on amazon.com and eBay that there was very little time for this.
The trip on the shinkansen was remarkably easy and a shame to every citizen of ecologically fragile Australia who has allowed the road lobby to waste billions on freeways and highways not a single one of which was remotely needed in a flat country like Australia whose terrain suits rail so well!
Entering Kyōto was as much a new experience as entering Japan itself. Whereas Tōkyō epitomised the modern, high-tech Japan on an amazingly grand scale, Kyōto was another world. The city was quite spacious – at least apart from the residential areas of which I saw very few – and in accordance with Japan’s very wet climate extremely green even during the fresh winter weather. Even the houses I did see amongst the large streets were very traditional – made of wood, an extremely abundant resource in hilly, fertile and wet Japan. Our hotel, in perfect accord with this, was very traditional and lacked the comforts we had had in Tōkyō, but it was actually less uncomfortable from merely a little more space. Inside, the room was dark and quiet, which rather suited me, and I enjoyed the relaxing experience and not having to worry about the Internet – which has led me to unhealthy obsessions which tend to cause unpleasant reactions dating from many years ago.
The second day in Kyōto was spent walking round the historic heart of the city, and much more memorably a number of royal gardens dating from when Kyōto was the imperial capital of Japan. These were the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: the houses in the garden were so well-arranged as to give a great surprise, and so was the walking path.
So good were Kyōto’s gardens that there was never time to have a look at shopping in the city – which did not bother me as I had enough to read in my email and to look at on amazon.com and eBay that there was very little time for this.
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