What strategy will result from a warning a decade overdue?

On 3LO today, I heard at last an admission that global warming will be disastrous for Victoria, something that should have been admitted way back in 1999 when it was clear that the winter polar cyclones are moving poleward at a rate of around one degree every two years. If you look though this blog or for my name in The Age, you should be able to see what I think without me saying much more.

In essence, the evidence of lake levels in the Western District demonstrates that unless carbon dioxide levels can be restored to something approaching pre-industrial levels of around 280 parts per million by volume, Victoria faces becoming entirely within the subtropical arid belt and having only irregular ephemeral streamflow or groundwater recharge from summer incursions of the monsoon. At current levels of fuel consumption and present demographic trends we are likely to see carbon dioxide reach 700 parts per million by volume, which would be the highest level since the beginning of the Miocene.

A carbon dioxide level of 700 ppmv is sometimes viewed as benign compared to today because of longer growing seasons in high latitudes. However, this gain would be nullified not only by elimination of the growing season in the Mediterranean-climate belt. Warmer temperatures would cause extensive leaching of soils that reduce crop yields potentially by a very large proportion if one compares 8 tonnes per hectare on very young northern European soils to around 1.5 tonnes per hectare on Australia’s ancient soils. Changes in ocean currents would affect the capacity of fisheries even more drastically.

Whilst I have spent too much time discussing the political problems responsible for Australia’s very poor greenhouse emissions, I certainly do want outline three steps Australia should take to cut greenhouse emissions:

1) Reducing road capacity
New roads are always advocated as solutions for the problem of traffic congestion that has resulted from increased affordability of private cars.

What too few people are ever told is that the supply elasticity of demand (ie. the responsiveness of change in demand to change in supply) of road capacity is so great that in fact increases in road capacity have never been found to reduce peak hour travel times.

Worse still, increases in road capacity, especially the growth of freeways, can be shown to be the decisive factor in the need for subsidisation of public rail and tram transport. Even Murray Lonie admitted that the Tullamarine Freeway took as many as fifty percent of off-peak passengers on the Broadmeadows train line upon opening and probably more afterwards. Other Melbourne freeways have had the same effect. If all these freeway users returned to public transport the fares would easily pay the entire costs of the system with no taxpayers’ subsidy. This would also provide incentives to actually make the system of a reasonable quality via extensions, duplications, and improved service frequencies, all of which would drastically cut Australia’s greenhouse emissions.

In the long run, in fact, I think reductions in road capacity would do nothing to reduce people’s mobility. With real incentive to invest in public transport, services would at last reach some sort of respectability in their quality and would serve to improve the mobility of rural as well as urban dwellers.

Whereas road building never pays off, large-scale road demolition in the long run will pay off through the public funding improvements to established infrastructure.

2) Rail track improvement
Most transport experts have been in wonderment at how ancient Australia’s track alignment is. Much of it has not been improved since World War I and is a major barrier to more respectable rail speeds that could compete with air services were aviation fuel properly taxed.

Calls to improve alignment have been made ever since the Pacific Highway accident of October 1989, but the government has instead concentrated upon truck safety laws that have been shown not to significantly improve the safety of road transport and have encouraged its further growth at the expense of more efficient rail.

3) Gauge standardisation
The lack on integration of Australia’s rail system has been one factor that promoted the growth of the most powerful road lobby in the world and continues to press for totally unneeded spending on an already oversized road system.

Rail is very well suited to Australia’s flat landscape and long distances, especially as it is a very clean means of transport. A high-speed rail network would be a much more efficient method of moving people around the continent than the present highway network, and the infrastructure exists to develop a very good system for goods.

The problem is that there exist “breaks of gauge” at state borders between New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland that make for a terrible network of multiple-gauge tracks.

Were these standardised, there would be multiple-track lines over extensive links that might allow for dedicated passenger and freight lines working in harmony as the main arteries between population centres.

Finally recognising how little hope I have

The letter I received today from RMIT after a month of waiting really makes it so clear to me that I have no hope of getting the job I need to be able to live a reasonably independent life. Their statement that I am dangerous to their staff's security really proves what I have been denying for years.

The way in which I reacted to not being allowed to enter their premises and even to losing a phone I had been over-eager and impatient to get back really shows me an inherently violent and egocentric person. Moreover, I am finally coming to realise that I always will be violent, egocentric, and unable to deal with being hurt or feeling unfairly treated in any way other than the most violent. The clearly show fact is contrary to what people who know me even for years believe - they see me as a gentle, peaceable person. Such a gentle, peaceable mask to try and gain public acceptance really cannot last and I am not so over-optimistic to think I would become a peaceful, empathetic person if I tried hard enough.

My (genuine) enjoyment of reading about peaceful and selfless people actually amounts to the most extreme form of envy possible. Whilst I do wish I could be less violent and more concerned with other people, I am not foolish enough to see this as in any way possible no matter how much I try. Even when I grab and assault other people, I do try not to be violent and am desperate not to cause injury.

The problem lies in the fact that I cannot and never will be able to judge how things affect other people and feel only what effects me: if something hurts me enough, there is no way I can think about whether fighting by any means possible, including threats to kill, will hurt the other person if I could theoretically get what I wanted at immense cost to the other person.

The whole problem with this is that on one level I know I will have to get a job merely to deal with the time when my mother can no longer support me and my pension disappears. On the other hand, I now know for sure that I am, as the RMIT letter says, inherently too violent and unpredicatable a person to be employable for anyone. If anybody does not give me what I want I know I could give them terrible bruises and possibly even something worse than that. Worse still, I am aware that it is unlikely that in such a situation of panic I will ever learn any response but physical fighting.

Re-acquainted with an old favourite site

When I first was on the Internet, one of my very favourite sites was Dead or Alive. I loved to find out about whether people I knew were dead or alive, but I was frustrated by the fact that so many people whom I knew were not included either because they were unknown in America (like Herbert Sutcliffe) or who are only famous in fields that have attracted my fixation, like Robert Christgau.

I have often imagined what sites for some people whom I have taken an interest in would be like (I actually asked the site owner if Mary Daly was dead back in 2002!)

In an age of such rapid change, I find it pleasant how little has changed about the outline of Dead or Alive. The fact that the site has not added people I suggested I have grown in acceptance of because I - perhaps through reading astrology sites appreciate that people in entertainment are much more famous than those in the specialised fields that have always (and still) capture my interest.

Gippsland by-election shows that people still need to learn

The Australian has published a good article that shows how Australia's soft population is so unwilling to deal with the real costs of not acting on climate change. Alternatively, we should say that they are unwilling to see the long-term pain that will result from policies that make life for them financially much easier but which constitute ecological suicide beyond even our present course.

My discovery that Family First, set to become the major party of Australia's next generation, did not even run, truly surprised me. The 2007 Family First candidate Tania Walters did run, but without the support of her party gained only 32.3 percent of the Party's 2007 votes.

It is true that some people have argued that local issues and not the reduced cheapness of petrol are the cause of the swing, and it is equally true that formerly party-endorsed candidates have been able in some cases to win more votes as independents. One might hope for this!

Now there is to be a by-election for the safe Liberal Adelaide Hills seat of Mayo. It might be safe for Labour not to contest given they have no chance of winning, especially if Family First - very strong in the mortgage belt of Adelaide - did run this time.

Labor really must have its priorities in the right direction. It should not run in a by-election for even safer Coalition seats like MacKellar (Bronwyn Bishop listed as "possibly retiring" before 2007), O'Connor (Wilson Tuckey ditto), Fairfax, Maranoa, Moore or Pearce (very like Mayo in being located in the hilly urban hinterland of Perth), but should instead aim to focus on trying to inform the public about the horrible costs of allowing petrol prices back into the depths of the basement.

Independent groups really should try to encourage people to voluntarily do without private motorised transport altogether even if this is very, very, very tough - showing them how Australia's climate has drastically changed and why we need to boycott private car usage to do something about it.

50 greatest footy players

Recent issues of The Age have contained details of who Bob Davis, Ron Carter, Ron Barassi, Ken Hands and Tom Hafey consider to be the 50 greatest players in the history of football.

II have had a long history of trying to dispute with my brother the effectiveness of "scientific" (ie. statistics-based) methods of determining who the best player in the league. Although I have given this up with old county cricket because I know that almost all the old English spin bowlers who made county cricket attractive were utterly hopeless on Australian pitches where they could get no spin, I have not ever tried to look at it seriously with footy - less so than with rugby actually.

Having once been bought a book Knights in Muddy Armour by my mother and actually seen Peter Knights at his peak in the 1970s, he is one player who was surprisingly omitted. Gary Ayres, who won two Norm Smith Medals at a time when I was a Hawthorn fan before finding that their success was due to a zoning system that essentially constituted a gerrymander, is another example from the same period, as is Paul Roos. My father recalls admiring Geelong's Bill Goggin, whom he thought one of the best players in football. Amongst older players, Melbourne's Ivor-Warne Smith, perhaps the predecessor to Knights and Roos, and Footscary centreman Allan Hopkins, are also missing, as is Norm Smith, whom it is thought would have won a Brownlow in 1943.