Occasional jottings and some choir concert recordings
-
Peak Coal?
“The perception that coal is the fossil fuel of last resort may well be an illusion.” Energy Watch. Professor David Rutledge of CalTech in a lecture last October, suggests that world coal reserves are grossly overstated and could be substantially exhausted this century.
-
Australia turns up the heat on climate change?
“Australians should be proud of what we are achieving at home to meet the climate change challenge” Alexander Downer in the Age this morning. Is he right? UPDATE: CSIRO and BoM report on the future for Australia
-
Oil Prices: where now?
On Webdiary we’ve gone round the the Peak Oil loop more than a few times over the last few years (eg here). A new point of interest has arisen over this week: for the first time in the last few years the oil futures price has come out of its persistent state of contango as it rose back over…
-
Wedging the climate
No one strategy can do all that we need to stop dangerous climate change. We need to follow several strategies simultaneously – but which ones? And are there solutions without nuclear power?
-
How Warm will Warming be?
Mark Lynas’ “Six Degrees: our future on a hotter planet” works systematically through the impact of warming the planet one degree at a time through the range of predictions for the next century. Key sentence: “none of the continent of Australia – except perhaps the extreme north and Tasmania – will be able to support significant crop…
-
Morality without a God
Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, says: “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down”. On the face of it, a deeply unlikely ambition, and not one that is borne out by the quality of the writing. Along the way, however, it does raise some…
-
Beyond Left and Right: Frank Furedi’s “Politics of Fear”
David McKnight’s Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture Wars was reviewed on Webdiary back in October. McKnight is essentially a politician whose analysis of the capture of the parties of the left by the market imperative is used as a basis for a program for regeneration of the left. Almost simultaneously with…
-
Rita, Katrina, Oil and the Economy
“Commentators at the positive end had already started writing their “why the world economy survived Katrina” pieces within a week or so of the disaster. The (economic) question is – will US consumer confidence (and market confidence generally) survive Rita? I leave for others the shorter term questions around whether the US authorities learned enough…
-
Warming up the energy debate
A recent New Scientist editorial sets out a handy scoring mechanism for energy sources: “We want them to have a small environmental impact, yet be able to supply energy on a huge scale. We want costs to be low, the method of generation to be safe and for there to be plenty of available fuel.…
-
Structural Separation won’t go away, however much Telstra would prefer it to
[Piece I wrote in the Exchange newsletter] Paul Chapman’s Ex Cathedra of 14 February 2003 pointed out some flaws in the precipitate decision to pull the plug on the inquiry into structural separation of Telstra. In my opinion, the flaws run much deeper than Paul set out. Senator Alston’s intemperate little tirade in the AFR…