As Sydney continues to be ringed by fire, it seems a good time to repost something I wrote about extreme weather events after the Black Saturday bushfires. I’m with Adam Bandt, now is the time to be talking about climate change, and its impact on the extremes of weather.Continue Reading
I’m in New Zealand right now, in the middle of pouring rain. But I’m enough of an Australian, and an insurance professional, that I can’t help reading everything my very slow internet connection will let me read about the bushfires. I’m so relieved that despite needing that “Catastrophic” rating forContinue Reading
Before the Lights Go Out: Conquering the Energy Crisis Before It Conquers Us, by Maggie Koerth-Baker is about energy management and the future in the US. Koerth-Baker’s book is about the energy crisis that is coming, and what the US should do about it. In her view, there are twoContinue Reading
Today’s book review is The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat, by Charles Clover. I’ve known, fairly well, for years, that we are overfishing the seas. Reading Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, by Mark Kurlansky, was the first bookContinue Reading
Miranda Devine had a rant this week about cyclists: But hostilities were fed by the lies told by the Government and the RTA, which gave cyclists unreasonable expectations and ideas above their station. The former roads minister Carl Scully, a vegetarian cyclist, threw $250 million at the lobby, further fuellingContinue Reading
John Connor, CEO of the Climate Institute, made a speech today talking about bushfires. I’ve been pondering one of his key points for the last two weeks, ever since the bushfires. Climate change is not just about warmer weather, it is about wilder weather. One of the lessons I learnedContinue Reading
Mr Penguin alerted me to this interested article in Wired. As you would expect, in the US, Republicans are more likely to be sceptical about global warming than Democrats. Environmentalism has always been found more on the left than the right, and Republicans have more to lose from action thatContinue Reading
Sydney’s water crisis is over, for the moment. Our dams are now 65.5% full – up from 33.9% on the 8th February 2007. That will last us around two to three years without any more rain, at the current rate, which feels like a reasonable cushion. Not coincidentally, Sydney’s water consumption went from anContinue Reading
In a front page story in the SMH today, the NRMA (NSW’s peak motorist lobby group) accused the government of wasting money on cycle lanes. “The Iemma Government is building a cycleway alongside choked Epping Road, despite as few as 25 cyclists using that corridor each day. At $7.6 millionContinue Reading
The Institute of Actuaries of Australia does a quick (36 seconds is the promise) survey of its members once a month, reported in its imaginatively titled magazine Actuary Australia. Of the 345 respondents (self selected, but a good proportion of all the actuaries in Australia) 35% don’t believe that globalContinue Reading