Love/Hate

Ben, The Backpacker, Groundwater had a recent entry on the U.S. - much criticised, often avoided, but, he argues, with many underrated charms. More interesting, however, are the comments of those who wrote in to respond, many of whom agree.

Carbon and Methane in '07

Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere continued their upward march last year, and methane showed new signs of life, with concentrations rising for the first time since 1998. This should serve as a reminder that the atmosphere is rather oblivious to all the talk about greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Dare Gallery Furniture

Dare Gallery Furniture has entered voluntary administration, appointing Deloitte to handle company finances and rescue it from what one must assume is a sorry financial state. Now normally I wouldn't bother writing about such trivial business dealings, except for the fact that said company has over a grand of our money. We ordered new sofas from Dare back in January. Their delivery was delayed, and we've spent the past month trying to get some kind of information from them as to what's up. Finally we discovered the company has essentially gone bottom-up. Our sofas are sitting in a container in Shanghai, but it remains to be seen whether we'll ever see them, or the money we put down as a deposit. Worst of all, this might mean that we have to go shopping - again. . .

Burn Baby, Burn

The Olympic Torch is currently in Australia, with runners carrying the flame through the streets of Canberra. To no surprise, there is no shortage of protesters, although things appear to be much tamer than what's transpired in other nations. Some possible explanations:

1) It's Australia (no one can be bothered)
2) It's Canberra (no one's there)
3) Maybe there's a higher percentage of people in Australia that recognise the torch as a symbol of unity, independent of China and its actions on human rights. Hence, if one seeks to protest the actions of the Chinese government, there are more direct symbols to target that don't cast shadows over the Olympics themselves and their intent.

Hit Me Baby One More Time

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues its first assessment report in 1990. Subsequent efforts have been released every 5 to 6 years for the past two decades, culminating in 2007's Fourth Assessment Report. And now the IPCC has indicated (through its report on the Future of the IPCC from the recent 28th meeting in Budapest) that the crowd has called out for more. The Fifth Assessment Report is to be rolled out between 2013 and 2014. That's still a long way off, but I foresee the AR5 going the way of the AR4: slightly wider ranges of uncertainty with respect to climate projections (part of the persistent trend toward increasing uncertainty associated with IPCC work), but no fundamental shift or ground-breaking discovery that would cause us to look at the issue and its challenges in a new light. This makes be wonder what benefits various nations see in continung such reporting over such short time intervals (i.e., there appears to be absolutely no correlation between scientific evidence and willingness of nations to pursue greenhouse gas emissions reductions) and will a time ever come when the IPCC publishes a report that says "well, six years have past and we don't really have anything new to say - see you next time".

There's Gold in Them Thar Icebergs

While the environmental implications of climate change n the Arctic have received significant attention in recent years, only now are folks starting to focus on the economic implications. Hugo Miller recently reported on the gold rush taking place in the far north as global warming increases access to some of the last great untapped mineral deposits on the planet. The irony of the situation appears lost on the mining and petroleum industries.

2020

The nation is abuzz with talk of Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 Summit (not to be confused with Twenty20)- designed to be an assembly of Australia's best and brightest and an opportunity to develop new ideas for Australia's future.

Everyone appears to have an opinion on this thing. It's difficult to see what 1000 people can accomplish in a day and a half, but the idea of citizen committees (even if many of those ordinary citizens are members of the elite) seems like a step forward in the democratic process. Given there were over 7000 nominations(including myself) for those 1000 spots, there are undoubtedly a large number of disgruntled people who were snubbed and therefore feel free to throw rocks at the process (some of us met for dinner last night and chucked a few stones ourselves). Yet, it should be noted that anyone was allowed to submit submissions to the process electronically. Despite criticism, living in a country where the government provides the entire nation with an opportunity to submit ideas is quite brave and refreshing.

Interestingly, in small public opinion poll prior to the summit, the biggest issue flagged as being "the most important problem facing the country" was the environment.

Kilikiti

[www.police.govt.nz]

Rod Curtis recently published this article on Somoa's national sport of kilikiti - a variation on the game of cricket, which was introduced by missionaries in the early 19th century but then allowed to evolve independent of British influence.

New Publication: Climate Change and Australian Runoff

Preston, B.L. and Jones, R.N. (2008) Evaluating sources ofuncertainty in Australian runoff projections. Advances in Water Resources Volume 31, Issue 5, Pages 758-775.

Abstract
Generating estimates of the future impacts of climate change on human and natural systems is confounded by cascading uncertainties which propagate through the impact assessment. Here, a simple stochastic rainfall–runoff model representing 238 river basins on the Australian continent was used to assess the sensitivity of the risk of runoff changes to various sources of uncertainty. Uncertainties included global mean temperature change, greenhouse gas stabilisation targets, catchment sensitivities to climatic change, and the seasonality of runoff, rainfall, and evaporation. Model simulations provided estimates of the first-order risk of climate change to Australian catchments, with several regions having high likelihoods of experiencing significant reductions in future runoff. Climate uncertainty (at global and regional scales) was identified as the dominant driving force in hydrological risk assessments. Uncertainties in catchment sensitivities to climatic changes also influenced risk, provided they were sufficiently large, whereas structural assumptions of the model were generally negligible. Collectively, these results indicate that rigorous assessment of climate risk to water resources over relatively long time-scales is largely a function of adequately exploring the uncertainty space of future climate changes.

Slave to the Grind

It's been a busy couple of weeks. I did a sting on the lecture circuit, giving talks at a workshop on urban water systems, one on climate change and social justice, one on climate adaptation in local government, and finished off talking to secondary school students (pictured here) about success and how to achieve it.

Not-so-big Rig

Joshua Dowling from the Sydney Morning Herald writes about his experience driving a new Smart Fortwo across the great continent of Australia.

First Compton, Now NYC

The escotereic sport of cricket continues to make inroads in America. First, the Compton Cricket Club hit the news and now word that a junior cricket league has been launched in New York.

Victoria Leads

Victoria has been in the spotlight as of late when it comes to taking on climate change. Recent initiatives include:

1) Opening of the Otway Project - the world’s largest research and carbon geosequestration demonstration project.

2) A $72 million increase in investment for the state's renewable energy projects.

3) A partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative to explore clean, renewable energy projects in the state.

2008 Nationals

From 23-29 March, Melbourne hosted the 27th JKA Australia Nationals, with ~250 Aussies and Kiwis coming together to train and compete. It was a pretty awesome sight to see that number of people training in sync (under the guidance of some of Japan's most accomplished instructors) and to see the camaraderie among those that have invested blood sweat and tears in the pursuit of karate.

See here for a recap of the week and here for the tournament victors.