2b

I think cold water extraction is the problem, I've got a friend who uses heaps this way. It really is depressing to watch him sleep his days away.

NewScientist.com news service Any one who is aware of what the Templeton foundations' goals are or anyone who has read Dawkins for that matter will understand the issues behind this prize. His work does sound interesting.

Michael Northcott Professor at Edinburgh University, author of "A Moral Climate" raised an interesting point in an interview about his new book on the ABC this week. He claims that carbon trading will be part of the problem , not a solution at all. I have highlighted the paragraph. This is a transcript of the interview , the original can be found here: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/religionreport/st...008/2199497.htm Michael Northcott, welcome to the program. I have to tell you it's slightly disconcerting to open your book and read an argument that strongly implies that global warming is God's punishment for human idolatry. Michael Northcott: Well of course the argument that global warming is God's punishment is pre-scientific, and I'm not really suggesting that in the book. But I'm suggesting that the way that the Bible reads climate calamities as divine punishment is a reminder to us that God is the creator who is set into the earth a set of relationships and when we as human beings neglect the way those relationships interact and our responsibilities to maintain the relational character of the earth and its creatures, then we may suffer the consequences. That isn't strictly speaking, to say that God directly is punishing us by warming the planet, but it is to say that the planet itself is punishing us one might say. Stephen Crittenden: An Old Testament narrative I guess brushes up against Gaia Theology there. Michael Northcott: Absolutely. I mean of course, James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis has produced a recent book which he calls 'The Revenge of Gaia', and he says that the earth is going effectively to get its own back on industrial civilisation by killing off the species of industrial humans that are creating the problem with all these emissions into the atmosphere. I don't see it so much as a revenge of Gaia, but it is in a way, judgment. It is the judgment of the earth against a civilisation that is out of control, and is sending the planet, and its climate out of control. Stephen Crittenden: Underlying everything in this book is a very simple proposition I guess, which is that global warming is at some level, a moral issue. I doubt there's a single person listening to this broadcast who'd deny that. Michael Northcott: Well I think there are quite a lot of people in Australia and beyond who would deny that global warming is a moral issue, but many people in the world still do not think that global warming is a consequence of human action. So first of all, to understand it as a moral issue, you have to embrace what the science now clearly shows, which is that industrial emissions of greenhouse gases are changing the climate, and that's the first thing. The second thing then is if you accept that industrial emissions are changing the climate, those who have put the most emissions up there historically have a very grave moral duty to act, and act first. Well what is actually happening is that countries like America, and indeed Australia until very recently, have argued that they're not going to act until China and India act. And that's why this is a fundamentally immoral issue because of the injustice of the fact that here in Australia you have 20 tonnes per person greenhouse gas emissions; in Africa you have about 0.2 tonnes per person greenhouse gas emissions, but it's the Africans who are already suffering from malnutrition, whose farms and crops are failing. Stephen Crittenden: The big ethical enemy in the book is neo-liberal economics, and the accompanying loss of a sense of the common good. Michael Northcott: Yes, well I think neo-liberalism is easier to fix than sin. It's a fairly recent idea, or set of ideas, it had its day in the 19th century, it was called laissez-faire economics in those days and it's come back in the late 20th century to affect Australia, New Zealand, Britain and America primarily, but from their influence, much of the rest of the world. And what neo-liberalism basically does is to suggest that human societies are best ordered and maximise their welfare when individuals, consumers and corporations, are free from collective commitment for the common good and from legal regulation. The difficulty is that in fact human welfare has not been advanced. Here in Australia a small number of people have got very rich under the influence of neo-liberalism, but many others have seen their income stagnate or even decline and you've seen in some areas a decline in quality of life, rather than increase, just as we have in the UK, under the influence of neo-liberal philosophy. Now on the global scene, neo-liberalism suggests that the common good is not something we should aspire as nations or as groups or as communities of nations to actually serve, that we'd be better off just addressing partial interest, corporations of consumers and emerging States. But the difficulty is that the atmosphere is the collective commons, and only if we act collectively as nations, to reduce our Greenhouse gas emissions by common agreement, can we address this global problem. Basically neo-liberalism undermines the idea that humans need to act morally in the interests of others, not just to themselves. Stephen Crittenden: You've got a very interesting ethical take on carbon trading. You basically suggest that carbon trading is a product of the same neo-liberal paradigm that gave us the pollution problems and the global warming problems in the first place, and you make the point that it's privatising and commodifying things that are really common goods. Michael Northcott: Absolutely. Carbon trading has been a very effective diversionary tactic by neo-liberal economists, mainly from the States, but also from some other countries, party to the Kyoto negotiations. Economists, when they look at this objectively, have argued that the most efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is through regulation and control. Basically what we have to do is to keep fossil fuels in the ground and stop putting them in the atmosphere. That the simplest way of doing that is to regulate less use of fossil fuels. The other thing that's troubling about neo-liberalism is it's disabling us from acting collectively and morally, because it trains us only to act individually. So in a sense then it creates a moral climate which suggests that we're all atoms, we're all as individuals or as corporations, or as nation-states, disconnected, and if we act only in our own disconnected individual interests, the argument goes the market will turn that towards the common good. Stephen Crittenden: In your book you talk a great deal about original sin and structural sin and I might get you to explain what those two things mean for the audience. I think what comes through the book is that this whole problem with global warming is emblematic of those two things. Michael Northcott: I think that's absolutely right. Original sin of course is the Christian idea that goes back to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve that there is a condition which human beings inherit that our tendency not always to act morally is not simply an individual trait, it's a trait that is passed on from generation to generation. Structural sin though, refers to the way in which that capacity for us to inherit sin has modified in a world which is much more complex than the ancient world, and where you have structures and social systems which connects us in a range of new ways, which are not just genetic or biological or - Stephen Crittenden: You actually suggest, don't you, that a structure like the global market economy is in some senses a structure of sin. Michael Northcott: Absolutely. Let me give you one example of that. Bananas are traded globally, many bananas are grown on plantations where corporations aerially spray not only the banana plants with their pesticides and herbicides, but workers' houses, workers themselves and their children and their wells, and children get sick, workers' fingernails fall out, many bananas are grown in ways which are very destructive to the environment, and socially very, very unpleasant. But in response to this Christians and others have tried to introduce a new way of trading in the global economy, and this is called Fair Trade, and now in Britain, and under the influence of the Fair Trade movement which began in the churches, a number of companies and supermarkets are now refusing to sell bananas grown in the old unjust and unfair way, and are only selling Fair Trade bananas. Stephen Crittenden: We've reported on this program a similar campaign that's begun in the last year or so in relation to chocolate which is produced under slave conditions in many places. Michael Northcott: Absolutely. And what you see Fair Trade is an example of Christians leading but not only a critique of structural injustice in a global market, but a new way of trading, and Christians around the world have been taking a similar lead in relation to climate change. The global market economy is indeed a structure of sin, and so in a sense is an international market in carbon emissions. Stephen Crittenden: Well one of the most important people that you refer to several times in the book, is the American farmer and essayist, Wendell Berry, who may not be a familiar name to many of our listeners. Tell us about him, because I suspect that his vision for the kind of lives you imagine us all living, in a better, more utopian future, is heavily influenced by him. Michael Northcott: Yes, I think that's very helpful. See what I'm trying to argue in the book is very much along the lines that Wendell Berry writes. Wendell Berry is a Kentucky farmer, he's a southern Baptist, and he's a brilliant essayist; America's finest contemporary essayist. He has a land ethic in which he suggests that industrial nations and industrial people are living irresponsibly on the earth because they don't know how their food is grown, they don't from where their energy comes and they don't know where their waste ends up. And this lack of knowledge and this lack of awareness of their material relations with the earth produces a culture of moral irresponsibility. And it is that culture which is not only causing global warming, but is causing the sixth great extinction of species, toxicity, pollution and waste. Now Berry suggests we need to recover responsibility for all of the material relationships that our lives involve, and one of the most obvious forms of material relationship that we all engage in every day is the use of energy, so when we turn on a switch, do we know where that power has come from, how it was generated? When we turn a key in a car ignition, do we know where that oil was found, how it was sourced, what effects it had on the lives of the people who live near that oil well. And unless we do, Berry suggests we're living irresponsible lives. Another area he focuses on a great deal is the area of food, and of course it is food which is the first area Christians have addressed through the Fair Trade movement. But he says we need to eat locally grown food, we need to eat organic food. We need to eat food that we know about rather than food that we don't know about. Because only when we eat food that we know about will be eat food that has been justly grown by farmers who are able to lead decent lives. So Berry's philosophy is, I think, a very hopeful philosophy because it says to us "yeah we've got these big global problems like we've got global warming. They look horrendous and impossible. But actually" he says " by addressing these big problems we can live both more morally, and also more fulfilling lives". Stephen Crittenden: Professor Michael Northcott of Edinburgh University an d his book, 'A Moral Climate' is published by Darton, Longman and Todd.

A HEPA filter is a HEPA filter, the only reason to use one over the other is convenience .

That's the one and if you buy a plastic drain fitting from the hardware store (the kind in the bottom of your bathroom sink) and mount it inside your box so the drain pipe bit pokes out (through a whole you cut) you will find that the thread on the drain pipe is the same as the filter cartridge so it will just screw staight on. Of course the fan has to be inside but that is no problem.

Yeah these work fine , but they are all different volts (the fans that is) the volts and amps are written on the back of them so just buy the right size transformer/voltage pack. As for the filter you can attach a HEPA filter to it and it works just fine i found one that was threaded and intended for use on a respirator. Remeber the fan sucks air in through the filter into the glove box , creating positive pressure inside.The air spills out around the purspex lid.

Michael (Michal) Hellers' work quite frankly is beyond me. Non-commutative geometry and groupoid theory are very heavy going. It always makes me step back and look at my own preconceived ideas of religious people when it appears they actually have faith and a brilliant mind. Dawkins thinks that faith falls away as inteligence increases, but I come across many more exceptions to this idea than I feel comfortable with. I have always considered myself 'agnostic with doubts'. Not having the strength to be athiest and being a fence sitter is a little weak , but I just can't say that the issue of faith is binary.

Getting a rain water tank makes more sense.

Fluoride seems to be a hot topic at the moment everywhere I go. In my town this has been dragged through the media in the most alarmist sensational way that it was hard to believe. The amount of junk science complete with facts straight off the internet (so that means they must be true!) that was put forward was astounding. I'm not sure what my personal position is on this topic, but the amount of poorly researched arguments is a real worry. Let's start with this issue of toxic waste. Fluoride is an important and expensive raw material used in Aluminium smelting operations. The efforts of these operations are concentrated on using fluoride as efficiently as possible and recapturing as much as possible through a fluoride recovery process. There are no liquid wastes to be disposed of from the recovery process and it is simply misleading to suggest that it is put into our water system to save money. As i said i have no fixed position on this issue, but let’s all take a step back and look at the facts. NB: "How's it going Ed ? It’s been a long time."

Merry christmass all. Thanks for just being here.

It's a numbers game , some will slip through but most get caught. Nothing short of pure luck is going to help here Billy. If your friend gets caught ignorance is not bliss , your friend will get just as busted as if he planned it all along. So the question is " Does your friend feel lucky ?"..................................

A mate of mine did this once and e-bay cancelled the auction. The reason e-bay gave was they have a policy of not selling body parts ?

I'll take a guess that it was one of Festers' books SMM or something like that , much like Pihkal some things are just plain illegal to posses and ignorance is no excuse. The whole book thing probably is being stirred up by 'jihad' manuals and alike docs . That doesn't make seven years seem any less extreme but remember that mandatory sentencing is a huge issue in the NT .

I'll take a guess that it was one of Festers' books SMM or something like that , much like Pikal some things are just plain ilegal to posses and ignorance is no excuse. The whole book thing probably is being stired up by 'jihad' manuals and alike docs . That doesn't make seven years seem any less extreme but remember that mandatory sentancing is a huge issue in the NT .

I am alive.

I was thinking about this movie the other day, a true classic . Almost a window into the Melbourne I remember as a kid , much like Romper stomper. Where have all the good locally produced and filmed movies gone ? Is this just an issue if you live in a regional area or are all you city bound folk seeing excellent local films that have just dried up for me ?

Anyone catch " Stranger than paradise." the other night ? I just love Jarmusch .

Synchronicity ? yes. So by definition it was out of your control.

Just hought I'd drop by and say hi ! Since i was last around i have made some changes in life , mainly quitting my job , renting the house out and buying a 40 foot catamaram Anyone interested the cat's a Wharram Narai MkII i bought it in Townsville and sailed her south to Maryborough to get out of the way of the cyclones. I am now living on board and getting the boat ready to cruise the South Paciffic. Check out the pics: here and pics of the journey south here and for those wondering I'm the guy holding the Mackeral Anyway now I'm not working i don't seem to have much time online , kinda funny that I've never been so busy now that I'm unemployed. Anyway , thanks T for providing an outlet that enabled me to stay sane in a world that tried to take me over the edge , thanks to the guys and gals here that have given me the inspiration to actually have a go and chase my dreams and if anyone wants to find out more about the boat or talk boats just PM me as i will try to drop by at least once a week . Thanks all , with out you guys I'd still be trying to convince myself that money and cars are more important than quality of life , and my life has just got a whole lot better.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1545977.htm Under the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the forest is a saint, as trees suck in carbon dioxide (CO2) as part of the natural process of respiration. By such thinking, if Kyoto signatories plant lots of forests, they create wonderful sponges that absorb the dangerous climate-altering gas. But what if trees, in addition to taking in CO2, also emit a greenhouse gas of their own? That scenario is sketched in a new study by European scientists, which if confirmed, would be one of the biggest upheavals in climate science for years. It would also inflict a serious blow to Kyoto, one of whose key pillars is the faith in "sinks", as forests are called in the treaty's jargon. Until now, the mainstream belief is that atmospheric methane chiefly comes from bugs: from bacteria working in wet, oxygen-less conditions, such as swamps and rice paddies. But in a study published in the journal Nature, a team led by Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute in Germany has found living plants, dried leaves and grass emit methane in the presence of air. Nor is this gas just a piffling amount. The researchers roughly estimate the world's living vegetation emits between 62 and 236 million tonnes of methane per year, and plant litter adds one to seven million tonnes. This would be equivalent to between 10 and 30 per cent of all annual global emissions of methane. Experiments The evidence comes from a series of carefully controlled experiments in the lab and in the field, in which gas chromatography and sensors to monitor carbon-13 isotopes detected and measured methane flows from the vegetation. The ambient atmosphere was first stripped of background methane before being pumped into enclosed tanks surrounding the plants and leaves in order to get a better chance of spotting the vegetal gas emissions. Levels of methane were "very temperature sensitive," with concentrations approximately doubling with every 10 degrees Celsius rise in temperature in a range between 30 degrees and degrees, a phenomenon that suggests that breakdown by enzymes is not the cause. In a review of the study, New Zealand atmospheric scientist David Lowe said the findings were a surprise but in fact could explain a nagging puzzle. Between 1990 and 2000, satellite monitors had detected a slowing of methane flows to the atmosphere by around 20 million tonnes a year. The cause for this may have been the dramatic rate of deforestation during the same period, Dr Lowe suggested. From 1990-2000, more than 12 per cent of the world's tropical forests were hacked down. Added to this is the anecdotal data from satellite sensors, which have occasionally spotted inexplicably large plumes of methane over old tropical forests, he said. Consensus The study does not seek to explain exactly how the methane is emitted, nor suggest which plant species may emit more than others. Nor does it challenge scientific opinion on global warming, which has become rock-hard over the past five years and is now questioned only by a small minority. The consensus is that global warming is a fact and may already be affecting Earth's climate, and the big culprit is the billions of tonnes of CO2 spewed out by burning oil, gas and coal. The paper's earliest impact could be political, for it attacks one of Kyoto's conceptual cores. Under the protocol's notoriously complex rule book, industrialised signatories that plant forests can offset the supposed benefit against their national quotas of CO2. 'Sink' mechanism The "sink" mechanism hobbled efforts to complete Kyoto in 2001 as Russia, Japan and Canada demanded concessions for their forest industries. Ironically, "sinks" were initially demanded by the United States under the Clinton administration in order to save costs for the oil-dependent US economy. President George W Bush then abandoned Kyoto in March 2001, in one of his first acts in office. Scientists have frequently shaken their heads at the perceived benefits of forests in the global warming equation. Previous research has already suggested that CO2 storage goes into reverse when a forest matures and its older trees die and rot, surrendering their carbon to the air. Now doubts over "sinks" have been strengthened, which could mean the extraordinarily bedevilling issue could be opened up again. Negotiations on Kyoto's commitments after 2012 are due to start by May and are expected to last several years. "We now have the spectre that new forests might increase greenhouse warming through methane emissions rather than decrease it by being sinks for CO2," Dr Lowe said - AFP

©AAP 2006http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=85309 Saturday Feb 4 22:38 AEDT Someone has successfully bid $1,300 on eBay to spend a weekend with four young Sydney blokes. Bidding closed in the online auction of a weekend of "beer, snags, good conversation and a hell of a lot of laughs" with the 24-year-olds at their shared Balmain digs. Marketing reps Zac, Corey, Mark, and law student Lachie, were keenly waiting to discover the identity of the winning bidder, "newidsooz", on Monday when the bid should be confirmed, Zac said. "I think it's value for money," Zac said after four weeks of bidding closed. Meanwhile, there are six days left to bid on eBay for a weekend with "4 lovely ladies" in Sydney. Currently $1,350 is the top bid for the chance to party with the 20-somethings promising "plenty of fun and shenanigans". "Why are we doing this?" the girls' website entry asks. "It's better than chat rooms, freaks in bars, randoms who just annoy you, or hanging out at home with your mother." While the lads had offered the chance to meet a mysterious international guest, who Zac says remains a mystery, the girls say they can provide an introduction to a Bondi lifeguard. Although, how that will go over with the men they are targeting remains to be seen. "Most guys always say they are sick of trying to chat to the ladies when out and about, why not hang out with us ... we are 4 charismatic individuals," the girls say. The Sydney girls jumped on the auction bandwagon on Wednesday, and perhaps a group of Irish lads were similarly inspired because they started an auction on Thursday for a "Guinness weekend of a lifetime" with them in Dublin. "You won't find this type of weekend in any of the travel books, no tour group will provide this - you just can't get the insurance," the lads aged 25-30 say. With seven days remaining in the Irish auction, the top bid so far is at $A1,324.

I had a problem with a neighbour once , my solution was biological warfare ! Every snail i found in my garden was thrown over the fence into his vegies , i kept this up for over a year ! Not sure if he even noticed , or it made a difference at all but it kept a smile on my face every time i watered my garden and my calmness returned

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200602/s1561494.htm New research has shown Australia is in the grip of a bed bug pandemic. Sydney's Westmead Hospital Department of Medical Entomology says pest control operators are reporting rises of more than 1,000 per cent in the number of bed bug treatments they are conducting. The department says the influx of travellers from exotic destinations means the accommodation industry is among the hardest hit and is losing money because of the infestations. They say the figure could be as high as $100 million a year with some hotels having to close their doors for months while eradication measures are undertaken. Senior hospital scientist Stephen Doggett says a change in pesticides is one of the major reasons behind the increase. "In the past, motel rooms would be regularly sprayed against cockroaches, that's no longer done and if we take cockroaches particularly, the tendency is to use highly specific baits that only affect cockroaches and don't inadvertently affect other pests such as bed bugs," he said. Dr Doggett says while the problem has reached pandemic proportions, the accommodation industry has largely adopted a "head in the sand" approach. "They don't want to admit there's a problem for fear of actually losing money but by doing this, the problem's actually getting worse and money's not being funnelled back to look at the best strategies to control the bed bugs," he said. "This is what we urgently need, we've got so few chemicals available but there are some potential ones that look promising but, unless they're actually tested in the research laboratory, we'll never know."

Sage ?