WORKSHOP: Solar Passive Design (at Swansea)

Hello to all the lovely people who attended this workshop! If you have any comments or questions please click the "comments" link below, and let me know. Thank you for attending, it was a very good workshop! Jo

WEBSITE REVIEW: Good Wood Guide

Greenpeace have just launched their Good Wood Guide.
It is not quite finished, but will give you some ideas about where to start looking for sustainable timber. It's a really difficult project, as truly knowing if wood is good means knowing the entire process from the tree to the piece of timber. This was the idea behind FSC timber. However FSC timber producers are only just starting up in Australia, so generally any FSC timber you would be purchasing would be imported from overseas.
The Rainforest Information Centre's NSW Good Wood Guide was really awesome but sadly it is now out of date, and no funds to update it. However it has great background information to help you understand the real issues of purchasing sustainable timber.
My answer is to use secondhand wherever possible! Flooring, windows and doors especially are easy, and so much cheaper, if not free!!

BLURB: My published Blurbling

In case you missed it, here is a copy of my letter to the editor which appeared in The Newcastle Herald on Tuesday, July 10, 2007:

..........
Low coal sales a high achievement
THE Herald's coverage of the Live Earth concerts reported 2 billion people world-wide showing their commitment to cut carbon emissions ("Powerful plug for revolution" Herald 9/7).
A few pages later NSW Minerals Council chief Nikki Williams appeared sad that the growth in Australian coal exports was remaining low ("Now's not the time to let coal boom pass us by" Herald 9/7).
I feel we should celebrate this low figure, and keep it small.
Australia may be rich in coal but it is also rich in other, less carbon-emitting resources.
Solar power, wind energy, and the resources and knowledge to generate these and other forms of renewable energy are the best investment for the government and industry of our country.
Ms Williams hopes for the Government to take a long-term vision and to have the willingness to take a gamble.
We can't make a wager on the future of our planet.
As the 2 billion people who watched the live earth concerts shows, we need to invest in renewable energy for exports and local use, and certainly not coal or nuclear any more.
..........

The Talented Nikki Williams presenting an environment award to Hunter Valley Coal Corporation 2005

Interestingly, Nikki Williams appeared on the forum panel which came after the ABC screening of "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (see my previous post). She is a magnificent PR agent for the new coal industry. The only woman on the panel, she appeared sophisticated, intelligent, and very caring about the climate change predicament. (She certainly is involved in many environmental community initiatives, which I cannot complain about, but we must keep following her motives.) The comments she made on the panel did not mention her push to increase coal exports for financial gain (as she mentioned in the Herald), but the "need" for coal fired power in developing nations in order to end poverty. Apparently, coal-fired electricity is the way to solve the issue of 3rd world poverty and health. Once again, I wish it was that easy! Sadly, here in Australia, we have a huge population of people living in 4th World conditions, with shameful poverty and health issues, and these populations HAVE electricity. I very much doubt that the short term solution of coal fired electricity is going to be much appreciated by anyone who 1. can't even pay the bill 2. Will absolutely not appreciate the temperature increases and changes in climate, health, farming practices in their homelands which are predicted to be the result of climate change caused by co2 increases (i.e. by producing this coal fired power in the first place!)

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Last night on ABC TV certainly was exciting. They broadcast the controversial "documentary" by Martin Durkin "The Great Global Warming Swindle" followed by an interview by Tony Jones and then a forum with an expert panel and an audience full of interesting characters.

Basically the documentary put forward a case that humans are not creating climate change through carbon dioxide emissions, that temperatures are increasing and climate change is part of the earth's natural process, volcanic emissions and sunspots.

The conclusions I guess were that we can keep driving our cars and we don't have to bother pushing for renewable energy in developing nations, that those nations need to invest in coal right now, in order to end world poverty (?)

How I wish it were true! I wanted to believe! Imagine if all we had to do was cope with climate change, and not have to reduce our carbon emissions as well!
I could stop worrying about energy efficient housing and get back to worrying about resource depletion, ecosystem and habitat preservation, clean water, etc.

Unfortunately, from the outset, the doco appeared flawed with un-rigorous presentations and dubious science. The panel afterwards confirmed my fears.

Today I read an interesting article "The Great Global Warming Swindle": a critique., published in the Bulletin of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Vol 20. by David Jones, Andrew Watkins, Karl Braganza and Michael Couglan of the National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology.

I suggest you read it for a bit of scientific rigor.

The main errors it saw in the documentary were:

• Graphs and information used in the documentary were incorrect and/or had no identifiable source and/or have been superseeded and/or were made up in part.
• Temperatures today ARE higher than they have been in the last 1000+ years (evidenced by many different temperature measurement methods worldwide)
• Human activities ARE creating climate change, evidenced by climate "fingerprints"
• Volcanoes actually only produce less that 2% of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide produced by humans.
• Ice core temperatures measurements from the past only tell us the local temperature and not the global temperature so are not relevant to measuring global temperature, and indeed do show the climate scientists more intricate understanding of the fluctuations in earths temperatures .
• Sunspot theory is some kind of unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, and not fully documented in the documentary.

Anyway, the document is well written and a good read, so don't just read this post on the issue.
And there is a lot more stuff out there.

Moral of the story:
SORRY BUT THERE IS NO CLIMATE CHANGE SWINDLE :(

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