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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gestures as he deliver his speech at a rally to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that toppled the country’s pro-Western monarchy and brought Islamic clerics to power, Tehran, Saturday, Feb. 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
The current kerfuffle about the separation of the infrastructure and retail services in Telstra is a timely warning for energy and water privatisation programs.
In 1994, Stewart Fist and myself – writing as Geoff Ebbs – both had weekly columns in the Australian newspaper and called for that separation as a fundamental plank in any telecommunications strategy. We were considered radical ratbags and dismissed as having no real grasp of the economics of major infrastructure corporations. (Other ratbag ideas that I promoted at the time include resource taxes, social networking and timeshifted media.) Some of Stewart’s columns are still on line at http://www.abc.net.au/http/sfist/
The debate about the Murray Darling Basin has become a political football with a level of hysteria that is driven by a largely ignorant media. These five false beliefs about the basin and water allocation have been promoted by people with vested interests to confuse the media and skew the debate. If everyone talking to the media takes the time to explain why these lies are not to be repeated the debate will gradually shift to more moderate and constructive ground.
Water Minister tries to shoot the messenger
“They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.” – Plato
Media Release: 17 September 2010
NSW Water Minister Phil Costa attempted to disguise his inability to defend the indefensible Tillegra Dam by launching an extraordinary attack on the project’s opponents, according to Greens NSW MP John Kaye. (‘Concerns flow over Tillegra Dam’ Newcastle Herald 17 September 2010, http://bit.ly/nh100917)
Research says storms that hamper the exploitation of Arctic reserves may halve by 2100, but experts warn against oil rush
A reduction in storms may open up some Arctic regions, but they would simply move to other areas. Photograph: Mark Peterson/Corbis
Global warming could halve the frequency of Arctic hurricanes – extreme storms that strike the north Atlantic during winter – by 2100, according to a new study, potentially encouraging exploitation of the region’s oil reserves.
“Our results provide a rare example of climate change driving a decline in extreme weather, rather than an increase,” says Matthias Zahn at the University of Reading. His study, published in the Nature journal, is the first to use a global climate model to assess how Arctic hurricanes may behave in a warmer world.
The results of his study may provide encouragement to oil and gas companies that currently consider drilling in the northern north Atlantic very risky, he says. “As the likelihood of hurricanes destroying oil rigs declines, drilling in the region may become a more attractive option.”
Washington, DC, United States — Recent data and analyses have made it clear that the emissions savings from adding wind energy to the grid are even larger than had been commonly thought. In addition to each kilowatt-hour (kWh) of wind energy directly offsetting a kWh that would have been produced by a fossil-fired power plant, new analyses show that wind plants further reduce emissions by forcing the most polluting and inflexible power plants offline and causing them to be replaced by more efficient and flexible types of generation.
At the same time, and in spite of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the fossil fuel industry has launched an increasingly desperate misinformation campaign to convince the American public that wind energy does not actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As a result, we feel compelled to set the record straight on the matter, once and for all.
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