Brisbane City Council and the Queensland State Government launched the Kurilpa Master Plan at a Brisbane Development Association/ Business South Bank lunch today.

The Master Plan covers an area of approximately 25 hectares which is bounded by the Brisbane River, Montague Road, Grey Street and Hocking Street.  The site currently houses major industries including Parmalat, Hanson Concrete, ACI Glass.

The draft master plan has been developed to provide the framework for Kurilpa’s transformation from industry and factories to a world-class riverfront destination with the potential to accommodate 11,000 new residents and new parklands.

The draft master plan outlines the vision for Kurilpa and identifies five strategies and supporting sub-strategies to guide Kurilpa into the future.

BSB encourages members to review the plan and provide comments to either BSB or to Council via its on-line survey.

Click here to view the Master Plan Draft.

Back in the 1980s the former National Party premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen cut a deal with private developers for South Brisbane’s land once Expo88 was completed. It was a secret affair done for special interests. In the end the people of Brisbane rejected being cut out and they campaigned for the continuation of a great community asset. The result was Southbank.

The Kurilpa Riverfront Master Plan site in Brisbane is 1 1/2 times the size of South Bank. It has a total area of 25 hectares. It is a once in lifetime opportunity to develop the last, large-scale holding within Brisbane’s CBD.

The impressive scale demands an imagination of a similar scale. As in 1988 ordinary people of Brisbane must challenge this Liberal National Party government to get beyond narrow sectional interests to create Brisbane’s next South Bank. This should be a redevelopment that belongs in the twenty-first century.

Sadly the LNP State Government led by Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney and the City Hall controlled by Lord Mayor Graham Quirk have chosen to ignore requests from the West End Community Association to provide the same level of information and access afforded the developers across the last ten months. We can only speculate as to their choices and motives. However we do not need to accept their conduct.

The Kurilpa Master Plan should grasp the opportunity to deploy a light-rail network, powered by clean, renewable electricity. It’s a high capacity mode of transport that is not vulnerable to escalating operating costs derived from diesel prices. Those trams will not be consigned to the on-going traffic jams as buses are now.

The scale of the greenspace and open space should be ambitious. On yesterday’s draft its apparent that much of the present Riverside Park is being cannibalized for further commercial and private development. The opening ambit claim by the LNP will have 96% of the 25 hectares gifted to developers. Far from a gift for the community, the amount of open greenspace is only 6 % of the Brisbane City Council KPIs for public greenspace. This is appalling and the public will not accept being short-changed in such a way.

Embrace the Green necklace

We have a chance to create Brisbane’s next great Botanic Gardens. This can be another glorious space for the people that completes a green necklace.

Adding this new sub-tropical riverside park can connect the original Botanic Gardens and South Bank, to the Roma Street Parklands. Our sub-tropical capital would be surrounded by the most wondrous network of parks and open spaces.

Brisbane can do better. In fact, Brisbane deserves better. And as with the original South Bank concept this outcome will require a concerted effort from all of the people in Brisbane.

Member for South Brisbane Jackie Trad has raised serious concerns that the LNP State and Council Administrations are leaving Brisbane residents behind after the pay-to-view launch of the Kurilpa Riverfront Renewal Draft Master Plan.

Ms Trad attended the launch of the Kurilpa Riverfront Renewal Draft Master Plan as a guest of Business South Bank but was angered that the State Government and Brisbane City Council hadn’t provided an opportunity for locals to be given a briefing or have their questions answered.

“I am appalled that the vast majority of Brisbane residents were denied the opportunity to attend the launch and learn about the plan with a ticket to the event costing $150,” Ms Trad said.

“The Newman State Government & Quirk’s Brisbane City Council have been developing this plan for 10 months, but are giving the people of Brisbane only six weeks or 30 business days to have a say.

“Consultation with the community should be at the heart of this plan, but instead it seems to be an afterthought.”

Ms Trad said while the inclusion of parkland in the plan is positive, it is offset by a proposal to significantly increase the number of high rise buildings in the West End peninsula.

“I know locals hold serious concerns about the impact this massive development will have on already stretched local services,” Ms Trad said.

“When I asked for details on the population projections at today’s launch, Councillor Amanda Cooper merely answered that there were projections but refused to detail the actual population numbers.

 

“Ultimately the Kurilpa Master Plan is incomplete and until I am confident that locals are happy with it, Labor will press the restart button to ensure all interests are included and reflected in any final document.

“The secretive and privileged LNP has handicapped a legitimate process and arrogantly undermined public confidence in this project.”

Ms Trad said the last LNP State Administration in the 1990s had exactly the same development-focussed plan for South Bank, but the people of Brisbane had a different vision.

“In 2014, it’s hard to imagine Brisbane without South Bank and I think most Queenslanders would shudder to think of what the Nationals and their developer mates would have left behind if their plan had gone unchecked.

“With this second opportunity to redefine our City before us, I call on Premier Newman and Lord Mayor Quirk to restore confidence in this project by listening to the people of Brisbane first.”

Local, fresh food providore, Food Connect, has noticed fitness gurus and wellness activists championing the move to raw food lately. As a result it has released a product specifically aimed at raw food fanatics in the region.

To celebrate the launch of our raw food box, Food Connect is giving 10 lucky customers the chance to win an exclusive RAW DINNER EXPERIENCE here at the Food Connect Homestead on Thursday 11th September.

To enter the draw to win a ticket to this intimate dining experience, all you need to do is purchase a Food Connect Raw Box between Thursday 14th August and Sunday 7th September.  Winners will be notified on Monday 8th September.

This fabulous raw dinner party will be catered by Brisbane’s best raw food gurus, including Jamie-Louise from ORAWGI, and you’ll receive personalised hints and tips on how to prepare from your raw food box.

The Raw Food Box is not just for those who only eat raw. According to happiness manager, Emma-Kate Rose, it’s great for a diverse range of people who are transitioning out of a heavy animal protein diet into something more plant-based, or people who are experiencing illness, to those who simply want to learn a healthier way of eating.

She said that people who buy the box will be treated to the seasonal delights of many of our high quality items essential for the Raw Food diet.

The major difference is that the box avoids root veggies and other cook-only items without giving up the great value, surprise and convenience of getting a seasonal set box.

Among other tips on the website is a recipe for Raw Vegan Pad Thai

Need a hand with going raw? Here’s a delicious raw vegan recipe to get you off to a good start with your new Raw Box. Click here for deets.

20 August 2014 Last updated at 14:01

Greenland ice loss doubles from late 2000s

By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

The team has produced elevation models for the ice sheets

A new assessment from Europe’s CryoSat spacecraft shows Greenland to be losing about 375 cu km of ice each year.

Added to the discharges coming from Antarctica, it means Earth’s two big ice sheets are now dumping roughly 500 cu km of ice in the oceans annually.

“The contribution of both ice sheets together to sea level rise has doubled since 2009,” said Angelika Humbert from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute.

“To us, that’s an incredible number,” she told BBC News.

In its report to The Cryosphere journal, the AWI team does not actually calculate a sea-level rise equivalent number, but if this volume is considered to be all ice (a small part will be snow) then the contribution is likely to be on the order of just over a millimetre per year.

This is the latest study to use the precision altimetry data being gathered by the European Space Agency’s CryoSat platform.

Cryosat uses a radar instrument to measure the shape of polar ice surfaces

The satellite was launched in 2010 with a sophisticated radar instrument specifically designed to measure the shape of the polar ice sheets.

The AWI group, led by senior researcher Veit Helm, has taken just over two years’ worth of data centred on 2012/2013 to build what are called digital elevation models (DEMs) of Greenland and Antarctica, and to asses their evolution.

These models incorporate a total of 14 million individual height measurements for Greenland and another 200 million for Antarctica.

When compared with similar data-sets assembled by the US space agency’s IceSat mission between 2003 and 2009, the scientists are able then to calculate changes in ice volume beyond just the CryoSat snapshot.

Negative shifts are the result of surface melting and ice discharge; positive trends are the consequence of precipitation – snowfall.

Greenland is experiencing the biggest reductions in elevation currently, losing about 375 cu km a year (plus or minus 24 cu km per year), with most of the action occurring at the west and south-east coast of the island.

Significant thinning is seen also in the North East Greenland Ice Stream (NEGIS).

“This has three outlet glaciers and one of these, the Zachariae Isstrom, has retreated quite a bit and some volume loss has already been reported. But we see now that this volume loss is really propagating to upper areas, much further into the interior of the ice sheet than has been recorded before,” explained Prof Humbert.

The change in height of Greenland’s ice sheet between January 2011 and January 2014

In Antarctica, the annual volume loss is about 128 cu km per year (plus or minus 83 cu km per year).

As other studies have found, this is concentrated in the continent’s western sector, in the area of the Amundsen Sea Embayment.

Big glaciers here, such as Thwaites and Pine Island, are thinning and retreating at a rapid rate.

Some thickening is seen also, such as in Dronning Maud Land, where colossal snowfalls have been reported. But this accumulation does not offset the losses occurring in West Antarctica.

A British-led group recently reported its own Antarctica DEM, using a different algorithm to process the numbers in the CryoSat data.

The AWI outcomes look very similar, and the German team has transferred the exact same approach to Greenland so it can have confidence in comparing the two ice sheets.

The losses also look consistent with the analysis coming out of the American Grace mission, which uses a different type of satellite to monitor gravity changes in the polar regions – to, in essence, weigh the amount of ice being dumped into the sea.

Prof Andy Shepherd, who was part of the British group that reported its findings in May, commented: “This is yet another exciting result from CryoSat, thanks to the team at AWI, charting yet more new ground by providing the first complete survey of ice volume changes in Greenland.

“However, the increased ice losses that have been detected are a worrying reminder that the polar ice sheets are still experiencing dramatic changes, and will inevitably raise concerns about future global sea-level rise,” the Leeds University researcher said.

Have a guess how much space junk is floating around up there? That’s right, too much to count and we put it all there, over the past 40 years by launching more than 10,000 satellites, the majority of which are still in orbit. We’re only now beginning to reap the bounty we’ve sown, so to speak.

Rocket booster casings, dead satellites – you name it and it’s there a cosmic rubble pile posing a problem for astronauts and space tourists for the next 30 years! But, there is hope on the horizon. It may sound like science fiction but an Australian team is working on a project to zap orbital debris with lasers from Earth to reduce the growing amount of space junk that threatens to knock out our satellites.

Scientists believe there are more than 300,000 pieces of debris in space, made up of everything from tiny screws and bolts to large parts of rockets, mostly moving in low orbits around Earth at tremendous speed.Australia now has a contract with NASA to track and map space junk with a telescope equipped with an infrared laser at Mount Stromlo Observatory.

The ultimate aim is to zap pieces of junk so they burn up harmlessly as they fall through the upper atmosphere. There’s no risk of missing and hitting a working satellite, we can target them precisely.Are you starting to get reminders of what you saw depicted in the 2013 Hollywood movie Gravity? Stunning movie though!

Talking about stunning views, check out what’s hanging low in the eastern sky just before dawn. Those two bright ‘stars’ you see are actually the two brightest planets, Venus and Jupiter close together. Earlier this week they almost seemed to touch and still remain an absolutely spectacular sight this weekend! Jupiter is the one above with Venus below.

To top it off, the crescent Moon joins the group on the mornings of August 23rd and 24th, passing close enough to make it a magic triplet. Photo op! Grab a mug of tea or coffee, rug and head out into the backyard. You won’t be disappointed!

Crazy as it sounds, astronomy can actually save lives when it comes to planetary ‘conjunctions’ like this. A similar pairing of Jupiter and Venus in the dusk sky last year nearly sparked an international incident, when Indian Army sentries along the Himalayan border with China mistook the pair for Chinese spy drones. Luckily, Indian astronomers identified the conjunction before shots were exchanged. Whew!

We are under constant bombardment from space, and the Earth is getting heavier. We accumulate on average 20-40 tons of meteorites and spacey junk per day! In a year, it’s enough cosmic junk to fill a six story office building.

You can demonstrate this for yourself. If you put a big plastic sheet or a white sheet on your grass in the garden on a nice day, leave it for a few hours and then run a magnet over it. You can often find specks have just fallen down from outer space and landed on your magnet.

Hey, have you ever wondered how many people have ever lived on Earth? The ‘Population Reference Bureau’ recently took a stab at an answer and came up with 108 billion. Which means about 6.5% of the people who have ever lived are alive today. Now you know why the supermarket queues are getting longer OK!

Hey, want a really cool free astronomy app for your smart phone? Download one I’ve had on my phone for years called Pocket Universe. It’s got something for everyone from people mildly curious about the night sky to the dedicated amateur astronomer. Visit Dave’s website www.davidreneke.com for a free 323 page e-book ‘The Complete Idiots Guide To Astronomy.’