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During the Tasmanian House of Assembly (12/6/07), Nicholas McKim, Member for Franklin of the Greens, said that this year’s State Budget looked very much like groundhog day.

Pulp mill a sham: Not only does it appear as if, once again, Treasury has overestimated the economic growth underpinning this year’s Budget but it has also factored the pulp mill into that growth target. The pulp mill has not been approved yet. McKim said the Parliament has set up a sham process which was almost certain to result in approval for this pulp mill. The reason it was so certain was that the mill would not be required to meet any guidelines, not a single one, in order to be approved by this Parliament. Not only was the process a sham but recently the Premier’s fingerprints were all over Gunns’ decision to withdraw from the RPDC assessment, even to the extent that the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet requested that the RPDC not let Gunns know that their supplementary information was deficient in major ways.

Govt with fingers in Gunns’ pie: The Premier and his department have their fingerprints all over Gunns’ decision to withdraw from the independent RPDC assessment and there was now a situation where, prior to the required approvals occurring in relation to the pulp mill, the Government decided to include the so-called economic benefits of the mill into the growth prediction which underpinned this State Budget.

Reference: Nicholas McKim – Tasmanian Greens, Member of the House of Assembly, Tasmania, 12 June 2007

Erisk Net, 12/6/2007

Stop utilities from cutting power if house contains children: McSweeney added that she was not saying that the Labor Party did not care – it was probably as horrified as she was – but he made the point that there had to be a better way. McSweeney suggested such a better way: "As soon as people are having trouble with any utility, the utility must cut through the privacy laws and ring up the financial section of the Department for Community Development to see if the people concerned have children. If they have children, there has to be another way. Utilities cannot be cut off when children are in a house".

Reference: Robyn Mary McSweeney MLC, Member for South West Region, Liberal Party, Legislative Council, Western Australia, 5 June 2007.

Erisk Net, 21/6/2007

The disappearance of the lake in Bernardo O’Higgins National Park was discovered in late May by park rangers, who were stunned to find a 130-foot-deep crater where a large lake had been just two months earlier, when they last visited the area.

Possible causes for the dam to be breached include a sudden input of water into the lake, an earthquake or avalanches of ice or rock. Casassa said the Chilean lake was fed by two glaciers, the Bernardo and the Tempano, "and both are receding."

The water level of the lake could have risen with the increasing flow from the melting glaciers. "At the same time, the increased amount of water opens a tunnel under the ice, emptying the lake," Casassa said.

Another glaciologist, Andres Rivera, said "most glaciers in the region are receding as a result of the global warming." This may both create new lakes or cause others to empty, he said. Casassa said glaciers can recede for other reasons than global warming. It can be the result of the natural dynamic of glaciers, which recede or grow.

"But I am convinced that in this case, it is the result of global warming," he said. The empty lake is about 4,921 feet above sea level. Romero, the head of the forest service, said another theory is that the water disappeared through huge cracks at the bottom of the crater. He said the cracks may have been caused by the strong quake that rocked the region on April 21.

The Australian, 23/6/2007, p. 14

Source: Erisk Net 

Reference: Sylvia Hale, Member of the Legislative Council, NSW 30 May 2007

Erisk Net, 30/5/2007