Author: Geoff Ebbs

  • NSW town disappears in fires

    NSW town disappears in fires

    Uarbry
    NSW town of Uarbry was totally destroyed fire

    Fires caused by the extreme heat wave over the weekend have consumed the NSW town of Uarbry leaving around 100 residents homeless. Over 80 fires continue to burn, 23 of them out of control, across Western and Northern NSW. Those areas report the hottest February temperatures on record, while much of Queensland recorded the hottest temperatures ever as the Summer That Will Not End in Our Lifetime settles in. Climate chaos has led to unseasonal flooding in Western Australia with many rivers rising more than four metres in massive rainfall over the weekend.

  • Chinese factory replaces 90% of workers with robots

    Chinese factory replaces 90% of workers with robots

    Charlie Chaplin on automation in the 1936 movie Modern Times
    Charlie Chaplin on automation in the 1936 movie Modern Times

    A Chinese factory in Dongguan, Southern China has replaced 90% of its 690 workers with robots resulting in a 150% increase in production and a fall in defects from one in four to one in twenty products. The initiative is part of the Made in China 2025 program that aims to rapidly increase production in China, despite rising wages and environmental concerns. Magazine Monetary Watch notes that automation has led to better wages and conditions in some European countries but not in much of the developing world

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY

    http://monetarywatch.com/2017/01/chinese-factory-replaces-90-human-workers-robots-sees-250-production-increase/?doing_wp_cron=1486248726.4281659126281738281250

  • Marijuana laws fail to deliver medical cannabis

    Marijuana laws fail to deliver medical cannabis

    Prominent medical cannabis advocate, Lucy Haslam says current marijuana laws are so convoluted they will prevent patients buying cannabis. She spoke to the ABC last month. The challenge is that States have carriage of the laws regulating medical cannabis.  In October 2016, the federal government legalised the cultivation and manufacture of medicinal cannabis in Australia. Currently, medicinal cannabis can be prescribed in NSW and WA, with all other states and territories except SA and the NT to follow in 2017. Whilst many state laws vary, most are set to have strict guidelines for doctors in relation to who they can prescribe medicinal cannabis to. Cannabis and hemp entrepreneur, Paul Benhaim of Elixinol, told the Cage last week that, “the government is so worried about meeting demand for medicinal cannabis that it has put a temporary halt on exports.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-29/medicinal-marijuana-to-become-legal-explainer/7975194

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-28/fit-and-proper-people-can-apply-to-grow-cannabis-this-weekend/7970282

    http://www.nutraingredients-asia.com/Suppliers/Looming-perfect-storm-will-lead-to-Aussie-CBD-boom-pioneer-predicts

     

  • Energy sector scoffs at clean coal as renewable prices crash

    Energy sector scoffs at clean coal as renewable prices crash

    Bloomberg Energy reported last week that the renewable energy sector in the US now employs more people than coal and is firmly entrenched in rural America where renewable energy income is keeping farmers on the land. Wind and Solar Energy are now cheaper than new coal, costing less than 100 US dollars to produce one megawatt of electricity. The Australian government’s plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars more in clean coal has met with widespread derision from the energy sector as well as climate advocates. The US energy sector warned President Trump last week that removing environmental regulations on coal and government funding of renewables, will not keep coal competitive with wind and solar.

    https://industry.gov.au/resource/LowEmissionsFossilFuelTech/Pages/National-Low-Emission-Coal-Initiative.aspx

    https://about.bnef.com/blog/nrg-jx-nippon-open-1-billion-clean-coal-power-project-in-texas/

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/clean-coal-would-push-up-power-bills-more-than-wind-solar-or-gas-analysts-20170203-gu4ow5.html

  • National Guard razes camp at Standing Rock, arresting 76

    National Guard razes camp at Standing Rock, arresting 76

    In this image provided by Morton County Sheriff’s Department, law enforcement and protesters clash near the site of the Dakota Access pipeline on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016, in Cannon Ball, N.D. The clash came as protesters sought to push past a bridge on a state highway that had been blockaded since late October, according to the Morton County Sheriff’s Office. (Morton County Sheriff’s Department via AP)

    Seventy six protesters were arrested at the Cannon Ball protest camp at Standing Rock in Dakota last week and the camp was razed to the ground. The police and National Guard acted with the US Army Corp of Engineers under direct orders from President Trump to waive a review of environmental impacts and expedite the pipeline. Trump has initiated a vast rollback of environmental legislation and has formally threatened to cut funding from organisations as diverse as University of California Berkeley and the Environmental Protection Authority.

    http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/03/police-national-guard-raid-dakota-access-pipeline-protest-camp-arrest-76/

    Sierra Club on Trump’s Fire Sale on Clean Air and Water Safeguards

    Trump signed an executive order this morning requiring that for every new federal regulation implemented, two must be rescinded. “This a pathetic marketing scheme by Donald Trump, not a way to run a country.”

    http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2017/01/30/sierra-club-trumps-fire-sale-clean-air-and-water-safeguards

    Massive Rollback of Environmental Protections

    http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2017/01/30/trump-orders-massive-rollback-environmental-protections

    Trump Threatens UC Berkeley Funding Cut After Protest Against Fascistic Provocateur

    Berkeley, one of the top public research institutions in the United States,

    http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/03/trump-threatens-uc-berkeley-funding-cut-after-protest-against-fascistic-provocateur/

    US Congress Begins Repeal Of Anti-Pollution Regulations 

    that restricts the dumping of waste by coal companies engaged in a technique known as “mountaintop removal.”

    http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/02/03/us-congress-begins-repeal-of-anti-pollution-regulations/

     

     

  • The John James Newsletter 155

    The John James Newsletter 155

    To subscribe or unsubscribe email John
    What the US government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst possible crime a State can commit against another State
    Father Miguel D’Escoto
    People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster
    James Baldwin

    South Florida’s Rising Seas – Sea Level Rise Documentary 

    we all need to plan for this future. Florida keys is only a few feet above SLT, just like Barmagui another parts of Australia.

    Earth Under Water – Worldwide Flooding | Sea Level Rise 

    Everywhere exposed cities and agricultural land will be flooded. Meltwater Rie pulse 1A 5m+ or 16 feet in a century. By 2100 coastal cities will nkow they are doomed.

    Antarctic contribution to meltwater pulse 1A from reduced Southern Ocean overturning

    Giant iceberg poised to break off from Antarctic shelf 

    Predicted to be one of the largest break-offs ever recorded, separation of iceberg could trigger breakup of most northern major ice shelf, Larsen C. A thread of just 20km of ice is now preventing the 5,000 sq km mass from floating away, following the sudden expansion last month of a rift that has been steadily growing for more than a decade. “It just makes the whole shelf less stable. If it were to collapse there would be nothing holding the glaciers up and they would start to flow quite quickly indeed.”
     
     

    Is that a Black Hole or a hole in the data?

    How to quickly spot dodgy science.
    To spot false information
    The US government is creating a new $160 million bureaucracy to shut down information that doesn’t conform to U.S. propaganda narratives, building on the strategy that sold the bloody Syrian “regime change”

    Most Important Videos Uploaded In December 2016

    *  Peter Wadhams interview Farewell to Arctic Ice
    *  Mark Jacobson presentation How the Future of Energy Impacts the Future of Our Cities
    *  Paul Beckwith video Abrupt Climate Disrupting Arctic Changes
    *  Peter Wadhams also in video interview for ExtinctionRadio
    *   Guy McPherson presentation 22 December.

    Earths past was much hotter

    Today global land temperature stands at 14.8C where the most common has been 7C hotter – far too hot for us

    Morality vs Ethics: the problem with trolleys 

    Many people – even many philosophers – think that morality and ethics are the same thing. But they are not. Morality is primarily about making correct choices, while ethics is about proper reasoning. Should you kill the fat man?
    and

    Fresh doubt over global warming ‘pause’

    When the researchers corrected the data to take the “cold bias” into account, they concluded that the oceans had warmed 0.12C per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as previous estimates of 0.07 degrees. The warming experienced in the first 15 years of the 21st Century was “virtually indistinguishable” from the rate of warming between 1950-99, a time generally acknowledged to have seen significant rates of warming from human emissions of CO2. The study did not go down well with climate sceptics and US House of Representatives subpoenaed the author’s emails which Noaa refused to hand over.

    Population growth masking weak economy, making households worse off

    One of the economic arguments that has been used to support current immigration rates has been that it helps offset an ageing population. However, the Commonwealth Bank report noted that this is only “kicking the can down the road”, with the current working age migrants themselves ageing and leaving the workforce 20, 30 or 40 years from now.

    When hoping for population decline

    It is worth remembering what happened to the numbers of the St Matthew Island reindeer herd in the late 1960s.

    Record-breaking extreme weather in Australia in 2016 devastates ecosystems

    Bureau of Meteorology’s annual climate statement cites unprecedented bushfires in regions that don’t usually burn and worst coral bleaching on record, and has been attributed as the cause of damage to vast tracts of crucial kelp forests, oyster farms and salmon stocks across southern Australia.

    A well-kept open secret: Washington is behind India’s brutal experiment of abolishing most cash

    In early November, without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80 percent of circulating cash by value. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this. That is surprising, as Washington’s role has been disguised only very superficially.

    Changing the Global Food Narrative

    The dominant story about the future of the world food supply is logical, well known and wrong. Changing Diets, Not Population Growth, is the Dominant Driver of Food Demand

    Climate change is going to be very bad for the global economy

    But by analyzing temperatures alone we have more precise estimates of how climate change could affect the economy. It turns out that temperature has a surprisingly consistent effect on different economic inputs: labor supply, labor productivity, and crop yields all drop off dramatically between 20°C and 30°C.

    Nearing exit, Obama seeks to tie Trump’s hands

    Obama has also permanently banned oil and gas drilling across large swaths of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, closed off 1.6 million acres of Western land to development and scrapped the last vestiges of a registration system used largely on Muslim immigrants.

    ‘The Greatest Single Step’ to help Elephants

    In ‘game-changing’ development, China announces it will ban all domestic ivory trade by end of 2017.

    History suggests Australia could be left behind by the next industrial revolution 

    There’s a new industrial revolution just around the corner, driven by artificial intelligence and robotics. Deterioration within the key institutions of suffrage, education, and land policy indicate that Australia may be left behind this time.

    NATO’s Playbook Of Proxy Wars In The Middle East

    Since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of the master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Libya or Syria, the same playbook has been executed to the letter.

    What Kerry Did

    What set off the firestorm was that Kerry dared to publicly and forcefully criticize Israeli policy. And that was what the overreaction intended to snuff out. The standard Israeli approach used in situations of this sort is to launch a campaign of intimidation designed to pummel the offender into submission and to discourage others from taking similar course.

    2016 was a great year for wind and solar, even if nobody noticed.

    Renewable energy’s gains this year were incremental and unglamorous. In the US, the amount of residential solar installed rose, with no limits in sight. Utilities built solar projects in record-breaking numbers.

    The future of nuclear power runs on the waste of our nuclear past

    The conventional nuclear power method involves inserting radioactive rods into a reactor core where their fissionable material is converted into energy. Problem is, it’s not particularly efficient. Over the four years or so that a rod will remain in use, only about three percent of its available nuclear material is expended, leaving 97% as “waste.” And since nobody seems particularly willing to just fling it into the Sun, this waste must be disposed of in a nuclear repository. Over the past forty years or so, the US has generated 67,500 metric tons of the stuff—enough to cover a football field with spent fuel rods to a depth of seven yards. But what if there were a way to recycle the waste and recapture the remaining energy?

    Preview YouTube video Earth Under Water – Worldwide Flooding | Sea Level Rise (SLR)