John Howard 2.0 launched on stiff, clunky platform

Things have moved on since the Office of Prime Minister John Howard first launched their rather flat HTML website on December 3, 1998. Internet stocks boomed, bubbled and burst. Enron collapsed and then, 9/11. Everything changed — we perfected the art of no longer needing words to describe things. We had WMD, WoT, GWoT hit in quick succession. Now we have AWAs, SARS and GHGs to contend with. Even technology has caught ADHD and spawned the iPod and Web 2.0.

What's Web 2.0? Well, from an election media strategist's perspective, it's where you will catch the elusive 18-36 voting audience hanging out, after not finding them in the tv, radio, and print media audience studies. This new Technorati will be updating their FaceBook profile, fine-tuning their Google reader, catching up on their favourite Blogger's, or uploading YouTube video responses.

They tuned out to push media a while ago, and turned on the interactivity, personalisation, collaboration and immediacy offered by a slew of social networking sites, wikis, and other self-publishing platforms. The media is the message.They don't read or watch news any more, they pick out their highlights with Clipmarks to re-contextualise and recycle it, or bookmarking it at site like de.liscio.us, thereby voting for their preferred news in the great, big, Google on-going page-rank election. Web 2.0 turned the passive audiences of yore into a growing cast of a dynamic, interactive play, writ large.

Has the PM and his Office been taking notes? From JWH's debut on Web 2.0, apparently not...



However, it seems from their rapid YouTube video response, that Rudd and his Office has...



At the unofficial start of the election Rudd promised to play with Howard's mind. By luring him online with his FaceBook profile, Rudd just pwned Howard's arse and exposed him, once-more, as behind the times.

On consideration, maybe I am being a bit unfair to Howard. It's just that my broadband is so damned slow.

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Shanghai building wetlands

Thought I would give Mash a whirl...

I like it, except for that blinking ad. Annoying — highlights how nothing is for free, but I would be happy with a redesign of the ad. Anyone who needs to get their college degree that fast can't value an education.

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Global warming caused by too much science

Not a bad characterisation of GWB's global warming policy.

clipped from www.alternet.org In the video posted at the Alternet page linked above, Will Ferrell plays "the Commander-in-Chief of the World" is this faux promo about climate change. In it Bush struggles to explain the issue and rails against "facts" and "scientific data". It's silly and funny at first, until you find out it's not too far off from the real thing.

The Great Global Warming Swindle V4.0 still riddled with bugs.

Great interview with Tony Jones and Martin Durkin. Jones flew to London to record the interview, as Durkins would not come here and participate in the panel discussion afterwards with leaders from industry, science and the environmental movement. Jones demolished Durkins, demonstrating that Durkins chops the end off his Freils Christiansen graph to prove the Medieval Warming Period is the warmer that now. Only "now" is 25 years ago in Christiansen's Graph. That's like leaving the foot off the hockey stick — you get a stick.

Durkins got PWNED. You could tell by the twitching thick black eyebrows, head rolling, shifting, his intent focus and the deep sigh accompanying a look of crumpled relief crossing his face when Jones had finished with him. Got PWNED when Jones revealed that the original The Great Global Warming Swindle is proving to be what software programmers call bloatware. It's now in its fourth major or minor edit from it's début on Channel 4 in the UK. Professor David Koroly said, in the panel discussion after that there is further to go to rid the piece of scientific inaccuracies. He described it as "propaganda".

Excellent panel discussion after which I would like to elaborate on later. The audience? The audience comprised of one rent-a-freak after another. Poor Tony Jones could sense his show risked being hijacked by vocal wacko dissemblists. The stuff that was in his control he did particularly well. He is a credit to his craft.

Well done ABC.


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Big night on ABC TV after The Great Global Warming Swindle

...which starts in just over an hour. I can't say I'm looking forward to the doco itself, but I have the feeling that people are ready to take on the engineered ignorance shamelessly promoted by the denialist industry. That is worth staying up for.

If you are interested in a good debunking, Angus Alderman left a link to a New Scientist pummelling in my comments, and the next link is a critique from the good ole boys from the Australian BoM - the people who you would expect to know their stuff.

“The Great Global Warming Swindle”: a critique.

David Jones, Andrew Watkins, Karl Braganza and Michael Coughlan
National Climate Centre, Bureau of Meteorology

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Will Tony Jones demolish The Great Global Warming Swindle?

It is my fervent wish that Tony Jones exposes The Great Global Warming Swindle as a hoax and fraud on ABC TV after the documentary viewing at 8:30. He is a thorough and dogged interviewer and I hope he takes Martin Durkin to task.

It looks like he might.

The ANU's Dr Janette Lindesay and Professor Malcolm McCulloch, along with their Stanford University colleague, Professor Robert Dunbar, will address the scientific flaws in the claims of climate change sceptics at the public forum on Friday titled Debunking The Great Global Warming Swindle.

The forum will focus on claims that global warming is not due to greenhouse gas emissions but other natural causes.

Respected journal The New Scientist has also re-issued a guide to climate change myths and misconceptions it put together earlier this year, when The Great Global Warning Swindle was aired in the UK.

"Despite the claims made in The Great Global Warming Swindle, there is now an overwhelming amount of evidence that the world is warming, and that this warming is due to increased levels of greenhouse gases caused by human activity," said the journal.

One of the so-called experts on the ABC's panel that will debate climate change is retired James Cook University professor Bob Carter.

Professor Carter, whose background is in marine geology, appears to have little, if any, standing in the Australian climate science community.

He is on the research committee at the Institute of Public Affairs, a think tank that has received funding from oil and tobacco companies, and whose directors sit on the boards of companies in the fossil fuel sector.

Maybe it is a good thing the TGGWS is being shown on ABC TV. Their promo website message board is getting a workout, 800 messages in two days. Most of them indicate the public have a reasonable, layman's grasp of the science, and a sense that oil companies are behind the manufacture of the denial industry.

clipped from www.smh.com.au ABC TV came under renewed pressure today about its decision to air a misleading and scientifically flawed climate change documentary, with the Australian National University holding a forum to debunk the program. ...rumours circulate about editorial in-fighting at the ABC about the UK documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, that will air tomorrow night. In what appeared to be a defensive reaction to initial criticism from scientists of the decision to air the film, ABC TV asked Lateline presenter Tony Jones to interview the film maker, Martin Durkin, and to lead a panel discussion about climate change. Jones' interview raises questions about Durkin's use of statistics and graphics, and his omission of more recent research contradicting the claims made in the film. ...raise questions about why the ABC bought the highly discredited documentary... the Herald believes there were robust discussions between Jones and head of Factual Entertainment, Denise Eriksen, about his interview.

Robust is good. The question of why the ABC bought the "highly discredited documentary" is not hard to answer — the ABC board is newly stacked with Howard Government appointees.

Margaret Thatcher started global warming alarmism

The Great Global Warming Swindle is being shown on ABC Television. My god. How can this be? How all-pervasive is the denialist industry to get their propaganda funded with tax payer's money?

How can they be allowed to spread their misinformation about the clarity of climate science's conclusions in their successful attempt, so far, to stall serious action on global warming.

'They' is Martin Durkin, MD of Wag TV. The anti-environmentalist's crusader, it seems from his bio on the ABC microsite devoted to the propaganda. The ABC is going all out with Tony Jones hosting the The Great Global Warming Swindle at 8:30, Thurs, July 12. Tony will then have an in-depth interview with Martin Durkin, and then throw to a panel of leaders from the business and scientific communities, social commentators, environmentalists and academics. This group will include a number of climate sceptics who support Martin Durkin's view of global warming. Let me guess, Bob Carter's an Aussie. All in front of a, no-doubt, fired-up ABC studio audience.

I watched the trailers of The Great Global Warming Swindle posted on the ABC microsite. Most of it is, disappointingly, stock-standard denialist fare that's been rehashed, reheated and slopped up over the years. But the premise is a conjurer's gem. It was news to me that the catalyst for setting up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was nasty, evil Margaret Thatcher. See, she wanted to flog nuclear power, so gave the Royal Society money to 'invent' global warming. Once a fabrication industry had been set up, so the story goes, it became more and more alarmist to sustain itself with bigger and bigger government grants.

Margaret Thatcher, the Great Global Warming Swindler? Not the Margaret Thatcher that drove the Great Rock 'n Roll Swindlers, the Sex Pistols, anarchic in the UK? Surely not?

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Extreme weather: Global warming or El Niño-La Niña baton change?

After Australia's hottest autumn on record and the coldest June since 1950, the SMH asks Dr David Jones from the Bureau of Meteorology why there has been extreme weather.(01:38)

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Live Earth to reach two billion world over

Al Gore has recruited Australian-based Cathy Zoi to run the Alliance for Climate Protection he set up six months ago.

"It will be the first great note in a worldwide song demanding change that will be heard on every continent in every time zone," Zoi says of the concerts.

"Post Live Earth, the Alliance for Climate Protection is undertaking a three- to five-year campaign to educate people from all walks of life that the climate crisis is both critically urgent and something we can solve."

One such action is the Live Earth's outreach program, called Friends of Live Earth. Some 6000 people have applied for kits to run their own events simultaneously with the concerts.

A key part of Live Earth will be to get people around the world to sign a seven-part pledge that commits them to lobby their governments.

This is much more than a feel-good exercise: the event organisers plan to capture a massive database of people who can be mobilised in future campaigns - and be asked to donate.

On the night there will also be six calls to action, says Zoi. One is to install four energy saving light bulbs in their home. If the event is as big as organisers hope, they will be able to quantify the impact and use it in future publicity.

clipped from www.smh.com.au WILL the biggest global media event in history be enough to convince George Bush and John Howard that climate change is an urgent problem? The former vice-president turned climate change campaigner, Al Gore, certainly hopes it will provide a good nudge along the road to requiring nations to reduce greenhouse gases by 90 per cent by 2050. The Live Earth concerts this weekend, which will be broadcast worldwide on television and the internet to reach more than 2 billion people, begin in Sydney and cascade around the world to Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Hamburg, London, Rio de Janeiro and New York where Gore will be. For the first time, China will participate. There are two special events: from Toji temple in Kyoto and from the British scientific base in Antarctica. "The climate crisis requires a global solution," said Kevin Wall - the man behind Live Aid and Live8 - and now this event. "Live Earth is using an unprecedented media architecture to reach a global audience."

Greenland's DNA reveals green past

Erik the Red, who settled in Greenland 1000 years ago, named it to lure more settlers, although a small area not covered by ice would then have been very green.

While an admirable marketing tactic, Erick was half a million years (give or take a thousand), behind the times.

clipped from www.smh.com.au THE oldest DNA found on earth has been collected from under a kilometre of ice in Greenland, revealing that the frozen island really was once green. Half a million years ago Greenland was covered by lush forests filled with butterflies, moths and the ancestors of beetles, flies and spiders. The discovery of ancient DNA from a warm period half a million years ago suggests that ice on top of the ancient forest did not melt as believed during the last warm period, 116,000 to 130,000 years ago, when temperatures were 5 degrees higher than today. If it had, the remains of the ancient trees and insects would have been replaced by new flora and fauna. "If our data is correct, this means that the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Professor Willerslev, whose team's findings are published today in the journal Science. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Downer: Iraq war is about oil

The Aussie government ping-pong championships are on:

clipped from www.smh.com.au THE Foreign Minister has contradicted the Prime Minister, saying that the mission in Iraq is linked to safeguarding the war-torn nation's oil reserves. A day after John Howard said oil was neither a motivation for invading Iraq nor for staying there, Alexander Downer said allowing al-Qaeda to prevail would affect Iraq's oil industry and cripple the country economically. "They have to be able to generate some income in Iraq," he said. "The suggestion that the Iraqis shouldn't be able to export oil and generate any income to sustain an economy which has already been attacked by terrorists is pretty absurd." Global Warning Climate Change Energy

War for oil! Who would've believed it?

Flying a kite for the election, Australian Prime Minister John Howard backtracks on claims Iraq is about the oil, but is wrong-footed by current opinion. How will this play out?

From howardout:

clipped from howardout.blogspot.com Well, Howard may still be in denial, or damage control mode, or insane, but the rest of the world now knows the truth: Iraq - Oil supply is an essential factor of Australia’s presence in Iraq Pakistan - Daily Times: Oil key motive for Iraq involvement: Australia United Arab Emirates - Gulfnews: Oil 'key factor for Australia's role in Iraq' Turkey - Oil a factor in Australian role in Iraq: minister India - NDTV.com: Iraq oil security a priority for Australia: Nelson Germany - Oil slick hits Australia's Iraq policy Ireland - RTE News: Mideast oil priority for Australia Etc. Even the Canberra Times has a refreshing glimpse of the truth: The Japanese and the Chinese have proved that it's possible to achieve energy security without resort to force. Indeed, gas and coal producers line up to win contracts to supply their industries. Energy producers and consumers have a symbiotic relationship: both have an incentive to do business, a fact sometimes lost on Americans.

Rain in Spain falls mainly on the forest

It's a good thing Spain is developing wind energy and concentrated solar power, because they are facing emissions levels of 37 percent above their 1990 levels. They are allowed only a 15 percent increase under the Kyoto Protocol agreement. So they plan to sink 20 percent of the excess carbon dioxide by re-foresting.

clipped from www.smh.com.au Two of Spain's regional governments and its capital city plan to plant millions of trees to help offset the impact of the country's spiralling greenhouse gas emissions, environment officials said on Thursday. Spain's emissions in 2006 were 48 percent above their level in 1990. It aims to offset 20 percentage points of that via United Nations-approved clean energy projects in developing countries, and a further 2 points by planting trees. Castilla-La Mancha, an extensive, rural region on Spain's central plain, has already increased its forested area by 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) to 5 million hectares. It now plans to plant 20 million trees in the next four years. Madrid is also planting. "We will also plant 1.5 million trees, which will absorb 9,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year," Ana Botella, the head of the city hall's environmental department, said. 10,000 new trees will also be planted in the Basque Country. Global Warning Climate Change Energy

Global warming shapes society. Part 1 - Migration

One of the major effects of global warming is adjusted species-range. Plants and animals evolve to survive in a particular climate, and when it changes quickly species follow their preferred climate travelling up the latitudes towards their closest pole, as the planet heats up. They change their range. While many species tend to travel north or south, the only way is up for the American pika - their 1200 years migration from the great American plains has now found them high up in alpine terrain.

Which brings us to us. We are a species too, and we have our range, which is currently every continent bar Antarctica. Yet in the nascence of our evolution as Homo sapiens sapiens, around 150,000 years ago, our range was restricted to the Rift Valley in central Africa - for 50,000 happy years. What happened to make us leave the comfy ancestral home?

Climate change is what happened. :::[Vanity Fair: Out of Africa]

What set these migrations in motion? Climate change—today's big threat—seems to have had a long history of tormenting our species. Around 70,000 years ago it was getting very nippy in the northern part of the globe, with ice sheets bearing down on Seattle and New York; this was the last Ice Age. At that time, though, our species, Homo sapiens, was still limited to Africa; we were very much homebodies. But the encroaching Ice Age, perhaps coupled with the eruption of a super-volcano named Toba, in Sumatra, dried out the tropics and nearly decimated the early human population.

[...]

And then something happened. It began slowly, with only a few hints of the explosion to come: The first stirrings were art—tangible evidence of advanced, abstract thought—and a significant improvement in the types of tools humans made. Then, around 50,000 years ago, all hell broke loose. The human population began to expand, first in Africa, then leaving the homeland to spread into Eurasia. Within a couple of thousand years we had reached Australia, walking along the coast of South Asia. A slightly later wave of expansion into the Middle East, around 45,000 years ago, was aided by a brief damp period in the Sahara. Within 15,000 years of the exodus from Africa our species had entered Europe, defeating the Neanderthals in the process.

From the beginning climate change has had an all pervasive influence on our global migrations. And indeed, even on the music of U2. :::[Vanity Fair: Mommy, where Do Bonos Come From?]



The maternal ancestors of Africa-issue guest editor Bono were, like Graydon's, part of the second major migratory wave out of Africa. They moved northward out of the Near East, entering Europe around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. During the worst of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago, these ancestors were pushed into Iberia. After the ice age, Bono's ancestors moved northward and westward to populate the British Isles and Scandinavia.

(I always thought I could hear the atavistic strains of the windblown Iberian tundra of 15,000 BCE in New Year's Day).

Our history is one of being shaped by climate change, it's quite ironic that we now shape the climate ourselves. I wondered how it would all turn out:



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It's not the first time we've almost died out

Have you ever wondered why people are fundamentally similar world over?

clipped from trakker.typepad.com All humans on the Earth today - over 6,000,000,000 of us - are homo sapiens. While homo sapiens appear to have emerged 200,000 years ago, in Africa, the population grew slowly and was subject to many setbacks. One such setback about 50,000 years ago or so, reduced the entire population of homo sapiens to just 2,000 individuals! Think about that. We were THAT close to extinction!