"It's not really that different from the edicts that govern UL: use only what you need and no more, keep it light, make dual or more use of every item, and live according to the local conditions."

I like that very much Miguel Thanks for sharing that (and the rest of the post). The whole post reflects my opinions (suspicions) on the pitfalls of so-called democracy. Democracy has nothing to do with wisdom, or doing the right thing. It is a type of mob-rule where the opinions of the mob are very much influenced by those with power, money, or other forms of influence. The consensus of most current democracies seems to be that economic growth is paramount, and all other issues are secondary. The majority of voters seem to buy into this consensus.

"Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy"

I am so happy to see this link posted. It even provides a forum for Herman Daly, author of one of the most lucid proposals I have yet seen for a sustainable economic system, in his book "Steady State Economics". I would highly recommend it to anyone here interested in the problem. Like all proposals, it is not perfect, but I have long felt it would be a good place to begin a discussion and, dare I say, a movement.

Thanks for putting this one out there, Miguel!

"We are pretty amused how these heat inverters are touted as a low energy alternative to heating and cooling."

I presume that you're talking about heat pumps: I was also always puzzled by them being touted as "green" because I knew that they were reverse refrigerators, and as we all know fridges absolutely chew through electricity. Turns out that my suspicions were correct, they really aren't "green" at all.

"I read recently somewhere that heat inverters are the single biggest contributor, by a long shot, to the increase in electricity demand in Australia."

I doubt that: heat pumps aren't that common here yet. On the other hand we did gain a million or so people 2 years ago when the immigration department decided to adopt an open doors policy without telling anyone. Melbourne got an extra 400,000 or so people ....

Now that our renovation is finished we've started to get some post-makeover bills: our most recent electricity bill was $100 for roughly 2 months, but we got a $70 feed in credit, so just $30 balance. That's not too bad for a family of 5. Some friends of mine who are DINKs rack up $400 per quarter, so over double our usage for just two people.

I'll be fascinated to see what our water bills will be: since we switched to whole-house rainwater the tanks haven't been empty because of the unseasonal rain, so the only mains water we'd've used would be for teeth brushing and whatever was filled from the kitchen sink. The figures will be slightly inflated because my 2.5 year old has recently discovered water play and the joys of filling bathroom sinks ...

Miguel says:
Uninformed decision-making mobs, where all the individuals act on their own without regard for the whole society, are probably more dangerous than informed, benevolent dictators.

Actually Miguel, the people you call uninformed decision-making mobs have a lot of commonsense and highly tuned B/S detectors. Which is why they are not falling for the co2 story.

It sounds to me like it's a job for parents and teachers, and leading by example on the part of the great and the good who currently preach their green credentials from the steps of their private (or often publicly paid for) aircraft.

I will not be kow towing to any benevolent dictator, especially not world government composed of the U.N. Bureaucracy.

Edited by tallbloke on 12/20/2010 10:06:54 MST.

Actually Miguel, the people you call uninformed decision-making mobs have a lot of commonsense and highly tuned B/S detectors. Which is why they are not falling for the co2 story.

They have commonsense? Really? Please explain the Iraq War to me then. 80% of Americans were for it at the start. Most probably never read past the headlines to really understand what was happening. Yet it was all BS. You only had to stop for a moment and read a little bit outside the sensationalist news or listen to anyone who said, "Wait, hold on a minute. This doesn't make sense." (Tom Brokaw was one well-known newscaster who did just that. Very courageous at that time, I think). All those yea sayers fell for the propaganda like sheep to the slaughter. Sounds mightily uniformed to me. Which is exactly how propaganda works. As you keep saying.

I have very little faith in the masses doing much of anything commonsense and for the good of society and the planet. If people had so much commonsense we wouldn't be having these horrendous environmental disasters (As an architect interested in green design and vernacular wisdom I think the yearly destruction of homes in the American Southeast due to flooding is entirely avoidable, IF people would completely change their way of siting and building houses. You build for floods, not reiterate the problems by building conventional houses year after year. That's just plain stupid.). I'm not saying that people are malicious; I think people are generally well-intentioned. But wise and sensible... hmmm. I think, seriously, of humans as nothing more than the apes we are. We can no more change our attitudes and behavior than dogs can change the way they act. I, of course, include myself in the whole thing. Which is why staying as informed as possible is so important... so we can at least make weighted decisions.

Edited by butuki on 12/20/2010 14:53:24 MST.

"It sounds to me like it's a job for parents and teachers"

I hope, I wish that was sarcasm, as I can't think of a more ill-informed group, as a whole. At least if my parents, and friend's parents, and teachers were anything to go by....

and teachers were anything to go by....

Heh, well, I do my best as a teacher...

Hey Miguel, I'm sure you know what I mean. There are many good teachers out there, and at least you have to have some qualifications to be a teacher, but qualifications do not ensure quality. To be a parent OTOH, well, nuff said!

"All those yea sayers fell for the propaganda like sheep to the slaughter. Sounds mightily uniformed to me."

Partly uninformed no doubt, given that concentrated corporate control of the media has reduced The Fourth Estate to little more than a ministry of information. It is also easier to live with the results of being misinformed when it's other sheep that end up getting slaughtered as a result of our misguided wars.

Further to my comment a couple of days ago, here's a photo taken in Victoria yesterday:

.

Temperatures in Eastern Australia were well down on normal yesterday, about 8-12C below normal across a big area!

.

How unusual is this the day before Austral summer solstice?

Perhaps Arapiles can help. :-)

Edited by tallbloke on 12/21/2010 01:24:07 MST.

"How unusual is this the day before Austral summer solstice?

Perhaps Arapiles can help. :-)"

The Alps can get snow at any time of the year, as with mountains pretty much anywhere. That said:

"Although snow in December is not unheard of for this part of the country, it is still out of the ordinary. The snow was the result of a very cold air mass pushing its way over the southeast."

But Christmas Day will be 28*.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC1012/S00054/climate-science-coalition-vindicated.htm

“Almost all of the 34 adjustments made by Dr Jim Salinger to the 7SS have been abandoned, along with his version of the comparative station methodology.

“NIWA is clearly not prepared to defend the adjustments exposed in Are we feeling warmer yet? But it took a court case to force them into a corner.

“NIWA makes the huge admission that New Zealand has experienced hardly any warming during the last half-century. For all their talk about warming, for all their rushed invention of the “Eleven-Station Series” to prove warming, this new series shows that no warming has occurred here since about 1960. Almost all the warming took place from 1940-60, when the IPCC says that the effect of CO2 concentrations was trivial. Indeed, global temperatures were falling during that period.

“The new temperature record shows no evidence of a connection with global warming. Since that’s the reason this tempest in a teacup has brewed in the first place, it should simmer down now.”

Mr Treadgold said the people of New Zealand, for the first time, now have an official (although provisional) temperature record of the last 100 years. It is provisional because NIWA still has two steps to take to complete the project:

It is working on calculations of the confidence intervals, or margins of error, which will be published later.

It is yet to publish its methodology, which is to be independently peer-reviewed for a scientific journal.

Coalition scientists look forward to examining this new series closely over the coming months to determine its accuracy. The two steps outstanding from NIWA will be of great benefit in this regard.

Mr Treadgold said: “It’s reassuring to know that, for the first time ever, NIWA understands their own graph. This must be a tremendous relief for NIWA staff and management. It is certainly a relief for the NZ public.

Come on Rog, your talking about a weather event here, not climate. Likewise it's been very warm and dry here (though not far inland they had 135mm rain and this has caused rivers to flood) just across the ditch, even though we can get snow here, at sea level, on Christmas day. It's just weather, and predictably unpredictable in this part of the world. As you say, time will tell, and if it continues, then we can say it's been a cold/hot summer. It's certainly been a very warm spring/early summer here...though I haven't confirmed this with any of NIWA's measurements...

> The Alps can get snow at any time of the year, as with mountains pretty much anywhere.

Yup. Happens regularly. Always amusing to meet walkers who don't know this ...

We met a group of runners in training inside Seamans Hut one year. They looked very miserable and worried. They were dressed in running shorts and singlets; it was snowing with a strong wind outside.

Cheers

Sure, it's just weather. Just having a josh with DW. The interesting thing is that the centre of the continent has been 2-6C below the 1961-1991 average for the last 4 months. The maritime climate round the east west and north coasts has been a bit warmer, so the phenomenon has gone unnoticed mostly. What it's telling me is that the lack of solar warmth under clear desert skies is having a noticeable effect this austral summer. Given the cooler southern ocean temp (antarctic sea ice has reached record levels again this last season, the south coast has been a lot cooler and wetter.

Lots to learn about.

Hi Rog T

Do you know of a Piers Corbyn?
See
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/theres-a-mini-ice-age-coming-says-man-who-beats-weather-experts-20101221-1945a.html

Cheers

Hi Roger C

Yes I know Piers. He is a very clever man who has spent a lot of time working out weather patterns and how the solar wind and lunar tides affect them. He does a lot of comparison with past weather to help develop his understanding. He has two physics degrees and as you might imagine, he's scathing about the co2 climate hypothesis. My friend Ulric works with him. Ulric calculates temperatures and precipitation from planetary positions.

He recently got a bit of media exposure when Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, praised his accurate forecasting:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/8213058/The-man-who-repeatedly-beats-the-Met-Office-at-its-own-game.html

Last year he forecast the blizzard which hit the copenhagen climate summit over a month ahead. Which gave us all a laugh. The BBC promised if he was correct, they'd do a major feature on him. We're still waiting though...

And goodwill to all. Thanks for your continued interest in the carbon flame war and for your kindness and understanding of my obsession with gaining knowledge of how the Earth and it's biological skin goes about dissipating the energy it receives from the Sun.

Here's hoping the Sun perks up a bit, because for the last three years, it's been in a quiescent state, and it's been getting colder. This is the most severe winter in my part of the world since the Sun was this inactive 110 years ago.

Stay warm and safe

Rog Tallbloke

.

Edited by tallbloke on 12/24/2010 15:50:50 MST.

Arapiles said:
"Although snow in December is not unheard of for this part of the country, it is still out of the ordinary. The snow was the result of a very cold air mass pushing its way over the southeast."

But Christmas Day will be 28*.

Looks like Arapiles forecast for Christmas didn't quite work out. ;-)
It might have briefly hit a high of around 28C on Christmas day, but it has generally been well below average:

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=IVICMELB2&day=28&year=2010&month=12&graphspan=month

Currently a chilly 9.5C in Melbourne.

"IF people would completely change their way of siting and building houses. You build for floods, not reiterate the problems by building conventional houses year after year."

Mostly they don't because the Federal Government continues to offer them flood insurance at relatively reasonable prices.

"That's just plain stupid.)"

Or maybe, as Einstein was supposed to have observed, "When people keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result, that is called insanity." (paraphrased)

Whom it would apply to in this case is open to debate. The homeowners? The government? Or maybe the taxpayers who fund the whole insane process for not calling BS on it? All three?