At present the world seems to have gone mad on varying time zones. I have read disturbing figures that question whether it actually does save power. If you take into account the time, power and effort put into programming all the clocks, flight time tables, mobile phones etc for a constantly changing time situation I would gravely doubt it! It was worse than Y2K yesterday!

So much of our lives now are based on computers and software and writing that that software to cope with whimsical changes that differ all over the place is costly in energy terms as well and time and money.

North America has extended its daylight saving - great. I guess all the computer bios’s will be manufactured to US requirements in future. This won’t suit the rest of the world.

In Australia some States have extended their daylight saving and others have not. Personally I find this confusing because I have teleconferences and sending clients up to date information EACH WEEK because it is changing somewhere weekly at present, is time consuming and also wastes power as I sit at the computer longer trying to get it right. It also gives me headache and makes my grumpy.

Yesterday was chaos at the airports as the flight departure computers were an hour out and passengers were in panic mode. Mobile phone times were crazy. Lots of people was completely unaware of what week our time will change. In fact there are several websites that spell it out very clearly but not everyone knows that.

I t would make much more sense for the entire world to change on the Sunday closest to the equinox when day and night are both the same length and this happens on the same day all around the world! If this is too confusing because people can’t work out which is the equinox (ye gods! how hard) then the last Sunday in March and September would do as a standard.

Technorati Tags: time zone, time zone chaos, Australia, North America, energy, daylight savings time

We need a combination of awareness, behavioural change, and some technology.

Programs like my Module 1 where I teach you to mind-map your activities develop a greater awareness and help plan for the behavioural changes needed.

The problem is our habits and our resistance to change and this is where technology helps and the simple, low cost technologies that help us change our habits does already exist.

In some hotels we have a slot to put a card in that turns off all the power except essentials like the fridge. This would be great in every house and workplace with just some designated power points left live.

Our Video/DVD recorders need to be made with a battery &/or some form of “trickle” to keep the date and time set - or else a gadget that we can plug them into to do this. It is not practical to turn them off at the wall because it induces “video time set rage”.

In a work environment, people who work late could have a pass-card to turn on their desk and the lighting could be based on motion detectors so the rest of the lights are off when not in use.

This technology does exist and would save enough to pay for its installation.

Technorati Tags: energy, energy savings, behavioural change, awareness, low cost technologies, changing our habits

While we need to think along these lines for more than 1 hour a year, I was very disappointed with Adelaide’s effort. I live on the second floor of an 8 storey apartment building and I went out to look over Adelaide and saw NO evidence that our Government or businesses had made any effort. The lights of Adelaide looked exactly the same as usual.

The power use did go down 3% but I suspect this was due to lots of small users and households. I certainly noticed that there had been no effort to turn off the 24 hour passage lights in my building. I cannot understand why we can’t have these on motion detectors at night.

My 2 cats were fascinated by the candles!

Technorati Tags: Earth Hour, Adelaide, no effort made, no effort for Earth Hour

The latest news is that in the Antarctic, the temperature is rising five times faster than elsewhere. Many of the penguin colonies are under threat. It was really sad watching film of penguins with eggs surrounded by soft snow melt that was drowning the eggs. A new situation the parent birds had no behaviour to cope with.

We all know by now that polar bears are becoming endangered as their ice shelf disappears.

I read yesterday that the rate of species extinction at present is greater than when the dinosaurs became extinct.

Technorati Tags: Arctic, Antarctic, global warming, polar bears at risk, penguins at risk, penguin colonies under threat

The Victorians finally agreed to hand over management of the Murray to a single authority BUT

• The deal cost $BILLION
• No more water will go into the Murray from Victoria until 2011!

Their irrigators will make the kind of changes that others have been making to improve the efficiency of use and delivery of the water for years without the subsidies.

Oh to be a self centred head water user.

The huge dams on cotton farms in Qld come in here as well.

My take on this is that anything that dams water that would naturally end up in the river system should be measured and counted and PAID FOR as water taken from the river.

We have one country and we should all be paying for the water we use and ensuring that there is some left at the “end of the pipe”.

Technorati Tags: Victoria, Australia, water resources, water efficiency, dams

The Murray at Murray Bridge, in South Australia, is currently 35cm below sea level and is to drop around 50cm lower by the end of April.

Meantime, wheat crops are being planted off the Darling and flood irrigated, cotton and rice which uses enormous amounts of water planted.

60 -70 year old farmers are crawling out over the mud at Lake Albert to extend pipes to keep stock alive and get muddy water for their homes and Lake Albert in parts is receding at 500 m per week.

Meanwhile Victoria refuses to hand control of the system to the Commonwealth 14 months after the $10 billion plan was offered.

So much for the ‘spirit of cooperation’ between States and Commonwealth we were promised with Labour coast to coast. I thought Australia was one country but nonsense things like this sound like squabbling between different nations not states in the same country.

My personal take is that when there is a shortage of water, the Federal Government should share the resources equitably and account should be taken of the $ earned per litre of water used for the various crops and industries. The farmers losing their water allocation should have compensation but as climate change bites, and Australia is one of the worst affected places, it is hard to see how anyone can justify water-wasting crops like cotton and rice, in the upper reaches of the river while the bottom end dries up and whole towns and cities are without water and without the industry and jobs that depend on the river.

Update on 26th March

This week all the State Premiers and the Prime Minister are meeting in Adelaide to the regular talk & argue-fest. In this morning’s paeter, the Victorian Premier was quoted as saying that Victoria has the best managed water resources in the country and he is not going to go anything to dissadvantage any Victorians.

It is easy to have the best managed water (for Victorians only) when Victoria has more rainfall and is on the headwaters of the river.

The management that is of concern, if how they equitably share resources with other states and in particular with South Australia where the river is rapidly drying up.

Victorians are able to go on driving around happily with “Victoria- the Garden State” on their vehicle registration plates. I guess that is what matters to Mr Brumby and his voters.

Technorati Tags: drought, interstate squabbling, River Murray, Adelaide, Victoria, Australia, The Murray, Murray Bridge, Lake Albert, water resources, global warming

Walking the talk to a low-carbon city - The Age - 14 Mar 2008
THE interim report of Professor Ross Garnaut’s Climate Change Review has posed a major dilemma for Sir Rod Eddington’s assessment of east-west transport needs in Melbourne. Can a major road project possibly be consistent with a future where national greenhouse gas emissions will probably need to be reduced by 70-90% by 2050 on 2000 levels?

Poor public transport isolates residents - The Herald Sun - 14 Mar 2008
Monash University professor of public transport Graham Currie warned climate change would worsen the situation in the outer suburbs. RESIDENTS of Melbourne’s booming growth suburbs are being left stranded and cut off from essential services as public transport lags behind development on the city’s fringe.
Many residents have to walk up to 23 minutes to the nearest bus stop and almost an hour to the nearest railway station. This did not include waiting times at the stops.
This is really hard for people struggling to cope with small children and shopping. Plus as I know only too well since I was injured in a bus in November, the lack of seat belts makes public transport dangerous. I did notice last week that New Zealand buses have seatbelt type anchors for wheel chairs which we no not have.
New research shows poor access to public transport is linked to social exclusion, poverty and crime. Early findings from a three-year study by the Brotherhood of St Laurence, Monash University Institute of Transport Studies, Bus Association of Victoria and Department of Infrastructure, reveal poor mobility on Melbourne’s urban fringe cuts residents off from services and activities taken for granted elsewhere.
All things to think about as fuel prices sour and will continue to do so And we need to reduce our fuel use to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Technorati Tags: information, newspaper, low carbon city, low carbon, global warming, public transport, Melbourne, Australia

I have concerns.

• The market is currently an unregulated mess.
• In some states perfectly good natural ecosystems are being cleared to plant unsuitable trees to “reduce carbon emissions”.
• In other states, SA for a prime example, the water restriction on garden watering are causing the death of large trees that absorb CO2 emissions. I am not objecting to water restrictions BUT they need to be intelligent so that people have the choice of how their use their available water allocation. Some may choose to conserve water in the house with very brief showers and less flushing of the yellow in the toilet (the old rural adage is “if it is brown, flush it down, if it is yellow, let it mellow”). If this is the case they should be free to use this saved water.
• I intrinsically feel that paying taxes on emissions is more of an incentive to reduce them and probably easy and cheaper from an accounting viewpoint, that carbon trading.
• I think we need simple technology that can allow us to reduce our energy use passively – things like turning off all power except essentials when you leave a room or house. People don’t change habits easily.

Technorati Tags: carbon trading, carbon, ecosystems, natural ecosystems, reduce carbon emissions, paying taxes on emissions, emissions

I spent last week in New Zealand with my daughter’s family. It was interesting to discover that most of their power generation is from Hydro electric, wind and thermal power. This is logical if you think about the land of the long white cloud (has been known to rain) which is always windy (a jaundiced view perhaps as I stayed in Wellington) plus the islands are volcanic. Apparently there used to be a lot more very efficient small hydro power stations supplying local areas with minimal environmental damage because the water was already falling down waterfalls and some just went though pipes instead. Most of these have been closed in the name of greater efficiency but they actually were very efficient.

In Australia we have the world’s largest high quality coal reserves, not much rain and a lot less maintains and waterfalls. Guess what- our power generation is mainly coal powered! Logical and sensible from a historical perspective BUT we are in a new space now and we understand atmospheric pollution by greenhouse gasses. The coal industry is working hard on developing clean coal technology.

The thing is that we must not be blinded by the huge reserves we have of wind energy, geo thermal energy (less obvious but there) and wave energy as well as the obvious but at present expensive, solar energy. Time to move on Aussies!

Technorati Tags: natural resources, generate power, power, resources, New Zealand, hydro electric, wind, thermal power, wind power, solar energy

A recent Poll shows 64% of Australians support the Government signing Kyoto and less that 7% oppose it. OK 29% don’t know what to think or don’t care. Perhaps they are not used to thinking.

My personal belief is that you have no credibility telling your children and grandchildren that you love them if you don’t do something active about securing their future. This means reducing our individual and business greenhouse impacts.

• - Other key findings in the report (by Auspoll) were that 73% of Australians expect the Government to show strong international leadership by introducing stronger policies to reduce greenhouse pollution in Australia;
• - A similar number (68 per cent) believe we should be doing more to help developing countries, reduce their emissions; and
• - Most Australians do not want action delayed because of arguments about jobs.
• - Less than one in three (29 per cent) agreed that the government should “delay action on climate change if jobs are at risk”. (The remaining 71 per cent either opposed this position or had no real opinion.) My comment is that we already know that 29% don’t think much!

The full list of findings is available at;

http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/images/climate%20change%20omnibus.pdf

Australia is likely to be the worst affected continent by climate change so we had better care and do sooner rather than later.
“The majority of people surveyed - women in particular - indicated a strong desire to try to reduce the amount of electricity they are currently using in their home,” a CSIRO report says.

“People want to reduce their household emissions as well as save on the cost of their energy bills.”

The report showed that younger, more educated, higher income householders were willing to integrate technology into their home to manage their own household energy requirements.

The report also found that Australians interested in generating their own household electricity prefer renewable energy sources, particularly favoring solar and wind.

Public Attitudes towards Electricity Alternatives: Results from a Survey of Australian Householders is available at www.csiro.au/resources/HouseholdElectricity.html

Technorati Tags: Australia, electricity alternatives, electricity, Kyoto, greenhouse impacts, reducing greenhouse effects, climate change