Saturday 30th of March 2024

Gus Leonisky's blog

the air we breathe...

press

too close to ningaloo for comfort...

mingaloo

Near Ningaloo Reef (picture by Gus)

The value of world heritage-listing status is being questioned after Shell was given the green light to explore for gas near Western Australia's Ningaloo Reef.

The Federal Government says the giant petrochemical company will be allowed to drill for gas 50 kilometres from the Ningaloo Marine Park boundary.

Shell says its operation will be focused on gas, not oil, and will be located away from the reef itself.

More than 6,000 square kilometres of coastal Ningaloo were listed by the United Nations late last month, and environmentalists claim the drilling plans could threaten the protected area.

rabbit stew...

rabbit stew for dinner...
The Murdoch Style, Under Pressure


By JEREMY W. PETERS and BRIAN STELTER


Risk-taking and line-skirting have always been just one more cost of doing business for Rupert Murdoch.

scarecrows...

scarecrows

...

The big change in the statement is inclusion of the phrase: “…cautious behaviour by households and the high level of the exchange rate are having a noticeable dampening effect.”

Europe’s well-publicised fears have played a role in that, but so have Tony Abbott and Glenn Stevens himself.

Abbott’s fear campaign over the carbon tax – consistently telling workers they will lose their jobs and the Australian economy will be severely damaged – has worked, as all opinion polls show.

tanking economy...

world economy

The global economy is in the midst of its second growth scare in less than two years. Get used to it. In a post-crisis world, these are the footprints of a failed recovery.

The reason is simple. The typical business cycle has a natural cushioning mechanism that wards off unexpected blows. The deeper the downturn, the more powerful the snapback, and the greater the cumulative forces of self-sustaining revival. Vigorous V-shaped rebounds have a built-in resilience that allows them to shrug off shocks relatively easily.

genetically modified lies...

wheat

Fields near Tamora, NSW. (Picture by Gus)

Australia's GM wheat will only worsen world hunger

Kumi Naidoo

From my first introduction to Australia via a picture book as a child, I was captivated by Australia's vast and pristine landscapes. To my mind yours is the country of health, nature and purity.

Yet on my first voyage to Australia as the executive director of Greenpeace International, I am devastated to find myself in a country set to become the first in the world to produce genetically modified (GM) wheat.

gold surplus....

grain loading

Grain loading in WA (picture by Gus).

Australia recorded a trade surplus of $2.33 billion in May, easily exceeding analyst forecasts of a sub-$2 billion number.

It is the fifth biggest trade surplus since the ABS figures began in 1971.

The Bureau of Statistics figures show exports increased 3 per cent to $26.26 billion, seasonally adjusted, while imports remained roughly the same at $23.93 billion.

The biggest rise in exports came from non-monetary gold, which jumped 49 per cent (but is highly volatile), while rural goods were up 6 per cent.

killing the first stone...

stoning...

...

Dickson is not yet finished with me. He correctly quotes me as saying that the famous "cast the first stone" scene "was added centuries after John was written." He then accuses me of confusing the fact that


"this narrative doesn't appear in the best manuscripts of John's Gospel, something all modern Bibles acknowledge in their text of John 8, with a conclusion that the story was concocted 'centuries' later."


But I didn't say that the story was "concocted" - I don't know its provenance, but it clearly seems to be controversial - I said that it was "added," and Dickson then goes on to confirm that it was indeed added later.

the bolt report...

boltreport2

The Bolt Report has attracted larger television audiences than ABC’s Insiders every week since its 8 May launch, OzTAM data shows.

Last Sunday, The Bolt Report attracted its largest audience to date when 322,000 tuned in to the program’s two editions, beating the show’s previous best of 305,000 achieved on 15 May.

The ABC’s Insiders program, presented by Barrie Cassidy, last week attracted a combined audience of 264,000 – 58,000 fewer than The Bolt Report.

The Bolt Report airs at 10.00 am on Sunday morning and is repeated at 4.30 pm the same day.

the price of fish...

nickelcobalt

Nickel/cobalt refinery north of Townsville (Picture by Gus)

 

ONE of Australia's richest men, Clive Palmer, is buying nickel laterite ore for his Yabulu refinery from an Indonesian company that is defying a ban and mining in Raja Ampat, the world's most ecologically diverse marine environment.

raising the roof...

deficit obama
To the Limit


By PAUL KRUGMAN


In about a month, if nothing is done, the federal government will hit its legal debt limit. There will be dire consequences if this limit isn’t raised. At best, we’ll suffer an economic slowdown; at worst we’ll plunge back into the depths of the 2008-9 financial crisis.

So is a failure to raise the debt ceiling unthinkable? Not at all.

kryptonite...

kryptonite

A reluctant Tony Abbott has pledged, after Peter Reith's assault on his reticence to talk about industrial relations reform, that the opposition will take a ''strong and effective'' policy to the election. Abbott's office swore he wasn't saying anything new. Other participants in the debate - from Reith to the ACTU scaremongers - saw his comment on Tuesday as a significant development.

The reality is that the IR issue is on Abbott's plate and it will become very hot. He must take control of it, or it will badly burn the Coalition.

thin ice in our whisky...

melting ice...

As I have mentioned before, the melting of ice sheets is masking the full potential of global warming though we can measure a strong (in geological timescale) warming trend anyway...

Again here, I use the "ice in the whisky" image: the ice cools the whisky. Yet the sum total of temperature is rising despite the ice being cold... The ice melts and there is a tipping point at which the influence of the ice becomes so negligeable, the whisky temperature quickly rises to room temperature...

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