ink marks on a blank page 11th march

Simple is as simple does, that be life really . Days go, replaced by others, each one different but similar and it is the simple ones that I love best. None of us enjoys angst or drama, happens in the best of regulated lives but 'tis never the high point of the day. Excitement is fine, but I for one would not want to go through my life in a high state of frisson each and every minute. James Bond I'm not, think of all those endorphins rushing around colliding with each other. Makes me want to lay down with the energy of it all, not that I am a sloth, indeed not so, but having said that I do enjoy moments of torpor. Mostly in the afternoon around 1430 or thereabouts, just a nice laze in my favourite chair and now seeing as it is Autumn sat in front of the large windows that look out onto the park in front of the house. Said park is looking a litle raggy though, the drought took its toll months ago and what grass there was has just up and left not to be seen until the winter rains. That there will be rains I have no doubt as the rainbow lorikeets have started to fly into the next doors claret ash on our boundary. These lovely birds just adore that tree and come into it in numbers at the beginning of Autumn through to mid-winter and then again in Spring. How do I know that there will be rain aplenty? simple. When I had the 'simple' life on the farm it was in a district that always had 'good' rains, that is they came , they held, they watered well and long. Some seasons were better than others and we noted that the year before those 'better' seasons the parrots ,lorikeets et al all had very bright plumage that carried into the next year, the good year. As the season progressed sometimes Rainbow bee -eaters would appear and then the next rains for that season would be heavy indeed. The years when the Bee -eaters didn't come then that next season although it always rained enough, the hay cutting would be earlier and not quite as heavy. We do not get the Bee-eaters here but the rainbow lorikeets and the parrots have excellent bright plumage this year and as well the Sulphur crested cockatoos are a glossy white too.

Climate change is big news here in OZ and the terrible wild-fires in Victoria have been blamed on climate change by our conservationists groups and some political folk. They carefully forget that the massive dry understory and build-up of bark etc that they will not allow the volunteer fire service to burn off in the winter helped fuel and in some instances increased the fire risk. These groups lobbied councils in the areas that were severely affected by the fires to stop locals from collecting the dead timber that falls from trees along the roadside, the result? In those council where this practise was disallowed the roadside verges became firestorms in themselves as the years of deadwood that had piled up fuelled the fires.
I am not a climate change denyer as we humans have despoiled the planet with many years of pollution but we seem to be rushing in headlong without seriously cosidering the evidence from the past. Antartica did not exist as it is now 4ok years ago, sharks swam where Alice Springs exists in a semi desert today and the Himalaya were in a different place . I will post an excerpt from a geology of the Himalaya to show what is happening as I type this and will continue to happen always regardless of what some rabid conservationists say. This is not to refute climate change, it is merely to point out that the Earth is in a continual state of evolution and will continue to do so as IT(Gaia) is want to do : I quote;
"Over periods of 5-10 million years, the (tectonic)plates will probably continue to move at the same rate. In 10 million years India will plow into Tibet a further 180 km. This is about the width of Nepal. Because Nepal's boundaries are marks on the Himalayan peaks and on the plains of India whose convergence we are measuring, Nepal will technically cease to exist. But the mountain range we know as the Himalaya will not go away.
This is because the Himalaya will probably look much the same in profile then as it does now. There will be tall mountains in the north, smaller ones in the south, and the north/south width of the Himalaya will be about the same. What will happen is that the Himalaya will have advanced across the Indian plate and the Tibetan plateau will have grown by accretion. One of the few clues about the rate of collision between India and Tibet before the GPS measurements were made was the rate of advance of Himalayan sediments across the Ganges plain. There is an orderly progression of sediments in front of the foothills. Larger boulders appear first, followed by pebbles, and further south, sand-grains, silts, and finally very fine muds. This is what you see when you drive from the last hills of the Himalaya southward 100 km. The present is obvious, but the historical record cannot be seen on the surface because the sediments bury all former traces of earlier sediments. However, in drill holes in the Ganges plain, the coarser rocks are always on the top and the finer pebbles and muds are on the bottom, showing that the Himalaya is relentlessly advancing on India" end quote.

We have to change the way in which we as makers and growers of products do things in order to live on our blue ball, however, I do believe that we also must look into the past in greater depth to see what has gone on before so that we can understand how to effect our future. All very well for folk like Al Gore to make $140million on a massive scare campaign using exaggerated filmic techniques to sell 'his' message but let us have rational and scientific informed debate from both sides of the issue and then create a consensus to address this on a global scale.

Here in OZ the federal government is pressing ahead with its version of a Emission trading scheme whether or not our fragile ecomomy will be able to withstand the impost or not. As an observer in this I cannot understand just what emissions a trading scheme will stop. The way the scheme works is that a heavy polluter(steel mill) will always emit on a daily basis more than their permit limit so they buy credits from a small emitter(fairy dust maker) who emits far less on a daily basis than their permit allows. What I do not understand is that the steel maker will still put their daily pollution into the atmosphere and all that will happen is the the fairy dust maker will get money which will in part be passed onto the Government in the form of taxes. The steel maker will in due course have to bring in new technology that will limit its emissions, this is just a natural progression that industry will always do anyway to remain competitive. All that the Emissions trading scheme is going to do is increase the tax revenue and in the short term reduce the steel makers workforce . Hortense my little wonder woman this is making my poor little brain ache with the complexity of it all. You blame Al Gore, yes indeed, but you are a clever wonder woman at that and you do not even have a glass plane. Al is a cheeky little sod are he not? we all wonder just what he has done with that $140mill net he pulled from the movie,dogs home! I think maybe that will not be his first choice. Oh Horty old girl 'tis a good thing we are off to cocolat and a show tonight, we shall have a good laugh and put the Emissions trading scheme just where it belongs.