Sunday, June 28, 2015

Full Moon July 2nd

Okay, mother really bad this time.
She had a shower last week and they had to rush her back to bed and oxygen.
This is the longest time she has spent in bed at the Home and she says she's not getting up until she feels better.
This from WonderWoman who would not stay in bed for anything and demanded a shower every day.
She's back on Penicillan injections (sp?), oxygen, big purple antibiotics, patches over her heart and oxygen.
The coughing up of bits of lung into the phone was enough to keep me away without her telling me to stay home in case I caught it. 
I don't think I'll catch what she has.

I'll be back whenever.  Thank goodness I have anti-depressant ice-creams in the freezer.

Saturday, June 13, 2015

How much renewable energy could we have by burning redundant politicians, 'let them eat cake' Hockey could burn for years!


On Thursday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott used primetime radio to boast about cutting clean energy, calling wind farms "visually awful" and arguing "I would frankly have liked to have reduced the number a lot more". 1

Now, his government is kicking straight into action by rescheduling a parliamentary vote for Monday morning to slash jobs and investment for Renewable Energy Target (RET).

But here's the kicker: Monday's proposed legislation won't just cut investment in clean energy. The Abbott Government wants to redefine 'clean energy' altogether, by including burning native forests in the Renewable Energy Target. A move like this could see the open slather logging of forests that our Australian wildlife depend on for survival. Just as terrible: every native forest cut down and burnt for electricity takes away from capacity and more investment in the clean energy of the future - like solar.


That's the email I received from "Get Up" today.  Does this idiot realize how long a native forest tree takes to become "renewable" again?  Are the animals renewable, you know the ones who shelter in trees, on trees or underneath trees?  Does this troll of a politician know how much carbon trees take in and oxygen put out for us to breathe?  Does this entire political party have a brain cell between them that can estimate the damage of trees burnt and sold as "renewable" energy?  Well, the way the Mad Monk obviously sees it, most of the liberal (I refuse them a Capital) party have been living in the shadow of wind farms and have been permanently damaged by it.

Oh, here's a clue.  Let's build solar reflecting panel farms in our famous red and flaming hot centre. Too expensive  or you don't know what they are?  It's a shame you don't have a Minister for Science to explain it to you.  He could also explain about building wind farms in windy places because the wind is free.  Never mind we'll have lots of windy places when all the trees are cut down.  Perhaps the Minister for the Environment could look up "Mallee" and see what the ignorant did to that region.
Do we have a Minister for the Environment, as in for all Australia not just looking after the grounds of Parliament House and making sure no-one sneaks a wind turbine up there considering the free hot air that flows from that asylum.  Oh dear, there goes another trigger word, Hello ASIO.

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

It seems like yesterday.


Mt St. Helens under a layer of snow, towering above  Spirit Lake, just the place for a holiday of camping and hiking.  35 years ago, just before it blew its top leaving a horseshoe-shaped crater and devastation for miles.  The top of the volcano was blocked by a plug of hardened magma so the mountain simply blew out of the side after an earthquake of 5.1.  It caused one of the largest known debris avalanches in recorded history.  The magma caused a massive pyroclastic flow of hot gas and wind down the side of the mountain flattening everything in its path over an area of 600 square kilometres.  The debris was then carried further by the melted snow combined with earth as huge lahars flowed.



Thirty-five years later and the scars have still not quite healed.  The horseshoe crater is still visible as is the new magma dome inside the crater.  Beautiful Spirit Lake is in the upper centre of the image. At centre right of the image is Castle Lake.  At right of Spirit Lake, debris avalanche deposits surround the tiny St. Helens Lake and the long line of Coldwater Lake.
Scientists estimate the eruption released over 1.5 million tonnes of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere and recorded a Volcanic Explosivity Index of five.

This image was assembled from data acquired by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 and the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on the Terra satellite.

Like I said, it just seems like yesterday. In geological terms, it's a blink which is why climate change deniers are going to be eating their words after another 35 years.  And please, could we possibly have a Minister for Science some time before then and preferably not Greg Hunt who can't see the coral for the reef and insists that all that coal mining and coal shipping won't hurt the Great Barrier Reef at all, not a bit.