We need war-like mobilisation against Global Warming

[Jovial Monk]

Cheap oil has been a curse. So a bimbo who is totally incompetent and unsure at driving a car buys (or her hubby buys) a big 4WD/SUV. Car weighs like four times as much as it need for city driving so goes through petrol/diesel like anything. It gets hot in summer, so the SUV HAS to have airconditioning, lots of it. Yup, buy the car with "free air" and burn even more petrol doing so. Drive the kids to school, drop them off and return to her airconditioned home that has fuck all eaves, no verandahs, is facing in the wrong direction etc so it too get hot and the a/c has to be a huge monster of a unit that really chews the watts.

Brute force thinking, possible because of cheap oil, the cheap oil that made possible two world wars in ONE century!

Now, for a while I drove my dead father's Datsun 120y. Lefty will remember discussions about this at KRS. The car had two little windows that you could open. With the fan you had a really good flow of air through the car and you didn't really need a/c at all.

Mankind is clever, and we need to move away from our fascination with big, brute-force type thinking and focus on clever.

Look at the old houses: thick walls, eaves, verandahs, breezeways etc don't get anywhere near as hot as the McMansions do (again, it has to be bigger than the house next door!) and hardly need a/c.

As I said, we are clever, we can fix.

[Lefteee]

Now, for a while I drove my dead father's Datsun 120y.

The Datto 120y!! My brother -in-law had one of those before he became an in-law. Man, we took that thing places where Toyota Sahara's and Jeep Grand Cherokee's would fear to tread! Bung a chain-gun on the top and it could have qualified as an ASLAV. It was an awesome car!

A few weeks ago, we built a heavy shadecloth awning along the western wall of the house. The western sun no longer hits any walls except for a small spot in front of which I have planted a local native - ribbon fan palm - plus some sugar bananas. It has made a BIG difference in the temperature inside. Next week, Kevvy and Swanny send their insulation dudes around (must remember to take that plastic Christmas tree out of the manhole) it that will make even more difference again.

[Jovial Monk]

Clever, not brute force. Grow a plant, excellent, a native even better!

[Jovial Monk]

Hmmmm there is one country well aware of the dangers of rising ocean levels, Holland, half of which is below sea level. Saw mentioned on a politics site but not sure how true this is that one option being considered by Dutch govt is to migrate the whole population into Germany.

That is how drastic climate change is going to be!

Adelaide, its western half anyway and the market garden area of Virginia all the way north to beyond Pt Wakefield is quite low lying. Adapting to this might mean we need to build a dike all the way across Gulf St , perhaps at the level of Seaton or so. Pretty drastic, but if Copenhagen is a flop we should straight away start doing such works!

[Jovial Monk]

Where my house is is not all that far above sea level and not far from the sea. Fortunately, I will be pushing up daisy's before the sea will reclaim it.

[Lefteee]

Gladstone is extremely hilly so most houses should be safe. They might want to think about raising the height of all the docks and loading facilites tho.

[Jovial Monk]

Make them all floating docks.