This one is currently being used by Priya and Tom in the Kimberley.

This month is the 130th anniversary of the first publication of a weather chart in a Melbourne newspaper. On Monday 26 September 1881 The Argus published the chart below, with an accompanying article describing the process use in the preparation of the chart. The chart is available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page260381.

Of course this was not the first Australian weather chart published in a newspaper – the Sydney Morning Herald published the first chart on 5 February 1877. But the article accompanying the 1881 chart in The Argus is interesting, I think. The article commences with the comment:

The “Weather Bulletin” which we have hitherto published is replaced today by a Weather Chart, the facsimile of a chart prepared at the Observatory from telegraphic reports received from the principal meteorological stations in Australia and New Zealand.

The article concludes with:

The world of weather forecasting is still dominated by government agencies and national weather services, but there’s now a steady drip-drip of private forecasters.While they’re not exactly flooding the market, opportunities are increasing all the time.Is this a storm in a teacup? Should we be concerned? And why did governments, not private companies, come to dominate weather forecasting in the first place?

Gippsland is vulnerable to the impacts of a changing climate. Changes in rainfall patterns pose challenges for water supply and agriculture, while higher temperatures increase the risk of large and intense bushfires.

The conditions for large fires are likely to become more common by mid-century. This image shows bushfire recovery in Wilsons Promontory. Source: Xufang/Shutterstock.

There are serious consequences of rising sea levels for the Gippsland region. The Gippsland Lakes, including Ninety Mile Beach and Corner Inlet, represent one of the most vulnerable coastal areas in Australia. Within 50 years, parts of the Gippsland coast will be inundated to an extent requiring protection or relocation of houses and buildings.

The risks have never been clearer and the case for action has never been more urgent. This is the critical decade. Decisions that we make in the decade will determine the severity of climate change impacts our children and grandchildren suffer.

This report was released as the Climate Commission began a tour of the Gippsland region that included meetings with community, local government, business and industry leaders, as well as a community town hall forum in Churchill.

Find out more

• Download the full document, The Critical Decade: Impacts for Gippsland, Victoria.
• Read more about the Commission’s report on climate change science, The Critical Decade.
• Find out about the Climate Commission’s visit to the Gippsland region.

The Conference aims to raise the profile of Underwater Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific region and has UNESCO patronage. This conference will provide a great opportunity to engage with and build collaborations with maritime archaeologists and underwater cultural heritage managers as well as to provide a forum for discussion and the exchange of ideas, approaches and the latest research about underwater cultural heritage in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Conference website is at:

http://www.apconf.org/

Underwater cultural heritage photos courtesy of the NOAA Office of Marine Sanctuaries

Peter’s article was chosen by the selection panel on the basis of originality, scholarship and contribution to knowledge.

Media organisations spend precious time and money polling voters. This implies people care a lot about politicians’ personal popularity.

But surely it is democracy per se, rather than the passing political parade, we value. Surely it is the substance, not the form, that truly concerns us. Surely we are interested in so much more than this week’s performance perceptions of Julia and Tony, of Wayne and Julie and the crossbench cowboys.

 

Dr Peter Cock, sociologist, environmentalist and community founder

Well, perhaps not. North Africa and the Middle East are convulsing with desire for the freedoms, rights and responsibilities many of us appear to take for granted.

Perhaps we ought to abandon, or at least reduce, the Canberra bloodlust, notwithstanding its perverse entertainment quotient. Sociologist and environmentalist Dr Peter Cock is in The Zone to argue, with the benefit of decades of experience, that apathy is debasing our democracy.

”We’re so pious and arrogant at our democracy. But in a sense we’ve also given up on it. We’ve stopped engaging in it. Part of it is because we’ve lost learning citizenship at a grass-roots level.

”We need to have aspirations for a better society. We in the West tend to think we’ve made it and we’ve arrived. Well, we haven’t arrived.”

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/all-together-now-20110227-1b9w3.html