How the Wivenhoe engineers fell foul of the Floods Commission
As I outlined in the first post, in February this year the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry reconvened as a result of reporting in The Australian by Hedley Thomas which suggested there had been a major breach of the flood [...]
Could the Wivenhoe flood engineers have done better?
As I mentioned in the other post, which is necessary reading for background, the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry in its Final Report did suggest that the engineers could have done better – a little, perhaps – but were sufficiently [...]
Amazing rain, and what the flood engineers did about it
Most people had the impression that the four flood engineers, Robert Ayre, John Ruffini, John Tibaldi and Terry Malone, had done pretty well during the Brisbane 2011 flood event, which began on 6 January when the Wivenhoe Dam first exceeded [...]
Queensland election wrap
We’ve reached 400 on the other thread and I’m not sure we are done yet. Any way I wanted to make a rather long comment. To me there were three general factors and three specific ones. The first general one [...]
The games miners play
It’s basic bargaining strategy. Threaten to walk away. Behre Dolbear have just released their 2012 annual survey of Ranking of countries for mining investment. Australia, Canada, Chile, Brazil and Mexico are ranked in that order as the top five nations [...]
Behind the Seams: Agriculture, land use and aquifers
Because of Crikey’s IT problems last week, there’s a bit of a backlog in Coal Seam Gas: Behind the Seams articles, so we’re publishing this piece here. In CSG and the land: straight from the farmers’ mouths I looked at [...]
Climate clippings 71
1. State of the climate 2012; 2. Southeast Australia’s wet, cool summer; 3. Climate shifts are step-wise; 4. Looking into the deep past; 5. Salt-resistant wheat; 6. Efficiency standards; 7. Understanding the India’s monsoon; 8. Time to end the clean coal charade.
Behind the Seams: Coal Seam Gas and Agriculture/Land Use
Crikey’s website is down today, so we’re publishing the latest Coal Seam Gas: Behind the Seams posts here. NB: You might like to consider donating to support the work of FAQ Research on our Coal Seam Gas project. The project [...]
Climate clippings 70
Stuff happens. We have a household of three with separate access to our online service and last week the youngest member blew our monthly usage budget downloading games, 11 days out from when it renews automatically on 17 March. So [...]
You wouldn’t read about it
Not in the Murdoch press, that is. Gillard and Swan are shaping to try to convince us that Labor is a good economic manager, indeed better than the alternative. Stephen Koukoulas was Gillard’s adviser for a time. Now he has [...]
Climate clippings 69
1. Electric cars you have about 750 million cars in the world today; you’re going to have about 1.3 billion cars in about 25, 30 years; and you can’t expect them all to be running on gasoline. There isn’t that [...]