I am told it is not so much pollution that is the trouble, but the warming seas. The seas, I am told, are warmed by human effluent and the tidal patterns that send it from, say, the Hawkesbury up the east coast to the Barrier Reef. And that a rise of one degree in the temperature of the seas sets off hurricanes, tornadoes, electric storms.
It’s gone a long way, I am told (by John B. Fairfax, a grumpy marine biologist I sometimes breakfast with), and the sea-grass now gone is irretrievable and less and less fish will be born and this is a problem. But the effluent could be piped inland (as Archie Kalekerinos used to recommend) and the sea-warming lessened, contained or reversed.
This would help.
As to the rising seas, well, we could blast a hole in the Pacific, enlarging the Mariana Trench, and the problem addressed from time to time in this way. The holes the offshore oil comes out of should be looked to as well, as a natural, manageable, already existing repository of the rising seas. The seas could be deepened. Of course they could.
As to the Ganges drying up, and the snow-fed rivers of Asia and America, well, it’s difficult. But a lot of desal plants would help, and water systems like London’s that reconstitute sewage as drinkable water. And planting in Russia eighteen billion trees. And buying up the Indonesian forests and patrolling them with Elvises. One quarter of global warming each year is from bushfires, and we can do more to prevent and quench them, and punish the firebugs, with sixty years in solitary, for instance, perhaps.
It’s time anyway we started talking about what to do instead of bewailing it all, and imagining big corporations will stop polluting the skies fast enough to make a difference if we ask them nicely. Why would they? They’re big corporations. Polluting is what they do. They cheat. Cheating is what they do. It is what they love to do. And funding political parties that assist their cheating. Piping shit inland is easier than trusting these barbarous villains, discuss.
We should think on these things.
Prove that I lie.
Name:
This is what we love about you Bob – blue sky ideas thrown about like confetti. Deepen the seas! Why didn’t we think of that? Perhaps dredge the oceans, build up Mt Kosciuszko and ensure we have better ski seasons? Build a new continent perhaps, and plant trees on it? Build a new planet between Earth and Mars?
The possibilities are endless!
Why not deepen the seas? The Dutch built dykes, the Pharoahs the first Suez Canal. The Caesars piped water from snow-melts a thousand miles to thirsting provinces. The British dug the Chunnel. And the Underground. We have the technology, hydrogen bombs, to blow big holes in anything.We also have shovels. Look at the holes Gina makes in Western Australia.
Possibilities are not endless, but, as the Ozone levels now show, some things can be fixed.
The really big one is the bushfires.
Elvises. Elvises. Elvises through Indonesia.
A billion trees in West Irian.
Replant the Amazon. Pay off the ranchers and replant it.
What would you do, ask Clive Palmer to behave responsibly?
Really?
With what would you persuade him?
I love you too Bob. Perhaps Christine Milne should take your suggestions up. Gillard too.
Bob, I will take you seriously. If you are joking, I guess the joke’s on me.
If you deepen the seas, you’ve got to put the stuff you dig out somewhere? Where? (Google Archimedes principle).
It’s quite a lot and would not be nice fertile soil but rock and such.
You would need to dig it out at the rate the oceans are falling, which they are not yet.
If you get ahead, the ocean will fall too fast and Sydney will end up several hundred k inland.
In other words, it is a dopey idea.
Please don’t become or pretend to be a silly old man, Bob. Those of us who have known you a long while don’t want to see that happen.
Tell us it was a joke…
It isn’t a joke. Why would I be joking. What would you do? Or do you think a billion refugees fighting each other for space on mountain slopes is a good alternative?
It’s really late now. What would you do?
No, it seems the Antarctic land mass has more ice on it now. This is due to the ozone hole above it letting the heat out into space.
Maybe all we need to do is spray Antarctica with sea water, and let the ice build up and up.
And manage the effluent of course. And plant scores of billions of trees.
Anyone with any better ideas please contribute them.
Building another planet is not an option. Don’t be daft.
As to digging holes, we do it already, when we dredge harbours, or dig the Panama Canal. Deepening Lake Erie would be a start, and piping the Atlantic into it.
What is your better idea?
Abandoning the whole idea? Saying bye bye to the planet?
A new planet between Earth and Mars isn’t as silly as it sounds.
Once Robert “Boom Boom” Ellis blows the beshitter out of the Marianas Trench – the size of the Arctic and Antarctic combined – we’d need a new planet to live on, from the proceeds, after and also from the proceeds the forty five foot Tsunami swamps every known land mass, killing 98.87% of the world’s population.
This truly is the best day, ever, on Boom Boom’s blog.
An interesting proposal, Bob. And yes, I remember the encounter with John B. Fairfax you recounted in “Suddenly, Last Winter” in which he argues his theory of how the oceans are dramatically heated by algae, effluence and other human-linked waste. “When I was a boy on the farm I had to clean the algae off the top of the water in the drinking troughs, because the algae made the water so hot the cattle wouldn’t drink it. They’d wait till midnight till it cooled down.”
While the solutions you propose are probably the most practical, their seeming far-fetchedness only illustrates how desperate and insoluble this crisis really is.
Bless you.
what about ‘group marriages’? … (they’ll reduce average household fuel consumption/greenhouse emmissions)…
Shame you don’t know anything about bushfires Bob.
The earth and the ecology needs bushfires – without them the planet, or parts of it, will die. Fires regenerate and are part of the ecosystem.
You cannot stop bushfires. They are mostly caused by lightning. Or should we stop lightning too?
Also, Russia is not planting 18 billion trees. That is a fiction.
And if you blast holes in the ocean, you kill marine life. Without marine life, big fish die. And we are left with big holes and nothing else.
You may also note that big blasts are caused by chemicals!
So there you have it – pollute the oceans and kill marine life in order to preserve the oceans; stop the lightning and regeneration.
Stick to what you know Bob, and leave fire ecology to the experts.
You can probably stop the fifty percent of bushfires that are caused by the firebugs of Indonesia, which account for twelve percent of the global warming we are in.
Are you in favour of them too? I’m not. I regard them as terrorists.
What happens to the space the oil used to be in? Why can’t we put the sea water down there?
Say why.
There is absolutely no evidence that 50 % of bushfires are started by humans. None
Either provide evidence or prove that I lie.
Avoer 90% of all bushfires are caused by lightning or accident.
please Bob, try to research before you make up stuff.
Fifty percent of the bushfires of Indonesia are set by firebug-farmers who want to farm the land. The worst fires in Victoria were set. The Blue Mountain fires are always set.
Jesus, do your research.
Blast a hole in the Pacific, enlarge the Mariana Trench … are we that desperate that we need to look for solutions that sound like they come from a pitch for a Hollywood eco-disater film?
Yes. We are.
It may well be that the specific measures mentioned in the post – blowing a hole in the floor of the ocean, etc – are impractical.
But not as impractical, it would seem, as trying to achieve a gradual amelioration of the problem by international negotiation. Copenhagen demonstrated the enormous difficulties connected with this – difficulties not alleviated by Kevin Rudd’s outraged squeals about ‘Rat-fuckers’.
So while there may be no actual plans to renovate the Marianas Trench by means of a handily-placed tactical nuclear weapon or two, people are starting to think about constructing gigantic umbrellas in space or what it might take to alter the composition of the upper atmosphere to reflect more light.
However far-fetched it may seem, it is highly probable that some high-risk strategies – whether geo-engineering or an accelerated program of nuclear power station construction – will have to be employed.
Because that’s the way we like to do things on this particular planet – on a high-wire, at the last minute, whilst balancing a 28-piece dinner set, two loads of laundry and an ordinary kitchen table and chairs on our noses.
hey ho
Well said.
Would the pressure at Mariana Trench depth allow any realistic movement? What boof would it take?
Seriously. (And then, of course, how do you capture – and remove from the sea – any matter that’s displaced? What is it? Mud; sludge?)
Cheered me up!
Joyous day. Meanwhile, these rumblings might kick off a very nice little episode…
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/abbott-has-5050-chance-of-leading-coalition-to-election-windsor-20121004-270ml.html
Have fun.
Generally a deputy takes over from the PM: Julia from Rudd, Keating from Hawke etc. No one ever suggests Julia B is the appropriate person to take over from TA. Curious?
I’m not quite sure what that means, sorry, but it is curious to me, certainly, that these days there’s a touch of acid in any Abbott leadership question. There’s a bite there now. It’ll be interesting to see if the rumblings get a day or two’s run, and who chips in.
If Abbott doesn’t make it through, today will have been seminal in his removal.
And, thankfully, once all the fish have died, the sea level will be back to normal.
Yes and no, sometimes the deputy is appointed merely to placate one of the factions; as you may recall Jenny Macklin was deputy to Crean, Latham and then Beazley, and Bishop is regularly taunted as Everyone’s Loyal Deputy” by the PM.
We can save Greenland today by immediately taking Bob’s Volvo off the road, it was on the agenda in Rio, some ALP hack got it buried as a favor.
The icelandic volcano emitted less carbon than what would have been emitted by all the flights, if they had not had to be cancelled.
It thus became the first carbon positive volcano in history.
I personally know two Volcanologists, one in Norway, who has invented a detection system for the “silicates”?? emitted by Volcanoes during eruptions for the airline industry that he is trying to get commercialized. He is a climate skeptic, funny that.
Oh dear.
I just re-read this Bob as my mind was swimming in a sea of inland effluent … and it reads more and more Alan Jones like. Remember, he wanted to turn the rivers inland.
Well rising sea levels cannot be fixed by blowing a fucking big hole in the ocean. You see, the rise is caused by melting ice, which is in such proportion (think Greenland) that you’d have to blow a hole bigger than the one you created when you went the poor PM over her father.
Look, you’re normally a thought-proving and clever writer, a great wit and good judge of politics, but this is just Z grade crap.
Please, stay away from science.
What would you do?
Ask a million CEOs to pollute less, please?
Are you serious?
Or would you deal with the effluent that warms the oceans? And plant trees.
Please answer this.
Where does your shit go Bob? Have you installed a biodegradable toilet or do Ellis turds flow into the sea off Manly?
What are you doing then? Yu’re blaming others. You want others to fix the problem.
Please tell us how you are stopping your effluent from damaging the environment?
How about you did a big hole in your backyard and shit in that? It’s good for the soil and won’t destroy the oceans. You can have His and Her holes too.
It’s not CEOs mate, it’s people like you and me that are the problem.
Wake me up when you’re part of the solution.
It is people like you and me that are part of the problem.
And you think six billion of us can be made to change our ways?
Really?
What if two billion don’t?
Bob’s just playing ‘toss another idea on the barbie’. Satire’s not his usual forte, but if taken as such it makes sense.
The numbers are daunting. There’s around 30 million cubic kilometres of global ice, with ~ 90% located in the Antarctic.
The other 10% is more problematic, and given its volume, say 3,000,000 km cubed, well, that’s the size of the hole to be dug in the ocean, more or less. Around 140km in length, breadth and depth, or equivalent.
Mind you, the ice melt is incremental, and we’ve likely got a couple of hundred years to dig. Minor issues such as where to put the dug material can be sorted out along the way.
Maybe I’m more a glass half-empty than full kind of guy, but in my bones I don’t really feel blowing up the Marianas Trench is the best way forward. Shoreline dredging, on the other hand, may just cut it. The size of the hole needed to accommodate all the additional ice-melt water would only need to be be 2km x 2km x 2km if all of the world’s countries’ shorelines were thus dug.
Could be boom times for the berm industry, dredge manufacturers and retrenched miners.
math mistake…would only need to be be 2km x 2km x the length of shorelines.
Sounds like a good plan. Like dykes was.
Pretty similar, really.
The ice on Antarctica is growing.
This may mean there is no ocean problem at all.
The hurriicane/tornado problem is something else.
On my planet Bob Ellis is riding shotgun on a fleet of fire fighting helicopters as Ride of the Valkyries blasts from the speakers. They hover over the torture dome where Gerard Henderson begins to feel the pitter-patter of leaks on his Richard Nixon mask. He looks skywards from his next dissection victim, David Marr, or as they say in the business, a B43109, and removes his mask in horror, as a high-heeled Ellis sneers and throws the switch, dropping 10,000 litres of treated brine down his gullet.
Through the swinging spotlights and strange smelling spray, Marr is gobsmasked, a bottom dwelling fish flaps around in the puddle that now resides in the crotch of his corduroy jeans and the sneering face of death was no more, simply washed away like mud from a driveway. The force of the torrent has cracked his spectacles, and the falling shape of his saviour from the sky sparks a blood curdling scream, for what greater horrors could today present? Muldoon,goggled yet unphased, takes the fish by the tail and wallops him with it. “For God’s sake man, I’m here to rescue you.”
Whisked away, soggy and on the end of a tether swinging below the belly of the chest-thumping beast, drops of water fall away from his now golden brow and he is even more gobsmacked than before. Together, an endless precession of Elvises carrying giant pipes, in formation, depart into the sunset leaving the Sydney Harbour mudflats behind forever.
That was good, William. Hunter would approve.
Hunter might also have patted the magnum and said ‘don’t bogart the drugs, man.’
There is very little an electron microscope can tell you of the endless plethora of uses one can extract from a paperclip.
Twelve year old children will score higher on this test than most of you, and six year old children even higher.
Thanks William. I know I’d score poorly on the p/clip creativity scale, unlike young children who, naturally, are incredibly curious and often quite creative.
But there’s a lot an SEM can tell you about the nature of matter that a paper clip can’t.
I saw that a dentist in America was jailed for two and a half years for substituting paper clips for the stainless steel pins used in root canal therapy. One wonders if his patients were white-skinned or other, whether he practiced racism in his scam or whether all patients were fair game?
Fucking deranged Ellis. How ’bout a nuclear winter – reduce the world’s temp by a few degrees, refreeze the Arctic and start a new ice age. Problem solved.
How do you arrange that?
By the power of prayer?
Can’t you read? “Nuclear winter”. Do I have to explain it?(sighs) A result of nuclear war of course. Not ideal, I hear you say, but not unlikely when the shit hits the fan over oil, water and food resources. Religious nutters will be right out there in front.
So you could say “by the power of prayer”.
Indeed.
Welcome back.
a one word fix for global warming (would take some 20 years):-
Condoms
What a splendid idea they can give them out at Liberal party functions. With copious amounts of KY Jelly for the man on man action some of them no doubt participate in, only on each other as you all know.
I think that’s why the Liberal party were against the same sex marriage act, there just wouldn’t be enough to go around so to speak.
I think I will personally buy a couple of thousand boxes and have them delivered to Menzies house.
Actually the Libs like me will be popping champagne corks so you Labor and Greens voters can use them as suppositories hence eliminating turds in the ocean and stopping global warming. The conservatives will inherit the earth. It stands to reason and improve the gene pool for the benefit of humanity. It’s a win-win situation.
Market forces are the only real way out of this mess.
Start with enforcing sustainability ratings on all consumer goods – that takes into account pollution; CO2; chemicals; and other environmental damage attributable in the production lifecycle.
Those products that meet a near 100% sustainability rating then qualify for exemption from GST.
Manufacturers who produce only sustainable rated products qualify for 50% reduction in company tax.
Exempt these manufacturers from all fuel excise, duties & payroll tax & charges in the product supply chain.
Remove the burden of multi-tier govt taxes & charges for these products, thus delivering a significant pricing advantage in the market.
Make up any local tax shortfall by increasing the MRRT by a minor percentage.
Expand this concept on a global scale.
Market forces is what got us into this jam from the start.
Anyway it’s all too late the horse has bolted.
We may see some change when people like Tony Abbott float out from inside their lounge room into the shipping lane in Sydney Harbour, sitting in their tax payer funded recliner.
Fuck market forces. Your beloved model is in its death throes.
Frank the only thing conservatives are likely to inherit is their families stolen loot. As for conservatives drinking Champagne, that has all the equivalence of giving strawberries to pigs.
As for the gene pool, next time question time is on in parliament have a butcher’s at some of the members of the Liberal party sitting there. I’m sure a check of some of their DNA would reveal some strange combinations.
Phill, I try and turn a blind eye to the failings of my fellow Libs however small and trifling they are. Most Lib MPs are hardworking and incredibly good looking (except for Turnbull who chose the wrong party) and oozing of common sense and talent that is rarly found in parliament these days.
The gene pool is safe for humanity as all the undermenchen in Conroy department of global warming will soon be posting a fridge magnets and a bum cork to all Labor people and Green supporters in their electorate to save the planet. Conservatives being naturally endowed with common sense will throw them in the bin.
The gullible of course will all explode as per Bob Ellis’ directive to elimate turds etc, hence my theory is proven, unless a super trawler is stationed outside Sydney to harvest the floaters which may be a possibility….but don’t count on it given the stupidity of the Greens to veto the idea.
Frank I do too. If I didn’t I would be in a permanent state of hysterical laughter.
As for hard working and good looking, Frank perception is one thing, but, you’re not blind are you?
Hey politicians of all stripes couldn’t work in a barrel of yeast or an iron lung. They have been conning the public since the Roman Senate.
Yes Frank the gene pool is safe, most of the old conservative guard are dead or if not dying. I mean, look at Bronwyn I haven’t seen a shade of grey like that on a human since I looked in a coffin at the morgue.
As for Global warming, it is real and nothing you can say will change that salient fact. The worlds bona fide scientists by a country mile have deduced there is some thing crook in Tullerook.
Talk of ulterior motives, research grants by and for scientists and the like is, just a load of verbal diarrhea.I wish it wasn’t true, so do the capitalists who believe it but, wont let anything stop the juggernaut of capitalism extracting the last cent out of the planet.
The answer? I haven’t got a fucking clue, what’s more neither do you.
The Greens contrary to what you believe will one day govern, much the pity I wont live long enough to see it.
Now there’s an issue which has gone onto the back burners – climate change. A couple of years ago there were articles about it every few days, and I recall the ‘vigorous exchange of views’ over at The Drum and such like sites; no longer it seems.
The issue hasn’t gone away, just the debate.
I suppose some degree of reality has permeated the thinking of all concerned : the reality that if mankind vanished tomorrow from the face of the earth, the planet would continue to warm nearly as much as it would if there are nine billion of us by 2050. Continue to warm, by however much it will otherwise warm; scientists differ on the amount, but very very few deny that it will warm over the next two centuries.
What we need to do now – asap – is to work out what needs to be done to minimise the damage and to adapt to the results of a moderate amount of warming.
But apparently not until after the effects of the GFC and the economic malaise are dealt with.
So it goes.
Turn water into wine Bob solving two problems as once.
What problems?