Contemporary politics,local and international current affairs, science, music and extracts from the Queensland Newspaper "THE WORKER" documenting the proud history of the Labour Movement.
MAHATMA GANDHI ~ Truth never damages a cause that is just.
The indictment against George Papadopoulos offers the hardest evidence
yet tying the Trump campaign to Russian government interference in the
election.
Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
On the day that Donald Trump
summoned James Comey to a one-on-one dinner and asked the then FBI
director to pledge loyalty, a crucial interview was taking place at the
bureau. George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the
Trump campaign, was questioned about contacts with a Russia-linked
professor who had offered “dirt” on election rival Hillary Clinton.
Papadopoulos lied during that 27 January encounter, it transpired on
Monday. He is the first person to face criminal charges linked to
interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia during last year’s presidential election.
And ominously for the White House, the indictment against him states
that, following his arrest at Dulles international airport in July, he
has “met with the government on numerous occasions to provide
information and answer questions” – implying that he has “flipped” and
is now assisting special counsel Robert Mueller.
Preet Bharara, the former US attorney for the southern district of
New York, who was fired by Trump, tweeted: “Special Counsel Mueller
appears to have a cooperating witness, George Papadopoulos. That is
significant. Time will tell how significant.”
The revelation came on the day that former campaign chairman Paul Manafort
and his deputy Rick Gates were also indicted on 12 charges of
conspiracy against the US, conspiracy to launder money, failing to
register as a foreign agent, making false statements and failure to
report offshore bank accounts.
These were the first public actions in Mueller’s sprawling
investigation into possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and
Moscow. Even in the best times for a US president, that would be hugely
damaging. For this president, it may be only the beginning.
Trump made a characteristic attempt to downplay their significance
and deflect attention elsewhere. “Sorry, but this is years ago, before
Paul Manafort was part of the Trump campaign,” he tweeted. “But why
aren’t Crooked Hillary & the Dems the focus?????”
Three minutes later he added for good measure: “....Also, there is NO COLLUSION!”
It is true that Manafort’s indictment makes no mention of Trump or
Russian involvement in the election campaign. But they do indicate that
he is accused of illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian
political party with a pro-Russian stance from 2005 all the way up to
and including 2016.
White House: No sign of collusion in campaign aides' indictments – video
The Center for American Progress Action Fund noted: “The inclusion of
money laundering charges indicates something important: leverage. If
Manafort’s Kremlin-aligned partners were aware of his money laundering
crimes, that would give them leverage over the head of Donald Trump’s
campaign.”
And
the fact that, with so many skeletons rattling in his cupboard, he was
hired to work for Trump suggests that the campaign did not employ the
type of “extreme vetting” the president now advocates for immigration to
the US. The indictment filed in federal court in Washington accuses
Manafort and Gates of funneling tens of millions of dollars in payments
through foreign companies and bank accounts.
Manafort – campaign chairman from March to August 2016 – was also
among the participants of a June meeting at Trump Tower with a
Kremlin-linked lawyer that raised suspicions of coordination between the
campaign and Moscow. Gates, for his part, never left the campaign, was
on the inaugural committee and has made visits to Trump at the White
House.
The indictment against Papadopoulos offers the hardest evidence yet
tying the Trump campaign to Russian government interference in the
election. The administration will probably claim that Papadopoulos, who
pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to FBI
agents, played a limited role in the campaign and no direct access to
Trump, as it has with similarly nebulous figures such as Carter Page.
But the indictment, which was unsealed on Monday, is damning.
“Papadopoulos impeded the FBI’s investigation into the existence of any
links or coordination between individuals associated with the campaign
and the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016
presidential election,” it states.
The international energy lawyer initially told investigators that the
professor was a “nothing” and “just a guy talk[ing] up connections or
something” when in truth he understood that the professor had
“substantial connections to Russian government officials,” the document
says.
The
special counsel said Papadopoulos told FBI agents he had been in
contact with an unnamed foreign “professor” who claimed to have “dirt”
on Democratic nominee Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails”, and
that Papadopoulos claimed such contacts occurred before he joined
Trump’s campaign. However, Papadopoulos in fact did not meet the
professor until after he joined Trump’s campaign, according to the
indictment.
The Manafort charges were not unexpected after initial reports
emerged on Friday night, but the Papadopoulos case may have taken even
Trump by surprise. The president spent the weekend typically trying to
fling mud in other directions to obscure the picture. On Sunday, he
called Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt” and tweeted about the
special counsel’s attention to “phony Trump/Russia, ‘collusion’, which
doesn’t exist”.
Fox News and other conservative media are also likely to remain
loyal, questioning the significance of the charges and continuing to
focus on Clinton instead. And perhaps most reassuringly for Trump, his
populist base rarely seems troubled by the issue, cheering at rallies
when the president mockingly says that he did not see any Russians in
Pennsylvania, West Virginia or other states.
Nevertheless, the odds on the special counsel’s investigation leading
to Trump’s downfall just shortened again. People will talk. Matthew
Miller, a former justice department spokesman, tweeted: “Mueller’s
choreographed one-two punch today sends a signal to every Trump
official: cooperate & get a good deal or resist & get hammered.”
Halloween is a tradition with Celtic and Pagan origins, but it has well and truly arrived in Australia — why?
Whether
it is Aussies' love of parties or the challenge of dressing up, it is
not just children in Australia enjoying the sweet treats this Halloween.
One business owner has noticed this year, people of all ages are donning spooky costumes and taking part.
"It's not only just the kids it's the adults having a go as well," Michael Soames from the Base-House Warehouse said.
The party shop at Alexandria in Sydney's inner-east has had a slew of customers buying Halloween decorations.
"I
think it's certainly escalated the range in this store, [it] just keeps
getting bigger and bigger every year as demands asks for different
things," Mr Soames said.
Cob webs, pumpkin buckets and toy weapons have all been big sellers this year, he added.
Mr Soames said he believed Halloween was
being embraced because it was a community event that any neighbourhood,
business or school could be part of.
"You get a lot of people doing dress-up themes for businesses," Mr Soames said.
"A lot of the schools get on board with things these days.
"I know a lot of older people now are taking up the vogue and dressing up tombstones and figurines in the front yard.
"I think Australians just like to have a party sometimes."
Chris Raynor, who runs website Halloween Australia, said she was addicted to the holiday.
"We usually get told our decorations are the some of the best in Mosman," she said.
"You can get disparaging comments from some people, but it's all just fun."
Ms Raynor defended Australians who may be criticised for participating in Halloween-themed events.
"It's not just the US — it's also the UK, so it's not an issue of people blindly copying America."
Other New South Wales residents said they had
been shocked by the rise of Halloween in Australia, after having lived
overseas and returning home.
Andrea Martinez of Erskineville returned from Papua and was not expecting the new prevalence of Halloween.
"When we came back we were quite surprised at how popular it was just in the last couple of years," she said.
Merridy
Eastman of Newtown lived in Europe for some time, and upon coming back
realised Halloween was not just a fleeting trend down under.
"I left in 2003 and came back in 2009 and the difference was extraordinary," she said.
"It's big in the eastern suburbs, it's big in the inner-west so it's here to stay. There is no use fighting it anymore."
Scientists have detected a powerful X-ray aurora hotspot near Jupiter's south pole and it does not behave how they expected.
Key points:
Mystery surrounds what powers Jupiter's auroras
X-rays from a newly detected southern aurora hotspot show a regular pulsing pattern
This doesn't match the pattern at the north pole and is a surprise to scientists
They hope the findings from this study, combined with data from the Juno spacecraft, may solve the mystery
Rather than pulsing in sync with the northern aurora, the southern hotspot runs to its own regular beat.
"The
south has this really strange regular pulsation every 11 minutes," said
William Dunn, an astronomer at University College London and lead
author of the study, published in Nature Astronomy.
This
behaviour, he explained, is different to aurora on Earth, where the
northern and southern lights are both irregular and generally mirror
each other.
"If you think of the [spots] as these twin features
then maybe you expect them to be identical and behaving in time with
each other and they are not doing that at all," Dr Dunn said.
The
discovery adds to the mystery of how Jupiter's powerful auroras are
created — a puzzle scientists hope will be solved by NASA's Juno
spacecraft, currently orbiting the planet.
Jupiter's auroras not like other planets
Jupiter
has the most powerful auroras in the solar system, but they are very
different to those on other planets such as Earth, said astronomer
Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer of the University of New South Wales.
On Earth, an aurora is created when the solar wind — a stream
of charged particles from the Sun — rains down on the planet's magnetic
field. The lines of that field direct the particles to the poles, where
they collide with gas atoms and emit light.
But while Earth's auroras only appear during solar storms, Jupiter's are permanent.
These
powerful displays are generated by high-energy particles in the
atmosphere of Jupiter and its moons, interacting with the planet's own
magnetic field.
"These [particles] are accelerated in magnetic
fields and slammed onto the high atmospheric layers in the polar regions
of the planet," said Dr Kedziora-Chudczer, who also studies Jupiter.
One question puzzling scientists is whether, and to what degree, the solar wind also plays a role powering Jupiter's aurora.
In 2000, astronomers discovered an aurora hotspot spewing out X-rays at the planet's north pole.
Recent
research by Dr Dunn and colleagues found brightening of this hotspot
during a solar storm, which suggested the solar wind was indeed
involved.
But auroras at the planet's south pole are much harder to see from Earth.
Spotting the southern X-ray hotspot
To
find the southern aurora hotspot, Dr Dunn and his international team
analysed data collected by two X-ray space telescopes on two separate
occasions, 10 years apart, in 2007 and 2016.
On these days, not
only was Jupiter's south pole tilted towards the two observatories
orbiting Earth, but the northern hotspot was also visible.
The
team then compared the activity of the southern and northern hotspots —
both of which cover an area greater than the surface of the Earth.
While the southern aurora gave off pulses like clockwork, pulses from the from the northern spot were less predictable.
"Sometimes it pulses at 45 minutes, sometimes it pulses at 12 minutes, and sometimes it pulses erratically," said Dr Dunn.
The researchers also saw the intensity of the two auroras increase and decrease at different times.
Dr
Dunn said the regular pulse his team detected at the south pole may be
caused by the solar wind hitting a specific part of the planet's
magnetic field, causing it to vibrate and send waves towards the south
pole every 11 minutes.
The charged particles can then surf these
waves and collide with the atmosphere of the planet to produce the
bright X-ray aurora.
"It is weird because the aurora are like the signature of the
magnetic field. Whatever is happening on a magnetic field line should
trigger things that happen in both poles."
Dr Dunn said it's
possible that because we don't get as good a view of the southern
hemisphere, we may only be seeing some of the lines that are vibrating.
But,
he said, there is mounting evidence from other observations that show
the two auroras are acting independently of each other.
Juno spacecraft may solve aurora mystery
Dr
Dunn said the next step in solving the mystery of Jupiter's auroras was
to compare polar observations taken by the X-ray observatories with
ultraviolet and infrared data from NASA's Juno spacecraft, which is
flying directly over the poles every 53 days.
Juno is tasked with measuring Jupiter's magnetosphere for the first time.
"Juno
is essentially rewriting much of what we had previously thought we knew
about the planet, just as these X-ray observations contradict what we
thought we knew about the aurora," said Dr Dunn.
Dr
Kedziora-Chudczer agreed that local effects in Jupiter's magnetosphere
could cause the aurora to behave independently, but said more
observations were needed to confirm these results.
"Observations of auroral emissions in all wavelengths, together with measurement of particle fluxes in situ by spacecraft like Juno, will give us a complete picture of these interactions."
Just off the Caribbean island of Roatan lies a massive pile of floating garbage.
It
spans kilometres of ocean and consists of everyday plastic items like
chip packets, cutlery and ziplock bags and even flip flops.
The
emergence of this rubbish patch is likely due to recent hurricanes that
struck the region, one of Australia's top scientists has said.
"It
is shocking and it's very confronting", said Dr Britta Denise Hardesty,
the principal research scientist for oceans and atmosphere at the
CSIRO.
"I wish I could say that I'd never seen anything like that before."
Dr Hardesty has worked in the Caribbean, which was "scoured" by wild weather during Hurricanes Irma and Maria last month.
She
said the floating rubbish would contain everything from building waste
and household waste to "all sorts of things" coming off the land.
And Dr Hardesty said Australia was not immune to the perils of plastic marine waste.
"No
matter where you are in Australia you will still find trash on each and
every single beach," she said, adding that three quarters of this
rubbish is plastic.
Great Barrier Reef clogged with plastic pollution
The
CSIRO completed a survey at more than 200 sites, every 100 kilometres
around Australia's coastline, with some areas so remote scientists used
sea planes to reach the beaches.
"Even in places that are as
remote as the Kimberly, every single one of those beaches had trash on
it, whether it's tyres or fishing gear, toothbrushes or balloons and
things like that," Dr Hardesty said.
"Some of the highest concentrations of plastic pollution floating in our ocean were just inside the Great Barrier Reef.
"Is that because of the runoff that's coming into those areas?
"Is
it because there's an outer Barrier Reef that helps keeps things
trapped in there? Is it because we happen to have surveyed that area
recently after large rains?
"I can't tell you the answer to that."
Dr
Hardesty said even Antarctica was showing evidence of plastic
pollution, which she saw first-hand when she visited the continent in
December 2016.
"As we were walking on some of the most remote places in the entire world, we still found plastic debris."
Indonesia proves transformation can be quick
But
Indonesia's success in removing vast amounts of plastic waste from 2014
to 2016 has shown the situation is not hopeless, Dr Hardesty said.
"In
under two years they transformed these canals that were literally full
of trash and junk and choked with plastic bags, water bottles and things
like that.
"They went in there, cleaned it up and really turned the entire city around."
Dr
Hardesty said the Indonesian Government tackled 12 major canals and are
now working to restore more than 1,000 minor canals and waterways.
"They created jobs and dealt with a tremendous, huge, long-standing waste issue in their canals," she said.
"Jakarta is an amazing story of hope and inspiration. And it's really about how quickly transformation can happen.
"It's
made it a cleaner, safer place. It's completely transformed those areas
and become a source of pride for the communities living there."
Dr Hardesty said she was often asked if working in the field of plastic pollution was depressing.
"It's not," she said.
"Because most of the trash that gets out there into our oceans was in someone's hand at one time."
So the question at the centre of it all is always, "what do we really value?" she said.
"Do we want to live in a clean world? Or do we want to live in a world that's disposable and full of throwaway items?"
Treasurer
Scott Morrison last week stood at the lectern and delivered a
thundering dissertation on the urgent need for cuts to company taxes.
The occasion was the release of the Productivity Commission's latest report on how best to lift our living standards.
So
convincing was the Treasurer's speech, so lucid his argument, a
reasonable person may well have formed the impression that the
commission endorsed his major policy initiative.
Sadly, not. In
fact, not a single sentence on company tax is to be found anywhere in
the entire report, the modestly titled 'Shifting the Dial: 5 year
productivity review', which runs to six chapters with various forwards
and appendices.
Instead, it focuses on health, employment, urban
planning and the rather sticky question of energy. And it's here that it
drops a bombshell and aims several Exocet missiles at strategic
targets.
The energy crisis fix — a carbon price
A sober
document it may be, as you'd expect from an apolitical body like the
Productivity Commission. But the headline on energy pulls no punches.
"Energy is an appalling mess", it screams, describing Australia's electricity markets as being in "a fragile state".
Little wonder the Treasurer opted for the diversion tactic: the old "Look over there, it's a puppy" device.
The Productivity Commission report contains some blunt
assessments on the nature of our energy problems and how to fix them,
which indirectly deliver a savage blow to the Coalition's policies and
strategy.
The primary recommendation is to adopt a carbon price.
It isn't the first time the commission has urged the Government to
rethink its carbon emissions strategy. But the looming catastrophe in
our energy markets has given the message new urgency.
Having been a
cabinet minister in Tony Abbott's government — which junked the carbon
price and established a multi-billion-dollar handout program in its
place — the Treasurer's reluctance to address issues raised in the
report is understandable.
But, as the commission points out, it is
the very failure to address the problems that have led to the dire
situation in which we now find ourselves.
Inaction and indecision
from the Federal Government has killed electricity generation
investment. If that's a strategy to maintain the status quo, to retain
coal fired generators, it is doomed to failure.
As the commission
points out, policy failure or fence-sitting is likely to hasten the
demise of coal fired electricity generation.
"Doing nothing on
emissions intensity (via price or via some other proxy) is most likely
to ensure that the fear of redundancy for coal will become a reality,"
it says.
Why a carbon price?
There are three competing factors in electricity generation: reliability, cost and emissions.
Unfortunately, our current system of regulated prices has failed to send the correct signals on those factors.
A decade ago, state governments overinvested in their
poles and wires to "gold-plate the system" to avoid a political backlash
from power blackouts. No thought was given to the cost of that extra
reliability. But that now is a major component in our soaring power
bills.
It's a similar story with generation and emissions. Those regulated prices are slow to adapt.
Just
as they don't reflect the true cost of carbon emissions, or the cost
involved in reducing those emissions, they similarly don't price in the
real cost of the unreliability of renewable energy.
The recent
report by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, now largely abandoned by the
Government, attempted to overcome the problem on unreliability with
renewable energy projects by making them factor in battery storage or
back-up with gas as part of the project cost.
The point is, improving the reliability of renewables comes at a cost. So too does reducing carbon emissions.
A
price on carbon would make those costs far more transparent and lead to
innovation and investment that would secure our energy supplies in the
long term which ultimately would bring down prices.
The trouble with subsidies
Ask
most economists, and they'll tell you a truly free market is the most
efficient way to allocate resources. A market price provides incentives
to both producers and consumers.
The carbon tax installed by Julia
Gillard was about to revert to a carbon price before Mr Abbott
fulfilled his election commitment and axed it.
Instead, we've
relied upon a motley collection of schemes which essentially provide
subsidies in a bid to speed up the switch from fossil fuels to
renewables.
The problem with subsidies is that they are inefficient and taxpayers end up shouldering the cost.
In
2001, the Howard government installed the Renewable Energy Target
(RET), a program that was boosted in 2009 and 2011 by the Rudd and
Gillard governments but then reduced by the Abbott government.
The
problem with the RET is that it discriminates between power generation
methods and doesn't directly deal with carbon emissions.
Gas,
which produces much less carbon that coal, is out the mix because it
isn't renewable. Ludicrously, in Europe under its RET, burning timber
has increased in popularity because it's renewable. The problem is, it
still emits carbon when burnt.
Dr Finkel opted for a Low Emissions
Target, which was preferable, because it didn't dictate which
technology to use. It also would have introduced a defacto price on
carbon. That's now been junked.
Instead, we have the National
Energy Guarantee (NEG) which shifts the dial slightly towards a pricing
mechanism. Retailers who do not meet their emission reduction targets
will able to trade with those who do.
Sadly, the mechanism still is short on detail and the
announcement from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was made after the
Productivity Commission had delivered its report.
But given the
commission favoured Dr Finkel's idea over the RET, it is likely to at
least acknowledge the Prime Minister's NEG plan is an improvement.
This is what it had to say on Dr Finkel's Low Emissions Target:
"The
critical point is that while there are various ways of placing prices
on carbon, establishing an agreement on one of them, even if not
perfect, provides a guide for investment toward the lowest cost emission
reduction options."
Whatever happened to Direct Action?
It's the subsidy that dare not speak its name.
Around
$2.23 billion was spent on government handouts to industry and some of
the nation's biggest carbon emitters. Much of the money went to
companies planting trees or those who stopped clearing land.
As an emissions reduction program, it was a complete waste of money. Total greenhouse gas emissions rose 0.8 per cent while the program was in operation and the Government confirmed it would not meet its 2030 climate target with the policy.
In
May this year, the Parliamentary Budget Office calculated Australians
would need to fork out $23.6 billion for the policy to meet the
Coalition's Paris Accord commitments.
Compare that with the carbon tax when emissions fell during its short life.
Research by Swinburne University's Jayanthi Kumarasiri and Christine Jubb found the
country's biggest emitters said they lost focus on reducing emissions
once the tax was repealed because they lost the commercial imperative.
As for the energy crisis and the future of coal, perhaps the Productivity Commission should have the final say.
"The
financial viability of refurbishing existing coal-fired power today
appears very doubtful, as uncertainty is actually priced into current
management models," it said.
"Advocates of older generation
technologies who oppose prices that reflect emissions are actually doing
themselves a major disservice. Lacking information on risk, investors
most likely will not commit."
As Basil told Polly: "Listen, don't mention the war. I may have mentioned it once but I think I got away with it."
University of Melbourne paper combines latest understanding on Antarctica and current emissions projection scenarios
The extra contribution to sea level rise from Antarctica will not kick
in if warming is kept at less than 1.9C above preindustrial levels, the
researchers found.
Photograph: IceBridge/Nasa
Coastal cities around the world could be devastated by 1.3m of sea
level rise this century unless coal-generated electricity is virtually
eliminated by 2050, according to a new paper that combines the latest
understanding of Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise and the
latest emissions projection scenarios.
It confirms again that significant sea level rise is inevitable and
requires rapid adaptation. But, on a more positive note, the work
reveals the majority of that rise – driven by newly recognised processes
on Antarctica – could be avoided if the world fulfils its commitment
made in Paris to keep global warming to “well below 2C”.
In 2016, Robert DeConto from the University of Massachusetts Amherst revealed that Antarctica could contribute to massive sea level rise much earlier than thought, suggesting ice sheet collapse would occur sooner and identifying a new process where huge ice cliffs would disintegrate.
But that paper only examined the impact of Antarctica on sea level
rise, ignoring other contributions, and didn’t examine the details of
what measures society needed to take to avoid those impacts.
The new paper
by Alexander Nauels from the University of Melbourne and colleagues
uses simplified physical models that allowed them to explore all known
contributions to sea level rise, and pair them with the new generation
of emissions scenarios which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) will use in the next set of reports.
They found that if nothing is done to limit carbon pollution, then
global sea levels will rise by an estimated 1.32m. That is 50% more than
was previously thought, with the IPCC’s AR5 report suggesting 85cm was
possible by the end of the century.
But the extra contribution from Antarctica would not kick in if
warming was kept at less than 1.9C above preindustrial levels, the
researchers found. Temperatures above that threshold risked triggering
the additional processes in Antarctica identified in the 2016 paper,
causing much greater sea level rise.
“The 1.5C limit in the Paris Agreement is a much safer bet to avoid
this additional contribution than only achieving 2C,” Nauels said.
The work, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters,
showed that the current carbon reduction pledges which governments have
made as part of the Paris Agreement by 2030 – their Nationally
Determined Contributions (NDCs) – are so weak they would require very
deep cuts between 2030 and 2050 to avoid triggering those extra
processes in Antarctica.
Since the authors used the next generation of emissions scenarios
(the “Shared Socioeconomic Pathways”), which include assumptions about
socioeconomic factors that are driving emissions – such as energy
demand, energy generation, population growth and GDP – they were able to
examine what actions could be taken to avoid the sea level rise.
Those scenarios suggested coal could only make up 5% of the world’s
energy mix by 2050 if sea level rise is to be limited to about half a
metre.
Similarly, those scenarios suggested a global carbon price would have
to be well over US$100 per tonne, since at that cost, sea level would
rise by 65cm by 2100.
John Church, a leading sea level rise expert from the University of
New South Wales who was co-convening lead author of the chapter on sea
level in the third and fifth IPCC Assessment Reports, told the Guardian
the work was further confirmation that the world needed to prepare now
for substantial sea level rises.
“Under all scenarios we are going to have to adapt,” Church said. “We cannot stop all sea level rise.”
He said the research community was not in consensus yet about the
accelerated contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise, identified in
the 2016 paper and modelled in this study, but examining the
implications of those findings was still important.
DeConto, the lead author of the landmark paper from 2016, said it was
important to recognise the good news in his original findings and this
extension of that work.
“In the aggressive mitigation pathways, where we assume that the
global community gets its act together and we reduce emissions, it’s a
much rosier picture. There’s a much reduced risk of dramatic sea level
rise from Antarctica,” he told the Guardian. “This study fully
reinforces that.”
Nauels said his team’s work assumed that Antarctica would contribute
to sea level rise as was suggested by the 2016 paper by DeConto, but
more work was needed to confirm those findings.
“We still have to find out what’s going on in Antarctica,” he told
the Guardian. “We can’t base all future sea level rise projects on just
one paper. And the Antarctic ice sheet community are frantically working
on the new insights.”
In the heart of Queensland’s mining belt, a businessman who has grown
his enterprise mostly off the back of the coal industry sees the energy
sector going only one way.
“I think renewable energy is where the market’s going – what we class as the energy revolution,” says Jason Sharam.
The self-described “dumb-arse electrician”, who will have grown his
Mackay mining energy business from a starting staff of six to 150 by
mid-2018, says he is trying to help people “see through the politics” on
energy.
“We try to stick to the facts and the real numbers,” Sharam says.
In Mackay, as elsewhere in regional Australia, power prices are already eye-watering for small and medium businesses.
One of Sharam’s clients has gone off the grid to run a diesel
generator, which is not cheap, but still cheaper than paying for network
electricity at an average of 86 cents – and as much as $1.26 – a
kilowatt-hour.
“They’re the sort of stories around, that’s just one client,” he says.
Renewables being held out as a scapegoat for rising costs in the
energy debate is “typical politics” but a complete red herring, Sharam
says.
The “elephant in the room” is the network and distribution charges
that “we’re all paying exorbitant prices [for] and it seems to be the
small to medium enterprises that are copping the brunt of it”, Sharam
says.
These “go through the roof” when a business uses more than 100 kwh a day.
This is especially so in regional Australia because it lacks the
concentrated populations to keep down network and distribution charges,
which make up half of a business’s energy bill, he says.
That means renewables like solar are a countervailing force, a way for businesses to drive down their network power costs, even if they stop short of getting off the grid.
Sharam’s Linked Group Services has quit the grid entirely however,
and some clients are also interested in “defecting” after hearing how
the numbers stack up.
Linked Group has spent $460,000 on a solar and battery installation,
including what Sharam thinks is the first off-grid use of a Tesla
Powerwall battery system in Australia.
And yet the business will immediately save $75,000 a year on its
energy bill – even while paying off a bank loan over six-and-a-half
years for the installation.
If its origins are confirmed, the asteroid or comet, named A/2017 U1,
will be the first object known to come from elsewhere in the galaxy,
say astronomers
A false-colour image of the object, which appears as a faint point of
light in the centre. The streaks are stars, caused by the telescope
tracking the object.
Photograph: Alan Fitzsimmons/Queen’s University Belfast/Isaac Newton
Group La Palma
A mysterious object detected hurtling past our sun could be the first
space rock traced back to a different solar system, according to
astronomers tracking the body.
While other objects have previously been mooted as having
interstellar origins, experts say the latest find, an object estimated
to be less than 400m in diameter, is the best contender yet.
“The exciting thing about this is that this may be essentially a
visitor from another star system,” said Dr Edward Bloomer, astronomer at
the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
If its origins are confirmed as lying beyond our solar system, it
will be the first space rock known to come from elsewhere in the galaxy.
Published in the minor planet electronic circulars
by the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics, the observations reveal that the object is in a strong
hyperbolic orbit – in other words, it is going fast enough to escape the
gravitational pull of the sun.
Objects originating from, and on long-period orbits within, our solar
system can end up on a hyperbolic trajectory, and be ejected into
interstellar space – for example if they swing close by a giant planet,
since the planet’s gravity can cause objects to accelerate. But Dr
Gareth Williams, associate director of the Minor Planet Center, said
that wasn’t the case for the newly discovered body.
“When we run the orbit for this [object] back in time, it stays
hyperbolic all the way out – there are no close approaches to any of the
giant planets that could have given this thing a kick,” he said. “If we
follow the orbit out into the future, it stays hyperbolic,” Williams
added. “So it is coming from interstellar space and it is going to
interstellar space.”
The object’s orbit.
“If further observations confirm the unusual nature of this orbit,
this object may be the first clear case of an interstellar comet,” the
report notes. A second report, published later the same day,
redesignated the object as an asteroid on account of new analysis of its
appearance, giving it the handle A/2017 U1.
According to observations made by astronomers, the object entered our
solar system from above, passing just inside Mercury’s orbit and
travelling below the sun, before turning and heading back up through the
plane of the solar system towards the stars beyond. At its closest, on 9
September, the object was 23.4m miles from the sun.ead more
First spotted earlier this month by a telescope at an observatory in
Hawaii, astronomers around the world are now following the path of the
object. Among them is Professor Alan Fitzsimmons from Queen’s University
Belfast.
“It is fairly certain we are dealing with our first truly identified
alien visitor,” he said. Fitzsimmons added that his team is currently
working on measuring the objects’ position better to improve
calculations of its trajectory, and to gather information relating to
its chemical makeup, and size.
Early
results, he said, suggest that the object might be similar in make-up
to many of those of the Kuiper belt – a region past Neptune in our solar
system that contains myriad small bodies.
Bloomer says we should not be too surprised if it does indeed turn out to have come from elsewhere in the galaxy.
“Beyond the planets and past the Kuiper belt we think there is a
region called the Oort cloud, which may be home to an astonishing number
of icy bodies,” he said.
“Computer models have suggested that disturbances to the Oort cloud
do send some stuff in towards the inner solar system, but it would also
send stuff outwards as well – so we might be throwing out icy bodies to
other star systems.”
If so, Bloomer said, there is no reason to suspect that disturbances
to other star systems, as a result of gravitational interactions or
other processes, wouldn’t throw material out too. “Just statistically,
some of them are going to reach us,” he added.
Williams noted that objects could also be thrown out from the inner
region of other solar systems as a result of gravitational interactions
with giant planets, casting them into interstellar space.
And Fitzsimmons added that there was another possibility – that the
object had been thrown out during the planet-forming period of another
solar system.
“We know now that many stars, probably the majority of stars in our
galaxy, have planets going around them, and we know from studying those
stars but also primarily from studying our own solar system, that planet
building is a very messy process,” he said.
With large quantities of material thrown out into interstellar
space, said Fitzsimmons, is was expected that there would be objects
travelling between the stars.
“This object itself could have been between the stars for millions or
billions of years before we spotted it as it plunged into our solar
system,” he said.
But, he noted, puzzles remain, not least that Kuiper belt bodies,
which are believed to be icy, would give rise to an atmosphere and tail
if brought close to the sun.
“There is no evidence that this object has behaved like that, all our
data show it as an unresolved point of light, implying it is more like a
rocky asteroid than an icy comet,” he said. “There are mysteries to be
solved here.”
