Green jobs dopey, says CFMEU leader, Tony Maher | The Australian

ONE of Australia's most powerful union leaders has lashed out at the push for green jobs, labelling it a "dopey term", and has dismissed environmental campaigns against some of the nation's major export industries as "judgmental nonsense".
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"A coalminer or a power station worker isn't going to leave their job on $120,000-plus with well-regulated shift arrangements and decent conditions to install low-wattage light bulbs or insulation," he said.

MediaGlobal: Thousands to Benefit from Food Rations in West Africa

Melby has worked in West Africa for ten years, and says that only recently has she begun to witness such extreme cases of climate shifting and weather extremes. She mentioned the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this winter, saying, “Right now, just looking across the continent of Africa, you can see climate change at its worst. At the eastern horn, there are horrendous droughts, and then there are these examples of extreme flooding in West Africa. This is certainly the kind of extreme weather that we have to look forward to unless action is taken,” she continued. “2007 was certainly the worst year for flooding, but the unpredictability is just getting increasingly bad. It affects everyone and everything, especially those who are most vulnerable to begin with.”

[If not SUVs, what caused these fluctuations?]: Extreme Nile floods and famines in Medieval Egypt (AD 930–1500) and their climatic implications

Nile gauge records of variations in Nile floods from the 9th century to the 15th century AD reveal pronounced episodes of low Nile and high Nile flood discharge. Historical data reveal that this period was also characterized by the worst known famines on record. Exploratory comparisons of variations in Nile flood discharge with high-resolution data on sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic climate from three case studies suggest that rainfall at the source of the Nile was influenced by the North Atlantic Oscillation. However, there are apparently flip-flop reversals from periods when variations in Nile flood discharge are positively related to North Atlantic warming to periods where the opposite takes place. The key transitions occur atnot, vert, similarAD 900, 1010, 1070, 1180, 1350 and 1400. The putative flip-flop junctures, which require further confirmation, appear to be quite rapid and some seem to have had dramatic effects on Nile flood discharge, especially if they recurred at short intervals, characteristic of the period from the 9th to the 14th century, coincident with the so-called Medieval Warm Period. The transition from one state to the other was characterized by incidents of low, high or a succession of both low and high extreme floods. The cluster of extreme floods was detrimental causing famines and economic disasters that are unmatched over the last 2000 years.