TTKD Nov 2013 meeting: Sustainable Local Food

TTKD Nov 2013 meeting.pdf

TTKD October meeting: The Story of Stuff

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October 2013 TTKD Meeting

The Story of Stuff

Thursday October 17

7.15pm for a 7.30pm start

Kenmore Library Meeting Room

TTKD May 2013 meeting: Reinventing the Toilet!

TTKD Meeting Flyer May 13

Thursday May 16

7.15pm for a 7.30pm start

Kenmore Library Meeting Room

Also of note:

Moggill Market Stall:
TTKD will be holding a stall at Moggill Markets on Saturday 1 June – people are welcome to bring any surplus home grown produce to share. We will also have some native plants from Moggill Creek Catchment Group for sale at $2 each.

Healthy Waterways Awards:
Here is a link to the Healthy Waterways Awards people choice voting page. Please note, our August speaker, Matthew Fullerton is a nominee in the Young Adult Encouragement award, under the Individual and Lifestyle Group (voting closes 20 May).

http://healthywaterwaysawards.org/award/peoples-choice-award/

Infographic: Plastic Bags and the World

Click the link below for the info:

Infographic: How Plastic Bags are Suffocating the World

Emergence - how life creates radical change

I wanted to share my thoughts with you on an article that a friend recently gave to me on 'emergence' - of community, of connection, of ideas and of movements. I think it really captures what Transition Towns is all about and why we are all involved. The article was written by the founders of the Berkana Organisation, who work with and for communities all over the world. Transition Towns also is about communities working with and for each other, encouraging and supporting people to live more sustainably. How we can actually achieve that is something that I know I for one am grappling with, constantly searching for answers.

Emergence happens when individuals connect with other other individuals in the same locale, sharing knowledge and ideas and forming new ways of doing things. If those new ways and thoughts stayed in that locality, then it would be hard to discern that change. When individuals share their knowledge and their ideas with other like-minded individuals in other communities, and they too begin to change, suddenly a pattern emerges, and a whole new movement has arisen.

Transition Towns is a model of an a emerging movement. A loose network of connected communities, full of people with the same hopes and desire for change. It is up to us to keep sharing our knowledge and stories, within our diverse communities and other networks, and forming new connections, until gradually these ideas become new ways of doing things.

If you're interested in reading about the 'Lifecycle of Emergence' here is the link:
http://berkana.org/berkana/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=6&id=168&Itemid=219

I hope this article inspires you as much as it did me.

TTKD Growing Food & Landshare Initiative

Growing Food and Landshare Initiative:
Interested in growing food?

Your local Transition Town: Kenmore District group is continuing the process of self-empowerment.

We are launching the Growing Food & Landshare Initiative.

Please share the following information with your email lists, neighbours, friend and family in the area.

Here in the Pullenvale Ward (from Kenmore/Chapel Hill through to Moggill) we are very fortunate to have a mixture of medium density housing through to peri-urban acreages. This diversity creates an opportunity for those without land, or land unsuitable for growing to match with landholders who do not have the time or resources to utilise their land. This synergy can result in a very productive and stronger community.

This idea of matching people keen to grow food to people with available land came to fruition in the U.K . Landshare was launched by KEO films in the UK in 2009 through the River Cottage TV program. The concept is simple: to connect people who wish to grow food with landowners willing to donate spare land for cultivation. Since then it has flourished into a national movement of more than 50,000 people, sharing more than 3,000 acres of land, with matches in every region of the UK.

TransitionTown: Kenmore District (which covers the Pullenvale Ward) would like to engage with people interested in exploring the possibilities of:

1.Landshare and setting up an online Landshare register

2. Co-ordinating people who are already growing food and have a surplus, no matter how big or small.

3.Co-operatively selling food through the local Moggill Markets in the first instance then onto a wider local food supply network.

______________________________________________________________________________________
Who should register interest?

Anyone interested in growing food.
Anyone with land they are happy for others to use with a written agreement as to the terms of that use.
Gardening Mentors: people in the area who have experience in growing food and are willing to share that knowledge.

Register your interest by sending us an email: transitionkenmore"at"gmail.com

"From little things, big things grow" - Lets start growing!

National Agenda for a Sustainable Australia

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has released it's 2010 National Agenda for a Sustainable Australia which you can download from their website.

"It spells out a series of specific and measurable actions a federal government would take if it was serious about reducing pollution and leading the transition from energy wasting cities to cleaner, more liveable cities."

With 23 steps arranged around 5 themes:

1. Lead the transition to a clean economy and sustainable Australia
2. Take effective climate change action now
3. Transform our cities to be world leaders in efficiency and liveability
4. Rescue our life support systems and restore our ecosystems to health
5. Secure an environmentally sustainable future for Northern Australia

With an election coming up, now would be a good time to have a read of the plan and then consider which political parties are committed to creating a Sustainable Australia.

The ACF also recommends some steps you can take to make a sustainable agenda part of the national agenda.

1. Talk about the plan of action with your family, friends and work colleagues. Share the hope you have for a sustainable future by talking about the practical steps toward achieving it.

2. Help lift the ACF plan of action into your local community conversation. Send an email or letter to your local paper.

3. Help broaden community and business support for the plan of action. Phone, email or mail relevant parts of the plan of action to local businesses, chambers of commerce and community organisations asking them to publicly support the plan of action.

Renewable Energy Solutions - Online version of Phillip Machanicks talk

The first speaker at our recent meeting on renewable energy solutions was Dr Phillip Machanick.

He has been kind enough to put his talk online at www.scribd.com and I have embedded it below.

Don't forget to check out Phil's blog as well.


Clean Energy Options

Supergreenme: A "facebook for greenies"

A love of nature and the environment lead sunshine coast man and former banker David Toomey to set up a "facebook for greenies" called Supergreenme.
Part eco-encyclopedia, part social networking Supergreenme provides a wealth of user generated information on environmental topics and the ability to interact with other environmentally minded individuals and groups from around Australia and the world.

Informative stuff on the site includes lots of "going green tips", reasons for living an environmental friendly lifestyle for everyone from small business to grandparents, and lots of eye candy in the way of videos showcasing natural beauty as well as user created videos.

David recently explained that increasing environmental awareness in people by developing their appreciation for the beauty of the natural world and its wildlife is a major part of the philosophy behind Supergreenme and I think this clearly shows in the website.

Looking at some of the other environmental and nature orientated groups on Supergreenme such as Wildlife Warriors Worldwide (a group founded by Steve and Terri Irwin to care for and protect injured and endangered wildlife) you are reminded of the breadth of the environmental movement and also of how the jobs of such wildlife defenders will become much harder if we allow climate change to decimate natural ecosystems.

Although Transition Kenmore is mostly focused on the effects of climate change and resource depletion on people, it's worth remembering that a love of nature and the environment is an important reason why many of us become concerned about the impacts of people on the natural environment in the first place. Perhaps before we realised the serious impact a changing environment could have on us too.
In our efforts to address issues like climate change we must ensure that we not only work with other groups whose main focus in the natural environment but that we also reach out to members of the public who care about the natural environment but have not yet made the connection between climate change and environmental destruction the same way people have with other topics such as deforestation.

Luckily for us, David Toomey and Supergreenme seem to have realised this already.
Check it out.

How to build a garden box part 2 (plus a part 1 progress report)

Back in December 09 I posted about one DIY method to make a garden box to keep opossums and brush turkeys out of your vege garden.

Despite being a little cluttered due to our enthusiasm to plant as much as possible in the space available, we now have spinach, chillies, broccoli and zucchini growing quite happily where 6 weeks ago there was bare dirt (check out the photos from the original post)




The chilli plants seem to have enjoyed the recent rain and are flowering and sprouting a lot of little chillies.






Making the wooden framed box with a lid in part one took a bit of work. Since it seems that the local brush turkeys aren't so interested in more mature plants we are also using more simplified protection for other plants.

For our sunflowers, we simply bent some chicken wire into a upside down "half-pipe".



Keeping it as free of other bought or non-degradable items as possible, we used some bits of bamboo bark that was lying around to wedge the chicken wire open
















and then some large seed pods to hold it all down.








When the sunflowers grew taller, we simply cut holes for them to grow through. Easy.

How to build a garden box

If you find, like we did, that your attempts to grow a garden are being sabotaged by marauding raiders in the form of hungry scrub turkeys (or opossums) then you might want to fortify your position to protect your innocent vegetables. Thankfully, stone battlements and boiling pitch are unnecessary to ward of these raiders and a garden box can be made in a few hours with a some pieces of wood, nails and chicken wire.
Our method was not necessary the best, but it does show anyone can do it.

Here's what we did.


Measure out a likely spot, be a little less optimistic than we were about how close to the brick path is reasonable.


Construct the lid, a lid may not be 100% necessary but does provide excellent protection. Crossbeams provided the flimsy wood with some strength.



Add the chickenwire netting. This can be attached with staple type nails, single strips of wire and by winding the chicken wire around the wood and back onto itself.



Attach chicken wire to your corner stakes for your sides. Leave plenty of stake to dig into ground. We only attached two (opposite) corner stakes initially and added others once the size and fit of the edge was confirmed.



Once sides are done, start planting. We added some stones that were dug out of the garden area round the sides to discourage tunneling.



Attach the lid and there you have it. If you wanted to be fancy you could add a wooden top to the side pieces and then attached some hinges between this and the top for easy opening, but a few bits of wire or string work as well.

Visualisation of the "debate" on climate change

I just came across this (what I think is) impressive visualisation of some of the claims and counter-claims made by climate skeptics and scientists. The author (not an expert on climate science) approached this project from the perspective of someone just beginning to learn about climate chnage. He makes an important point at the bottom of the post: that even on (for example) realclimate.org, specific rebuttals to skeptics' claims can be buried in jargon, at the end of long chains of comments. Because of this issue, I think projects like this one are really important.

(I'm sure there are many other such things out there - please link to them in the comments!)

UPDATE:

As Mike mentions in the comments, he posted a comprehensive list of resources earlier.

The Community Climate Network Queensland now has a website

A few months ago, representatives from a number of climate action groups in Qld (including TTKD and the SEQ Transition Town Network) came together to form the Community Climate Network Queensland (CCNQ).

CCNQ now has a website
http://www.climatenetworkqld.org

Currently it is in a very basic and initial form, but eventually it will help to bring together all the various climate action groups and provide a one-stop-shop for news, events and information on climate action and climate change in QLD.

Check it out.

Climate Change Science: Resources part 2

In part 1 of this series I listed some websites that provide useful information on climate change. In this post (part two) I will provide links to specific figures and graphs on areas of climate science.

Please note that many important climate science figures come from the IPCC reports and scientific papers which are often not available to view online (although the IPCC reports are free to download) so some figures necessarily come from websites which have copies.

One website that collates scientific images in one place is: Global Warming Art. Other links are provides in the drop-down boxes below.

+/- Temperature and temperature trends - click to expand

Graph of the surface temperature record (land and ocean) from NASA GISS
-Technical note: Green bars are uncertainty estimates, base period ie: temperature anomaly of 0 is 1950-1980

Temperature trend calculator (Hot-topic website)
- situated within an article (so scroll down to find) this interactive gadget displays the temperature trend of the instrumental record.

Recent temperature trends (RealClimate website)
- heard skeptics claiming warming has stopped, what does the science actually show? Graphic show upwards temperature trend over the last ten years.

Statisticians reject global cooling - another rebuttal to skeptic disinformation

NCDC - State of the Climate
-National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) gives all the climate information you could want to poke a stick at (surface temp, atmospheric temp, rainfall, ice extent etc etc).

+/- Carbon dioxide levels, comparison with temperatures and humans vs volcanoes

Carbon dioxide levels over the past 400 000 years (NASA)
-shows the steep rise in C02 since industrialization

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities (US geological survey)
-another skeptic favourite, to bad "Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes". To find, click on the "effects" tab and then scroll down.

Correlation of C02 and temperature (Skeptical science)
-Show graphical relationship between C02 and temperature over 450 000 years. Plus explains (rather technically) why C02 changes lag temperature changes during iceage- interglacial transitions.

+/- Sea level rise and ice melt (Glaciers, Greenland, Antarctica and the Arctic)

Recent sea level rise (CSIRO)
Last few hundred years (CSIRO)
- note that the average 20th century rise was 1.7 mm/yr. While in the last two decades it has been 3.3 mm/yr. It would appear sea level rise is increaseing in speed.

Accelerating ice loss from Antarctica and Greenland (Skeptical science)
- Review results of a recent scientific paper which shows rapid increases in ice loss from Antartica and Greenland

Melting of glaciers (Sketpical science)
-Combines results from several papers to show how almost all studied glaciers are melting

Melting of arctic ice cap (NOAA)
-shows how both winter ice extend and especially summer ice extent have decreased. Scroll down to figure S2.

Solar activity vs temperature rise
No correlation between solar activity and global warming (Skeptical science)
-summaries scientific papers on solar activity.

Attribution of climate change - two slightly different ways of looking at it
Effect on radiative forcing (IPCC FAQs)
Effect on temperature (Global warming art)


The Earths energy balance and how we know global warming is occurring (Skeptical science)
-summaries several lines of evidence to show how we know the earth is warming due to greenhouse gasses.


Comparisons of emissions from different countries (Washington Post)
-shows levels of emission per country and per capita up to 2006. Australia is the 15th biggest polluter worldwide per total emissions and the 2nd biggest per person.


C02 abatement cost curve. Created by McKinsey and Co. Shows the "cost" and effect of various emission reduction strategies by 2030. Note that many ares especially in efficiency save money.

From now till Copenhagen - What you can do

It is now literally just over two weeks to the UN Climate meeting in Copenhagen, where nations will attempt to thrash out a treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The main object inhibiting a strong global deal is a lack of political will, especially on the part of the rich, polluting nations. So now is our last chance to apply political pressure and spur more political will.
Here are some ways you can do this:

1) Write to Kevin Rudd
The Queensland Conversation Council (QCC) have an online petition/letter to Kevin Rudd you can send from their website. Use their suggestions or formulate your own message and remember than individualized letters get more attention.

Oxfam also have online letter writing tools at their site A Climate for Change. They are pushing Kevin Rudd to provide finance to developing countries so they can develop cleanly. If I fair deal for developing countries is important to you, tell him.

2) Write to the Liberals and tell them to get serious about preventing dangerous climate change and start supporting a clean energy economy.
Send a message to Malcom Turnbull

3) More powerful than emailing your local MP is to call their office and speak to them, or even meet with them. Although there isn't much time to set up a meeting, you could still give them a call. The ACF has some information here to help you do this.

4) Talk to your local or a visiting MP at a community event.
MP's attend community events all the time, providing an opportunity for you to speak with them and such events will often be on their website/ in the local paper. For example Independent Senator Nick Xenophon will be visiting the Ryan federal electorate in just over a week. Perhaps a few people from TTKD could have a chat with him?

5) Protest outside your local fedreal MP's office
Get a group together and stage a protest outside the office of your local MP telling them to get serious about preventing climate change. Such a protest would be more effective if your MP is in the electorate and not in Canberra. If actions 3&4 (above) doesn't work this should get your MP's attention.

6) Sign one (or more) of the many international petitions.
eg: 350.org Survival Pact
: Seal the deal! The UN campaign on Climate Change
: Tcktcktck - "I'm ready" (for a fair ambitious and binding climate deal)

7) Attend the Walk Against Warming. On December 12th, during the Copenhagen conference, there will be a world wide day of climate action with people calling for a strong deal on climate change. In Brisbane there is the Walk Against Warming starting and finishing in King George Square followed by speakers and a concert. Event starts at 10am. Be there!

8) And most importantly, talk with your friends, family and neighbours and if they are concerned about preserving a safe climate and avoiding dangerous climate change ask them to take these actions too. If they are confused about climate change, you can always tell them to start here.


That's a few off the top of my head. If you have more ideas please leave a comment.

Climate Change Science: Resources part 1

Following on from our successful Climate Change Q and A, here are some resources where you can find out more about climate change science, the effects climate change is having now and the predictions for the future.

I'll be splitting the resources post into two parts. This (part 1) will contain links to websites with lots of information on climate change. Part two will be links to specific graphs and figures on areas of climate science. I'll also add some links to the sidebar on the blog.

Websites with information of climate change:

NASA - climate change. Brief easy to understand descriptions of evidence, causes, effects etc.
UK Met office - Your guide to climate change. Lots of information here.
RealClimate - "Start here". RealClimate is a website/blog run by climate scientists, the Start Here page is full of links to climate change information graded by your amount of knowledge (from complete beginner to lay informed)
Coby Becks' - How to talk to a climate skeptic. Debunks common myths about climate change.

IPCC 2007 (AR4) Report - The consensus science on global warming.
There are three long working group reports and a synthesis report tying it all together. Mostly available as PDFs only.
Start with the Synthesis Report's: Summary for Policy Markers (SPM) which is written for a lay audience. Then try the synthesis report itself or the SPM from the individual working group reports.
The IPCC does provide online FAQ's. These help to explain a lot about the climate and climate change.

NASA - Temperature Record (GISTEMP) - Lots of informative graphs showing temperature changes since the instrumental record began.

Climate Denial Crock of the Week - Peter Sinclair's produces short, easy to understand Youtube videos to explain climate science and rebut deniers.

RealClimate and Skeptical Science. Two websites that provide commentary on the scientific literature so that it is understandable to an informed lay audience. RealClimate also allows you ask working climate scientists questions, however it is recommended you gain a reasonable understand of climate science first. Their Start Here function can help you with this.

Update 25.11.09
A group of leading climate scientists have just released the "The Copenhagen Diagnosis" which updates the climate science since the IPCC AR4 in 2007. This report is written for a non-technical audience and be downloaded or read online.


Enjoy!

PS: I have tried to keep this list brief and link only some of the most reputable sites. However if you think there are other sites that deserve to be on this list please leave a comment.