If ever there were examples of how interconnected we all are, we are seeing them right now.

First we had the oil price crisis which some people think is caused by speculators, but in reality is caused by the fact that the speculators have formed a belief that there is limited supply and increased demand. Hence market forces will set prices higher and higher until there is no further tolerance for higher price.

Now we have the news that the wild card of the Iowa floods is having greater impact on the local farmers than we might have expected. Check out this story.....(From Moneyweek)

"A catastrophe for Iowa farmers will not be just a catastrophe for Midwestern Americans. In the Iowa floods, we’ll see more evidence of how the problems of weird weather (climate change) combine and ramify the problems associated with Peak Oil. In this particular case they lead to an inflection point sometime around the 2008 harvest season, which will also be our time of political harvest.

These are not your daddy’s or granddaddy’s floods. These are 500-year floods, events not seen before non-Indian people started living out on that stretch of the North American prairie. The vast majority of homeowners in Eastern Iowa did not have flood insurance because the likelihood of being affected above the 500-year-line was so miniscule — their insurance agents actually advised them against getting it."

It seems that not only has the move into corn/ethanol reduced the availability of food, but now with the increased price of delivery via trucks and the reduced amount of recompense that farmers will receive via insurance that there are significant stresses on the whole agribusiness/infrastructure ecosystem.

Expect that the speculators will get onto this next and drive up futures in all food products in the US and that will impact prices in other countries too.

According to James Hansen, the renowned American climatologist, we are very close to the tipping point for the planet.

And in the mean time politicians are opening shopping centres and getting given bottles of Grange. Really quite tragic. Because the people just sit there like dumb animals and continue to consume flat panel TV's. Was it Karl Marx that said that religion was the opiate of the masses? He was wrong - it is media that provides the soporific environment for people to sit snugly and consume while the planet goes to hell in a handbasket.

Wake up, people!

I haven't blogged in a fair while. Been busy doing things in the real world - mainly working on the house and the garden. Actually beyond the garden... I have been planting trees.

I got an olive tree as a birthday present from my older daughter. So decided that one wasn't enough and went out and bought eight more this morning.... Prepared the ground and planted them today.... with a lot of help from Robyn.

That meant that first I had to do some serious mowing. The grass in that part of the property is about two foot tall and the slope on the hill is about 15 degrees, so it really took some effort to get the area cleared and ready for holes to be dug.

As I was digging holes for the trees our neighbour, Bill, called over the fence and offered us a couple of macadamia seedlings that his sister had grown from seed. So that meant expanding the area for the orchard or grove.... and a bit more digging.

The conditions were perfect for planting today after a week of good rain - the topsoil was soft enough to make it easy to dig holes and it didn't rain during the time we were out working.

So that was today's effort...

The relevance of this is that living now out of Sydney, I am starting to think that the city really is like the proverbial case of the frog in the saucepan with the water heating up.  I find it totally amazing that people are not being motivated to actually do something worthwhile about the changes that are taking place that are impacting society. Some of these are the totally lacklustre performance by the politicians in both the state, the country, and the rest of the world. Some of them are about the breaking infrastructure. And some are about the changes to the environment.

Perhaps the biggest problem that we all face is that the whole self interest meme still has a way to go before people will perhaps start to realize that we are all in this together and we have to start making do with less and doing it for each other and not just for ourselves.

But let's just look at the local situation in Australia and New South Wales for a moment...

We have a state government that wants to privatise the power industry. We all know what that will mean, surely. Power stations will have to become more efficient. That will mean that a lot of people will lose their jobs. Maybe they deserve that. Maybe not. But the by-product will absolutely be that there will be less people apprenticed to become electricians. Every time an industry is privatised or manufacturing moves off shore to China it means that the human skill base of the country is diluted.

It's hard to remember all this stuff when you are in a place like Berry and planting trees!

Climate warming is expected to increase the amount of ice melt this northern summer according to scientists.

All the evidence points toward human-made changes at both poles, she said, a conclusion that "further depletes the arsenals of those who insist that human-caused climate change is nothing to worry about."

Climatologist Gareth Marshall of the British Antarctic Survey said that while the term global warming is widely used, things are more complicated at the regional level.

In the Antarctic, he explained, climate change strengthened winds blowing around the continent, helping trap colder air. But that will decrease in the future, allowing warmer conditions to begin, he said.

And, Marshall added, all studies now show that human activities are the drivers of climate change in the Antarctic.

Asked if this summer will match last year's record low sea ice in the North, Overland that is likely.

"The tea leaves point to a minimal amount of sea ice next September, that would be the same as we had last summer, 40 percent loss compared to 20 years ago," he said. Overland added that the winter freeze got a late start last fall.

Looks like the price of putting solar into your home is about to get a whole lot cheaper... The shortage in the kind of silicon used in solar panels is coming to an end.

Now all we need is for the governments - state and federal - to do what should have been done years ago - to put a premium on home generated solar energy that goes into the grid, so that home owners are encouraged to install solar. If this was done instead of a subsidy payment for the installation there would be a lot more investment in solar in this country.

A UK survey has found that people there aren't prepared to pay extra by way of taxes on four wheel drives, plastic bags, etc that are designed to discourage people from those same pursuits....

Nor a surprise really. If you asked smokers whether they would be prepared to pay an extra tax on cigarettes to help fight lung cancer, they would almost certainly argue that it isn't proven that tobacco causes cancer.

It makes sobering reading.... How do you get people on side to support something that is going to cost them more at a time when everything is costing more because of increased oil prices...

Here is some of the article:

The public's climate-change scepticism extends to the recent floods which inundated much of the West Country, and reported signs of changes in the cycle of the seasons. Just over a third of respondents (34 per cent) believe that extreme weather is becoming more common but has nothing to do with global warming. One in 10 said that they believed that climate change is totally natural.

The over-55s are most cynical about the effects of global warming with 43 per cent believing that extreme weather and global warming are unconnected.

Three in 10 (29 per cent) of all respondents would oppose any more legislation in support of green policies, while close to a third of citizens (31 per cent) believe that green taxes will have no discernible effect on the environment since people will still take long-haul flights regularly and drive carbon-heavy vehicles.

Where is the climate going? Is it getting warmer? Or are we heading for a mini ice age as some people believe?

I wonder whether what we are getting to is neither one or the other, but more a matter of chaotic weather.

I saw a story that in Scotland they are having the best snow season in ten years. But I think what is more disturbing is the news that climate scientists have found that there is a significant change in the salinity in the antarctic region and that this may have "profound effects on the earth's currents".

"So-called Antarctic bottom water helps power the great ocean conveyor belt, a system of currents spanning the Southern, Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans that shifts heat around the globe.

"The main reason we're paying attention to this is because it is one of the switches in the climate system and we need to know if we are about to flip that switch or not," said Rintoul of Australia's government-backed research arm the CSIRO.

"If that freshening trend continues for long enough, eventually the water near Antarctica would be too light, too buoyant to sink and that limb of the global-scale circulation would shut down," he said on Friday.

Cold, salty water also sinks to the depths in the far north Atlantic Ocean near Greenland and, together with the vast amount of water that sinks off Antarctica, this drives the ocean conveyor belt."

First it was the war in Iraq. Then it was global warming. Then it was subprime.

Now there is a forecast that sunspot activity is intensifying and within the next four years could be significant enough to knock out a lot of our digital devices.

Here is the forecast:

Detours
Clumps of ions in the atmosphere could interfere with GPS. Satellite signals are slowed by bumping into particles, meaning your trusty navigator may lose its way. Remember those colorful paper things called maps?

Falling Satellites
Increased solar energy heats Earth's atmosphere, causing it to expand. That's a drag on low-flying satellites and can even knock them out of orbit. A solar storm in 1979 deposited Skylab on Australia.

Layovers in Alaska
Particles are drawn to Earth's magnetic poles, right through popular flight paths. Electrons absorb the energy in shortwave signals, causing radio blackouts — and unscheduled stops in Anchorage.

Light Shows
Auroras occur when waves of charged particles light up gases in the upper atmosphere. As more particles stream in, the so-called aurora oval grows, bringing the "northern lights" as far south as Key West.

Climate change is here. That is now commonly accepted.

Here is something pretty interesting though. According to an article in The Scotsman Shell are making public their scenario planning documentation and the conclusions that they draw.

There are two key scenarios that emerge - codenamed "Scramble" and "Blueprints"

From the article:

This is a video that I discovered on Home Page Daily. Those guys are doing some of the best aggregation of video available on the web today for people who are awake and who care about the planet and the issues. Definitely worth visiting. Unfortunately they haven't yet figured out how to run personalized RSS feeds or alerts in the way that Real News Network has...

This is Lester Brown at the recent Pop Tech: