no, it did not cause the flooding in Dubai
— Read on www.theclimatebrink.com/p/a-primer-on-cloud-seeding/comments
Keeping this for future reference …
no, it did not cause the flooding in Dubai
— Read on www.theclimatebrink.com/p/a-primer-on-cloud-seeding/comments
Keeping this for future reference …
I’m sitting in a green chair, different from last time I was here when I was directed to a black chair, in the waiting area of my local Centrelink branch. Gone are the days of queueing … one thing Covid was good for.
I’m here to explain the ‘flow of my finances’ and although I have nothing to hide, Centrelink’s power and layers of bureaucracy and impenetrable behaviour, I’m as nervous as everyone else sitting here waiting for their appointments. Centrelink of course likes to keep us on our toes, we think.
I have with me plastic folder of proofs in two bunches as my printer/scanner has not recovered from the move yet and refuses to shake hands with the computer. First thing this morning had to beg the village’s admin to print stuff off for me, that CL can keep. The other bunch are the paper copies CL will need to copy.
To top off the day, the good news is that my previous unit, where I broke the lease, has new tenants. Meaning, I don’t need to pay any more rent there.
And the bad news is that my hearing aids have spat the dummy. Switched themselves off. I’ve tried everything I know, to get a sign of life, but no go. All verbal communication is like talking and listening through a wad of cotton wool.
I’m outside now, finishing this off. It’s raining. I didn’t bring an umbrella, or raincoat. Probably better wait for my ride.
Guess how high this tree is …


Climate change is a World-versus-Earth problem, I heard the other day.
Apparently people still don’t know how completely dependent on Earth our World is. The dragon will pass us by, and with a flick of its flaming tongue, or tail, will drag us with it into the inferno.
Earth is a planet that supports Life and is an inseparable part of it.
World is the human culture, the where and the what that we build and extract and dig and superimpose on the soil, that thinnest of layers between us and bed-rock.
The same bed-rock that we can not survive on without the natural services provided by sunlight, water, air, and soil. Is that really so hard to understand?
Air? Another thin thin layer. Above us. Blue where and when the Earth continues its work. A disgusting tan yellow where we think we have improved our lives. Where industry and wrong-living coughs out smoke and smog, dust and death. Dragons.
Water. Oh my people, Ocean is in so much trouble. We warm it. We degrade it. We dynamite and pillage, we fill it with cast-off refuse, we leak oil and bilge waters, spread disease and alien creatures, and still we expect whales, pristine rain, sparkling springs and sweet lakes of fresh water.
Life is the miracle that has become, and grown, and evolved over unimaginable distances and stretches of time. Life is the lives that by the millions have come and have gone, like stitches over and under, through the fabric of time.
We sapiens, living for ten or twenty thousand generations and perhaps two more, will dive under and also be gone.
It’s easy to forget that the “World” we live in, is totally embedded and laced through and through, with the “Earth” system, where the “World” is the cultural system and the “Earth” is the biological system.
I’m calling them both “systems” because neither stand still. They are always moving and always changing. It’s just that we–slow creatures–still, often, think ourselves part of the World but separate from the Earth.

Nice place, isn’t it? Gardens, central swimming pool, blocky buildings from the 1980s. Birds, mostly rainbow lorikeets but also Torresian crows, chattering and whistling in the trees surrounding the central grassed area. The place is gated to keep out the riff-raff.
So why am I complaining?
I’m indoors, looking out for 90% of my hours. This isolation caper is pretty boring after a whole year of it already. Numbers in Queensland doubled overnight. [We live in pretty amazing times that most of the world will know what I’m talking about in those last two sentences.]
Our premier is saying this time next year every Queenslander will have had it. She’s of course not forecasting the death toll. Not wanting to be one of that unsaid number, I’m isolating. Again.
I know. I know. Omicron is meant to be mild. Not a killer of healthy immune systems. Ten percent of us are feeling left-behind. We are a long tail about to be shortened. This is biological and indeed evolutionary reality.
In the meantime, I’m going to be talking about the Earth versus the World. How we’ve been thinking about it up to now.