Climate change? What Climate change?

Australia burns at an unprecedented ferocity and our fire defences are failing. Murdoch's Joe Hilderbrand blames the greenies in a long rant strong on denial that people have been putting the scientific case to the Government for many years.

I found an exquisite quiet rebuttal buried on Catherine Perry's website

Gridlock begone

Manhattan situation normal

Despite the number of vehicles on its streets, those who live in Manhattan often choose to drive rather than take the 24/7 subway and bus system, ferries, cycle,  or walk. And that is irrespective whether they are traveling for work, errands or recreation. Result: intermittent gridlock

The term "gridlock" had to be coined in the 1970s in New York City, meaning traffic congestion that blocks a city’s network of intersections. It was when the Manhattan core was overwhelming traffic volume which began to happen regularly in the 1980s  https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/motorist/gridlockalert.shtml

Now, the known busiest traffic days of the year in New York are designated as "Gridlock Alert Days" and the city's department of transport(DOT) pleads for New Yorkers to consider walking, biking or taking public transportation whenever possible so the number of days does not increase.

And the DOT is now taking biking much more seriously.  Biking in NYC has grown a lot in the last 15 years with ridership up 262% from 2000-2010 and growing. Around 500,000 New Yorkers are biking each month for a number of reasons. 

The City’s “cycling risk indicator” shows that the danger of serious injury has fallen 73% in that time https://brokelyn.com/5-reasons-youre-less-likely-die-biking-new-york-anything-else-new-york/

A key reason, apart from the proliferation of cycleways and lanes has been the recent introduction of a slower speed limit. It dropped from 30mph (about 50kph) to 25mph (about 40kph). 

Dances with Greeks

Viewing the vintage 1961 war film The Guns of Navarone and struck by the care taken in the introduction titles to acknowledge the help of the people in Greece in making the film on Rhodes.
The film was based on Alistair MacLean's novel about a fictitious action on the fictitious Greek Island of Navarone but rooted in the reality of the Battle of Leros during the hopeless WW2 Dodecanese Campaign. The allied forces lost badly but it delayed the Axis forces enough that the Russian attack was forced into the Autumn and then Winter. The rest is history.
But, returning to the shooting of the movie, and how well the makers were treated.  One of the cast, Anthony Quinn ( a native of Chihuahua, Mexico) loved the area so much that he kept returning and eventually bought property around a bay that he particularly warmed to.

Three years later he starred in the famous Zorba the Greek. The film was shot on location on Crete. Specific locations featured include the town of Chania, the Apokoronas region and the Akrotiri peninsula. The famed scene in which Quinn's character dances the Sirtaki was filmed on the beach of the village of Stavros.
The film was incredibly successful. In the 1980's he revived the 1968 Broadway musical that had adapted Zorba to the stage and at age 67 took it on a four-year US tour.
Today his memory is kept alive with a bay and beach named after him on Rhodes. But in a typically Greek way, there is a messy ownership issue
The story goes that he was so angry about the broken promises made by local politicians that he stopped only in Crete and never once mentioned Rhodes.
Quinn died in 2001 at 86 and was buried on his family estate...on Rhode Island, NY

The well bred baguette

When it comes to culture nothing beats the French for protecting their heritage..and nothing is more French than the baguette. 

In France, strict rules have been applied since 1933 to protect the recipe, and the artisans, from cheaper breadsticks. The threat never more real than in contemporary France where preservative laden knock-offs frozen down and shipped from the sweatshop bakeries of countries with cheaper labour.

Each year they hold a fiercely contested competition for the best baguettes from the Parisian bakeries. First prize is for the winner to deliver 20 baguettes a day to the President's Élysée Palace

As a further precaution, to be called a boulangerie, a French bakery must bake on the premises. Boulangeries often display a sticker on the storefront or add to their outside advertising that it is an “Artisan Boulanger.” 

Another protection is the name. The baguette traditionnelle is a step up from ordinaire being hand-formed, as evident by the pointy ends and bumps in the loaves. In the photo above the traditional loaf is on the right and will cost a little more than the baguette ordinaire on the left.

An innovation has been for the Artisans to install 24 hour vending machines into the outside walls of their bakeries. The one below was in a small village in Brittany. Not everyone agrees that this is a good move

A recent concession to the modern world: the artisan boulangeries vending machines 

Last year, President Macron ratcheted up the game by started the process for the traditional baguette to get UNESCO World Heritage status

East coast ablaze

The East Coast of Australia is suffering unprecedented fire outbreaks on Friday. In NSW alone, at least 100 homes have been destroyed on that day. Three people are are dead. More than 30 people have been injured. By early Saturday there were 77 NSW bush or grass fires with 42 uncontained.  Meanwhile by Saturday night a state of emergency was been declared for 42 Queensland local government areas. Authorities say that it could be several days before thousands of residents who were forced to evacuate on Queensland's Sunshine Coast will be allowed to return home.

The latest picture for all States

The Bureau of Meteorology State of the Climate 2018 report for Australia noted strong land surface temperature increases and a 10%-20% decline in cool season rainfall across southern Australia since the 1970s. These changes are closely associated with increasing human greenhouse gas emissions, as well as natural variability.

Elaine Johnson @ElaineEDO the lawyer who pursued and won the Rocky Hill case made it clear that the NSW is not responding very well

And the NSW Govt response to the unfolding #ClimateCrisis?
Next week it will rush a Bill through Parliament that REMOVES a requirement to assess downstream emissions from coal.
And PROHIBITS regulation of development in relation to climate 

The despair continues with the Sydney Morning Herald playing a double game.  They write an excellent report but then push it to page 7.  According to the article, NSW residents have been told to brace for 'unprecedented' conditions as fatal bushfires persist. The story that replaces the coverage on the front page is about a TV host's tribululations.
Trying to get people to realise just how serious this is and how it is linked to Climate Change, Federal Green MP, Adam Brandt tweeted on Saturday

‘Just to recap.
Today’s fires are “unprecedented”.
fires in Qld earlier this year were “unprecedented”.
Townsville flood was “unprecedented”...
The central Qld fires last year were “unprecedented”.
The drought is “unprecedented”.’
It’s an emergency.

Nationally, our PM, who so proudly bought a lump of coal into Parliament last year, saying fossil fuels were Australia's future, tweeted

....useful.

Shelby Story

A prime player in the 1966 and later wins by the Ford GT40 was the motoring legend Carroll Shelby. in the movie Ford v Ferrari, he is played by Matt Damon. Shelby had the gig to built the Le Mans winner mainly because of his reputation in building the AC Cobra, an outstanding Californian production racer. Every US teenager at the time dreamed of having one.
One day, one such dreamer turned up at his workshop and said she wanted to buy a Cobra. It was a diminutive 17-year-old singer, Carol Connors who had just had a hit with "To know, know know him" and had a wad of money to burn. As Shelby told it in an interview, she took the car away telling Shelby that she would write a song about it. According to Connors, Shelby had promised not to charge and would be his guest at the Le Mans. Six months later the racing car anthem "Hey, little Cobra" hit the airwaves and reached number one on the charts before being swept away by the tidal wave of the Beatles. Shelby came good on his promise and Connors saw the historic win in 1966. 

As the music industry tarted her up

With her Cobra and "Hey Little Cobra" sheet music

And yes, that is her in the picture above. She ended up owning three Cobras then a Rolls.
Enjoy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc6FmZCT0Zc&list=PLJrZSd1VE406KtRAIAORyruhK9U9IJDYf&index=5
Bio details at http://www.spectropop.com/CarolConnors/

Update: The Hollywood epic of Shelby's attack on Le Mans, Ford v Ferrari is running hot in cinemas https://g.co/kgs/wHqGyy It gives the Reader's Digest version of the next chapter of Shelby's career challenging the Steve McQueen classic Le Mans for visceral racing excitement. Try to see it on the big screen because the photography is pretty special.  Liberties have been taken with the storyline but in the good cause of trying to capture the spirit of a fast disappearing era of American dominance.  

Ferrari woh-woh