Could Yasi be worse than expected?
Cyclone Yasi heads towards Queenslands North East coast this morning with significant concerns for residents. There is potentially an added danger based on the way cylones work. Typically a cyclone needs two things – heat and water, which is why they can dissipate quickly once they head inland. However Yasi hits following a couple of ‘preconditioning’ events that could make it continue even inland
Firstly, there’s been a cyclone a week ago that has dumped significant amounts of rain onto an already very wet landmass, and there is a hugh high pressure system just to the south edge of the cyclone. Potentially this might mean that even as Yasi smashes into the mainland, it will still find a significant volume of water and heat to allow it to continue. It has been said that Yasi will produce enough energy to power the entire worlds energy needs for a whole year!
It is of no comfort to know that these types of ‘one off events’ have been predicted by global warming climate models for over a decade. to likely to continue. What is becoming ever more certain is that the warming global climate will force us to ‘live with’ floods, storms, heat waves and more at ever increasing numbers. I wish those in its path, the best of luck
Or is it? …Over the past six years, the mainstream media polls have consistently shown the Liberal Party /National Party Coalition as well ahead of the Australian Labor Party. Those polls turned out to be wrong last time around when Tony Abbott failed to get enough of the vote to defeat Julia Gillard. Or should…
Read More >In my view ALL futures thinking about ‘big issues’ starts with futures thinking about personal issues. The idea that we take for granted the way our lives operate has for millennia been shown to be a high risk assumption. From the food we eat, to where we live, to products we use (and how we…
Read More >What you look at, how you look at it and where you find your information are critical elements for developing far more effective strategy. Futures work is about removing the organisational blinkers to increase awareness of risks and emerging opportunities often through Environmental Scanning (ES). ES comes in all sorts of guises and the key…
Read More >How do you innovate? Where do you innovate? Why do you innovate? How do I start innovating? These and a truckload of other similar questions are often tied to the idea that innovation is the silver bullet or panacea to mediocrity in organisations. And maybe it is. There’s a whole raft of ways in which…
Read More >From an organisational perspective it is pretty common for senior managers to spend significant energy considering when to upgrade plant and equipment, be it machinery, vehicles or IT infrastructure. The upgrades can occur on the run (in response to a surge in demand for instance), as a result of necessity (say as a result of…
Read More >If you’ve seen me speak before you already know I take a provocative stance when it comes to areas like personnel development, training and recruitment. Clients also know that once we’ve opened the door to thinking differently, they’re guided through some significant ‘of course’ moments in terms of how they approach developing their people and…
Read More >I flag from the outset that I haven’t been a regular readers of newspapers for almost a decade, only slightly less than my giving up on mainstream TV News shows. As such you should take this with a grain of salt, coming as it does from someone who reads maybe a paper a week and…
Read More >In the search for fuels and energy sources that act as a replacement to Oil, there’s much hype and claims that need to be tested. In much the same as claims about carbon capture technology being built onto existing coal fired power stations seem to lack both viability and credibility (in my view), the same…
Read More >Every day people in positions of ‘opinion authority’ make choices about what ‘opinions’ they will offer on a whole array of subjects. And it would be fair to say that over the past five years or so, many of those ‘opinion authorities’ have been significantly negative on Australia’s manufacturing sector. There’s no doubt that the…
Read More >As a futurist spending much of my time assessing emerging developments and their implications across an array of industry sectors, I am frequently asked for a view on ‘consumer trends’. Common questions are ‘what will consumers want in the future?’ ‘Does our product (service) have a place?’ ‘What is driving consumer behaviour?’ ‘How can we…
Read More >