New Car!

We have bought a new car!

New, as in newer but still 2nd hand. From a dealership in Brisbane. We'll be flying up to Brisbane on Saturday morning to pick it up and drive it back to Melbourne over the weekend. It's a 20-hour trip, so the aim is to leave the dealership at around 9am (our flight touches down at 8am), go for 9-10 hours to around Gilgandra, NSW. Nice little Motel there to stay at.
Then Sunday, head off at 6.30 from there, for 10-11 hours and arrive back at home at 6-7pm. We can stay anywhere though, it's not fixed.

Anyway the car! It's a 2005 Audi A3 TDi sportback. TDi = turbo diesel. Me in a diesel!?? Yeah, I've decided the environment and economy (fuel use, not the economy) are more important than driving a bit faster. The diesel is fast enough as it is, when we test drove one a few weeks ago it was doing 60 before I could in my 180SX. The engine is a 2L 4-cylinder and the transmission is the 'DSG' (direct shift) semi-automatic. It's a Volkswagen/Audi/Skoda transmission that is basically a manual but changes gears for you. It has 2 clutches, and it engages the next gear up/down when going up/down gears, so the changes are really quick. It's a 5-door hatch but has heaps of space in the back.

Anyway, here are some photos of it in the yard:






I cannot wait to go pick it up on Saturday! Ness and I will take turns driving it down, so it should be good. It is unregistered so we have a permit to drive it unregistered to Melbourne, then I have it booked in to Vicroads next week for rego.

It is rated to use 4.8L/100km on country roads, so we should do about 1100km/tank. In the city it's 7.6L/100km. And diesel is now a bit cheaper than petrol. It puts out 162g/km of CO2 (compared to 260g/km for a 2008 Commodore or 344g/km for a 2008 SS Commodore). And it has 8 airbags and a 4-star safety rating. Comes with sports suspension, 'sports' seats (more bucket-ey than normal) and paddle shifts on the steering wheel, so it's a damn good drive!

Anyway... 2 more sleeps....

Global Climate Change - Do You Care At All??

Just chilling on this Good Friday, before going camping tomorrow. Four or so mates, Ness and I are going to Chiltern National Park (specifically Mt Pilot) and coming back on Monday. I bought a tent yesterday as I never really had a good one of my own. This one was $60 and for that it is damn good in my opinion. It's a Spinifex 3-person dome tent.

Anyway, if you are wanting to backup your ipod music collection (copy the music to your computer), may I suggest SharePod. I have spent the last hour trying out various programs, and this is the only free one I've tried so far and it's awesome, better than the rest. A few years back I was running out of space to mirror my itunes/ipod libraries so I made itunes manually sync music on my ipod. But now it's a little annoying and I have way more space, and I want to go back to syncing them so I have to re-import all the music back into itunes.

And now for something completely different.

I have been thinking lately, this blog is a bit on the boring side. Until now, it's comprised of my waffling on about what's going on in my life which probably most people find uninteresting. So I'm going to talk about things which are important to everybody from now on, and maybe sprinkle in some 'whats up with me' news.

...



Did that get your attention?

As you probably know, I'm passionate about reducing human impact on the earth and global climate change. I feel at this point we're still battling not to reduce carbon dioxide/greenhouse gas (GG) emissions, but with people's attitudes toward the whole problem. I think about this every day of the week.

How many people do you know? Now how many of them care about global warming? How many of them are actively trying in their everyday life to reduce their GG emissions? I mean seriously, not just install a low-wattage light globe and then drive to work? For me, it's not many. I know people who don't care about the problem, and others who don't but try to say they do. I have spoken to so many people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk. They really sound like they feel bad about what is going on, but then they don't get off their arse and do anything.

If you're reading this and that is you, then I'm not sorry, but I want you to listen up. In a minute I'm going to talk about what may happen in our lifetime, predictions by those whom use scientific methods based on what is going on right now (the observations). At least read that, because I will pitch it at your emotions as it's one of the best ways of persuading people. It's funny, I'm a pretty quiet guy and don't go around telling all my friends this stuff, but I'm getting close to one day taking a new tact in life and speaking out more because I'm bottling it up.

What is predicted to happen due to human impact on global climate change in the next century:

• Polar ice caps will melt
  
• Polar bears will become extinct in the wild, possibly also various other species of animals which share these environments such as king penguins, etc
• Sea level will rise, by up to a few meters due to expansion by heating
  
• Hundreds of millions of people such as those in low-lying areas like Bangladesh and Maldives will be displaced and end up environmental refugees causing great burden on their own and surrounding countries. Fancy some more refugees in your country? I know Australia doesn't want them...
• The Great Barrier Reef and many reefs like it will be destroyed forever, ending up lifeless, rocky and colourless due to ocean acidification from carbon dioxide absorption. It's called bleaching
  
• The weather will be more extreme, as it has been becoming, where dry areas will be drier, frequent flooded areas will receive more flooding, etc
• Disease among people and animals will change, malaria will be introduced to Australia as the temperature will be suitable for the virus to survive here
• More frequent and more severe fires and weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones
• Food will be more expensive, at least a lot of it will be, due to the above changes (supply shortages)
  
• Water will be more scarce and expensive, we are seeing this already
• The combination of scarcer water, food and land (due to ocean rise, desertification, etc) will result in more wars and conflicts, for resources. The Iraq invasion was about oil, which is a resource

There are a lot more, but I can't think of them now. But does anyone reading this care about any of that? I do, it breaks my heart all the time.

But you need to care such that you actually change your daily life. I mean, walk/ride/train/bus to work. Is that hard? I walk 2km every day whilst train-ing it to work, and I'm used to it. If I can do it, so can you and you can probably do with some exercise. What about buying green electricity? Everyone has this option but most people don't want to part with money for it. How's about you part from your cable TV and get some wind power supplying your house? Everyone I know with cable/pay TV does nothing but flick and complain about repeated shows . Everyone should spend more time talking with their family/friends or reading the newspaper or magazines or books. Or get a solar hot water system installed. It's only about $1500 and it'll have a huge impact, especially if you're on electric hot water. It goes on. Buy in bulk with minimal packaging, recycle everything you can (and correctly - eg greasy pizza boxes don't recycle), have a compost bin, plant more trees in your garden/property, refuse plastic bags and use reusable ones, support ecotourism when you can, buy fairtrade/eco-alliance coffee, buy organic food, throw out your clothes drier, make your next car a small (or hybrid or small diesel) one - you'd be surprised at the room inside, lobby your government to do more for the environment, use water efficiently, reuse water, buy a water tank and use it for your toilets, use recycled paper toilet paper for wiping your arse (eg the Planet Ark toilet paper), use less soaps and buy environmentally friendly soaps (I do), turn off stuff when not using it, don't heat your house to 25C - heat it to 20 and put on a tiny bit more clothes (do you need to be walking around in a t-shirt in winter??), convert to double-glazed windows if you have the money (don't shoot me once you find out how much it is, just do it!), try hard not to use your air-con in summer, donate to non-govt aid agencies, buy stuff from Oxfam shops/online, think about what you own and what some of the poorer people in the world own, travel to poorer areas of the world to find out what it's really like for most of the world's population, try to consume less (live simpler), generate less garbage, get outdoors more, and finally, vote Greens!

Phew. Anyway I will continue this next time. I'm tired.