a new funding structure providing flexibility to meet existing and emerging priorities including: counter-terrorism; serious and organised crime, including e-security crime; border protection; overseas deployments and peace keeping; criminal law enforcement in business regulation; and support to the enforcement of the anticipated Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

via Rudd’s carbon cops | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt Blog.

FEDERAL politicians are using a taxpayer-funded perk to pay for gas-guzzling SUVs, with more than 90 percent of them driving six or eight cylinder cars.

A staggering 225 out of the 243 private-plated cars chosen by MPs and Senators have six or eight-cylinder engines, in contrast to the national trend towards smaller, more fuel efficient models.

via MPs talk green, drive SUVs | The Courier-Mail.

The experience recalled a conversation I had a few years ago with a CEO. He confessed to me that if he could improve any one thing, it would be his listening skills. I remember pointing him to an old HBR article (1957, to be exact) by Ralph G. Nichols and Leonard Stevens called “Listening to People.”

The authors — who conducted several in-depth studies on listening skills — offered some tips for what they call “efficient listening,” by which they mean that the listener doesn’t wander off onto mental side-roads while someone else is speaking. They found that “good listeners regularly engage in four mental activities, each geared to the oral discourse and taking place concurrently with that oral discourse.” Those four processes are:

1. The listener thinks ahead of the talker, trying to anticipate what the oral discourse is leading to and what conclusions will be drawn from the words spoken at the moment.
2. The listener weighs the evidence used by the talker to support the points that he makes. “Is this evidence valid?” the listener asks himself. “Is it the complete evidence?”
3. Periodically the listener reviews and mentally summarizes the points of the talk completed thus far.
4. Throughout the talk, the listener “listens between the lines” in search of meaning that is not necessarily put into spoken words. He pays attention to nonverbal communication (facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice) to see if it adds meaning to the spoken words. He asks himself, “Is the talker purposely skirting some area of the subject? Why is he doing so?”

via Is Listening an Endangered Skill? – HBR Editors’ Blog – Harvard Business Review.

He aims to spend 100 days next year in the white space. “As a great teacher, Rochelle Myers, taught me, you can’t make your own life a work of art if you’re not working with a clean canvas,” he says. (Another smart bit of Collins philosophy: “Speak less. Say more.”)

Clearly, Collins lives different life than the rest of us because, as a best-selling author, he can afford to. (But even when he couldn’t afford to — before he became famous — he spent his time thinking and working on his first book, Built to Last, turning down consulting offers from large companies that wanted him to travel to them. And he credits that “time in the cave” spent thinking for his success.)

So he challenges the rest of us to “afford” white space time. He questions whether that frenetic pace is actually getting companies anywhere (indeed, frenetic companies are usually those in decline, as he points out in his recent book, How the Mighty Fall). At the end of his keynote speech, he exhorted the gathered HR managers to create their own white spaces — even if for only a half hour a day. I could practically hear everyone thinking, “Great idea. Love it. But I haven’t got time!”

Do you try to make time for white space? What tactics do you use for managing your time?

via Manage Your Time Like Jim Collins – HBR Editors’ Blog – Harvard Business Review.

Yet there is one group of energy producers that are not being prosecuted for killing birds: wind-power companies. And wind-powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year.

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

via Windmills Are Killing Our Birds | Global Warming Skeptics.

What is always ignored in such pronouncements is the fact that the surface record is only one way of measuring global temperature. There are two others – the satellite record and the radio sonde record, both of which are mutually consistent, and which show 1997 to be the 8th coldest of the last 19 years.

So which data source do we believe? The surface record which shows 1997 to be the warmest ever? – or the satellites and sondes which show 1997 to be a colder than average year?

via What’s Wrong With The Surface Record?.

The roll-out of nationwide fast broadband will reduce Australia’s carbon emissions by five per cent, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.

The $43 billion project is an “historic act of nation building” that is essential for Australia to compete globally, he says.

Broadband would “improve opportunities for all Australians no matter where they live”, Mr Rudd told the Broadband Future Forum in Sydney today.

Adopting smart technologies in the key areas of energy, water, health and transport could also create 70,000 jobs and increase gross domestic product by 1.5 per cent, he said.

via Rudd: NBN will cut carbon emissions by 5% – News – Communications – ZDNet Australia.

“a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicized handouts, run by giant bureaucracy.”

via Global Warming Revolt – WSJ.com.

Truer words were never said.

So it’s an underwhelming surprise that the top two auditors have both been caught selling “Credits for emitting air that might-have-had-more-carbon-in-it, which might-have-been-checked by people who might-have-been-qualified to check these things”. Selling bridges in Boston has more respectability.

via The carbon casino caught with its pants down (again) « JoNova.