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Fort Lauderdale, is where we were to embark on an Eastern Caribbean Cruise. Here I realised that I'd been a bit too critical of Miami, that had begun to grow on me. Perhaps it was fungal? Fort Lauderdale was my new new bête noire.
Despite the apparent green, much of Fort Lauderdale is an urban desert. We didn't have a car and it's not pleasant to walk around.
But very shortly we would be on the boat.
In July and August 2023 Wendy and I travelled to the United States again after a six-year gap. Back in 2007 we visited the east coast and west coast and in 2017 we visited 'the middle bits', travelling down from Chicago via Memphis to New Orleans then west across Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and California on our way home.
So, this time we went north from Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington, and then into Canada. From Vancouver we travelled by car, over the Rockies, then flew east to Toronto where we hired a car to travel to Ottawa and Montreal. Our next flight was all the way down to Miami, Florida, then to Fort Lauderdale, where we joined a western Caribbean cruise. At the end of the cruise, we flew all the way back up to Boston.
Seems crazy but that was the most economical option. From Boston we hired another car to drive, down the coast, to New York. After New York we flew to Salt Lake City then on to Los Angeles, before returning to OZ.
As usual, save for a couple of hotels and the cars, Wendy did all the booking.
Breakfast in the Qantas lounge on our way to Seattle
Wendy likes to use two devices at once
This is a little exercise in creative writing. The brief was to reimagine the Three Pigs from a different perspective. The original is a parable about the virtues of forward thinking, providence and hard work, so that only the most abstemious pig survives the metaphorical wolf. I thought it was a bit tough on the middle pig who is just trying to find a balance between work and play. So here is my version:
I originally wrote the paper, Issues Arising from the Greenhouse Hypothesis, in 1990 and do not see a need to revise it substantially. Some of the science is better defined and there have been some minor changes in some of the projections; but otherwise little has changed.
In the Introduction to the 2006 update to that paper I wrote:
Climate change has wide ranging implications... ranging from its impacts on agriculture (through drought, floods, water availability, land degradation and carbon credits) mining (by limiting markets for coal and minerals processing) manufacturing and transport (through energy costs) to property damage resulting from storms.
The issues are complex, ranging from disputes about the impact of human activities on global warming, to arguments about what should be done and the consequences of the various actions proposed.