RCCMS Meeting Report 8 March 2016
Reporter: Warwick Cavell
Opening:
The meeting was opened by the Chair, Michael Wells, with a toast to Rotary International.
There were no visiting Rotarians.
President George welcomed the speaker Professor Michael Buxton and guest Stuart Taylor, son of Neville Taylor.
Club Announcements:
Frank O’Brien reminded the club that the joint Echuca-Moama/RCCMS lunch will be held on Sunday 20 March at the Tooborac Hotel and encouraged members to support this event.
Herb Greenwood reminded the club of the upcoming fundraising wine event to be held on 16 April.
Directors Report
Peter Duras, Community Chair reported on the following matters:
- The Rotary Rest Centre at White Night – 20 & 21 Feb. A very successful event well planned by Neil Salvano and ably assisted by Rotarians and friends from Kew, Melbourne Park and Rotaract. Serving 2,600 cups of tea and coffee.
- Royal Talbot Working Bee 27 Feb. A highly productive Working Bee – a wonderful project with a great history.
- McAuley House. Graffiti painted out and some storm damage repaired. Arranged for the delivery of excess bread from the Farmers’ Market.
- Caprice Donations. Working with International we have made 2 pickups of donations from Caprice in South Melbourne. Caprice thanked for their ongoing generosity.
- Lentara. Sam Sondhu, is keen for our club to resume our mentoring program, possibly with their members who are assisting with the Farmers’ Market.
The next two months will also be focussed on building a sawbuck for Camp Getaway, investigating the future of our alliance with Youth Projects in Hosier Lane, publicising the Mens’ Shed and planning the next IFTAR Dinner in June or July.
Presenter Talk:
Tony Thomas presented on the topic of “The Evidence of Climate Change”.
The main thrust of Tony’s concise and informative presentation was that, data claiming 2015 to be the hottest year on record was, at best, dubious. Tony advised that there is much conflicting data on climate change and that some of the data is simply ‘made up’. He pointed out that, in fact, the data from the RSS Satellites indicates a warming halt over the last 19 years. This area of ‘science’, according to Tony, is an area subject to distortion to meet a political agenda. He presented a number of graphs and other data to support his points indicating that if the data does not fit the main hypothesis of climate change the data is adjusted until it does.
The last word presented by Tony on this matter came from the Editorial in The Washington Times last Friday under the heading of “The Doctored Science of Global Warming”.
“Science must be free from pressure to validate political goals. If findings and measurements are altered to serve a political agenda, the findings are flawed. It’s called fraud, and should be punished…If administration officials are colluding with scientists to cook evidence to demonstrate that the planet is warming, the skeptics deserve everyone’s thanks”.
Guest Speaker:
Michael Buxton (Professor of Environment and Planning at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University) was introduced to the club and provided a most informative presentation on the topic of “Future Proofing Melbourne”. The presentation was particularly well-received and generated much discussion.
Michael pointed out that we are going through a period of ‘rapid fundamental change’ and despite such events occurring in the past Governments seem not to learn the lessons.
Governments fail to understand and deal with the very nature of change, despite there being well-established patterns. Change is non-linear and but is cumulative, often starting slowly until it reaches a threshold or tipping point from which it accelerates rapidly. Michael gave the example of soil moisture levels to demonstrate his point.
The time to plan for and deal with change, most efficiently and effectively, is in its early stages and not when it reaches this threshold or tipping point. We seem to be very poor at understanding and anticipating this. He believes that this inability has made a significant contribution to the downfall of civilizations, throughout history.
He talked about such change in the context of Melbourne growing from a four-million-people city to an eight-million-people city. He firstly made the point that Melbourne is already a large city – there are very few cities in Europe with four million people e.g. Berlin is a city of only three million. Then to grow to eight million presents a whole range of challenges, particularly for governments not structured to deal with and anticipate change as outlined above.
Our challenge, if Melbourne is to successfully grow to an eight-million-people city, is to identify and plan to deal with change in its early stages before it reaches threshold levels.
He specifically commented on:
- The need for quality public transport (and how far behind our current infrastructure and thinking is behind what is required).
- Protecting our heritage.
- The poor quality of much of our recent stock of high rise apartments.
- Social mix – a city is not only about physical factors but also such things jobs in outer urban regions and how these areas function.
He challenged us to think about the question: How will Melbourne, as a city of eight million people, function as a ‘system’?
Closure:
President George closed the meeting by thanking the guest, Stuart, as well as thanking the guest speaker. Light up Rotary.
