Climate change and mosquito borne pathogens and parasites

Over recent months, much of the media commentary has been focussed on the Zika virus (transmitted by mosquito bites) and its potential to affect the Olympic Games to be held in Rio de Janeiro between 5th and 21st August 2016.  The increasing risk of serious vector-borne disease is much greater that most periodic media reports would suggest and more so with the increasing impact of climate change. The main risks, which to a limited extent, are already realised involve pathogens and parasites such as Malaria and Dengue fever (from Mosquitoes), Sandfly fever and Leishmaniasis (from Sand Flies) and Lyme Disease and Encephalitis (from Ticks) all of which have the potential to have an expanded geographic range due to warmer weather. The increased temperatures enable the transmitting insects to travel further afield than is currently the case moving into areas that previously were free of disease. Dengue fever, for example, is found in a band between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn and not fully across the entire region. Warmer weather will enable this range to expand in both North and South latitudes. Dengue cases have already been increasing from 0.5m in 1990 to almost 2.7M by 2013. The projected increase in future years is 12-18% by 2030 and vaccines are only in the very early stages of developmnent. Malaria has now been detected in higher altitude regions of Papua New Guina where there was no previous exposure. Public health authorities have only just started to grasp the scale of this on-the-horizon issue and the threat to health may yet prove to have a significant impact on outdoor living activities.

Film Review - Brooklyn

Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) in Brooklyn

Brooklyn attracted three Academy Award nominations this year for Best Picture, Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Adapted Screenplay. Although ultimately unsuccessful in the Awards, it's easy to see why this film attracted the attention of the film industry and the viewing public with its themes of identity, discovery, loss and relationships at many levels. A period drama set in the early 1950s the film traverses between Ireland and North America following the journey of a young Irish woman, Eilis Lacey as she seeks a new future in Brooklyn, New York, far from her home in the little town of Enniscorthy in southeast Ireland.

Eilis' older sister, Rose Lacey (Fiona Glascott) wants a better future for her younger sister and arranges for Eilis to migrate to the United States following a well worn sea journey travelled by many Irish to America. Arrangements for employment and a place to stay at a Boarding house in Brooklyn have already been made courtesy of the local Catholic priest in Brooklyn (Father Flood) so Eilis finds herself in a new life albeit suffering terribly from homesickness. A budding relationship with local boy and plumber, Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen) and part-time college studies cements her acceptance of the new place and culture. However the old life in Ireland is not far away and the sudden death of Rose forces her to return to Ireland to comfort her grieving mother.

This is a competent, well-paced and executed film demonstrating that the art of storytelling does not require reliance on high-end CGI effects and extraordinary $100m+ budgets in order to delivery a quality piece of entertainment.  Shot on location in both Enniscorthy, Ireland and New York City with additional locations in Dublin and Montreal in Canada, the film effectively conveys the context and atmosphere of the era, the two different societies which Eilis must negotiate and the juxtaposition of the old world with a new one.  The screenplay was written by Nick Hornby, directed by John Crowley and the supporting cast includes veterans such as Julie Walters (as Madge Kehoe, the Boarding House landlady) and Jim Broadbent (as the Catholic priest, Father Flood).

Film Review - Star Wars Episode VII - the J J Abrams version

The new villians - Kylo Ren and Storm Troopers from the First Order

As Star Wars VII The Force Awakens finishes its cinema run, Star Wars VIII is already in production continuing a substantial film franchise established by George Lucas in 1977 when Star Wars Episode IV was released. Since Disney bought LucasFilm in 2012 for $4.06B there is a new Star Wars owner bringing some changes to the overall method of storytelling most notably with the appointment of Director J J Abrams to continue the series.

The story picks up thirty years into the future and introduces a new generation of characters and reintroduces old favourites. New characters are Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscvar Isaacc). Old favourites such as Hans Solo (Harrison Ford), Princess [now General] Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), the androids R2D2 and C3PO and the wookie, Chewbacca also return.  The Empire is gone along with Darth Vader, the Emperor and the Death Star however the remnants have regrouped as the 'First Order' aligned with the Dark Side of the Force. A fledgling Republic is re-established which supports the ongoing Rebellion Forces (its not clear why the forces are still termed as 'rebels' at all) and continues to be threatened by the ambition of the First Order.

As the First Order gains strength and threatens to topple the re-established Republic, the new quest is to search and find the remaining Jedi Knight and Rebel leader Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) who has gone into seclusion many years previously.  

As with many Abrams efforts there is a strong reliance on instantaneous gratification and unyielding, almost continuous action. Subtlety and development of plot are missing and key elements of back story to give context are not mentioned. Whereas in the original first three films, Luke Skywalker needed tuition and training from Jedi masters such as Yoda to handle a light sabre and  develop a connection to the mystical 'Force', the new heroine Rey, just picks up a light sabre and starts combat with no training at all.  Many characters are very stereotypical and more so than the original Lucas versions - there is the remorseful Stormtrooper, Finn, who deserts his Division and reluctantly joins the Rebel forces; the young female heroine, Rey, a scavenger outcast who has some latent powers of the Force and can immediately use Luke Skywalker's own light sabre; and the X-Wing fighter pilot, Poe who is reminiscent of a younger Hans Solo of sorts (Hans Solo was an contrary-hero figure in the first film).

This is a film well pitched at a Gen Y audience, easily digestible, predictable and with few surprises. Familiar motifs, images and settings abound grounding this film strongly with the previous six films. Of interest, the forward planning is to proceed to Star Wars IX for release in 2019.

Shareholder activism - who is running the agenda ?

Traditionally when reading and hearing about shareholder activism, images of small shareholder groups, retirees and mum and dad investors petitioning company executives at Annual General Meetings has been the most likely image. The 'activism' landscape has now substantially changed however and shareholder activism now encompasses a much wider definition of participants.

Overseas giant mutual and exchange traded funds have been backing activist hedge funds exerting pressure on publicly listed companies by aggressively calling for change - the ultimate goal to force greater effort to unlock shareholder value and to shake up complacent boards. Current estimates of the amount of funds invested in activist funds in the United States are over $300 billion and the old model of passive asset managers has started to disappear. This is a trend which has not really materialised in Australia with the opposite being more likely than not - characterised by the top ten shareholder groups (usually financial institutions, trustee corporations or investment funds) in ASX listed companies being extremely reluctant to take a position unless absolutely forced.  The question which now is being asked in financial circles is whether this is an ongoing structural trend or merely a cyclical response to a low-growth, low return financial environment. If a structural trend is underway this reveals a major shift in influence as shareholders are clearly demanding a greater active say in corporate strategy than previous decades. Confidence in many boards of listed companies has taken a major fall in recent years due to perceptions that change is not being implemented fast enough. Will Australia join this trend ? Given current shareholder activity, there is a high chance a similar picture, albeit on a smaller scale, will evolve here.

The fragility of life - are the aliens dead ?

Figure 1: Scenarios A) B) and C)

Despite the realisation that there are literally billions of stars, exoplanets, planets and other celestial bodies in the Universe, the perplexing reality is that proof of life on other planets has been impossible to obtain despite decades of effort. Programs such as SETI and observational work through telescopes (Hubble, Spitzer, Kepler and in the future TESS and James Webb) has done little to establish the existence of life on another planet. 

Chopra and Lineweaver, in a controversial paper, have proposed a Gaian bottleneck theory to explain the low or non-existence of life while making the telling observation that archaeological excavations have not unearthed alien spaceships and optical and radio searches for extraterresttrial intelligence have not been successful.

The Gaia hypothesis, (theory or principle), contends that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a self-regulating complex system that plays a critical role in maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. Within this paradigm are key components such as the way in which the biosphere and the evolution of life forms affect the stability of global climate, ocean salinity, oxygen in the atmosphere and other environmental variables that affect the habitability of the planet.

According to Chopra and Lineweaver, a Gaian bottleneck exists whereby if life emerges on a planet, it only rarely evolves quickly enough to provide activities which regulate greenhouse gases and albedo, thereby maintaining surface temperatures compatible with liquid water and habitability. This bottleneck theory therefore suggests that first, extinction is the cosmic default for most life on the surfaces of wet rocky planets and second, rocky planets need to be inhabited to remain habitable. Almost a Catch 22 situation.

The emergence of life's ability to modify its environment and regulate initially abiotic feedback mechanisms is termed 'Gaian regulation'. As far as Chopra and Linewear are concerned, without rapid  evolution of Gaian regulation, early extinction would be the most common outcome for planetary life. As continuing efforts are made to search the universe to locate and identify life, the Gaian bottleneck model suggests 'that the vast majority of fossils in the Universe will be from extinct microbial life.'

Three scenarious are shown in Fig 1 above - A) Emergence bottleneck, life rarely emerges even on rocky wet planets; B) No bottleneck, life emerges with high probability and lasts for billions of years; C) Gaian bottleneck, life emerges but goes extinct within a billion years.

So, the chances of finding any form of life, under this model is close to zero and what evidence may be found will have long been dead. 

Chopra and Lineweaver's paper can be accessed here:

The Case for a Gaian Bottleneck: The Biology of Habitability

Gas and dust form planetary disks - formation - image courtesy NASA

The value of National Parks - a timeless heritage

Dove Lake, Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park, Australia (c) SO

National Parks, those precious territories of conservation, can be found world-wide across Africa, Asia, South America and Europe but they originated in just two countries - the United States and Australia. The first national park to be proclaimed was Yellowstone in the US in 1872, the second being the Royal National Park in Australia in 1879. Since then the concept has been introduced across the world but with vastly differing results and often severely challenged by land use conflict for human activity.

Australia now has over 500 national parks with over 28 million hectares of land designated as national parkland accounting for almost four per cent of Australia's land areas. A further six per cent of Australia is protected under various land categories such as state forests, nature parks and conservation reserves.

As at 2015, Australia has 19 World Heritage areas, a number of which also encompass national parks. Tthe United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) lists areas and structures as World Heritage when they are deemed worthy of special protection due to representing the best examples of the world's cultural and natural heritage. It's something of a mixed blessing for a number of World Heritage sites have also been lost due to war and religious conflict demonstrating that protection was little more than a theoretical concept. 

The key World Heritage sites in Australia with a nature significance are listed below:

• Great Barrier Reef (inscribed 1981)
• Kakadu National Park (inscribed 1981)
• Willandra Lakes Region (inscribed 1981)
• Lord How Island Group (inscribed 1982)
• Tasmanian Wilderness (inscribed 1982)
• Gondwana Rainforests of Australia (inscribed 1986)
• Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park (inscribed 1987)
• Shark Bay (inscribed 1991)
• Fraser Island (inscribed 1992)
• Australian Folssil Mammal Sites (Riversleigh, Naracoote) (inscribed 1994)
• Heard and McDonald Island (inscribed 1997)
• Macquarie Island (inscribed 1997)
• Greater Blue Mountains Area (inscribed 2000)
• Purnululu National Park (inscribed 2003)
• Ningaloo Coast (inscribed 2011)

The key challenge is matching conservation with public access for it's becoming more apparent that its possible for national parks to become too popular leading to large volumes of people traversing the fragile ecosystems and habitats with resultant degradation of the natural environment.

Freycinet National Park, Australia (c) Sentinel Owl

New Year 2016 - Where the World currently sits

Happy New Year

2016 will arrive in 12 days time and with the new year, where does the world currently stand ?

Economies: the United States economy is recovering from the GFC whereas Europe remains in negative territory with no immediate sign of improvement and a continuing debt problem for Greece. China's economy is slowing to single digit growth rates rather than double digit which has been the yardstick for the past several years. The mining boom is over in Australia and structural adjustment to the new investing environment remain elusive. Despite cutting the cash rate to 2% with a forecast to further cut to 1.5%, there is little sign of increased investing by the business sector. The Reserve Bank of Australia's key tool of economic leverage is therefore something of phantom which only affects housing prices in Sydney and Melbourne but does little to stimulate consumer spending or business investment. Consumer spending is influenced by the overall economic outlook and jobs sentiment.

International relations: the Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan conflicts continue to grind-on with Daesh, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and affiliated groups in Africa and Asia continuing to engage in armed conflict and terrorism. There are few signs, despite various pronouncements and UN Security Council resolution on Syria, of these conflicts ending in the near future. Closer to Australia, tension remains in the South China Sea with the Chinese Government building naval bases on the Spratly Islands, particularly Johnson South Reef and Fiery Cross Reef. This has led to strong diplomatic pressure from the Philippines, Japan and the United States (with some marginal statements from Australia).

Environment: the COP21 Agreement from the Paris Conference for managing climate change and  reducing CO2 emissions to keep temperature rise below 2 degrees C and possibly as low as 1.5 degrees C is high in ambition but short in capability and capacity. Many of the nations who are parties to the Agreement but are also developing industrial powers (India notably) are not, as yet, able to reign-in their energy reliance on the largest contributor, coal fired generators. Even if there was immediate action to remedy the situation the high risk of cascading effects from the existing temperature rise is very real with continuing collapse of ice sheets and permafrost melting across the upper Northern Hemisphere.

So with these large picture challenges in mind, Happy New Year !