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Unfortunately, John Howard was not in the House when Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage and Water, Anthony Albanese, gave the following solution for reducing greenhouse emissions, speaking in Federal Parliament on Wednesday:

Climate change is real and the threat of dangerous climate change is also real. What Labor would do is cut Australia’s greenhouse pollution by 60 per cent by 2050. We know that, if you have a target, it is like a one-day cricket target: you do not bat out the first 30 overs; you send out Adam Gilchrist to get some runs on the board early because it makes it easy to get to the target later on. That is what the business council’s Global Roundtable on Climate Change has said.

As Justin Langer’s aspirations of a 500 lead before winning the Fifth Test disappear beneath the covers, here are some useful links at the Met Office:

• Rainfall radar map
• Satellite image (visual)
• Satellite image (infrared)

That’s a nifty little low pressure down in the Bay of Biscay…

Oh, and they also have this alert issued at 8.03am:

Heavy Rain
Affecting Bracknell Forest, Gtr London, Kent, Medway, Oxfordshire, Reading, Slough, Surrey, W Berkshire, Windsor + Maidenhead & Wokingham
Outbreaks of heavy rain already affecting some areas, and thundery showers developing elsewhere, will produce some torrential downpours at times today, with a 40 percent chance of any one place seeing the heaviest downpours. Standing water and spray, with sudden reductions in visibility, will lead to dangerous driving conditions and a risk of localised flooding. The warning will be reviewed late morning and may be extended.

Issued by Met Office.

Cricket hotel hits rare thrasher for six
(BirdLife International, 22.4.05)

Blame the 2007 CWC. A hotel development in St Lucia, which will host Group 3 of the first stage of the 2007 tournament (New Zealand, England, Kenya and a qualifier) could, according to an Environmental Impact Assessment, wipe out a quarter of the world’s population of the White-breasted thrasher.

The lime tree inside the boundary at St Lawrence’s Ground, Canterbury is no more.

The 290 year-old tree, which was expected to have to come down in the near future, was blown over during wild storms on Friday. According to today’s Telegraph, the Kent CCC is yet to decide whether to replace it with a sapling planted by the late Jim Swanton in 1999, or to have a boring old tree-less outfield the same as everyone else. At least we still have the VRA Ground in Amstelveen for arborial diversity.

There’s a rather sad-looking photo of the stump on the Kent CCC website.

Photos of the tree in happier days, taken when Dianne and I visited the ground on the occasion of a women’s one-day international in June 2000, can be found here.