A nuclear (atomic) bomb explosion in 1953, 1 millisecond after the detonation. Those fingers at the bottom are the support steel cables vapourising. Amazing.

Saw the doc this morning. The problem is the C6 vertebra in my neck, it’s not my shoulder. The pain in my shoulder and arm is just from the pinched nerve in my neck.

So, oxycontin for the moment, and a referral to the orthopedic surgeon I saw last year. Luckily I have the MRI he did at the time, so we can see what the problem is.

BUT — I phoned for an appointment – 11 June. A month to wait. They know I’m in severe pain but I just have to join the queue and wait. This is not satisfactory. The oxycontin is helping, but not enough. It’s still hurting and it makes me drowsy. I may have to ask for another specialist who can see me sooner. It’s wrong that the number of specialists is artificially limited by the medical mafia so that they all have long waiting lists.

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More on Maurice Newman’s crazy conspiracy ideas.

“Maurice Newman, writing in the Australian newspaper yesterday [Friday]maintains it’s all a United Nations conspiracy, a power grab of massive proportions.

” ‘This is not about facts or logic’, he wrote, ‘It’s about a new world order under the control of the UN.

” ‘It is opposed to capitalism and freedom and has made environmental catastrophism a household topic to achieve its objective.’ ”

“Newman claims that 95% of the climate models that we’re told prove the link between human emissions and global warming have been found to be in error.” In his article he targets Christiana Figuerres, executive secretary of the UN’s Framework on Climate Change.

“Newman says there is a real chance Figuerres and those share her centralised power ambitions will succeed.”

He raves on about Australia having to accept emissions targets that are futile and are job destroying, etc etc.

This is sheer lunacy. The warning signs told to us by reputable scientists are the result of decades of careful scientific research. They are peer reviewed, looking for errors and only published when found to be accurate and credible. The researchers are PhD level scientists with decades of learning and research experience behind them to back their papers up.

Newman has no scientific credentials at all. Yet he feels qualified to pronounce that 95% of the research predictions are wrong. How can he say this? Where’s his research? What are his credentials.

Yet he was appointed by our climate change denier PM to write a report on climate change for the government. Words nearly fail me. This is lunacy.

To cap it off, that fine, ultra right wing conservative Senator Cory Bernardi has written in Saturday’s Australian that Newman is right and should be applauded. This is the same guy who said homosexuality leads to bestiality.

How do these idiots get elected?

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again. I believe the science about global climate change and the need to cut our CO2 emissions to zero if possible. To do so, we may have to spend a great deal of money.

If the climate change deniers like Newman and Abbott and Bernardi are right and global warming is not a problem, we will have spent a great deal of money but not for nothing. A huge amount of new technology will have been created (it’s happening right now) and many many jobs will have been created to build all the new equipment to generate zero emissions power. If I’m wrong, the money we spend will not be wasted, by any stretch. Australia is very good at producing high tech solutions and making clever stuff. Look at the Carnegie wave power generators at Cockburn Sound that I mentioned a few weeks ago as one example.

But if the climate change deniers like Newman and Abbott and Bernardi are wrong, and we stop development of clean power technology and rely on the old stuff like coal fired powered generation and oil and gas burning to pump out all those megatons of CO2, the dmage will be very obvious, but importantly, irreversible.

There will be no, “Oops, sorry, got it wrong, let’s fix it.” The damage will not be fixable. The earth’s temperature will continue to rise beyond 2degC and people will start dying, either from heat stress (it happens now) or flooding. Maybe not around Newman’s North Shore mansion or Abbott’s little places in Canberra and Kirribilli, orat Bernardi’s mansion in Perth. but in places like Bangladesh and the Philippines and Vanu Atu and Fiji which will be drowning under sea levels rises of 2m, 4m or more. People will die as a direct result of these idiots putting spurious obstacles in the way of decent people.

I despair, I really do. This will happen around 2040 onwards. I probably won’t be around to see it, but I’d like to take thsese guys by the neck and say, “Look! See what you’ve done? Now fix it.”

I’m going to start writing letters to Abbott and Bernardi – it’s all I can do. Apart from writing this stuff here, which no-one reads.

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Meanwhile, I’m going to continue to buy cameras. Why? Because I can, because I enjoy it, because the cameras being produced these days are just abso-bloody-lutely marvellous.

I bought another one last week:

Why? Big sensor (1 inch diagonal); beautiful Leica 25mm – 400mm zoom lens; shoots 20Mpixel images (my highest resolution so far of all my cameras); shoots video, not just Full HD video but 4K video.

It’s the perfect travel camera. Top quality images, far better than yer little point and shoot happy snapper toy cameras, and absolutely top quality video as well. No need to fiddle with anything, just press the red button.

The one on the left is the Sony RX10 and I’ve got that too, just like in this shot. Why both? Because I want both and I can, so there.

But with all the medical problems I’m having (neck nerve pinching, diabetes, leg ulceration, and more) I’m afraid travel is off the agenda at the moment. I was thinking of Bali at the end of this month, but it’s lucky I didn’t book as there’s no way I can travel at the moment.

Next purchase? A new 4K computer monitor by LG, so that I can look at and edit my 4K video in all its glory. I’ve shot a little bit so far and it sparkles.