LABOR REBOUNDS
Tim Blair – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (05:31 am)
Julia Gillard’s carbonites score a huge poll swing:
Tony Abbott’s approval rating has plunged to a record low 33 per cent and the Gillard Government leads the Coalition for the first time this year, according to today’s Newspoll.
In a dramatic turnaround from Labor’s worst-ever opinion poll figures just two weeks ago, the ALP has picked up votes from the Coalition and the Greens to post a six point jump in primary support to 36 per cent.
The Coalition’s primary vote fell five points to 40 per cent and the Greens dropped three points to 12 per cent.
2011 just became yet more interesting.
UPDATE. If Kristina Keneally’s father was running for office in NSW, he might just win:
He doesn’t believe in global warming and is vehemently opposed to any carbon tax.
FEAR OF THE KNOWN
Tim Blair – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (05:26 am)
Besides being clean, modern, reliable and cool, there’s one other good reason to begin an immediate nuclear energy program in Australia.
It might educate people about nuclear power and stop everyone screaming like children when they hear the word “radiation”.
SINGER’S SONG
Tim Blair – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (04:11 am)
The Herald Sun‘s Jill Singer takes me down a peg or two. She uses Don McLean lyrics to do so, which is probably unique in the history of climate debate.
(The general theme of Singer’s piece is matters about which one has changed one’s mind. Jill’s an expert.)
469 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S INFANTILISATION TAX
Tim Blair – Monday, March 21, 11 (11:25 pm)
Gippsland Trades and Labour Council secretary John Parker welcomes proposals for massive carbon tax compensation:
“In reality what it means is that the tax payers don’t actually pay anything for the carbon tax,” Mr Parker said.
So, what’s the point of the tax then? Wasn’t it meant to alter behaviour? Oh, but it will. Julia Gillard explains:
In the consumer end, where there will be some price impacts, people will be standing there in the supermarket with the household assistance in their hand. As a result of pricing carbon pollution, some products will be relatively more expensive. Products that have less embedded carbon pollution will be relatively cheaper. Now, people can go in and keep on buying the same old products, or they can respond to those price signals, buy the things that are relatively cheaper with less carbon pollution in them and send a signal back to business ‘you know what, consumers like to buy things with less carbon pollution in them’, and businesses will respond to that price signal, too.
Ms Gillard is re-writing our shopping lists. This sounds half patronising and half Soviet Union. Next, the Prime Minister is asked:
HOST: And assuming that that all works, there’s then the issue of what will all this actually achieve? If the argument that Australia’s emissions are only about 1.5 per cent of global emissions, and the 2020 aim is to reduce our emissions by 5 per cent. Now I’m not sure what 5 per cent of 1.5 per cent is, but I’m sure it’s not a lot. What’s the point of this whole thing? That’s what a lot of people are asking.
Gillard’s response? The per-capita lie:
PM: Well, the point of this whole thing is to say to ourselves the truth, which is we are big emitters of carbon pollution by world standards. Per capita, per head of population, we are the biggest emitters of carbon pollution in the developed world.
That’s the best she’s got. And it’s wrong.
OLD GILL
Tim Blair – Monday, March 21, 11 (01:58 pm)
Fairfax executive Michael Gill denies reports that he’ll be replaced by someone from News Ltd:
The interviewer – some kind of advertising limey, I think; Sydney is full of them – shares Gill’s dismissive view. Then, this morning, Gill was replaced by someone from News Ltd.
UPDATE. From the source of that video:
When Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes put rumours of his imminent departure to Gill in a video interview last week, he cast doubts on them.
So did Burrowes.
WATER MAGIC
Tim Blair – Monday, March 21, 11 (01:53 pm)
There is now twice as much water in Sydney’s dams as there was following Tim Flannery’s spectacular deluge-bringing 2007 no-water prediction:
Those upswings in the catchment level … they almost look like little hockey sticks.
SLOW KIDS
Tim Blair – Monday, March 21, 11 (12:32 pm)
An excellent column by the Guardian‘s Victoria Coren:
It is only a certain percentage of children who will ever have their imaginations captured by Shakespeare, algebra and foreign languages. The mistake, in a previous generation, was to privilege these disciplines above metalwork, carpentry and cookery. Our elders decided that it was insulting to the “less bright” kids to teach them “trades” instead of Hamlet.
But it isn’t at all. Some children’s brains come alive for practical or visual skills, some for flights of mental fancy; you don’t need to define them as more or less “clever”. Learning anything, whether speaking French or making a table, is beautiful for its own sake. We once had a system that identified whether children excelled at physical or verbal creativity, respected both and weighted their education accordingly. Abandoning that system was both patronising and short-sighted. It was a decision taken by those who had shone in written exams themselves, but couldn’t hammer a nail to save their lives.
Bookish types are especially entertaining around cars. A friend of mine, an award-winning writer, once drove across several US states before she realised that her rental car had an overdrive gear. I know of an academic who hired a Prius and even after driving it for some days believed that it could be recharged via a plug. Another friend, easily a genius by any verbal or written measure, once topped up his engine oil. I mean, right to the top. It took gallons. More from Coren:
I had a plumber round here the other day, talking about his disappointing son.
“He’s a bit slow,” the plumber revealed. “He could never make it in plumbing. I once left him to drill six holes in a wall. Came back an hour later, he hadn’t even managed one of them. Poor lad, he isn’t the smartest.”
“What does he do now?” I asked.
“He works for the civil service,” said the plumber, sadly.
UPDATE. Coren also makes sense about shoes:
 41 comments | Permalink |
HERE COMES THE OXY MAN
Tim Blair – Monday, March 21, 11 (12:25 pm)
Ice cream with benefits in NYC:
As Louis Scala drove through Staten Island in a Lickety Split ice cream truck, it was not just the children who eagerly awaited his arrival, officials said on Thursday. Mr. Scala also used the truck to sell oxycodone, a highly addictive prescription painkiller, to waiting addicts …
It would not be the first time ice cream trucks have been implicated in drug-selling schemes. Nor would it be the second.
It’s just wrong. Like cats with thumbs.
Christmas Island too dangerous for refugees
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (07:52 am)
Another boat arrives - and finds Christmas Island too tense for sanctuary:
A SECOND boatload of asylum seekers was on the way to the mainland last night as the government was forced to defend its processing policy for boat people.
Federal police officers in riot gear conducted the first headcount of people in Christmas Island’s main detention centre following riots and escapes.
The Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, said the latest batch of 57 boat people would still be processed as if they were offshore. ‘’Because of the place they were intercepted and the processing that will occur, that is what will happen,’’ he said.
Is this how to make an Australian movie?
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (07:04 am)
More millions thrown away:
It proved to be a disastrous weekend at the box office as three Australian films - Griff the Invisible, The Reef and A Heartbeat Away - failed dismally to connect with local audiences.
Of the three, Griff the Invisible did best, taking a modest $66,344 on 20 screens… The Reef did poorly with its $58,196 take on 36 screens, its per-screen figure of $1617 indicating very little interest.
Worst of all, though, was A Heartbeat Away. The $7 million film directed by first-time film director Gale Edwards took a dire $44,204 on 77 screens, its abysmal screen average of $574 being among the worst of any Australian film in recent memory…
Set in a coastal town, the tale involves a teenage garage band guitarist who takes charge of the local brass band while the community battles an evil property developer. The film fails in almost every conceivable regard, was pummelled by critics and presently has a 0% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes movie website. It certainly should not have been released
And who funded it?
It was funded by Screen Australia, Screen Queensland, Cutting Edge, Quickfire Films and distributor Hoyts.
From the start, it seemed an amateurish approach, given $7 million of investment - much from taxpayers - hung on the result:
Originally titled Montague Municipal, the script was submitted by a Queensland Investment Corporation equities dealer, Julia Kincade, to an initiative set up by the PFTC and Pictures in Paradise to find new writers.
“New writers come up with fantastic ideas and they’re very open to changes, which I’m not sure more experienced writers are. The downside is that it can sometimes take a long time, because they’re not full-time writers and they’ve got other jobs,” said producer Chris Fitchett.
Two scripts from that scheme were soon made into films, Blurred in 2002 and Under the Radar in 2004, but the process for this one would be much slower. Chris Fitchett was working on the film as script editor with Brown producing, but both got distracted by other projects.
Policing families can be harder
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (06:55 am)
This is devastating for the family:
(No comments.)
Labor leads
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (06:49 am)
It’s true that Julia Gillard has attacked rather than cowered, and that those who don’t buckle will seem stronger. But I suspect this is a rogue poll that exaggerates the recovery:
TONY Abbott’s approval rating has plunged to a record low 33 per cent and the Gillard Government leads the Coalition for the first time this year, according to today’s Newspoll.
In a dramatic turnaround from Labor’s worst-ever opinion poll figures just two weeks ago, the ALP has picked up votes from the Coalition and the Greens to post a six point jump in primary support to 36 per cent.
The Coalition’s primary vote fell five points to 40 per cent and the Greens dropped three points to 12 per cent.
In two-party terms it was a massive 10-point turnaround to put Labor ahead 51 to 49 per cent - the first time it has been in front since November.
UPDATE
Essential Media puts the Coalition ahead, 53 to 47, although this takes in half the previous poll.
Rushing into Libya to do what they know not
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (06:33 am)
France, Britain and the US seem to have blundered into a war without thinking through what they will have to do to end it - and how some will now betray them:
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin Monday likened the U.N. Security Council resolution supporting military action in Libya to medieval calls for crusades....
“The resolution is defective and flawed,” Putin told workers at a Russian ballistic missile factory. “It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades.”
The Arab League is particularly treacherous, having appealled to the US to do its dirty work - which it now condemns:
-- Amr Moussa, secretary general of the Arab League, condemning the U.S.-led air assault on Libya
And what is to happen now? Will the US and its allies allow Gaddafi to stay in power, exposing them as toothless? How could Barack Obama permit that challenge to US authority when he’s demanded Gaddafi ”step down from power and leave”?
Or will the coalition simply lose steam?
But appearing on “FOX News Sunday” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated the promise that once the situation was stabilized, it would be European and Arab jets enforcing a no-fly zone.But the coalition is currently suffering from a lack of direction and waning support.
Turkey blocked a bid to have NATO take over command of the operation, called Odyssey Dawn. The Arab League, which helped spur a sudden shift in the Obama administration late last week by calling for a no-fly zone, is now expressing misgivings about the size and ferocity of the effort.
Media Watch overheats
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (05:21 am)
I have praised Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes in the past, but last night his global warming evangelism overwhelmed his judgement.
This was an almost entire episode of Media Watch dedicated to damning thought crimes against Holmes’ apocalyptic faith, with calls to regulate the wicked. It was illiberal, intemperate and at times absurdly reliant on argument from authority - with “authority” very loosely defined. It was also a smear.
For a start, it presented a string of factual statements by commercial radio presenters Holmes was criticising as self-evidently wrong (bracketing them with a mistake by Alan Jones) without ever attempting to contradict them:
But a great many people, all around the country, every day, listen to stuff like this…
Gary Hardgrave: I mean CO2 is not a, is not a pollutant though is it? It’s not pollution. It’s just a natural process...Sen. Doug Cameron:...now look again you, you must be on these…
Gary Hardgrave: Well no I just go back, Year 6 primary School taught me that CO2 was required for photosynthesis, so which kept the trees growing ...
—4BC Brisbane, Drive with Gary Hardgrave, 9th March, 2011
What we will be looking at is stuff like this…Jason Morrison: Now I have no doubt that the climate is a changing. Because I think it always changes. Just about every day it’s different. Over time it changes but as new evidence pops up it starts to cast further doubt over whether indeed it is us making that change happen.
— 2UE Sydney, Breakfast with Jason Morrison, 14th February, 2011
…
Sydney’s 2GB has two (Sceptics) out of four (presenters): breakfast host Alan Jones and afternoon host Chris Smith. Chris loves a bit of science too
Chris Smith: Out of our journey of one kilometre there are just 12 mm left, about a half an inch, just over a centimetre, that is the carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.
— MTR Melbourne, The Chris Smith Afternoon Show, 7th March, 2011
…
Perth’s 6PR - Drive host Howard Sattler. He likes a bit of maths too.
Howard Sattler: 0.038% as a fraction of what is in the atmosphere – that’s CO2 – that’s the carbon we’re talking about – 1/27th of 1%.
— 6PR Perth, Drive with Howard Sattler,14th March, 2011
If these statements are true, which they are, why does Holmes sneer at them? Why imply they are false?
Holmes’ thesis is that commercial stations have too many sceptics interviewing too many sceptical scientists. There is no balance.
Ironically, Holmes is guilty of the very bias he deplores (as is the ABC more widely) by taking as his own authority only preachers of his warmist faith. In fact, he advances as a guru of climate science a man with no formal training in it whatsoever, and quotes him making what is at best a highly dubious claim:
But one reason that people are so angry is that fewer and fewer believe that human-induced global warming is actually happening. And that’s while the actual scientific evidence, as the government’s adviser Professor Ross Garnaut said last week, shows that it’s happening more rapidly than the IPCC forecast just four years ago...
Garnaut is in fact an economist, and paid by the Government because he shares its faith that man is warming the planet dangerously.
In fact, Holmes misstated what Garnaut actually said - which was not that warming was increasing faster than what the IPCC had predicted, but that sea levels allegedly were. As Lenore Taylor, a fellow warmist, reported at the time:
Professor Garnaut said the latest evidence showed global temperatures rising as predicted and sea levels rising faster than forecast in the last intergovernmental report.
More seriously, Holmes fails to note that in the very week that Garnaut, an economist, claimed we had more reason to worry, a real climate scientist of world repute, John Christy, gave evidence in Washington that global warming was in fact just one third of what global warming models had predicted:
I have repeated that study for this testimony with data which now cover 32 years as shown above (1979-2010.) In an interesting result, the new underlying trend remains a modest +0.09 C/decade for the global tropospheric temperature, which is still only one third of the average rate the climate models project for the current era (+0.26°C/decade.)
There is no evidence of acceleration in this trend. This evidence strongly suggests that climate model simulations on average are simply too sensitive to increasing greenhouse gases and thus overstate the warming of the climate system ...
Why did Holmes prefer the evidence of economist to that of the climate scientist? Of the political player to the independent researcher?
It gets worse. When broadcasters cite sceptical scientists - each one of them with more relevant qualifications in the field of global warming than Garnaut - Holmes goes the smear, citing the insults of their worst and most vitriolic warmist critics rather than present any evidence that those criticisms are merited. Once again, you must just take Homes and his prefered scientists on trust:
Let’s ask Chris Smith. He’s certainly got no time for the people the Prime Minister listens to ...She said she knew who she’d rather have on her side, not Alan Jones, not Piers Akerman, not Andrew Bolt, but the CSIRO, The Australian Academy of Science, the Bureau of Meteorology, NASA, the National Atmospheric Administration, and every reputable climate change scientist in the world. Did you hear that?There was no mention of leading Australian scientists who question climate change including Professor Ian Plimer, Professor Bob Carter and Dr David Evans, among others. What, none of them are reputable now?
— 2GB Sydney, The Chris Smith Afternoon Show, 17th March, 2011
Ah, Professors Plimer and Carter.... Well Professors Plimer and Carter are both expert media performers; they’ve both written books highly critical of climate change science....
Here’s how Professor David Karoly, of the University of Melbourne’s School of Earth Sciences, describes Bob Carter’s book “Climate: The Counter-Consensus”:
it is a mixture of scientific facts with misinformation and misinterpretation, as well as outright errors, spun around a framework of personal opinion.— Professor David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne, 21st March, 2011
…
As for mining geologist Ian Plimer’s book Heaven and Earth, it’s been a best seller, but has been ferociously panned by his scientific peers...
In fact, Holmes is so busy smearing that he overlooks the real deceit that’s been perpetrated here - by Julia Gillard, who claimed that “every reputable climate change scientist in the world” supported her view on global warming. And Holmes’.
That statement is demonstrably false. On the list of reputable - indeed, leading - climate scientists on the more sceptical side are people of such eminence that not even Holmes could smear them.
And the real question then becomes: why are such scientists almost never interviewed on the ABC? Why did Holmes not even acknowledge their existence? Why this grotesquely unscientific attempt to characterise the debate as between scientists and charlatans:
Professor Andy Pitman of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales explained why he now declines requests from radio sceptics.
It would be like asking a cardiologist to respond to the well known theory that humans do not have a heart and cardiologists only claim we have a heart so they can make lots of money claiming to operate on them.
— Professor Andy Pitman, Climate Change Research Centre, UNSW, 17th March, 2011
To portray the debate like this is to deceive the viewers. In my opinion, it is not fair, accurate or even honest. But rather than challenge such extreme and plaining inaccurate views, Holmes now suggests the authorities force them onto commercial radio stations - to demand a “balance” that the ABC and Holmes himself does not provide:
As we’ve seen, there are requirements for accuracy and diversity of view in Code of Practice No 2 (by the regulator, ACMA)… Well, in my view, it shouldn’t need a government regulator to tell influential radio hosts to provide at least a modicum of balance on a subject as crucial as this. The stations should do it themselves.
This was not Holmes’ finest hour. And on a night in which Four Corners wildly hyped the Fukushima nuclear emergency, and Q&A mustered another Left-leaning panel on global warming, it was another evening of blatant bias from “our” ABC as well.
Four Corners gets a bad case of nuclear hysterics
Andrew Bolt – Tuesday, March 22, 11 (12:03 am)
The ABC’s Four Corners report last night on the Fukushima nuclear emergency was shock-jock television at its worst.
Every unqualified alarmist was given a free run to spread fear, and the few true nuclear experts were given little opportunity to speak and none to contradict the wildest scaremongering claims. Let;s go through the worst examples ... none of which were given with any attempt to balance them with the truth.
First, there’s Damon Moglen, director of Friends of the Earth’s climate and energy project, ex-Greenpeace and with no nuclear science training, giving a wildly unlikely hypothetical:
The problem there is, if that plutonium fuel is melting inside the core, if it’s being vented out or if an explosion were to break the containment open, we could have, and we have as much as a quarter of a ton of additional plutonium in that reactor, we could have radioactive releases containing plutonium, which would be just yet another horror to have to deal with...
Moglen, then gives another wild hypothetical involving a highly unlikely explosion, that’s long since been given a reassuring answer:
Again, a terrible decision to make, do we allow the reactor to heat up and potentially explode? Or do we start pumping seawater into the reactor, even though it destroys it as a reactor?
Reporter Quentin McDermott makes a scary claim with no attempt to quantify “large doses” actually received by the workers or assess the real health consequences:
Several workers were injured in the explosions, and others exposed to large doses of radiation.
In fact, here’s the International Atomic Energy Agency report, suggesting just one worker received a dose of radiation of any great concern:
Radiological Contamination
* 17 people (9 TEPCO employees, 8 subcontractor employees) suffered from deposition of radioactive material to their faces, but were not taken to the hospital because of low levels of exposure;
* One worker suffered from significant exposure during “vent work,” and was transported to an offsite center;
* 2 policemen who were exposed to radiation were decontaminated; and
* Firemen who were exposed to radiation are under investigation.
Today, the World Nuclear Association adds:
According to the Research Organisation for Information Science and Technology, a typical person in Japan receives an average radiation dose of about 3750 microsieverts per year. Some 60% of this is voluntarily received from medical procedures - such as X-rays and CT scans. A CT scan of the chest can contribute some 7000 microsieverts, according to Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT).
A nuclear worker by contrast is allowed to receive a dose of up to 20,000 microsieverts per year, although in practice they often receive very much less. In emergency situations it is acceptable for workers to receive up to 100,000 microsieverts. Below this it is statistically difficult to connect radiation dose to cancer rates, but above this the relationship starts to become apparent. An exception has been made in the current crisis to allow emergency workers to receive exposures up to 250,000 microsieverts. Only one worker involved in a steam venting operation some days ago has been confirmed to have received more than the 100,000 microsievert level.
McDermott then tries for a hypothetical, using a scenario that didn’t occur, involving workers taking risks against which they seemed actually protected:
QUENTIN MCDERMOTT: The concern being expressed was that a core group of workers still on site - working in shifts of 50 - could develop acute radiation sickness. If these crews are working there for hours on end, how bad could that be?
PETER BURNS: Well I believe the 400 millisieverts lasted for a short period of time as there was a release from reactor 4, but- so it didn’t continue at that level for a long period of time. But if you worked for several hours at that level then you would get to big doses of one sievert or above which would start to cause acute radiation syndrome and you’d have, yeah nausea, vomiting, and these sort of effects and leading to reddening of the skin, hair falling out and also compromising your immune system.
Except it seems that none of the above actually happened.
Dave Sweeney, an Australian Conservation Foundation anti-nukes activist with no qualifications in nuclear science bobs up to make several wild claims, most involving hypotheticals:
Personally I feel a great sense of sorrow and empathy when you see those pictures of little kids having Geiger counters run over them. That might count what’s on the outside; what it doesn’t count is what’s on the inside, what’s been inhaled, what’s been ingested, if any particles are sitting in a kid’s lung or a kid’s thyroid.
In fact there is zero evidence of any child having received a dose of any health concern, according to the IAEA, Further, thyroid cancer, while nasty, is treatable and there is no evidence that even the infinitely greater contamination at Chernobyl caused a single case of lung cancer.
Then we get Richard Tanter, a former activist and professor of international relations whose actual qualifications are in sociology and political science (again not disclosed):
And you really don’t know where it could stop. The worst thing obviously is the equivalent of a dirty bomb of one of the reactors physically exploding and dispersing as radioactive particles.
“Dirty bomb”? Reactors “exploding”? Extremely unlikely, say the real nuclear experts. At the very worst, a hydogren explosion from the venting gas may have cracked a reactor - but none did.
Richard Broinowski, a former diplomat and now Adjunct Professor in Sydney University’s Department of Media and Communications, adds his own uninformed comments on a subject in which he has no formal training, and declares the Fukushima workers as good as dead already:
They’re going to die, many of them I think are probably sacrificing their lives.
See again the casualty list above. Broinowski is wrong.
But Professor Heinz Luegenbiehl is produced as a corroborating witness, and you might assume it’s because he’s a nuclear expert, unlike Broinowski:
You know we didn’t have kamikazes in the West, okay. What is a kamikaze pilot except someone who sacrifices himself for the good of the nation. He is committing suicide for the greater good, okay. So I’m not surprised that we have individuals in this situation putting their lives at immediate risk, because that is seen as part of the responsibility.
But Leugenbiehl is no nuclear expert, either, nor even a doctor. His expertise is more in the philsophical line:
- Professional ethics
- Philosophy and technology
- Phenomenology and Existentialism
- Asian philosophy
By this stage even a fan of the program’s apocapytpic message must be wondering. Why are a philosopher and a journalism lecturer talking about the medical risks - and not, say, a doctor? Why is a sociologist discussing the mechanics of a nuclear meltdown and the risks of a “dirty bomb”? Why aren’t these questions being answered instead by people expert in these very areas?
After the report, we discovered why, when Kerry O’Brien interviewed a real and discovered to his evident astonishment, after all those screaming scares, that this man still had a smile on his face - because he knows the reassuring truth:
KERRY O’BRIEN: For 21 years (John Carlson) headed the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation office and chaired the International Atomic Energy Agency’s advisory group on safeguards for five years. He’s now a counsellor with the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative and a visiting fellow with the Lowy Institute....
John Carlson, what is your worst fear scenario related to civilian run, or nuclear power plants run for civilian purposes?
JOHN CARLSON, AUST. NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS OFFICE 1989-2010: I think we’ve just about seen it, Kerry. I can’t imagine anything worse happening. People think back to the Chernobyl accident and a number of commentators were predicting that this would be like Chernobyl. The technologies are just so different and the driver for releasing large amounts of radiation simply isn’t there with like water reactors.
So I think, basically, we’ve seen the worst scenario and it’s turned out to be not the nightmare that many people thought it could be. That’s certainly not to be complacent and clearly there’s going to be a lot of work analysing what happened and learning and improving safety systems but I think basically the technology has shown itself to be very robust.
KERRY O’BRIEN: Really? You can say that, robust, given the pictures we’ve seen, the explosions that took place?
JOHN CARLSON: Well, you have to look at in terms of two things - first of all, what was the actual impact on public safety? And secondly, I think in any kind of analysis we do of nuclear energy we have to compare it with other energy sources and the risks and benefits and limitations of other energy sources.
I think if you look at nuclear energy purely in isolation you’d probably conclude maybe it’s best not to use it, but the fact is there’s no perfect way of generating electricity and we have to take an objective look at pros and cons on a comparative basis.
How great a public service Four Corners would have done to have screened a report that sensibly examined the risk Fukushima posed to public health (virtually zero) and the comparative safety of this form of generating base-load power (high). But no, like the cheapest of shock jocks, it rounded up every person it could find that was unqualified enough to shriek that Amargeddom was almost upon the Japanese - and it did so on the very day the Fukushima plant was finally being brought under control.
Shameful. Just shameful.
So much spin
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (03:27 pm)
Two excellent questions from the Nationals leader, Warren Truss, in Question Time today.
First, he asked, had Julia Gillard in fact conceded on Q&A that even had she won government in her own right she would have broken this election promise?:
And so today I announce that if we are re-elected, I will develop a dedicated process – a Citizens’ Assembly – to examine over 12 months the evidence on climate change, the case for action and the possible consequences of introducing a market-based approach to limiting and reducing carbon emissions… This means I will act when the Australian economy is ready and when the Australian people are ready.
You see, on Q&A last week, she said this:
if I’d been elected into a majority government what I would have done is legislated an emissions trading scheme...
From Gillard, no direct answer - because none was possible.
For his second question, Truss referred to this claim from the new real Julia:
I think it’s important for people to understand their Bible stories, not because I’m an advocate of religion - clearly, I’m not - but once again, what comes from the Bible has formed such an important part of our culture. It’s impossible to understand Western literature without having that key of understanding the Bible stories and how Western literature builds on them and reflects them and deconstructs them and brings them back together.
Asked Truss, if learning Bible stories is so critical, where are they mentioned in the new National Curriculum Gillard commissioned?
UPDATE
Oops. I had my back to the TV screen, and reader Victoria 3220 thinks I got it wrong:
Curriculum question was from Peter Slipper I think, not Truss.
Joyce to attend the No Carbon Tax rally
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (03:19 pm)
Senator Barnaby Joyce emails his supporters, saying he’ll be at Wednesday’s big no-carbon-tax rally:
You will remember that in 2009 we led the charge against the proposed Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). You helped by signing a petition against it.
Now, despite telling the Australian people fives days before the last election that “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”, Julia Gillard is now telling you that we really do need one.
It’s time to fight it again.
This Wednesday, 23 March there is a NO Carbon Tax Rally at Parliament House Canberra at 12 noon.
If you are in the area or can get to Canberra, come along and you will help once again to defeat a tax on everything that won’t make it any cooler.
If you would like to know more about how to get there, where to park, etc. go tohttp://www.nocarbontax.com.au.
I’ll see you there.
Details of other rallies around the country are at that link.
If I’m there, the ABC is not balanced
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (02:54 pm)
Satire or serious? More Alene Composta? Or is the Political Sword for real?
Mark the day – Sunday 13 March 2011, the day Andrew Bolt took over as compère of the ABC’s Insiders, bullied his way into the dialogue and eventually ruled the roost, leaving Barrie Cassidy looking defeated....
We longed for Cassidy to pull Bolt into line, to contradict his outrageous statements filled with hate and loathing for Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, but no, Bolt was allowed unfettered opportunity to emit his bile on whomever he pleased.
This is not the first time that Bolt has behaved this way on Insiders. Similar performances have evoked angry letters to Cassidy imploring him to ditch Bolt from his panel in the interests of balanced discourse about contemporary politics that at present are as complex as they have ever been. But the pleas have fallen on deaf ears....
Past communication with Barrie Cassidy have evoked an always-courteous but generic response. The ABC values our feedback and is grateful for our communications, but excuses itself on the grounds that the likes of Bolt are used to provide what the ABC euphemistically likes to call ‘balance’.
You cannot achieve balance by engaging someone who is consistently antagonistic to one side of politics, even if the others are leaning the other way. Balance is achieved by engaging balanced people. By no stretch of the imagination could Bolt ever be categorised as balanced....
We know that Greg Jericho’s caustic comments on Grog’s Gamut about reportage of the run up to the last election caught the attention of Mark Scott, MD of the ABC, who took his comments to a meeting of his executives and to a forum on journalism. He took them seriously. Whether any change of behaviour at the ABC resulted is difficult to discern, but we hope he might similarly take note of all the voices of protest that were generated by this week’s Insiders, more than I can recall previously. Evidence of action in response would be the permanent removal of Bolt from the Insiders panel. That might prove to be too difficult for the ABC who no doubt would fear a backlash from Bolt and from News Limited for whom he operates. I suspect that a ‘long talk with Andrew Bolt, asking him to tone it down a bit’, would be the ABC’s preferred option…
This is our perception - we want OUR ABC back.
Wow. Who is the “us” that owns “our” ABC, I wonder?
Speaking of Alene Composta, she is in distress, despite receiving the support of a fellow ABC contributor - and has uncovered yet another evil perpetrated by the corporate media which should alarm the Political Sword as well, if the two are not the one:
HAVE you noticed how the nuclear catastrophe in Japan is suddenly missing from the front pages?
How bad must it be if this sort of censorship is now deemed essential for the public good, needed to avoid panic and riotous disorder?. Even the SMH and Age have signed on, no longer daring to mention the coming meltdowns so many scientists were warning about only on Friday. Instead, in a transparent effort to distract the public, the Age now writes not about the threat to humanity but theimpact on carrots and cumquats.
Composta is curious that she is now banned by the ABC’s Drum from contributing more of her superb pieces, given that she fits so precisely its demographic of most-published authors, as “balanced” as the Political Sword demands of its ABC:
Bob Ellis —103
Ben Pobje— 58
Helen Razer – 57
Irfan Yusuf – 55
Greg Barns – 43
Kellie Tranter – 37
David Horton – 33
Tim Dunlop— 31
Jeff Sparrow – 29
Lauren Rosewarne – 25
Amin Saikal—25
Antsy Lowenstein – 22
Ben Eltham – 19
Scott Bridges – 14
Mark Bahnisch – 13
Melinda Tankard Reist—13
Jason Wilson – 12
Marieke Hardy – 10
Catherine Deveny – 8
Ben Sandilands – 8
Mungo MacCallum – 7
Christime Milne – 6
Your taxes. Their ABC.
(Thanks to reader John.)
Do cows drive 4WDs?
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (02:08 pm)
So the Environment Minister, green activists and journalists drove up to Victoria’s high plains to inspect the damage being done there by cows. Luckily, they had just the vehicles to get through the mud.
Cisco shows Gillard is kidding with her NBN
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (01:55 pm)
The Gillard Government is spending $37 billion on a bet that what we really want is a national broadband network that has us tethered to a wire in the wall.
Communications giant Cisco Systems forecasts another future - and it’s mobile:
The Mobile Network in 2010 and 2011Global mobile data traffic grew 2.6-fold in 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row. The 2010 mobile data traffic growth rate was higher than anticipated. Last year’s forecast projected that the growth rate would be 149 percent. This year’s estimate is that global mobile data traffic grew 159 percent in 2010.
Last year’s mobile data traffic was three times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. Global mobile data traffic in 2010 (237 petabytes per month) was over three times greater than the total global Internet traffic in 2000 (75 petabytes per month)…
The Mobile Network in 2015Global mobile data traffic will increase 26-fold between 2010 and 2015. Mobile data traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 92 percent from 2010 to 2015…
Mobile network connection speeds will increase 10-fold by 2015. The average mobile network connection speed (215 kbps in 2010) will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 60 percent, and will exceed 2.2 megabits per second (Mbps) in 2015…
Mobile-connected tablets will generate as much traffic in 2015 as the entire global mobile network in 2010. The amount of mobile data traffic generated by tablets in 2015 (248 petabytes per month) will be approximately
equal to the total amount of global mobile data traffic in 2010 (242 petabytes per month).
(Thanks to reader John.)
If you’re so terrified of Fukushima, don’t you dare fly either
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (01:04 pm)
How much radiation would you get from standing for a day in a town near the Fukushima plant?
And how much would that represent of what’s thought to represent a health risk?
This diagram explains the relative risk - and why the screaming, braying, lying, hyperventilating, fabricating, panicking media coverage is probably likely to kill you first instead.
Here’s a detail:
In turn, all those blue dots above amount to just three of these green ones:
It is true that there were two brief spurts of radiation just downwind from Fukushima on the 16th and on the 17th that amounted to 180 of those green dots had they persisted all day. Those levels have since fallen dramatically, so that no one in the towns around the plant is in any danger whatsoever from the radiation.
(Thanks to many readers.)
The independents just smile and swallow as Gillard tears up their deal
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (12:15 pm)
Independent MPs Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor were gullible to think Julia Gillard would honor her deal with them. Now they’re also weak for letting her break her word:
THANK you for signing an agreement on September 7 for a government to be formed based on support for confidence and supply....A minority Labor government will facilitate discussion of future tax reform as follows:
a) Convene a public forum of experts on taxation and its economic and social effects to discuss the Henry Review, with that meeting to be held before June 30, 2011.
The Henry Review specifically covered a new mining tax and tax reform. But already by September 7 Windsor realised he’d been dudded by Gillard:
WAYNE Swan has ruled out the inclusion of the mining tax in the tax summit offered to key independents in return for them supporting Labor…
”I thought it (the mining tax) was going to be included in any discussions related to the Henry Review,” Mr Windsor told ABC radio. “We may talk about that.”
And now:
The tax summit, promised for June, would be delayed until October… Mr Swan indicated the mining and carbon taxes, and the rate of the GST, were off the agenda for the summit...
Fukushima being stabilised. The real tragedy lies elsewhere
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (11:49 am)
The death toll from Japan’s tsunami reaches truly terrible proportions, yet our media hyperventilates about a nuclear emergency that has killed no one and probably never will:
THE number of people confirmed dead or listed as missing in Japan has topped 21,000.
Meanwhile, the danger at the Fukushima reactor recedes:
Workers on site have succeeded in increasing the stability of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor units with units 5 and 6 now in cold shutdown. Pressure built up within unit 3 but a more significant venting does not seem necessary now.
External power has now been connected to unit 5 and 6, allowing them to use their residual heat removal systems and transfer heat to the sea. This has been used to cool the fuel ponds and bring the units to cold shutdown status, meaning that water in the reactor system is at less than 100ºC…
An extended operation to refill the fuel pond took place at unit 3, with the Hyper Rescue crew spraying for over 13 hours. Radiation levels 500 metres north of the reactor showed a decrease from 3.44 millisieverts per hour to 2.75 millisieverts per hour, indicating a measure of success in refilling the pond. A similar operation is planned for later today at unit 4 and the surface temperatures of the buildings appear to be below 100ºC.
It’s astonishing that these reactors could have so well withstood a catastrophe that was unimaginable when they were designed:
The Fukushima power plants were required by regulators to withstand a certain height of tsunami. At the Daiichi plant the design basis was 5.7 metres and at Daini this was 5.2 metres.
Tepco has now released tentative assessments of the scale of the tsunami putting it at over 10 metres at Daiichi and over 12 metres at Dainii.
The plant sites were inundated, causing the loss of residual heat removal systems at both sites as well as emergency diesel generators at Daiichi.
It’s time to hold the scaremongers to account.
UPDATE
German physicist Peter Heller is in despair at this witchburning and the despicable role of the media:
There were times in history when ignorance and cowardice overshadowed human life. It was a time when our ancestors were forced to lead a life filled with superstition and fear because it was forbidden to use creativity and fantasy. Religious dogma, like the earth being the centre of the universe, or creationism, forbade people to question. The forbiddance of opening a human body and examining it prevented questions from being answered. Today these medieval rules appear backwards and close-minded. We simply cannot imagine this way of thinking could have any acceptance.
But over the recent days I have grown concerned that we are headed again for such dark times. Hysterical and sensationalist media reporting, paired with a remarkably stark display of ignorance of technical and scientific interrelations, and the attempt by a vast majority of journalists to fan the public’s angst and opposition to nuclear energy – pure witch-burning disguised as modernity.
So it fills me with sadness and anger on how the work of the above mentioned giants of physics is now being dragged through the mud, how the greatest scientific discoveries of the 20th century are being redefined and criminalized. The current debate in Germany is also a debate on freedom of research. The stigmatization and ostracism of nuclear energy, the demand for an immediate stop of its use, is also the demand for the end of its research and development. No job possibilities also means no students, which means no faculty, which then means the end of the growth of our knowledge. Stopping nuclear energy is nothing less than rejecting the legacy of Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr and all others. It is tantamount to scrapping it, labelling it as dangerous – all in a fit of ignorance. And just as creationists attempt to ban the theory of evolution from the school books, it almost seems as if every factual and neutral explanation in Germany is now in the process of being deleted.
Read it all. Please.
And then wonder at the irresponsibility of 60 Minutes last night, crying crocodile tears at the panic it both incites and feeds on:
Then came the tsunami. More than a week later, we still don’t know how many souls were carried away by the ocean. And now there’s the threat of a nuclear meltdown.
Of all the miseries that have been visited on the Japanese people in recent days, this has to be the most terrifying.You can’t see it like a wave. Or feel it like an aftershock. All you can do is wait and hope and try not to panic.
UPDATE
The late and great Michael Crichton warned of the rise of this new anti-science green religion six years ago.
UPDATE
The International Atomic Energy Agency confirms:
Radiation levels near Fukushima Daiichi and beyond have elevated since the reactor damage began. However, dose rates in Tokyo and other areas outside the 30-kilometre zone remain below levels which would require any protective action. In other words they are not dangerous to human health.
(Thanks to reader Robert,)
Don’t worry. It will warm soon, we’re told
Andrew Bolt – Monday, March 21, 11 (11:44 am)
Yes, weather is not climate - but how often do we have to say that in these chilly, wet times?
The Mudyug icebreaker, left, leads a ship named the Federal Danube as men fish in the frozen Gulf of Finland, some 40 km (25 miles) west of St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, March 15, 2011. Icebreakers have been called in to free dozens of ships that have been trapped in ice in the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg. The eastern Gulf of Finland has not seen such thick ice since 1992, according to the federal agency.
(Thanks to reader Rob.)
Facebook bans children lying to get online
SOCIAL networking site blocks 20,000 kids every day because they have lied about their age, but says it takes more to keep them off.
99 Maccas meals bring glory for runner
MARATHON man beats personal best and finishes among top runners after eating McDonald's only diet for whole month.
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