HAWK vs DORK
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 11 (03:54 am)
Iowahawk’s 2011 Earth Week Cruise-In is luring a spectacular assortment of beautiful carbon-generating speedcraft, all celebrated in gleefully affectionate terms by their various drivers and pilots.
And then there’s Prius person Tim Flannery, whose latest flanasonic book promo delivers a tardload of mind-blanking numbtalk:
The human global superorganism is shaping up with extraordinary rapidity.
Hadn’t noticed it myself, but thanks for the warning.
No species in the four-billion-year history of the planet has ever gone through a demographic transition, and we’re doing it in such a brief period of time.
Really? That’s a shock. You mean to say that pelicans and beetles and such don’t structure their communities around salaries and material status?
So that’s a cause for hope.
Damn straight. I’m not paying all this rent just to live next door to pelicans.
We have to remember that six years ago no one had heard of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. We have come a long way in the last five years or so, and if we make progress at that rate then I am hopeful that we will overcome this problem.
We sure are. The problem of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is quickly being overcome.
In China, the focus is on clean energy.
Wrong. In China, the focus is on energy.
I’ve got a brain which helps regulate my body. It’s just the most efficient way of doing things.
The foot didn’t work out?
At the planetary level, Gaia has its own way of regulating things.
Carbon tax!
Traditional knowledge is hugely important. Traditional knowledge represents the collective wisdom of people who’ve been living on a piece of land in some cases for tens of thousands of years … I think we’re going to be dipping ever more into that traditional knowledge pool as we try to reorient our own global culture to a more sustainable model.
Flannery appears to be talking about a pre-industrial era. Interesting.
My nightmare scenario for the world is that we get to that point of over-reaching the resource base, that we still haven’t formed a global superorganism at that point …
Only the other day, I heard someone at the shop asking if the global superorganism had kicked in yet. Puzzlingly, Flannery has already announced that “today, we’ve formed the first global superorganism ever”, so obviously there’s been some rescheduling.
… the various power blocs that exist, nations and so forth, will fall to fighting over the remaining resources, whether they be water or food or whatever else. What effectively will be tribes armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. You can see the danger.
I can see something, but it looks more like an urgent need for Flannery-sized tinfoil headware.
We’ve spent at least 10,000 years building this civilized, affluent lifestyle we all enjoy now. For that to vanish would just send us back to a world of brutality.
Flannery’s messages sometimes seem confused.
When you think about it, if you think in geological timeframes, even with the speeds of travel we have at the moment, it would take us only 5 million years to colonize the galaxy. On the evolutionary scale that’s not a long period of time. But that’s what we stand to lose if we blow it, simply because we can’t shift to a clean energy base or we can’t agree on how to share wealth and cooperate.
Unless we share the wealth – Flannery is an expert – our five-million-year galaxy-colonisation plan won’t happen. Who among will sleep after learning this?
It came to me just the other day, when I was watching the situation unfold in Syria. There were thousands of people dressed in traditional robes, with their long beards, but what they were chanting in Arabic was, “The people united will never be defeated.” I thought, what a demonstration of common humanity that is.
Perhaps people should take up that flyblown chant at the next anti-carbon tax rally.
A great friend of mine gave me a bit of advice years back, something I’ve always cherished. He said, “never get angry, just get even”.
You’ve already scored $720,000 off us for telling us how much better off we’ll be by paying higher taxes. You’re not even, mate. You’re way in front.
Just do an act of leadership, whether it’s in your own home deciding whether you’re going to switch off the lights to save some energy or whether it’s buying green energy …
Buying green energy, you say? There’s Flannery waving the Panasonic flag again. One fan heeds the Flanster’s wisdom:
Finally succumbed & bought plasma TV like all my fellow suburban scum. Got a Panasonic one ‘cos Tim Flannery told me to.
438 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S UNSELLABLE, JOB-SHEDDING TAX
Tim Blair – Friday, April 22, 11 (01:58 am)
From the west, a tax prediction:
The West Australian Premier Colin Barnett says the Prime Minister Julia Gillard will eventually ditch the carbon tax proposal because it is impossible to sell to the public.
Mr Barnett has again voiced his opposition to the policy and says it is nonsensical to suggest a new tax can be introduced without losing jobs.
He’s understating things. A carbon tax would cost entire industries.
Who the hell did Rudd help in Libya?
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (10:32 am)
Several ghastly videos suggest that the Libyan rebels being helped by the US, Britain, France and NATO - at the urgent insistence of Kevin Rudd, among others - are guilty of the most appalling atrocities, including decapitations to cries of “Allahu Akbar”.
Did Barack Obama and his allies, or Kevin Rudd, ever work out just who these rebels were before lending them a NATO airforce in their civil war against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi?
(Thanks to reader Oggi.)
Call that a trend?
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (10:11 am)
Mathematician Douglas J. Keenan says the rise in world temperature measured last century may prove as little as a trend produced by just three rolls of a dice.
Earth worshipper likens sceptics to Christ-killers
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (09:39 am)
Here’s a church leader who seems guilty not only of a serious lack of science and perspective, but possibly of blasphemy, too:
The Moderator of the Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT, the Reverend Niall Reid, said in his Easter message that climate change was the result of ‘’unsustainable, unfettered and unthinking addiction to economic growth’’, and those who could not entertain a less destructive path were like those who sent Jesus to the Cross for expediency’s sake.
(Thanks to readers Alan, Steve and Alan RM Jones.)
Is Bowen ringing the protesters personally to beg them stop?
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (07:02 am)
Can this possibly be true - that Immigration Minister Chris Bowen is so desperate to get the nine protesters off the roofs of the Villawood detention centre that he’s ringing each personally?
From the ABC:
Those on the rooftop had their refugees claims rejected, some twice.
Iranian man, Majid, has been in detention for 20 months.
“Two years in a prison. What for? For freedom? For freedom? Is this human rights? I’m human. I need the freedom. I want freedom. I don’t want prison. I want protection not detention,” he said.
Mr Bowen has been personally ringing the men on the roof.
”He just asked me when you want to come down? I said never. I don’t want to come down never,” he said.
How does this alleged personal attention from the Minister, with who knows what incentives offered, square with this tough talk yesterday after the Villawood protesters burned down nine buildings:
Mr Bowen said ... the protest would not help their case.
“If they think they will be accepted as refugees because of this sort of protest action, they have chosen the wrong government and the wrong minister because that won’t be happening,’’ Mr Bowen said.
Or with this, from Julia Gillard:
“Violence is wrong and it won’t help your claims,” she said.
(Thanks to reader Pira.)
UPDATE
Majid tells me from his Villawood roof that the ABC is wrong. The media, not Bowen, rang him.
But he also says Bowen is wrong. He was part of the Christmas Island protests, too. That said, his English is bad.
Arthur leans to Combet
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (06:40 am)
I’ve already discussed the seven contenders to replace Julia Gillard as Labor leader - and PM. Now Arthur Sinodinis goes through his own list:
Kevin Rudd is ... excelling as Australia’s prime minister at large.... (But) Labor backbenchers are keenly aware that Rudd’s leadership was destroyed by Abbott who would retain the psychological advantage in any return bout. Rudd’s recent apology for walking away - at the urging of Gillard and Swan - from the emissions trading scheme now looms as an obstacle to his return.
Rudd is not about to resurrect that scheme even though he presumably still believes it is superior to a fixed carbon price-tax scheme. What else does he offer nervous nellies on the backbench: a change of style (read spin) but no change of substance? That is how we ended up with Gillard.
Rudd’s return would all but guarantee Abbott’s retention as Liberal leader. ... In the absence of significant policy change, Rudd would simply wear the blame for the carbon tax and his past failures such as pink batts or the Building the Education Revolution.
Combet or Shorten would argue to caucus they offer hope of moving beyond the divisive Rudd-Gillard era. Combet would spearhead a back-to-basics working families campaign to address cost of living pressures and stand up for battlers. (New Labor national secretary) George Wright would make a virtue of Combet’s union record on James Hardie, the waterfront and Work Choices to weave a moving narrative of working-class hero standing up to big business.
Combet will carry the baggage of the carbon tax but don’t discount a backflip to achieve a Hawke-like consensus that generously accommodates households and trade-exposed industries… One question about Combet is whether he possesses the ruthlessness to go slow on the climate negotiations while his leader drowns in the polls.
Shorten meanwhile, as Assistant Treasurer, needs to brush up on his economics… Shorten also struggled recently to explain the impact of the carbon tax on the cost of a birthday cake. Remember John Hewson? Shorten needs to pull up his socks and do more homework. Otherwise he will never become head of school.
Finnigan falls, and SA Labor dies
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (06:25 am)
As if South Australian Labor wasn’t on the nose already, this should ensure it dies a long, lingering NSW Labor-style death until the 2014 election:
ACTING Police Minister Bernard Finnigan has resigned from Cabinet and will not be replaced.
Premier Mike Rann announced this morning that he had accepted Mr Finnigan’s resignation from Cabinet and Executive Council.His portfolio of Industrial Relations will be allocated to Transport Minister Patrick Conlon while his Gambling portfolio will go to Regional Development Minister Gail Gago…
The resignation comes after a disastrous Advertiser poll published on Tuesday which showed support for Labor had slumped to its lowest level since the disastrous State Bank election of 1993.
Labor was in a death spiral already, with its primary vote down to 24 per cent, according to the latest poll, and the Police Minister himself punched twice in three months at a night club and a restaurant. Finnigan’s fall will resonate so loudly that almost any hope of recovery is now dead.
(No comments for legal reasons. Truly, our restrictions on free speech have reached dangerous levels.)
Unsettled science: now it’s the ozone layer’s fault
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (06:06 am)
You mean we’ve wasted all these billions on cutting carbon dioxide?
In a study to be published in the April 21st issue of Science magazine, researchers at Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science report their findings that the ozone hole, which is located over the South Pole, has affected the entire circulation of the Southern Hemisphere all the way to the equator…
This is the first time that ozone depletion, an upper atmospheric phenomenon confined to the polar regions, has been linked to climate change from the Pole to the equator.
“The ozone hole is not even mentioned in the summary for policymakers issued with the last IPCC report,” noted Lorenzo M. Polvani, Professor of Applied Mathematics and of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Senior Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and co-author of the paper. “We show in this study that it has large and far-reaching impacts. The ozone hole is a big player in the climate system!"…
Located in the Earth’s stratosphere, just above the troposphere (which begins on Earth’s surface), the ozone layer absorbs most of the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays. Over the last half-century, widespread use of manmade compounds, especially household and commercial aerosols containing chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has significantly and rapidly broken down the ozone layer, to a point where a hole in the Antarctic ozone layer was discovered in the mid 1980s. Thanks to the 1989 Montreal Protocol, now signed by 196 countries, global CFC production has been phased out. As a result, scientists have observed over the past decade that ozone depletion has largely halted and they now expect it to fully reverse, and the ozone hole to close by midcentury.
But, as Polvani has said, “While the ozone hole has been considered as a solved problem, we’re now finding it has caused a great deal of the climate change that’s been observed.”
So when you get some politician shouting that “the science is settled”, you know they lie.
If all teeth are white, why are only Aborigines and boat people treated free?
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (12:08 am)
Two questions about Victoria’s public dental service:
- Why do all members of one race get free dental care, when members of all other races must show special need or other qualification? Isn’t this racist?
- Why do asylum seekers get free care, when pensioners who have paid taxes all their lives must pay $24 each visit? Isn’t this unfair?
More along this same strange line, from last year:
VICTORIANS will subsidise train and tram fares for asylum seekers from next month.
The State Government plans to extend Category “A” concession fares to include those who have or are applying for bridging visas and who receive humanitarian assistance… The discount scheme will cost taxpayers up to $100,000.
Transport Minister Martin Pakula yesterday defended the new concessions, saying charities would save money.
UPDATE
It’s not as if non-Aborigines and non-asylum seekers aren’t struggling to pay for dental care, too:
The annual visit to the dentist is becoming a luxury for many Australians, with a new report showing about 40 per cent of the population do not go for regular check-ups.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found another 30 per cent say they simply cannot afford it or have trouble accessing a dentist.
UPDATE
How they mocked and scolded on Q&A:
JOHN MACNAUGHTON (audience member): What action can the average Australian or Queenslander do to stop the drift towards Multiculturalism? The boatpeople seem to have more rights in Australia than the people who were born here....
TONY JONES (host): Yeah, just quickly on this, the other part of what the gentleman said, boat people seem to have more rights in Australia than people who were born here. Are you disturbed that kind of idea has taken root?
ANNA BLIGH (Queensland Premier): Look, I think it’s very unfortunate that people would think that. Australians enjoy, I think, some of the best human rights in the world and we’re very lucky. We have, you know, unfettered right to practice our own religion, to vote, to get health care. You know, wherever you look when you look around the world, it’s pretty hard to think of a place that you’d rather be than be an Australian when it comes to exercising rights and if I was living in a detention centre, I don’t think I’d think that I was somehow better off than your average Australian.
(Thanks to readers, David, Pira and Cathryn.)
Strange, how the bandicoot speaks exactly like a Greens voter
Andrew Bolt – Friday, April 22, 11 (12:03 am)
How does the animal instruct his legal guardian in negotiations over his property rights? And how does the guardian presume to know the intentions of his client?
While some landholders may dismiss the idea as a joke, the nation’s peak farming organisation said it was a threat that must be taken seriously.
University of Western Sydney academic John Hadley, who is at the forefront of a global push to give animals property rights, believes farmers should be forced to negotiate with the legal guardians of Australia’s native animals before clearing their land.
“Under an animal guardianship system, landholders who want to modify habitat on their land would have to negotiate with a guardian acting on behalf of a designated group of animals,” Dr Hadley said in his article on a new academic website The Conversation.
“Ideally, guardians would be registered with an independent tribunal and be qualified to make environmentally and ethically-informed decisions.”
The problem that Hadley hasn’t considered is that some animals - take, say, my dog Ralf - would be only too happy to help out a human by giving up his property rights to the back yard.
And to which animals do these property rights extend? Are they granted even to the ants over whose nest I wish to place a paver? To the bacteria against which I propose to take an antibioitc?
You see, it seems to me that in the end we will actually be forced to negotiate not with animals but with activists who only fancy they speak for them, and then only the ones they like and whose politics they curiously just happen to share.
(Thanks to reader Amanda.)
Is this the worst excuse yet for a broken Gillard promise?
Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 21, 11 (07:21 pm)
The Gillard Government can’t even lie competently. Here is Finance Minister Penny Wong trying to pretend the latest broken promise isn’t a broken promise because the promise will only be broken temporarily:
PENNY Wong has denied breaking an election promise by announcing a rise in the efficiency dividend to reap an extra $465 million from the public service, arguing it is temporary.
The Finance Minister said today that ”an efficiency dividend of 1.25 over the forward estimates was an election commitment - that remains. What we’re doing is a temporary increase to 1.5 for two years‘’.
It’s so insulting when someone thinks such a clumsy, pathetic lie is all it takes to fool you.
Off to visit the Queen
Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 21, 11 (05:53 pm)
Good lord. What on earth is she wearing?
(Thanks to reader Fiona.)
If the rest of the world is with us, we wouldn’t sell so much coal
Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 21, 11 (05:47 pm)
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet denies claims that Australia is too far ahead of the rest of the world in trying to cut emissions from coal-fired power - the cheap power source that gives us our competitive advantage:
Really? Well, if the rest of the world is also trying to cut its use of gassy coal and oil, explain Julia Gillard’s comments in Japan:
The Greens are also pressing Labor to replace the nation’s reliance on coal-powered generation with renewable resources.
But this morning, speaking ahead her lunch with a range of senior business executives, Ms Gillard said she had no fears about the future for Australian exports.
“I am very confident that there is a strong future for our LNG industry as we also move to a clean energy future,” she said.
”I’m very confident in the future of our coal exports as well as we move to clean energy future.”
Something doesn’t add up.
(Thanks to reader Gab.)
Nice dance move, Dimitry
Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 21, 11 (03:41 pm)
... but does Russian President Dimitry Medvedev (in the lighter blue suit) have a second move?
Book launched
Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 21, 11 (03:06 pm)
First I knew of the details, and it might be useful for you to know them, too:
Connor Court Publishing with the Bennelong Society and the Institute of Public Affairs invites you to the Melbourne launch of ABORIGINAL SELF-DETERMINATION: The Whiteman’s Dream by Gary Johns
to be launched by Andrew Bolt ( Herald Sun newspaper columnist and radio commentator) at The Celtic Club, First Floor, 316-320 Queen Street, Melbourne, Vic 3000 on Monday 2nd May at 6pm for the launch
(attendees are also welcome to join us for an à la carte dinner at 7.30pm in the Shamrock Room following the launch. Food and drinks at bar prices.)
RSVP for launch and dinner
Anthony Cappello
Phone: (03) 9005 9167
Email: anthony@connorcourt.com
And Greens believe in Gaia, too
Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 21, 11 (02:47 pm)
Sarah Phillips is not only an ABC journalist, but its environment reporter. So I sure didn’t expect to see read this telling observation on vegetarianism, sure attractive to the religious-minded:
Abstinence from meat or a more general period of fasting is a feature of many of the religions that comprise Australian society. For example, Jews have Yom Kippur, Muslims have Ramadan, Hindus often have one fasting day a week, while some Buddhists are vegetarian all the time.Curiously, it’s also a feature of environmentalism, which Andrew Bolt, amongst others, has said is akin to a religion.
Environmentalists have been advocating “Meatless Mondays” for some years now. The Australian Meatless Mondays website says not only is less meat good for your health, but it reduces water use, greenhouse gas emissions and land use in Australia. (Although it seems the website has not been maintained since the end of last year.)
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the primary scientific body on climate change, the IPCC, and who, surely, would qualify as high priest of Bolt’s predicated religion has advocated vegetarianism to help save the planet.
Is there a change in the air?
Setting fire to Gillard’s “compassionate” policies
Andrew Bolt – Thursday, April 21, 11 (02:12 pm)
I really don’t think Julia Gillard’s boat people policies are working, or, on the other hand, have turned out so ”compassionate”, either:
The rioting followed a day-long protest by up to 11 detainees, some of whom refused to come down from the roof from where they threw tiles… A spokesman for the NSW Fire Brigade said it was not safe for the officers to enter the centre, forcing them to attempt to extinguish the flames from a cherry picker....
Refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said three areas of the compound on fire had been destroyed, including a billiards room and computer room....
Last month, a violent riot erupted at Christmas Island’s high security detention centre following a mass breakout. In the past eight months, six people have died in detention.... A senior Comcare investigator found that alleged ringleaders of the Christmas Island riot transferred to Villawood’s high-security area were placed under the control of a worker who had not been trained for the job.
These are people asking to be let into the country? Still, if setting fire to stuff has already got some detainees from Christmas Island to Sydney, why stop?
UPDATE
John Howard got the boat arrivals under control, and then in 2008, Labor decided to weaken the laws:
UPDATE
The unrest started with a protest by 100 detainees, but Immigration Minister Chris Bowen is quick to say they weren’t people waiting to be let in:
Mr Bowen said today that the ringleaders of the protest had already received negative assessments.
”These are by-and-large, I’m advised, people who have received negative refugee assessments,” he said.
“So this is not a matter of timing, of people protesting that they have not received enough (of a) speedy response to their claims.”
“These are people in many instances who are not happy that they have not been accepted as refugees.”
Mr Bowen could place no dollar figure on the damage sustained at the centre, but described it as “substantial”.
He denied those involved in violent riots at the Christmas Island detention facility in March were engaged in the incident at Villawood overnight.
No comments:
Post a Comment