Monday, January 29, 2007
ELEVEN YEARS IN AN ETHICAL BIND
Global warm-monger Stephen Schneider ramps up the fear in 1996:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
Hit the above link. He’s still offering up simplified, scary scenarios.
UPDATE. Hey, everybody! The Australian Conservation Foundation has exciting news:
Want to win your very own DVD copy of Al Gore’s inspiring documentary, An Inconvenient Truth?
No!
We’ve got ten copies of An Inconvenient Truth to give away!
Local landfill all maxed out again?
To be in the running to win one, just tell us, in 25 words or less, what action YOU are taking in your day-to-day life to address climate change.
On Sunday I ran the air-con at home for eight hours straight. Climate didn’t change for a second.
Maybe you leave the car at home one day a week?
Maybe, if I have someone else’s car to drive.
Or make the effort to switch off lights when you aren’t in the room?
That would require quite an effort. Who am I, Stretch Armstrong?
Whatever action you take, we want to know about it! Entries close Friday February 2.
You heard the sap. Send those entries in.
DUCK SEASON
Media attention at a recent anti-war event in Washington mostly centred on the likes of Susan Sarandon and Jane Fonda, but other puppets were also involved:
It’s the majestic Peace Duck! Right now, Michael Leunig is experiencing an intense sensation in his panted regions.
(Via LGF, which has further puppet news.)
CITIZENS IGNORE NEWSPAPER
• The amount of greenhouse emissions generated in Victoria during the Age’s first week of monitoring: 1.919 million tonnes.
• The amount of greenhouse emissions generated in Victoria during the most recent week of monitoring: 1.925 million tonnes. Way to go! The Age’s partner in this project, The Climate Group, notes with sadness: “This week’s Greenhouse Indicator is 25.2% above the weekly average for emissions from energy in 1990.”
Sunday, January 28, 2007
MAYBE THEY’RE BOTH RIGHT
Hamas slams Fatah:
The Fatah movement continues to give a factional, political and media cover to the killers. Hamas has therefore decided to suspend all talks with Fatah.
And Fatah slams Hamas:
Hamas does not want a government of national unity. It’s not possible to have a dialogue with killers.
UPDATE. Pakistan’s Daily News reports:
Six students were injured in a row between two student organisations, the Islami Jamiat-e-Talba and Pakhtoon Students Federation, at the Dawood Engineering College of Science and Technology …
On Saturday morning, the students fought over a poster urging students not to fight on campus. According to reports, the fight was over who would put up the poster first. And what started as an exchange of hot words snowballed into a full-fledged fistfight following which, the students hurled classroom furniture at each other.
UPDATE II. Rather than stop his own people killing each other, a Palestinian psychotic kills three Israelis.
BEGIN THE CULL
Michael Duffy on religious matters:
You can’t be a good priest if you lie with prostitutes, and you can’t be a good Marxist if you exploit workers. And you shouldn’t be taken seriously as a global warming prophet unless your actions reflect your words.
Speaking of which, Australian of the Year Tim Flannery takes a guess at Australia’s optimal sustainable population:
Well, my personal estimate is that’s probably going to lie somewhere between six and 12 million.
That’s between 14 and eight million fewer people than currently inhabit Australia. Flannery has two children; will he allow them to live?
“MAN HAS GONE SECRETLY MAD”
The Age’s Michael Leunig - who previously met God during his anti-Semitic cartoon crisis (“God came in from the paddock and placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder”) - now has a personal encounter with weather:
The drought looks at me accusingly - the drought that shrivels egos, affectations and falsehoods - it looks at me knowingly.
The drought! It sees all! In other signs that Leunig is certifiable, he writes:
Democracy, with its implied respect for and dependence upon difference and diversity, now includes mob rule and totalitarianism by stealth in its process through a tawdry, media-based popularity contest spun around superficial appearances, catch phrases, and the modern art of instant, mass deceit. We may well wonder if the true self of modern man has gone secretly mad with fear and exhaustion and is too weak and frightened to emerge. We have fantasy and delusional versions of individuality but do we have the stomach for the real thing?
No realms of human endeavour seem immune from the gently flowing falseness and conformity. Pop stars, politicians, cricket buffs, critics, comedians, actors, academics - craven and crawling - desperately impressing the world with charm, symmetry, toughness, quickness, grooviness, goodness, aloofness, happiness, wit: all the pleasing and dazzling things, the cultivated forms of attractiveness, but somehow moribund.
Best wishes to anyone who has to deal with this chap.
WILL SLAM AMERICA FOR FOOD
John Pilger picks up some tanning salon money:
Eltham Bookshop, together with Amnesty International, invite you to hear John Pilger discuss his latest book Freedom Next Time ...
Cost: $10 per person, including supper
(Via Yevgeniy Detsik)
HOLIDAY LANE
The Sunday Age reports:
Terry Lane is on leave.
What with his chronology problems, Terry may be on leave longer than expected.
GANG OF 20 MILLION
Wally Anglesea emails:
My wife and I were at Belmore Basin (Wollongong) for this year’s Australia Day celebrations. We saw more Aussie flags than in previous years, and people from all walks of life, ages and, dare I say, ethnic backgrounds, all celebrating, and many, many with Australian flags, or clothing or tattoos of Australian flags (and a lot of green and gold).
With the Big Day Out kerfuffle, it seems to me that someone is out of touch with the psyche of the Australian public ...
Observe Wally’s pics. Allan J. also reports gang colour sightings, including gang colour underwear exposed during the World Cup, and gang colours infiltrating the “Second Life” computer game.
“AMBIGUOUS COMMENTS”
Yet more context problems at the Lakemba mosque:
The Seven Network reported Imam Safi offered a prayer “for our brothers in Iraq”, appealing to God to destroy the enemies of Islam.
“God destroy the oppressors, destroy the aggressors, destroy the hypocrites, destroy the despotic tyrants.”
Sounds quite like Antony Loewenstein, doesn’t he? All due to confusion, of course:
Tom Zreika, president of the Lebanese Muslim Association which runs the mosque, said Imam Safi was not calling for the destruction of Australian troops in Iraq.
“His reference isn’t against the coalition (forces) because he is an Australian, we are Australians, and we wouldn’t stand for something like that,” he told Seven.
Islamic Friendship Association president Keysar Trad, a friend of the sheik, said people should not think the worst of the imams “ambiguous comments”.
“Why not give them the benefit of the doubt,” he told Seven.
(Via Darrin H.)
NARROW, INWARD FOCUS MAINTAINED
Despite evidence to the contrary, Hugh Mackay continues bitching about imagined Australian selfishness:
We couldn’t get enough TV programs about backyards and home renovations, because that’s where our heads were. Our narrow, inward focus excluded the things we half-knew needed our attention, ranging from our continuing involvement in Iraq to the anti-terrorism and industrial relations laws; from the rising tide of prejudice to the apparently intractable problems of poverty, drug abuse and the crisis in our public hospitals, schools and universities ...
But now, for some reason, there’s a stirring. A restlessness. A gnawing sense that we’d better take another look at the big picture.
Those of us interested in tracking the mood of Australia have long wondered what might provoke this kind of re-engagement. A terrorist attack? A bird flu epidemic? A crash in commodity prices that would burst our economic bubble? A painful rise in interest rates?
The Left; always praying for disaster. Sadly for Mackay, none of these scenarios have occurred. He’s reduced to relying on global warming and “anti-Islam prejudice”:
Even the sceptics who see climate change as part of the inexorable swing of a global pendulum are starting to wonder whether this latest swing might have been accelerated by human activity. From water restrictions to car use, we are starting to engage with the idea that tough remedial action might be called for.
None of which will impact on wealthy Hugh; those “narrow, inward” Australians he writes about, however, may expect some unpleasant changes under a Mackay-approved remedial-action regime.
Deeper values-based questions are engaging our attention: have we become too materialistic for our own good? How can we lead more balanced lives? Can we revive our communities and our sense of belonging to them? Is the Australian way of life in danger of being hijacked by American values and culture?
Apparently “American values” aren’t a part of the multicultural diversity Hugh so adores. Following his unleashing of anti-US prejudice, Hugh writes:
Disturbing signs of ethnic tension - including the unleashing of anti-Islam prejudice - remind us that multiculturalism is a fragile edifice that requires commitment, goodwill and a healthy curiosity about our differences. To succeed, our bold experiment needs more diversity, not less.
More burkas, less burgers!
Kevin Rudd’s accession to the Opposition leadership adds another item to the list of things re-engaging us. Can Labor win in 2007? Who knows? But the question has suddenly become more interesting, the contest more lively.
It will be six months before we’ll know whether the electorate has emerged from its dreamy period.
If John Howard is re-elected, Australia remains “dreamy” and inward-looking; if Rudd is elected, we’re suddenly “re-engaged”. Mackay’s simplicity is verging on the single-celled.
(Via ann j, who emails: “I am tired of this. I am tired of the Hugh Mackays. I wish he and his ilk would have a meal or even mix with someone other than the ‘people like us’ mob.”)
WORLD’S FASTEST PLUMBER
A Bentley convertible is one thing; a Bentley plumber’s van, quite another. This inventive device is located in New Zealand, where - from memory - a farmer once re-fashioned a D-Type Jaguar into something suitable for rounding up cattle.
(Via Andrew Landeryou)
STERN STOMPED
The Stern Review reviewed by the BBC:
Expert critics of the review now claim that it overestimates the risk of severe global warming, and underestimates the cost of acting to stop it ...
The report may have been loved by the politicians and headline writers but when climate scientists and environmental economists read the 670-page review, many said there were serious flaws.
Via Blogstrop, who asks: “Do you think we’ll get an ABC admission that their Stern sycophancy was premature and superficial, not to mention plain wrong? No? Didn’t think so.”
SEA TOO BIG
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was full of hope when its latest anti-whaling stunt was launched a couple of weeks ago:
The organization’s flagship M/Y Farley Mowat is expected to arrive in the whaling area during the second week in January where the flagship will rendezvous with the organization’s faster ship Robert Hunter. The two ships with over 60 international volunteer crewmembers, a helicopter, and numerous smaller vessels will confront the Japanese whalers on the high seas.
Well, they would, if they could find them:
Frustrated anti-whaling campaigners yesterday offered a $25,000 reward for help in locating the Japanese whaling fleet that is hiding in waters near Antarctica ...
Two Sea Shepherd ships have unsuccessfully searched for the Japanese whalers in the Ross Sea for the past 12 days.
Maybe Greenpeace can help ... or maybe not:
The Greenpeace ship Esperanza left Auckland on Friday and will reach the Ross Sea late this week to join the hunt.
But the two groups hate each other almost as much as they hate the whalers.
Greenpeace said it did not know the co-ordinates of the whalers but would not tell Sea Shepherd even if it did.
In other environmental news, the Gore Effect - last noticed in New Hampshire - now hits the Twin Cities.
SECRET CODE
The successful integration of Muslims into the broader Australian community continues apace:
A row has erupted over Muslim-only washrooms at La Trobe University that can be accessed only with a secret push-button code.
Apparently most Australian universities provide Muslim-only prayer and washrooms for students. Shouldn’t they be called multiversities?