Monday, March 26, 2007
DELAY ALMOST OVER
On January 11, CBS News examined - in their own way - the case of Australian Taliban member and Gitmo homeboy David Hicks:
Today marks five years without a day in court for David Hicks ...
And why might that be? ABC national security correspondent Leigh Sales:
The Hicks defence strategy relies on delaying the process for so long that the Australian Government will be forced to ask for the prisoner’s return.
Hmm. Anyway, despite his lawyers’ delaying tactics, Hicks is shortly due to appear in a Gitmo court. Latest word is he’ll make a deal.
UPDATE. Hicks pleads guilty.
UPDATE II. The Australian reports: “Hicks is short and overweight … He did not look unhealthy and certainly not ‘gaunt’ or ‘hollowed cheeked’ as his legal team have described him in recent months.”
UPDATE III. Alan Grey beats me to the punch!
DENIALISM ON RYRIE STREET
The Geelong Advertiser takes a stand:
Man-made carbon dioxide emissions are not to blame for global warming.
They’re not to blame for rising temperatures, not for polar melting, not for sea levels and not for endangering species around the world.
No way.
Good call.
(Via Paul N.)
SHEIKH SOUGHT
A Baltimore reader emails:
Good day, back in 2005 you had made a story about sheikh Khalid yasin.
Yes. Yes, I had.
we the women affairs committee in baltimore, maryland USA are planning a fund raising event for homeless women and we would like for the sheikh to be our guest speaker. we would like you assistance in finding how to contact his agent or scheduler or what ever number or address that you may have to help us in our endevor in finding him.
if you would be so kind to reply whether you can or not able to assist. my name is——-———. please email me the information it will be greatly appreciated.
I’d love to,——-———, but Sheikh Khalid might consider it a sign of friendship, and he wouldn’t approve: “There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend, so a non-Muslim could be your associate but they can’t be a friend.”
Sorry.
SOUND SMOKED
Smokin’ the Sound returns to Biloxi. Emails seawitch: “Helicopters, powerboats, rescue craft, pleasure craft, cars: there was enough carbon burned today to almost equal what Al Gore uses in a month!”
CAFEOPPRESSION
CafePress.com permits this T-shirt design (not work safe), but has withdrawn from display reader Matthew J.’s rather more thoughtful image:
Matt’s shirt is “generally offensive or in bad taste”, apparently.
SUZUKI SWIFT SPORT
The latest test car is hella fun:
Suzuki’s original Swift GTI - we’re looking here at something evolved from that mid-80s mini-hatch - was a terrific car. Correction; it was a terrific engine attached to a bunch of rubber, glass, and metal recovered from dumpsters. The Swift Sport, though, has handling and brakes to match its sweet-sounding motor; and it costs just $A24,000, which is outrageous.
Sub-Honda/Mazda refinement levels are sometimes evident, but who cares? Also, those low-profile Dunlops stick like Fatty Arbuckle’s reputation. Longer review to follow.
NAME ALREADY TAKEN
“Call it the Al Gore effect,” writes Deidre Woollard, “but lately I’m seeing eco-friendly everywhere.” If it was the genuine Gore Effect, Deidre, you’d be seeing cold weather everywhere. Speaking of which, Algeria is enjoying a surprise coldening:
The northerly wind flow about the western side of this storm has poured northern chill ashore in Algeria. Soaking rain and small hail (4 inches of rain at Jijel) has given way inland to snow along the heights of the eastern Atlas Mountains. Thursday morning, snow lay 6 inches deep at Jelfa, where the 35-mph wind made it feel as cold as 10 degrees.
Via Daniel F., who asks: “Is Al Gore in Algeria? Hmm ... algore ... algeria ...” Hey, look what’s up in the freezy Arctic:
Barren and uninhabited, Hans Island is very hard to find on a map. Yet these days the Frisbee-shaped rock in the Arctic is much in demand — so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships. The reason: an international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by the impact of global warming on Earth’s frozen north ...
Some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century.
Speedier shipping times will help save the planet! There’s just no downside at all to this whole global warming thing.
UPDATE via Martin G. Further global warming goodness:
It is true that, for example, the temperature rise from global warming will probably cause 2,000 more heat deaths in the United Kingdom by 2080. Yet studies indicate that the same temperature increase will also decrease cold deaths - 20,000 fewer U.K. cold deaths by 2080.
Mentioning 2,000 more deaths, but not the 20,000 fewer cold deaths that go with them, is no basis for sound policy.
UPDATE II. Republican Senator James Inhofe to Al Gore: “It seems that everything is blamed on global warming. How come you guys never seem to notice when it gets cold?”
BLOGGING DOOMED
Along these lines, Virginia Trioli this morning introduced a segment on her 702 ABC show: “Wither blogging. It seems the much-hyped blogging phenomenon is disappearing. I say good riddance.”
Hey, at least during our brief reign we bloggers haven’t cost taxpayers a couple of hundred grand per year, which is the price paid (at least) for Virginia’s views. Her guest commentator for this segment was media lecturer Kate Crawford, who seemed slightly more fond of blogs than is her host; in fact, she said, some blogs are very good, and online audiences were becoming better at selecting quality blogs over “someone ranting about their cat”.
Then Kate named her favourite site. Daily Kos, she said, represented the very “top of the table” of global blogging. I don’t think Virginia had heard of it ... otherwise her opinion of this flash-in-the-pan medium would probably be higher.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
POLARGANDA
Oh no! Polar bears stranded on melting ice! As the Daily Mail wrote in early February:
They cling precariously to the top of what is left of the ice floe, their fragile grip the perfect symbol of the tragedy of global warming.
Captured on film by Canadian environmentalists, the pair of polar bears look stranded on chunks of broken ice.
The same story and image later ran in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph; the image was also published on the front page of the New York Times, followed by a correction one month later:
A front-page picture caption on Feb. 3 about polar bears floating on chunks of glacial ice, illustrating an article on a global warming report, carried incorrect information from the Canadian Ice Service about when and where the photograph was taken, and about who took it. The picture was taken in August 2006 in the Chukchi Sea, not in 2004 in the Bering Sea, farther south. The photographer was Amanda Byrd, not Dan Crosbie.
That correction needs a correction. Byrd’s photograph first appeared in 2004, not 2006, alongside this journal entry detailing a Joint Western Arctic Climate Study cruise. The original caption:
Mother polar bear and cub on interesting ice sculpture carved by waves.
Not “stranded”; not “clinging precariously”. Byrd - an Australian studying at the University of Alaska Fairbanks - was interviewed about this by spiked a week or so back:
Over the past few months the photo has been published widely as a snapshot of the dangers of global warming. Byrd, however, is wary of seeing the photo as direct evidence of manmade climate change. ‘I believe in the climate change phenomena, but for me to say that the image is a direct link, I would be speculating’, she tells spiked. ‘The ice in the Arctic is definitely growing less, and the bears in the migratory route in the Beaufort Sea (where this image was taken, 90 miles off Barrow) have to swim further.’ Byrd is clearly a little miffed that ‘the image you have seen around the world was distributed without my consent, and [with] the wrong byline’.
Ann Althouse and (especially) Dan Riehl were quickly alert to this polar bear photo caper, but as of last week someone was yet to catch up:
For Al Gore’s presentation yesterday to a conference of human resources executives, his second Toronto visit in a month, the Oscar-winning envirogelical recycled just about everything from his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
From his opening line—“I used to be the next president of the United States”—through the Churchill quotes, the slick computer graphics and the boiling frog analogy, to his rousing finale, the presentation was a live action carbon copy of the film.
But there was one notable addition, an iconic photograph that was distributed worldwide last month by Canada’s Environment Ministry, and for which the Canadian government is about to be sued by an Alaskan photographer.
The photo, taken in summer, shows two polar bears on a melting ice floe in the Beaufort Sea, north of Barrow, Alaska.
“Their habitat is melting ... beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet,” Mr. Gore said, with the photo on the screen behind him. “They’re in trouble, got nowhere else to go.”
Photographer Byrd knew where to go - to her lawyers:
In an interview yesterday, she said Environment Canada “distributed it to seven agencies without my consent. They were amicable, but it’s under legal action right now.”
She has not filed a lawsuit, but has hired a lawyer to pursue a breach of copyright case. She does not accept the government’s explanation that it was “an honest mistake.”
But how does she feel about Gore’s use of her picture?
She said she was flattered when Mr. Gore approached her and offered to pay for use of the photo.
“The image is an icon. It’s definitely pulled the heartstrings of people and it says a lot, in itself. But I don’t have really any opinion myself on what the image says,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to the bears after that… They migrate over 100 miles, swimming.”
She now charges newspapers US$500 for use of the photo on inside pages, and US$700 for the front.
Further items here, here, and here (spiked’s otherwise excellent item mistakenly cites Sydney’s Daily Telegraph rather than the Sunday Telegraph).
(Much thanks to Lee Matthews for links and research)
IT’S ALL ABOUT OIL
Hugo’s environmental views:
Chavez has argued that powerful nations are responsible for causing global warming. What is more, he has publicly regretted pollution resulting from traditional sources of energy. He has called on developed nations to look more favorably on alternative energy such as gas, hydro and solar power. To its credit, Venezuela has ratified the Kyoto Protocol reducing greenhouse gas emissions ...
In his 2005 address to the United Nations, Hugo Chavez derided what he called “a socioeconomic model that has a galloping destructive capacity.” The Venezuelan president expressed concern about “an unstoppable increase of energy” and added that “more carbon dioxide will inevitably be increased, thus warming our planet even more.”
Hugo’s views are subject to change:
President Hugo Chavez said China is set to rival the United States as Venezuela’s top oil buyer as he announced new plans with the Asian powerhouse to jointly ship oil, build refineries and expand crude production.
So much for his concern about “an unstoppable increase of energy”. Hugo is unlikely to change his tune on psychotic nation-wrecker Robert Mugabe, however: “He continues, alongside his people, to confront the pretensions of new imperialists.”
LIFE BETTER SOMEHOW
Reason’s Indur M. Goklany:
Environmentalists and globalization foes are united in their fear that greater population and consumption of energy, materials, and chemicals accompanying economic growth, technological change and free trade—the mainstays of globalization—degrade human and environmental well-being.
Indeed, the 20th century saw the United States’ population multiply by four, income by seven, carbon dioxide emissions by nine, use of materials by 27, and use of chemicals by more than 100.
Yet ...
Read on.
EVANGELIST ENDORSED, ENDEFEATED
An endorsement (and prediction) from exaggermentalist Tim Flannery:
I wholeheartedly endorse Patrice Newell’s bid for election to the NSW’s Upper House. I think she will prove Margaret Mead correct in saying ‘never doubt that citizens of good will can change the world. Indeed they are the only thing that ever has.
Newell’s Climate Change Coalition pulled just 0.48% of the NSW Upper House vote. That’s despite an election-day assist from Newell’s husband, Phillip Adams:
Weather has suddenly become very political, and not a little religious. In today’s NSW elections, for example, the greenhouse effect, aka global warming and climate change, along with associated water problems, is the major issue. Not only with Labor and the Libs, but with the Nats and the Greens—and a new party called the Climate Change Coalition. (And let me declare an interest here. The CCC was formed by my missus, Patrice Newell, who heads a ticket of 21 climate evangelists standing for the Upper House.)
Evangelists? Yes, because weather is now intensely religious ...
After railing against religion for decades, Adams has ended up sharing his life with an unelectable evangelist. Perhaps there really is a God.
(Via Andrew H.)
TOP GRADE
Teaparty emails:
A couple of weeks ago you posted on Time for Kids’ shameless exploitation of polar bears, and my daughter’s homework.
As a result, a number of Blair Nation readers have stopped by and inquired about her grade. I think they might be pleasantly surprised.
Further details (from Mrs Teaparty) here.
NYT’S PROBLEM
Iowa Voice reports:
On March 18, the New York Times published this story about female soldiers who served in Iraq and are now having problems as a result.
One of the women mentioned in the story claims to have been sexually assaulted and that she suffers severe mental problems as a result of being deployed to Iraq ...
One problem though: she never was sent to Iraq. She was in Guam the whole time.
Her next appearance? Probably in a Terry Lane column.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
THREAD OPEN
Well, partially; there is still the matter of Australia’s World Cup match against South Africa to deal with (the Efricans are chasing 378; currently 0/79 after just 11 overs). Apart from that, this thread is as open as can be.