Sunday, April 01, 2007
NOTE ON THE DOOR
Andrew Bolt reader Alan reports:
During Earth Hour last night we drove 40km across Sydney to a party.
I saw no evidence of anybody turning their lights out. Houses were ablaze, shopping centres all lights blazing, restaurants, servos - all brightly-lit business as usual.
At the party the subject moved to ‘earth hour’ and GW generally. Even Al Gore and Nic Stern. Melting glaciers and drowning polar bears copped a mention. Surprisingly, dare I say, switched on bunch at this party.
The consensus, and I mean consensus, with no dissenting voice, was one of anger at the GW con job mixed with guffawing at the stupidity of the Gores and Flannerys of the world.
Pathetic ratings for Ten’s Cool Aid fiasco and the Climate Change Coalition’s tiny State election vote might also point to a growing trend towards mockery and dismissal of globey warming hysterics. Which would be bad news for Kevin Rudd, who is banking on fear of warmening to win the next election:
Labor is treating climate change as a near religious issue while the government is working to reduce its effects by practical measures, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says.
“We are about substance, we’re about real achievement, practical achievement, things that work,” Mr Turnbull told Network Ten today.
Conversely, Labor is looking at climate change in a religious sense, he said.
“For Labor it’s a religious issue,” Mr Turnbull said.
“Labor is verging on becoming fanatical about this issue in the sense that they do not care how poor we have to become as long as we become pure.”
Meanwhile Greenists become ever more puritanical. Here’s another Earth Hour-related Bolt reader comment:
We went to the Swans v. Eagles game (Swans lost by 1 point again!) and left the lights on at home in protest. Came home to find a note on the door from our green neighbours ...
GORE IS LAW
Here’s an interesting case:
Citing Al Gore’s movie on global warming, a federal judge has advanced a lawsuit against the government for its financing of overseas projects that may contribute to climate change.
The judge in question, one Jeffrey White, seems to be drawing on the precedent established by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles v. New York City Sanitation Department.
MARKET SPEAKS
Massive prices paid for Sydney beachside properties:
When Ann Arkins made the $3,725,000 bid needed to buy a block of Bondi Beach units yesterday she was more than happy.
She’d expected to pay a lot more ...
In neighbouring suburb Tamarama, a four-bedroom, four-bathroom 1940s house overlooking the beach sold for $5.9 million - $1.5 million above reserve.
March is traditionally strong, it always has been, but the beachside suburbs have shown enormous strength in recent weeks ...
Haven’t these people heard about the 100 metre floods that will wash away coastal properties worldwide? Why, it’s as though they want to drown.
HUMOURLESS, VANQUISHED, HOPELESS, DULL, WORRIED, ETC
Interviewed by the Age, Phillip Adams roams mastodon-like over some familiar territory:
Adams has his own theory on the dearth of political satire in Australia: the left has lost its sense of humour. “What’s left of the left has felt so vanquished, so hopeless,” he says. “You’ve got to have a sense of humour otherwise the vast epidemic of depression seeps into your clowns and your clowns get sad faces. The entire world of the left is now sombre, dull and worried at the moment. So it’s desperately depressed. They’re all on life support and there are no laughs in that.”
Oh, cheer up, Phil. Sad clowns are hilarious.
CORE APPROACHING MELTDOWN
There might be something to this global warming crap after all:
Scientists have taken the temperature of Earth’s innards, more than a thousand miles beneath the surface, and found that the mercury there soars to about 6,650 degrees Fahrenheit.
No wonder poor little Sarah Bishop’s feet are all blistered. The earth isn’t warm; it’s freakin’ hot!
From their measurements, the scientists estimate that about one-third of the heat that radiates from Earth’s surface into the atmosphere - estimated to be 42 terawatts a year - comes from our planet’s core.
Damn fool planet is trying to kill itself. Next on its heat-o-ramic hit list: the innocent Himalayas.
INFORMATION PUT TO USE
The Sunday Age’s Terry Lane - now reduced from writing weekly to writing every two weeks, which probably means he’s been half-fired since his last column debacle - muses on the nature of news dissemination:
Cultural critic Neil Postman, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, reckons that our news collection and dissemination technologies have turned the age-old problem of information on its head: where people once sought information to manage the real contexts of their lives, now they have to invent contexts in which otherwise useless information might be put to some use.
• Useless information: long-disproved claims by someone who never served in Iraq;
• Invented context: the war on terror is opposed even by US troops;
• Put to some use: Lane got a column out of it.
KIDNAPPERS CROSS LINE
UK Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt on the capture by Iran of 15 British sailors and Royal Marines:
“It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people.”
Via Larry T. As always with such a blindingly stupid quote, be alert to the possibility it’s too stupid to be true.