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FAMILY BLAMED
Phillip Adams, August 15:
Let the record show that today I’ve cancelled my Qantas flight to London. It was scheduled to land at Heathrow on September 11. Call me superstitious, but any plot to start blowing up aircraft for the fifth anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 spectacular gives pause for thought.
A few weeks later, Phillip changed his story:
Three weeks ago, under family pressure, I cancelled a flight to Britain because it was scheduled to land at Heathrow on September 11.
Whatever. Today Adams re-invents himself as a global warming pioneer:
Chairing the Commission for the Future more than 20 years ago, I decided to make the greenhouse effect, as global warming or climate change used to be known, our central issue. We argued that even if the scientific case weren’t proven, it made sense to act, just in case. If right, we were doing the right and desperately needed thing, and if wrong we’d do no harm. The same thing applies today, only more so. If Gore is only half right, we still face the greatest threat in human history. And if the sceptics are even half wrong, they’re condemning our planet to a lingering death.
On the Right of politics, what passes for risk assessment seems surreal. You’ve probably noted that many climate change sceptics among the commentariat are the greatest enthusiasts for the war against terror, demanding extremism in the face of a comparatively small risk while branding Gore an extremist for calling the world’s attention to what may prove to be the ultimate calamity ...
Those of us who’ve been campaigning since the 1980s agree with Gore that climate change is far more than an environmental or political issue. It’s an ethical issue. And even if he’s only half right, or a quarter right, it is the issue. Of survival.
Speaking of which, you’ll notice Adams didn’t cancel that flight because of global warming.
UPDATE. Reader rbresca: “One of his favourite targets back in his heyday was organised religion and the catholic church in particular. Now faced with a real, in your face, fascist, theocratic movement he decides not to play that game anymore. Far too dangerous - those guys mean business. Softcock.”
UPDATE II. Sam Harris on the mindset of Adams and his like:
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I’d like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the Bush administration deserves most of the criticism it has received in the last six years — especially with respect to its waging of the war in Iraq, its scuttling of science and its fiscal irresponsibility.
But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out of touch with the realities of our world — specifically with what devout Muslims actually believe about the West, about paradise and about the ultimate ascendance of their faith.
On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right.
This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that “liberals are soft on terrorism.” It is, and they are.
But hey, they’re hawks on ocean levels and carbon credits.
I guess he actually does do a nice job of summing up the chasm between the Left and the Right.
In simplistic terms I’ve always seen the Left as expounding ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…’ sort of politics. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone who wanted to flee their hell-hole of a country was allowed to enter whatever nicer country they wanted to and keep their values and customs and cultures and everything would mix into a fabulous multi-society and we’d all be better off. Whereas the Right knows damn well that the hell-holes they are fleeing are hell-holes because of the very culture, customs and values of the people who want to flee, and not all customs and cultures are mutually compatible. The Left are idealists the Right are realists.
And so is the debate on Climate Change. A lot of what the Green lobby expounds is ‘wouldn’t it be nice if…’ we all had solar-powered unicycles and stopped burning fossil fuels just in case these climate models over here actually turned out to be correct in 50 years, and shouldn’t we anyway because that would be so nice. Whereas those on the Right who have a more critical and realistic view of the world know that climate models have bugger all chance of predicting what the weather will be like next month let alone in decades to come based on some pretty dodgy data.
Crumbs, was there ever a quango that Phatty didn’t sit on? How did he find time, in between becoming an advertising millionaire and singlehandedly inventing the Australian film industry? And of course he knew all about greenhouse twenty years ago. He probably helped Algore invent the Internet, too. “Come here Mr. Adams, I need you!!”
Let the record show that Philip Adams is so full of hot air that he could float all the way to London if he kept his mouth shut long enough.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 09 19 at 12:55 AM • permalinkAnd if the sceptics are even half wrong, they’re condemning our planet to a lingering death.
Lingering for say a couple of thousand years…
And even if he’s only half right, or a quarter right, it is the issue. Of survival.
Better make that 4 thousand
Geez, I don’t think statistics are Phil the Dill’s strong suite. Why not throw in ‘an eighth, a sixteenth a poofteenth ... whatever’?
“Zing”, Tim. BTW, wasn’t the 1980s when it changed from a pollution-caused, upcoming, new Ice Age to global warming?
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 09 19 at 01:08 AM • permalinkThe Commission of the Future??? Good grief.
We argued that even if the scientific case weren’t proven, it made sense to act, just in case. If right, we were doing the right and desperately needed thing, and if wrong we’d do no harm.
How many disasters to which the left is father were born of this very attitude? All action has a reaction and, therefore, consequences—unintended though they may be. Idiots.
There’s something reassuringly middle class about the former US vice-president.
Is he talking about the Al Gore born with the silver spoon, groomed for the presidency, product of the finest hotels and schools Washington and the Ivy League had to offer who first ran for Congress in his father’s old district with his father’s name? That Al Gore? The one who owns several palatial mansions and travels by private jet? That must be some swell middle class you got down there in Oz.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 09 19 at 01:15 AM • permalinkWhat a load of drivel, but Hey Phil how about a solution? Surely in amongst all your rhetoric, curiously and generously sprinkled with religious epithets (I didn’t think you were the religious type), there is a solution?
Well in case you’re bereft of ideas, I have the one answer absolutely guaranteed to fix the problem once and for all. <u>And, yes I’ll even provide a money back guarantee!</u>
Actually I should thank Dr Suzuki because it was in reading some of his recent ramblings that the solution magically came to me. Suzuki really was decrying the fact that people were spoiling the plant, chewing up precious finite supplies of energy and producing CO2 from their motor vehicles. But it’s so obvious there is one common element to all this
globalwarming/cooling/ climate change stuff and that is all those pesky human beings running amok around the planet.So A Population Cull is the Answer. That’s what we need!
Suggested headlines: “Al Gore and Phillip Adams unite in a call for volunteers to sacrifice their lives to save Gaia.”
You could even lead by example and we’ll let you know how it all works out (one day).
Just read Phil’s 9/9 offering. Phil’s bored with terrorism because it isn’t, well, sufficiently terrifying any more. Gee, what a shame, Phil. What do you suppose we could do to re-pique your interest?
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 09 19 at 01:50 AM • permalinkI loved this snippet:- Chairing the Commission for the Future more than 20 years ago, I decided to make the greenhouse effect, as global warming or climate change used to be known, our central issue. We argued that even if the scientific case weren’t proven, it made sense to act, just in case. If right, we were doing the right and desperately needed thing, and if wrong we’d do no harm. Ecxept for fucking the economy, crushing the resource sector, costing heaps of members of the lumpen proletariat their livlihoods, their homes and their dignity…... no harm at all to a bloated tick who’s been siphoning the lifeblood out his fellow citizens for nigh on forty years, and whose last actual paying job was selling said proles whiffy, ozone depelting (and possibly carcinogenic) anti-perspirants.
He seems unnaturally comfortable with the title “chairman” as well- he’s just shitty it was some pointless pissup appointed by Hawke when he was back on the pop, rather than his rightful (or should that be leftful) position on the politburo.
Oh well- when industry and agriculture collapse after the draconian restrictions favoured by Gore and his peanut gallery take effect, we can always eat Phil- there’s enough of the sod to last until the next ice age, but how could we generate the necessary energy to refrigerate his copulent corpse?
The prospect of that mass going off and releasing assorted noxious gases makes a Lovelockian catastrophy fantasy look (and smell) like a Wiggles show.
You know, I was thinking just the other day that it’s almost twenty years since we’ve been hearing from the doomsayers about global warming. That’s a fair amount of time to start judging these claims in historical terms.
I first heard about GW in the mid-80’s in the form of articles written for the student magazine by doomsaying greenies. I was less skeptical in those days, and remember saying to people at parties “In twenty years time there may be no skifields in Australia left”. (Note the “maybe”, even then I wasn’t dogmatic about it).
Twenty years on, none of those prophecies have come even close to being true. There may have been some slight overall warming, but even that’s controversial. Their doom-saying predictions have simply not held up, and everything keeps being put back; recently I heard Sky News in the UK (getting more like the BBC these days) talking about 2050 being when changes might start to show.
As for Adams, he doesn’t appear to have any idea about risk assessment. His approach seems reminscent of Pascal’s wager. As it happens, a Times journalist explicitly invoked Pascal’s wager recently in order to call for action on GW.
There are two problems with this sort of Pascalian thinking. The first is that it can be applied to any possible risk, no matter how unlikely, as long the possible consequences are catastrophic. So it demands that we must equally do something about the possible threat of billions of mutant polar bears wiping us out (like melting the polar ice caps to destroy them first). Because even if we’re only half-right about this, there still be a long and terrible war between the bears and us. So it would only be prudent to at least start shooting polar bears whenever we see them.
In actual fact, we have to look at the probabilities of these terrible things happening, but that isn’t what the likes of Phil fail to focus on when they say “Well, it may be unlikely, but if the greens are even half right… . But funnily enough he comes over all clear-headed with Islamic terrorism, saying it’s only a small risk, so there’s not much pointing worrying about it. Why this is only a small risk and GW isn’t he fails to say.
The second problem is that this sort of reasoning is only supposed to apply to catastrophic scenarios anyway, and a few degrees warming is not going to be any catastrophe (unless you’re crazy-Gaia man James Lovelock, who I heard in Oxford once a decade ago warning us even back then that we were all going to die soon as the planet rejected us).
Apparently even Friends of the Earth have conceded that two degrees warming is survivable (good to know they have so much confidence in us. I wonder whether they think I’ll survive today if I go out without a jumper on?)
Adams also says:
>Imagine a retired John Howard campaigning for religious tolerance.You know, before 9/11, if you’d asked anybody in Australia who was the least religiously-tolerant person in the country, they would have said Philip Adams, who for years attacked Christianity mercilessly.
Posted by Blithering Bunny on 2006 09 19 at 02:22 AM • permalinkwasn’t the 1980s when it changed from a pollution-caused, upcoming, new Ice Age to global warming?
Seeing as how the “Cooling-Blue” graphics, were not nearly as scary as the “Melting-Reds”, the theory was changed from global cooling to that of warming, for the sake of the almighty ratings.
please note: not an original observation on my part.
If Gore is only half right, we still face the greatest threat in human history. And if the sceptics are even half wrong, they’re condemning our planet to a lingering death.
Ive bagged more than 50 super-model virgins in the last twenty years. If I am only half-right, Im still the biggest stud in human history. And if the sceptics are even half wrong, I’m still the biggest stud in human history.
I remember when the Commission for the Future was set up, by the Hawke government if memory serves. At the time I thought it was another lefty wank-fest, as so it proved. I think Barry Jones was on it - it was nearly all luvvies. It achieved nothing and is now forgotten and unlamented. People like Adams still put in on their CVs.
Posted by walterplinge on 2006 09 19 at 03:30 AM • permalink#9 - Exactly, kae. There would of course be the danger of self-deflation - what with him being such a prick…
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 09 19 at 04:17 AM • permalink“As for Adams, he doesn’t appear to have any idea about risk assessment.”
Adams doesn’t care if he has any idea or not about the legion issues he comments on. Like a scabby old dog, he cocks a leg to a tree or bush, drenches it with his stale piss, then limps on to the next target. He is insufferable.
Posted by Bearded Mullah on 2006 09 19 at 04:18 AM • permalinkaah the precautionary principle. It seems so long since i’ve heard that invoked.
The trouble with the precautionary principle as described by Phil is that ever since it was enunciated it has encouraged people to think up the direst consequences of any act they don’t like. They can then say that banning the act is prudent because even if the risk is miniscule the consequences are horrendous. I heard this principle used by green groups in their campaign against genetically modified foods.
It’s about as honest as its close companion, “if this saves one persons life it will be worth it”
Given bird flu is a Known but remote possibility of being catastrophic we should stop all research and funding into it now.
However given the Statistical but improbible chance of a meteor strike ending all life on earth tomorrow we should devote all time and energy to terraforming mars.
Given my long hours of playing Alpa centauri I feel i should be considered an expert on this despite my overwhelming ignorance on the science behind the issues. I will leave all that to the plebs to pay for.
/Phatty off
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 09 19 at 04:40 AM • permalinkAll fixed, no need for bertha to paddle my butt, thanks Nilknarf!
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 09 19 at 05:24 AM • permalinkAs Australians, I think you should all apologize for Phillip Adams. It’s only fair, I did for Suzuki.
If Gore is only half right and
Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fidesI rest my case.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 09 19 at 05:35 AM • permalinkThere are two, rhetorical, points that should always be raised about Kyoto and climate change:
1. Politicians are promising to make the weather better.
2. Since when can we believe a weather forecast, let alone a politician?
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 09 19 at 05:40 AM • permalinkHeed my words, puny humans. You are all going to die unless you change your ways.
Are we all tired of this bull yet? BTW That’s a disturbing #6 Skeptic, I hope the report is wrong.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2006 09 19 at 05:58 AM • permalinkEver notice that Phuckwit Phil’s favourite words are the pronouns are ‘I’ and ‘us’, which, for His Cowardly Snivelling Self Obsessed Phatness, are the same thing. A bit like the Royal ‘we’. What realy makes me laugh about the pathetic phucking wanker know-it-all is his phucked-up Marxism - hates religion, but not his religious adherence to the teachings of his discredited secular deity; and hates capitalism, despite being a rather well-off former advertising mogul. He’s a champion of the working class, despite despising the great unwashed, plasma TV-loving, Howard-voting rabble. I bet the self-annointed enviro-warrior intellectual has never ridden a bicycle or walked any great distance in his life. If only we could export the phat pompous git to North Korea or Cuba, where he belongs.
The Global Warming scare first raised its head in the late 1980’s, less than fifteen years after temps (minutely) started to increase during the mid-late seventies, ‘hot’ on the heels of global cooling concerns. We should be in awe of such statistical gymnastics (the equivalent of a standing start double backflip).
#21, the precautionary principle has been back in vogue in the last few years amongst the eco-mentalists and environmental bureaucrats because traditional risk analysis doesn’t give the answers that they like.
They’ve also done the same with cost-benefit analysis. It never showed that daft schemes like Kyoto were worth doing, so they invented triple-bottom line accounting.
Typical lefties, they first pick an answer and work backwards from there.
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2006 09 19 at 08:17 AM • permalink#33 Blogstrop: Paco Enterprises is pleased to inform you that you have won the bid for composing the music and lyrics for the corporate song that our employees will be
forcedencouraged to sing at the beginning of each work day. Something featuring sunrises and birds and fat profit margins should do the trick.There’s nothing wrong with admitting that you canceled a flight to somewhere because you were afraid that terrorists would blow it up. We’re all afraid, although most of us don’t change our travel plans. Admitting to that fear, though, means there’s something to be afraid of, and in Mr. Adams’ case, admitting that he’s been wrong all this time when he said there wasn’t. It makes him seem small.
We argued that even if the scientific case weren’t proven, it made sense to act, just in case. If right, we were doing the right and desperately needed thing, and if wrong we’d do no harm.
Something about the quote reminded me of another quote, allegedly made by playwright David Mamet,
“you’re all the same … It’s always ‘What I’m going to do for you.’ Then you screw up and then its ‘we did the best we could. I’m dreadfully sorry’ and people like us live with your mistakes the rest of our lives.”Remember the leftist creed: Accountability is only for conservatives.
Posted by Mark Razak on 2006 09 19 at 10:06 AM • permalink#36 Thanks Paco. It’s been done. Just needed a new verse added:
Sunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gazeSunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tearsSunrise, sunset
Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the memos:
Who gave these idiots a pay rise?
Union hacks know that I cut toes!Phatty thinks RWDB’s are divorced from reality. This from his Colon
column.
“Compare his stand with that of James Lovelock. The inventor of the Gaia hypothesis believes that billions of us - yes, billions - are doomed to die this century as a consequence of climate change. As reported in this column months ago, Lovelock talked to me of “a few breeding pairs of human beings perhaps surviving in a melted Arctic”.”An inventor makes a thing, not produces an unverifyable construct from his own imagination.
Someone needs to hack his TV and present “Edge of Darkness” as a documentary.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 09 19 at 07:02 PM • permalinkJust think of yourself as deputy to Sherriff Andrea, Nilknarf.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 09 19 at 08:01 PM • permalinkOh god I’m too exhausted to fix all the crap. It looks like what nilknarf did is working, so I’ll leave it. (Thanks nilknarf.)
Now I will go collapse.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 09 19 at 08:06 PM • permalinkBugger, bugger , bugger. Ive used it before no problems. I am now typing with bannannas for hands.
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 09 19 at 08:12 PM • permalink#37 Rebecca, its even worse than that. Phatty goes on record with the position that terrorism is no big deal, just something got up by Bush and Howard to scare a bunch of reich wing morons to vote for them. Fair enough. But then he chickendove’s out of an international flight because of the possibility of a terrorist act, despite it being no big deal? I could understand if he skipped the flight because at 35 thousand feet he would be too close to the sun (global warming and all). That at least would be intellectually consistent, and fat does melt quite easily.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 09 19 at 10:06 PM • permalinkWhat amazes me how he ( and plenty of others) can say that he was saying twenty years ago that life as we know it will end in twenty years time and here we are and… whoops not much has happened. Anyone else with half a brain would be quietly shuffling off to the side hoping no one notices.
They seem very comfortable with the idea of “sure we were absolutely hopelessly wrong back then, but we’re right now”Posted by the nailgun on 2006 09 19 at 10:45 PM • permalinkThis is a term Ive never heard spoken of in polite company. “Geoengineering”,* apparently some of the same people who dont know weather it is warming up/cooling down/more storms/silent spring/DDT bad/DDT good/etc.
They are proposing large scale “interventions” to counter the problems of climate change.
They cant quantify what is happening now, but want huge funding to do “something”.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.1/huyghe.htmAllready has its own conspiracy nuts following it.
http://www.lightwatcher.com/chemtrails/smoking_gun.html
Tell me again why I should trust them??*I know this is a legitimate field in oil exploration and similar diciplines but this is way outside what used to be geoengineering.
I suspect Phill is involved.Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 09 20 at 03:38 AM • permalinkIs David Marr related to Phil? They have about as good a grasp on reality.
This is from SBS Insight programme last night
“DAVID MARR: It’s dog-whistling politics. You know, this rhetoric from the Government at the moment about Aussie values - it’s talking white values and Christian values. It’s dog whistling and it’s disgusting and it is one of the most embarrassing things that’s happened in public life in the country for a very long time. This is wholly unnecessary. Costello’s rant the other night about the, you know, the dangers of sharia law in this country was a confected rant against Islam. And this is a country Australia is a country terrified of Islam at the moment. Why? Well, it’s very good politics for the Government and that is a very sad thing”
You should have heard the hate and bile in his voice. It warms my heart to know a dickwit like him is so seething and boiling with rage against the majority of Australians.
Oooh original! Marr brings up the “lovely food” defence for multicult.
“But Jenny, there’s another reason why we’re all laughing at Sam Kekovich a moment ago, because in our hearts we know that the best people for cooking lamb in the world are Lebs. They have the best lamb recipes. It’s just a joke to think that my grandmother’s leg of lamb beats the kind of recipes you get from the Middle East. It’s a joke”
If anyone can get a couple of stills of Marrs face as he spat out his lines
“DAVID MARR: Let’s not romanticise Australia’s past. Australia is a paradise of a kind and it’s because people like you who spout this hateful rhetoric… hateful rhetoric of unity.”
Stupidest,,,statement…ever…
http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/#Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 09 20 at 05:21 AM • permalinkDe nada, Andrea, anytime.
signed, Deputy Dawg.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2006 09 20 at 07:59 AM • permalink#51 Even with Marr’s compadres Lisbeth Gorr,Ron Embarrassi,the Prof from the religion of peace-noooooo-one laughed at his joke.I noted the One Nation guy got the icy shoulder from gappy Brocky when he attempted a word or two.
Brockey assembles the usual suspects in droves to represent the public..I don’t know why she bothers -the Aussie public mostly wouldn’t give it the time of day -even tho they shell out big dollars for it and its FREE they won’t go there.Ah, Pascal’s wager. Love it—false dichotomy and all.
As Homer Simpson pointed out to his wife, “But Marge, what if we picked the wrong religion? Every week, we’re just making God madder and madder!”
Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 09 20 at 05:40 PM • permalink“Mr. Adams…fat, wrong and cowardly is no way to go through life, son…” Dean Vernon Wormer
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 09 20 at 08:08 PM • permalink
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Maybe if dillip, woops, I meant phillip could get the terrorists to stop blowing things up he could solve that issue and global warming in one go. Upside of that is we wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore?