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Last updated on August 6th, 2017 at 02:05 pm
Everything Tim Flannery says should be viewed in relation to this comment, from a Bulletin profile published last week:
“This year’s election is the critical moment for us all. It’s a bit like the days before World War II.”
Flannery’s at war! Which might explain his tendency to exaggeration and alarmism; all’s fair when you’re fighting the denialist Nazis. The rest of the article is a subtle comic masterpiece, as Julie-Anne Davies (broadly sympathetic with Flannery’s aims) encounters Flannery’s spectacular ego:
“I’m not into celebrity,” he announced straight up. “I’ve not run for political office. I am a private person and, anyway, it’s the message that’s important, not me.”
There will be some people – notably scientists and politicians – who are probably picking themselves up off their floors after reading that one.
And, presumably, Bulletin readers. Non-celebrity and private person Flannery somehow appears on the Bulletin’s cover, in one of the most sick-making compassionate-tilt images ever published:
Brief pause while sawdust is deployed. The article continues:
Some in the Green movement believe he should have knocked back the honour because of the Coalition government’s woeful record on climate change. Did he consider it? “Not for a second. It’s the people’s honour, this is the year of climate change and that is why it has been bestowed upon me.”
And here were we thinking climate change is some kind of long-term problem.
Those few Australians who haven’t read his The Weather Makers better bone up, because Flannery promises it is all he is going to talk about for the next 12 months.
The majority of Australians haven’t read The Weather Makers. Still, thanks for the warning.
Even as a child he was aware of the footprint man was making on the environment. “When I was very young, there was so much space but gradually it began to disappear and with it the birds and the trees. That was the depressing thing about Melbourne even back then: the relentless march of the suburbs. I remember commenting on it to my mother and she said, ‘that’s progress’.”
Australia is approximately the same size as the US but with a population of only 20 million. If Flannery thinks our space is “disappearing”, he’s looking through the wrong end of the telescope. (By the way, Mrs Flannery sounds like she’s got a good handle on things.) The Flannery ego now commences to emerge:
Flannery also has a reputation in some circles – bitchy scientific academia mainly – as being a bit of a media tart. He is always available. For this story, he bent over backwards to help out with photos and took more time than his packed diary permitted, to explain himself and his life …
He’s a private person.
Trying to get Australians to think, really think, about climate change and how they’ll vote in the coming election. That’s what Tim Flannery wants to talk about. So quizzing him about his partner Alexandra, or his relationship with his children (a son and a daughter, both in their early 20s) ends up sounding trivial and, as he bluntly wrote later in an email, “their own business”.
Given Flannery’s estimate of our optimum population, he’s probably ashamed they’re alive.
When he travelled the river with his mate John Doyle for the ABC series Two Men in a Tinnie, more than a million viewers tuned in … A second series is planned for later this year.
He’s a private person. Beyond this point, Davies’ responses to Tim’s Flannerisms become delightfully frosty:
“There is nothing that is more important for me than influencing government policy towards halting the amount of greenhouse emissions, nothing. Our climate is so fragile, it’s like it has cancer. We’re at the point where we are not sure if it has metastasised or not. I think we can still pull it back, but if we don’t act now, we will spend trillions of dollars trying to ward off the new dark ages that will surely follow.”
Bloody hell. He bandies around ideas that seem so big, so impossible, that one’s first response is to dismiss them. It is also many people’s second response.
And so on:
He makes no apology for his apocalyptic predictions and has a checklist of solutions, including a new city which he calls “Geothermia” to be built in central Australia on the borders of NSW, South Australia and Queensland. A new desert city? But that’s not going to happen, surely? “I know it’s radical but we have no choice,” he shoots back in that quiet, earnest, assured way that galvanises many but also infuriates his critics. Later, he sends me his list which he headlines, again without a trace of irony, “A New Industrial Revolution for Australia”. Flannery is happy to provide the list because “this is important, you have to get this stuff right”. By that he means me.
Next, a terrible threat:
In July, Flannery will begin a new phase in his life when he takes up a professorship in environmental and life studies at Sydney’s Macquarie University. He is also girding his loins to write another book. “I’m dreading it in a way … “
You ain’t alone, professor.
But before that, he’s got another project to complete. Flannery the serious enviro-scientist is part way through writing a work of fiction.
Flannery shouldn’t have too many problems with that.
has a checklist of solutions, including a new city which he calls “Geothermia”
The second that a person proposes construction of a utopian city with a goofy futuristic name, you are obligated as a sentient being to utterly dismiss everything they have said previously and everything they say subsequently.
- Tell that man to get my continent out of his beard!Posted by crittenden on 2007 02 25 at 12:59 PM • permalink
- Cities that are built where there is a reason and need for them thrive, until the reason or need vanishes. But if you start where there is no need or reason… what you get, if you are very lucky, is a tourist attraction. A thriving city? Nope. Case in point: Washington DC.
Flannery, like many leftist changers of the world, profess love of humanity yet they invariably despise people. And without people to live in it, Geothermia isn’t going to be a city.
Posted by Steve Skubinna on 2007 02 25 at 01:18 PM • permalink
- Hmmmm.
Personally I’m figuring that the world’s lefties are going to be as wrong about climate change as they have been about *everything else*.
Which means instead of global warming, which has few downsides in reality, we’re actually going to get global cooling which would be catastrophic to a degree that would stun you if you researched it.
Posted by memomachine on 2007 02 25 at 01:52 PM • permalink
- This is the year of climate change? You mean, by this time next year all of this will have gone away? Okay, I think I can manage to stand it for a year. Maybe. Or not. I’ll get back to you.Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 02 25 at 01:53 PM • permalink
- …Flannery will begin a new phase in his life when he takes up a professorship in environmental and life studies at Sydney’s Macquarie University…
May God have mercy on the students at Macquarie University.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2007 02 25 at 02:09 PM • permalink
- Hey, I happen to own a bridge in Geothermia that I’m looking to sell. Maybe Tim F. is interested? You know, a guy could make alot of money to buy carbon credits if he bought my bridge, you know, in charging tolls for using the bridge and the like. Something to think about, Tim F., if you’d like to drop me a line at PACO International.Posted by andycanuck on 2007 02 25 at 02:09 PM • permalink
- We will know Flannery is serious about environmentalism when he starts using both sides of the toilet paper.Posted by Mystery Meat on 2007 02 25 at 02:10 PM • permalink
- Even as a child he was aware of the footprint man was making on the environment. “When I was very young, there was so much space but gradually it began to disappear and with it the birds and the trees. That was the depressing thing about Melbourne even back then: the relentless march of the suburbs. I remember commenting on it to my mother and she said, ‘that’s progress’.”
Whilst that was also the case in Sydney, it’s dishonest not to acknowledge that the urban environment has markedly recovered. Where the fifties, sixties and seventies urban sprawl adversely affected bird and tree numbers along with air and water quality, the urban environment here over the last thirty years is vastly improved, despite huge increases in population.
Heavy industry plus a majority of manufacturing and fabrication plants have long disappeared from our city, resulting in much cleaner air and water quality. Additionally vehicle emission controls have greatly contributed to improved air quality. That’s progress.
Where once urban gardens were largely English plantings, modern gardens are now predominately native, enabling habitats for healthy numbers of native birds not seen in Sydney for generations.
When I was a kid, around the same age as Flannery, there was little awareness of the urban environment. Every weekend trees and vegetation were regularly chopped down and burnt. Where once the only vista of my childhood neighbourhoods was a sea of red roofs, these days all one sees from the same locations are glimpses of red roofs amongst a lush coverage of native trees. That’s progress.
Where once only eels lived in our waterways, these days most rivers and the Harbour are clean enough to fish and swim. Eagles work the upper reaches of the Parramatta River as do increasing numbers of sharks. It’s too bloody clean !
Right now outside my window in the pre dawn, currawongs and kookaburras are stirring whilst families of possums stomp around my roof. It’s a veritable wildlife plague, 15 kilometres from the CBD. That’s progress.
Yet Flannery implies by omission of the facts, that our urban environments are in the same depleted state as forty years ago.
Tell that man to get my continent out of his beard!
Is that why the weather has been shitty lately? Is this guy in cahoots with Algore?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 02 25 at 04:22 PM • permalink
- #2
The second that a person proposes construction of a utopian city with a goofy futuristic name, you are obligated as a sentient being to utterly dismiss everything they have said previously and everything they say subsequently.
Hey, whatever DID happen to “The Multi-Function Polis”?
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2007 02 25 at 04:35 PM • permalink
- Never forget, THESE are the people who were responsible fo making Flummery AoTY:
Australian of the Year
Chair
Ms Lisa Curry Kenny MBE OAM
Three time Olympian, Managing Director Curry Kenny GroupDeputy Chairman
Ms Shelley Reys
Managing Director Arrilla
Directors
Dr Tony Cocchiaro AM
General Family Medical PractitionerMr Ian Elliot
Company Director and ConsultantMr Bill Lenehan
Company DirectorMr Tuong Quang Luu AO
Head SBS RadioMr Andrew Metcalfe
Deputy Secretary
Department of the Prime Minister and CabinetProfessor Margaret Seares AO
Deputy Vice Chancellor University of Western AustraliaDr James Bradfield Moody
Director of Divisional Business Strategy, CSIRO Division of Land and WaterMr Fergus Ryan
Director Australian Foundation Investment CompanyMr Duncan Lewis AO
Deputy Secretary, Department of Prime Minister and CabinetDr Bruce Walker
Centre for Appropriate Technology
- Not only do these people purposely leave out any progress in cleaning up the consequences of industrialization, they purposely fail to mention the enormous boon to human kind that industrialization represented. Unless, of course, you are one who yearns for Rousseau’s utopia that included an average life-span of 30, massive die-off of children before the age of 5, plagues that periodically wiped out hundreds of thousands of people, mass famines when confronted with any climatic change, such as drought, and the like, were good things.
I luuuuuuuv the picture. He’s got the whole world in his hand. Humbly, of course.
He’s a private person.
I believe the modern definition of “a private person” is one who doesn’t flash their genitals to photographers.
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 02 25 at 04:58 PM • permalink
- Our main problems stem from overpopulation in certain countries, overfishing and overclearing of places like the Amazon. But we won’t blame those enviro-vandals for their rampant destruction, because we are too busy fussing about light globes.
I await the deluge of ridicule due to Flummery for all his exaggerations, but particularly for It’s a bit like the days before World War II.
After all, Brendan Nelson was taken to task for carelessly and supposedly inaccurately comparing the current war with that war.
For the media, it’s not so much a case of don’t talk about the war, it’s more one of don’t mention the long history of climate change prior to industrialisation. Under no circumstances must the Sun be mentioned as a cause of anything apart from night and day, oh, and solar energy. That’s good, benevolent solar energy, not energy which might vary and might have side effects from time to time. Just don’t talk about it.
- There’s nothing crazy about building a city in the desert. That would be Las Vegas. It’s a swingin’ place, and Australia should have one.
Cocktail waitresses in skimpy outfits, the $5 buffet, giant billboards advertising “Cold Beer, Hot Women”, a sports book on Malaysian table tennis.
If that’s what he has in mind, count me in, baby!
- #8 debo.v2 Flannery is probably referring to the desert in South Australia where a company Geodynamics is currently working with a project to extract useful heat from the earth. Whilst technically I find geothermal energy and the engineering behind it an interesting topic, there are a number of issues to be resolved before this technology can have an impact on how we produce electricity, if ever. The SA test site is remote, as with most sources of hot rocks that are ‘reasonably’ accessible to the surface. Any large scale harvesting of this energy source would of necessity cover a substantial (really huge) area, i.e., you can only extract a certain amount of heat from a given area and the heat, whilst useful, is not high grade like the heat produced in a conventional power station. Hence Geodynamics are hanging their hat on additional technology to improve the efficiency of heat extraction (see Kalina on their web page). Personally I have doubts about that technology.
And the big one – if any large scale power generation was to be generated from this energy source, massive infrastructure would be required to transmit the electricity to where it is needed. And, of course, you guesses, this will cost the earth.
So Flannery’s answer seems to be to build a
towncity in the desert and call if Geothermia. Good thinking eh? Take the people to one of the most inhospitable places on the planet where water is scarce and no doubt stick the entire Goethermia in an airconditioned Geodome. Hey, I’ve just realised this man is brilliant! Quick someone nominate him with Goracle for a Nobel peace prize.P.S. [Shhh – I just noticed on the Geodome site that it utilizes the latest engineering technology with ALGOR finite analysis – geez that bloke gets everywhere].
- …he takes up a professorship in environmental and life studies at Sydney’s Macquarie University
Macquarie Uni is recruiting all major intellects in this country.
- He makes no apology for his apocalyptic predictions and has a checklist of solutions, including a new city which he calls “Geothermia” to be built in central Australia on the borders of NSW, South Australia and Queensland.
Why do I think he owns land there and plans to make a killing, much like some real estate developers did in Florida thirty years ago selling land lots that, rather than being waterless, were actually under water?
- That issue of the Bulletin (with Flummery’s head all over it) arrived in my letterbox Wednesday at 10am.
At 10.01am it was in the rubbish bin.I am sick and tired of this snake oil merchant.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 02 25 at 08:08 PM • permalink
- I was given Flannery’s book for Christmas by some green friends.
In their presence, I tore off enough of the wrapping to reveal the book’s title.
I stopped unwrapping it while I tried to compose a thankful expression on my face. (Failed.)
Seeing my expression, they suggested I return it to the book store and exchange it for a title more to my liking.
I cannot recommend this book because I was unable to read beyond the claims made on the cover.
…“Geothermia” to be built in central Australia on the borders of NSW, South Australia and Queensland.
The owners of the Birdsville Pub will be pleased.
I am now carefully watching land values as owners of beach-front mansions in my area dump their properties on the market and flock to Birdsville.
Pity Paco’s on leave. There is a killing to be made here.
- It seems like about every 20 years, somebody comes along with a harebrained scheme to build a new Emerald City. How many Australians remember the Multi-function Polis? We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz…
- Like this Flannery comment:
I’ll talk to anyone who will listen.
Shame the reverse doesn’t apply.
[i]Flannery the serious enviro-scientist is part way through writing a work of fiction.
His first few novels have been tedious, with implausible plots and a serious lack of character development, which makes them strangely autobiographical.
That was the depressing thing about Melbourne even back then: the relentless march of the suburbs.
And now 21st century Flannery says he has done his bit to extend Sydney’s suburbia over the Hawkesbury River and into the bushland beyond? Any environmentalist worth his reputation would live within cycling distance of work. But where should Tim live? Near Macquarie Uni or near the airport? Environmental warrior, hypocrite is thy middle name.
- 36 Cuckoo: My kids were badly burnt buying property in the area proposed for Queensland’s MFP. That is why we are being much more cautious in our property dealings these days.
It so happens that I am using Flannery’s book as an authoritative source for new coastline mapping. A one acre block I have just put on the market will have the beach at your doorstep.
- It’s a bit like the days before World War II.
Does he mean the days when they sacrificed the Rhineland, Sudetenland, Austria and the Czechs to the insatiable maw of the rampaging, totalitarian Great Saviour Ubermensch Hitler?
There are definite parallels with what the Greenies are demanding of us in the West now.
Flannery looks like an innocent kid:
‘Pleeease, come and play Glowball with ME!’
- #17 Lisa Curry-Kenny as Chair? Give me a break. Are my taxes paying for this?
Warwick Capper on the other hand…
Posted by Hump B Bare on 2007 02 26 at 12:15 AM • permalink
- #6 Ed,
Thirty years ago the same people were predicting global cooling, and a new Ice Age in the near future. Some of them were exactly the same people, like Stephen Schneider and Tjeerd van Andel. The solutions were the same, give all power and money into the hands of socialist bureaucrats they approved of. They were wrong about that then and I’d bet they are wrong now.Geothermal energy production works fine, in Iceland. It happens to sit atop a geological hotspot that brings heat from the core-mantle boundary and atop the mid-Atlantic ridge that brings heat from the upper mantle to the surface. If Golden Boy can find a spot in Australia that has those characteristics he’ll be squatting pretty. Someohow I doubt such a place exists.
And he wants to build a city in the desert where there is no water? Las Vegas? I rather doubt that such a killjoy puritan as Flannery would build something like that. For one thing, he doesn’t have the mob connections that made Las Vegas such a success. Somebody have a look at Qom in Iran for a realistic example of such a project.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2007 02 26 at 12:20 AM • permalink
- Keep in mind that although Las Vegas is in a desert, one of the biggest rivers in the US flows not too far away (less than 30 miles), so water is available without so much trouble (although how to divide it up fairly is a subject of dispute). I don’t know too much about Australian geography but I don’t believe there are too many large rivers flowing through the heart of the continent. Is that the case?
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It’s not. Next year it will be something else, like a plague of rabid moths or impending death by asteroid (confession: my personal favorite and longed-for doom, because I think that only a big rock from space will be enough to make people like Tim Flannery shut up).