Saturday, March 14, 2009

Miranda Devine, Climate Sceptics, Independent Scientists, Warmie Greenie Brownie Hysteria and aux armes Citoyens!

Just love the term climate sceptic. It sounds so, well, so scientific. There's all these greenie alarmist hysterics roaming the planet shouting out we're all gunna die, we're all doomed, and back in the corner quietly going about their scientific business are the 'climate sceptics'.

Rigorous, analytical, searching, probing, trying to understand. Like evolution sceptics. But wait, isn't the column in The Sydney Morning Herald entitled Climate sceptics fight tide of alarmism written by Miranda the Devine? Didn't she confess only a few days ago that the intertubes had reduced original thoughts and hard won thinking to zero? Where's this sudden new respect for science come from?

Well from the sceptics who gathered in New York, at a gathering funded by the Heartland Institute, a US free-market think tank, as a rival gathering to the loons gathered at Copenhagen to discuss, and confirm, that climate change is real. Think of it as hard nosed Protestants gathering in one corner to rebut the flabby Holy Roman Catholics in the other.

If you read the wretched column, don't expect any logic beyond the 'two legs good, four legs bad' thinking the Devine is sometimes capable of. Out she trots a few well known dinkum Aussie sceptics to prove global warming doesn't exist. It's all the fault of flawed computer modeling. It's all the fault of natural climatic events and trends. It's got nothing to do with the six billion odd cockroaches currently roaming the planet, nor should we worry as we head to nine billion cockroaches in the not too distant future.

No, let's get into really scientific discussion. Cue arch loon, Vaclav Klaus, a Eurosceptic who suddenly thought that the Czech Republic's ascendancy to the European Union presidency was a good thing. 

Environmentalism is all about control and manipulation. Environmentalism had replaced socialism as the totalitarian threat to freedom in the 21st century, he said. "Environmentalists ... do not want to reveal their true plans and ambitions: to stop economic development and return mankind centuries back."

But Miranda if that means getting rid of googles and the intertubes, won't that be a great thing? It'll save the minds of generations to come.

Klaus by the way is an economist by training and with about as much scientific understanding as I have, and as many bees in the bonnet.

Sadly Klaus reported that the sceptics had made little headway. The Heartland conference received little coverage in Australia (so much Miranda thinks of Piers Akerman), and the odd New York Times story (that bankrupt bastion of liberalism and warped leftie thinking), when it ran any story at all, dwelled on "sneering dismissal from Greenpeace campaigners."

But wait, there might be hope. Only 11% of Czechs believe humans have a significant influence on warming, and here in good old land of Oz, climate has dropped from equal first place to fifth, with Australians caring more about jobs. And only 18% of Americans strongly believed climate change is real, human-caused and harmful.

Isn't it great? If only I'd known that scientific research could be reduced to polling of a couple of thousand souls. Smirking as I hand paper up to science teacher. "Ah Mr. Lee seventy per cent of the class think magnetism is god's way of binding the universe, and gravity is a seemly way of speaking, but luckily only sixty per cent think you're a doodle headed wombat." A + Dorothy.

Thank the lord, I can add that to the 64 per cent of Americans who believe aliens have contacted earthlings, the 6o per cent who believe in hell, the 34 per cent who believe in UFOs, the thirty per cent who believe in witches, the quarter who believe in astrology, the twenty per cent who believe in reincarnation, the 82 per cent who believe in god, the 73 per cent who believe in miracles, and the 68 per cent who believe in angels. (Source Harris Poll here 2005)

So that's a relief Miranda, you've won. We have dominion over the earth, and we're free to loot and pillage for as long as we like, and fuck risk management or the future generations. Let's burn all the coal, let's clog the atmosphere, let's return to those good old pea soup fogs we used to so love in London, full of statue-melting acid rain. To do anything else would be a constraint on our god given freedom and liberty.

But wait, what's this? The fundie greenies have got amongst the fundie Christians. Lord say it ain't so, do some of them believe we might be around on this planet for another two thousand years before Christ returns and the rapture sweeps the goodies into heaven?

In a wake-up call to Christian groups who have rushed to embrace climate alarmism, Robinson (professor of chemistry and co-founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine) pointed out the world's poor will bear the brunt of carbon prohibition policies.

Funny, and I thought they were bearing the brunt of rampant American and Australian greed and consumerism.

Yep, banning DDT for mosquito eradication was the first example of genocide by the removal of technology. All that to save the bloody bald American eagle. Bugger that for a joke. Not to mention the millions who have died from the insertion of fluoride into water and toothpaste, the first example of genocide by the addition of technology (oh, sorry, love to use that term genocide, sorry, forgot to mention Zyklon B).

So here's the problem. You have all the arguments, all the scientific cred, all the experts, all the knock down passion (actually you aren't sceptics are you Miranda, you're dinky di true believers), all the public on your side. So why do you feel beleaguered?

But how can the courageous independent scientists in New York compete for attention with climate hysteria coming from such world leaders as Prince Charles, who in Rio de Janeiro this week claimed: "We have less than 100 months to alter our behaviour before we risk catastrophic climate change."

And the Prince is such a convincing scientific expert. No wonder it's an uphill battle. Why as an expert, he always sounds like a very authoritative tampon, so he must be right.

But worse. He's Australia's future head of state, and he's a greenie. Oh no, could Miranda be thinking of going Republican? Anything to avoid the talking tampon as head of state. Worse still, he's on a 10 day eco-tour of South America in his own private Airbus, delivering a carbon foot print estimated at more than 300 tonnes.

It just shows that what counts with climate hysterics is not the greenness of the planet but the brownie points they gain.

Sure it's a cheap, irrational shot by Miranda. After all, if climate change is a myth, the impact of humans nil, who cares if a prince in waiting jets around the world, haranguing his subjects about loon topics. If it was good enough for George III (and what a fine fun film that was about his madness), then surely it's good enough for Bonnie Prince Charlie. Monarchists and the monarchy have always been a rich source of addlebrained, crackpot thinking (oh dear lord, their mother's been killed in a car crash, must take the boys out shooting to get their minds off it).

But that's why we love the Devine's google spaghetti intertube brain so dearly. It makes me believe in evolution. If god decides we have to stop at the point where Devine's brain has reached, we'd be in a sorry pickle. But I firmly believe googles on the tubes will fix us up. Sup dawg, you be hearing me? Some day we'll evolve into a better place.

Meantime, what disturbs me are the deeper implications. Here she is taking shots our future divine leader, the mystical head of the throne. By defiling him, Miranda is defiling our most sacred institution, the constitutional monarchy. David Flint, where are you? Let me check again. Yep, she's attacking a preening prat prince who flies on his own airbus, on a grand South American tour, and worst of all, is a climate hysteric after easy brownie points, when nothing will redeem him. After all, Charlie's a well-known loon, his 'sang impur'.

Is Miranda the Devine turning anti-monarchist, pro-Marxist, leftist, and a French republican revolutionary to boot? Can I see a guillotine in the shadows, just waiting for Charles to suffer the same fate as the original Charles? Yeay, republic here we come. Let's sing along with Miranda the so fervent revolutionary Devine:

Arise, children of the Fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us the tyranny's greenie leftie monarchist tampon Charlie's
bloodied banner is raised (repeat)
Do you hear in the countryside
The roar of those ferocious greenie leftie monarchist tampon Charlie supporting soldiers?
They come right into your midst
To slaughter your sons and wives!
And limit your conspicuous consumption 
And life of indolent luxury

Aux armes, citoyens
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons! (repeat incessantly in a drunken vin rouge fashion)

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Look possum, a comment!

Anonymous said...

Make that two.

Anonymous said...

I'm one of the 60% who believe that your writings are HELL to have to read - Mon Aux Frenchie stuff!

Anonymous said...

Ya site counter is going to get off 2 you bot, not including your mama, but it won't last...life's cruel.

Darryl Mason said...

If only you had your own 'WB' to help fill up your comments. Or any number of media-insider friends, or even a typing cat, to ramp up the comment count.

Of course, doing something like that would be fraud. Which probably wouldn't matter much to you, being an independent blogger.

But if you worked at, say, the Daily Telegraph in Sydney, and you had friends, housemates and typing cats inflating the comment counts on your blog posts, then it wouldn't be such a good look.

At all.

Anonymous said...

"Think of it as hard nosed Protestants gathering in one corner to rebut the flabby Holy Roman Catholics in the other."

Alas, dear fellow, the analogy does not stand. The flabbiness is in the Protestant corner these days.

dorothy parker said...

Just love your typing cats notion. With sharpened claws I bet, trying for a bit part in a James Bond movie (come on y'all let's be bad).

So elegant, so intelligent. 'Course in my day it was typing cockroaches, and Mehitabel just lay around eating cream and dreaming of Cleopatra.

The cats can't even work out it's the hard nosed leftie extremists who are winning the global climate debate, and it's the flabby Catholics who are focussed on the dangers of aborting nine year old girls, but there you go, cats is cats, and that is thats.

Anonymous said...

talk about trying to wade through a stack of bricks.. for fucks sake, look up the up the word 'succinct'.

dorothy parker said...

Oh does poor anonymouse possum's head hurt? Tried to read War and Peace, couldn't get past the first page and found the classic comic just too hard. Found a new life on the intertubes harassing the prolix, the verbose, the wordy.

Thinks words of one syllable are way too ostentatious and lengthy. Until he found that word "suck the sink" in the dictionary and thought he'd give it a fly.

Typing cat.