Archive for category Environment

Dickhead of the Year Award Already Won

by Trevor McDonald on 17 February 2010
Categories: Crime, Environment, Foreign matter, Media | Tags: , , , ,

Compare and Contrast:

1. Gob from the hit DVD show ‘Arrested Development’ decides to become the centre of attention and breaks into jail and gets locked up then let out. Gains notoriety by featuring on the cover of coveted magic magazine “Poof”. Everyone laughs.

2. ‘Captain Bathune’ formerly of the decapitated ‘Ady Gill’ decides to become the centre of attention and breaks into the Japo whaling ship to perform a ‘Citizens Arrest’ on the Caption of the ship. Gains no notoriety, no front page, is a prisoner for the at least the next 2 months with no soap-on-a-rope. Everyone laughs.

Being a topical debator who can weigh up the twos and fros of port and starboard in both sides in a debate I would like to ask some pertinant questions in the ionosphere of the Internet. One being who gives a flying fuck about the Ady Gill dickhead? Two being did he watch the famed Police Academy movie “Citizens on Patrol” too many times? And more importantly, where are the David Hicks fan club and Get Up when he needs them?

Now, this whaling business is all over the news channels. And the Japs are being harpooned in our media for killing a fish. So? When Wayne and I did a tour of Werribee zoo when we were kids we hadn’t been fed by Wayne’s step mum for a few days. We saw an antelope walking around with a wound in it’s side and a bit of blood. Wayne and I were following that antelope around with our tongues hanging out waiting for it to drop dead so we could bring something home to eat. Did Africa try to put a citizens arrest on us? But I digress sort of.

Now I’m glad this hilarious tale of Captain Buffoon hasn’t been followed too much in the media and the David Hicks fan club haven’t rallied demanding Buffoon’s release. I hope those Japs are serving threee square meals of rare endangered whale for breakfast, lunch and tea. Maybe he will be released looking as fat as David Hicks. Further in the excellent Herald Sun article it’s investigative journalist also notes that Captain Buffoon handed the Japo Captain a bill for a cool 3 million. Is this where I insert the imaginary typewriter joke? LOL.

To sum up this debate I will like to end with a quote from the article in question:

“[Buffoon] opened the door and walked into the wheelhouse… that’s the last we’ve heard from him” a save the whales home and away actor said.

As the internets would say; Sea Shepherd FAIL, Captain Buffoon FAIL, Ady Gill FAIL, Debt Collection FAIL and Whaling WIN!

This is Trevor signing off.

Trevor.

7 Comments

Back to the future

by David F on 10 December 2009
Categories: Environment, Politics | Tags: , ,

A common complaint of the Australian parliamentary game is that it’s merely a case of Tweedledum versus Tweedledee, a contest between two parties who largely resemble one another in both policies and methods. Certainly, this has been the case for federal politics in recent years – Rudd was at pains to present himself as a ‘fiscal conservative’, and emphasise his religiousity and populism (see his comments re: the Bill Henderson sage, for instance). On the other side, Brendan Nelson and Malcom Turnbull were ‘moderates’, who both were supposed to represent ‘generational change’. To this game, the Coalition has now said basta, electing Tony Abbott as leader. He in turn has elected a shadow cabinet comprised of rightist demagogues and old discards from the Howard era. The dust is yet to settle on this one, but I think there are a few things to be considered.

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Does you like pointless graphs to illustrate your point?

by Trevor McDonald on 3 December 2009
Categories: Environment, Media | Tags: , , ,

At the tafe Internets course I learnt that on the Google there is a function called Google trends. You type things in to see their relevance to other things and you can separate them by what is called a comma.

Behold the graphs I made below:

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Never mind Hockey, I have a Fielding feeling

by @FakeFielding on 2 December 2009
Categories: Environment, Politics | Tags: , , , , ,

This first appeared in Monday’s Crikey email and is on the Crikey website

__________

Let me tell you, weeks like last week don’t come along every week. Calling it extraordinary would be the understatement of the century, as even seasoned political observers would attest. For starters, this nation’s government considered a number of highly important issues and my speeches in the Senate were some of the most passionate, articulate and emotional presentations the Parliament has ever seen. They had everything: shouty voice, soft voice, pauses for effect, graphs as props, and moral appeals to right and wrong. I’m exhausted just thinking about them. One of my speeches was so powerful that I went to do it again for Susan and the staff back in the office but Susan yelled at me to get down off the desk.

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Her Genocidal Majesty

by Scott Bridges on 1 December 2009
Categories: Environment, Politics | Tags: , , , ,

I reproduce this Citizens Electoral Council press release that lobbed into my inbox this arvo (I subscribe to a lot of shit, okay?) without comment.

Citizens Electoral Council of Australia
Media Release 1st of December 2009

Queen flexes muscle to demand Copenhagen genocide treaty

Just as the climate change hoax is about to derail completely, Her Britannic Majesty herself, Queen Elizabeth II, whose family spawned the modern green genocide movement*, has pulled rank on the Commonwealth group of nations—her repackaged “Empah”—to demand they deliver a treaty at Copenhagen.

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In his balloon

by Molesworth on 29 November 2009
Categories: Environment, Politics, Science | Tags: , , , ,

While the Liberals are embroiled in a simply delicious leadership crisis as the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists try to hijack the party, it’s worth taking a look at this enlightening Tony Abbott interview on Lateline which took place not ten days ago:

TONY JONES: I hear what you’re saying about the earth having been hotter in different periods in its entire global history, but let me ask you this. Have you read the science that we’re talking about here – for example, have you read the IPCC’s report?

TONY ABBOTT: No, I don’t claim to have immersed myself deeply in all of these documents. I’m a politician. I have to rely on briefings – I have to rely on what I pick up through the secondary sources.

But look, I think I am as well versed on these matters as your average politician needs to be.

TONY JONES: But you have read Ian Plimer’s book.

TONY ABBOTT: I haven’t yet finished Ian Plimer’s book. I have started Ian Plimer’s book.

TONY JONES: But you have quoted it from time to time.

TONY ABBOTT: I’ve quoted a couple of passages, and I confess I’m probably more familiar with the book through people who’ve written about it than I am through having read it myself.

TONY JONES: What evidence do you have then for saying that the earth has cooled since the late 1990s.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I am not setting myself up as the great expert here, but the Hadley Institute in Britain, which is apparently one of the most reputable of these measuring centres, according to press reports, has found that after heating up very significantly in the previous 25 years, there seems to have been a slight cooling, but at a high plateau I’ll accept that.

TONY JONES: That is Ian Plimer’s argument. So when you actually go…

TONY ABBOTT: This is the Hadley Centre – this is measurements.

TONY JONES: I’m about to tell you what the Hadley Centre actually says. When you go and look at what it says about global temperatures you’ll find that they say that the years 1998 to 2006 include the hottest, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth and the sixth hottest years in recorded history.

TONY ABBOTT: And the hottest one was at the beginning and the less hot ones have been since.

And it goes on. To summarise:

  • Tony Abbott has not read the IPCC report.
  • But he has read Heaven & Earth.
  • But he’s only started it.
  • But he’s capable of reciting whole passages of it at the drop of a hat even though he hasn’t read it.
  • This is because he’s familiar with the book having read people who have written about it.

This is why Andrew Bolt being the intellectual beacon of Liberals is a good thing.

Bring on the next election.

4 Comments

The ETS for Dummies

by David Bonnici on 24 November 2009
Categories: Environment, Politics | Tags: ,

What is the ETS?
ETS stands for Emissions Trading Scheme, which means that companies will have to pay for credits to create pollution.

Why?
To combat climate change caused by man-made carbon emissions. The idea is if companies have to pay to pollute they will pollute less; the climate will stop changing and baby polar bears will live to become big polar bears allowing them to scavenge through Alaskan rubbish tips.

But companies pollute because they make things or produce power. How will they be able to keep providing us with their important products and services?
This is the smart bit. They will pay the ETS and the government will give them the money back so they can continue what they’re doing to protect jobs and working families. At the same time they will pass the ETS costs to the consumer which means some polluting companies and industries will be better off under an ETS despite not actually reducing their carbon footprint.

That’s fucked!  
That’s your interpretation shithead, but at least the government will look like it’s doing something to stop climate change.

But will an ETS stop climate change? Surely once the Antarctic sheds millions of tons of ice and sea levels rise there’s not much we can do to stop it. It’s like trying to stop a freight train with a wet kipper.

You know, for a dummy you’re a smart-arsed little fucker! Listen, this isn’t about stopping climate change it’s about feeling good that we’re doing our best without having to actually give up anything that causes pollution. We’ll still use electricity and drive cars, but we’ll do it safe in the knowledge that it really gives conservatives the shits.

You’re a deranged lefty idiot. This isn’t about climate change at all, it’s about idealism.
Oh, do fuck off!

4 Comments

So some academics’ emails have been hacked …

by David F on 23 November 2009
Categories: Environment, Science | Tags: , , ,

… and a lot of conservatives and right-wing ‘libertarians’ are getting very excited. It seems a hacker has obtained the private email correspondence of researchers who were looking at AGW. The candid comments found therein (always quoted out of context by said conservatives/libertarians, of course) are supposedly further proof that claims about AGW are merely a hoax, and that the science is a scam.

From what I can see of the emails, they prove no such thing. What they do demonstrate, however, is that scientists, and science itself, are fallible, and subject to the vicissitudes of personality and politics (broadly speaking), just like every other aspect of life. To construct an entire conspiracy theory out of this decades-old fact is to therefore be clutching at straws.

None of this ought to be news for the conservatarians, or anybody else, for that matter, except the former have an irrational fear and hatred of all things that smell even vaguely pomo. Because of this, some fairly basic points, such as science being fallible, or occurring within a context that is full of contingencies, are likely to be new and unfamiliar, despite these points having been made, in different ways,  some time ago.

Indeed, Kuhn argued long ago that ‘more than one theoretical construction can always be placed upon a given collection data’, and that ‘personal and historical accident is always a formative ingredient of the beliefs espoused by a given scientific community at a given time’.

Note also that, whatever the purported sins of these AGW scientists from East Bumcrack, their scientific failings are utterly trivial when compared to the shenanigans of Big Pharma, for instance, about whom the conservatarians are entirely silent.

We can expect to see plenty more about this on the blogosphere. (Larvatus Prodeo has a thread here — the comments are interesting, though the post itself pulls its punches, IMHO). This is what constitutes a scientific scandal when an entire generation of computer-literate conservatarians have been getting their ’science’ from Andrew Bolt and Ann Coulter.

8 Comments

Square pegs and round holes

by David F on 18 November 2009
Categories: Environment | Tags: , ,

I won’t pretend to be on top of the detail when it comes to AGW. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that it is a real problem.

Does anybody seriously believe that the ETS, a market solution, par excellence, is going to make the slightest bit of difference? That in placing all of our eggs into the capitalist basket, we are trusting in a magic talisman that can, at best, merely tinker on the margins?

Using capitalist structures and processes as a means of combating AGW is like trying to fight a live bushfire by opening up a a farmers’ market, and putting a tax on undergrowth.

And this at a time when support for ‘the market’ has never been lower.

5 Comments

ETS and One World Government

by @FakeFielding on 11 November 2009
Categories: Environment, Politics | Tags: , , , ,

As you all know I’ve been following the climate change and emissions trading scheme debate very closely. Earlier this year I travelled to the USA to consult widely with the Heartland Institute and they gave me a nifty graph to show to all my friends at Parliament. Nick Xzennophone asked if I made it myself in crayon but he shut his mouth quick smart after I showed him the quality of the laminate and the superb laser printing.

I like to make sure that I look at both sides of the story, and the ETS debate is no different. I’ve looked at the government’s side (anthropomorphic climate change is definitely real and we need an EMS right now) and the opposition’s side (anthrophomorpic climate change is possibly real and we might need an LMS sometime in the short or medium term), but Family First’s side of the story is quite different again: anhtro antro antrhop man-made climate change is a myth and the PMS is completely unnecessary and will destroy man’s way of life.

But you wouldn’t believe the trouble I’ve had in getting my view heard! Penny Wong and Ian Macfarlane meet regularly to thrash out a version of the government Bill that the coalition might support, but the way they’ve dismissed Family First’s role in these crucial negotiations is a disgrace to Australian democracy. Imagine a democratically-elected Senator being manhandled and ejected from meetings inside Parliament House! It’s not like they didn’t know I was coming; each time I’ve told Xzennophone to tell Barnaby to tell Macfarlane, and Xzennophone to tell Conroy to tell Wong.

Some nights I’ve been in tears at home, burning up with the indignity of the way the other MPs treat me. I tried telling David Hawker about the teasing and bullying but he didn’t seem to care. Even my son, when he got home from school the other day and found me on the lounge with Blanky, told me to “harden the fuck up”. I told him that’s not very Christian language but he just mumbled something about wishing he was adopted.

So when I heard some people this week start talking about a One World Government that might be formed in Copenhagen soon, I got very excited. Maybe I could run for election to a government that is kinder and more accepting. A government that is inclusive and considerate. A government that looks at all of my sides of the story. I mentioned to Susan that this new government will add significantly to the Pope’s workload given that he’s the head of the world, but Susan told me he’s only the head of the Catholic Church. And you could’ve blown me right there and then when Susan dropped the bombshell that the Pentecostal Church is not part of the Catholic Church so the Pope isn’t even the head of me! A lifetime of delusion, it seems.

Anyway, I’ve started doing some research into how one would go about running a campaign for the One World Government, and I’m trying to book a flight to the Hungarian capital to be at the centre of the action at its inception. Given that Australia is part of the world, and the One World Government will be the world’s boss, I will be able to have much more influence over Australia’s PMT policy from the OWG Parliament than from the chamber of Australia’s Senate.

Until next time.

9 Comments