Sorry Day

Yesterday was a very sorry day. I am sorry that such unspeakably bad legislation was passed by the government of the country I live in and love so very much. I am sorry that we have a government that continues to make bad decisions pretty much every day of the week. I am sorry that so many people believe this legislation and this tax will help the environment in any way. I am sorry that this government won't grow some balls and admit that this is little more than a tax grab. I am sorry that so many people believe that it's better to do a stupid "something" rather than a realistic nothing. I am sorry that people keep saying they now have hope for the future of their children and grandchildren. I am sorry that these people don't spontaneously combust. I am sorry that something magical didn't occur in the last few months to save us from this bad thing. I am sorry that I don't have the guts to have organised a coup and installed myself as the benevolent dictator of this woe begotten country. I am sorry that there isn't a federal election being held this Saturday.

I am sorry that in 20, 50, 100 years time when the Emperor's nakedness is revealed and history will show all this insanity for what it is, there won't be a Sorry Day and that Kevin Rudd or his future clone won't shed crocodile tears for the damage done.

1, 2, 3, 4.... we don't want your...

...stupid Carbon Tax. Sorry. Doesn't really have a great ring to it, does it.

Never mind. Her I am last week at the No Carbon Tax protest in Sydney.

It's hard not to get disheartened and I'm not one for protesting in general but there I was last Saturday, listening to Angry Anderson get really really ANGRY and wondering when exactly the world went totally mad.

Not my best angle I must admit and my sign is a little cringeworthy. My problem with slogans is that the first one that pops into my mind is the only one that pops into my mind. So here I am with my sign which I'm not overly proud of (though I fully belive in the sentiment I'm expressing so badly). As you can see the man next to me isn't all that excited about my sign either. Last thought on this damned sign - I do like the typeface.

Anyway, let's see some better signs.

This lady had a double sided sign and I loved both sides.

I couldn't get a photo of one of my favourites but it said "By 2012 no Australian child will be living in Carbon". Giggle.

The final word goes to the homeless man selling The Big Issue on the corner of George and Market Street. As I walked back to the car park after the rally he saw my sign and said "yeah, just keep polluting the world" - as in "yeah, just keep polluting the world you fucking capitalist Earth wrecking bitch". It's good to see even the street people have been brainwashed. Not just the chardonnay sipping middle classes (I actually quite hate that expression but just using it for effect here - my dad refers to them as "doctors' wives" and I hate that even more).

So there we go. I've expressed myself in a public forum on the subject I feel most strongly about (politically speaking) with a nett end result of zilch and the march to futility continues. Oi vey!

I continue to be mad as hell...

For those missing my man made climate change is bollocks rants (I know there is at least one of you) here is an update from my favourite climate change is bollocks blog.

I had been hoping Australia may be cooling down on this shit because the rhetoric had been wound down prior to the last Federal election but obviously that had been wishful thinking. I knew deep down that it was just the lull before the storm... and believe me there's a storm brewing right now.

I've never been much of a marcher, only that one anti-nuclear march when I was 14 or 15, before I grew a brain, but I'm ready to march now. This may not be Lybia but I feel like a little bit of civil disobedience. Hand me a rocket launcher and point me towards Canberra (if you're reading this, ASIO agents, I'm almost totally joking).

Remember me?

I don't blame you if you don't. I have been a bad, bad little blogger of late.

I am sorry about that and I'm afraid I won't be repenting right now. It's the first day of the school holidays and I'm recovering from a few weeks which have left me seriously dazed and confused (or even more, much more, than usual). The kidlets and I are off to a playdate shortly and I'm trying to shuffle the crap around the living room so it doesn't resemble the set of Stepford and Sons. The aforementioned kidlets are laying in my bed watching the Jerry Lewis version of The Nutty Professor; they too are recovering.

I need to update you on the craziness which has been my life lately and especially about Oprah. So stay tuned, catch up blogs coming up very soon.

In the meantime a little giggle from the Climate Change Fiasco file - Arctic Meltdown?

My blood is running cold

No, I haven't fulfilled my long held ambition and become a vampire.



Not surprisingly what's making my blood run cold is this new carbon price committee being set up by JGill (I really enjoyed typing KRudd much, much more... thanks for nothing Julia).



I knew it was too good to be true that this monumental waste of money would have actually been dead and buried. I suspected it was simply hidden from view during the election run up so that the pollies could just stick to pathetic personal insults instead of discussing any actual policies).



Now that we have Dumb, Dumber and Too Stupid for Words (and the other guy) holding the balance of power it's all systems go and we're screwed.



Yesterday I heard Bob Brown explaining why this committee needed to have secret discussions - because us civilians are simply too stupid to understand all this complicated scientific talk and we need those super smart polies making the hard decisions for us - (it's hard to explain how my frozen blood can be boiling at the same time). At that moment I added an extra segment to my fantasy involving a night of passion with Eric the gorgeous Viking vampire from True Blood. Now there's a bit at the end where instead of lighting a post coital cigarette Eric drags a squirming Herr Brown into the room and rips his throat out.



I want to do Bad Things alright.

Just in case my blood needed a little more boiling

A very interesting little article about the tangled web behind saving the planet from imminent climate catastrophe; aka fleecing the folk who care and all the others who don't have a choice.

[F*&# it's good to read this stuff which gives some real structure to what has been weighing on my mind and twisting in my gut for these past few years. Climate change is real but it's natural, not man made and it can't be fixed with Toyota Priuses and paying airlines for less-than-useless carbon offset charges.]

RIP ETS

Or should I say "rot in hell"?

I am ever hopeful this is the last we'll see of the Emissions Trading Scheme but I'm sure Penny Wong, Bob Brown [there's two I'd like to see drown under rising sea levels!] et al will continue to moan about what bad little humans we are, how much we must all pay for our sins in order to "save" planet Earth.

What might the next reincarnation of the ETS look like?

An Inconvenient Pile of Total and Utter Bollocks

Last night I went to hear Lord Christopher Monckton talk about the farce which is the man made climate change scenario being forced down our throats. You know the one. The one where our children are frightened of a horrible future by being made to watch The Horror Movie Which I Cannot Mention in schools. Where we are sold all sorts of overpriced, unnecessary crappola (e.g. solar panels) in the name of saving the planet. Where consultants are making a killing by providing advice on how to overcome the effects of climate change in your business, your home, your school (I'm fairly sure these were the same consultants who "saved" us from the terror which was the Y2K - and we all remember how badly that ended! Ha ha ha and fucking ha! Does the term "fleeced" mean anything to you?). Where we are all going to pay pay pay until we can't possibly pay any more for an Emissions Trading Scheme which will be about as useful and beneficial to the planet as a copy of The Female Eunuch to your average Saudi Arabian sheik.

It was sheer joy to hear someone in the public arena talk about what a hoax man made climate change is. When you are a climate change sceptic like me it's a little difficult not to feel like a bit of a social leper. It's not a subject you can easily bring up without being regarded as an idiot or some sort of right wing nut bag, at least that's the feeling I have. For the most part I don't think my close circle of friends really give a shit, they are all busy living their lives without give this stuff much deep thought.

I would be happy to just have a laugh about it and get on with my life but I just can't. It sticks in craw and I can't let it go. Because Al Gore's poisonous bucket of bile gets shown at my children's school on constant rotation during a school fete. Because the media squawks about it constantly. Because it is apparently giving our government (and many others) carte blanche to pass legislation which is utter madness without any sort of proper public debate on the subject.

I apologise for repeating myself ad nauseam but I can't rest knowing that we are being told a blatant pack of lies day in, day out. The bottom line is climate is changing, it always has and it always will. Greenland used to be GREEN. Ancient Greeks and Romans wore togas because it was HOT. The Australian land mass used to be joined to the Indonesian land mass, water rose, now they are not joined any more. I'm fairly sure this all happened before we started producing the carbon which is allegedly to blame for our all non-existant problems. We are actually at the end of an ice age and therefore temperatures are rising. We are putting the wrong facts together and coming up with illogical equations. 2 + 2 = 427. I'm no scientist (surprise!) but I know bullshit when I see it and we are all being buried under a giant pile of stinking cow manure.

Remember how the hole in the ozone layer was going to kill us all? We were all going to die of horrible skin cancers because the sun would be so strong it would burn us all to a crisp. Strangely enough that hole is never mentioned any more.

The other speaker last night was Professor Ian Plimer, author of Heaven and Earth. He is an Australian geologist who writes about the geological history of Earth and how we need to look at the past to understand what is happening now and what may happen in the future. He is saying that the computer models which produce the armagedon scenarios are wrong. Of course they are fucking wrong. The computer models can't even tell us what the weather is going to be tomorrow, how can they predict the next 20 or 100 or 1000 years. They can't. Full stop.

Then there are the people who say, well even if it isn't totally right we should err on the side of caution. No. What's happening now is not erring on the side of caution. It's like saying we may have a small chance of getting a cold next winter so we'll just take 5 kgs of antibiotics every day for the rest of our lives just in case. You can't be too careful you know. Never mind the damage those antibiotics will do to our bodies in the meantime. Never mind that the antibiotics are expensive and we can barely afford them. Never mind....

Oh, never mind. I'm over it. Enough ranting for tonight.

If you are vaguely interested in a different truth, not the inconvenient kind but the REAL kind, you may want to take a look at this website http://www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org/ and it's blog http://www.sppiblog.org/ .

Well, I'm off to drag my poor old aching head to bed.

Amen!

I don't always agree with the views expressed on http://www.spiked-online.com/ but when they get it right, they get it so bloody right it is fucking scary.

When I read this I ran around like an idiot shouting "hurray" and "amen to that, brothers and sisters" ... well at least in my head. This is the sort of stuff I think about but am too lazy to actually put down in written form. Luckily Spiked! have done it for me. Good on you, you clever little English folk.

Hands off the human footprint! spiked's alternative Copenhagen deal

Everyone, it seems, is disappointed with the Copenhagen Deal drawn up by world leaders, with its promise of more money to tackle climate change and its commitment to stop the planet from warming by more than two degrees. But never mind all that. As spiked kicks off a major online debate about the future of the planet and humanity post-Copenhagen, here is our Alternative Copenhagen Deal.





#1: Hands off the human footprint


From Genesis to the Enlightenment, mankind was seen as the master of the planet. We have ‘dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and every other living thing that moves on the Earth’, said the Bible. Let’s put ‘nature on the rack’ and ‘extract her secrets’, said Enlightenment thinkers. Now we’re described as a malignant tumour, a ‘serious planetary malady’, in the words of one leading green, and our achievements – industry, cities, skyscrapers – are disparaged as the ‘human footprint’. The goal of environmentalism is to shrink this ‘footprint’, speaking to a view of humans as ultimately destructive and of our breakthroughs as gigantic follies that must be decommissioned. No way. We have not poisoned the planet; we have humanised it. And far from being shrunk, our ‘footprint’ – our 5,000-year project of taming and transforming this wild ball of gas and water – must be expanded further.


#2: Ditch the carbon calculators



Every human activity is now judged according to how much carbon it emits. Flying, working, eating, development and even reproducing – people’s decision to create new human life – are measured in ‘tonnes of CO2 emitted’. A baby is another 10 tonnes of carbon a year, we’re told; more fridges in China will add too much CO2 to the atmosphere, it is claimed. But human activity is not reducible to the number of toxins it allegedly creates. The carbon judgment on our daily activities has replaced God’s judgement – except where the God squad at least distinguished between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ activities, under the morality-lite, toxins-obsessed tyranny of original carbon sin, everything is potentially harmful. Stop carbon-calculating our lives, and let us celebrate people’s activities in human terms, recognising them as good, creative, explorative, industrious, or simply as making people happy.


#3: Demand more economic growth

 Creating plenty – plenty of food, homes and things – was the overarching aim of most human societies. From the toiling Israelites’ vision of a ‘land of milk and honey’ to Socialists such as Sylvia Pankhurst’s dream of ‘a great production that will supply more than all the people can consume’, we recognised that plenty would make us more comfortable and more free, allowing us to spend less time toiling and more time talking, thinking, experimenting, living. Yet in the eco-era, thinkers demonise ‘plenty’ and celebrate ‘enoughism’, to use one green writer’s word: but whose idea of ‘enough’? Economic growth is denounced as polluting, and people’s desire for wealth is redefined as a mental illness: ‘affluenza’. The sin of gluttony has been rehabilitated in pseudo-scientific terms. We should insist that ‘growth is good’ – in fact, it’s essential if we are to satisfy people’s needs, and liberate their time and their minds so that they can realise their desires.


#4: Don't sustain sustainable development

The only kind of development bigged up today is ‘sustainable development’. It sounds nice: development is a good thing, and who wants to do things in an unsustainable fashion? Yet the cult of sustainability, of pursuing only small-scale projects that can be sustained into the distant future without too much eco-stress, speaks to a lack of human daring. The idea is that we should only build and create things that can be held together or remade without much effort, and that we should never, ever think of overhauling society, of making industrious leaps forward, of discarding the homes, towns and vehicles we have now in favour of better versions. The demand to do only That Which Can Be Sustained is really a warning against rethinking, reimagining and remaking our world. It’s an intellectual straitjacket for progress. We should wriggle free from it.




#5: No limits on population growth


Progressives once argued that unemployment, poverty and hunger were social problems susceptible to social solutions. Today the orthodoxy is that they are natural or demographic problems springing from humanity’s failure to respect Mother Nature’s limits. Nowhere is this clearer than in the rise of eco-Malthusianism and the notion that the planet is overpopulated by ‘too many mouths to feed’. Society’s failure to create a world fit for people, a world of plenty, is redefined as individuals’ failure to control their reckless fecundity and limit the number of new ‘resource-users’ (formerly known as ‘bundles of joy’). When problems were understood in social terms, the solution was seen as more debate and more progress; when problems are understood in natural terms, the solution is seen as curbs on people’s nature-transgressing behaviour and the use of eco-blackmail to curtail fecundity. Population growth is not the problem – the lack of social imagination is.



#6: Stop demonising 'deniers'

Serious debate about humanity and its future is continually curtailed. Anyone who questions the science or politics of global warming is written off as a ‘Flat Earther’, a phrase used by Gordon Brown on the eve of Copenhagen. Some label ‘climate change denial’ as a psychological disorder and claim these ‘evil words’ will literally bring about death and destruction. From Torquemada on, censors have always painted their enemies not only as wrong but as morally warped, and their utterances as a threat to the social fabric. The idea of ‘denial’, meanwhile, suggests there is an already established Truth that we must either Accept or Deny – no challenge to it can be tolerated. We should defend scepticism, not because climate sceptics always have something interesting to say, but because every breakthrough in history has sprung from at least a willingness to ask awkward, agitating questions about accepted truths.




#7: No to eco-protectionism

 In the past even Marxists sang the praises of capitalism’s tendency to internationalise production and trade. The ‘rapid improvement of all instruments of production, [and] the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation’, wrote Marx and Engels in 1848. Today we have ‘locavores’ – people who only eat food produced within 100 miles of where they live – and green lobby groups deploying the pseudo-science of ‘food miles’ to argue against the CO2-emitting import of foreign foodstuffs. Eco-miserabilists have even invented the category of ‘love miles’ to measure the pollution caused by importing Valentine’s Day flowers from Kenya. This is the resurrection of protectionism in green language, and is causing people in the Third World to lose their jobs and homes. We need more, and more meaningful, links between the North and the South, not fewer.


#8: Make energy the solution, not the problem



Whether we’re digging for coal or extracting uranium, man’s use of the Earth’s resources to create energy is frowned upon. We’re ‘destroying the planet’, apparently, by draining its fuels. Such panic over allegedly dwindling resources is not based on hard evidence that this stuff is running out, but on a conviction that we shouldn’t really be using it in the first place. Even our use of water is now problematised: green charities talk about our ‘water footprint’ and tell us to live ‘water-neutral lives’. This speaks to a new view of people as merely consumers rather than producers, destroyers rather than creators. The Earth has been relabelled a ‘warehouse of resources’ and our role is apparently to tiptoe through it and borrow only what we really, really need. We should see the creation of energy not as the problem but as the solution, allowing us to power industry, light up whole cities, and improve human existence. All kinds of energy can be explored – even wind and waves – just so long as the principle of expanding energy to meet our needs is accepted first.



#9: Address the democratic deficit


Our leaders went to Copenhagen hoping to find the sense of historic momentum that is sorely lacking in everyday politics. Unable to inspire voters with anything like a grand vision of a future Good Life, they instead play at ‘making history’, depicting themselves as the defenders of basic existence from the coming eco-Armageddon. Yet rather than resolving the crisis of political vision, Copenhagen exposed it: on one side our leaders expressed disappointment with we the public’s lack of ‘urgency and drive and animation’ about climate change (in David Miliband’s words), and on the other side everyday people sensibly switched off, seeing Copenhagen as a waste of time and telling pollsters that they don’t think climate change is the biggest problem facing the world. Today’s democratic deficit, the gulf between the rulers and the ruled, will not be fixed by the displacement activity of pseudo-historic international conferences – we need openness, honesty and debate.


#10: Humans before polar bears



In the past many thought there was a white, hairy being in the clouds who was judging our behaviour. Today many believe that another white, hairy being – the polar bear – is a barometer of human hubris. Everything we do is measured according to its alleged impact on the ice floes, polar-bear habitats, and other natural phenomena. This represents the creation of a new, backward morality, one which seeks to control human behaviour and lower humanity’s horizons through mythical tales of our eco-destructiveness; the idea of limits, harm and polar-bear vulnerability are used to hector and cow the public. We need to rediscover a sense of human morality, of judging our behaviour in its own terms rather than the terms set by miserabilist misanthropes and cynically externalised as Concern For Polar Bears. When it comes to political decision-making, progress and development, only one question should ever be asked: will it or will it not benefit humankind?

Burn the heretic

Who knew that one day it would come this? I don't like to say that I'm on Tony Abbott's side. There is a lot about him I don't like: the conservative Catholic ideology - anti abortion, anti divorce, yada yada.

But how can I not love a man, the only man, who is publicly showing some balls, real balls, by standing up against the most stupid, ridiculous, beyond ridiculous, waste of money, waste of public resources, waste of my sanity, piece of shit legislation ever seen in this country?

Of course, being a politician, he couldn't maintain by admiration for long. Having previously said that climate change is a "lot of crap" [I believe I'm quoting him correctly] he has now stated he's a "believer" [meaning, he hasn't totally got the guts to straight out state that the emperor is naked].

I am finding all this bullshit so increibly frustrating. Whenever something about it comes on the radio or news I literally feel my blood boiling. One of these days I will burst a gasket, I'm sure of it.

To be frank if we're going to live in a world ruled by Emission Trading Schemes and similar models of public insanity than I'm on the "I wish the world would hurry up and end already" bandwagon. Maybe I'll start a FaceBook page with that title...

Some of you may be wondering what this whole Carbon/Emissions Trading thing is all about. There is certainly a lot of talk about it in the media.

I thought I'd take a moment to give you a practical demonstration of what this will mean to you.

Firstly, take a $20 note out of your wallet, cut it into small pieces, then go and put in your toilet. Flush.

There. You have just found out what the KRudd government is proposing.

Of course the proposed fees/taxes/stealing is aimed at the business world; the awful, evil, horrible, suck the marrow out of little babies business world. You know the business world that doesn't do anything but pollute the environment and rip off all and sundry. So that makes it all OK. Stealing from business is like a Robin Hood-style take from the rich and give to the poor scenario. All good.

Except of course that evil, old business actually employs, well, pretty much most of the adult population of our country. But let's not mention that. While we're at it, let's not mention that all these stupid taxes are going to be passed straight onto us, you and me, the good ol' Australian consumer. So everything we buy is going to directly or indirectly go up in price. Utilities, milk, donuts, tennis lessons. Everything.

Now this might be exceptable if there was any tiny, minescule possibility that this money, this stolen money, was actually going to result in anything beneficial happening for Australia, the planet, the universe, you and/or me and/or our children and grandchildren, etc. Except it won't. Not to the smallest extent.

I believe that so strongly, with every atom of my polluting, evil, Western middle class body that I would bet the value of my house and every cent I have ever and will ever earn on it, should Centabet offer any sort of odds.

Oh FUCK. We're in so much trouble (and I don't mean because of this Climate Change Hoax) and there are very few people with any balls who are willing to talk about it. Most days I am happy to observe from a distance as the population bow and scrape to the naked Emperor but sometimes I want to scream and stomp my feet and throw myself on the floor of the universal Coles supermarket and shout "wake the fuck up".

In celebrity news:

Did you see Toni Collette on the Emmy's last night? Talk about when good fake tan goes bad. She looked horrific, seriously. She was so gold, head to toe, she actually looked like an Oscar statuette. I love Toni (she'll always be Muriel to me) but she really looked awful.

Did you see Hugh Jackman pontificating about climate change on the news this morning. I love you Hugh; you're gorgeous and talented. But seriously shut the fuck up on this shit. You're just shovelling shit onto a pile which is very deep already.

I'll just sit back now and wait for Entertainment Tonight to call me about that job offer....

Last week I found a website which sells t-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc.

I wanted to buy the t-shirts which state:

CLIMATE CHANGE HERETIC

and

SANTA CLAUSE
EASTER BUNNY
TOOTH FAIRY
GLOBAL WARMING

But they were expensive and I'm too old and chunky to wear band-style t's these days.

So I thought about getting the stickers instead but realised some feral hippy type would probably vandalise my poor car for daring to voice dissent. They don't take kindly when you point out the emperor is sans clothing.

I will probably order myself a mug. At least the people I work with all know exactly how naked the poor old emperor really is.

Am I mad? Does anyone really believe this carbon trading bullshit actually means something? Do people really think it's some sort of magic pill which will fix the alleged climate change problems?

If the problems are as bad as we're being told (and you may have guessed I don't buy any of it) than arguing over 5% or 10%, this year or next year, etc is just a whole lot of hot air. Surely such semantics are a big waste of time if we really are hurtling towards oblivion.

I simply can't believe how seriously this is being discussed. As if it really matters one way or the other in the big scheme of things. We're a funny bunch, us humans. So self important and pathetic.

Yesterday I heard Julia Gillard say [something very close to]: "... under our new employment laws employees will be able to negotiate to have their employers make regular donations to climate advocacy groups...".

The lunatics really have taken over the asylum.

... and furthermore (while I'm up here on my very spacious, lonely bandwagon)...

From The Australian "Cut & Paste" July 9, 2008

Garnaut might be right, give or take a trillion dollars

ABC political editor Chris Uhlmann, who trained for the priesthood, bares his soul on climate change on Insiders.

As a former seminarian, one of the things that strikes me about this debate is its theological nature. That's essentially that we have sinned against the environment and that we are now being punished, and the only way we can escape that punishment is to wear a hairshirt for the rest of our lives and hope that in the next life, and in our children's lives, and in our children's children's lives, that things will get better.

Now, I'm willing to sign up for that. But this is a very long caravan and there are plenty of lunatics attached to the end of it.

I do not believe every proposition that's been put. When the weather department can tell me what the weather is going to be like next Friday with any certainty and Treasury can get to within a million dollars of what the surplus is going to be next year, I'll believe an economic model that marries those two things and casts them out over a hundred years.

I'll make one prediction: that whatever number (Ross) Garnaut puts on where we'll be in 2100, it will be at least a trillion dollars either way wrong.


EXACTLY right! How many millions, trillions, gazillions are we spending on this nonsense because no-one has the balls, especially now that we've travelled down the road someway and an admission at a high level could be a tad embarrassing, to stand up and say ENOUGH OF THIS BULLSHIT?