Fair Facts?

Fair and unbiased? Not on issues of the environment and climate change. The Fairfax media empire owns 1/3 of Earth Hour along with the World Wildlife Fund.

Excellent old school journalism by blogger Boy On A Bike.

-- Nora

Fall For Anything

Quick! Bring out the smelling salts!

A Hervey Bay mother swoons when she discovers that her Year 8 daughter has brought home... a 32 year old boyfriend?... Drugs?... A busload of OWS protestors?... Syphillis?

Quelle horreur, what could possibly cause her to go on a "crusade" right up to Education Queensland's head office?

Birgette Linding said she was mortified when her daughter came home earlier this year and recounted how Gideons Bibles had been handed out to students at the end of a Year 8 assembly at Urangan State High School.

How shocking.

And how quickly the anti-religious haters come out in comments, but also adhering to the law of unintended consequences John of Townsville's comment is a revelation: "Good, religion and the bible have no place in Queensland schools." So it would seem.

"Religion (by which they mean Christianity) is unscientific," they cry - ignoring the fact that modern science owes a significant debt to Christianity which provided most of the founding principles of science with the acknowledgement that a rational God created the world rationally and that those rational principles could be observed, repeated and understood.

These anti-Christian bigots are equally as sanctimonious as the religiousfolk they decry, smug as they are in their rigid belief system that all life evolved from nothing and that the reason we're here is because 'gravity did it'.

"We're far to logical, smart, clever, rational to believe in a sky fairy," they argue.

And yet, unmoored by the Christian belief system to use as a framework for rationality or as a foundation for ethics, these same people become easy prey for other gods - particularly Gaia The Earth Fairy who got a shout out this week at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Durbin, South Africa at which our own Climate Change Minister Greg Combet attended (carbon-neutrally, of course).

From the conference manifesto:

Rights of mother earth
74. Ensure respect for the intrinsic laws of nature.
75. The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony
between humanity and nature, and that their will be no commodification of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose.

Compare this to the instruction given to man in Genesis to have dominion over the earth.

That not is to say that we trash the planet, anymore than a logical, rational human being would trash their own house. But what it does mean, as generations of people before us knew, we are to use the resources it contains to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

This Gaia-mad, quasi-scientific, pseudo-religion demands the opposite. And if you're poor, and life is a today-to-today struggle keeping body and soul together, you're less likely to consider helping others or have the resources to do so even if you were inclined.

And any propensity to charity (particularly one which cannot be reciprocated) makes no sense within a Darwinian framework in which survival of the fittest is the only law.

So what purpose does it serve to condemn humanity to a hell it can avoid? There's a question for another day.

Such a world governed as the Gaian adherents would have it would not be a nice place to live - but get used to it folks, without the Christian world view and the compassion and grace it teaches, your world is about to get even uglier.

Oh, and a final comment to Our Lady of the Perpetually Offended, Birgette Linding - you are under no obligation to read the Bible yourself, neither is your daughter. If you don't like it, don't look.

And a few questions: Why are you so afraid of the Bible? Are you afraid that if your daughter reads it that she will find something wonderful and life changing? Are you usually so narrow minded?

-- Nora

Who Do They Think They Are?

We all know what happened last time a group of scientists signed a letter together. What do you think will happen this time:

In stark contrast to the often repeated assertion that the science of climate change is "settled," significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. But because IPCC working groups were generally instructed to consider work published only through May, 2005, these important findings are not included in their reports...

For a start, they'll be shut out of conferences and villified.

-- Nick

Just Asking

Why is it that a Catholic who repeatedly sins in the knowledge that confession will provide absolution is regarded as a hypocrite while Al Gore can produce more carbon emissions in a month than the rest of us do in a year and purchase carbon offsets from his own company and be regarded as a messiah?

Just asking.

-- Nick

What Do You Call People Who Hang Around With Musicians?

The Daily Telegraph's Kathy McCabe asks the Live Earth Sydney acts some questions about their green credentials including:

What is your favourite green anthem and if you don't have one, what song do you think could easily be adapted as the theme of climate change?

To which Missy Higgins' response:

"Kermit The Frog's It Ain't Easy Bein' Green. What an anthem."

...is beaten soundly into second place for sheer dumb-assery by Ghostwriters' Rob Hirst:

"Green Green Grass Of Home was clearly a stoner anthem of the '70s but could become a modern carbon footprint dance floor hit."

The Green Green Grass Of Home, written by Claude Putman Jr and a major hit for Tom Jones in 1966, is a country song about a man who wakes from a dream of happier days to realise he is in jail and condemned to be executed for murder in the morning. (Lyrics | Wikipedia entry)

Whether or not Hirst, the former drummer for Midnight Oil, was being humorous is irrelevant. His and Higgins' facile responses add weight to recent criticism by more sensible members of their professional peer group.

-- Nick

Green Hatred

Late last month we made a comparison between environmental types and misanthropes and frankly, I'm not sure we were believed.

But the always entertaining Tex from Wacking Day highlights this exchange on a motorcycle discussion forum (scroll down to A Deep Love Of Humanity):

>> We need a good pandemic we do.
>Unfortunatly I think you're right.

Fortunately we won't have long to wait...

[...]

Well _something's_ gotta decimate this toxic plague known as"humanity" [misnomer alert] or else every other species is in dire peril...

As Tex himself says - charming fellow.

-- Nora

Enviro-Loonie

Poor, poor Tim:

SCIENTIST and environmentalist Tim Flannery says he has considered handing back his Australian of the Year award due to Prime Minister John Howard's climate change policies.

Speaking at Melbourne's RMIT University today, Dr Flannery said he was struggling to reconcile his role as Australian of the Year with his views on climate change.

"Of course this year I am Australian of the Year, and I have to somehow tread a very difficult line, a very tenuous line, I think, between honouring the tradition of Australian of the Year, being apolitical, and trying to do something for my country," Dr Flannery said.

But you won't, will you. Tim?

-- Nick

It's Hotter In The Australian

It was a warm last three months in the Northern Hemisphere apparently but the story got even hotter by the time it reached The Australian newspaper two and a half hours later.


Agence France Presse's wire story reported the tale as 'adding fire to global warming concerns' while The Australian's edit was 'fuelling further fears of global warming' and, in effect, both agreed that global warming was to blame.

But AFP allowed the mitigation of El Nino and noted:

...El Nino rapidly weakened in February, as ocean temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific cooled more than 0.3C and were near average for the month.

However, The Australian expunged all mention of El Nino and hysterically pronounced:

...a review of computer climate models suggested that global warming could transform the North Pole into an ice-free expanse of open ocean at the end of each summer by 2100.

Of course, it's all bull.

Not only does NOAA - America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - know only too well where it's funding is coming from but cherry picking periods of time:

(Headline:) Earth bakes in hottest quarter on record

...is a guaranteed way of bending statistics to your desired point of view. Since when was December-February a 'quarter' in the common understanding of the term?

-- Nick

Cosmic Revelations

It's really no news at all for anyone who has done a modicum of reading on the subject beyond hysterical headlines:

Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research. Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought.

But there is one thing they have got wrong:

They hope this will prove whether this deep space radiation is responsible for changing cloud cover. If so, it could force climate scientists to re-evaluate their ideas about how global warming occurs.

Not so - it could force climate scientists to re-evaluate where they get their government research grants from.

-- Nora