Counting The Dead

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So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions. In the mind of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn't noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved. If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don't you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?

The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be before wrecking the economy. It is the job of our opposition politicians and press to demand the evidence from the relevant minister, Penny Wong.

And what is going to happen over the next decade as the global temperature continues not to rise? When the public find out that all the above points were known in 2008, might they feel deceived, furious at the futility of the economic sacrifices?

Who is going to be held responsible? Perhaps the political class, for not having the wit to examine the evidence? Maybe the press, for not have not done even the most elementary job of informing a debate and asking questions? (If any of the missing signature, the lack of actual evidence, the lack of temperature rises since 2001, or the 800 year lag of CO2 in the ice cores are news to you, then no, your press has not been keeping you well informed.)

Don't you think some evidence is required before wrecking the economy? Someone simply has to demand to see evidence. You will find that there is none.
Dr David Evans


Science is not about consensus or belief, these words are those of politics and religion. Science is a celebration of uncertainty. Scepticism and criticism are valued and information from all different disciplines is integrated in an attempt to understand the world around us. Because the current theory on human-induced climate change is not in accord with validated geology and astronomy, then the theory must be rejected. However, the idea that wealthy western humans change global climate is an attractive ascientific idealistic political idea and this idea is currently promoted with great missionary zeal.

The tail has wagged the dog and squeaky wheels and a sensationalist media have forced both major political parties, against their better judgment, to make political comments about climate change. These comments have nothing to do with science. They are pragmatic political survival.

What is interesting is that the squeaky wheels are in affluent western countries that have lost the religious structure to society. Climate change has become the new dogmatic religion and woe betide heretics, sinners and the wealthy. We are all now to pay papal carbon indulgences to the Archbishops of climate change (on the condition that such payments only hurt a little).

My concerns are that the great gains made in the Renaissance regarding logic, argument, challenges to authority, rationality, the use of evidence and an understanding of the world around us have been lost in the space of a decade. This was an incredible politically driven social change. The word sceptic is now a pejorative word and criticism, questioning and the integration of a broad spectrum of science is either dismissed or regarded as evil. There is no climate change debate, only dangerous dogma, the constriction of thinking processes and a negative view of the future.

Any future great environmental problems can only be solved by science and if the weapons of science are removed, then we place society at risk. Children now have a negative view of the future rather than equipping themselves with the tools to make the Earth a better place. We are now starting to reap the rewards of dumbing down science education. The real message from the politics of climate change is that science education in Australia is in a woeful state. Society is again in one of its great backward swings.

The only good news is that those who have only known the good times are reminded to be frugal with energy and resources and not to throw waste into our waterways and atmosphere. But we knew this anyway, didn't we?

Ian Plimer is the Professor of Mining Geology at The University of Adelaide and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne.



The catacombs echoed with dripping water. Men, some half-naked, appeared out of the gloom. There were things taking place he could not determine, shadows and space and darkness, the sandstone walls mouldy from the constant damp. We sang the clarinet, watched bees dancing in the meadows, saw the melting snow in spring. The souls lined up to be judged, the ceaseless line. How was your time on earth, in the physical realm? The darkness and gloom which overtook this vision was something in the meantime, was a precursor to a tortured life, foreshadowed a sincere wrestle with the fates.

He was in the darkness. He didn't know how he had got below the surface, to this strange place. He was too young to understand that the men might be doing more than just showering, but even more puzzling was how this place of interconnecting, underground caves had got here in the first place, in the school playground in this remote suburb, two thousand years and ten thousand miles from where one might expect to see such scenes, beneath the Colosseum in Rome. He wanted to be protected, by the spirits of bustling old housewives, by the men who bought him drinks all those years ago, by a protective and loving God, that would do.

The city is still full of pilgrims. It's impossible to resent them, people say, they're so nice, sincere, earnest. They burst into song, they clutter public transport, they still wear their pilgrim security passes to Randwick, as if the passes separate them out and they can't bear to let go of the wonderful time they have just had. The policeman who gave his hat to the Pope has died, God will be with you, we all face death. He came from the ancient lands of Europe to this new place, brash, without a history, or without a European history, making it all the more strange that his head was filled with Old Testament images.

In a cavern, in a dripping catacomb, in a past that was narrowly defined, in a brief passing, brief life, in the shadows that we welcomed into our hearts. The different languages of the pilgrims filled the public transport system, Italian, Spanish, sometimes something else, Swedish, German. They were bright and fresh faced and had the whole world in front of them, and the psychic and physical pain that had dominated his life slipped away.

There were other shadows now, more recent, more optimistic, spirits who regarded him
with greater kindness than the harsh spirits of an unforgiving religion, a cruel God. Another soldier dies in the dust of Afghanistan, and we all wonder why. Obama tours the world, and is on top of the planet. Everything works in a perfect life. Old dragons and feminist warhorses slip away, still ranting angrily about the patriarchy and the bitterness of past loves. He just wanted to be happy; to smirk in their faces, to wave bye bye tosser and step out on a new path.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theage.com.au/national/patel-bailed-but-still-behind-bars-20080721-3is7.html

ON THE day he returned to Queensland, Jayant Patel had a win: the discredited surgeon was granted bail after being charged with 14 offences, including three of manslaughter, over his tenure at Bundaberg Hospital.

But the win was qualified. He was expected to stay in jail last night after Brisbane magistrate Brian Hine made his bail subject to the posting of a $20,000 deposit, which could not be arranged last night.

Patel will also have to live at a place approved by the Director of Public Prosecutions, report to police three times a week and not leave Queensland or approach an international airport.

He must not contact any witnesses and must surrender his passport.

Mr Hine acknowledged the serious offences and the public interest in preventing Patel from fleeing, but said Patel had consented to his extradition and any trial was at least 12 months away.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24058144-421,00.html#

MEN who want to spend more time with their children have found a new champion in an unlikely quarter - the Sex Discrimination Commissioner.

Elizabeth Broderick said she wanted to strengthen the Sex Discrimination Act to penalise those employers who stick family-friendly fathers on the "daddy track" by refusing to promote them.

The reforms are a key part of the new commissioner's agenda for action that will be launched in Sydney today.

Ms Broderick said that, until the workplace culture changed to give men as well as women an equal right to time off work for family duties, men would be unable to do housework and childcare.

She told The Daily Telegraph that men as well as women deserved to have the joy of being involved in their families.

But the workplace culture prevented them taking up part-time work and they were still viewed as the primary breadwinners.

Ms Broderick said men complained to her about the gender imbalance in access to flexible family-friendly work arrangements during the listening tour she undertook when appointed last September.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gk8pwmaYvxbRj4r8_RxchUobZA1g

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Osama bin Laden's former driver, SalimHamdan, pleaded not guilty on Monday at the opening of the first trial before a special military tribunal at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said.

"The trial has started and he pleaded not guilty," Cynthia Smith, spokeswoman for the US Defense Department, told AFP.

Hamdan, from Yemen, is the first "enemy combatant" in Guantanamo from the US "war on terror" to face a full-scale trial since the prison camp at the remote naval base was opened in late 2001.

Hamdan, whose trial is expected to last two weeks, faces charges of "conspiracy" and "material support for terrorism," and could receive life imprisonment if convicted by the controversial tribunals set up by President George W. Bush.

Australian national David Hicks was to face a trial in Guantanamo in 2007 but pleaded guilty at a hearing before it began.

After being held without trial for five years, Hicks admitted to providing material support to terrorism as part of a deal that allowed him to return to his country where he served the remainder of his sentence.

The trial jury will be selected from a pool of 13 military officers who have been flown into Guantanamo for the case.

In a new courtroom built for the proceedings at the naval base not far from the prison, lawyers, journalists and human rights monitors are watching a trial that is seen as a test of the tribunal system.

The Bush administration set up the special military commissions in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, saying terror suspects could not be adequately prosecuted in regular courts.