Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris....
The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.
The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.
A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.
And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.
Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?
As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James distinguishes between healthy, life-affirming religion and the monastically inclined, "morbid-minded" religion of the sick-souled. Global warming is sick-souled religion.
Bret Stephens.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Rolled gold disaster, his head declared, as he wrestled with an ideologically wracked Labor government out of control. Nothing could be worse. A whole generation had grown up with the annoying, stifling and stale influence of John Howard, and had never seen a Labor government in power in Canberra in their lifetime. If you were 30, I wish, Howard would have been there your entire voting life. There was a dam wall holding back a tide of discontent, and Howard never had the courage, the gumption or even the common decency to explain to the plebs why he was doing what he was doing. And drunk with power, weaned on his own importance and all the sycophants who told him what a great leader he was, he dragged his party into oblivion, losing not just the election but his own seat in a humiliating defeat.
And now we all pay the price of that man's preening idiocy. He pressed the black button on the hospital wall to gain access to the wards on Level Eight. He passed down the corridor to the nurses station; and asked for Joyce Larkin. A nurse started to answer him, that he didn't know, but in the middle of answering him got caught in an ongoing argument with another staff member. Camp as a row of tents the pair of them, low status males. He stood there bemused as they hammered out their differences over where something was and what some patient did or didn't need. Minutes passed, he increased the heaviness of his presence to no effect. Finally a little Asian nurses aid took pity and offered to help him. Joyce Larkin, he repeated. She's here somewhere, she's moved beds.
How old is she? she asked.
Eighty three, he replied.
She's probably next door, she said, referring to the Acute Aged Care facility. She showed him how to get through another locked door; and pointed him to another nurses station. These patients were prone to wander, and there was going to be no easy way out.
He found her bed easily enough, but had been shocked every single step of the way by the ancient human disasters he kept on passing. An impossibly old man stood vacantly in the corridor. In each alcove impossibly old people sat slumped in chairs, or perched up in their beds. Joyce was asleep; and he was shocked by the change in her, her body slumped out on the bed. He sat down in the available chair, appalled. He picked up the paper back she was reading: "No Escape". Only Joyce could pick a book with such telling irony. "No escape". He began to read, his eyes taking in the other customers.
A woman who looked like a barely breathing mummy, on the edge of death, pale, yellow sick, shrunken, a ghastly pallor, was slumped in a chair opposite, everything about her the epitomy of misery. Dear Lord don't let me ever get to that state, he thought. Put me out of my misery long before that. What possible point could there be with this quality of life? Another woman patient sat in the bed along side her; looking like an old Greek islander but as ugly as sin; she'd been standing behind the door when good looks were being handed out. The ugly one beamed vacantly, looking at him with what could have been interest. The curtains had been around the patient next to Joyce, and the moans of distress and the rapid chatter of nurses and relatives emerged.
He kept reading "No Escape" and the minutes dragged by. A nurse came by, and with her bustling Joyce woke up. She looked at him, coming awake. "Oh John," she said. He busied himself getting a cup of tea; leaving her with the nurse. And then he sat down again. "Oh Joyce," he said. "This place is appalling." "You've got no idea," she said. "It's hell." "You'll go downhill fast if you stay here," he said. "No I won't, I'm too strong. It's all the stuff we've learnt."
"This is a nightmare. You can't stay here." And his eyes welled with tears. Joyce had always been kind to him, always helpful, in the days when he had struggled under his own appalling legacy of sickness, death, addiction and despair. Not like the others, she hadn't been kind because he was a journalist, famous or infamous in his own little realm. She couldn't have cared less, didn't really appreciate or understand his fame; liked him for him and that was that. They had the exact same sense of humour; and he had declared once, it's very strange being friends with an 83 year old lady. And they had laughed, and not cared; after all the troubles it was one of the best times of their lives.
They had formed the Redfern Movie Appreciation Society, consisting of the two of them, and gone to see progressively virtually every major movie that had been out in the past few years. Joyce had prayed one day, sweet soul, her handsome husbands long gone, for someone she could go to the movies with. And miraculously enough he had appeared out of nowhere. And now here she was, amidst the dying and the dammed.
"I wnat my movie buddy back," he said.
"I want to be back," she said. "I don't know why I'm going through this, but I am. They say I'm wonderful for my age. Most of them don't know where they are even.
It's chaos here, absolute chaos. Public hospital chaos. You've got no idea."
But he had every idea.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23975740-2,00.html
KEVIN Rudd wants all Australians to share the pain of increased costs to help save the planet from climate change - except him.
The Prime Minister revealed yesterday he would continue to allow taxpayers to pick up his power and petrol bills.
In the wake of the week's Garnaut report, Mr Rudd was asked if he would pay for power, lighting and heating bills at The Lodge.
The Sunday Herald Sun also asked whether he would start to pay his petrol bills for his chauffeur-driven car.
Mr Rudd's office responded: "The Prime Minister will not be changing the long-standing practices of previous prime ministers in relation to these matters...
Mr Rudd declined to say how much The Lodge and his chauffeur driven car cost taxpayer's last year, referring the Sunday Herald Sun to Government annual reports.
According to Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio estimates, the cost of running The Lodge and Kirribilli House in Sydney is expected to be $1.8 million this financial year.
Mr Rudd, whose wife, Therese Rein's companies turned over about $260 million last year, also has a taxpayer-subsidised nanny for his youngest son and a taxpayer-funded butler paid $78,000 a year.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/heavens-may-open-for-pilgrims/2008/07/05/1214951110555.html
SYDNEY could be hit by rain on three of the biggest days of the World Youth Day festival. MP Kristina Keneally, the Iemma Government's spokeswoman for the Catholic youth event, said weather forecasts suggested rain on July 17, 18 and 19.
July 17 has been dubbed Super Thursday because of the official papal arrival; July 18 will feature the Stations of the Cross in Sydney's CBD; and on July 19 about 180,000 pilgrims will take part in the pilgrimage walk to Randwick for the evening vigil Mass being celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI.
Ms Keneally has warned pilgrims and others planning on attending the events to be prepared and wear appropriate clothing to keep warm and dry, especially those camping overnight in average temperatures of eight degrees.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/kevs-no-fun-any-more/2008/07/05/1214951108010.html
Downer, we all know, has finally quit politics. His legacy as foreign minister - for the full term of the Howard Government - might be arguable. But his contribution to Liberal politics over a quarter of a century is not.
Downer could present one minute as the archetypal Tory boofhead and the next as John Howard's battering ram, yelling down his enemies in Parliament, arguing black is white and taking no prisoners along the way.
His stint as Liberal leader - during which he was utterly humiliated by his own party, by Paul Keating, but mostly by himself - would have killed others.
For Downer it all became scar tissue, part of the armour that made him impervious to 13 years of subsequent taunts and ridicule.
He developed the most valuable and rare of political assets - a total absence of fear. His myriad shortcomings aside, Downer was a political warrior in a class inhabited by few Liberals who remain in Parliament.
His old mate Nick Minchin is in the club. So, too, is Joe Hockey. Malcolm Turnbull - a complex bloke with nothing to lose - is rattling the gates manically.
Peter Costello ... well, his incapacity to put the old boy to the sword could, unfortunately, become the defining measure of his legacy, no matter what personal justification he offers in his forthcoming book.
No, it's time for Downer to go. For he is already a relic from an era when politics was actually interesting, when the personalities were big and where passions were regularly unleashed in Parliament and on the stump. "Mate, we are the most effing boring government since federation ... and that's just the way Kevin wants it," a senior minister told me recently. Welcome to the New Calvinism. Or should that be the New Kevin-ism?
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