CRIKEY: In Rundle’s Friday drive-bys, (Friday 14 August Item 14), Guy Rundle wrote that Oscar Humphries had been sacked from his position as editor of The Spectator. That statement is untrue and has been removed from the story on the website. Humphries has not been sacked and has no intention of going anywhere in the near future. Crikey apologies for the error.
First Dog on the Moon:
A. Headcase (aka Jim Ivins) writes: Re. “First Dog on the Moon” (Friday, item 4). I wish to complain about First Dog’s “poorly formed opinion and self indulgent rambling disguised as badly drawn whimsy”.
I notice that, yet again, your cartoonist has chosen to attack a soft target, this time in the form of Vietnamese peasants who are so poor they have to eat their pets. Well, at least this makes a change from the attacks on helpless Christians and right wing politicians. I mean, it’s not as if the Vietnamese are actually capable of defending themselves against a bunch of misguided foreigners.
I demand to know why First Dog didn’t have a go at the Muslims or the Jews instead. After all, don’t they hang live sheep upside down before cutting their throats? Or is that how Black Pudding is made in the north of England? I’d look it up on Wikipedia but I was recently banned from that site, despite the many helpful additions I made to the entry on Steve Fielding. We’re so lucky to have him you know.
Female wage parity:
Kate Jackson writes: Re. “Stevens’ sunny-side-up optimism could bite him” (Friday, item 23). Glenn Dyer notes there were some “encouraging statistics on employment” in Crikey‘s business section on Friday, however he misses the downside to the employment stats as picked up by Peter Martin in The Age, “Downturn hits female wage parity.”
Martin says: Earnings figures for May put average female pay at $54,907, just 82 per cent of the $66,581 male average — the lowest proportion in 21 years. This is interesting when contrasted with historical figures.
Professor Glenda Strachan of Griffith University notes in a story for the ABC back in Feb that, “Female wage rates and earnings as a percentage of male wage rates rose from 71 in 1966 to 92 in 1976 (weekly rate).”
So women have gone from 92% in 1976 to 82% in 2009. So much for progress!
The Australian Fair Pay Commission website also notes that, ‘In 2006, women earned 84% of the average weekly earnings of male employees, compared with 87% in 2004.” Still embarrassingly short of the 1976 figures.
The Gods of Rock:
Denis Goodwin writes: Re. “Vale Les Paul, symbol maker of rock” (Friday, item 16). Tim Dunlop surely loses credibility when he writes “Best guitarist: Page, Clapton, Beck, Blackmore, Howe? Someone else?”.
I know he was writing about the sad news of the death of Les Paul and his personal preference for the Gibson over the Fender but that is no excuse to leave Jimi Hendrix of the list of best guitarists.
Climate change:
Moira Smith writes: Tamas Calderwood (Friday, comments) wrote: “3,600,000,000 — the number of years Earth has been warmer than it is today…” If I am correct in my interpretation of the “noughts” that is over three and a half billion years. Yes, the earth has been around a long time. And for much of that time life was what we’d today consider as “primitive” and even different, although interesting in its way. Sponges, for example. (And that was after a long long time.)
I am informed that much more recent Quaternaty period (from 2.5 million years ago) is when human type beings began to develop. From that point of view, the three billion or so years previous are irrelevant. The climate was different then, different life forms developed and flourished. Except for one thing: the fossil fuels we burn with such alacrity today were laid down and sequestered before humanoids emerged, yet we’re now re-releasing them into the contemporary atmosphere for the first ever time.
We’re potentially re-engineering the atmosphere into what it was BEFORE human life was possible. The latest observations from Antarctica and the Arctic indicate that something strange and worrying is happening. Glaciers are melting and disintegrating EVEN FASTER than the scientists had at first predicted. Does Tamas Calderwood have any children or grandchildren? Or is he one of the fortunate like me, who can say “après moi le deluge”?
Nigel Brunel writes: Re. Tamas Calderwood (Friday, comments) on the numbers concerning climate change. You missed one number Tamas. Zero: the number of times I have given a toss about what Tamas Calderwood opines.
Send your comments, corrections, clarifications and c*ck-ups to boss@crikey.com.au. Preference will be given to comments that are short and succinct: maximum length is 200 words (we reserve the right to edit comments for length). Please include your full name — we won’t publish comments anonymously unless there is a very good reason.
Nigel Brunel is very brave. I still remember vividly the time Tamas Calderwood slapped me around the ears with limp lettuce leaves when I innocently suggested that crikey.com only needed to print Tamas’ name, and I’d know precisely what he is going to state with such certainty.
Denis Goodwin correctly (in my opinion) points out that Hendrix would have to be at the top of any ‘best of’ list of rock guitarists. But what about B.B. King ? I think Clapton at least is on record as acknowledging how much King’s style influenced him and I reckon the same would be true of a number of the others if they were asked. While we’re at it, lets put Angus Young and Ry Cooder in the mix as well, along with Scotty Moore (someone had to be first).
Nigel and Wayne – I just don’t think your comments add much to the debate. For a polite, factual response take a look at Moira’s comment. See how this debating stuff works?
Moira – the point I was making was that for 80% of its existence Earth was warmer than it is today. We have no idea why. Yet today we attribute a few tenths of a degree warming (after the end of the little ice age) to human CO2 production. Also, CO2 has been many times higher in the past than its concentration today and this did not lead to runaway global warming (eg; it has been far higher during past ice ages).
Also, the Roman and Medieval warm periods were warmer than today. We don’t know why but we do know that the warmness didn’t lead to diaster. Quite the opposite. Warmer times have generally been more prosperous times for humanity.
I also dispute that the latest observations from Antarctica and the Arctic indicate something strange is happening. Antarctic ice area is at the highest level ever recorded and while summer ice levels in the Arctic were low in the past few years, this year they have recovered to normal levels. All this can be explained far better by natural variability rather than human CO2 production (which, by the way, is only 3% of total CO2 released every year).
Tamas Calderwood? Is that a pseudonym for Andrew Bolt, the comic dog. I’ve been on the planet for 65 years and I’d like my grandkids to do at least the same. Certainly climate change is happening but we don’t really know the causes. Nevertheless, it is madness to exacerbate the situation by continuing adding to the problem by pumping tonnes of extra CO2 into the atmosphere, not to mention billions of tonnes of pollutants. The deniers say that the amount of CO2 we produce is only a tiny fraction of the total amount – so what? That little bit extra just might be enough to tip the scales. The reality is that we don’t get a second chance with climate change – if we do nothing and the deniers are wrong, we’re stuffed. Try explaining that to your grand kids in 30 years time Tamas (and Andrew). Alex
Alex/Bakerboy – but what if humans don’t control the environment? What if CO2, which is 0.00038 of the atmosphere, is completely irrelevant in the broader climate system?
There is absolutely no empirical evidence to show CO2 is the dominant factor in the climate system. Yet we are about to destroy our energy industry and make us all poorer (to say nothing of the developing world) based on a crazy theory that humans can control the climate system.
This is apocalyptic nonsense of the worst kind. I haven’t seen anything remotely like this in Western Society before. We think we live in an age of science and rationalism yet the hysterical, end-of-the-world doom sayers have utterly captured our Political and Media classes.
The fact is that temperatures rose about 0.7C in the 20th century. Since we’ve had hyper-accurate satellites we know temperatures rose only 0.38C in 31 years. We know that temperatures haven’t budged (and in fact have cooled slightly) for 10 years. We know that the Oceans have cooled slightly since at least 2003.
How is all this a crisis? Where are the effects of this “crisis”?
The Roman and Medieval warm periods were warmer than today. Why didn’t the planet collapse back then? And what caused it to be warmer back then? Why do we assume that all natural factors are irrelevant in the climate system now and CO2 is the only factor that controls it?
Your plan to “save” the planet will do infinitely more damage than the tiny amount of warming we have seen in the past 150 years.