Kevin Rudd:
Alan Kennedy writes: Re. “It’s all your fault: killing the ETS was a team effort” (yesterday, item 1). Bernard Keane says Rudd is more like Bob Carr than Paul Keating. He’s wrong; Rudd is Carr. It is no accident that Rudd is surrounded by Sussex Street’s finest for whom being in office is all that is required. Just being there means they can get their hands on the levers and get on with whatever business they like. They created a puppet Government under Carr who thought it was enough to turn up every day and do his impersonation of a premier.
Sadly the public bought it for ten years and as we watch the infrastructure crumble and the lack of planning over those years sentence us to purgatory, we get a glimpse of what it will be like if Rudd continues.
In NSW Sussex Street have created their ultimate puppet premier a good looking sassy straight talking footy Mom, our very own Sarah Palin, who may save them a few votes. She was put there by all those stooges who now pose around her doing impersonations of Ministers of State a role played best by Transport Minister Campbell.
But I note that while the polls show our Kristina is popular, they punters can’t wait to beat the crap out of the Labor mob. It will be an even bigger victory if Malcolm suddenly hears the call of Macquarie Street and swaps Wentworth for Vaucluse. If the Libs get in they will be in for quite some time.
Federally it is time for the boy and girls in the party to drop the curtain on Kev’s acting career and install someone with the ticker to do things otherwise, while they may win later in the year, the inaction will see Labor wiped out at the next poll and in the wilderness for years. If you are going to be in Government you have to be prepared to die on your feet, fight for what you believe in. And by that I don’t mean a belief that just being in office is the object of the exercise.
Les Heimann writes: Re. Yesterday’s editorial. Is it really the case that our PM is clearing the decks for an election?
Is it the case that he has micro managed stuff to the point where it is so confused and complicated that is unsellable? Is it the case that our PM has simply become bored with a few things so made them go away? Is it the case that Mr Rudd is just another politician — and not such a good one? Is it the case that he will wimp on a double dissolution? Is he getting a little confused about himself? There are a lot of questions. A leader we don’t have, a fixer we don’t have — an accident is what we have!
I want a genuine reformist government run by a gutsy leader, not what we’ve got now. Don’t you just pine for a genuine man or woman at the helm?
David Lenihan writes: Michael Frame (yesterday, comments) joins other critics of Kevin Rudd, Liberals all, who keep pushing the ‘ he wants to head the UN ‘ line. Perhaps Mr Frame would care to advise what his source for this career move of the PM is? .I have never heard Mr Rudd ever make a suggestion along those lines.
Al Jazeera and Rupert:
David Menere writes: Re. “No demand for Al Jazeera on Foxtel, says Williams” (yesterday, item 17). Foxtel CEO Kim Williams says that Al Jazeera’s non-presence on Foxtel is a matter of pure commerce and audience demand. Maybe, but earlier this year, Rupert Murdoch entered into a cross-ownership deal with Saudi Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, owner of the major Middle East TV giant Rotana Media.
Williams’ statement would look decidedly thin if a Rotana- sourced current affairs channel appeared soon on Foxtel. Perhaps Rupert’s foray into Middle East media will be more successful than his effort to enter the Chinese media market.
Rupert’s credibility in the Middle East is unlikely to have been helped by his statements at the outset of the Iraq war that, (if I recall accurately), the war would be a good thing because it would bring the price of oil down to USD20 per barrel.
Brett Stewart:
Anne Turner writes: Re. “NRL, News Ltd facing a nightmare of conflicts of interest” (yesterday, item 3). Please remind Michael Visontay that Brett Stewart is facing a trial in September and until proved guilty, then he is innocent, and no comments can be made about him that would damage his case. Therefore why would the NRL punish the whole of the Manly team because of a matter which remains unresolved and before the court.
Global warming:
Tamas Calderwood writes: Re. “It’s all your fault: killing the ETS was a team effort” (yesterday, item 1). Leading climate scientists admit the world hasn’t warmed for 15 years and the warming spurts from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were statistically indistinguishable.
Copenhagen collapses, Germany abandons binding CO2 targets, France’s high court rejects a carbon tax, cap-and-trade is stalled in the US, China and India refuse to limit their emissions, two thirds of Americans now believe global warming is mostly natural, renewable energy scams abound in Europe and the dodgy “science” of the IPCC and other climate institutes has been exposed.
Yet in a gorgeous display of his blissful unawareness about all this, Bernard Keane awards much of the blame for Australia’s ETS debacle on The Australian, the ABC and “many other outlets” because they dared to report on all the above and look at the sceptical case.
Even better, he decries the “rubbish-in-rubbish-out” economic models used to discredit the ETS, which in turn was … ahhh … based upon a bunch of rubbish-in-rubbish-out models that attempt to predict the weather in 100 years, even though they didn’t predict the cooling over the past 10.
Seems those wingnut, conspiracy theory denialists are having a few wins right now. So instead of dismissing them and calling for censorship, maybe their arguments should be examined and this “settled science” reviewed. Just a thought.
While much of what Alan Kennedy says about Sussex Street may be close to the mark, his equating of Kristina Keneally with Sarah Palin shows the usual inability to look beyond a woman’s gender. The NSW Premier may or may not be ‘a puppet’ but she bears almost no resemblance to Sarah Palin, beyond their both being women. To my knowledge Keneally has given no indication whatsoever that she is ignorant, insular or a religious nutter. On the contrary, she appears to be urbane, of broad views and altogether a pleasant and sophisticated woman. Alan would never have attempted this sort of silly, trite connection if he’d been discussing a bloke. A lame effort.
Tamas Calderwood has again blessed us with his presence as self-appointed spokesperson for the climate deniers.
On behalf the more sentient readers, I must thank Crikey for again inflicting his repetitious falsehoods on the populace.
Just a few:
+ “Leading climate scientists admit the world hasn’t warmed for 15 years”. Who, exactly? Leading? This assertion is simply not true. Any random sample of leading climate scientists would run a mile from that position. Who, Tamas?
+ “the warming spurts from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were statistically indistinguishable.” So, for the sample period, although overall there is a rise in global temperature, and Tamas agrees that in more than 50% of the individual years also display rising temperatures, somehow the temperature isn’t rising. Odd, that. Also unsupportable.
+ “Renewable energy scams abound in Europe.” Do tell. What’s this got to do with the world-is-cooling hypothesis? We all know that businesses and banks love to scam. That has been shown elsewhere to be a major profit generator.
+ “The dodgy “science” of the IPCC and other climate institutes has been exposed.” Really? The IPCC predictions have been shown to not only be correct, but, if anything, exceeded. Science involves much checking to ensure that signal is separated from the noise. The signal remains true – IPCC predictions are sound. The noise is the accumulated static generated by cherry-pickers of data and whingers who, for no good public reason, rate their opinion above their knowledge.
And so it goes…
Humans are resistant to change, are prone to optimism and to listen to both sides of even the most biased debate. In this case, the signs of international disunity are a major concern and will come back to bight us. I say this based on the balance of probability available from published sources and expert opinion. Sadly, this disunity will result in future energy and climate policy adjustments, when much more harm will have been done and much more money will be needed to respond to the challenges.
Sad, really. I don’t want to see 30% of life forms needlessly killed out, the oceans rise over some of the most productive and heavily populated land on Earth, or the social upheaval which this will bring.
Even sadder, that the gullible, the optimistic and the lazy are being stampeded towards the cliff by the Denialists.
John:
1) Professor Phil “Hide the decline” Jones, head of the CRU. I can’t post links because the moderator won’t let them through for a while, but google it. He said that in a written BBC interview.
2) Same interview from Jones above. Why would the warming spurts be the same if human CO2 was much higher in each successive period? Maybe because CO2 has nothing to do with the warming Earth?
3) Oh boy, this is a good one. Google this: Spanish renewable energy scam. Because the “solar” energy was so “good”, the government guaranteed a very high price for it. So these guys cranked up some diesel generators, fed the diesel power into the grid and claimed it was solar – thereby collecting those juicy “renewable” rates. They got caught because they got so greedy, they started doing it at night. There’s more in Italy, Germany… etc.
4) Yeah, whatever – Himalayan glaciers! Amazon Rainforest! Food production in Africa! All wrong… and many more…
No John, humans are also prone to mass hysteria. But it’s not effecting you, John. Nope – this time the world really is going to end, and you are right!
Tamas Calderwood is a “f*ing” “idiot”.
“The” “world” “is” “not” going to end Tamas, as you straw-man these days — in quotation marks for supposed emphasis — which just reinforces how amateur you are when it comes to grammar, among other things.
A big, ignorant mouth with an internet connection and nothing better to do is all you are. You are “so cute” Tamas (cue cat-scratch double fingers and beaver funny face for effect).
On topic, the good thing about CC is that it is a wipeout for species, not the planet itself, and one species affected in a big way will be…drum roll…humans!
The beneficial flow-on for those with a brain is that the number of low IQ tossers (like monsieur Calderwood) will be greatly reduced, or in the worst-case scenario wiped out completely. A good thing for the human race in my opinion.
Thank goodness for Crikey’s practice of bylines. Without them, I might waste huge amounts of time reading Mr (or is it Ms?) Calderwood’s maunderings. One has to wonder whether he/she/it has any offspring who might suffer if he/she might (God(dess) forbid) might — just possibly – – be wrong.