Lots of talk about carbon this week. Not much about global warming, though. Or climate science. The whole motivation behind this mooted piece of policy that’s getting everyone so hot under the collar.
While Tony Abbott has cited “the public” as the experts he considers worth consulting on this issue (never mind climate scientists and economists) and Julia Gillard has talked about mobile phones big as bricks and being shy at the National Press Club, a different kind of conference took place in a neat piece of symmetry this week.
Here’s the opener to the “Four degrees or more: Australia in a hot world” conference that concluded yesterday, as reported by David Spratt :
Keynote speaker Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute, and former climate adviser to the German Chancellor and the EU, asked rhetorically: “What is the difference between two degrees (of temperature increase) and four degrees?”
“The difference,” he said, “is human civilisation”.
Right then. That should puts things in perspective.
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Is Tony Abbott the scientific version of Voldermort?
Or is Rupert Murdoch the Big Media’s version of the same villain?
Or is his incarnation in the human flesh of two people at once, a Matrix like duality, all part of the Evil One’s genius?
The nose free Deathly Hallows Part III, coming to a climate near you!
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
Well done Crikey, and especially on the new ‘p’ word.
Clearly there are a lot of ‘dumb and ‘stupid’ people living in Australia.
There is an RS cleverly targeting them to do his bidding, like ruin the country if he doesn’t get his way, have two elections at once (that’s a promise) so that they can help him get his way. Then he will feed them as fodder to the big company friends to be devoured as cheap labour. (that’s where ‘Labour’ should be ‘cheap’ not audaciously imagining itself as management — competent what’s more – ooohhhh I’m going to be sick I can hear him say)
Here’s a perspective on the dumb and the stupid, often dumbed down to ‘an alternative opinion’ say like driving on the wrong side of the road could be.
They come in all shapes and looks, some rich some poor but the unassailable truth about them is they can often be more lovable, more loyal and even more fun on occasion than ‘smarties’ who are right about ‘carbon’ and other things like ‘climate’ for example.
So keeping them is preferable. (maybe just educating them)
I thought Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber’s name rang a bell. The following is what Crikey reported from him on 4 November 2009
“Australia and the USA would need to be at zero emissions by 2020…….. Not 25% by 2020, but 100% by 2020 for Australia. That’s the science, unadorned. God forbid the politics.”
Let me explain this in really simple terms for you all. That’s not going to happen. Period. We are doomed. It’s over. The car has gone over the cliff but hasn’t crashed yet. So forget it folks, the worthy professor has pronounced our collective doom. I mean, he is a respected scientist with great credibility, isn’t he? What he says must be true, mustn’t it?
Dr Harvey M Tarvydas
@DAVID HAND
He doesn’t know, nobody knows.
We calculate, based on all we know, and worry but we know one thing, we are making too much CO2 and have a good idea what this could lead to being well aware that we have absolutely no idea how nature would deal with man’s excessive CO2 production if it could so we must reduce seriously and are impotent if doom is payment for lateness.
But for all we really know in complex total, if we really go for it we might make it.
There will always be right in any claim that it’s not fast or enough, that’s human life.
“He doesn’t know, nobody knows”.
Right then. That should put things in perspective.