Conservative icon was ahead of the times on climate change

Here’s a quote, from 1990, for the Andrew Bolt-led rightards to ponder.

“The danger of global warming is as yet unseen but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices, so that we do not live at the expense of future generations.”

Who expressed such concerns before fools like Bolt turned it into some sort of idealistic divide between left and right?

None other than Margaret Thatcher, during her prime ministership.

According to The Australian’s Mike Steketee: Thatcher argued there was a clear case for precautionary international action, action that would be sensible in any event if it improved energy efficiency, developed alternative and sustainable sources of energy and replanted forests. 

Thatcher, an Oxford University graduate history who worked for a period as a research scientist before selling Britain and screwing miners, said in 1988 in a speech to the Royal Society, Britain’s national science academy, that three changes in atmospheric chemistry – the ozone hole, acid rain and greenhouse gases - warranted government action. Perhaps that’s why she closed all the mines.

She committed to bringing carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels by 2005 and provided funding for reafforestation in Britain and overseas. Yet nearly 20 years later we are a long way short of a comprehensive international agreement to limit greenhouse gases.

There has been a lot of water (or in our case a lot less water) under the bridge since and despite the science proving Thatcher was right, we’re hindered by people on Thatcher’s side of the political fence who use the economy as an excuse to justify their stubbornness on the issue.

But as Steketee adds: “A recent CSIRO study found that green jobs could boost employment by between 230,000 and 340,000 over the next decade. Waiting for strong economic growth to resume risks missing the boat and running into investment bottlenecks. Delaying until the rest of the world signs up to an international agreement would see us miss opportunities, as we have done already with areas such as renewable energy where other countries have stolen a march.”

But of course an over-opinionated hack like Bolt knows a lot more than CSIRO researchers.

At risk of sounding like Andrew Bolt …

Figures released today show that more than 220,000 died as a result of natural disasters in 2008. These included 135,000 deaths after the devastating Cyclone Nargis in Burma and 70,000 killed in the terrible earthquakes in China’s Sichuan province.

Bad shit. But what got me in this report about the statistics released by a German organisation called Munich Re, was a quote by one of its board members Torsten Jeworrek, who said:  “Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes.”

Hang on, catastrophic cyclones are nothing new to South East Asia and the horrendous death toll was as much due to the appallingly inept response by the Burmese junta as to the storm itself.

And since when did global warming cause earthquakes?

John McCain poses a dilemma for Aussie right-tards

Eat shit and die right-tards, John McCain reckons Rudd is on the money.

John McCain has called for a stronger bilateral relationship between the US and Australia to combat climate change and nuclear proliferation, two of the Rudd government initiatives that have received plenty of crap from ‘Teh Right’.

Writing in today’s The Australian, the US Republican presidential candidate says he will work with the Rudd Government to establish a global framework that would encourage China and India to become part of the solution to man-made climate change. Senator McCain says he is committed to a market-based cap-and-trade system aimed at reducing carbon emissions. And he wants a closer bilateral partnership on other key issues such as nuclear proliferation, trade liberalisation and combating terrorism.

If a Republican presidential candidate had said such things about the Howard Government the right-tards would have whitewashed the inside of their pants while telling anyone who gave a fuck that this was the reason why  John Howard is our saviour and that Australia will die if the Americans voted a damn Democrat back into the White House.

But while many right-tards like Timmeh Blair do their best to push the McCain barrow to 20-million Australians who can’t vote for him, they will find themselves hard pressed to use this as an example of why McCain would be good for Australia – as it would require acknowledging a need for carbon trading and an ambitious nuclear proliferation agreement – these are the same liars who said the US-Australian alliance would be fucked under a  Labor government.

My guess is they won’t mention it at all and simply continue their peddling lies about Barak Obama.

One the other hand those on Teh Left should realise that, Sarah Palin aside, if McCain were to win we could rest assured that things can only be better than they are now.

If you’re going to storm the PM’s office and demand a meeting …

Wouldn’t you choose a time when he wasn’t on his way to New York?

 

Either we’re fucked, or Tim Flannery has gone crazy-ape bonkers

Outspoken climate change campaigner Tim Flannery says we should pump sulphur into the atmosphere to stave off environmental collapse in the next FIVE years.

Flannery says sulphur could be inserted into the earth’s stratosphere to keep out the sun’s rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.

He said the process, which can be achieved by adding sulphur to jet fuel would create global dimming through contrails would even change the colour of the sky. Me thinks it would lead to acid rain too.

Aviation, which many people blame for greenhouse gas already contributes to global dimming – when all flights were banned in the US in the days after the September 11 attacks, the mean temperature around the United States shot up by a very significant one degree. 

While global dimming may be seen as the opposite of global warming  and thus a good thing, it is has it’s own negative effect on the environment in that it reduces the sun’s capacity to evaporate water by around 10 per cent, leading to less rainfall – some scientists believe it is global dimming which led to disastrous droughts in Ethiopia during the 1980s.

Flannery, admits the consequences of pumping sulphur into the atmosphere to increase global dimming are unknown – this to me sounds like a cane toad solution on a Biblical scale.

I don’t seek to denigrate Dr Flannery or be a climate change believer or sceptic – though I reckon he has certainly given some ammunition to the latter here.  However, it’s worth bearing in mind that the Earth has frozen over before, and it has been warmer than it is now – Antarctica had rain forests.

Whether or not the global warming trend is man-made or paert of a natural cycler is an argument I won’t get into here. But I do believe the planet will sort itself out and mankind has to be more flexible to nature’s evolution.

We built farms and towns to suit climatic conditions at a particular time, maybe we need to accept that this was always going to be a moveable feast,

The Warmening – now it’s serious!

Forget polar bears, more hurricanes and the melting of the polar ice caps, according to the Herald Sun, beer will be in short supply, more expensive and may taste different as climate change affects barley production, a scientist says.

Mother of God! I’m turning my computer off now.

Today’s weather is not proof that we’re all going to die!

The severe windy conditions in Melbourne has caused plenty of havoc, destruction and sadly at least one death.

Listening to talk back radio and various comments on the news sites I noticed a few people were using today’s conditions, which included dust storms from Victoria’s west, as proof, that the effects of global warming were on show for all to see.

Get a fucking grip people. It’s windy, not Armafuckinggeddon. The strong gusts were caused by a depression rising from the remnants of a tropical cyclone off the West Australian coast, that saw low and pressure system to come together.

It’s called weather you alarmist dip-shits. It’s happened before and it will happen again, regardless of climate change.

Oh I get it, climate change is working class people’s fault.

 

I’m normally a fan of The Age columnist Catherine Deveney, but I was rather peeved by her column this morning that suggested that while inner city folk were doing everything in their power to be good environmental citizens, those who live in the outer suburbs are nothing more than environmental terrorists.

Perhaps my chip in the shoulder is taking what some would construe as jest too seriously, but this is not a new opinion. It also again demonstrates how The Age thinks Melbourne only consists within the tram network.

The paragraphs I mainly took issue with are:

The aspirationals continue to build their McMansions an hour’s drive from where they work and then hop in their fuel-guzzling monster trucks every morning to pay for their five wide-screen televisions, air-conditioning to counteract poor design and petrol to fuel their “lifestyle”, which is basically shopping. Am I the only one who’s a bit happy when the price of petrol goes up? “Good,” I think. “Make those dickheads suffer.”

Because nothing will make them think, or change.

They bleat: “We can’t afford to live closer.” Yes, you can. You just won’t have a double garage, a parents’ retreat, a rumpus room, a home cinema and five bedrooms with en suites.

Let’s disect this typical blinkered, inner-city, bullshit, call-me-Mother fucking Theresa view of the world.

For starters I hate the term McMansion. It’s offensive and patronising in that it implies that a certain class of people not be allowed to live in big homes.  What’as next? Do my kids go to McSchools and thus should be shunned by perspective employers because they don’t have an inner-city school tie – who says Australia doesn’t have a class system?

People live in the outer suburbs because they grew up in the area and feel at home there or because they can’t afford what The Age will tell you are the more desirable suburbs. For Deveney to say someone can sell a $450,000 house in the outer suburbs and buy something closer to work, regardless of size, is an absolute joke and totally blind to the housing crisis.

What this smacks of to me is a reverse envy, where people who bought two-bedroom dog boxes in the inner suburbs with a view to upgrade find they can’t afford to go anywhere else and are stuck in their little shit holes with a changed set of life priorities brought on by having a family.

Meanwhile their friends, who couldn’t afford to live in the cafe belt, managed to get over the whole bullshit “location-location” con and live like kings in a house where the dust doesn’t predate Federation. 

Do they feel guilty? Like fuck they do!