The Dog’s Bollocks

Truth is like a dog’s bollocks – pretty obvious if you care to look.

Pre-emptive Al Gore is Fat Blog Strike

Al Gore will be visiting Melbourne next month to address Safe Climate Australia on his plan to switch the US economy to clean energy in 10 years. Expect a flurry of outraged indignation from the usual suspects claiming that there is no such thing as human-produced-CO2-induced climate change because Al Gore is fat and a hypocrite for flying here in a jumbo jet to speak to rent-seeking totalitarian greens who want to destroy civilisation and eat your babies. What to speak of the fact that Safe Climate Australia will be charging exorbitant admission prices so only elitists can attend.

You heard it here first.

Filed under: Blogging, Environment, Wingnuttery, ,

Scientists claim proof humans to blame for polar warming

Oh dear!. Yet IPA’s corporate environmental spokesperson Jennifer Marohasy continues to live a world where Arctic ice may actually be increasing, and hey, Britain has had some unseasonably cold weather so clearly global warming is just a leftist tax-eating conspiracy design to deprive corporations of their well-earned profits accrued purely in the service of the progress of mankind.

Scientists say they have been able to prove for the first time that human activity is contributing to the warming of both the Arctic and Antarctic.

Scientists claim proof humans to blame for polar warming – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Filed under: Environment, Wingnuttery, , ,

Bolt explained

Changa’s Boots, at the new Possum Box offers insight into why Andrew Bolt and his ilk do what they do:

[The Right]…“know that by playing to their base in very well-crafted ways, they can shift the very definition of what the middle is. By introducing radicalism into the public discourse (and taking initial heat for it), whatever used to be radical within this context becomes moderate by comparison.”

Australian attack bloggers and the Overton Window « The Possum Box

And here I was wondering whether an otherwise intelligent, educated person (I’m giving Bolt the benefit of doubt), pouring out a relentless excrescence of dishonest and disingenuous drivel for the purpose of cultivating ignorance, prejudice, intolerance and misinformation could have some qualms about his fundamental lack of moral, intellectual and ethical integrity.

Oh wait…

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Filed under: Big Picture, Blogging, Howardians, Ideology, Media, Pseudoscience, Wingnuttery, , ,

The IPA and other fossil fuel fossils

skeptics.jpgJennifer Marohasey, environmental fellow for Liberal Party think tank the Institute of Public Affairs, has been ringing in the New Year with her list of climate change sceptics – the “400 dissenting scientists”. “If 2007 was the Year of Al Gore, with his movie, Academy Award and Nobel Prize, 2008 just might be the year the so-called scientific consensus that man is causing the Earth to warm begins to crack.”

Marohasey has small coterie of loyal fans on her website eager to battle with any who dissent from her campaign to prove that global warming is not caused by human activity and to argue that climate change is a plot by leftist academics and others keen to milk the tax payer’s purse to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an evil attempt to destroy our entire way of life and the future well-being of our grand children’s grand children. Long time contributor Luke, Jennifer’s token greenie who owns an ecotourism property in the Daintree, appears to have departed with a scathing assessment of Marohasey’s blog site.

It strikes me as incredulous that Marohasey could have a PhD, conducted field research for more than a decade and yet is now happy to push a denialist agenda in the employ of the IPA. I guess it pays better than field biology.

The IPA receives support from corporations and corporate interest groups (including Gunns Limited, Monsanto and tobacco, mining and oil companies) and provides regular op-ed fodder for the MSM pushing the Liberal Party line. As the Liberal Party struggles to establish what it stands for I’d argue that the IPA also needs to look at what it believes in. Corporate Australia wants action on climate change, if for no other reason than needing to stay competitive in a changing global political economy. Yet the IPA is still pushing the denialist agenda, as if they can somehow reverse overwhelming global political sentiment. They would server their masters better, and advance the quality of public debate, by turning its attention to how Australian businesses and corporations might best respond the forthcoming carbon emission limitation mechanisms.

Regardless of the dissenting opinions of climate sceptics there is no sound scientific argument for continuing increasing global CO2 emissions at an exponential rate into a closed system. Sceptics are simply motivated by the desire to avoid the financial inconvenience that curbing CO2 emissions might entail. If, as the sceptics would argue, the science is far from clear, then the precautionary principle should apply. Curbing CO2 emissions is sensible and prudent precisely because we don’t exactly what the long term ramifications might be. In the meantime, it will encourage more efficient and sustainable energy usage and consumption which will have real long-term benefits for our grand-children’s grand-children.

Filed under: Big Picture, Environment, Media, Politics, Science, Technology, Wingnuttery

Howard steals indigenous assets

Crikey’s Darwin insider Henri Ivrey writes about Howard & Brough’s latest indigenous policy abomination – a plan to seize all community assets valued in excess of $400k and rent them back to their communities, regardless of how well-run and effective they are. They are enacting their final solution for Australian Aborgines by stealing their land, undermining their fragile communities, and offering only mainstream assimilation in return. Are there no limits to the bastardry and ineffectual policy making of this morally bereft parcel of rogues? Apparently not. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Ass Hattery, Ideology, Indigenous, Politics, Wingnuttery

Extreme weather silences wingnuts?

BritainA breath of Spring-like weather blowing across Victoria today turned my thoughts to climate change and denialists. When the cold weather hit Eastern Australia back in June with drought-breaking rain and freezing winds, wingnuts were falling over themselves to pronounce that this was the clinching evidence that global warming and climate change were merely figments of tax-eating lefty conspiricist imaginations and loathing. Yet the usual suspects are strangely silent of late in blogging about the many extreme weather events happening around the planet.

Devastating floods in Britain, Texas, Indonesia, China, and La Niña threatening to cause more extreme weather in the form of monsoons in Asia and Atlantic hurricanes (the kind that flattened New Orleans), are strangely absent from the tabloid daily news commentary emanating from wingnut blogs. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Environment, Media, Wingnuttery

The Dog’s Bollocks

What they say

The Dog's Bollocks: "Bollocks" is one of my favourite words, and this is now one of my favourite blogs and I've only been reading it for five minutes. – John Surname

This is the person who tried to analyse Hayek. This is actually a person who needs a shrink. – JC

Shut up slim. You’re an idiot.
Just you stay honest and keep that thinking cap on. – GMB

Insightful perspectives on politics and discussion of matters epistemological? I’m sold! - Bruce

Add to Technorati Favorites

Flickr Photos

Scan-130524-0020c

Scan-130524-0020b

Scan-130524-0020a

More Photos
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.