IT’S been a frantic few weeks, so just time to share some recent links of mine.
First up, I had a look at the phenomenon of the “conservative white male” effect which is a bit like the greenhouse gas effect, in that seemingly the more of it you release, the worse things get. This could lead to some serious negative thinking, and even be the start of a bout of anxiety. Should this be the case, and you find yourself struggling to cope with every day, you may wish to look to a natural product from somewhere like Bluebird Botanicals to help you see things a little clearer and focus your thoughts on what matters in your life.
I also took a look at the new climate sceptic group the Galileo Movement, and their various links to conservative white males like Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt and pretty much every climate denier that’s ever stalked the corridors of a free market think-tank. Oh, and they share a PR firm with the Church of Scientology and The Exclusive Brethren.
On the Brisbane Times and across the rest of the Fairfax network, I previewed a court case about to close in Queensland which is hearing a challenge against a huge coal mine development by Xstrata. Over the mine’s lifetime, the coal burned will see about 1.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases added to the planet’s atmosphere. If you’re following Australia’s carbon tax debate, then this cancels out the Government’s five per cent cut about seven times over.
Also on the Brisbane Times, a look at a report from The Climate Institute into the mental health issues related to extreme weather events like floods, droughts, bushfires and cyclones. If you take your climate science from climate scientists, then you’ll know that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere increase the chances of events such as these happening more often (or in the case of cyclones, there could be less of them, but the ones we do get will probably be bigger and meaner).
Oh, and one of my chickens laid that egg. Disappointingly, there was no dinosaur inside.
I shall comment in a number of parts.
First, the CWM’s. I think it is fair to say that the climate deniers tend to be a particular subset of the CWMs – those who have a significant commitment to a carbon based lifestyle. As Al Gore noted, the truth about climate change is extremely inconvenient to those of us who consume vast quantities of (fossil fuel derived) energy. Thus it is no surprise that the Galileo Movement had its origins among the self funded and self satisfied retirees of Noosa.
It is a far greater thing to have give up the Land Rover and the Merc, the twin engined cruising yacht and the fully air-conditioned McMansion on the marina than it is to toss in the clapped out Toyota and catch a bus back to the flat in the boondocks.
The CWMs also seem to be further advanced in their loss of mental faculties than the rest of the ‘mature’ population.
I read with some amusement the comments of the proudly self-identifying CWMs whose grasp of elementary mathematics is about as poor as their understanding of the facts of atmospheric physics. These zombie arguments about CO2 being at one and the same time, both an ‘essential part of the atmosphere’ and ‘so trivial as not to matter at all’ are just too tragically stupid to subject to anything more than general derision. Suffice it to say that what they lack in understanding they more than make up for in belligerence.
What they don’t seem to realize is that you can’t make global warming go away by shouting abuse at it.