Jara

Dieter I take your point - I did a bit more reading - (must be 20 years since I read Goldhagen) I don't know about his book being "totally wrong" - controversial is the best I'd say about it. Grapeviney made some good points. Again, many years since I read it, and I don't remember the name or author, but a book about secret recordings made of German senior officers in a POW camp remains the most chilling thing I've ever read about the casual attitude of so many Germans to the slaughter of innocents. I should mention that my own views on German complicity weren't based solely upon one or two books. My father in law was an artist who fled Germany in the 1930s, driven by his horror at the rise of Fascism and Anti-Semitism and who remained very cynical about the country of his birth. I don't believe he was surprised by the Holocaust - he did say to me once, something along the lines of "It takes a lot of criminals to murder six million people".

Daisy - hmmm - I'm just shooting from the hip here - haven't really thought this through - but I'd have thought there's some truth in the claim that the holocaust was inspired by Christianity. Jews had been persecuted by Christians for hundreds of years. Luther was a famous anti-semite, was he not? What was the Jew's 'crime'? That they practised a religion other than Christianity. Surely dogmatic Christianity was laying the groundwork for the persecution of the Jews for hundreds of years, a process which reached its apotheosis in the 1940s? Of course I realise that there were decent people of every religion who were humane towards the persecuted, often at the cost of their own lives - Bonhoeffer, for example - but overall, the Church (like Dieter's Wermacht chaplains) did virtually nothing to halt the Holocaust. I remember reading a very convincing book - years ago - I think the author's name was Goldhagen - who demonstrated that the overall German population, and its institutions, including the Church, were complicit in the genocide. I was shocked by his accounts of the massacres in Poland and the Ukraine - carried out not just by SS, but often by regular soldiers. Maybe the perpetrators weren't doing it "in the name of" Christianity, but I suspect in some ways they were inspired by it - if nothing else, their religion taught them that those who followed other faiths were damned, inferior, cast into darkness - something which must have made killing them a lot easier.

Nut, maybe not, but the attack on Iraq is different - most Muslims I know were outraged by it (as was I) - the radicals (not that I know any of those, I'm just going by what I read) seem to see it as yet another attack by "The Crusaders" ie even if we don't see an event as committed in the name of Christianity, it's seen as that way by many on the receiving end of the bombs

Right on, Dieter. That Pro, he's a riot, isn't he? He's like the little squirt prancing around the schoolyard, ripping off his shirt, clenching his fists and saying: "Come on, ya lefty scum, I'll take you on!" Then you say something he can't handle and - zip! - he's got you on ignore.

Careful, Grape. When old Pro starts telling you you're his favourite lefty, you're on a slippery slope.He's contagious. Before you know it, you'll be a twisted and bitter old man hissing and spitting and punching your computer.

Not knowing what he's talking about is no impediment to old Pro.

Hey Pro, I'd debate you on a lot of things but evidently you don't feel up to it, because you have me on ignore.

Hate to say it Pro, but you really need to get out of the house more.

Aaagh! I surrender. Enough is enough. Pro, you're a genius - the Cut and Paste King. Climate change is an illusion, nothing to do with us humans, you can pump squillions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and it will have no effect. I'll agree with whatever you want - I'd been wondering whether solar UV (200-320 nm) decadal variability drove appreciable temperature changes in mesosphere and upper stratosphere largely through absorption of UV by ozone, and now I know -- .- just - pleeeeze - gimme a break from those interminable, incomprehensible articles. All I ever wanted to know is why is it so bloody hot!

Thanks Pro. Breaking news: the sun affects the climate. Who'd have thought....

Here's another one for you Pro http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/melbourne-to-set-two-weather-records-for-hot-spring-days/news-story/2285f48c7e838a9f8e97fa20a8a65035 All fake news, of course. Nothing to worry about. Herald Sun and the BOM - all in on the Commie conspiracy. Hottest spring days on record? Just a coincidence. Nothing to do with global warming.

But Pro - you miss my point (maybe I didn't make it clear enough). You're forever banging on about how Global Warming is some sort of lefty conspiracy, that humans have got nothing to do with it, that it's a myth. Then you go and post an article suggesting that it's real. If the latter is true, then why are you at least not open to doubt, why are you so fixed in your belief that it's (to quote your beloved leader) "crap." Why do you spend your life cherry-picking, cruising the net looking for for evidence that it's a myth and posting it here? (I could just as easily cherry-pick articles to the contrary, but what's the point? Better things to do than preach to the four or five readers of this thread who are all pretty fixed in their attitudes anyway.)

Spent ten minutes reading one of those interminable posts old Pro bombards us with. My reaction: huh? I don't get where he's coming from. Pro is always rabbiting on about how human activity doesn't affect climate, it's all a commie conspiracy, whatever... But the article clearly suggests that climate is affected by a combination of solar, geophysical (i.e. volcanic) and human activity. Don't imagine we can do much about one and two, but number three is exactly what the more enlightened members of this thread have been saying all along: that climate is being influenced by human activity. Is Pro secretly one of us?

Sorry, of course I meant the hottest 'since records were kept' (although - again, I'm just shooting from the hip - but it may well have been the hottest ever, since, one of the scientists told me, the continent has been gradually heating for at least 80,000 years, as it drifts towards the equator - i.e. the deserts used to be forests. Maybe Jackaub, with his 'earth sciences background;, might be able to enlighten us). I don't have the science to respond to your last comment - although I suspect the highly-credentialled scientific advisors to the governments that signed the Paris Climate Agreement might.

Thanks Wrecker - the thing is, as I said to you before (I was only stirring up Pro in asking him to respond) - I spent a fair bit of time with scientists after Black Saturday, and their general opinion was the human intervention was warming up the planet. It could all be a coincidence, of course - I'm not stupid enough to sound as certain as Pro is - but it's a hell of a coincidence. The worst drought ever produces the hottest temperature ever which produces the worst fire ever.

Aw but but.....Pro...you should have hung in there. You could do with a little more fun in your life. Fair enough. I can't claim to know much about other schools. As long as your wife wasn't teaching at Scotch or Melbourne Grammar, I'm sorry they didn't get what they wanted. I seem to recall it was all done in a rush - part of a financial stimulus to help us avoid the GFC - successfully, I seem to recall, though God knows who was responsible for that - Labor reckons they were, Libs reckon Costello. But, as I said, both my daughters' schools received great facilities which are used by the entire community.

Pro - the money spent on school halls wasn't wasted. Both my kids went to scungy public high schools with terrible facilities (because our governments keep giving money to posh schools to build Olympic pools and rowing sheds) - both got wonderful new sporting venues which have been a real boon to our local community. Agree with you on the NBN. Bloody Turnbull.

Oh and I'm also still waiting for Jackaub (or whatever his name was - sorry) to tell us what he means by an "earth sciences background". I've got an earth sciences background myself - the earth sciences department of Melbourne Uni was directly behind the cafe where I used to sit and study for my degree in classics.

Pro, I'm still waiting for you to answer my question about Black Saturday. (maybe you've got me on 'Ignore' - fair enough - I'd ignore myself if it was possible)

Hey Pro - you've posted about a million gigs of data here, most of which is too complicated for a simple country boy like me. But I'm still waiting for a reply to the question I asked you a couple of days ago: How do you explain Black Saturday? Just a coincidence? Lefty conspiracy?

Great day. 61% of our fellow countrymen and women put human happiness above bigotry.

Gotta love that Breitbart. All very objective, scientific. Nothing to do with funding the climate deniers receive from energy companies, Saudi Arabia, etc... Like Earl says, just look at what's happening. ProDee, how do you explain Black Saturday (preferably without misleading graphs from Breitbart)?

Well, if the purpose of life is to learn something new every day, I've just learned a few days worth. Thanks, that was an interesting read. I've even read the book by Gould, but I didn't remember that. Most amazing bit - that the main period in which people believed in a flat earth was in the 19th Century - in response to Darwin. What I don't get is why Copernicus was afraid to publish - if everybody already knew the earth was round, was it such a giant step to say it revolved around the sun? And yet the Church seems to have burnt people at the stake for saying so. I don't get it. Anyway, quite interesting. We'd probably all achieve more if we sat around arguing about Medieval cosmology instead of Global Warming.

Yes, I know that Copernicus proposed that the earth revolved around the sun, but I'm still not sure why you're saying Dieter's wrong. Aren't the earth revolving around the sun and its being round kind of inter-related - i.e. in demonstrating that the earth revolved around the sun, wasn't he showing that it was round? Sure, sailors etc knew that ships sank over the horizon, but the official position was that the sun revolved around the earth. That's why Copernicus was reluctant to publish. I can't speak for him, but think that's all Dieter's trying to say - that before Copernicus, the authorities could rely upon faith. After him, thinking people had to rely upon observation.

With all due respect, Daisy (and I'm just shooting from the hip here, can't be bothered looking up the details) but I think Dieter's correct. At the time Copernicus proposed his theory, the vast majority of the "scientific" community would have agreed with the Church. I know Greek philosophers had proposed that the earth was round, but those ideas had largely disappeared in the intervening 2000 years. Copernicus's views were so revolutionary that, like Darwin, he was reluctant to publish them for many years.