Jara

Pell should be in jail.

I had a bit to do with him when he was working at the CLCl in the eighties. Couldn't quite say why, but I still think of him as one of the most impressive individuals I've ever met.  (I knew about the footy as well - played with some of my cousins when he was at Monivae - funny thing - my cousins are basically rough-and-tumble farm boys, but they all said he was pretty extraordinary as a kid - such gravitas (even though I don't think he had the beard then))

Thanks for posting that, Hardtack. Amazing. These creeps... I was raised a Catholic - hate em now. We're going to see them in all their glory during the gay marriage plebiscite. I can see it now,  The usual scene: a bunch of old men who who've worn dresses for their day job telling other people how to live their lives. The gall... The gall... If I had as many skeletons in my closet as they have, I'd be ashamed to open my mouth in public. 

9 hours ago, Wrecker45 said:

I like how all the lefties on here think the royal commission into Union corruption was a witch hunt and a waste of money despite the arrests that have followed but think a 3rd royal commission that Pell has yet to face is justified.

I must be one of the lefties. The Royal Commission into Union corruption was clearly politically motivated. There are as many corrupt bosses and builders as there are union officials but the liberal-appointed judge had no interest in looking at them. (Amazing coincidence - thousands of union officials, but the judge decided he wanted to look at two recent Labor leaders)

as as for the Royal commission into the perverts, it was brought about in response to public demand as the true horror of the problem became more and more obvious.

I don't see what the problem is. No inconsistency, no hypocrisy. Different commissions, different circumstances. One is aimed at supporting the bosses and the wealthy, the other is aimed at supporting victims of abuse and ensuring that it doesn't happen again.

cheers.

Hey Wrecker

re your response about the link between fossil fuel companies and the denialists. The NY times state quite clearly that Soon was heavily subsidised by fossil fuel companies. Why would they do this? As you said, they invest in alternative energy themselves.

I'm just speculating, of course, but I can see a pretty clear reason why they would want to fund the denialists. It's because they've got control of the current system, they are making zillions out of it. As the world switches to alternative energy, they will become just one more player. At present, for example, I gather that most solar cells, etc, are manufactured in China. The big oil companies have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and dragging out the change to renewables for as long as they can - bugger the consequences.

17 hours ago, ProDee said:

You're so desperate to believe you ignore science.

No, just prefer science that isn't funded by vested interests. That's not science, it's propaganda and corruption. 

Do do you believe science funded by the tobacco industry? I suppose if I was some poor sod who was hooked on smokes and desperate to be reassured that the risks were minimal, I might allow myself to be deluded.

Couldn't help but notice the comment, a quote, from the NY Times, that the paper was written by some bloke who'd received  $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry and failed to disclose that fact in his publications.

very objective.

Pro,

sure, climate has always changed. Over the past thirty million years, our continent has been gradually rafting towards the equator and is getting warmer. This is why the eucalypt replaced the rainforest. 

But the trouble is in the timing. It is now heating up so quickly that we won't have time to adapt. Look how many of the hottest days have occurred in the past fifteen years. This, combined with the fact that we have built up a society which is totally dependant upon a steady climate and fossil fuel, presents an existential threat to us. To my children. 

There re is so much evidence of this, if you could only look at it with unblinkered eyes. Just one thing I've looked at in the past few days is an episode of Catalyst - currently available on ABC Iview - on the greater frequency and potency of mega fires. It lays the facts out so clearly.  I don't know where you live, but I've seen some of these fires up close and personal. They are really scary. 

Pro

if the BOM tells me there's a storm coming I take an umbrella.  

If they tell me it's going to be a Code Red day, I evacuate my family and get ready to jump into a fire truck

they are virtually always right.

if they tell me it's been the hottest year on record, I tend to believe them.  

I suppose if if I were to scrape around every fringe loser or lunatic publication I could find somebody who disagrees with them, but why would I bother? Why would the BOM be lying to me? (I know a couple of scientists working in the area - they're as straight as the day is long)

the loonies, on the other hand, I am naturally more suspicious of. My suspicion, ultimately, is that they are somehow in the pay of those with a vested interest in maintaining our dependence upon fossil fuels ( eg Saudi Arabia) - or else they are so stuck in their ways, or so tight-arsed,  they can't manage the minor changes to our lifestyle needed to combat climate change. Or else they are just right-wing, anti-government Tea-party paranoids.

That Cornwall Alliance thing. Hilarious. I got as far as the bloke - supposedly a scientist - whose main claim to fame was that he was the founder of the journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine (I wonder if he covers stoning adulterers in his journal) 

on closer inspection, his name, appropriately enough, is Payne.

i'd stake my kids lives' on those jerks. Not.

 

From day one it was quite clear that our media was a combination of the following factors ... lazy, incompetent, negligent and hopelessly compromised.

Our media ended up feeding a general public what they wanted to see and hear ... that was the agenda but it was always going to be quite exposed if the players were found guilty and subsequently banned for a decent length of time.

Those thinking that this saga is over need to do a re-think.

I suppose so, Macca, but I find the dreaded Baker and Mackenzie are usually on the ball. I suppose even a hard-hitting investigative reporter would have trouble getting information out of a medical centre (patient confidentiality and all that).

i bloody hope Hunter succeeds in his action. Surely he should have some rights. Having to take legal action to find out what you were injected with.....? Jeez. And his mother is a doctor, I noticed - no wonder the family is concerned. (anyway, I suppose they've always got Bomber's assurance that whatever they took, it could cure cancer) 

Interesting post, as always, Whispering. 

Was as talking to my wife about it. Says one thing she can't understand is why nobody has approached the clinic where the injections were given, even taken legal action against them to uncover the truth. (She is a midwife in a major hospital. Assures me nurses only allowed to give injections under a doctors orders, and detailed records must be kept. )

Hird should consider Bleak House for his summer reading. Especially the bit about the bit about the never-ending court case - Jarndyce v Jarndyce - which destroys everybody involved (except for the lawyers, of course) 

I reckon "The 34" are going to be filthy rich one day - surely they'll take legal action, and succeed - mind you, they'll have to live with the fear of what it's doing to their bodies.

 

They were getting injections before Reid got wind of it so they signed consent forms and hid it all again.

 

BTW that is a [censored] disgrace from the afl and essendon, asking for costs after Hunter asked for docs relating to what he'd been injected with. What a bunch of [censored].

Thanks for posting this, Biggestred. I didn't realize they were doing that. As you say, what a disgrace. He has to sue them to find out what chemicals they've injected into his body. Good on him. That's one of the puzzles for me - why is nobody taking legal action to make that smirking lump of blubber Dank tell them what he pumped into them. Even Essendon aren't - you'd think they'd want to know. Only assumption I can make is that they do know - but their "scientist" was so stupid, he didn't realize it was illegal, so when McKenzie or Baker (sorry forget which half of the Dynamic Duo) pointed it out, they destroyed all records. 

Huh? I'm perfectly aware of the difference between weather and climate.  Weather events are obviously affected by the overall climate. For example, in a time like the present, when we are busily heating up and changing the climate, fires, droughts etc will occur more frequently and with greater severity.

Sorry Prodee - love you as a fellow Demon, but your last post really doesn't make much sense.

even a bunch of lefty ratbags like the BOM reckon - don't have the figures in front of me, but from memory, they say 8 of the hottest years ever recorded have happened since 2002. Is that a coincidence? Black Saturday broke all kinds of records. As did the twelve year drought leading up to it.

planet heating is good for us? My god, man, have you ever fought a bushfire? 

Mary T Mumpter? I believe she was one of the authors of my Grade three Reader. Wrote a story about a rabbit.  Very distinguished in her field.

On on a more serious note, notice how many of them are emeritus? Won't be around to face the consequences of their actions. 

I suspect they're a bit like Keith Windschuttle (sp?) Non-achievers bitter that things have passed them by - so they are happy to find that somebody will listen to them, even if it is only a bunch of fossil-fuel companies and their puppets.

Great to see that distinguished climate scientist Lord Monkton getting a guernsey.

the list is actually a bit short on Aussie climate scientists - some dude from the IPA (and we all know what their agenda is) Bill Kininmoth, who is a retired meteorologist.

bit surprising to me is their rather unscientific certainty that they are right (for example, stating that Sandy was not caused by human factors)  Any decent scientist would say something like "on the evidence available, it is unlikely that...."  Not unlike Black Saturday  - you can't be sure that it was caused by global warming, but equally you can't be sure that it was not  

my basic stance: we need to do something. If the deniers are right, we will at least have reduced the amount of pollution in the atmosphere. If they are wrong, and we do nothing, our children will face a catastrophe

Interesting chat on Radio National program Life Matters with scientist Sir Paul Nurse this morning. Had a few comments on the current topic. Gave some suggestions as to why some people, including scientists, are Climate Change Deniers. Repeated the comment that 95% of climate scientists believe that the climate is warming and that the change is man-made. Then again, what would he know - he's merely President of the Royal Society and a Nobel Prize winner? (He did stress that he was a geneticist, not a climate scientist, but he did have enough faith in his colleagues to be worried)

Quote

 

Hey Prodee - of all those scientists you just quoted, not many of them seem to be climate scientists. 

just been spending some time with my cousin - sheep and wheat farmer in the western district for forty years. Told him some people dispute the fact that things are getting warmer. Said anybody who couldn't see that was welcome to come down and help him with the harvest, which was being destroyed by said climate.

Hey comrades

For those of you who are worried about global warming (or who just want to recapture the youthful vigour of your university days) big protest march this Friday - 5 30 at the State library - try to put a little pressure on the poisoners ahead of Paris

Cheers

So, headed in today to get around to building that Ikea shelving (see above ...). Walked past the Bataclan (just round the corner from where we were going).

Found it impossible to imagine the reality of the horror of it all. Seems unreal, to be standing there on a beautiful Parisian autumn morning, looking at a scene of a massacre. The sign out the front still displays: "Coming: Eagles of Death Metal". Even looking at the laneway down the side, and seeing the second floor window where the woman was hanging by her fingertips until someone managed to pull her in ... like rewatching a dream. Hard to grasp.

What brought it home was this: across the road, is a small park. Completely surrounded now by flowers, candles, dedications, photos, flags, you-name-it, lots of people there standing round silently, laying flowers etc., along with others with little stalls handing out hot drinks and sandwiches, the whole street still lined with TV crews and camera trucks.

And at one point amongst it all - a woman's bike, a run of the mill, thrash around Paris bike, locked to the fence: but covered in flowers. Someone's bike that the owner, for whatever reason, hasn't been able to come back and collect.

They were real people, with real lives, real families, senselessly cut down.

Difficult.

Thanks from me too, Bing. As Dr John said, better than a photograph.

What an awful world we live in. I've got a few Muslim friends here in Melbourne who feel the same way.

No idea what the solution is - other than to keep trying to communicate with each other.

As some know, I live in Paris. Nowhere near where this happened, though I know it well. My wife's office is in the 10th, we were due to go in today and put together some Ikea shelving (don't ask ...). My son has school this morning, even though it's Saturday, but that has been cancelled. Hard to think of what kids must feel growing up amongst these kinds of events.

Around us, it's very very quiet. We live near an RER station, and there's usually a stream of people coming and going, even moreso on a Saturday. Not this morning.

From what I can see, no-one can quite grasp what's gone on. The local press and media are primarily just trying to catch up on events, there's very little analysis or reflection. But you would have to say that it's something of a game-changer, and I suspect that our idea of what a "normal day in Paris" entails is about to change.

Tragic. Hard times.

Bonne chance, mon ami!

Jara - why did you waste your time interviewing fire scientists, meteorologists and environmental historians when I know everything and you could have just asked me

In all seriousness I will be asking father Christmas for your book and look forward to reading it.

Thanks Wrecker - I should have realised Demonland would contain all the expertise I needed. Could have saved myself a lot of trouble.

Hope you enjoy the book.