Let’s start with a little quote from Andrew Bolt circa 2009:
“What I want is for people, it’s the emperor’s new clothes thing. I want people to see that the emperor has new clothes. If Tim Flannery can go on the ABC TV and say, whoops the theory isn’t working, the world is not warming, it’s actually cooling, then even you have to say, gosh, why are we then doing this massive tax that wouldn’t stop global warming even if it’s true and will cost a lot of people their jobs? Why don’t you ask that?”
Ok, that wasn’t the quote I was going to use, but I found it while looking for his piece about how it’s not heat that kills people, it’s cold. I thought the above quote reveals a lot about poor Andrew’s understanding of things. He desperately wants the people to “see that the emperor has NEW clothes”! Which is rather unfortunate, because if you remember the fairy tale, the whole point is that the emperor has NO clothes. Still, I guess Andrew would have been one of the sycophants refusing to admit that he couldn’t see the clothes because the tailors had convinced people that only a fool couldn’t see the material.
But it was the other 2009 quote that I was after. That year, Bolt also told us:
“MORE than 30 Victorians died in last week’s heat in one of the great scandals of green politics.
About 20 more people died in South Australia, but neither state government is telling yet how precisely the victims died, saying they are awaiting coroners’ reports.
But already warming extremists such as Prof Clive Hamilton are excusing these same governments—which almost certainly contributed to at least some of these deaths.
“Australians are already dying from climate change,” shouted this professor of public ethics at the Australian National University, and author of Scorcher.
But Hamilton is utterly wrong in portraying global warming as the killer.
Fact: Cold, not heat, is what really kills people, as we see now in Britain.
Fact: A warming world would save countless lives, not cost them.”
Rather poor timing, because he happened to write this the day before Black Saturday. I was reminded of Bolt’s assertion that heat was, in fact, much better for us than cold after Tony’s recent long rambling speech. While he did say that Australia had “ten years of disappointing governments”, I trust that he wasn’t including his in that, because I, for one, found nothing “disappointing” about it. It was simply as incompetently incapable of doing anything, as I expected it to be. When Tony told us that a bit of warming was good for us, at least he didn’t say it the day before a major Australian bushfire… Although, California does have a bit of a problem at the moment.
Right, two points to make before anyone else makes them. No single weather event is evidence of climate change so it’d be wrong to talk about the heatwave 0f 2009 in terms of climate, and the climate change sceptics who tell us after every disaster that this shouldn’t be blamed on climate change do have a point. It’s just a bad look to say that heat doesn’t kill people the day before a major bushfire does just that. Secondly, like many climate change deniers who ask where the global warming is when it’s a cold day, Abbott does presume that global warming will make it warmer everywhere. What it will do – if the hypothesis is correct – is alter the climate, which may lead to greater extremes.
Of course, Bolt interpreted criticisms of Abbott’s lecture on God, country and human sacrifice as further evidence of the shutting down of free speech and the refusal to engage in debate. Debate, of course, meaning that people should be free to say anything with which he agrees without the burden of anybody challenging them in any way. You know the way this works: Any outrage expressed by the left is dismissed as the politically correct brigade trying to impose their will on us all. Of course, it’s quite ok to be outraged by union thuggery, teachers telling kids that people have different sexual orientations and refusing to sing carols just because it’s eight months till Christmas, people on welfare missing appointments, halal certification or bakers being forced to do something contrary to their religious principles such as baking a cake. Then, outrage is ok and, indeed, in the case of the baker we need some form of legislation to ensure that they’ll only be required to make cakes for people whose belief system equates with their own. Mm, I wonder how One Notion will deal with the contradiction of trying to eliminate halal certification while ensuring the religious freedom of cake-makers.
In his musings on the confusing nature of reality, Abbott did make the worthwhile point that because of Australia’s abundant supplies of coal, gas and uranium that we should have much lower power prices. However, he puts the blame squarely on “green ideology” rather than the idea that it may have something to do with the fact that our gas is sold more cheaply overseas than here in Australia.
Ok, brief history lesson…
Mm, I wonder how many of you studied the Irish potato famine in school. I know that I didn’t. And it’s not like I didn’t do history. I did British History in Year 11, as well as Modern History. But I don’t remember any mention of the Irish potato famine. Maybe it wasn’t that interesting and I forgot about it… Although I do remember learning about the Corn Laws and they were surely a whole lot less interesting, even if they did have something to do with millions of Irish people starving. I suspect it’s more likely that it has something to do with history being written by the victors. The potato famine isn’t really one of England’s finest moments.
Now some of you are probably thinking what’s the failure of a potato crop in Ireland got to do with poor old England. But I suspect many of you do know that, even as people were starving to death, potatoes were still being exported by the absentee English landlords. Nearly a million people died from starvation. Yet, potato exports continued.
Why were exports continuing when the population was starving? Well, you see, many of the farmers were tenants. They didn’t own the land. And, if you don’t own things, then you’ve no right to eat. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Like, we don’t own our gas.
Or do we?
Whatever, the people who own it get to sell it overseas for less than we’re paying here because that’s how capitalism works.
Wait a sec.
No, that’s not how it’s meant to work. I must have missed something.
Anyway, I’m growing potatoes in my backyard. I hope that nobody wants to frack there.
