Last night I noticed that Trump was speculating – not claiming, mind you, just wondering out loud – that he was the victim of a conspiracy with his microphone to make him look bad. I have to say that I wholeheartedly agree. The people televising the debate allowed his mike to be switched on, enabling people to hear what he had to say. If they’d just left it off, he would have sounded a lot more presidential. Clearly an attempt to make sound as silly as he looks…
Of course, I thought that the Trump’s microphone theory was going to be the most ridiculous thing all week, until I heard Josh Frydenburg on the radio this morning. This’ll be great for a satiric piece, I thought. But no, when I sat down to write, it was just impossible.
I mean, how does one satirise a minister who starts by agreeing that it was the collapse of transmission towers in the worst storm in fifty years that caused the widespread blackout and nothing to do with windfarms, but then goes on to tell us that this should be a warning about their reliance on renewable energy for South Australia. How do you make that more ridiculous than it is?
Well, actually young Josh had a pretty good go at it, because after criticising Labor and Nick Xenophon, he then went on to say that this is not the time for partisan politics and we should all be working to make sure this doesn’t happen again. And Malcolm followed this up by not playing politics telling us:
“Let’s focus now and take this storm in South Australia … as a real wake-up call, let’s end the ideology, focus on clear renewable target. The federal government has one as you know, 23.5% is our target.”
You don’t get much more non-partisan than that. Unless it’s Barnaby Joyce telling us that South Australia would have been just fine if they’d had a few coal-fired power stations because such things keep the gods happy and ensure that the weather is mild and that our crops don’t fail…
Of course, those “climate alarmists” may see an extreme weather event as further evidence for climate change, but they overlook some basic tenets of how the Liberal Party views such things:
1. A single extreme weather event is just that, and to draw conclusions about climate change from that is just not valid because one event is too insignificant to be considered evidence.
2. In spite of that, one can still ask on a cold morning: “Where’s that global warming, eh?”
3. A second extreme weather event is still not evidence because, in spite of popular belief, lightning can strike twice and it’s just coincidence that we had a similar “once in a lifetime” recently, so don’t jump to any conclusions.
4. A third similar extreme weather event just shows that this sort of thing is normal and, here in Australia, it happens all the time, so don’t get your knickers in knot and bring up climate change.
Yep, people see things the way they want to see them and to suggest that events in South Australia are further evidence that we should be doing more to encourage renewables, well, that’s just “ideologically driven”, according to our fear/less leader, Mr Turnbull. (And may I say that I think the “fear” and the “less” apply in equal parts to Malcolm.) On the other hand, in the midst of all this chaos to go out spruiking the benefits of brown coal – as Mr Joyce and company did – is neither political nor premature.
I’m reminded of something I read recently about “cognitive dissonance”.
As Franz Fanon put it:
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are
presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new
evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is
extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it
is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize,
ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”
Personally, I think that there’s definitely no such thing as “cognitive dissonance”! Haven’t we always had uncomfortable feelings and they’re perfectly natural, so the most recent ones are just part of a conspiracy by the UN to impose world government. Besides, there’s been a fifteen years pause in so called “cognitive dissonance”, thanks to Andrew Bolt, John Howard and Tony Abbott…
As Malcolm Roberts explained on Q and A, I refuse to believe something until I’m presented with empirical evidence that agrees with the position I already hold. Anything else is just inaccurate or falsified.
