Scottie And The Miracle Of The Simultaneous!
One of the things about climate change deniers that’s always amazed me is their capacity to hold two contradictory positions simultaneously. You know the sort of thing I mean. After asserting for several minutes that the climate isn’t changing, that they can suddenly point to a cherry-picked set of figures and argue that not only is it getting cooler, but that climate has always changed and therefore it’s got nothing to do with mankind.
By itself, that would be contradictory enough, but then they will often move on and question the qualifications of someone like David Suzuki, Tim Flannery or Greta Thunberg because they’re “not experts” and have no “qualifications”. They know this because Alan and Andrew have told them. And what do you mean, they’re not experts either. Everyone has a right to an opinion and you are stifling my freedom of speech exactly like my teacher did when they said that I couldn’t call the other students certain names. It’s only because my teachers insisted that there was only one right answer that meant that I failed all my exams and why shouldn’t I be allowed to question whether A squared plus B squared really does equal C squared by writing any number I chose in the answer?
Now, you can expend a lot of hot air arguing with them, but that probably just helps contribute to the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so the best thing to do is quietly walk away… unless you can convince them that putting an “X” beside all the candidates they don’t like in the next election is a perfectly valid way to vote.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the miracle of the simultaneous lately as I read the comments on social media. Apparently we’ve always had bushfires so this is nothing out of the ordinary. At the same time, these fires are unprecedented and caused by what Prue MacSween called “greenie infiltrators” on councils who have someone prevented fuel reduction burning. Some people even go further and suggest that these are being started by arsonists belonging to Extension Rebellion in order to convince us about the need for climate change. Which, of course, brings up the further contradiction that these protestors were meant to be “inner-city types” who never venture outside their trendy cafes and are too lazy to do any proper work. But if we’ve always had fires, how is it suddenly only because of arsonists or the lack of fuel reduction burning.
Say what you like about Scott Morrison, the man is always thinking ahead as to how to turn a situation to his advantage. He’s gone to see John Howard, so I’m expecting them to trot old Johnny out so that he can do the empathy thing and Scott can stand around behind him hoping that his smirk seems like a smile of approval. That should free him from any more criticism about forced handshakes. Howard was occasionally good at the consoling thing and, if the sight of boats arriving with people from fires zones doesn’t make him slip up and instinctively say something like, “Children overboard!” then that should take the pressure of Morrison to look like he actually cares.
This will free up Morrison to do what he does best and make more Liberal Party ads. He’s just made one about the deployment of troops to help with the bushfires…
We know it’s a Liberal Pary ad and not a government announcement because it says “Authorised by S,Morrison, Liberal Party” at the end, and not “Australian Government”. This ad has attracted a lot of criticism because some didn’t think that up-beat elevator music was the best backdrop. It’s attracted criticism from others because it seems to suggest that the only thing that matters to the government is its own image. The second criticism is unfair because people keep asking for truth in advertising so they shouldn’t complain when they get it.
So what will the next one be about?
Well, he did tell us that the most frequently raised issue with him by communities was lightening fuel loads…
Now, I’m not suggesting that this wouldn’t be an issue to some people. However, I do wonder that there weren’t many other issues that people would have been more likely to raise. For example, the funding of aircraft to fight the fires, the slowness in getting support to some of the victims, climate change, what’s happening about all the people who have lost their houses, his trip to Hawaii… the list goes on. Let’s take our PM at his word, and presume that this is the number one issue. Which is lucky for Scottie because, as he told us, these issues are overseen entirely by state and local governments, so nothing to do with him.
In spite of this being a state responsibility, it now needs a nationally coordinated approach. Scottie already has the answer: more land-clearing and controlled burn-offs.
I must say that I am pleased to see the word “controlled” in there. Various people have been complaining that there were all these restrictions that stopped people doing burn-offs on their property. While I’m sure nobody meant something like days of “Total Fire-ban”, the idea that anyone can just decide to burn at any time doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
However, I suspect it’s the “more land-clearing” that we’re going to see in the next ad from Scottie from Marketing and we’ll see something like:
“These National Parks are a national asset and a national liability.”
SHOT OF FIRES BURNING THEM.
“Let’s liquefy the asset before fire takes it.”
SHOTS OF LOGGERS.
“There’ll always be those who seek to wreck”
SHOTS OF PROTESTORS
“But let’s build our future together.”
SHOTS OF ANZACS SUPERIMPOSED OVER AN AUSTRALIAN FLAG.
Yes, you heard it here first. Ah, the Coalition Government… Satire one day; Policy the next!
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Return to home pageAhh Rossleigh, another gem!! It seems appropriate to use a kindergarten reading primer to sell the message to the unthinking masses but I am surprised that you blame the Liarbral Nasty People misgovernment with being capable of “policy the next”.
I guess the only thing saving Scummo from speculation in Canberra political circles about the Ides of February is that his Liarbral colleagues are on “Ministerial study tours overseas at taxpayer expense” and out of immediate contact with Duddo and the Fascist faction.
How could you have missed the Sydney Furphy about “these fires were deliberately started so that the NSW government Very Fast Train Project would have cleared railway easements”. THIS FURPHY IS ABSOLUTE RUBBISH BECAUSE THE BURNT PARTS OF NORTHERN NSW ARE MAINLY NEAR VERTICAL WET SCLEROPHYLL FOREST WITH EAST WEST RIDGES DISCOURAGING RAILWAY DEVELOPMENTS.
How steep? A friend drove me down one power line easement with my feet on the dashboard of the Land Cruiser and no sight of the bonnet in front!!
Beauty rossleigh, a wee bit of licence here and there but we all have friends and rellies that fit the bill.
I also suggest an X next to labor and ….. because one x is probably judged valid by indicating last position.
The flag is very important in showing you are sincerely an Australian and want to reclaim our Australia back from where ever it has been taken by those politically correct lefties.
To suggest that the lnp have presided over the americanisation of Australia so that we might as well cut out the Union Jack, especially as ‘union’ is a dirty word in England, a insert the Stars and Stripes (try and write that without capitals), gets some cautious agreement against the horror of just cutting out the jack.
Has the NSW government just announced it is privatising state forests? If so, expect land clearing dressed up as hazard reduction.
Brilliant, angry and evidence based
Wish this was pasted on walls as in dictatorships ie a samizdat series of walls
Climate change denial is an interesting phenomenon and appears to completely reject what we used to call the precautionary principle : put simply, adopting precautionary measures when scientific evidence about an environmental or human health hazard is inconclusive or uncertain and the costs of doing nothing are outweighed by the potential risks at hand.
Usually human experience should dictate that where there is an unquantifiable risk with uncertain consequences, that we proceed with caution but this approach is anathema to those who insist that climate change is a ‘cult’.
Internationally, these ‘cultists’ in the form of scientists from every major science academy in the world have contradicted Abbott. It seems that Abbott’s anti-science views on climate change whilst well known in Australia are not well known in international circles and would normally not get any oxygen but for the fact that he makes himself available for these interviews, as a former prime minister, posing as an informed source which of course he isn’t.
But, the Murdoch media empire then add fuel to comments by the likes of Abbott and every commentator within the Murdoch compound – with the noted exception of Peter Van Onselen – jump on the band wagon and the screeching from Bolt, Kenny, Murray etc on Sky is deafening. Not only will they not adopt a precautionary approach and listen to the science, they want to shut down all talk of climate change and ridicule those who bring balanced arguments to their attention. To suggest that Murdoch is not driving this personally is hard to believe and yet :
In 2020 I think we need to actively put these people under greater scrutiny and question their motivations. I believe that the ABC can play a role in this by drawing some of these vocal deniers out of their echo-chambers to participate in open balanced discussion on programs such as Q&A and Insiders and other such forums where their motives and their beliefs can be probed and exposed.
In other words, we have to stop this being a Right v Left issue as it is in the USA and bring it back to the centre : several western economies have done so successfully including the UK and the European Community and there is no longer the rancour that we have, they just get on with the job of saving the planet.
The most depressing thing for me out of all this is 51% of Australians gave us this man & if there was an election next weekend they would probably deliver him to us again.Go figure??
Why is climate change a political issue?
Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2019 is “Existential” as in “Climate change is an existential issue” – although it’s probably more relevant to call it an “existential threat”.
And the wonderful Simon Benson in the OZ is wondering why an astute political operator such as Scott Morrison has become so tone deaf. I don’t know what they are smoking over there but would certainly like some.
According to my local news limited rag (Toowoomba Chronicle), of today, 06/01/20, the southern fire disaster doesn’t even rate a mention until page 15. Nothing to worry about apparently.
NEC, it’s time for reality check and well past time to wake up.
Look at Agenda21/30 Plan:
Pack & stack them (us) in compact cities encircled by an electronic force field via 5G surveillance/attack capability.
The plan is well-advanced in the USA and looks complete in China.
Australia is a late bloomer. Burning hippies and bush-dwellers out of rural areas is not even a hiccup in the scheme of things for the global masters. One or number of billionaires with access satellites and high tech can wreck the joint and no-one is any the wiser.
Meanwhile most are screaming ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’, as if that is the only game in town.
Do you really think the fires would exclusively follow a rail corridor, that’s a bit too obvious even for such criminals.
How to counter weaponization of space by private individuals? I have no idea.
Here’s one idea however to address drought:
Govt sets aside some monies to send a delegation of State Fire Chiefs & Bureau of Met officials to the 22nd Conference on Planned and Inadvertent Weather Modification in Boston US 2020.
https://annual.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/2020/programs/conferences-and-symposia/22nd-conference-on-planned-and-inadvertent-weather-modification/
What harm would it cause to check up on the possibility of modifying the weather in order to restore a more normal rainfall pattern?
I am sick to death of crazy rubbish conspiracy theories that distract from reality.
Agenda 21 is a just a non-binding plan for sustainable development focusing on the following broad areas:
Section I: Social and Economic Dimensions is directed toward combating poverty, especially in developing countries, changing consumption patterns, promoting health, achieving a more sustainable population, and sustainable settlement in decision making.
Section II: Conservation and Management of Resources for Development includes atmospheric protection, combating deforestation, protecting fragile environments, conservation of biological diversity (biodiversity), control of pollution and the management of biotechnology, and radioactive wastes.
Section III: Strengthening the Role of Major Groups includes the roles of children and youth, women, NGOs, local authorities, business and industry, and workers; and strengthening the role of indigenous peoples, their communities, and farmers.
Section IV: Means of Implementation includes science, technology transfer, education, international institutions, and financial mechanisms.
Please please please stop the crap
The reality that Australia is naturally vulnerable to extremes of drought, fire and flood makes me more concerned that climate change makes these worse, not less. Especially in the midst of an unprecedented fire emergency the prospect of 3 or 5 degrees of global warming is properly terrifying – but we shouldn’t worry because we’ve had droughts and fires and floods before?
That the climate, like the weather climate enables, has changed dramatically in the past is greater cause to be more concerned, not less – after all, completely contradictory to the Doubt, Deny, Delay messaging, it would take climate that was and is stable and unchanging for it to not be a problem. It is the vehicle with dodgy steering, that won’t stay on a straight line, that is most likely to run off the road.
We won’t get any unequivocal acknowledgement of how serious climate change is let alone genuine new and real commitment to reaching zero emissions from Morrison or his team. But nor will we get unequivocal acknowledgement of the true dark depths of their climate science denial. They will fight – and fight dirty – for what they believe in but will not permit public expression, let alone examination of what they truly believe or why they believe it – they have reached the point where they will not even tell the public at large what it actually is that they believe, let alone open it up to public discussion and debate.
One hour ago, Scotty’s captain’s pick (with a silent r), Craig Kelly, posted this:
“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 5% ?
Every inquiry in our nation’s history after major bushfires has called for increasing hazard reduction burns.
The Royal Commission a decade ago in the ‘Black Saturday’ Bushfires recommended that a minimum of 5% of public lands be burnt annually.
In Victoria, that should have seen 770,000 hectares of hazard reduction burns undertaken over the past two years. Instead just 204,000 hectares was burnt off. That’s more than half a million hectares short.
And it’s actually worse, because it’s not only the failure to undertake the hazard reduction burns, it’s also the closure of the forestry industry, the red & green tape reducing land clearing, and the locking up of the national parks.
And in what’s no surprise, the ‘Hazard Reduction Burn Deniers Club’ are the very same people seeking to blame ‘climate change’ for their failures – for they think bushfires can be reduced by sending billions of dollars off to China to buy solar panels.”
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said public safety had to come first in hazard reduction.
“It’s becoming harder every year to find enough days where it’s safe to do burn-offs, to get anywhere near the amount that there was found back through the royal commission more than 10 years ago,” Mr Andrews said.
“We have to burn off in strategic areas to protect property, not just to chase a target, the total number of hectares.”
(For Harry) For over two centuries, “we” have imported, used and abused, spread by indoctrination, education, propaganda and culture, a British imperial and general European attitudinal system, much of which has been systematically noxious and deleterious to Australia. Soil abuse, erosion, denuding, deforestation, land clearing, monocultures, overstocking, desertification, aridity, plagues and pests, water theft, abuse, wastage, all this has made the continent, dry, dangerous, gradually impoverished, under resourced, generally and stupidly abused. We now live in a dangerously exposed nation to face a rotten future, in which a growing number of noncontributing, thoughtless, squashed, regressive consumer dupes are controlled by corporate bumboy manipulators who see their advance and rise as geared to serve the biggies in control, usually through criminally cunning, self fixated corporate management sustaining itself on over rewarding ignorance and failure. So? It is why I am one of many who is unhappy and abusive and vaguely hopeful but more depressed.
Has anyone seen Dutton???
Who is available to carry out all these hazard reduction burns? Do we expect that the same volunteer fire brigade members will be out there every safe (ish) weekend -because they are doing that already throughout every winter. Hazard reduction does not take place in some remote corner of the bush, it is done close to town areas where it can inconvenience the locals mightily … dusty window sills, smelly washing and smoky vistas are all side effects as are increasing discomfort for asthmatics and others with compromised lungs.
And sometimes hazard reduction goes wrong. We saw a death and horrific injuries right here near Bundanoon a few years ago, when an unfortunate wind change trapped a crew involved in hazard reduction.
What is it about Morrison? social media is full of women defending him.
Surely Australian women cannot be that stupid that they cannot see the man for exactly what he is.
Anyone have any clues?
Could it be that women are still brought up to think the best of men, no matter what they do to them, no matter how badly they behave, no matter how they lie and cheat?
KL: “And in what’s no surprise, the ‘Hazard Reduction Burn Deniers Club’ are the very same people seeking to blame ‘climate change’ for their failures – for they think bushfires can be reduced by sending billions of dollars off to China to buy solar panels.”
Can he identify the “Hazard Reduction Burn Deniers Club” and their members and can he give one example of the members of this club “preventing a hazard reduction burn”? I’ll bet he can’t because the whole thing is fabricated and as explained by Daniel Andrews, safety considerations are paramount.
No one said we can reduce bush fires by sending billions of dollars off to China to buy solar panels. Can he identify anyone who said that? On the other hand, we can fight bushfires better if the government listens to firefighters and climate scientists and increases the resources available to them instead of pretending everything is fine.
He obviously has a gang of the usual spin agents who dig out this information and feed it to him, because a dumbshit like him is incapable of doing it all by himself. In fact, they probably run his Facebook account themselves. Are you able to question him on these matters or does he block you (as I might expect)?
I have been thinking that talking about climate change in the context of these fires allows his kind of deflection about solar panels. We should hammer home the fact that the government ignored the warnings about increased bush-fire risk because of its denialist mind-set. It has blood on its hands.
Action on Climate Change that is required, can come later.
Phil,now we’re on the same page,Kookaburra stamps heading your way.(Thanks, Phillip Adams).
I’m touched, getting a reply from a resident guru.BTW, they are highly unlikely to print what I’d really like to say.
Max, he’s busy hatching plots and counting numbers,sans the Belgian bullshitter.Only fitting that the Liar gets the rug pulled out by his own “colleagues”.
Xristos on a broomstick: “… for they think bushfires can be reduced by sending billions of dollars off to China to buy solar panels.”
This creature, like his mentor A.J.Abbott, are raving lunatics and need to be sectioned off to some appropriate “Home for the Bewildered” (thanks Frank Kelly & “Twelve Days of Xmas”).
Quite apart from the fact that Australia had the opportunity to be a major manufacturer of solar panels had the governments of the time not considered that there was no future in the technology, (c.f. personal computors by Rank Xerox) and the ethnic Chinese Australian had not subsequently transferred all his manufacturing nous and entreprenuership to China.
So much for the “Clever Country”.
Harry: “BTW, they are highly unlikely to print what I’d really like to say.”
If it’s not actually libellous, the trend seems to be to let appropriate epithets prevail, even in such august publications as the Guardian Australia.
Psychiatric research has, in recent times, found that it tends to be those with higher intellects who use vulgarities most creatively and often most frequently.
Lay off smoko , how easily you forget his Christmas miracle . He disappeared from Sydney in a cloud of smoke without a trace. I believe in miracles since you came along you creepy thing (apologies to Hot Chocolate)
It’s a mad world !
The US Republicans continue to make excuses for this lunatic that they call their President.
Craig Kelly was allowed out of the country and is in the UK embarrassing us on national television : don’t we have visa restrictions to stop these people going overseas ?
The Tourism Australia promotion with Kylie Minogue………..has been suspended !
That “next ad from Scottie from Marketing” is frightening, because I can see them actually releasing that, and following those policies.