Challenge Issued

This is the scene over Melbourne several weeks ago.

I don’t suppose any of you are game enough to interpret the photograph from a feminist chauvinist post-modern traditionalist perspective?

Questions For Tim Flannery

Andrew Bolt has up a thread asking for suggestions of what he should ask Tim Flannery next time they meet. There are some great suggestions on that thread, some of which are paraphrased below.

From Andrew’s readers:

• Are you as stupid as you appear to be on the tele?
• Scared any children this week, Tim?
• What measurable statement would you be prepared to stake your reputation on and if wrong, would you ‘retire’?
• Why aren’t you taking the stairs [instead of the lift]?
• Have any of your predictions come true yet?
• Have you measured the emissions produced by this hotel yet?
• Did your arms get tired flying here?
• How are the fossilised marsupials coming along, mate?
• Where is all the water coming from for sea levels to rise by 80m?
• Did you request a room on the top floor?

The comment that made me laugh (and I’ll warn you, lime cordial coming out of my nose is not fun) was from Boonarga in Queensland. Their observation about Flannery’s reliability?

Ask him for a prediction for the Cup. Then I will know at least one horse to rule out.

I have three questions for Flannery of my own, one of which Margo’s Maid also asked. That question is “At what point did you change your position on nuclear power, and was it influenced by changes in your income stream?”. My other two questions would be “Other than an understanding of scientific research techniques, how does a degree in paleontology qualify you to consider yourself an expert in climatology?” and “What personal sacrifices and life changes have you made to ensure that your predictions regarding climate change are not proven correct?”

I’d bet that he’s stumped on answering all of these questions, and probably many more.

Scams’R’Us

If even PlanetArk acknowledges the scam in carbon offsets, they must be pretty bad.

Climate Change Hits Perth

It’s gotta be climate change. After all, there’s never been a storm in Perth before, right?

Al was supposed to stop this from happening. You fat bastard!

This will certainly mean hard work for the local councils and the volunteers in the SES, all of which do a great job.

The City of Melville was the hardest hit, but I happen to have the inside scoop that the men and women working for Melville are absolutely fucking brilliant, and I’m sure it’ll be cleaned up very well and pretty fast.

Yo, Perthians, youse better all be safe, or I’s gonna hunt you down, you gots it?

* Image from The West.

Click for more photos, taken by our man on the ground.

‘Global warming is not our most urgent priority’

Bjørn Lomborg, the controversial Danish economist, tells James Delingpole that it is better to spend our limited funds on saving lives than on saving the planet

Gosh, I do hope Bjørn Lomborg doesn’t think I was trying to pick him up. I’ve only just learned from his Wikipedia entry that he’s ‘openly gay’ which, with hindsight, probably made my dogged insistence that we conduct our interview in his cramped hotel bedroom look like a cheap come-on. Not to mention the way I sat there throughout, mesmerised and sometimes lost for words under the gaze of the handsome, trim 43-year-old blond’s intensely sincere Danish blue eyes which never leave yours for one second.

But it’s OK, Bjørn. You were safe all along, I promise. The reason for my awe is quite simply that I believe you are one of the heroes of our age. You’ve been called the antichrist, been vilified ad hominem in numerous scientific journals, even had custard pies thrown in your face (at Borders bookshop, Oxford, by an eco-activist), but still you’ve stuck to your guns and continued bravely to reiterate what for a time seemed almost unsayable.

Lomborg’s basic argument — as laid out in his bestsellers, The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It! — is that the world isn’t in nearly as bad a mess as the eco-doomsayers claim it is. And before we do anything too drastic to try to make things better, we ought first to ascertain what its most pressing problems are, rather than throw good money after hopeless causes.

Lomborg’s latest venture is a body he has founded called the Copenhagen Consensus. Funded mainly by the Danish government, this research panel comprises 50 leading economists, including five Nobel Laureates, and has spent two years applying cost benefit analysis methods to a list of global challenges — disease, pollution, conflict, terrorism, climate change, water and so on.

Lengthy one from The Spectator UK

Proof God Hates Al Gore: The Impending Ice Age

By way of Glenn Reynolds, a member of that elite group of lawyers whose guts I do not hate, we learn that Sol may be entering an extended minimum, which means a mini-Ice Age could be coming.

I almost hope it’s for real, except for the fact that I hate cold weather.

Bearfaced lies

The myth of the desolate bear reveals two things about the politics of environmentalism: first, that it’s underpinned by a simplistic, anthropomorphic view of good vs evil, which most of us grew out of before we hit our teens; second, that it frequently bends the facts to fit the fable.
Brendan O’Neill: Bearfaced lies

The article pretty much says it all. I have nothing to add 😉

The Downside of Lakefront Living

Swiss Ice (PowerPoint File)

Swiss Ice (PDF File)

The insurance premiums must cost a fortune.

Snowing here…

The snow is coming down at a pretty good clip and since I live within 100 yards or so, of outside the boundaries of The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, my elevation will get me the larger of amounts, if this keeps up.

Plus it is going very much below freezing this evening and through the morning hours, with more snow coming as the weather prognosticators have said.

All these damn pretty, now barren trees, with snow or ice, do come down on things…refer to one of the first posts on this subject, you will see one on my roof, with a tree suspended only by the wires that held the damn thing up, from crashing through my roof…BUT it did blow my power. DUH!

Long story shorter…If by some chance I lose power and/or cable. My hopes are that those with access to the Blog, for posting threads (if that is what you would like to call them…lol) please keep the Blog going.