Exploding school kids? Have the climate change hysterics finally gone completely mad?

No doubt they will claim it is funny, (like a dose of clap), but this is just disturbing and deranged, leaving aside the obvious point that a 10% reduction in personal carbon emissions, (which is always going to be less for society as a whole, probably substantially so, as most people and organisations wont become involved), would have no discernable effect on the planet's climate. I think this poorly considered tactic is at least in part driven by an increasing sense of desperation amongst the alarmists that the boondoggle that has generated so much money for them, (often tax payers' money), is finally running out of steam (cue next green scare campaign - biodiversity crisis anyone?). From WUWT: My Inbox exploded with tips today, this one in particular. This unbelievably vile video from the 10:10 campaign takes the award for the most disgusting climate and carbon reduction video ever. It is in a class by itself, which is off the scale. See also Ryan Maue’s post below this one on the 350.org tie in for 10:10.   What were they thinking? They weren’t, because this is going to have the exact opposite effect they intended it to have. I don’t have words to describe my disgust with the video. RELATED STORIES: Lower Than This They Cannot Stoop   Global Work Party Day on 10/10/2010: come up with your own event

Forgive India for not being Club Med

Mr Bolt is getting tired of some of the criticism being dished out to India at the moment: CAN we give India a break? Stop squealing that it’s dirty, and not quite Club Med? What an embarrassing fuss we’re kicking up now that sports fans finally realise the Commonwealth Games is being held in what’s still - yuk! - a Third World country. Reporters are competing to find the most horrific evidence of dirt. See the dog prints on this bed? See the hole that the site’s dirt-poor construction workers used for a toilet? See the open drains and pools of stagnant water? The talk is not just of the understandable fear of terrorism or even dengue fever, but of Delhi belly, smells, defecation, child prostitutes, dirty handbasins, and 700 cleaners being deployed to scrub clean the athletes’ village. “Filthy,” sniffed the Commonwealth Games Federation. “Uninhabitable.” Olympic Committee president John Coates even complained the Games “shouldn’t have been awarded to Delhi in hindsight”. Gosh, who’d have thought India isn’t quite Sydney, or Melbourne? The rest here.

Popular British TV chef: please don't celebrate excessive thinness

I couldn't agree more. As I've said several times, the new class of puritanical health scolds have a lot to answer for, and it is indeed not surprising that increasing numbers of children are presenting to hospitals with eating disorders. We're are quite literally making them neurotic about their food. Nigella Lawson has championed an "anti-diet" philosophy and expressed concerned that increasing numbers of young people are suffering from eating disorders. The television cook, renowned for her indulgent recipes, said she worried that dieting had become "normalised" for teenagers. Seeing her late mother, Vanessa, struggle with eating disorders throughout her life has made her determined to have a positive relationship with food, Lawson said. "I think that's probably very much the basis of my anti-diet stance. "It's not that I think it's good to eat unheathily, I don't, but I can see how corrosive obsessive dieting can be. Via the Food & Health Skeptic

Scientific American - Generation X Loyaler to Religion Than Previous Generation

"Research published this week reveals a surprising trend among the American generation X—the group who came of age in the late 1980s and 1990s and are known for their rejection of all things conventional. It appears that in comparison to the baby boomers, Gen-Xers are significantly more loyal to religion." Full article here.

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Labor’s black hole is far deeper

Andrew Bolt: In ordinary times, this would be the final straw - and not just for the independents who claim to be so concerned with black holes and competent government: THERE is a multi-billion-dollar gap between what Labor expects its mineral resources rent tax to raise and what the miners expect to pay The ... three companies, which negotiated the revised deal and would supposedly pay the vast majority of the new tax, believe it will cost them only a few hundred million dollars extra each year. That adds up to only about $1bn a year in total from them in contrast to the $5bn to $6bn a year extra predicted by Treasury and promised by Labor… It also makes the arguments and accusations over Coalition costings look modest by comparison. The difference is that Labor can rely on official Treasury backing for its figurings. UPDATE Paul Kelly says it would be bizarre if the independents seize on Tony Abbott’s costings shortfall, as claimed by Treasury, as the reason to back Labor instead: Some of this ($10.6 billion costings “hole") reflects the inevitable “different models and data”, as Treasury concedes. But the Coalition has made mistakes that should have been avoided… And if Gillard wins she will lay this charge around Abbott’s head for the next three years to ruin him… The reality, however, is that the budget policy of Labor and the Coalition, measured by Treasury estimates, is near identical. Treasury says that over the forward estimates the Coalition improves the bottom line by $863m compared with Labor’s improvement of $106m, though in the final two years Labor’s surplus is bigger… The independents need to be careful: any effort to tie costings to the issue of confidence when both sides have a similar bottom line would seem bizarre and Labor’s first-term financial blunders have been so high profile. The real strategic blunder of the week was Gillard’s deal with the Greens: In a sense the deepest insight from the week is Gillard’s commitment to a Labor-Green alliance, precisely because it was so unnecessary… It is Gillard taking ownership of the Labor Party: a decision driven totally by politics, not any pro-Greens sentiment. Its motive is to show that Gillard is the arch interpreter of the new politics, prepared to compromise to secure the numbers. In this deal Gillard surrenders little of substance… (But) Gillard has invited the Australian public to see and judge Labor as the party in alliance with the Greens, a movement it cannot control, whose values are sharply different from Labor’s. If Abbott is consigned to opposition he will crusade on this strategic blunder for the next three years.

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Dear penis, I don't think I like you anymore

Words fail.

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Genetic excuse for obesity 'is a myth'?

Dr Ray comments: There's actually nothing new in the research below. That you can work off fat by exercising hard and regularly is no news at all. There is no denial below that some people are genetically predisposed to fat. Obesity researchers have dismissed as a "myth" the excuse that we are "slaves" to our genes. Academics found that people could work off around 40 per cent of the extra weight that "fat genes" laid on them by exercising. Although some people do have a predisposition to be overweight or even obese, scientists at the Medical Research Council's Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge discovered that having an active lifestyle could go a long way to countering a person's genetic inheritance.

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Confessions of a young monarchist

From The Punch: When I was in my first year of university I consented to attending some forum where politicians talk to young people about politics and spirituality. This was achieved through a combination of hassling by my parents, and an idea that I may be able to pick up some attractive young female leader type impressed with my attendance at such a deep thinking event. Isn't he just dreamy? Prince William in Australia last year Having entered the room and scanned through the earnest polar fleeced mini-lawyers, I quickly realised this was an asexual event more concerned with signing up for the Liberal or the Labor Right, and as such, planned to quietly head back down to the bar where the demarcation between male and female was more obvious and less sober. Unfortunately I was spotted by a friendly tutor who was happy one of his students had turned up, so I stuck around and we were introduced to that week’s guest speaker: Tony Abbott MP. I can’t remember much of what was said, except for the fact that afterwards at dinner Tony and I got into an argument about the prospect of an Australian republic. It was only a year since the failed referendum of 1999 and it was still something students would bother talking about. Abbott was impressive as much for the fact that he wasn’t condescending when arguing with a student - he just let you have it like he would anyone else. Abbott’s arguments for maintaining a monarchy in Australia haven’t changed over the years. They are best summed up as “if ain’t broke don’t’ fix it.” At one point Abbott said to me: “I’m a Manly fan, becoming a republic makes as much sense as switching the team I go for.” Besides wanting to point out that Manly are team for tossers, it struck me that Abbott’s argument for not becoming a republic also summed up this man’s brand of conservatism. I disappeared into the night, smug in the assessment that my support for a republic was evidence of a more open mind. But ten years on I am really having doubts about my desire for a republic, and if yesterday’s Fairfax poll is anything to go by, so are most people.   Full article here.

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The greatest green scam of them all

Tim Blair: The UK Telegraph’s Christopher Booker on the greatest green scam of them all: This is a scam so glaringly bizarre that even the UN and the EU have belatedly announced that they are thinking of taking steps to stop it. The essence of the scam is that a handful of Chinese and Indian firms are deliberately producing large quantities of an incredibly powerful “greenhouse gas” which we in the West – including UK taxpayers – then pay them billions of dollars to destroy … Even greenies have become so outraged by this ridiculous racket that the Environmental Investigation Agency has described it as the “biggest environment scandal in history”. Two weeks ago the UN announced that it is suspending payments to five Chinese firms pending an investigation, with a view to a major reform of the system.

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The local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent do-gooder dogmas

On vacation in Massachusetts, I reel from frequent arguments from lefties. (I vacation right between a home owned by the late Howard Zinn and one owned by Joe Sibilia, CEO of CSR Wire). I also rage at the NYTimes, which I unfortunately now have time to read. It is then such a relief to stumble across a rare bright spot on the Op Ed page, like this one by Stephen Budiansky. What a joy too when the latest group of silly people, the locavores, have their myths punctured in their own "paper of record." "[T]he local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent — and self-defeating — do-gooder dogmas. Arbitrary rules, without any real scientific basis, are repeated as gospel by “locavores,” celebrity chefs and mainstream environmental organizations... [I]t is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in a California field because of the energy spent to truck it across the country; it is virtuous to buy one grown in a lavishly heated greenhouse in, say, the Hudson Valley... One popular and oft-repeated statistic is that it takes 36 (sometimes it’s 97) calories of fossil fuel energy to bring one calorie of iceberg lettuce from California to the East Coast.... It is also an almost complete misrepresentation of reality... Shipping a head of lettuce across the country actually adds next to nothing to the total energy bill. Eating locally grown produce is a fine thing in many ways. But it is not an end in itself, nor is it a virtue in itself. The relative pittance of our energy budget that we spend on modern farming is one of the wisest energy investments we can make..." Source Via the Food & Health Skeptic

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Oh dear, Crikey apologising to Tim Blair again (and Andrew Bolt this time)

An immediate and complete correction to a Guy Rundle item in Crikey helps avoid expensive legal processes: A line contained in Wednesday’s item “Assange and the Wikileaks fallout”, misrepresented the views of Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt. References to them were offensive and indefensible. Crikey regrets this and apologises. Crikey‘s previous editor wasn’t so alert. The correction is appreciated. Tim Blair

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Black rice - the latest example of the idiotic "superfoods" religion

I'll reproduce the last paragraph of the media article, as pointed to by the Food & Health Skeptic, who comments himself "Just the antioxidant religion again." Victoria Taylor, senior dietician at the British Heart Foundation, said: 'In reality, it's unlikely there's a single food out there that will have a great impact on lowering your risk of heart disease. Healthy eating is about a balanced diet overall. 'It's great if you can eat more of some groups of healthy foods, like having five portions of fruit and veg a day, but there is still no conclusive evidence that 'super foods' alone make a real difference to your heart health.' No doubt this will not worry the true believers, but the fact remains that there is no evidence to actually support the absurdly inflated claims about the benefits of so-called antioxidants, despite them first being mooted over 50 years ago.

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From Botswana - the only way to play guitar

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On the misunderestimating of Mr Abbott

Germaine Greer, (who, you ask? Um, oh, never mind), is simply the latest in a long line of quite smart people who not only never bothered to try and get to grips with the real Tony Abbott and what he believed in and stood for, but actually wilfully preferred the fantasy one of their own imaginations' creation.

Even as the Coalition's desperately dire position under Malcolm Turnbull, (who had made the Coalition a bigger laughing stock than it was under Brendan Nelson), immediately began to improve under the leadership of Mr Abbott, the "smart" opinions did everything possible to find another reason for this because, well, as they believed so emphatically, he was after all unelectable. Everybody down at the new and oh so trendy cafe said so.

So even on Saturday night we saw the woman on Channel 9's panel who was Julia Gillard's biographer assert that taking 13 to 14 seats off of a first term government, and coming within a hare's breath of winning a majority, was somehow a bad result for Mr Abbott.

You could see what was going on; the cognitive dissonance so clearly on display - but everybody at the cafe, (you know, that really cool new one that's just opened up in a converted inner-city brothel, with the girls' "working" clothes on the walls - so daringly transgressive!), said that far-right "christianist" madman could never be elected. Anyway, we all read that he was quite mad in The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald, so it must be true.

I'm forever amazed at the capacity of otherwise clever people to use their intelligence to delude themselves.

From Andrew Bolt:

Janet Albrechtsen:

TONY Abbott is “unelectable”. He will “reduce the party to a reactionary rump”. “No one thinks Abbott can win in 2010; he would be doing well if he held the line.” The Liberals’ choice represents the “spirit of kamikaze fundamentalism”. The Liberal Party has chosen “the least electable” candidate. The Liberal Party will likely face “a lengthy period in the wilderness of opposition”....

The Opposition Leader has confounded them all. Even if the Coalition fails to form a minority government, this election is about the rise and rise of an eminently electable Abbott, and the demise of brand Labor.

UPDATE

When the facts change, it’s sometimes wise to change your opinions, too: 

Laura Tingle in The Australian Financial Review, December 2, 2009:

VETERAN pollster Rod Cameron says simply of Tony Abbott that he is “unelectable”. ”This is a description I reserve for a very small group of politicians,” he adds.

Cameron tells Paul Kelly in The Australian on March 3:

I STAND by my earlier view that Tony Abbott is unelectable, but the government is doing everything possible to prove me wrong.

Tingle in the AFR, April 23:

ANOP pollster Rod Cameron thinks that “until a month ago, even two weeks ago, Kevin Rudd was in serious trouble, not because of Tony Abbott but as a result of his own work”.

Lenore Taylor in The Sydney Morning Herald, June 12:

CAMERON believes that with almost any other leader the Liberals would now be almost assured of victory.

The Australian, July 22:

VETERAN pollster Rod Cameron of ANOP Research Services believes that “the hard heads” in the Coalition recognise Mr Abbott is deeply vulnerable with women voters.

Tingle in the AFR, July 30:

THE pollster for ANOP Research Services, Rod Cameron, agrees with the assessment that Gillard won the leaders’ debate but Abbott may have got more out of it since the expectations for his performance were so low.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/abbott_ascendant/

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Yes We Canberra - It's funny because it's true

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William Connolley, chief climate change gatekeeper at Wikipedia, may be out

For those who don’t know, William Connolley, a Real Climate founding contributor, has been the most prolific climate information gatekeeper at Wikipedia, and was the subject of this Lawrence Solomon article:

Wikibullies at work. The National Post exposes broad trust issues over Wikipedia climate information

Given the volume of his volunteer Wiki output, one wonders how he supports himself with regular work.

Full article here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/24/connolley-may-be-out-at-wikipedia/

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Yes We Canberra's ad for the Labor Par...sorry, GetUp!

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Doesn't get much more cross-cultural than this

Mistress Sondrak

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Still laughing at Tony Abbott? Guess the joke's on you (with names named)! #ausvotes

From Mr Bolt: James Paterson holds to account the journalists and Labor hacks who thought Tony Abbott a loser. Gavin Atkins does more naming and shaming of those who mocked Abbott.

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Taiwan's 3D news channel covers the Aussie election. Hilarious!

You've got to watch this!

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