Despite rallies in New York, despite the relentless propaganda, the people just don’t seem to be scared anymore. In the latest Gallup Poll, Climate Change is ranked 13th out of 13 issues. As the strident messages of doom roll out, 60% of the public simply don’t believe what the professors are telling them. Science has lost a lot of its aura and credibility.
The US midterm elections are nearly here, yet the poll shows that Democrats have clear advantages in areas that … not many people care about. A victim perhaps of their success in adopting the smug concerns of inner city university graduates?
Items to the right are considered more important.
“…These results are from a Sept. 25-30 poll in which Gallup asked registered voters to rate the importance of 13 issues to their vote for Congress, and then to indicate which party would do a better job on each issue. The accompanying graph simultaneously displays the rankings of these issues on both dimensions. The higher an issue is, the greater the Republican Party’s advantage. And the farther to the right an issue is, the more important it is to the electorate.”
View survey methodology, complete question responses, and trends.
Even among Democrats only 61% ranked climate change as extremely or very important. Among Republicans it was 19%. (Why do so many Republicans still toe the line?)
“Ordinary people, struggling through the worst recession in living memory, see environmentalism as just another financial overhead they’re having to contend with. They simply haven’t got time for it any more. No time and no interest at all.”
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2013/03/08/a-species-facing-extinction/
Pointman
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The left has a major political blind spot. They assume that when they pontificate the general public believe them because after all they know better. In many ways this poll isn’t good news because the actions of what I still firmly believe are a minority have damaged the good reputation of the vast majority in the eyes of the general public. Science should be a temple, inviolable and never subject to the political gamesmanship the AGW gang have demeaned it with. It should by the very nature of the rules that govern it be non partisan. One day some time in the future we will have a society that understands this and will have an established code of conduct. Hopefully it will be constitutionally enshrined. They will look back at us in the same way we look back at the way our forebears dealt with the plague. And it will make them sad.
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The American poll in question actually says a lot of important things…
* Everything the Lefties care about (social this, equality that, climate this, redistribution that, etc); NO ONE in the REAL WORLD gives a crap about! This disconnection becomes more and more evident the longer Lefties stay in power.
* The longer the Left stay in power, the more angry everyone else is! Lefties don’t listen when reality does NOT align with their ideals! Because Lefties believe they know better and impose all sorts of nonsense that doesn’t pass common sense of Jane/Joe public citizen. Seriously, just watch how they react when they realise their ideals are wrong!
* Because of the previous point, they will be voted out. The general population needs adults to govern the country. In fact, it is EXPECTED that mature, thinking adults with wisdom of experience be in charge! NOT activists who want to impose their ideal “Utopia” by “fundamentally transforming” the Nation. (Obama’s words).
* Lefties behave like children. They don’t care about things that seriously matter to other people. That is, when someone asks “How can we afford this?” (an adult question), they will get a emoted response; “Don’t you care about the children?!” (Children behave on emotion and feelings. Not on time tested principles. Adults are guided by principles, they have a plan and commit to follow through to deliver good results.)
* The worst thing about the Left is that they are digustingly manipulative with their emotional bullying when faced with data, analysis, and evidence that runs contrary to their ideals. They will call names, lie about their opposition, gaslighting (see here), and outright lie to the public…Believing the public are mugs who don’t know any better and will lap up any BS they sprout! (And then its off to another game of golf! Foooooouuuuurrrr!)
* Everything is political to them. And American people are becoming ever more so suspicious of the Obama Administration with a new issue every single bloody day! Even science can be destroyed as its used as a political tool for the Left. The Left can’t infiltrate engineering (application of science in the real world), because engineering is about solving problems. You either produce a good solution that addresses the problem or you don’t. You can’t politicise engineering in university. Because all the professors and lecturers would laugh in your face for being an idiot! (You can’t solve problems with politics. In fact, politics doesn’t solve problems! Else, it would be called engineering!) …One can say, engineering is like: “Prove it by building/creating a solution”. (Remember, Leftists don’t create or build anything worthwhile! They break and mess up everything they touch!)
Seriously, who gives a crap about Climate Change when:
* one can’t get a job in the Land of Opportunity!
* university/college debt is astronomical! (You can’t pay it off if the previous point isn’t addressed!)
* Ebola has entered the country!
* The open border policy of Obama has re-introduced diseases! (Diseases that were previously eradicated decades ago!)
* The Federal Govt keeps printing money!
* Excessive spending hasn’t stopped!
* The first lady is trying to shove crap into school kid’s mouths! (The children respond by throwing it all in the bin!)
* While schools are eradicating American History in favour of Grievance History, as they tell boys and girls not to call each other boys and girls in order to be “gender inclusive”.
* Obama and his cronies are intentionally ignoring the fundamental rules of the nation! (Not adhere to The Constitution. Ignoring via Executive Orders.)
* The Foreign policy is encouraging the Nation’s enemies like ISIS…As ISIS has already murdered at least 2 American citizens! Putin has given the finger to Obama in regards to Ukraine, and Obama isn’t doing jack about it. (The only one who wants to stand up to Putin is actually Abbott!)
…and so on.
Just look at all the BULL$HIT the Left come up with in order to pretend to look smart (ivory tower academics in humanities, Liberal Arts, and “soft science” areas of university/college)…While they WASTE everyone’s time and money on garbage they themselves created!
* Social Equality.
* Social Justice.
* Social Inclusion.
* Economic Justice.
* Gender Inclusion.
* Gender Identity.
* Gender Equality.
* Racial Equality.
* Ethnic Equality.
* Racial Inclusion.
* Religious Tolerance.
* Racial Tolerance.
* Ethnic Tolerance.
* Racial Diversity.
* Ethnic Diversity.
* Gender Diversity.
…and so on.
All this BS can be summed up by what one can call the Leftist’s Trinity: Race, Gender, and Class. That’s what they care about at the fundamental level. Seriously! Just look at all the issues they push out, it will hit one of those three!
Climate Change? Its about class. (Economic re-distribution). That is, the developing/poor nations are the victims of developed/rich nations. As such, in order to create “Global Equality”, the developed should be punished by a re-distribution scam under the cover of environmentalism that is called “Climate Change”. The poor nations shall be called “Climate Victims”. Since they should be compensated!
This all should be centralised by a global body like the United Nations in order to circumvent the people’s voice and a nation’s sovereignty. ie: You have to pull your pants down and bend over because the UN says so!
You see? Its not hard to think like a Leftie with this Trinity in mind! Just think emotionally nonsensical, without responsibility and accountability of the consequences (like a child)…and you are on your way to graduating in a Bachelor of Leftism at the University of Leftist Indoctrination!
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But feel that inner warmth of profound smuggness, as you come to realize that in Obama’s Americomustan even the diversity of AussiBears have equal inclusion in the despairing justice of the dislocated, fractured, and battered society the left has inflicted on everyone.
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That isn’t what they care about either. But it points to the thing they do care about.
Pretending to be inclusive. At it’s core it is socialisation, sharing, by force if neccessary.
Great rant by the way. +10
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Aussiebear,
as a leftist I resent your rant.
And can confirm its accuracy.
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Slightly off topic, but relevant:
A couple of years ago I prepared a bid to build a water treatment plant for a third world country, to be funded by our taxes.
The particular town involved was on a lake which served as both the source of drinking water and sewerage disposal. Ie: the people drank their own crap.
One requirement in the RFT was that the tenderer had to explicitly show how their particular water treatment plant addressed “underprivileged and disadvantaged women, those with emerging sexual orientation, and climate change”.
In my submission I foolishly said that the clean water coming out of my design would benefit men, women, children, and animals of all social classes, economic status, gender preferences and sexual predispositions regardless of any changes in climate.
Not surprisingly, my bid was rejected.
The winning bidder overran the project by two years and several million dollars. The plant was never fully operational, never produced water of potable quality, broke down and was never repaired. It was finally abandoned, and the people went back to drinking their own crap.
Is it any surprise to anyone that this town is very close to the epicenter of the current Ebola outbreak?
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And will the leftist and vile perpetrators of this disgusting inhumanity ever be brought to account? Not while capital punishment is unavailable.
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Being on the Left means you never have to apologise for anything you’ve done…That includes pushing various ideas that hurts or kills others.
When questioned about what they’ve done, the standard tactic is to either: change the subject, spin it in better light, blame shift it to their opposition, or don’t even mention the issue (hoping everyone would forget the past). If they are employed by the Govt, they hope being in a sea of govt workers shields them from any responsibility. You folks know how bureaucracies are in Western societies! No one specific is actually held accountable. Its usually the leader or dept as a whole that is the fall guy! (How many of Obama’s activist friends have stepped down from their positions of power when they have unrealistically promised something they cannot deliver? Remember how Obama pretty much blamed the US Intelligence services at how ISIS has become so powerful? When in reality, it was Obama NOT taking his daily security briefings and recommendations seriously! ie: 800+ hours of golf vs 600 hours on security matters.)
To the Left; THEIR ideas, feelings, and faux altruism (politically motivated to make their opposition look bad) is MORE important than other people’s lives. When it comes down to it, they love the feeling of being seen to care for others (public image), but to actually step into the fire themselves and to get their hands dirty is a completely different story!
Have you noticed they only help poor people when they are poor? NOT steer people away from getting into that dire economic situation in the first place! …Ask yourself: Why do they create Debt/Deficit upon everyone when they get into power, and then they claim they are “for the people”, “working people”, or “doing it for the children”?
What kind of a person would say they are doing things “for the children”, while at the same time, they leave a legacy of debt/deficit for the children to absorb?
=> More specifically, when you take out loans to accommodate debt on a country, you are enslaving future generations because of the interest that must be paid on that loan. The concept is simple: The borrower is the slave of the lender. (And the Left is supposed to be about fighting slavery?…See how contradicting they are?)
This is what urks me about Leftists in general: Their complete hypocrisy between what they say and what they actually do in results produced.
While this site is most concerned about the topic of Climate Change, one can’t help but notice that such tactics used by the movement has been repeatedly applied in other areas of our lives. And its effects are everywhere such that everyone is annoyed (a natural reaction) when we encounter it.
This is especially notable with indoctrinating the young minds of children and teenagers to political correctness and activism.
Racial connotations over black sheep prompts changes to Baa Baa Black Sheep at Victorian kinders
=> http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/racial-connotations-over-black-sheep-prompts-changes-to-baa-baa-black-sheep-at-victorian-kinders/story-fni0fit3-1227093091674?nk=2a5907e0e57f46314e7ec28da9c296be
St Patrick’s College Back Down
=> http://www.2gb.com/article/st-patrick%E2%80%99s-college-back-down#.VED2aa0vCUk
…Why does St Patrick’s College have a Social Justice Action Group? When asked by Andrew Bolt and Steve Price in an interview, the principal said teachers didn’t influence them, the kids came up with the idea all by themselves and from the Internet. I call BS! Children don’t come up with activism unless some activist teacher gave them the bloody idea in the first place! Note the timing as well! Under Labor/Greens we saw no such protest! But under Liberal, they just all magically appear!
You’d think an expensive private school would be more concerned with preparing their students (morals, values, and skills) for global competition in the 21st century, than turn them into activists! If I was a parent with a child at their school (or associated school involved with such protest), I’d pull them out! My child is not a political tool for an activist fool!
My understanding of how the Left function is that they are really interested in three things:
(1) Power
=> To impose their will upon everyone via Govt force. (As they believe they know better, we’re just sheep, and we should not question them!)
(2) Your Money
=> To spend other people’s money without a care on the value one is supposed to get from spending. (I honestly think their basic grasp of mathematics, let alone economics, is literally non-existent. Science is a political tool to them, as we have seen with Climate Change. And engineering is a mysterious, magical black box that can turn out iPads, iPhones, make cars move and planes fly!)
(3) Young minds
=> To turn other people’s kids to think like they do through the education system and academia. ie: Not Educate with valuable skills and competences, but Indoctrinate with useless ideas that are flawed in the real world…This is why you have graduates of low quality and completely ill-equiped to meet the market! (How are you supposed to produce anything of value if you’ve been indoctrinated about “social issues” and Leftist narratives? Good luck paying back those HECS loans! Oh, that’s right! Its a statistical fact that there is a low chance they’ll be able to pay them back! Another burden on the taxpayer! Thanks Leftists!)
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That was well said, aussiebear.
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The world is a weird place.
KK
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They never allow themselves to realise they are wrong. Interestingly, this latest Gallup poll has results which are remarkably similar to the poll of the economists in “Global Crises, Global Solutions” that Bjorn Lomborg got together in 2004, ten years ago, when global warming was still thought to be a dangerous threat.
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Well said. What we also need to note is when the modern leftists rose to power. They got their big boost in the late 60s and 70s with the anti war movement. That’s when the left began to dominate the universities and academies. They also had great sway in the trade union movement. At the same time it was a time of great prosperity and innovation. The West was booming and we could afford to be indulgent. Equal pay? Why not? Shorter hours, leave loadings, sick leave could all be afforded because producers could still just jack up prices. There was little competition from overseas as we hid behind tariffs and our exports went mainly to Britain. Gradually that all changed and now the fabricator at the local metal shop is competing with an Indian welder in Mumbai and even the girl in the call centre is displaced by the kid in Manila. I heard a fellow who owns a hire car company tell a radio host he uses his wife’s sister in the Phillipines to receive and manage his bookings. A plus for the NBN. The penny is dropping and folk are becoming aware that they are in competition with the rest of the world and the rest of the world doesn’t have time for climate change and neither should we. The purveyors of doom largely live in a cloistered environment protected from reality. The great majority of voters don’t have that luxury and will vote accordingly. The great scam will collapse partly because people wake up but mainly because the average Joe has far more pressing concerns. That is why Abbott was wrong to not scrap the RET. Apart from a few Chinese companies most couldn’t give a damn.
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It won’t be too long before the top issue will be our survival as a Western democracy due to a number of causes, including high energy costs (partly due to the AGW scam) and massive debts of Western governments. I believe we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Western democracy and economies. It’s now someone else’s turn to rule. The Greens and the left can go on about AGW as much as they like but it will only make them look more and more silly as time goes on, and to be honest even if it were real it’s the least of our worries.
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Democracy has always been a stop/start phenomenon. Churchill said is was the worst political system apart from all the others.
In the second world war the Democracies won out over Totalitarian regimes. In the Cold War, Democracies prevailed over Communism.
However these victories were not easily or quickly won. It took a long time and a lot of suffering.
Western democracies are still a minority of world governments.
However, when they have the choice, people vote with their feet (or get on boats) and seek a better life. That is the strength of democracies and capitalist systems. and therefore I expect it will continue some how.
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Peter C, the problem is that it is getting hard to distinguish Communism from modern western democracies.
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Yes but that is because, as Peter said, people vote with their feet, and make their way into the treasury. Just look at the deficit in most countries with democracy. A better way to get a democracy that works is actually to only let people vote who contributes to the system ! Sounds unfair ? well, people also have the choice of living on the system or contributing !
Today, an election is an auction on future stolen goods from legalized theft, called tax.
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It’s the legalised theft (at the point of a gun), and the naked wastefulness of that largesse; that most makes me angry with Western Society. I’ve been saying for years “it’s a slavery system”.
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More accurately it is ‘serfdom’ excepts Medieval serfs got to keep more of the wealth they produced when compared to the middle class now.
When you factor in the 150 taxes on bread = over half the cost of bread and THEN add in federal, state, local and sales taxes (~64.5% for a middle class person twenty years ago) you are up to a tax level of about 80% or more with a 50%+ tax base for everyone via hidden taxes.
And that is before you add in inflation’s tax on your savings.
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Peter C,
I would contend that the Anglo-American Banking Empire won both the 1st and 2nd world wars – and everyone else lost.
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It also won the GFC which seemed to have been engineered by these very same people.
KK
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For the person who down voted me.
[1] Can you name a war that occurred that wasn’t funded?
[2] And when someone is funding a war – do you not expect that they intend to make a profit?
REF 1: Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler”
REF 2:
As for WW1, I have no surprise that Europe was largely moved off the Gold standard in 1914, as a war of such scale and destruction could not be funded under a gold backed monetary system.
I have no surprise that the following events occurred in the order in which they did.
[1] US Federal Government Institutes an Income Tax (16th Amendment) – 1913
[2] US Federal Reserve System Established – 1913
[3] WW1 begins – 1914
[4] WW1 Participant Countries move off Gold Standards – 1914+
[5] US Enters WW1 (with minimal casualties vs other participants) without moving off a gold standard – 1917
[6] US moves from Debtor to Creditor nation – 1919 (Mission Accomplished)
For the people who rule – you are completely expendable – and if they can make a dollar running you at a wall of machine guns – they’ll do it without hesitation, or a single second thought.
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Can you name a war that did not need funding?
Start with the Romans and work your way up.
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As soon as you have an organised military – it requires funding.
Consider the Sovereign powers.
[1] Define the Monetary System
[2] Define the Law System
[3] Define the Tax System
[4] Define the Military System
The way it works is this – a successful, high functioning psychopath, acquires control over a territory and populace (Resource Base), the perimeter of the territory (resource base) is defined by the operational perimeter of his 4 systems. The Monetary system allows him to define a tax system, which allows him to form and operate a military system which is then used to enforce the operational perimeter, and if possible expand that perimeter, and defend it from the threats/incursions of other competing sovereigns. The Law system is used to assist with the orderly maintenance of the operations of the other three systems.
Evidence?
Ghadaffi chooses to sell Oil in Gold instead of respecting the perimeter of the $USD Petrodollar. He is no longer with us. There are other examples where the perimeter of the dominant monetary system was under threat and the response was entirely a military one.
Nowadays the Sovereign powers are tied up with the State, and the co-option of the machinery of the state enables the private definition & use of the Sovereign powers by those who are skilled at co-option of the state.
(US Federal Reserve anyone – Privately owned instrument for the current world reserve monetary system, conceived in secret and enacted during a holiday with the minimum numbers of congressmen),
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Glad someone understands.
One point of clarification.
Why go to war?
1. To defend your power base.
2. To acquire additional resources.
If the resources acquired are not more than the cost of the military operation then war makes no sense. Any successful warlord ‘get that’ Historically the peasants would put up with 40% wealth confiscation before revolting. 10% went to the Church that left 30% for the ruling class.
This kept wars down to local and reasonable.
Enter Fractional Reserve Banking. The bankers could lend fiat money to the state and the state authorized fiat money this allowed confiscation of wealth from the peasants without the peasants knowledge. It also allowed the state to kick the debt down the road so THEY didn’t have to pay the bill and suffer the wrath of the peasants. The USA is STILL paying for WWI despite the fact every one involved is now dead.
Once Fractional Reserve Banking was in place then running up the state’s debt and increasing the interest paid to the bankers became the real reason for war.
Remember it was the bankers who set-up the Soviet Union in the first place.
link The betrayal of Russia is about one page down under The Federal Reserve-A Corrupt Institution
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Indeed Science has lost a lot of its credibility and for a very good reason. The pronouncements of Scientists have been even more wrong than usual. Scientists become very vulnerable when they try and predict the future (which is the domain of Climate Scientists).
What I don’t understand is why so many Scientific Institutions have mortgaged their credibility by circling the wagons and defending the most wayward of the Climate Scientists. They should have jettisoned them (non scientists) at the start instead of identifying with them.
The damage to Science in general is very great. I don’t blame people for ignoring the whole lot of us. Scientists in Australia should stop blaming Tony Abbott for the reduction in their funding, and have another look at the damage caused by Tim Flannery (and others).
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True—though let’s not forget that all scientists are almost always wrong. That’s the human, and a fortiori the scientific, condition. The problem with these particular scientists is that they’re not only encyclopedically ignorant, they appear to be incapable of gaining new knowledge, which (after all) is what we pay them for. Climate science isn’t meant to be easy, but there’s something seriously wrong in Denmark when today’s climate scientists can’t guesstimate the future one iota better than a farmer’s kid with an agricultural almanac, a ruler and a pencil a generation ago.
Yes. For all the apparent obviousness of that remark, surprisingly few people seem to make it. Science is all about prediction, of course—but with apologies to Wilde, it’s never really been about predicting the future so much as predicting the unknown. A subtle but diabolical difference that clisci has learned the hard way. In the process the less well-intentioned elements of the profession have managed to pervert the entire idea of scientific prediction. It’s meant to be a bet about nature, where the stakes are your hypothesis. The cost associated with betting wrong is that you abandon your hypothesis—not just your bet—and that cost keeps scientists hungry, on their toes and honest. Climate scientists want to imbue their predictions with the prestige of science but without paying the associated cost, and the science-naive public has let them get away with it, to the disrepute and dishonor of science as a whole. It may take generations for the damage to be undone, short of a cataclysmic cleansing of the Augean stable that is PostNormal [Pseudo]science.
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Peter, a lot of those reasons were on display last night.
Catylist had it all on there……… again.
It was like watching an Al Gore production as the propoganda machine started up.
Simplifying everything for the “unwashed and uneducated masses” who refuse to get with the program.
Anything and everthing thing that was contrary to the “money train” was dismissed as not correct.
There was one major glaring ommission “standing in the room” as they slipped into over drive about artica and its ice cap.
Antarctica never recieved a mention.
Nothing!
It really was cringe worthy as they blended known “facts” with crystal ball gazing.
Right down to the closing line where one of the many expert gazers has a parting shot at the skeptics.
“I really do wish they were right”
The catostropheric anthropological global warmists scientist’s just don’t understand.
That people today can actually do more than read.
Their explaination of the “pause” will be added to the other 52 odd over at wuwt.
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On the plus side, Catalyst non-snarkastically acknowledged Judith Curry’s and Garth Paltridge’s existences.
Maybe they’re triangulating, their hypersensitive ears hearing the slow “glug… glug… ” long before the human passengers have any idea how much water’s on board?
Nah, never explain by rat cunning that which can be explained by cluelessness.
Another positive sign: My mum, an ABC junkie, sounded mildly irritated as she asked me, “Why haven’t I heard about this 17-year pause before?”
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I am a degreed scientists and at this point I want to see ALL public funding to science and academia stopped. I especially want to see the government NOT fund NGOs like Green Peace, Friends of Earth, WWWF….
If I want to fund them that is fine but the government should not rob me to give MY $$$ to those I do not approve of.
Let government go back to what government is supposed to do*** and get the heck out of my business.
***Enforce contracts, prevent/punish of theft, assault, battery, fraud, murder/attempted murder. Provide for the general defense which includes roads and transport systems. Everything else can pretty much be taken care of out side of the federal government.
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Two things.
1. I bang on about context. Has the position of climate change changed? I am just asking the basis for the “not anymore” statement.
2. So completely off topic and I can expect a snip or comments addressing this to be snipped but, does the fact that the polled republican voters (presumable male and female) not worry about female pay inequality believe that that it is not a problem because
a. there is no inequality (whether they are right about this is not my question)
b. They believe women should be paid less than men.
c. The inequality is being addressed and systems and policies are in place to address it
d. the other things are more important (including climate change)
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For once gee Aye, I have to ask.
What on earth are you talking about?
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Gee Aye – as per the post above the link to methods etc: http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/178316/Strengths_and_Weaknesses_of_Parties_on_Issues_141013%20.pdf
Climate Change Question H: for comparison
The environment 2002: 60% of adults said it was very or extremely important.
The environment 2010: 46% and 59% ” ” ” (March, August respectively).
Global Warming April 2014: 41% ” ” ” ” ”
Climate Change Sept 2014: 40% ” ” ” ” ”
2. No idea. Not asked as far as I can tell. Who knows?
The survey suffers from a lack of prioritization and ranking in the sense that voters are not asked to put their choices in order, and theoretically could have rated everything as important. But even despite that, they didn’t. 60% couldn’t be bothered even paying lip service to it.
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2020 the response will be ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn.
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Hey, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawning’s a kind of lip service 😀
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Thanks.
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Most likely Republicans believe the studies that show that when men and women share common experiences they are paid the same. Women who leave the work force or work part time for some intervals get paid less, or their progression is delayed. There is also the concept of equal work. If you are an advocate for a particular side, you may try to claim that a social worker should be paid more than a car assembly plant worker.
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Its tough to word this in a way that does not make it sound flippant, but I hereby bestow on my next words an air of serious context, so please see them that way.
Ebola and IS have been quite timely in a weirdly cosmic way. These 2 actually serious situations have reminded the Gen. Pop. somewhat of the fact that life is big, complex and not entirely in our control yet. They have helped to contextualise AGW alarmism by reminding everyone that the quest for 25°c, sunny with light winds, everyday, forever, can really be taken just so seriously before reality has to snap us back to more important issues.
So in essence, its not important how many people are having a cow about the weather, it never was. Consensus is not science. So in the same way people have realised that whether you believe in AGW or not wont change the weather, the alarmist community needs to move on and realise that politics wont change it either.
If AGW theory is right, you will have your “day in the sun”(even Im happy with that one) 🙂 you will be able to dance about and tell us all “I told ya so” as we fry and starve to death, life will be great for you. Meantime the adults have more important things to worry about so go play.
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You make a very good point.
Ebola is not new – it has been around before. This may be a new strain, that is more deadly, I don’t know. But it is a clear and present danger, especially now it is being airfreighted around the place.
Likewise, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (to give it its full name) is another clear and present danger. The media conveniently drops mention of the “Levant”, either because they don’t know what the word means, or because they are frightened by the implications. I suspect the latter — even journalists can look it up on Wikipedia.
Climate change is a, “Some time in the future”, threat. Both of the above, are present now. Where are thinking people going to allocate their quotient of worry, this week?
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“Likewise, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (to give it its full name) is another clear and present danger. The media conveniently drops mention of the “Levant”, either because they don’t know what the word means, or because they are frightened by the implications. I suspect the latter — even journalists can look it up on Wikipedia.”
Rereke if Wikipedia is indeed to be believed then it is simply IS nowadays as even they cane decide if it is ISIL ISIS or peoples liberation front of IL.
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Well that is true, as far as it goes, but it is a bit over-simplistic.
An Islamic State, called ad-Dawlah al-Islamiyah fil-Iraq wa ash-Sham, was declared, as a caliphate, by Abu bakr al-Baghdadi (aka Amir al-Mu’minin), on 29 of June, this year. This roughly translates into the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and that is where the media have picked up the ISIS abbreviation.
However, as a caliphate, it claims religious authority over all Sunni Muslims worldwide, and also civil authority over its immediate neighbours in the wider area historically known as the Levant.
Thus ISIL becomes the abbreviation for this wider Islamic State. The Levant includes Syria, Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon, plus part of southern Turkey and Cyprus (for historic trading reasons). The Levant also includes Israel, and that is what makes this particular confrontation so scary, especially once you start to unpick the network of mutual-protection treaties that exist.
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Having typed all that, I find that I could have just given you a reference:
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I suspect that if they were to ever even attempt to attack Israel,they would have there butts handed to them in very short order,by the Israeli military.
30
IS, ISIL, ISIS, etc are not as fearsome as these guys.
10
This gets tested in a pretty serious way next month when Cory Gardber (R) challenges Mark Udall (D) in Colorado. Udall will not support Keystne XL, has made climate change a key part of his platform and will be a big recipient of Tom Steyers political money. Udall was considered safe last spring but Gardner is leading now. If Gardner wins big, climate change may become a poison pill for many Democrats.
120
And I hope they take it.
100
Here in the UK, I will vote for the party that abolishes the idiotic Climate Change Act!
140
This may be of relevant interest.
This is part of an article from P50 November, 2014, Discover Magazine.
DAMAGE CONTROL
160
Yep, climate is boring. So boring that even Jo is taking an interest in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with Ebola riding into 5th place.
What I take from the above graph is that if you want Republicans to move on pay parity for women, start the rumour that underpaid women are cutting people’s heads off.
71
One doesn’t need to be very intelligent to realize the Ebola issue is a major concern and could easily turn into a pandemic, thus making the AGW issue, even it were real, a non-issue. Then there is IS and the war we are trying to win against them to avoid things getting really out of control all over the world. Interesting to note that Obama is looking at using private armies to fight his wars rather than sending US soldiers. Then there is the financial crisis that’s inevitable given the growing debt problems. Looks like global warming is not only boring, it’s the least of our problems with so many other problems now coming upon us. Time for the Greenies and the left to use their brains and re-think their priorities. They are fast becoming the laughing stock of the world.
90
Are you making Sleepy Hollow Season 2 references by any chance? Some of us haven’t downloaded that far so forgive my obtuseness! 😛
30
You don’t need to put Ebola in fifth place, it is already part of, “the four”.
“I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and hades was following close behind him. They were give power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine, and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.”
Revelation 6:8.
20
Here is my ordering of these issues.
[1] Plague – yep that’s an issue
[2] Famine – yep could run out of food.
[3] Sword – not so much – if you have one of these. (from 20 seconds in).
[4] Wild Beasts – See [3]
[5] No Toilet Paper is definitely a sign of impending doom.
00
And where is plague mostly likely to strike the hardest?
Where there is war and strife and the health system, food distribution and law has broken down and vast mobs of people are on the move in an attempt to escape from it all.
ISIS is the outcome of a rising level of such war and strife resulting from the so called Arab Spring when long established dictators were overthrown to be replaced by even worse dictators .
A “Spring” it no longer is but it has become the Arab nightmare soon to be the world’s nightmare with pestilence and a frightening plague still likely to come.
It seems extraordinarily coincidental that Ebola after many years of containment in central Africa should just start to spread and do so close to the points of strife and war right when one of the most deadly, psychopathic quasi religious terrorist organisations, ISIS, seen in decades should also be gaining power and killing on a grand scale.
Human nature being what it is when suspicion reigns, it is likely to condemn ISIS as being totally responsible for any Ebola outbreaks in the ISIS controlled territory.
As ISIS is a quasi religious terrorist based outfit it is also highly likely that the Hand of God will be seen as a condemnation of ISIS if Ebola establishes in it’s territory with a very high consequent plague death toll.
Which has the inherent promise of all sorts of totally unexpected ramifications politically, culturally and socially world wide.
The world’s problems will be that a very high percentage of ISIS foreign born terrorist fighters will quickly abandon the ISIS and it’s territory if the Ebola plague appears and gets a foothold in ISIS controlled territory.
And those former ISIS fighters will attempt to sneak back into their home countries by any secretive means possible with all that means for the spread of the Ebola plague .
It is a great honor to die in the support of the islamic god but it is a totally different sort of death to die from the Ebola plague which might just be interpreted to mean the judgement of the same god has been passed on you and there won’t be seventy odd virgins waiting for you in Paradise.
Instead there will be the eternal Hell fires of the wrath and condemnation of the ISIS god.
To quote that old curse attributed [ wrongly it seems ] to the ancient Chinese;
“May you live in interesting times”
00
After the above, Jo’s headline is about “Climate Change”
Err! “Climate Change!
Whats that??
00
For what it is worth:
Hajj is expected to fall between October 2-7, 2014.
Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, is one of the greatest religious observances in Islam.
It is also a main contributor to spreading disease world wide. The annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj, attracts more than a million pilgrims from many countries worldwide and has been associated with outbreaks of meningococcal disease.
Given the Muslims fatalistic attitude towards life and the importance of making this pilgrimage at least once during your life…
Sierra Leone, is 71% Muslim, (3/4 of the country has new outbreaks)
Liberia is 12% Muslim (3/4 of the country has new outbreaks)
Cote D’Ivoire 39% (minor outbreak along the border)
Guinea is 85% Muslim, (1/8 of the country has new outbreaks)
Nigerian is 50% Muslim, 40% Christian. (They had one case of Ebola)
CDC MAP of outbreaks.
Saudi Arabia has taken precautions but again it is just paperwork to be filled out…
They are half way through the incubation period….
00
Clearly the muggles just haven’t had enough of a chance yet to hear what climate scientists have to say.
Those prima-donna bowel-cancer researchers and other “sexy” causes have monopolised public bandwidth for the last 25 years.
But not to worry, the ScaredScientists project is sure to be the crucial tipping-point that finally gets Joe Q. Public’s attention.
/I might be being sarcastic.
50
Most folk worry no longer about climate, but the weather bothers some still. For them here’s yet more desperate doggerel for the discontented –
60
The agenda is not working out as planned. The fear is fading and that was the prime motivational factor in the strategy. But the agenda will roll on, because the ‘public’ are not intended to disrupt it. They were only important if they could be used in the marketing mix.
The next strategy? Who knows, but I would guess that ‘Mandatory’ might be the fall-back position.
70
Look no further than the latest from the IPCC. For all those interested in dissecting the propaganda the ‘IPCC Working Group II Contribution to AR5′ update has been released. Available at http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/ and as a 96Mb pdf download.
Within the documentation (page 9 of the full report) is Figure SPM.3 | Climate-change adaptation as an iterative risk management process with multiple feedbacks. People and knowledge shape the process and its outcomes. [Figure 2-1]
This graphic implies that the UN has the ability to tell governments what to do. You all voted for that didn’t you?
Yes the UN minions have set themselves up as identifiers of risk, assessors of risk, establishers of decision- making criteria, and implementers decision and then they’ll monitor you compliance.
It’s already there in black and white – effectively the UN are governing you.
80
Indeed, and the price for the privilege of such governance?
The US National Institute of Health (NIH) publicly complaining that had they had the funding they needed, they would have had a ‘cure’ for Ebola, having known about it since 2000.
I will resist drawing lines between unrelated dots, although it is noted that radical population reduction lies at the heart of extreme Green political agenda. The means by which this is achieved remains obscure, or does it?
40
Tom,
thanks for wading through a turgid tome and bringing to our attention the SPM.3 graphic from AR5 WG11. I only partly agree with the comment. The UNIPCC might be trying to tell us governments what they want to do, but they do not follow the flow diagram they lay out. They to not assess risks properly nor learn from the policy mistakes. If they did, the conclusion would be to that the risks are trivial and lack evidence.
Further the governments do not monitor policy implementation properly by independent audits. If they did, the conclusion would be to abandon any mitigation policy.
I have uploaded the graphic, and enlarged on my comments here.
50
Kevin (aka manicbeancounter)
“wading through a turgid tome”, sorry I have not the physical stamina nor mental capacity to churn through this coma inducing tome in one hit. So far I have skimmed some of it, marking the parts I find particularly offesive.
I plan over the next few month to try and read through completely (including all footnotes, inclusions, and additions). I have already seen some parts that, at first sight appear contradictory, but I’ll leave those till later.
40
Tom,
No problem. Even in the skimming you have highlighted a chart that is very informative. It very loosely lays out the policy process that should be followed if governments are serious about maximising the reductions in global emissions, whilst minimizing the costs and other harms of that policy. The fact that it is not up shows how little thought the peddlers of global warming alarmism have given to “saving the planet“.
10
Saw ‘Catalyst’ on ABC TV last night. As usual it had a Green segment. This was about the “pause” in temp’ rise over the past 18 years. It was full of twists, turns, weasel words, contradictions and on and on.
Best was a showing of 2 graphs illustrating how temperatures were rising despite everything. They were like Al Gore’s hockey stick graph where he stood on a scissor ladder to get higher. But these 2 graphs just had a straight line rising from left side base to right side top. Noticeably there were NO indications of what the X or Y axis’ were. Just to nebulous graphs going up, up, up in a straight line.
Talk about scientific!!
100
Edwina, I took the “stick” to catylist last night further up.
Did you notice there was not one mention of Antarctica?
Not one.
30
When you cry wolf to many times, you get the results that you deserve.
70
People stop listening to YOWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.
Sorry Im in a mood this morning 🙂
50
We gathered …
30
Uptick for cleverness there.
10
“A victim perhaps of their success in adopting the smug concerns of inner city university graduates?”
Starting the day with a giggle. Loved it Jo thanks.
70
Some way to go yet. When it reaches the magic “97%” it is finished.
40
It’ll probably never get to 97%.
I understand that 5% of Americans believe in UFO’s and alien visitors.
You’ll have to be happy with 95%….
30
Ahhh… I think that it might be larger than 5%
10
Depends on your definition of UFO. – UnIdentified Flying Object.
I and two geologists*** while doing a bit of stargazing at a meteor shower watched the air force scramble three fighter jets to chase a “UFO’ way back in the 1970s. Darn thing took off like a scalded cat and out ran the jets. (Russian Spy drone? American drone used as practice?) Anyway by definition, to us on the ground it was not identifiable.
Another friend was in the Air force and liked to fly big elaborate kites…. At night…. With leds attached so he could see it.
The base finally ended up ordering him to inform them BEFORE he went kite flying.
There is plenty of weird stuff out there and the US government has been caught lying too many times to the public. Take the human radiation experiments run on the public without their knowledge. Mom was a victim of that one. Add in NO scientific training what so ever in US schools and you get weird beliefs.
***One was the state geologist and the other who is brilliant and is now a multi millionaire.
00
Climate Change™ DOES worry me.
The ridiculous amounts of money being absolutely wasted on a meaningless agenda driven load of crap, means that the hunt for solutions to REAL problems are often left un/under-funded.
I for one, don’t want to go back to the Dark Ages !!!
60
[…] He states […]
20
Front page on the Australian today, General Electric announce a truck size prototype for nuclear fusion could be built in only one year! Without Government money.
This is also without the billion dollars a day spent trying to stop the weather from changing at all. However fusion would change life on earth completely. The implications are incredible, but it shows what is not being done while the people against everything try to destroy the joint, at our expense. Without nuclear energy, all life, all energy comes from the sun, itself a hydrogen fusion plant running on the world’s cheapest and most prolific fuel. Even coal is trapped prehistoric sunlight energy, but nuclear fusion would make life possible even without the sun. Limitless clean power, but the communist Green parties wants to talk about Global Warming at G20? As man made Global Warming is now utterly disproven, the subject is now the nebulous and quite unconnected “Climate Change”.
If the steady CO2 increase has not produced steady air warming as universally predicted by simplistic theories of the 1990s, how is this lack of warming supposed to produce Climate Change? No one has bothered to explain. The Science is ‘in’ something. Also how can the same theories as computer programs which all produced very wrong air warming predictions be trusted to predict anything, including an increase in weather extremes? In fact hurricane frequency has actually dropped. There is even the strong possibility the world is cooling, once the right Australian figures are used despite a desperate rearguard action to inflate world temperatures to keep the billions flowing. It may end. Al Gore does not need the money anymore.
30
Very sorry. Lockheed Martin, the aerospace giant, not General Electric. This makes it even more credible. Lockheed Martin have a number of patents on aspects of the development. Very exciting! This could change the world and they are talking years, not decades.
30
Original story here
Aviation Week
Oct 15th 2014
Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details
Lockheed Martin aims to develop compact reactor prototype in five years, production unit in 10.
Comment;
The timing of this publicity interests a lot of people.
The competition both in the LENR field [ Low energy Nuclear Reactions ] such as Rossi’s E-Cat plus other LENR projects plus Compact Fusion Energy devices from a number of potential developers and teams is hotting up which might have led to LM making sure that their Compact Fusion Device is in the running for some addittional funding from various sources in the near future when vast development funding is required IF the LM fusion project proves to be an energy producing and commercially viable system..
20
Thanks! So the space race has spawned another breakthrough after the microchip. Superconductors used to create a massive and increasing containment field, a substitute for the immense gravity of the sun. The Tokomak was never going to work. Again, this is from an aeronautics company looking for space propulsion, not infinite safe power. As said, such a system would allow an aircraft to fly forever or to reach Mars in a month. The implications for humanity are extreme. With this, we can change the weather, but what would we want?
20
TdeF
October 17, 2014
TdeF
I would have included the LASER in your short list of major inventions.
I can still remember the announcement of the LASER [ Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emmission of Radiation ] along with the news shot of the inventor holding the Ruby crystal Laser with an Xenon tube wound around it.
At the time it was described as quoted here below.;
_________
When the first working laser was reported in 1960, it was described as “a solution looking for a problem.” But before long the laser’s distinctive qualities—its ability to generate an intense, very narrow beam of light of a single wavelength—were being harnessed for science, technology and medicine. Today, lasers are everywhere: from research laboratories at the cutting edge of quantum physics to medical clinics, supermarket checkouts and the telephone network.
[ / ]
Without the LASER and the consequent use of collossal information communication capabilities of fibre optics, the world’s communication systems would still be reliant on copper wire technology and all that entails. It would simply be working at at least a magnitude lower in performance than is now the case. Modern computer technology would be still about at least two decades behind where it is now.
Data storage would still be mostly magnetic tape and so on.
The LASER, an invention looking for an application when it was invented is now one of civilisation’s truly great advances ranking in the tier of inventions below those civilisation creatinginventions such as the controlling of fire, the invention of the wheel, the smelting of metals, the invention of writing, the invention of the printing press and the invention of the steam engine and the harnessing of electricity.
Lasers are in the next great tier of civilisation advancing inventions.
Laser Inventor
The First Laser
30
The space race spawned this too, but was a thin cover for the development of ICBMs. The almost incidental benefits of satellites have not been fully realised or Australia would not be spending $65Bn putting cables in the ground across a vast country.
However the other great push was consumerism, personal electronics. The penetration of the mobile phone into even the poorest countries and most remote locations has been amazing along with the GPS from the satellites.
Even a glimmer of hope with fusion is enough to have every physicist frothing. This can provide infinite safe energy. With such energy, everything else can be done. Our dependence on the sun is broken. Even places like Dubai become sustainable.
10
SILEX!
(Shhhhh – Don’t tell anyone I said that!)
Tony.
10
Oh, and this process utilises a, umm, CO2 Laser.
Oh dear!
Tony.
10
Money should be spent on Thorium, which is 100% usable where Uranium is only 2% usable. This increases the amount available x50. Such a reactor would not have the dangers or pollution of a Uranium reactor. There is still a need for a uranium reactor to start the process and uranium enrichment, but the fuel would be Thorium and it does not need enrichment. Australia and India share half the world’s supply.
20
AKA “Stark Industries”. 🙂
10
TdeF,
If you dig nearer the source, you will find the Skunk Works words are little more than speculation. Nobody has yet achieved sustained fusion that generates more energy than is put in. Billions of $ spent so
far, no breakthrough gains.
I’m finding it more interesting to follow Rossi E-Cat papers.
Geoff.
20
It has to hold more hope for humanity than the billion dollars a day spent trying to stop global warming which is not happening and does not need stopping anyway. I doubt Lockheed Martin have spent even tens of millions. Besides, this is a new approach to an old problem using a new technology for intense magnetic fields. Work on supercolliders may have provided the technology. You might remember the Stephenson junction idea. Superconductors have promised so much. What do we have to lose here? Imagine what good a billion dollars a day in science investment could do for humanity? We have to get our priorities right.
50
But that would be employing real scientists…
20
As usual a major development has come from an individual, or a company, after years of throwing money at university research.
Time to make all university staff teachers, say 30 hours a week, & if they survive the shock, let them research the rest.
Now when are they going to get one small enough to power my car?
20
What you need is a Flux Capacitor.
(Time Travel effects may be an unintended side effect)
00
I will believe nuclear fusion when I see a working system producing electricity.
Remember thorium nuclear is out there and the Progressives do NOT want thorium nuclear to become viable in the USA.
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.” —Dr. Paul Ehrlich, Anne Ehrlich, and Dr. John Holdren, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, 1970, p. 323
Holdern is Obola’s Science Czar.
10
As always in the affairs of men there is never a stasis at any level.
There is always change often unrecognised until it becomes increasingly obvious and then people start to look back and see that a change was already under way quite some time in the past if only they had looked.
The global political systems have started the long swing towards the political Right again.
To our current generations the Left has shown it can never be trusted, can never significantly or substantially increase prosperity and has never, when reliant upon it’s own political resources, lifted nations and peoples economically in any substantial way.
The Left consumes and debases economic and political resources until both the economic resources and the people it governs are exhausted and sick to the teeth with the Left’s hyperbole and increasingly obvious failures, ecumenically, socially and politically .
Then and only then does the Right wing of politics regain power to rebuild the national resources and economic power.
But the Right always goes too far right with the eventual imposition of dictatorial powers until again, in another great three generational long political swing, the last generation of which with all the economic power and wealth rebuilt by the Right of politics while it was in power, cannot conceive of any other less salubrious life style to the one they are currently enjoying.
So they through their lack of the political Left’s economic and political experience can only consider what they come to believe is a much better way of running society through the hypothetical gains to be made by discarding and eliminating all those percieved political Right created nasties that they come to believe through their increasing receptiveness of Left propaganda, which the Left excels in, is a product of the Right even though it was those numerous supposedly Right created nasties which originally brought them all that the wealth and life style they are enjoying.
They of that last generation cannot see or conceive of how the wealth and life style they are enjoying was created in the first place nor do they want to look or consider by whom it was created and how.
They just want to change the political system in one of those great unscripted political and economic swings of generational and societal politics and all will be much better in their world is their motto and belief, a belief based on ignorance and total lack of experience after some two or three generations of a left or right orientated political system…
And so begins another great two and three generational long swing back to the Left [ or the Right ] of politics.
And political history continues to repeat itself all over again.
Certainly in my life time of 76 years and through the generation of my parents, the political omens of the early 1900’s were very much of a Left wing political slant felt most severely in Russia and then the USSR but prevalent right through out all of Europe of the times.
Then the Right wing extreme of the 1930’s in a reaction to the extremes of the Left earlier in the century arose, not just in Germany but in numerous European countries plus the USA and South America and Japan, the rising East Asian power of the 1930’s, right through the 1930’s and then the post WW2 late 1940’s, the 1950’s and the first half of the 1960’s when the now aging but then youthful generation of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s got their first taste of politics and enjoyed the good life.
Without the experience of the excesses of the Left in the 1920’s and only experiencing the excesses of the right in their short lives, they came to believe there was a better political way of doing things in society than too follow the political Right’s course of politics and governing.
And so the great swing towards the Left of the last three or four decades began.
Today’s generations are seeing the increasing failure of the Left to raise economic and living standards and so the scene is being set for another great political swing back to the right, a swing which is already under way and is just starting to gain momentum.
And a swing partly generated by the new fears of increasing Islamic terrorism and the fears of a possible major pandemic which many see as only the strong Right of politics having the organisational ability and cojones to take on and defeat.
The Catastrophic Climate Change meme is increasingly being seen as a creation and creature of the increasingly discredited Left of politics with all the Left’s hyperbole, fear mongering and total lack of any realistic and obviously visible threats leading to a rapidly increasing discrediting of the Left and it’s hyperbolic extremism by the populace through out Western society.
And with that discrediting also goes one of the Left’s most extreme branches, the Greens and everything they now supposedly stand for which is not much other than pure opportunism.
When a politically based organisation reaches the point where it’s main aim is an opportunistic one that has no supporting and firmly based guiding principles underlying it, something the Greens have now abandoned somewhere in their long gone past, then it is only a matter of time before they also fade from the scene as a political force to be reckoned with.
Globally, the political Left is on the downswing.
Globally, the political Right is on the upswing.
Neither are fully right or wrong or best or worst
Both have a contribution to make to human society and civilisation but we can only see that if we are prepared and interested enough to take a long view of human history.
70
Somehow that “ecumenically” inadvertently slipped into that second para instead of “economically.”
Although considering the left’s tendencies towards an enforcement of the leftist holy writ as defined by the rabid leftists with the CAGW meme, “ecumenically” might just be the right word to fit in this case.
30
ROM, I’m Not so sure that the swing to the right is really on yet or even likely to be in any reasonable time frame. There is a lot of noise being made but not a lot of evidence of pollies acting from principle or showing any courage of their convictions by advocating and enacting any significant policy to reverse the trend to the left or even to give the electorate any real alternative options.
There is an interesting discussion of some of this in Quadrant here
20
Drat, the link didn’t work. I’ve been and read the FAQ so please bear with me whilst I try once more here
20
After scanning through that Quadrant article it seems that right down at the basic street level but not a yet at the MSM. and academic elites and upper political levels my suggestion of a swing to the political right is well under way as envisaged by the American Tea Party and the various right wing groups in Europe.
When the world is generally at peace and nobody of significance is seriously threatened then the Lefts cultural wars and supposed collective embracement of everybody so as to make the collective whole easier to manage and rule is not itself seriously threatened.
However when the tribal group, the nation, the organisation, the family groups are threatened by outside forces and events then that is different and historically down through the ages the big swing to the political right has occurred.
And is now underway in Europe as the North Africans and the islamic economic refugees and straight out mostly African, Arab and mid eastern carpet baggers intent on enjoying the good life at somebody else’s expense have, like the legendary door to door sales man forced their foot into the closing door and demanded entry to the good life inside.
And the high migration levels, the exclusion of the native born from some areas in their own nations by these new and pushy arrivals and the excesses of these economic migrants have now created an increasing back lash as is being demonstrated by the rise of the right wing parties in Europe such as the UKIP which wants Britain out of the EU so as to both be economically independent and to control the uncontrolled immigration of foreigners into the UK over which the British have no say according to the free migration agreement between EU member countries as per the EU agreement..
We saw this shift to a right wing view ourselves here in Australia and have seen a heavy and developing politically important backlash over the so called refugee boat people who refused to abide by Australia’s very generous refugee resettlement program of over 100, 000 refugees a year done through the Embassy filtering process.
We are seeing the swing to the right here in Australia right now with the rising intolerance for the Islamic hate preachers and everything these extremists stand for.
The tribe, the Australian “tribe” is starting to feel it is under threat both from the very far right Islamists and from the possibility of a major global Ebola pandemic.
So the right wing defense is to more closely control it’s borders or even close them completely and control who is allowed into the tribal territory, Australia and who is allowed to stay, all of which is a supposed anathema to the radical left with its proclaimed freedom to go where you want to without hindrance unless the radical left itself says otherwise.
The world is already going to the right politically driven by disillusionment with the increasingly economic, cultural and societal failures of the radical left, the rise of islamic terrorism and the new threats of diseases and natural events which we can possibly delay or exclude but not if we continue to allow free and barely controlled entry to our various tribal territories, including Australia, all of which rightly or wrongly suggests a major shift to the political right is under way right down at street level and that is reinforced by that Quadrant article.
The pollies, perhaps a completely new batch of pollies will get on board the political right swing later .
The die hard leftist academics never.
They haven’t the intellectual cojones to ever figure this out
They will just have their surfeit of tax payer sustenance cut off and great will be the wailing, the casting of sack cloth and ashes and gnashing of the collective leftist teeth in the leftist strongholds in academia when this occurs as it most surely will.
30
Pollies are always a few years behind any change in an evolving societal change of view and approach to a previous well established political and societal meme.
I think that point is very well made in Jo’s headline post above where it is becoming obvious that society in general has switched off on the CAGW meme and even those who say they still support it are only giving lip service to the CAGW mme judging from their highly visible reluctance to change their own lifestyles in anything but the most minor “feel good” but totally ineffective manner climatewise.
So I think the swing to the political right is now underway and the point I made above in that it is only when we look back over a considerable past time frame will we recognise when that swing actually began.
The pollies will very quietly slither over to a new political meme to accommodate the societal shift to the right [ or left ] when it becomes obvious it is politically advantageous to do so.
The great democratic tradition which we have inherited here in Australia with our British based parliamentary and democratic system is the requirement that our electorates must be drawn up so as to give as equal representation to the left and right in EACH of our political electorates as possible.
This has prevented all of our political parties straying very far from the political centre as the voting patterns are so close in most electorates.
So each political party and the pollies immediately become politically vulnerable as soon as they stray too far from the political centre when a small portion of the electors in an electorate decide they don’t like either the stance their representative is taking or that of his / her party is taking or are sick to death of all of them but just want to try someone new
Through this equality of voting intentions as derived and drawn up and represented by electorate boundary changes derived from the voting patterns at the various booths, we have avoided the excesses of highly biased left or right electorates having an undue and politically corrupting effect on our political power structures.
The equality of the voting tendencies in our electorates has also had a very inhibiting effect and has reigned in the high levels of corruption seen so often in other countries with a much more concentrated level of left or right voting patterns in the electorates in their electorate system.
A pollie who will never be defeated because of the [ deliberately ] biased voting patterns in his / her electorate can get all sorts of scams going to his / her political and personal friends and supporters benefit and to the detriment of the society and the political system as a whole.
30
Are you saying they’re “reactionary”, not visionary as they would have us believe?
10
Pollies surprisingly are humans under their political skin so you get the full spectrum of human beliefs, capabilities, faults, abilities and guiding personal philosophies as well as the full range all the way from reactionary to visionary in the collective of politicians, just like the rest of society which the pollies are a product of.
They usually start out trying to be visionary which takes a rare ability to actually achieve until they have a political patch to protect and then the reactionary meme is likely to set in but not always for some politicians
00
15 Oct: RT: Russia develops hybrid fusion-fission reactor, offers China role
The project is open for international collaboration, particularly from Chinese scientists…
A hybrid fusion-fission reactor may be several times more efficient than a traditional fission reactor. And building one is “a goal for tomorrow” rather than the distant future, as is the case for a fusion reactor like the famous France-based International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) that Russia collaborates on, Kovalchuk said…
http://rt.com/news/196088-russia-hybrid-nuclear-reactor/
10
***”cearly propelled along by public concern” is just one of the Kenny fantasies in this attack on the PM.
check out the photo!
17 Oct: Canberra Times: Mark Kenny: Tony Abbott may yet be on the wrong side of history on climate change debate
PHOTO CAPTION: Fossil Fool (Abbott)
Through history, generals have been criticised for basing their strategies on past experiences – the folly of fighting the previous war. It is a trap for market analysts too – missing the risk factors building in front of them as they ward off the causes of the last recession.
So why should politicians be any different? In Canberra this question should be front and centre particularly in relation to the issue Barack Obama recently called the urgent and growing threat of climate change…
Now with the US economy improving and the alarming evidence of global warming continuing to mount, there is again a sense of urgency…
Three successive Liberal leaders, ***clearly propelled along by public concern, embraced strong market interventions: John Howard, Brendan Nelson, and Malcolm Turnbull…
“Mr Obama’s international adviser at the White House, Caroline Atkinson, said the G20 economies generated 80 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions and should give a political push to ‘specific steps’ to reduce global warming,” The Australian Financial Review reported last week…
The big players, the US, EU, and China, are preparing to set those targets in the first quarter of 2015 as they move towards the major climate change summit in Paris in December…
Abbott began this week talking about coal as “essential for the prosperity of Australia and … the prosperity of the world … for many decades to come”.
True enough, but he may end his first term talking about much stronger action on climate change whether he likes it or not after being “reverse Copenhagened” in Brisbane, Lima, and Paris.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/tony-abbott-may-yet-be-on-the-wrong-side-of-history-on-climate-change-debate-20141016-116ngz.html
16 Oct: Scientific American: Gayathri Vaidyanathan: Natural Gas Offers Little Benefit in Fight against Global Warming
Natural gas’s impact as a bridge fuel to a cleaner energy future has been oversold, new research suggests
The question is important given that the United States has become the biggest natural gas producer in the world…
The Obama administration has supported the gas industry, even as low prices have prompted utilities to switch from coal to gas for electricity generation…
The Nature study finds that abundant use of gas by nations would hardly make a dent in warming by 2050…
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/natural-gas-offers-little-benefit-in-fight-against-global-warming/
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still flogging away…
17 Oct: The Conversation: Jeremy Williams: Abbott’s G20 agenda: climate still the elephant in the room
(Jeremy Williams is Professor & Director, Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith Business School at Griffith University)
(Disclosure: Jeremy Williams is a member of the Queensland Greens)
President Obama’s deputy national security adviser for international economics, Caroline Atkinson, has made the point that, as the G20 economies generate 80% of the world’s carbon emissions, the group should give a political push to “specific steps” to address climate change…
This week’s pronouncement that “coal is good for humanity” is unlikely to win too many plaudits among G20 leaders with the possible exception of Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper….
The latest Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Index (September 2014) produced by EY shows China leading the way with the US in second place…
http://theconversation.com/abbotts-g20-agenda-climate-still-the-elephant-in-the-room-32810
shame on Oxfam for their exaggerations & pretense of concern for the poor:
17 Oct: Guardian: Clar Ni Chonghaile: Fossil fuel industry supported by a ‘toxic triangle’ that puts 400 million at risk
Political inertia, financial short-termism and vested fossil fuel interests threaten to push up global temperatures, says Oxfam
In its Food, Fossil Fuels and Filthy Finance report, Oxfam warned that EU leaders must resist pressure from the fossil fuel industry, which spends at least Euros 44 million (£35m) a year on lobbying the European bloc, and commit to cuts of at least 55% in carbon dioxide emissions, energy savings of at least 40% and an increase in the use of sustainable renewable energy to at least 45% of the energy mix…
“The world’s poorest are already being hit hardest and millions more will be made hungry by climate change,” the Oxfam chief executive, Mark Goldring, said…
European governments should give much of the revenue from the phasing out of direct and indirect subsidies for hydrocarbons to the Green Climate Fund,” he wrote.
The United Nations’ Green Climate Fund aims to help developing nations tackle the consequences of climate change, such as increased flooding, and invest in cleaner energy…
It also wants governments to shift investment to renewables, energy efficiency and policies to make sure the poorest people are able to access energy…
Fossil fuel and energy-intensive companies in the private sector must diversify their business models to embrace a low-carbon future, and investors should put money into low-carbon development and challenge firms that pursue high-carbon strategies, it says…
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/17/fossil-fuel-toxic-triangle-440-million-at-risk
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18 Oct: AFR: John Hewson: Reaction to ANU’s move is excessive
(John Hewson is a former leader of the Liberal Party and executive chairman of Shartru Capital)
ANU reportedly hired independent consultants to provide an assessment of their portfolio on ESG – environmental, social and governance – grounds, and decided to divest from seven companies that ranked at the bottom of that assessment – some $16 million worth of shares, from a $1.1 billion fund, and mostly insignificant relative to the market cap of any the companies concerned…
Some of the responses,such as that from David Byers of APPEA, have exaggerated and argued that ANU is divesting from fossil fuels, when it is clearly not, even though some of the companies from which it is divesting are from that sector…
However, as revealed by the Asset Owner’s Disclosure Project (AODP), which I chair, there should be no doubt that, globally, pension and superannuation funds university endowment funds, and other asset owners are running an extreme “climate risk”, investing as they do some 55 per cent of their funds in carbon- exposed industries, and less that 2 per cent of those funds in low-carbon intensive industries…
As pointed out by Hank Paulson, former US Treasury secretary, the world is risking a climate-induced financial crisis that would dwarf the recent global financial crisis. However, AODP is not campaigning for divestment per se, rather identification, disclosure and management of climate risk by these global asset owners. Divestment may be an option (as we’ve seen with the Stanford and Rockefeller funds), but so is hedging, or simply increasing investment in low-carbon industries, to spread the risk within the portfolio…
Within this context, the Abbott government is so far off the pace that cabinet is revealing something of a “siege mentality” on climate issues as it strikes out at any who dares to question them…
If I was an Australian super fund I would be concerned that I could be next to be directed to support some other government folly!***
http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/reaction_to_anu_move_is_excessive_BpsdPP53g0kHTH3yqjjCcI
***what, not another folly like CAGW, Hewson?
click on Carol A. Adams name for FULL DETAILS of her many CAGW connections:
17 Oct: The Conversation: Divestment backlash shows companies need to improve sustainability reporting
by Carol A. Adams, Professor at Monash University
(Disclosure Statement: Carol A Adams is a part time Professor at Monash University and consults through Integrated Horizons. She writes on her website ‘Towards Sustainable Business’ at http://www.drcaroladams.net)
Tony Abbott’s criticisms of the ANU’s divestment decision will come back to bite him. The tide of change is such that Vice-Chancellor Ian Young and the ANU Council will be seen as leaders. Others will follow…
Universities have a history of being a force for good…
Of course, we must not forget that in making the decision to divest, Ian Young and the ANU Council were responding to student protests. They are the true leaders in all of this.
http://theconversation.com/divestment-backlash-shows-companies-need-to-improve-sustainability-reporting-33079
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How could anyone be bored with 97% settled climate science humour?
September 11, 2014: Climate change could leave sharks unable to hunt
As more and more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, the ocean is acidifying too quickly for sharks to keep up.
For at least one species, the cost could be the vital sense of smell.
Without its ability to detect the odors of prey, the smooth dogfish could be left high and dry.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-could-leave-sharks-unable-to-hunt-20140911-10f8he.html
Shark hides from Carbon Dioxide!
16 Oct. 2014: Shy shark to thrive from climate change, Qld researchers say
Researchers have subjected the sharks to increased levels of carbon dioxide …
Epaulette sharks are shy, and Dr, Rahama(?) says that makes them the perfect candidates to survive climate change.
“The shark is constantly hiding in the coral reef and, almost creating a challenging micro-habitat for itself.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-16/shy-shark-to-thrive-from-climate-change-qld-researchers-say/5820468
The history of sharks goes back a long time.
http://www.sharksider.com/history-of-sharks.html
But the term “a long time” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Let’s put it this way: dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic Era, which began about 245 million years ago. Sharks, on the other hand, were living on the planet 200 million years before dinosaurs!
Is it starting to sink in now?
Sharks are without a doubt one of the oldest creatures this planet has ever known.
. . .
So, the meek shall inherit the earth?
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Climate change a CSIRO priority as new chief looks to secure funding
Larry Marshall says global warming is high on the public’s agenda because ‘the science is so compelling’
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/oct/15/climate-change-a-csiro-priority-as-new-chief-looks-to-secure-funding?CMP=twt_gu
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A fine example of what PeterC was discussing in #4 above.
It is of serious concern that increasing the proportion of scarce resources allocated to climate change is the most useful action CSIRO can think of. Even more so that they are proposing (publically) to cut useful programs such as radio astronomy and the high security Animal Health Laboratory to pay for this silliness. It is really making a travesty of a once great public institution.
I guess the silver lining is that it shows that there is more fat to be trimmed from the organisation if this is the best its collective mind can come up with.
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You can tell it is a private club to get money.
When was the last time the CSIRO or BOM criticized the IPCC conclusions? Are they always right? Are the only problems with the so called sceptics, who actually pay for all this and want answers to reasonable questions? How are those international all expenses paid conferences? Does anyone in the huge Climate Industry ever find fault with any of their peers or the endless wrong predictions?
We all know what happened to Professor Murry Selby when he said the models were all wrong. Dumped overseas with no return plane ticket and no credit card and no job. No one dares question the Climate Industry.
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17/01/2004:
It’s 2070, and Up north, the Arctic is now little more than an oversized iceberg, and the Inuit and polar bears are long gone.
This is the worst-case scenario for global warming, as forecast by the CSIRO and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The IPCC (and CSIRO) relied heavily on the Mann paper in coming to their global warming conclusions.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/16/1073878029212.html
31 March 2006
This 40-page consultancy report written for the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change is by CSIRO’s Dr Benjamin Preston and Dr Roger Jones, and addresses the impact of climate change on Australia.
http://www.csiro.au/resources/pfbg
APRIL 04, 2011
The CSIRO has meanwhile today called for a carbon price to be a key part of the nation’s overall climate action.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-change-to-mean-fewer-cyclones-and-smaller-waves-says-csiro-research/story-e6frg6xf-1226033322365
November 13, 2011– Carbon tax hit small: CSIRO
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/carbon-tax-hit-small-csiro-20111112-1ncvq.html
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jo – read it all. not at all convincing:
16 Oct: WND: Leo Hohmann: Alexa answers critics: ‘We’re impartial’ in ranking websites
After nearly three days of silence, a California company that ranks the popularity of Internet websites has responded to charges of bias against watchdog news-media sites.
In an unsigned official statement sent through Facebook, San Francisco-based Alexa Internet Inc., which is a subsidiary of Amazon, said it has not changed its methodology and stands by the accuracy of its rankings…
http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/alexa-answers-critics-were-impartial-in-ranking-websites/
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17 Oct: Australian: (Unattributed: Milne backs calls for ‘green’ court
MOVES by the International Bar Association to establish an international court for the environment have been welcomed by Greens leader Christine Milne.
“If you consider that we have the International Criminal Court to bring the powerful to justice when they commit mass atrocities against innocent people, it makes perfect sense to have an international court of the environment,” Senator Milne said…
The taskforce, which includes Chief Justice Brian Preston of the NSW Land and Environment Court, will seek endorsement of its scheme at next week’s IBA conference in Tokyo.
The report also proposed drawing up a model statute that would clear the way for individuals and community groups to seek injunctions in climate change litigation against governments…
The plan has been criticised by leading business groups and West Australian Attorney-General Michael Mischin, who described it as a “political manifesto” masquerading as a legal opinion…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/milne-backs-calls-for-green-court/story-e6frg97x-1227092943998
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And another step towards a world government is made….
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16 Oct: New Scientist: Fred Pearce: Climate sceptics exploit double standards of eco-warriors
(Fred Pearce is a consultant for New Scientist)
When former UK environment minister Owen Paterson addressed the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation last night, his diatribe on global warming and demands to ditch emissions targets were based on far-fetched arguments. Greenpeace would undoubtedly call this “data manipulation”. But the environmental group has a problem. In employing similar tactics in its campaign against genetically modified crops, it has undermined its own scientific credibility and its ability to shoot down Paterson…READ ON
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26397-climate-sceptics-exploit-double-standards-of-ecowarriors.html
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I wonder why. Could it be the abject failure of 20 years worth of predictions by any chance?
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