Malcolm Colless, Y2K, the ozone layer, global warming, and the guns of Singapore

The dumb level of debate continues on the question of global warming, and Malcolm Colless is right up there on the stupidity scale.

Heating beat-up has echoes of Y2K, he scribbles, and then opens up with this intro:

Remember Y2K? This was the new millennium bug that we were told threatened to throw the world's computer systems into chaos as we entered the year 2000.

Aircraft could fall from the sky and businesses crash in a global digital catastrophe, we were warned. Panic set in and billions of dollars were spent across the world to head off this impending armageddon.

In this mad rush there was no room for sceptics. The evidence of the looming danger was overwhelming and undeniable, regardless of the fact that it sounded like something out of a science-fiction movie. Action had to be taken and no price was too high.

Well, the tsunami turned out to be nothing more than a ripple in a pond, if that.

Um, that ripple on the pond? I wonder if that had anything to do with the IT industry and associated players shelling out what's been estimated at up to US $280 billion worldwide to tackle the problem?

Which is how come in the year 2000, there were a few minor glitches but nothing spectacular happened. On February 29th there were a few problems with credit cards, mobile phones and other glitches, but it was nothing to get excited about.

Sure a few people made out like bandits and spread FUD to help them overcharge the mugs (lordy, some people even got their digital toasters and fridges checked). But at the same time, there were real problems, requiring a fix.

The reality was that many of the programs on older computers had been developed in the nineteen seventies on the expectation that they'd be long gone by the time 2000 would toddle around.

So between the alarmists and the deniers, there was of course reality (and if you want to read a transcript of an ABC Science Show story on the subject, you can go here). Don't believe the ABC figure? Go here for other cost estimates.

Colless of course can hide behind the fact that nothing happened, because a lot of moola was spent designed to ensure that nothing happened. But what if no money had been spent? What then? Well of course we'll never know, because the "what if" scenario wasn't allowed to be explored, or allowed to happen.

But not content with drawing an entirely irrelevant analogy with Y2K, Colless then goes on to blather on about the ozone layer:

Does all this have a familiar ring to it? Of course. It is the same type of argument that is being foisted on us by the Rudd government over global warming and its threat to the future of civilisation as we know it.

Think about it. The blame for any disaster caused by the fanciful Y2K bug had to rest with mankind's development of digital technology. And mankind is back in the blame game, this time responsible for global warming.

Remember, it was not so long ago that we were confronted with the unnerving prospect of being fried like eggs on a hotplate as a result of a widening hole in the ozone layer of the atmosphere.

The hole is apparently still there, although it has stopped expanding and has, in fact, started shrinking. Coincidentally, it is now playing second fiddle to global warming in the climate change debate.

Does this have a familiar ring to it? You know, the way the hole is shrinking, just like Y2K never happened?

Of course. It exhibits the same stupidity as the rant about Y2K.

Is it surprising that the ozone hole has started shrinking?

Has any of this got to do with the Montreal Protocol of 1987 which produced an international commitment to reduce and eliminate the use of CFCs, which in turn led to the ban of CFC production after 1995? And Ozone Depleting Substances, which were supposed to be phased out by 2000, underwent an accelerated phase out.

How hard is this to understand? For Colless, it seems remarkably hard:

But just as we were told to disregard any suggestion that a hole in the ozone layer could be, in large part anyway, caused by Earth's natural evolution, so we must accept that global warming cannot be attributed to any natural changes in the planet's climactic cycle. No. It is all our fault.

Huh? Natural evolution? WTF? Now Darwin's somehow in the works?

For a singularly stupid understanding of cause and effect, this really does take the cake (if you want to wiki on the subject of the ozone layer, go here).

So by the time I got on to what Colless had to say on global warming, I'd lost interest. Two really profoundly dumb analogies and you're out. I guess I should have allowed three strikes, but when I read the first comment from a reader about artillery batteries being built in Hobart in the early nineteen hundreds in case the Russians were coming, I had a fried egg seizure.

Because it's the perfect Colless analogy. They built guns and the Russians didn't come (we had a nice set in Sydney too). But what if they hadn't built the guns and the Russians did come? Or what if the aborigines had built a six foot wall around coastal Australia and Captain Cook hadn't come, preferring to go directly to Hawaii to die?

I guess it was too much for that goose to remember that there were artillery batteries built in Singapore, just in case someone, anyone might come. They did. The Japanese. And the artillery batteries were facing out to sea. Great if anyone came from the sea. Tremendous naval base, virtually impregnable. Pity the Japanese came overland by crossing the jungle behind Singapore. Then advancing by land while mounting air attacks.

Don't start me on the Maginot line.

Where on earth does The Australian dig up these clowns to scribble a few apparently sentient sentences on global warming.

Well there was a couple of commenters who warmed the cockles of my heart:

Yet another in a long line of truly idiotic and dishonest pieces of ideologically driven, fact-free, anti-science drivel from The Australian. Do you guys have no shame at all?

Non-clear thinking: there is no valid analogy between events surrounding Y2K, which involved only human-made computers and programming, and humankind's interaction with natural ecosystems.

Nice own-goal Malcolm. This might just take the cake for the stupidiest piece to the ever grace the pages of a newspaper that is no stranger to idiotic commentary on AGW.

Tch tch guys, you're way too rational and coherent for me. How could you restrain yourselves when confronted with a prize buffoon?

Sadly Colless probably doesn't know how stupid he sounds, but who's the editor on this rag? Why not try to get a sceptic who is convincing and coherent? Where's the harm in that?

There might well be questions about global warming, there might well be questions about the government's current ETS scheme. But please oh lord don't let them be asked by Malcolm Colless, unless you want that stout-hearted engineer Steve Fielding to sound like a rocket scientist.

Did Malcolm Colless's family have anything to do with the design of Singapore's defence? Here's a Singapore naval defence gun being tested in December 1941. By golly, they gave the seagulls a hard time that day. Pity about the Japanese.