The pond is acutely aware that the comedy of the day is happening elsewhere in the soap suds of daily life - as when the lizards of Oz ran a story promoting the Seven promotion for Barners' shame, before he hopped in to meet Malware and then headed out of town, apparently unaware that he'd certified that his ongoing saga was worth meaningful moola to the more low-life forms of the media …
But the pond must remain true to its mission, and who better to celebrate the reptile mission with than that old stager, Bjorn …
Sorry Ron, the news that you're paying for the lizard Oz immediately means your thoughts must be discounted, and worse, what have you got against dog-poop?
Surely you could have found something a little more appropriate … say dinosaur poop … why you could have sounded quite fancy saying that the lizards of Oz output was worse than coprolite …
Such technicalities aside, the pond could by now write a Bjorn piece in its sleep.
Take a soft target - now they're hating babies, won't someone think of the babies - and blather away and then conclude that climate change isn't so bad after all, and won't cost much, but a few things should be done - not too many mind, maybe a little R and D - and then pocket the loose change, and then wander off like a Barners in search of Armidale …
Now let's see how the pond did …
Now the pond doesn't want to be thought of as a Dick Smith, but the thought that the world might reach 10 billion or so by 2050, and many of them will aspire to the status of obese Americans devouring resources so they can drive around in ridiculously large trucks occasionally gives the pond a little pause for thought … until it remembers that it won't be around, and with a cheerful wave to the young 'uns, wanders off for a rest, like Barners heading to Armidale …
As for the rest, the moment that the dissembling Bjorn scribbles a line like "the truth is", the truth is the pond reaches for its Glock …
Bjorn has never really shown much interest in the truth, as opposed to dissembling, skewering and distorting…
It's in his nature, and tt's beyond the sanguine and the optimistic to quote the US expecting emissions to drop over the next few decades …
Why that's to bring into question the enormous capacity of the Donald and his minions of the Pruitt kind to do their worst …
The last the pond checked world-wide emissions were still on the rise, here, and the Donald might well manage to turn the US around and help in the process, especially if assorted states can't stop him…
But begone dull care, good luck young 'uns, it's time for the good news portion of the Bjorn post …
Uh huh. It so happens that the only place you can read about this talk of "zero net cost" is in the lizard Oz - it last turned up on January 3rd 2018 with the author urging that green energy R and D was the best defence against warming … who might that author have been?
Of course everyone wants zero net costs, but to arrive at this sort of blithe assurance is to walk through a minefield of hotly contested definitions and values … and Bjorn manages the sort of expert fudge the pond expects from a US caramel lover, when it might be better to read other works on the estimated costs of economic damage, as at the Graudian here ...
But having a discussion on Bjorn's terms is a meaningless exercise. He has a mantra, a litany, and he always sticks to it through thick and thin, and the end result is always the same twaddle, with the same routine about confronting the challenge, and spending a little on R and D, and meanwhile, everything is hunky dory and let's get on with devouring what the world has to offer, because where's the harm?
Meanwhile, the pond has lost its chance of comedy for the day, and there's much comedy to be found …
Dorothy
ReplyDeleteMy hope is we will get more commentators like you who seek to reveal the way politics is played in Australia and who are just mouth pieces for the radical right and take these people task.
Watching senate estimates and the way these bloody public servants have been browbeaten to tow the party line when questioned by opposition senators is just so breathtaking.
These people seem to have identified the problem
Deletehttps://youtu.be/sitPeRlTdNs
The solution involves Dorothy's Glock. Any chance of rational politics disappeared with the election of Abbott.
Bjorn quotes "one young woman": "I know that humans are hardwired to procreate..."
ReplyDeleteActually, no they're not. Maybe some human males are "hardwired" to get their wives repeatedly pregnant, but that's not quite the same thing. As soon as women manage to get some independence, some education and just a modicum of self-determination, the "fertility rate" drops markedly.
Just consider that hotbed of maximal procreation, the Chinese: "China's family planning commission has revealed the country's birth rate dropped by 3.5 per cent last year, despite moves over the past couple of years to fully end the one-child policy."
China's birth rate drops despite end of one-child policy - http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-19/chinas-birth-rate-drops-despite-end-of-one-child-policy/9344634
Surely it's bleedin' bloody obvious that if the total human population was around 2 billion (as it was around 1927), then we'd barely have a problem. Even at 3 billion (as it was around 1960), we'd have less that half of the problem we have now.
But Bjorn doesn't give any pointer(s) to his asserted "global survey of all scientific estimates of the costs of climate change" does he. I wonder why.
https://grist.org/article/infamous/
DeleteYeah, our born-again Bjorg is a wonder.
DeleteIn days of yore I once encountered the proposition that, to arrive at a valid conclusion one needed accurate and adequate data, rigourous logic and sound reasoning. So far, so good; but once a conclusion is reached it seems, all the passion rousing and action raising emotional efforts are needed. So, at least some motivational commitment must be aroused.
But then we have the Lomborgs of the world, who start with the passionate emotion and only later, if ever come to attempting to apply reason. But they have no experience in applying reason, so, as with Lomborg's turnover, they go from one unreasoned position to the opposite, with no loss of passion in between.
This phenomena has been commented on in many cases, more usually of the 'rabid communist becomes rabid Roman Catholic, or vice versa' variety, but we have had a few in the environmental sphere - going from, or to, some irrationally passionate position. Lomborg is just one of the lesser examples - but, like Monckton, simple minded enough for the reptiles to grab hold of.