Greens using “think-tank” witchhunt

The emotional babies in Parliament will do anything to avoid discussing certain ideas on their merits.

The Australian Department of Education has been asking specialists if their appointed curriculum reviewers have been “connected” with two of Australia’s most prominent non-leftist think tanks. The crime apparently is to consort with the scum who ask if big-government is too big.

Both the IPA and CIS support free markets, individual liberty and limited government.

South Australian Greens senator, Penny Wright, wants to know.

“This is outright McCarthyism,” IPA deputy director James Paterson said. “It is pretty much ‘Are you now or have you even been a member of the IPA?’ ”

Should we or should we not teach points X, Y or Z to the children of Australia? Green-logic says it depends on whether the person making the decision has ever been associated with the IPA or the CIS. Presumably reviewers who’ve been published by Green Left Weekly, the CFMEU, The Wilderness Society, Greenpeace, or The Australian Conservation Foundation should be weeded out too. Right?

Maybe not.

The lead author of the original history curriculum was Melbourne University historian Stuart Macintyre. His connections were not pursued by the Greens. Professor Macintyre was once a member of the Communist Party.

The unspoken implication is that merely being associated with highly respected, law abiding organizations that question the value of big-government is something that needs to be disclosed.

The battle of words

To fight this kind of irrational reasoning, the grown-ups need more tools in the language box. What word describes someone who is afraid to debate the point, or so confused about logical arguments that they ask loaded questions with the aim of denigrating their opponent? What word do we use for someone who repeatedly uses this meta-tactic to avoid polite debate? All the choices for “illogical” are here, but none seem be specific. Suggest away…

Our national conversation is stuck in kindergarten, debating and discussing various forms of name-calling. Every time we need a whole newspaper article with quotes to describe why this is such a bad idea, it tells us that we need words to describe these meta-tactics, and we need to teach them. If we have to have a National Curriculum (and we don’t), shouldn’t we at least make sure all children learn to spot the cheats and cop-outs by they way they dissemble, avoid the topic, and use character assassination as their main tool of debate.

Stick ad hominem in your curriculum.

There is no reasoning with the unreasonable

The only response to pointless, insulting questions is to satirize or scorn them:

Associate Professor Melleuish said he was selected for the review because of his extensive curriculum work for Liberal and Labor governments.

“It is an attempt to taint people by association,” he said. “There is a strange idea around, especially online, that the IPA somehow has a pernicious effect on the government.”

University of Wollongong historian Greg Melleuish said he was happy to answer the question because he had “nothing to hide”.

Unfortunately we can’t just ignore them:

Other academics confirmed they had received the request and decided not to respond.

They found the questions insulting, seemingly suggesting that publishing with these highly regarded organisations devalued their expertise.

Publicise.  Publicise. Publicise. The light of day battles the dopey dark.

 

9.4 out of 10 based on 108 ratings

155 comments to Greens using “think-tank” witchhunt

  • #
    Unmentionable

    I guess the right to freedom of speech and freedom of association is out then. Any other core human rights they want to eliminate, or tend to take exception to? Or are they content to just blacken and denigrate the name, bonafides and hard-copy of unbelievers and infidels?

    Maybe some public denunciations, flogging and be cruelly forced to listen to an endless loop of Christine Milne and Sarah Hansen-Young whining, for seven years straight, whilst held captive in a leech-infested Tasmanian wilderness re-education camp?

    Stuff that! I repent!!

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      … the right to freedom of speech and freedom of association is out then.

      If you give those away, then you are guaranteed to loose … everything … eventually … in the most unpleasent way possible.

      The left use familiar words, in a slightly distorted way – like a carnival mirror. We have to use words that they don’t use, to describe what they are doing, and do so with very specific definitions.

      My candidates are:
      1. casuistic or casuistical – oversubtle; intellectually dishonest. It is a nice way of implying that somebody is lying through their dentures.

      2. sophistic or sophistical – alternative words to the above. I quite like these, because people think they mean “sophisticated”, so they take it as a complement.

      These words are often followed by the word “distinctions”, meaning a dishonest splitting of hairs.

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      • #
        RB

        eg.

        There is the AGW unrelated affair of the award winning Colebatch book. Professor Stanley of the ANU wrote for the Drum

        The specialists who have looked into his versions of the events he cites have found many errors. For example, he claims that the pilfering (possibly by wharf labourers) of valves rendered a radar station inoperative and led to the loss of American bombers returning from a raid on Rabaul. On investigation, Colebatch got wrong at least the identity of the supposed radar unit, the type of aircraft involved, the air force to which they belonged and, indeed, whether the incident actually happened.

        Sounds academic except Stanley just talked to the sot Mike Carlton who couldn’t find the records of another soldier so doubted that he existed. It looks like Carlton looked up Monk instead of Monks.

        More importantly, Colebatch quoted a 1992 book, Radar Yarns, correctly. In it, the RAAF sergeant writes that he wasn’t sure if it was the US or NZ airforce. It was the RAAF (No. 24 Squadron) who had the Vulteers at the base along with a US squadron and and the NZAF who had the 8 corsairs lost in the incident. A significant error but the sergeant was the witness to the missing tubes and not the the doomed mission.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Well they also hijack works like “denier” and “sceptic” to imply backward thinking.

        I agree – unless we tackle the Red Menace ( and actually call it that ) head on, it will sweep rationale out the window and we will have communism & extreme propaganda very quickly.

        We need to teach our kids thatthe Red menace cant be trusted, and will do you in if they get the chance. The only thing that holds them at bay ios exposing them, their tactics and what socialism MEANS for our standard of life and what happens to people under communism.

        If Socialist teachers yell at us or discipline our kids for thinking right wing , we need to tell the kids *why* the teachers behave they way they do. My child knows very clealry teachers dont know everything ( at age 8 ) and some stuff they teach is plain wrong. So it upsets the teachers, so what. We need to inculcate into our kids a need QUESTION AUTHORITY.

        Socialists hate being stood up to – which is why they whine and cry “VICTIM” so quickly – they are sneaky sods, so dont be afraid to verbally rip into them if needed and expose their lies.

        DOnt name call – jsut expose the lies. Once their cred is gone, they are impotent.

        We have to be jsut as relentless as they are.

        A population that cant be lied to and holds them accountable, cant be controlled…..

        40

    • #
      NielsZoo

      Any other core human rights they want to eliminate…

      Ummm, yes. That would be all of them! They truly wish to control you and make all your choices for you so those pesky “rights” aren’t really needed any more ’cause they know what’s best… just ask them.

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    • #
      Annie

      Sorry UM…thumbs down not intended…was scrolling

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Baaad Annie … 😉

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      • #
        Robert

        Shhh… Just blame it on the red thumb troll.

        31

        • #
          the Griss

          Must be a very SAD existence when your soul cause in life is to give red thumbs on JoNova.

          Yet he/she/it, is always here. Very sad! 🙂

          50

          • #
            NielsZoo

            At a penny per 10 thumbs from their Progressive “employers” they’ll be able to move out of mom’s basement about the same time it will take sea levels rise 3 meters.

            30

      • #
        NielsZoo

        I understand. I have a possessed touchpad that refused to let me turn off “gestures.” There are times when I really miss CPM and DOS.

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        • #
          sophocles

          … then switch to Unix and you can have both CPM and DOS on the same system at the same time 🙂
          it also does Windows (in its own window) and the X Gui all at the same time. Loads of fun.

          Yes, FLY it’s OT, sorry, just this once.

          00

  • #
    Peter Miller

    Censorship is the number 1 weapon in the alarmists’ arsenal, which is one of the reasons “the science is settled” is so important to them.

    In the old days the controllers of thought were organisations like the KGB and the Spanish Inquisition, nowadays we have the climate inquisition and Save the World/greenie politicians.

    Intolerance of contrary opinions is one of the best ways to judge whether or not something is inherently wrong. The last remaining factor, outside of dodgy computer model predictions, to support alarmist theory is fast disappearing – the late summer Arctic Ocean extent and volume has been doing something very inconvenient over the past few years, it has been growing fast!

    And lest we forget, the alarmists outfund the sceptics by at least a thousand to one and have the left leaning media on their side, yet the number of sceptics continue to grow as they continue to expose the shams, hoaxes and the routine data manipulation of the Climate Establishment.

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    • #
      Allen Ford

      Intolerance of contrary opinions

      Whatever happened to that diversity the greenie/left is always banging on about?

      30

  • #
    Jon

    So if You are a non leftist your arguments have no value and you have no place in South Australia?

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    • #
      Chuck L

      Reminds me of NY Governor Andrew Cuomo saying earlier this year that “extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault—weapon, anti-gay…have no place in the State of New York” Lefties are the same no matter what country they live in.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Yes and let NY run down to the state of anarchy and collapse and then see who they ask to come in and clean up their incompetant mess…..the conservatives.

        Darkness hates the light – commiess hate christians ( who are usually Conservatives ) because they hold a higher standard than athieism AND wont worship the State, which is what they hate the most….

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    • #

      No place in south Australia?
      Don’t be silly Jon. I’m sure they don’t want non-lefties in north, west or east Australia either!

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      • #
        Jon

        They clearly have Agendas and cause they try to promote nationally and internationally. They clearly do not want the Australian people to become aware of what “two of Australia’s most prominent non-leftist think tanks” have to say about Australian Education?

        10

      • #
        Bill

        We face the same problem in Canada as well. The rational majority are being shouted down by the various fruitbats (including the green freaks) on all sides. We even had a green MP elected under highly questionable circumstances (with allegations of voting fraud in the riding which are NOT being investigated by Elections Canada) who opposes everything that is in the national interest.
        As for the CAGW/CC weenies, we who dare to ask questions and bring up inconvenient facts are labled as deniers (trying to equate us with that species of vermin that denies the historical fact of certain genocides) and denegrated as “luddites” (like any of them know what that means) in all the media. (See http://www.ctv.ca/news for axamples)
        It’s refreshing to find that there are still some out there who can think for themselves.

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  • #
    Bob in Castlemaine

    Lock it up and throw away the key, it’s all the same to the Green/Left, be it our forests or the prospect of free and open debate.

    192

  • #
    Manfred

    What word describes someone who is afraid to debate the point, or so confused about logical arguments that they ask loaded questions with the aim of denigrating their opponent? What word do we use for someone who repeatedly uses this meta-tactic to avoid polite debate?

    “SPECIOUS” as in, misleading might be a good single word start.

    But that’s just the beginning. Revealing the drama being played out is key. I know it’s ancient history but such dramas were once described in a popular book published in 1997 entitled: ‘The Celestine Vision’, author James Redfield. In this book the author described the control dramas played out by individuals seeking to control those around them. Such psychological dramatis personae included ‘the poor me’, ‘the aloof’, ‘the interrogator’ and ‘the intimidator’. Clearly, more than one persona may simultaneously occupy an individual’s drama to gain control…think Stephan Lewandowsky

    Gaining control of the drama revolves around identifying it in the first instance and calling it out in the second (confronting the controller with the knowledge that one is aware of the identity they are using to control – revealing the persona). With the subject subsequently refusing to ‘play’ or ‘engage’ in the drama, this change appears instrumental in undermining the ability of the orchestrator to control the relationship.

    In the wider societal meme of environmentalism, demonstrating that the politicised and aggressive activism (for example see Greenpeace’s destructive and disrespectful activity in Peru lately) bears no resemblance to the laudable idea of being intelligently concerned for the environment, and that the ‘green’ activism is nothing more than pure political ideology intent on totalitarian societal control becomes the goal of exposure.

    It seems nearly all the traditional guardians of integrity have folded, have become invertebrates. There appear few statesmen or women to take the stand, and the traditional fourth column has failed dismally and completely in its duty guaranteeing its eventual demise. Nevertheless, the fifth estate remains. That’s us and the wider internet. Make no mistake, this is where the rancid stalking horse of “climate change” is being exposed, the drama of environmentalism is being revealed and indeed where it will inevitably founder, necessarily through an informed ballot box.

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    • #
      Andrew

      I’m glad you mention Greenpeace. I’d like to see LNP Sen8rs writing to any of the swampies involved in renewables subsidy scams, carbon tax cheerleading or dozens of parasitic roles asked “Are you or have you ever been associated with Greenpeace?”

      This pernicious organisation has been accused of destruction of historical artefacts, and even piracy.

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      • #

        Peru might be adding that to their list after Greenpeace walked all over the sacredNazca lines to spread out a banner. My guess is Peruvians will not be welcoming any more Greenpeace members for while.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Manfred,

      That is very insightful. Thank you for that. The way you deal with “control drama” is to classify it, name it, rate it, and then give the person engaged in it a score, much like judges hold up score numbers following an ice skating performance. I did this with my kids, when they had a tantrum. With my kids, the tantrums stopped in short order.

      By rating the performance of the “control drama”, and comparing it to other performances, you not only appear to be trivialising their message, you are also emphasising the techniques used, so that other people can also analyse what is going on. It might take a while for the messages to sink in through the Green skulls, but the undecided fence sitters will cotton on soon enough.

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      • #
        john robertson

        Good call except the gang green never mentally developed past the tantrum stage.
        It is all control drama at “Save the bank account central”… I mean save the earth..Emotional drivel to appeal to emotional basket cases.. or the young and still stupid.
        I think this will blow up nicely, if a politician feels such innuendo is OK, then have you ever been a member of WWF,Sierra Club,Greenpeace,…is a fine reason to evict from public office.
        As the treason of these activists in positions of public trust is now public record.
        The false CAGW drama has cost 100s of thousands of lives(possibly millions but not yet quantified) and trillions of dollars, complete with incalculable loss of future benefits, there is STILL no science of the quality required to support the public policies imposed upon taxpayers.
        Science based policy (as claimed) without said science is what?
        False pretences?
        Blatant fraud?
        Religious zeal?
        All good grounds for summary dismissal.

        50

    • #
      Yeahbut

      Dang.
      You put that so well. One sees the daily dramas and evaluates them. We’ve been doing that for ages. It’s time we pushed the MSM out of their complacent acceptance/promotion of the nonsense and took them to task.
      Unfortunately that requires we have to step out of our comfort zone. Can’t leave it all up to Jo.

      30

  • #

    Lefties always reach for the club if gentle persuasion doesn’t carry the day.

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    • #
      C.J.Richards

      You mean like the Club of Rome ?
      They are rather ‘clubbie’ in outlook though Lefties, aren’t they.
      Often because they cann’t see their own self worth beyond the collective, so the dimmer of them will serve the idea of collective unquestioningly, while their ‘Leaders’ exploit them mercilessly.

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  • #
    diogenese2

    The word you are looking for is “Orwellian”. The concepts in “1984” of “doublethink” “newspeak” and “unperson” are clearly active today.
    In 1946 he wrote two essays “Politics and the English Language” and “The Prevention of Literature”. There is nothing that you can observe today that is not identified within them, excepting there extension into graphic images.

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    • #
      Matty

      Don’t you think ‘Orwellian’ may be just a tad wasted on, what are just ordinary, typically disingenuous, evasive, distracting and dissembling lefties throwing a tanty, because they don’t have an argument ?
      It’s all done by implication and association. Manipulators of the emotive rather than any respecters of reason.

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  • #
    PeterPetrum

    Listen up. I am a nobody who really loves this site. I am dumbfounded that a Senator would debase herself to ask this question. This is meant to be a House of Review. It is more like the Slanish Inquisition., I am becoming increasingly depressed. Au secures.

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    • #
      PeterPetrum

      I meant Spanish Inquisition. How did that happen. Too much malt!

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Or not enough water – I suffer with you brother.

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      • #
        Unmentionable

        Shake it off Peter, they’re just another tawdry bunch of green extremists talking-ass again. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it a thousand times again. They have adjustment-to-reality issues. But in the actually natural world that’s an inability to adjust to meet survival challenges. Stasis.

        Most of the green weirdos and hardline slanderers who sit down and think up this muck are just as motivated by the sort of thinking and radical strategies and tactics proposed in detail within Ted Kaczynski’s Manifesto.

        Most of them seem almost as twisted and much more like him than they’d be comfortable admitting to. If you sat them down and read to them that manifesto in full, without telling them what it was or who wrote it until the end, they’d be nodding in agreement all the way through it.

        Their closet version of a hero is in fact the Ted Kaczynski Archetype, and just like him, they can’t face a world in which humans are permitted human rights, plus a valid place and role in the natural environment which created humans. We have a perfectly natural right to do what humans do best and to make our way, and our niches, in this world, as much as any and all other species.

        More so in fact, as we are vastly more adaptable. If the Kaczynski-Archetype greenies want to look down on humanity and sneer, then they have serious deep-seated mental and anti-societal problems, that getting their way would never resolve anyway.

        I will never apologise to people like that for using my own brain to maintain a sense of proportion toward human activities on our planet.

        The trick to beating people who are rooted in such hardline eco-doomer mentality is to out-adapt them, out-stabilise them, out-smart them, out-compete them at every turn.

        … and of course boot the ideological dead-ender world-coming-to-an-end nonsense out of them when that’s called for.

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      • #
        Mike

        “Too much malt” is just enough!, with apologies to Mark Twain.

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Did you mean : “Au Secours” – French.

      or is that the Slanish equivalent?

      KK

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    • #
      Michael P

      I would ask the good Senator if she agrees that this country should be run under Communist party doctrine as they seem only to tolerate the democratic system that they have when it supports them.

      30

  • #
    Eddie

    Stick ad hominem in your curriculum

    .

    Bring Latin back to the curriculum and a foundation in logic & reasoning.

    Aristotle’s sophistical refutations should be compulsory reading for all citizens of modern society.

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  • #
    Peter C

    “There is no reasoning with the unreasonable”

    Help stop science being exploited by big government and greedy corporates. It’s becoming a crusade to get logic and reason to a government (and school) near you. Support the independent minds which push back. Thank you.

    It has become time to get on board. For the sake of our democracy if nothing else. We who are willing to act may be few, but I hope there are many more who will join in before we loose the lot.

    Above quote is from the Jonova tipjar (top right hand corner). Is there anyone else who represents the truth so clearly?

    Please go there!

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Thanks for the reminder: the Jonova tipjar

      KK

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    • #
      PeterPetrum

      Absolutely, please support Jo and David. Without these independent minds providing a forum and promoting argument we are lost. $10, $50, is only a small ammount for us, but keeps Jo doing what she is so good at. Please hit the tip jar.

      Thanks Peter, thanks Keith, Thanks to everyone. – Jo

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  • #
    Andrew

    Seriously, it doesn’t top supporting Big Refugee in the open borders disaster that left over 1000 dead, but this is the second most sickening thing the Greens have ever done in my book.

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  • #
    pat

    totalitarians comes in all stripes. only Nitin Sethi & Business Standard appear to be reporting the shenanigans going on in Lima. am not surprised at all. the MSM & the CAGW zealots prefer propaganda to reality. read all:

    13 Dec: Business Standard India: Nitin Sethi: Lima climate change talks: The endgame after a leaked agreement
    Talks on a precipice, developing countries unhappy
    On Thursday night, climate negotiations had turned into a script for a thrilling film on international intrigue. A document so far held secret was inadvertently leaked well before it was planned to be released by the United nations climate change convention secretariat. That set off a series of high-drama sequences which by night time, when talks were suspended again, had plunged the conference into uncertainty.
    The two co-chairs of the negotiations and the secretariat had planned to time the release of the document with the opening of talks on Thursday morning.
    The document was a replacement of the original draft agreement text that countries had negotiated over the past 10 days. Upon arriving in Lima, all countries had become aware that the agreement in Peru could potentially lock in critical features and content of the global climate change compact to be signed by the end of 2015 in Paris…
    The realisation made all countries negotiate furiously over 10 days to insert their ideas and interests in the draft Lima agreement. Consequently, the draft bloated to a 100-page document.
    On Wednesday, pointing to the unwieldy draft, several developed regions, including the European Union EU, asked that the co-chairs of the negotiations produce a concise version. Several developing countries, including India, objected immediately. They had become wary of the role of the co-chairs. Over the past week, they had appraised the two — one from the EU and another from Trinidad & Tobago — as being biased in favour of the developed countries. Some had said as much in language that bordered on abuse in the world of international diplomacy…
    “It’s an old game in multilateral forums. Start with a biased document, make countries react defensively to put their clauses in and make negotiations unwieldy and prolonged, then claim lack of time to produce a new document out of thin air at the last moment. This pressurises countries into a take-it-or-leave-it situation. You can then only do so much to protect your interests in the hours that are left,” said a seasoned Indian negotiator at Lima…
    RAISING QUESTIONS
    Developing countries’ concerns with the new draft Lima decision text
    (LENGTHY LIST OF CONCERNS)
    But Thursday morning held a twist to this old plot. Just as the meeting was to begin, the G77+China group asked for a sudden temporary halt to the discussions on the Lima decisions. They said they were working on a proposal which would break the impasse at the climate talks.
    The real reason was that the G77 had got wind of the co-chairs’ plans even before the meeting began. They accessed a leaked draft decision text when it was inadvertently put on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change website for a brief while and then withdrawn…
    http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/lima-climate-talks-endgame-after-a-leaked-agreement-114121201201_1.html

    12 Dec: Business Standard India: Nitin Sethi: Leaked secret Lima draft decision: The real reason why G77 group got the climate talks put on hold
    Draft heavily biased against developing countries, G77 assessed
    http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/leaked-secret-lima-draft-decision-the-real-reason-why-g77-group-got-the-climate-talks-put-on-hold-114121200044_1.html

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  • #
    Graeme No.3

    The Eduction system is dependent, one could say hooked, on Federal funding. Any suggestion that automatic and increasing funding results in hysteria.

    That the Left has captured the high ground, the Universities Admittance Boards and the bureaucracy in the various State Education Departments is obvious. The results have been a loss of standards and learning replaced by propaganda. Entrenched as they are, think only of defying the Federal Government and avoiding any change.

    It has been obvious for 15 years, at least, that the methods of the late Victorian era modified by the political correctness B.S. is not the way of the future. Increasingly smart students are moving to internet learning, but are handicapped by Wikipedia, Skeptical Science, and Google etc. as they are selectively fed what the Left think they should believe. You can see the result in the decline of quality comment from the various trolls, most of whom are ignorant of basic science, logic and grammar.

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    • #
      Spetzer86

      And it’s not just an Australian problem, but a curse inflicted on the Western world. This site: http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/ goes into the background behind the changes in Western education over the last 100 years. While it primarily deals with the Common Core thrust in the USA, UK and Australian programs are often discussed.

      10

  • #
    Ted O'Brien.

    Over the years Bob Hawke put down many a good man by declaring him associated with the League of Rights. Just because he had had something to say that fitted with something the League of Rights had had to say, not because he followed the League of Rights. For people who had to take time off work to defend themselves it was easier to just let it go and drop out of the argument.

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  • #
    Robert

    Is she constipated or do the greens always look that way?

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    • #
      Unmentionable

      I reckon Christine Milne eats a whole bag of salty-plumbs before every press conference to be able to perpetually maintain such a sour and craggy face to camera. Impressive.

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        Milne fell out of the Grinch tree and hit every bloody branch on the way down!

        I can picture her retiring in a lovely forest in a gingerbread house with a very hot oven…..

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      • #
        Andrew

        She is universally referred to by me as The Lemonsucker

        30

  • #
    pat

    12 Dec: Business Standard India: Nitin Sethi: No road map for finance before 2019, say developed countries
    But, demand the linked emission cuts of poor countries be reviewed in 2015
    http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/no-road-map-for-finance-before-2019-say-developed-countries-at-lima-climate-talks-114121101289_1.html

    & how is our MSM – what little of it is even reporting on the latest out of Lima – framing the latest developments???

    this is basically the entire Reuters/Alister Doyle “story”:

    13 Dec: Daily Mail: Reuters: Alister Doyle: In overtime, UN climate talks head for watered-down deal in Lima
    United Nations climate talks, which ran on into a an extra day on Saturday, are heading for a watered-down deal on limiting global warming, leaving many of the toughest issues for next year’s Paris summit.
    Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, hosting the talks, told delegates that a new text on Saturday morning to try to break impasses was not perfect, but reflected common ground.
    Rich and poor nations were at odds after two weeks of talks in Peru over how to share the burden of curbing rising world emissions and how to raise a promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help the poor cope with a warmer world…
    “We are pushing the big things to Paris,” one delegate said on Saturday in a break in the talks on how to avert more floods, heat waves, droughts and rising seas.
    China, the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, has resisted any scrutiny of its policy to cap its emissions by around 2030, delegates said, despite hopes of more openness after a pact last month with the United States to limit warming.
    “This is not in the spirit of the momentum that was offered by the pledge between the United States and China,” Jennifer Morgan, of the World Resources Institute think-tank, said of China’s position.
    The new draft text expressed “grave concern” that all promises to fight climate change were too lax to reach a goal of limiting global warming to an agreed goal of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times…
    It dropped a key demand by many developing nations to discuss compensation for loss and damage from climate change, such as from typhoons or rising sea levels.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/reuters/article-2872478/In-overtime-UN-climate-talks-head-watered-deal-Lima.html

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  • #
    Roger

    The left wing Marxists have a long term agenda to educate children into their beliefs. Commonplace in the UK and where an organisation called Common Purpose seeks to train people to do this and also to infiltrate them into the top levels of opinion formers and decision makers.

    They have made massive inroads through unions, public sector employees and charities all inextricably linked with the far left wing and worse.

    Part of the tactics are to try and discredit and remove from positions of influence all those who do not share their view of the world as these disguised Marxists want it to be – and their vision for the world is one seen through dark red glasses.

    Climate change, green policies and green agendas are simply part of the overall plan to replace democracy with unelected, unaccountable left-wing apparatchiks to govern our lives and, as soon as possible, the world.

    For about 15 years I have quietly expressed the view that the major challenge facing mankind in the 21st century is to retain democracy where it is under threat and recover it where it has already been lost such as in the EU.

    Communism has put on another face, it appears green but underneath it is as controlling and anti-democratic as it ever was in e USSR.

    Democracy is under far greater threat than ever it was during the 2nd world war or the Cold War and we need to realise that and make the effort to defend it against the insidious activities of the greens and the rest of their Marxist cohort.

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    • #
      el gordo

      ‘The left wing Marxists have a long term agenda …’

      The Marxists I talk to believe material progress is a good thing (as did Marx) and they despise the pseudo leftist scum (PLS) who have taken over the ABC and our education system.

      So don’t blame the Marxists, know your real enemy, they live amongst us in large numbers.

      58

      • #
        Dariusz

        Marxist never believed in the material progress. This is the big lie that they want us to believe. What they believe is for “each person according their needs” and that is a vastly different proposition. The Material progress is leading to the liberation of the masses not their control and subjugation. And this is not what the Marxists want. The fact that after 30 years my parents could finally buy a crappy Russian made car and my grandparents finally got 2 electric bulbs (the number was determined by the apparatchik following the above rule according to their needs) on their farm in the 1980-ties do not qualify as the material progress. Nor vast steel factories that produced tanks to fight Australians in Korea or Vietnam and now they are rust buckets. What Marxism has produced is poverty not progress, just look at North Korea or Cuba where almost any girl will prostitute for as little as a perfume or even less. Perhaps this is what you meant by the material progress, sarc.
        Marxist, communists, ageing nazis mixed with the new generation of watermelons and Islamists live amongst us wating for their hour and just like the 5th columns in Europe under hitler they will strike. But this fight may not be ours as we may be too old to fight. When the hour strikes the generation of our children will come and ask us: what did we do to prevent this?
        Just to clarify (again) I studied Marxism because I had too and lived in that progressive material paradise for 20 years. Never again.

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        • #
          el gordo

          I accept what you say, the dictatorship of the proletariat was never going to work, but the Australian Marxists live in the lap of luxury and hate the Greens. Not that they have any political relevance these days, after Julia’s escapades.

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          • #
            Unmentionable

            eg, never ever underestimate the venal stupidity and lefty tendencies of the average Australian bogan. If a grand financial and economic vandal like Anna Bligh(t) can even get elected, then re-elected and then re-re-elected after all of the major economic and financial damage she did in her first term alone, and then the catastrophe of her second term, a cheap carbon-copy knock-off of Gillard can most certainly be elected in a landslide at the next election. Bligh(t) was elected (without any merit) three times not via a display of actual leadership talent, but simply via the grace of the total and utter disarray, in-fighting and hopeless policy bog-nozzle of the QLD Nat/Libs during that period.

            For example:

            The QLD population is ~4.68 million people today, yet:

            Queensland’s public debt quadrupled from $21 billion in June 2004, to $85 billion in December 2011. Today, public debt is around $90 billion and on track for $92.5 billion by July [2012].

            http://theconversation.com/standing-in-the-shadow-of-debt-in-the-sunshine-state-5820

            And the State budget deficit in 2013-2014 was still at a ruinous, “2013-14 fiscal deficit of $6.083 billion“, projected to still be $2,271 billion in 2014-2015, and forecast smallish surpluses in the $500 to $800 mill range thereafter. Even as State Govt ‘expenses’ continue to rise from $47.149 bill in 2013-14, to $53.66 billion, in 2017-18.

            i.e. that’s an implicit promise to keep structurally cutting and mostly fining people and raising ‘surcharges’, even further, if Newman is re-elected. So that’s the ‘good news’ to look forward to, implied in the recent budget forecast.

            http://www.budget.qld.gov.au/budget-papers/2014-15/bp2-1-2014-15.pdf

            Keep in mind that the Federal public debt level of Australia when Howard came to power, in 1996, was just $96 billion AUD, but it took ten years of cuts, deficits and rigid discipline to unwind just that much.

            So this will amount to about ~$97 billion in debt to service and pay-down (or write-down?), split between just 4.7 million people, or:

            97,000,000,000 / 4,700,000 = $20,638 of debt per capita

            And understand this, that figure does not even include the costs of debt servicing until it is paid off – all dead money now!

            Qld’s GDP was $283.6 billion AUD in 2011-12, growing at ~3.5% per annum the following year, with ~3.3% inflation rate.

            So we can estimate Queesland’s resulting Public debt to GDP percentage (given the qld.gov is now so reticent to even publish one of these now, for fear that potential investors will gallop for the exits). Queensland’s public debt to GDP is today around;

            97,000,000,000 / 283,600,000,000 = 34%

            For contrast the debt to GDP situation for the whole of Australia in 1996 was:

            96,000,000,000 / $401,901,000,000 = 24%

            That will give you some faint grasp of the scale and scope of damage the Anna Bligh(t) Labor Party (drunken-sailor) ‘government’ did to Queensland, and they clearly put an axe to its financial adn economic innards, as quickly as they possibly could.

            ZERO RESTRAINT OR PRUDENCE

            “Queensland generated 19.5% of Australia’s gross domestic product in the 2008-09 financial year.”
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Queensland

            So Queensland has only 1/5th of the GDP % clout that Howard had to call on, in 1996 through 2007, to deal with the proportionately much smaller national debt.

            If QLD Labor were deliberately vandalising the state’s finances and future, you wouldn’t really be able to tell the difference. Right? And yet the State’s venal and ignorant voters kept on cheering Bligh(t) and voting her and the muck she ‘served’ with back in, again, and again.

            So I would suggest very strongly that it is not just the Greens who have have a closet barely hidden intent to completely destroy the $1.4 trill economy of Australia, and completely trash its financial future.

            Just look at the debt and deficit numbers that Labor governments generate, at both State and Federal levels, and it becomes inescapably clear that the Australian Labor Party are snakes in the grass injecting debt-venom into every economy, and as quickly as it possibly can now, while simply pretending to, “Go for Growth” – Bill Shorten (Dec, 2014).

            Conclusion: The Greens and Labor have a obvious common ideological economic destruction nexus, it is an actually anti-social shared interest, the economic and financial evidence and its implications are indelibly clear. They have an allied aim to undermine and destabilize the national and State finances and economy. The Labor party, in particular, have been working hard to shackle taxpayers to the banks, as quickly as they possibly can, to such an extent that we may never shake it off, crippling a further rise in economic well-being and prosperity.

            Everything else they say or claim to want, for Australians, is pure baloney, because what they actually DO, tells you precisely what they really want and are really all about doing in practice.

            So, never ever underestimate the stupidity of the Australian electorate, because the Labor and Green party zealots are absolutely depending on that continuing.

            Snakes, ladies and gentlemen.

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            • #
              the Griss

              “a cheap carbon-copy knock-off of Gillard ”

              It should be mentioned that Tony Abbott is yelling “sexism” against Peta Credlin.

              Now who does that remind you of ? !

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              • #
                Unmentionable

                In the end its the bottom line that matters and cuts through, its what wakes people up to things like green power scams and carbon taxes and the electricity bill the get.

                But by them it’s too late.

                i.e. the fed .gov made a big song and dance about falling electricity costs a few months back, but my bill and EVERYONE I’ve spoken to about this all told me their electricity bill had gone UP again after the carbon tax repeal.

                So the damage is already done, it doesn’t really undo, so waiting for people to get the bill and finally wake up to the repercussions of their decisions made ten years ago is too late.

                All the other fluff around ‘issues’ (i.e. sexism etal.) will quickly seem like so much fairly floss, because it is, the core issues are always ignored. Instead of doing their job as policy legislator, all these stinking governments are continually grandstanding, talking about ‘issues’, and attending the latest tax-payer funded State funeral for some old geeza. They had their time, and they got paid for it, so why are we still paying?

                Waste and distraction.

                I would like all of them to get a copy of their blasted formal job description and actually read it, and then exclude all those activities that they currently do and involve themselves with, which are not on that formal job description. That’s what they’re paid for. Talking vapid crud all the time is not actually one of their duties.

                Is it any wonder so many see politics, politicians and democracy itself as undesirable and a net negative these days? well, if they were actually doing their formal job instead, and only their formal job and tasks, that most probably would not be the case.

                But given doing their job is a lower order priority, and the results are naturally and necessarily poor to very bad, the voters also naturally ask, “Why the h*ll am I paying for any of this? What good is it? This is Democracy, eh? Sell me and my first born to bankers? Is that it? Impose fines and surcharges on me when you’ve blown the kitty I put on the fridge for you?”

                Adults in the room. 😉

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                Unmentionable

                Another salient point I should have included above.

                Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan both came from Queensland Labor. They are contemporaries of Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh(t). We shouldn’t be surprised that when such birds of a feather were transplanted to the Canberra context and gained control of the national treasury, they did exactly the same thing Anna Bligh(t) was doing to Queensland, in parallel. But does the mainstream media point-out the curious and ruinous common behavior? Or point out the horrific numbers they managed to generate, in concert? Or mercilessly plow them under for brazenly doing it?

                The media won’t warn you about a clearly visible Taipan coiled on the lawn near our letter box either. You have to do your own checking with such a media, they are not in the business of informing you, or performing a civil duty-of-care, that’s for sure.

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        They have studied the Marxist texts and they deny the Marxist history!

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      • #
        Winston

        El Gordo,

        A quick perusal of Dariusz’s personal experience under real world Marxism should give your Marxist friends pause to reconsider their ideology, and whether it truly can deliver what theory might suggest.

        But, I humbly suggest that if they did read and comprehend it, it would dissuade them not one iota. And why is that? Because at their core, Marxists care not one jot for the plight of others, they care not one jot for human progress, they care not one jot that their ideology has been the root cause of both Nazism and Bolshevism, and over 250 million people killed in the 20th Century.

        Quite frankly they are a lower form of human existence, who cover for their own lack of competitive acumen and practical intelligence, and their envy of the success of others, by the forced suppression of human potential to allow them the ongoing delusion of their own superiority. That is why the jackboot is the natural progression of Marxist thought, a regressive Utopia where an elite few, incapable of progressing human ingenuity and technological advancement themselves, systematically stymie and throttle those who can. It is of necessity an entropic ideology that is predestined to failure, the only question being whether that failure is individual, national, or in the nightmare scenario – global.

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        • #
          el gordo

          Yep, I agree. We had an argument over the Great Leap Forward where they were defending Mao, but I argued that under capitalism those 30 million deaths could have been avoided.

          They see communist China as fascists, so I don’t know where that leaves us.

          41

        • #
          Winston

          It is telling that Dariusz’s comment attracted 2 red thumbs, in spite of merely retelling his personal experiences on the ground in a Marxist paradise. Those two red thumbs are people who “can’t handle the truth”, and whose narcissism disavows them of the obligation to analyse the effects propagated by their ideology. Such people are beneath contempt. My somewhat comment, when viewed objectively, rails against the totalitarian mindset, is a plea for those who seek to inculcate a flawed and unscientific belief system upon the broader global society to desist and reconsider, knowing that the likely result of their “success” would be an enforced reduction in the utility of resources (even those that are not immediately or even foreseeably finite), a diminution of effective development and industry, and the unwarranted compromising of individual freedom, self-determination and private enterprise, to the ultimate detriment of the human species. That little red thumb represents cognitive dissonance at its apex, the feeble defence of the indefensible, and a telling indictment of their delusional belief system, whose source was a poor excuse for a human being regurgitating pagan Platonic philosophy (reducing the mass of humanity to the level of cattle, while dreaming of a Utopia of the “enlightened”), and whose sole claim to fame is that he seduced many generations of parrots to mimic his intellectually stunted worldview.

          Btw El Gordo, please don’t feel my criticism was in any way directed at you, quite the contrary. Your “friends” however, another matter entirely.

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          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            It seems just about everybody scored at least one red thumb today. Pity there are not more, because that would indicate that more people who need to read this site have done so.

            20

            • #
              the Griss

              It worries me that someone would actually sit there all day just pressing the red thumb button.

              What a sad, dreary life that must be !!

              I almost pity them, 🙂

              10

          • #
            el gordo

            ‘Btw El Gordo, please don’t feel my criticism was in any way directed at you, quite the contrary. Your “friends” however, another matter entirely.’

            Thanks, they are not friends, just blog associates.

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    • #
      Bob Malloy

      I know Jo has used this quote in the past, I believe it is worth resurrecting,

      The Cycle of Civilization
      Man begins his existence in bondage, and rises:
      from bondage through spiritual faith,
      from spiritual faith to courage,
      from courage to liberty,
      from liberty to abundance,
      from abundance to selfishness,
      from selfishness to complacency,
      from complacency to apathy,
      from apathy to dependency,
      from dependency back into bondage.

      The Labor, Green blob are dragging us with increasing velocity through the dependency stage and would have us all back in bondage. The sheeple are with them all the way.

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  • #
    LevelGaze

    “It is pretty much ‘Are you now or have you even been a member of the IPA?’”

    That’s amusing.

    When I was at uni way back in the 60s (UK) I was a card carrying member of both the Conservative and Communist parties just so I could triumphantly flourish the appropriate card to win any political argument at all these narcissistic student shagfests.
    Of course, membership of both parties was free to students and after graduation the Conservatives started demanding annual subscription fees which I couldn’t be bothered paying and hence membership promptly expired.

    However, at that time (at least) there was nothing in the UK Communist Party articles to enable a member to leave – except presumably death – so as far as I know, and never having paid any dues, I’m still a Communist.

    But the Greens shouldn’t have a problem with that because they’re just closet communists themselves.

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  • #
    old44

    It’s simple:

    IPA bad.

    CPA good.

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  • #
    Eliza Doodle

    Are you or have you ever been a Member of Greenpeace ?
    In which case France should seriously consider restricting your access prior to next years COP21 in Paris. They have many ancient relics that could suffer abuse in the name of a bunch of ignorant numpties thinking they are saving the planet.

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    • #
      GI

      Eliza,

      SSSSHHHhhhhh…… don’t mention the Rainbow Warrior.

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      • #
        Eliza Doodle

        You mean the one at the bottom of Auckland Harbour, courtesy of agents of the French Intelligence, now free having served only 2 years of a 10 year sentence for the sinking and the killing ? (RIP Fernando Pereira )

        I forgot. Expect France will be taking no chances.

        62

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Does it not strike you as strange, that the French agents were caught in the first place?

          Of the tens of thousands of tourists to visit New Zealand every year, how come they stood out? Either they were very amateur, and ill trained for what they were doing, or they were sacrificed for some a higher purpose.

          There is much more to this story than meets the eye, but as a civilian, then and now, I have no access to any of the material.

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          • #
            Greg Cavanagh

            Interesting point Rereke.

            I always just accepted that the French weren’t the best at espionage, but I must remind myself that the French Resistance did a very good job way back when.

            Ah, a conspiracy, I bet…./wink

            20

            • #
              NielsZoo

              You forgot some history. The French Resistance was made up of farmers, farmhands, vintners, shop owners, housewives and the “rabble” that worked and lived in the French middle and lower classes. The French Government gave France the Maginot Line and then 4 years of Vichy collaboration and appeasement.

              20

          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            Rereke, where could they hide? Methinks they thought they didn’t have to.

            10

          • #
            C.J.Richards

            Perhaps NZ just had very good investigators, but they only caught two of those involved.
            That single act may have done much to boost support for Greenpeace in the years that followed, but self righteousness is not universally appreciated and it didn’t last.

            http://m.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10500908

            10

          • #
            Peter C

            Does it not strike you as strange, that the French agents were caught in the first place?

            Of the tens of thousands of tourists to visit New Zealand every year, how come they stood out?

            I did think about that at the time. I don’t agree that “They were sacrificed for a Higher Purpose” In a covert operation such as this no one wants to get caught. It caused a lot of diplomatic trouble. France had to strong arm the New Zealand Government to get their agents back.

            My own view was that the French agents underestimated the qualities of New Zealanders, whom I have found to be practical, resourceful and patriotic in a way that even Australians don’t understand anymore.

            The flaw in the plan was that the diver (who planted the bomb (mine) on the Rainbow Warrior had to get ashore unobserved (or at least unreported). But they were observed by a beach walker, who thought “that’s odd – why would someone be scuba swimming on their own at night time?” And they did report it!

            30

          • #
            Retired now

            Rereke, as I remember it they stood out because they posed as French tourists and ordinary people thought it unusual and reported their movements to the police after the bombing. New Zealand towns and small settlements people knew what was “ordinary” and what “smelled bad” and these state terrorists stood out in the rural areas they traversed through.

            All sorts of people were horrified at the French and my non-active husband wouldn’t buy anything from France for two decades because of it. He still won’t if he has a choice, which amuses me somewhat after all this time.

            20

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            Good comments, all. Very pragmatic, and very measured.

            I hope Jo realises the quality, and depth, of the analytical skills she has visiting this site.

            Thank you.

            20

    • #
      Michael P

      I’ve had the experience of dealing with a similar group that was recruiting and used a lot of “feel-good” rubbish about “saving Tasmania’s Forests” that sounded good at first,but when you dug into the matter further,some serious questions were raised about whether Tasmania wanted to be saved in the first place,or was the group in question disguising the facts in the first place,as some very underhanded things were done to Tasmania’s logging industry under the banner of “The forests must be saved”

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Save the whales! Collect the whole set, and get this free display cabinet, while stocks last.

        51

        • #
          NielsZoo

          Call before Christmas Eve and we’ll upgrade your display cabinet with rare and exotic woods from trees bulldozed carefully harvested from Brazilian Rainforest razed, slashed and burned re-purposed for net energy negative renewable corn ethanol bio-fuel production.

          30

  • #
    Mike

    While it’s not quite the same thing, I’m reminded of a term C.S. Lewis coined – “Bulverism“.

    “The modern method [of argumentation] is to assume without discussion that [your opponent] is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it Bulverism. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father — who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than the third — ‘Oh you say that because you are a man.’ ‘At that moment’, E. Bulver assures us, ‘there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and then explain his error, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.’ That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth [and Twenty-First] Century.”

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    • #
      Lord Jim

      Bulverism is endemic in modern ‘discourse’.

      You only believe x because of (some interest or cause) Y.

      You only believe CAGW is not a problem because you are funded by big oil.
      You only believe CAGW is not a problem because you don;t want to change your lifestyle.
      etc.

      The object (conscious or not) is to taint the views of an opponent with an intimation of bias thereby rendering his or her opinion worthless.

      This appears to be the Greens basic mode of operation in relation to the IPA and CIS: if you are associated with these organizations you are biased and therefore your opinion is worthless.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        The answer to people who say, “You only believe …” Is to respond, “No, I don’t believe that, and in fact, I don’t believe anything at all.”

        Then go on to say, “When presented with evidence, I may accept that something exists, but only for as long as the evidence remains relevant, for there may also be evidence to the contrary”.

        They will think you are a loony, but at least you will have shut them up, and they will leave you alone.

        If every sceptic did that, we would probably find that there were more sceptics than believers (pending empirical confirmation, of course).

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  • #
    John Rolin

    Inquisitors, as in Inquisition.

    22

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Suggest away…

    I think you’ve said it yourself, Jo. If the rational are the grown ups then the irrational are the children. “Child is as child does,” sums it up nicely.

    If children could handle their lives from the start they wouldn’t be given parents to keep them from screwing up, to educate them and support them for 18 or 20 years. Physical maturity and intellectual maturity don’t always go hand in hand. And the failure of some to grow up is a parental failure that needs fixing too.

    Using any other term I can think of turns the rational thinkers into name callers.

    The unfortunate fact here is that the children are not moved by any rational argument. They have seized control of the nursery and want what they want, even though they may not even be sure of exactly what they want. I’m beginning to believe that only some degree of force will put them out and regain control of the nursery. And I’m not sure how to apply that force. If public opinion was to swing back against them forcefully enough it might still take a generation or two to work its way to where the problem is and get it fixed. And I’m not sure the force of public opinion can last that long.

    That’s a pessimistic outlook for sure but it’s also honest. These last 10 years or so have changed my thinking a lot.

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    • #
      john robertson

      Roy, be of good cheer, that force is coming it is called poverty and has a very edifying effect upon persons who have allowed even more stupid persons to influence their decision making.
      human nature has not changed, the bills are coming due.
      Scapegoats will be sought and surrendered to the gods for appeasement.
      In english, the infestation of parasites feeding on the public tit is killing the public, public getting very unhappy, soon very angry and brutally effective in curing parasitic drain.
      Indications are, ever growing underground economy, refusal to comply on many levels, ever more restrictive and idiotic regulation,coupled with massive cost increases on monopoly services..…more liars in authority..more wilful ignorance of said authority.
      As always the herd can tolerate stupid when we are fat and rich, that tolerance vanishes when stupid burns the last reserves and pees in the last stored water..
      The green gang has advocated all these things in their promotion of eco-terrorism against us, their host.
      In canadian frence they would be Gang greene which is their true representation in any language.

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  • #

    I suggest a read of an off topic but exactly to the point exposition of what is behind the endlessly oozing Green Goo: My own enemies list.

    72

    • #

      I would add that the answer is not better people leading us, it is better ideas in the people so they know how to live their own lives. When this happens, the many alternate universes so many attempt to inhabit and force upon the rest of us will be recognized for what they are: fantasy, science fiction, and out of control paranoid delusions.

      112

      • #
        KinkyKeith

        Hi Lionel

        When I was much much younger there were checks and balances over the main message being sent out to the community.

        This system has been shown to have been susceptible to abuse in many ways. eg recently exposed and deeply buried church scandals – hypocrisy.

        Nevertheless, at the moment we are experiencing another type of communication malfunction; Information and Disinformation and Confused Information Overload.

        The average person is not equipped to filter and assess these messages and basically defaults to the group propounding the average best message they feel comfortable with.

        This is a doomed system and we know it has caused a lot of problems in recent years; just look at the corruption and community bewilderment behind the Great GFC Financial swindle! Theft on a grand scale unimaginable.

        KK

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      • #
        Unmentionable

        There’s and error in your link Lionell, it should be this

        21

    • #
      Truthseeker

      Lionell,

      It think that the link you want is this one.

      51

  • #
    Glen Williams

    The correct word for someone who places more value on their warped political ideas than on physical reality is an “idiolog”. I like it because it starts with ‘idio[t]’

    71

  • #
    Robber

    The best response is not to call them names, but rather to keep shining the light of freedom on their utterances. Quote their statements back at them and point out how illogical they are.

    But it’s ok to have the occasional vent at their sour, self-righteous, sanctimonious, Orwellian, ruinous, foolish ideas.

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  • #
    scaper...

    I like it, according to the soil-ant panties left the IPA ANDEV Murdocracy are the evil triumvirate conspiring to enslave the common worker.

    We’re doing their feeble minded heads in. The left would like to get hold of the IPA membership list as to identify and target. Some have demanded such. The IPA is member funded so it’s none of their damn business!

    Not so much with ANDEV though. I reckon because Gina chairs ANDEV we are pretty much tarred, no matter how noble our intentions. We did, at first put the foundation/industry voice members list on our site but pulled it down. Those were early days and we have grown since then.

    In my opinion, James should have said nothing as the Greens are unworthy of any reaction. Best to sit back and watch their heads explode.

    71

    • #
      the Griss

      Just think of the work available through ANDEV..

      Surely this is exactly what the unions would want ! 😉

      51

      • #
        scaper...

        Yeah, union members will be offered what they’re worth…$2 a day, with allowances of course. Lol.

        Actually, Roy Hill will mostly be automated and controlled from Perth. The on the ground workers will be offered a profit share scheme to ensure productivity.

        Here are the foundation members as it is no secret. Might recognise some familiar names.

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        • #
          the Griss

          Wouldn’t mind seeing a lot more agricultural interests on the list. !

          41

          • #
            scaper...

            If you saw the current membership list you would see a lot of agricultural interests. Also a bit of diversification on the part of the original members.

            No secret that Gina has heavily invested in meat and dairy. I have no interest in developing mining and I’m on that list. My interest is developing the Barkly Tableland into irrigated cropping and increasing the beef herd carrying capacity.

            The area in question was overlooked in the first instance but now ANDEV has included it in the northern development strategy.

            41

            • #
              the Griss

              “If you saw the current membership list you would see a lot of agricultural interests”

              As it should be. 🙂

              41

            • #
              gnome

              I’m with you on the Barkly Tablelands thing. Lake Julius is close enough and could be about 50 metres higher than now and still fill up almost every year. It should be NO 1 on the list, but it doesn’t even seem to be there at all.

              41

  • #
    pat

    13 Dec: Sun News Canada: Time for the UN to get out of climate change, Canadian prof says
    The UN must “get out of the climate field entirely,” a former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg says.
    Dr. Tim Ball, a board member of the International Climate Science Coalition and author of “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science,” says the agency should focus “only on issues the people of the world deem important.”
    United Nations climate talks, being held in Peru, are heading for a watered-down deal on limiting global warming, leaving many of the toughest issues for next year’s Paris summit, Reuters reported.
    “Climate change has happened, is happening and will always happen,” Ball said in a statement Saturday…
    “Contrary to the message of the last 30 years, current rate of climate change is well within the bounds of natural variability. Thus, a perfectly natural phenomenon became the biggest deception in history.”
    Tom Harris, the head of the Canadian chapter of ICSC, also came down hard on the UN.
    Harris said climate change negotiators in Lima “seemed oblivious to the findings of the UN’s ongoing My World survey about what the people of the world really want the agency to focus on”.
    “The seven million people polled so far indicate that, in comparison with issues such as education, health care, jobs, and energy, they care very little about climate change,” Harris said…
    http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2014/12/20141213-105217.html

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    Michael Hammer

    Alas; I cant resist. How about the term Jactitator (OK I made the verb up) but it comes from the real word Jactitation meaning a false boasting or claim especially one detrimental to the interest of another. Totally irrelevant of course but it was used in a film covering another form of religious extremism notably the 1930’s film “Inherit the Wind” which dealt with evolution versus creationism in the deep south of America. It was used to show how smug, arrogant, self righteous and conceited the prosecutor was – grandstanding with words even the judge was “not familiar with”. For those who haven’t seen it, its a superb film, extremely thought provoking with a very interesting message. I have seen it available on DVD from time to time.

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    Safetyguy66

    Nothing much has changed… although how this story got published on ABC I will never know, someone must have missed it.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-26/oneill-modern-day-climate-change-witch-hunt/3747368

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      Unmentionable

      Says “First posted December 26, 2011”, but did “The Drum” even exist in 2011? So when was it posted on ABC?

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    pat

    woke up to BBC/ABC reporting how Lima talks are ongoing because everyone considers CAGW to be

    13 Dec: UK Telegraph: Lima climate talks: The same old farce
    Greenpeace vandals provided a welcome diversion from the UN conference in Lima 300 miles away, writes Christopher Booker
    Lima is just yet another re-enactment of the three-stage ritual that has become only too familiar over the past 20 years. First, we are treated to months of ludicrously unscientific hype, telling us that the threat of global warming is now worse than ever. Then, they all gather in some agreeable venue, for the “developing” nations – led by China and India – to say they will only play ball if the “developed” world, led by the EU, the US and Japan, pays them $100 billion a year to curb their “carbon emissions”. In days of acrimony and stupefying boredom, when the poorer nations bid up the bribe they want (some were this time suggesting it should eventually be £1.5 trillion a year), it emerges that the rich countries aren’t really intending to deliver. The mere $1 billion promised to the “Green Climate Fund” by Japan, for instance, is all going to Japanese firms to build three coal-fired power stations in Indonesia…
    So the dreary farce will continue until the crack of doom – which, like that warming, will never appear as the computer models predicted. Or until they have all died of boredom.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11291389/Lima-climate-talks-The-same-old-farce.html

    13 Dec: UK Telegraph: Emil Gosden: Frantic efforts to save Lima climate change talks
    Main talks suspended as delegates from 190 countries admit there is ‘no consensus’, while frantic efforts have begun to reach some token agreement, but few are optimistic of a quick resolution, if any
    The United Nations says that to avoid “dangerous” climate change, the global temperature must not rise more than 2C above pre-industrial levels.
    But the measures needed to stick to that limit are extreme: in practice is requires an end to the burning of coal, oil and gas before the end of this century, unless new technologies can be developed to capture their emissions.
    “We have built our world on fossil fuels and we are trying to get rid of the fossil fuels. It’s massive,” said Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary.
    On Saturday night the talks even looked on the brink of collapsing…
    And in the midst of the melee some argue that the man-made extent of climate change has been exaggerated, and that it is partially due to natural cycles…
    By late on Saturday night, the talks were hanging on a knife-edge – they were meant to conclude on Friday, but continued to run even as the pavilions were being dismantled around the delegates…
    Christian Aid condemned the organisers for presiding over a “shambles”…
    Ironically, the conference has remained overtly reliant on fossil fuels, in the form of diesel generators. The talks are taking place in a vast temporary village constructed on the site of the Peruvian military headquarters.
    Organisers rejected powering the village with solar panels on the grounds they were too unreliable, while efforts to hook the site up to the national grid – which is half-fed by renewable energy – failed due to technical problems.
    Experts say the Lima talks will have the biggest carbon footprint of any UN conference to date at more than 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide…
    As well as the diesel generators, the footprint has been enlarged by the jet fuel burned by the estimated 11,000 people who flew in from abroad to attend – including roughly 4,000 from non-governmental organisations – as well as the emissions from the fleet of coaches that crawl through Lima’s gridlocked streets to shuttle delegates to and from the venue…
    The despondency was summed up by Prakash Javadekar, negotiator for India. “We are disappointed,” he said, angered at wealthy nations’ refusal to give more money to assist their poorer counterparts. “It is ridiculous.”
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/peru/11292469/Frantic-efforts-to-save-Lima-climate-change-talks.html

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    TdeF

    The Australian Department of Education? As far as I can see, this is a house without walls, school walls. The department was “formed in 2007 and absorbed the former departments of Education, Science and Training, and Employment and Workplace Relations” This was the popular incoming Labor/Green Government flexing its muscles.

    In the Australian Constitution, Education, Policing, Health are exclusive areas for State Governments.
    The Federal government has Defence, Customs, Exchange and Immigration and what a great job the Green controlled Labor government did of immigration and defence! Four jumbo loads of families dead in the Timor sea and 50,000 survivors rescued by our Navy and swamping our genuine refugee program. As the Green Senator Sarah Hansen Young said “accidents happen”.

    However since the dominance of Federal Income Tax over State Taxes, mostly the State exclusive GST, the Commonwealth has sought to control all education through its control of the money through a loophole the Constitution involving arbitrary gifts. The Federally collected GST also became a plaything, doubling the per capita payout to Labor states against the spirit of the constitution, so South Australians get double the state tax income of West Australians with the same total population.

    There was also a failed attempt to take over all the State hospitals for 30% of the State GST, without adding a single doctor. There was even talk of using the Federal police to control Western Sydney when they have no such role, formed originally to protect an early Prime Minister and focused on Federal matters like customs. The previous government also experimented with cash directly to local councils for more direct control despite the fact that councils are exclusively funded and controlled by the State governments.

    So this is the rump of the last ‘progressive’ Green controlled government wanting to force a farcical and irrelevant National curriculum over the schools it legally does not have, plus control the police, hospitals and councils, working around the Constitution with deals for cash, truckloads of cash.

    Now who actually uses this ‘National Curriculum’ with its obligation to teach aboriginal science and maths, its elimination of European and British history and its vague and arbitrary focus on Asia. Of course they do not want the IPA involved, with their passion for Western Civilization and Liberalism of trade and freedom of speech. To paraphrase Monty Python, what have the aboriginals done for us? We have only had the decimal point ourselves for 800 years and Pythagoras worked his equations with bits of wood, not mathematics.

    It means that the Marxists in the Federal Education Department with no schools have publicly recognized the IPA as their mortal enemies, that is apart from the evil but very popular ‘Murdoch Press’. Who needs a National Curriculum anyway? No one.

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      Unmentionable

      Your comment reminded me of this definition, which I read last year and kept. It seems apt to quote it at the end of your comment:

      “Since the Republican party in the U.S. has revealed itself as a complete fraud, may I be permitted a moment to define what conservatism truly means: because the definition used by the Republicans is no where near what conservatism is. Conservatism derives from a movement in the 19th century in Europe against liberalism (which we would today call libertarianism) and socialism (which we would today call liberal). The principle elements of conservatism were an emphasis upon the family as the bedrock institution of social order (as opposed to liberalism-libertarianism, which sees the individual as the atomic particle of civilization), a desire for local political concerns, those of the community, to be paramount to global or grand concerns, the importance of functioning social structures that serve to improve the moral character of the populace (i.e. the Church in the 19th century): institutions that teach ethics and respect for one´s fellows in order to maintain social cohesion in the face of rapid technological change and the fractures in society produced by an ever-more specialized division of labor. The need for societies, indeed nations, to share a common language was also a cornerstone of conservatism, since language structures how we think about and view the world, and it is necessary for people to have a common frame of reference in order to function cohesively.

      Finally, the overiding principle of conservatism was that society is not an experiment or a theory to be put into practice– the institutions that exist (family, community, church, etc.) exist because they serve a function in the social structure. One should not tamper with human society to test new theories or social philosophies. Change should be slow, deliberate, and organic… don´t fix anything unless it is broken.”

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    pat

    somehow i didn’t finish my comment –

    woke up to BBC/ABC reporting how Lima talks are still ongoing because everyone considers stopping CAGW to be such an important issue and there were such high hopes after historic US/China deal, but China is now refusing to agree to anything.

    no mention of any leaked documents, nor faux promises under the Copenhagen Accord, etc. you would think ABC/Fairfax would be all over the unfairness of it all! however, all sides want to hide the ugly truths & keep the scam going.

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    Michael Hammer

    Meant to mention, in the film he prosecutor when asked defined the term as “a false or specious argument intended to distract”

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    pat

    thank you Nitin Sethi for being a REPORTER:

    14 Dec: Business Standard: Nitin Sethi: Lima climate talks on brink of collapse, extended by 24 hours
    Near-zero commitment on finance from developed world, negotiation process angers developing nations
    After the climate change negotiations in Lima spiralled to the brink of a collapse in the wee hours of Saturday morning (Peru time), they were extended by at least a day. A third iteration of the draft text for decisions to be taken in Lima, released at around 1 am on Saturday, promised ugly battles during the weekend, between developed and developing countries.
    As countries took a break early Saturday morning to reconvene in few hours, several delegations, including the large Africa group and the Least Developed countries grouping, complained they had not even been consulted for the latest document. Many delegates rescheduled their flights to stay back on Sunday, too.
    On Friday morning, developing countries, including India, resoundingly and collectively rejected the second draft Lima decision text of the co-chairs (released late on Thursday night, after being leaked). The rejection came with visible anger and frustration. The text had little to offer to developing countries…
    ***The debate over this second iteration of the text was exacerbated by anger over delegates being denied entry into the negotiating room, citing lack of space…
    On the other hand, the US, along with other developed countries, put forth red lines, such as refusing to budge on issues of finance and more onerous references to their obligation on adaptation, finance and technology. They also remained steadfast in blocking even a mention of ‘equity’ and ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ in the text proposed as the Lima decision…
    In the early hours of Saturday, the third (and latest) version of the decision text was floated. In a departure from convention, the draft was not put on the website of the United nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at first. Hard copies of the third and latest draft were circulated at the meeting. Only half an hour was given to countries to react to this, on Friday night. Developing countries reacted with increasing anger and frustration, demanding more time for consultations. They expressed reservations about the process, with several complaining they hadn’t been consulted.
    The support and applause from select developed-country delegates for the co-chairs and the Peruvian head’s efforts did not find support from delegates from developing country…
    Among some groups, there was palpable anger at being ignored during the consultations…
    At the time of the filing of this report (around 8 am in Lima), developing-country groups were holding closed-door assessments and strategies.
    http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/lima-climate-talks-on-brink-of-collapse-extended-by-24-hours-114121300447_1.html

    best strategy is to walk away. CO2 is not your enemy.

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      the Griss

      “CO2 is not your enemy.”

      Not only isn’t CO2 your enemy, it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for your very existence !

      250ppm is plant subsistence level, and 400ppm is still dangerously low.

      The world will hopefully soon WAKE UP to this reality and wonder what the heck they were doing trying to limit its de-sequestration!

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    handjive

    O/T Arctic ice missing?

    Houston, we have no ice.

    Rosetta Mission Update | The Rocky Comet
    https://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2014/12/12/16789/

    5 min video- prepare to be challenged about what you know.

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      Yonniestone

      Challenge accepted and appreciated, everyone who considers themselves sceptical will enjoy this link, thank you.

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      scaper...

      Proves that our scientific understanding is still in its infancy, especially the predictions of climate. A long way to go yet in my opinion.

      “Homo ignoramus” says it all.

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    Turtle of WA

    Gruppy

    A green-oriented yuppy (i.e., gruppy = green + yuppy). Typically, one who works and/or lives in the city and lives an eco-friendly lifestyle. Often, given to trashing mainstream “pop culture” for conspicuous consumption while lavishly consuming many eco-friendly products to demonstrate a profound lack of consumerism.

    While she wasn’t exactly a hipster, the rain-driven drip-system she employed to grow herbs outside her 3rd story apartment showed she was very much a gruppy.

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    Leonard Lane

    Hard to believe he things greens/leftists believe and the things they want to do. It seems most of their thoughts and actions are against something, and the better or more useful or more virtuous or more necessary, or most fair to all that thing is the more they hate it.

    If their thoughts are always for darkness and against good, imagine their hearts and souls. Chilling to think about.

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    Krudd Gillard of the Commondebt of Australia

    The Greens reveal themselves to be totalitarians yet again.

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    Matty

    Isn’t this a great line from progressive terriblé, Naomi Klein

    ” I’m not going to just be intimidated by being told I’m wrong and to stop talking ”

    <a href="I’m not going to just be intimidated by being told I’m wrong and to stop talking " “>in the Financial Times.

    How well that would fit the use of ‘denier’.
    ” I’m not going to just be intimidated by being called a denier and to stop talking “

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    Yonniestone

    Oh the irony, the left always love pulling out the ‘McCarthyism, witch hunt’ card to demonize anyone who dares to challenge their superior ideals while actually becoming what they demonize in the first place!

    The McCarthy anti communism trials were then performed for the protection of constitutional rights in the worlds largest democracy and considering the gradual erosion of this democracy by the left in decades since it must be noted that despite any criticism of how these trials were conducted, the belief in the dangers of left wing ideals was correct in every way.

    In the past decade the pro CAGW crowd have practiced the art of mimicking or parroting any sensible, rational information conveyed by the true scientific community, the terms cherry pick, tipping point, feedbacks and many other once relevant scientific descriptions have been hijacked and debased by cultish hacks who have no imagination to even invent their own jargon except in the field of public indoctrination via Agenda21 catch phrases.

    I’m not surprised at the lengths these bastards of bastardization will go to.

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      NielsZoo

      Except McCarthy didn’t have anything to do with most of it. (Someone has at least attempted to edit the horrible Wikipedia article about the period.) The hearings were under the aegis of the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC. McCarthy was in the Senate, and just wanted to keep self avowed Communists out of sensitive government jobs. He had zero, zip, nada to do with it. He’s been delegated to the role of evil being by the Progressive left so that they can deflect the fact it was the then Democrat controlled House that did all the witchhunts, hearings, the Hollywood blacklisting and the rest of it from 1947 to 1654 when the Republicans got a brief 2 year stint as the majority in ’54 and ’55 when it was winding down. (As an interesting aside McCarthy was a member of the Democrat party until 1944 when he switched.

      Ann Coulter’s book “Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism” has a wonderful defense of the Senator. I’m not saying he was a great guy, but I am saying the hypocritical lefties use him as the boogyman to cover what is mostly their own dirty laundry. That’s how they work, lies, deflection and projection… the wonderful world of Progressivism.

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    Jimbo

    All this is one of the best websites I visit, love the comments even the ill informed. My one belief is that we cannot change the current group of sheep thinking however we have a chance of enlightening the next generation. My grandkids are smart and if we inform them that that not all they are told at school or read about in the media and wow wait for it – politicians may not have their best interest at heart – so when they find out that the planet is still going – despite the ice age I went through in the 70-80’s that due to my maturing age I cannot remember – the minority of self interest overrides the logical because there is money to be had. We need a bigger voice bur our current electoral system is a sham and the pollies will not change it because it works in for them. Do not misconstrue my distaste for the current system as a call for anarchy – just a call for skepticism to be accepted as an acceptable alliterative to doctrine -end of rant/vent. Once again love your work Jo and all who contribute – even the bewildered

    Jimbo

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    The Backslider

    OT – this is the latest paper being used by alarmists re. Antarctic glacier melt: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6214/1227

    Published Dec 5.

    Example here: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/less-ice-or-more-what-you-need-know-about-antarcticas-n265646

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    the Griss

    A bit OT,

    But this paper is going to cause a few issues for the CO2 haters. !!

    The lines from the end of the abstract….

    “Many authors have proposed a greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

    The present analysis shows that such an effect is impossible.”

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      Robert

      It is going to upset more than a few apple carts on both sides of the issue. WUWT and Goddard’s site if I remember correctly have become two of the skeptic sites where simply questioning the “greenhouse effect” generally results in being banned. It remains a hypothesis, it is not a theory, and the majority of “experiments” that I have seen or heard discussed really didn’t prove a thing no matter what their proponents try and claim. Someone a few threads back used the phrase “radiative gases” which I think is a more accurate term. The entire “greenhouse effect” matter has turned into one of those “well everyone knows…” type of things that is generally accepted in order to appear knowledgeable when the reality is no one really does know.

      As time passes and more papers such as this appear it becomes more obvious that far too many people have based their “science” on core assumptions that were faulty but were never properly examined. Simple fact of science, doesn’t matter how many papers are written saying roughly the same thing because if the core data or assumptions from which their research stemmed were wrong then so are the papers. That seems to cover most if not all of the “CO2 causes X” and “global warming will cause Y” papers that have been published.

      It will be interesting to see what happens with this paper, and how it is attacked as we all know it will be attacked based on its subject matter.

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        the Griss

        If you download the pdf, you will see some interesting people that this paper purports to refute. 🙂

        It will certainly be attacked, but how many have the maths/physics ability to follow it fully. Its pretty heavy stuff.

        I have MANY times asked for one single paper that proves that CO2 causes warming in an open atmosphere.

        So far… no takers. !! 😉

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          Robert

          I have MANY times asked for one single paper that proves that CO2 causes warming in an open atmosphere.

          Key phrase right there is “in an open atmosphere” because that is what we are talking about. What it does in a glass jar sitting next to a light bulb doesn’t prove a thing with regards to what it does in an open atmosphere.

          I see our red thumb troll is working overtime, as if anyone cares what they think.

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            the Griss

            “as if anyone cares what they think.’

            They don’t, and can’t think.

            Maybe its just an auto-bot.. artificial non-intelligence.?

            (note, that is auto-bot, not Autobot !) 🙂

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              the Griss

              Speaking of Autobots..

              …… if only climate science was 1% as advanced as CGI !!

              Unfortunately the CAGW meme has stunted development!

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        NielsZoo

        I’m one who regularly gets ridicule on those (otherwise excellent) sites when I point out valid gas law and radiative physics as well. A lot of the problems stem from basic misunderstandings of radiative fluxes and what we are actually measuring. Temperature and radiation are two different things and gases are really, really poor (read as non) radiators at the pressures and temperatures found in most of Earth’s atmosphere. The exception would be the Aurora Australis and Borealis effects where extremely high energy solar output is interacting with very low pressure gas at the top of the atmosphere. (CO2 ain’t one of them as far as I’ve found in any research.)

        If CO2 could really radiate the way they all say it does we wouldn’t need high energy, high frequency RF drives, near vacuum pressures, critical gas mixes and CO2 reformers in sealed CO2 lasers or the 15 or 20 kV high voltage, “high” current power supplies and near vacuum used in CO2-N2-He constant flow gas lasers. All we’d need was a set of laser mirrors and a heating element. That’s one of the problems when CO2 is used as a radiative emitter, its hard to get to the right energy state to emit a photon and it breaks down easily in the process. Sealed lasers have odd mixes and “reformers” to put the CO2 back together after it emits and drops to ground. The big gas flow lasers must have a constant supply of gas with new CO2 in it. Even then it’s the Nitrogen in the gas mix that snags the energy and bumps it up to a quantum that CO2 likes. Again, physics is NOT on the side of the “CO2 is radiating energy” argument.

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      Andrew McRae

      It’s bizarre you should post this link today as it was only on Saturday I was thinking about where Miskolczi’s hypothesis fits into the scheme of things. The last explanation I read from one of his students, Zagoni or something on Spencer’s blog a year or so ago, was that the total optical depth always remains constant due to entropy being maximised. This implied that when CO2 goes up, another gas such as water vapor will decrease to offset it.
      Some supporting evidence for this is from NCEP analysis of weather balloon data reported by Paltridge, Arking and Pook, “Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data”, 2009.
      He shows specific humidity increased at altitudes below 750hPa, but decreased at all higher altitudes.
      I don’t know if that means there was a net decrease overall. There is no graph of total column water vapour or total H2O(g) optical depth in that paper.

      However Paltridge says this which I find interesting in the context of the Miskolczi paper:

      Put the other way around, increases in total column water vapor in response to global warming do not necessarily indicate positive water vapor feedback, since very small decreases of water vapor in the mid-to-upper troposphere can negate the effect of large increases in the boundary layer.

      Okay so a small decrease in humidity can occur in the upper layers, a same-sized increase can occur in the lower layers, maybe the total optical depth stay constant as a result, but that still doesn’t say that no temperature increase occurs at the surface. Isn’t Miskolczi talking about the total effect on OLR?
      Well if a vertical redistribution of energy density occurs, you have warming at the surface and cooling in the upper layers, and that might satisfy both the OD constancy hypothesis and the greenhouse hypotheses. I guess I just haven’t understood how Miskolczi reaches his far-reaching conclusion.

      In particular, wouldn’t this mean that radiative transfer models like LinePak (at SpectralCalc) and MODTRAN are fundamentally flawed? Every prediction they make about today’s atmosphere has been found to be correct by observation. But we’re interested in what happens under a changed gas composition. If Miskolczi is right then the other gas components shouldn’t stay the same. My impression is the RTMs keep all other gas components the same and so they produce a greenhouse effect, just as “Steven Goddard” found. If the mainstream RTMs were correct, including their treatment of water vapour and gas-gas interaction, should they or shouldn’t they produce a radiative greenhouse effect? I guess Miskolczi would say No.

      Also, there isn’t any point in denying that the radiative greenhouse phenomenon as described by Houghton doesn’t exist because it’s been observed by satellite. There is a small notch in the difference spectrum of OLR between 1970 and 2003, right in the CO2 absorption band. Absurdly small, but it does exist. So Houghton got at least the first half of the greenhouse effect right. But the second half, that this small change in OLR eventually produces a warming of the lower troposphere, is the part that has to be defeated with observational evidence. Remember that Global Warming is a proposition about warming at the surface, not about OLR at TOA nor total optical depth.

      This part of Miskolczi’s model also sounds a bit dodgy:

      The net non-radiative processes K+ & K- are zeroed out on the basis, that the planet is in radiative equilibrium and the hydrological sub-system (or water cycle) is a closed equilibrium process. The only requirement from the model is the constant average IR optical thickness T which can be maintained

      Yeah, hold on, Ferenc, mate, the OLR has been observed going up since 1980, so the real world isn’t ever in radiative equilibrium. Plus the part you just zeroed out is the important part for global warming. That’s the evaporative convection in the boundary layer where we live. How much relevancy to global warming was sacrificed in the model so that he could prove total optical depth was constant?
      Having eliminated the greenhouse effect, he goes on to argue that cloud cover is the only regulatory mechanism of the global climate, but… he… just eliminated evaporation from his model. How does he make climatic statements about the cloud cover without that linked to evaporation?

      Ah look, right now I don’t know. I do know you are right this will stir up a hornets nest.

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        KinkyKeith

        Hi Andrew

        Not familiar with the work you are referring to but the comments you make seem to be spot on:

        “This part of Miskolczi’s model also sounds a bit dodgy: The net non-radiative processes K+ & K- are zeroed out on the basis, that the planet is in radiative equilibrium.

        My first observation is that the planet’s overall energy balance is impossible to detail at a level fine enough to allow any discrimination of so called “human associated greenhouse effects”.

        The second observation, as previously, is that ALL models must work and show that they work by correct and predictable responses to changes in parameters. This has never been done in this complex problem.

        Third, any possibility of producing a model showing temperature response to human activity is virtually impossible because of the huge number of overpowering known and acknowledged variables, together with the very obvious many hidden or poorly quantified variables.

        Variations due to human activity are likely to be limited to the error ranges of even small and acknowledged factors let alone the big ones.

        Model scam is an apt title for this discussion.

        The main parameters governing our planet are Solar Input, which is variable, and the temperature of the great heat sink our planet sits in at about 1.6 C degrees above absolute zero.

        Every day when the sun goes down in winter I begin to get very, very cold and am always tempted to wonder what it would be like if the Sun never rose the following day.

        KK

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          NielsZoo

          It would get really cold… but if it was due to isolock with our star it would be much worse living at the terminator. Imagine the wind velocities there with an atmosphere trying to equalize the sun side with the dark side.

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    ThoJak

    Interesting topic, thanks Jo!

    Of no comfort, but we have the same ‘development’ in our education system here in Sweden. It’s as if the Club of Rome (with the Swedish chair A. Wijkman) is pulling all threads.
    A lethal development for any & all societies!

    Brgds from Sweden
    /TJ

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    Robert of Ottawa

    OT Why does Abbot continue to pander to the left/greens? It won’t make them his friends, they’ll just push for more.

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    chrism

    ‘oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive’ (Scott)

    I like compound slightly offensive snarly nouns / adjectives

    I liked the combination preposterous and testosterone to give preposterone (a mythical web drink)

    so what about Sanctimony/ious and Money into an adjectival form Sanctimoneyious ? Sanctimoanious

    or Orwell/ian and Ignorant Ignorwellian ?

    I am sure there are lots

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