Dumb Wars

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating is definitely one of the great Australians. He had a tremendous vision for aboriginal australia, and was a reforming and inspirational leader with a brilliant mind and an extraodinary wit - last year I laughed for a week when he described the soon to be ex-PM John Howard as a "dessicated coconut" and the soon to be ex-treasurer Peter Costello as "all tip and no iceberg". I applauded his lacerating comments about millionaires in"tupperware boats" racing around Sydney Harbour "at the expense of everyone else's quiet enjoyment.Every small boat is capsized by it and now they've been given a signal that 30 or 40 knots is really quite slow, you can do a couple of hundred..."

Yesterday at a book launch, he made some more typically uncompromising comments, this time about Gallipoli, comments that are sure to enrage the shock jocks and typical talkback radio callers. Cant wait to read the tantrums they'll probably ellicit from the ghastly Miranda Divine and the tedious Gerard Henderson, right wing whingers who both write in the Sydney Morning Herald. Anyway this is what Keating is reported to have said about Australias involvement at Gallipoli

"Dragged into service by the imperial government in an ill-conceived and poorly-executed campaign, we were cut to ribbons and dispatched" He added he was disappointed some Australians still held the view Australia was "born again or even redeemed" at Gallipoli, and that those who visited there on Anzac Day were "misguided.An utter and complete nonsense," he said.

If ever there was a sacred cow of Australian cultural history, this would have to be it, and now Keatings put a hand on it, like he put his hand on the Queens arse when she was here a few years back, provoking an indignant moral outrage from royalists and Howard groupies. Already our current PM Kevin Rudd has announced Keating is "absolutely 100% wrong. I, for one, as prime minister of the country am absolutely proud of it.''

Personally I find this Anzac thing nauseating. To me every time we remember Anzac we teach and relearn the completely opposite lesson from the one we should be learning from it - it should be about what a shocking blunder that campaign was, and how ghastly and inglorious and degrading war is, and what an apalling failure it is when so called leaders allow wars to happen. Instead we glorify the war, we celebrate the battles at Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair and and tell ourselves all those wonderful brave young men who died were heroes, we sing hymns to the Christian God of Love and Peace and Turning the other Cheek, and engage in an hysterical orgy of drum beating flag waving and whipping up of nationalistic fervour. Isnt it sickening how the political masters of history have buried one of their greatest disasters in a cloak of glory and triumph? And how they are still doing it right now in Iraq? And soon it will be Afghanistan where next theyll proclaim Victory.

Those brave young men who went and died there so horribly and so far from home and for something that had absolutely nothing to do with them and their lives in Australia were victims of a political agenda, and were sadly blinded by the jingoism and the hysterical nationalism that politicians like to use to dog whistle the working class into line. When is it ever going to end?

Well there is one small ray of hope - or maybe I am clutching at straws - but read this quote from a speech made in 2002, just as the horror of Iraq was about to commence at the hand of George Bush, and see if it excites you a little, like it did me, when I realised who said it:

"I kn0w that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States or his neighbours; the Iraqi economy is a shambles; that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until in the way of all petty dictators he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a succesful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, encourage the worst rather than the best impulses of the Arab world and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars, I'm opposed to dumb wars"

Next week with a little luck, the Senator from Illinois who made such a wise prediction will be the next President of the US. Barrack Obama.

Beauty is there if you look

I went for a walk around the garden this morning and took these photos. I had been thinking about how easy it is to forget to look at the world as we rush by, and how we miss seeing so much of the wonder and beauty of nature. And the warm fuzzy muzzle of the ponies who rush up to the gate whenever they see us outside.

The Sun and Global Warming

Ive been frightening myself all week by reading "Climate Code Red: the Case for Emergency Action" by David Spratt and Phillip Sutton. On the back cover it says "This meticulously documented call-to-action reveals extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than officially indicated- and that we're almost at the point of no return" Whats really frightening is that things appear to be changing more rapidly than was predicted even as recently as last year when the IPCC Report was issued, but it is that IPCC Report which Governments like our own here in Australia are using as a guide to plan their response to Global Warming.

On the websites and Blogs that Ive been trawling all week for material for my next Blog, I frequently came across Warming Denialists who rubbish the IPCC saying its just a political body and couldnt produce anything other than whatever its masters deemed was politically correct, so they breezily dismiss its recommendations. But what is the IPCC?

The IPCC (The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information concerning climate change, its potential effects and options for adaptation and mitigation. Its first Report was issued in 1990. Its assesment reports are written by hundreds of scientific experts from many fields, and represent over 40 countries. These reports are required to be Policy "Neutral" and contain no recommendations. Each report takes more than 3 years to prepare and goes through multiple stages of independent expert and government review, "the most thorough review process undertaken for any scientific assesment" acccording to Professor David Karoly, Professor of Meteorology in the school of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne. So Governemnts are right to take the IPCC Report seriously - it is an important and authoritative document - except for one thing: its Five years out of date! Its out of date because it takes a year or two to do the research, another year or so to get the research published and then another three for the IPCC to scrutinise it and analyse it along with all the other material and eventually write a report that everyone agrees on. There are many environmentalists who regard this process as not only too slow but too subject to the need for consensus and compromise resulting in a report that is too weak. Hence the need for books like Climate Code Red which attempt to speed up that process.

What I was going to do was condense some of the central issues into a few blogs - but I realise now that its an impossible task- for me at least - the issues are huge and interconnected and there is much thats unresolved. Instead I submit this Introduction and link to an excellent Review in New Scientist called " Climate Change: A Review for the Perplexed

"Our planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors.
Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.
Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds could slow the warming or speed it up.
With so much at stake, it is right that climate science is subjected to the most intense scrutiny. What does not help is for the real issues to be muddied by discredited arguments or wild theories.
So for those who are not sure what to believe, here is our round-up of the most common climate myths and misconceptions.

Hitler and Global Warming

Years ago I read somewhere that if you write a book and want it to sell well, put a picture of Hitler on the front cover! That wasnt the only reason I mentioned Hitler in the title but I did want your attention! Ive decided to post a series of blogs about Global Warming because the more I read about it the more I realise that it is the Biggest Issue of our time - it is truly a greater threat to the future of mankind than anything that's ever happened in human history - Hitler included - yet as I write those words I hear a voice inside me saying "you're an idiot". Maybe I should do what Rene Rivkin is reported to have done whenever he thought about getting some exercise -just have a lie down and wait for that panicky feeling to pass.

Maybe that's what you re thinking too, but consider these words from "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer, a book only just published that I bought on Saturday:

"Runaway climate change threatens to sweep away our stable, familiar world and replace it with a terrifying chaos of famine, mass migration and war that could cut the human population to a fraction of its present numbers by the end of this century"

This book isn't a discussion of the science of climate change but an analysis of what will happen as result of it. Take Pakistan and India for example - a 2 degree world temperature rise (which is not an extreme scenario) will reduce Indian food production by 25% leaving a quarter of a billion Indians without food.(This happens because a greater part of India will become too hot to grow crops) So to increase production elsewhere they might extract much more of the water from the rivers that pass through India to Pakistan, and then what will Pakistan do? These two countries are nuclear powers and they've already been to war over petty border disputes.

Their neighbour Bangladesh will be literally disappearing under the sea, creating 60 million homeless starving people - who is going to feed them and where are they going to go? Similar problems of starvation, disease and mass migration will happen in Africa and central America- these people are going to head north - so there'll be border disputes and wars. How will Europeans deal with millions of starving Africans wanting food? Put up walls to keep them out? Share what they have? They wont have the money to buy it! Maybe they'll just take it, figuring its the West thats created much of this mess, now they can pay for it.

Frankly I get the feeling that chaos and disaster are almost inevitable because politicians and big business and much of the popular media don't yet take it seriously enough - an obvious example is everyone grizzling about petrol prices and politicians promising to keep them down, reassuring everyone that their lazy polluting dependance on cars wont have to change. And yet what possible reason can there be for anyone to own a Hummer, a grotesque example of western materialist excess if ever there was one - or even a 4 wheel drive? Surely thats exactly where we are going to have to start? The reality is that pain and restrictions and sacrifice and massive alterations in our lifestyle and expectations about the future are inevitable - they may be forced upon us by an unfolding calamity or else we could move now to embrace radical change and perhaps save the world- like our parents generation did when Hitler threatened the free world with Nazi destruction. Its a big call but I think thats where I am headed. I'll write more about it in the next few blogs.....

Pastors and Priests

For the last couple of years an influential youth pastor at Hillsong Church in Sydney has had terminal cancer. He wrote a song about it that sold well and he appeared on stage at their church services with an oxygen tube to help him breathe. Guess what happened next? He died ? They prayed for him and he got better? No, not exactly - actually last month he was found to be a porn addict and was faking the whole illness! Tearful confessions all round a la Jimmy Swaggart ( for those too young to know who he was, or too lazy to Google him, he was an American Televangelist who was discovered to have been doing kinky things with sex workers when he wasnt on TV telling everyone about Jesus and getting them to send money to him - theres always money when it comes to Televangelism! - anyway he famously went back onto his TV programme and confessed everything - well not explicitly- with tears streaming down and ruining his makeup) And then there was Jim and Tammy Faye Baker - they had a multimillion dollar Televangelism empire that crashed when Jim went to gaol for massive tax fraud that was uncovered just after he had first been discovered cheating on Tammy Faye.

So what is it with religious leaders and sex? Reminded me of the Pastor of the last church I went to, back in Dunedin in the "80's - the unmarried Sunday School teacher broke down one day and told everyone that this pastor was the father of her two kids,and it was his idea to spread the story around that they had been conceived in Australia when she went there on holiday and fell into sin. Twice! And we later heard that Frank Houston, the pastor of the Auckland Assembly of God Church had been molesting boys like a regular old catholic Priest. So the circle is almost complete because Franks son is Brian the Pastor at Hillsong!

What I always find amazing when these scandals are exposed is how quickly the congregations rush to the defence of the crooks whove been lying to them and ripping them off.Even more amazing perhaps is the way in which they refuse to allow these scandals to count against the reality of their religious experience.You would think they would be shocked that they couldnt tell the difference between the genuine article and these fakes and conmen. I presume they wouldnt want to suggest that if their service is conducted by a fake cancer sufferrer living a lie and addicted to porn its the same as if the service was conducted by say Mother Theresa - yet thats what it is. To put it mathematically:

Fake Cancer Sufferer+Porn Addiction = Mother Theresa + God.

Work that out!

Climate Change denialists are so Wrong

There was a debate on TV last year about climate change and afterwards on the Internet you could log on and ask the scientists questions. One post said something like "I'm a 15 year old student and even I can see that the professor is wrong about Global Warming because we 've just had the heaviest frost ever and how can that mean theres global warming?" More recently Ive had conversations with sensible educated adults whove been equally ignorant about climate science but nevertheless expresssed equally sceptical views about it, rubbished Al Gore and his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and repeated stuff they'd heard somewhere about how many cars he owns or claimed its just a scientific hoax or else its just part of the natural cycle of atmospheric events or whatever - this is actually no better than the ignorant 15 year old thinking he knew better than the learned professor - but just sounds a bit more impressive. Now I had seen the movie and been impressed by it but like most of us didnt really know anything else about Climate Science other than what I might have read in the papers and seen on TV. So I didnt feel qualified to disagree with the climate change sceptics and deniers - I felt pretty ignorant too. So Ive done a bit more reading and searching, and what Ive concluded is that Al Gore is right.

The first thing I realized was that Climate Deniers are an extreme minority, but they make a lot of noise, make arguments that are simple and sound plausible to most of us, and thereby create an impression that there is still an argument going on about whether or not Global Warming is happening and is a threat. The trouble is most of us are not scientists, and we can easily be impressed by glib arguments and have no way of knowing if theyre really valid. The same thing happens with creationists who try to give the impression that in Science there is still room for doubt about the fact of evolution : there is none - but which of us is actually qualified to know that, for example their often repeated claim that evolution must be wrong because human and dinosaur footprints can be found together is simply not true? There are also people who still believe that the Earth is Flat - its not- but try to unravel the arguments they make! There are others who believe that "9/11" was a US Government Conspiracy- try and argue against that monstrous lie and see where you get against fanatics whose agenda is not about Truth but about being Right!

As far as Global Warming is concerned, among scientists there are still many differences about specifics of Global Warming, but on one fundamental point there is near perfect unanimity : the main cause of a 0.75 degree rise in global temperature over recent decades is CO2 released from fossil fuel. The Chief scientific adviser to the British Government Sir David King wrote in the book "The Hot Topic " anybody who tells you differently either has a vested interest in ignoring the scientific arguments or they are fools"

So is the core of the issue for us non-climate scientists whether or not we can trust what the scientists are telling us? Well that at least is the way Climate denialists want us to view the issue, basically saying we shouldnt trust them, that rather we should listen to a tiny minority who insist that they are the only ones who really know whats going on. The odd thing of course is that most of us do trust what the Scientists have been telling us, and we've been doing it all our lives in just about everything that is part of modern life. So we live much longer and are much healthier because science discovered germs and identified diseases,worked out how the human body works, discovered blood groups and anaesthetics, insulin and penicillin and worked out how to make drugs to treat diabetes and hypetension and epilepsy. We use the phone, listen to the Radio, watch live sports from the other side of the world on TV, and cook dinner on the stove and the microwave because it was science that discovered electricity, radiowaves , satellite technology, microwaves and television; we travel all round the world because science discovered the jet engine, radar and the manmade materials that hold the planes and cars together; it was science that taught us about the history of the planet and the universe and the mysteries of the human body, and at the same time liberated us from the bonds of much ignorance superstition and fear. So forgive me if I declare my love of Science and my huge admiration for scientists and the scientific endeavour and what it has achieved in the last couple of centuries. The reality is that science works, and we demonstrate our faith in it everytime we answer the phone or turn on a light.

So what are they saying about global warming? Well this sounds extreme and unbelievable I know - but if nothing at all is done about carbon emissions, climate change will effectively destroy the entire human race before the end of this century. I'm going to repeat that : if nothing at all is done about carbon emissions, climate change will effectively destroy the entire human race before the end of this century. Lets say that one more time " IF NOTHING AT ALL IS DONE ABOUT CARBON EMISSIONS,CLIMATE CHANGE WILL EFFECTIVELY DESTROY THE ENTIRE HUMAN RACE BEFORE THE END OF THIS CENTURY"

The trouble with such a statement is that its too outrageous to be believable, yet climate change has resulted in mass extinctions before: the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction over 250 million years ago wiped out 96% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial life. So no matter how shocking and unbeliveable it seems, its happened before and the science is telling us that its about to happen again. This means that a baby born today could witness the end of human civilisation! Thats how close it is, and is why in many circles there is a growing realisation that massive changes are going to be necessary to avoid such a crisis, the greatest crisis in the history of humanity- yes the GREATEST crisis in human history.

I might mention the Myths and misinformation the Climate denialists write about some other time. Its a massive topic. As is trying to work out what the hell we should be doing to try and get out of this mess. But I'm leaving the last word to a guy that posted a comment on a Denialists Blog :

The hundreds of tree hugging scientists are just plain wrong!We should be looking to the experts at Exon Mobil, OPEC, and the American automobile industry. All of them have done way more research and found that there is no such thing as global warming! Don't let a little bookworn, brainiac, geek like Al Gore scare you!