This blog is now read by more machines than humans: RSS robots, spam-laying insectopoids, echoes of blog-gathering .edu projects. This essentially is the state of affairs that all human activities w
Cleaning Up the Nation
Austin Bay:
If Air America were a conservative radio network its corrupt funding trail and cynical abuse of a poverty program would be front page news at the NY Times and full-time mega-scandal at
Rank Materialism
Freedom. I am now the proud new owner of a Gateway 6020GZ laptop, perfect for students and others with limited means. I can now go into a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and look like I'm doing some
Fallujah Fonda
Uh-oh. From the Telegraph comes this exciting news:
Jane Fonda is returning to anti-war activism and embarking on a cross-country tour to call for an end to US military operations in Iraq.
Acros
John Pilger: Partner in Terrorism
In an outrageous piece of terrorist propaganda appearing on the cover of today's New Statesman, John Pilger puts the blame for the 7/7 London attacks not on the terrorists, but rather on Tony Blair:
Bullshit as Science
News blast from the AFP:
LONDON (AFP) - Global warming is reaching the point-of-no-return, with widespread drought, crop failure and water shortages the likely result, according to a new international report highlighted in the British press.
Note the weaselly invocation of the British press. AFP's not reporting this because they think it has any merit of course. It's only newsworthy because the British press is "highlighting" it.
The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics. In 10 years or less, they predict, the catastrophic point-of-no-return may be reached, The Independent daily reported.
The headline of the piece is "Global warming reaching point-of-no-return", with no indication that this is an opinion or propaganda. No BBC-style quotes there.
The report was assembled by the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain, the Centre for American Progress in the United States and The Australia Institute.
Separately I wouldn't dare to take any of these organizations seriously. Together they are a mass of self-reinforcing leftist authoritarian do-goodism that leaves reality far behind. Let's just examine some choice quotes from their homepages, shall we?
The Brits:
ippr is the UK's leading progressive think tank.
Well that fills me with confidence. The Americans:
Conservative Rhetoric or Reality
While President Bush has declared Social Security privatization his top priority, further reductions in taxes for the rich are a close second.
Alrighty then. The Aussies:
Private markets, while effective at encouraging efficiency in many circumstances, frequently fail to reflect adequately the ethical, social and environmental priorities of the community. Governments must provide the appropriate institutional framework in which private markets operate so as to ensure that they contribute to justice, equity and sustainability as well as efficiency. Market outcomes are not value free and the Institute reasserts the place of ethics in making public and private decisions.
That's awfully wordy for Australians. Anyway feel free to delve deep into the wisdom each of those sites offers. But continuing with our "science" report:
It says the danger point will be signalled when temperatures rise by two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750, before the industrial revolution.
But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline - so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached, the paper said.
How the hell did they reach the conclusion that there's a danger point beyond which nothing can be done? And how the hell did they conclude that this point is two degrees over the 1750 average world temperature?
The researchers calculated the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and say it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.
The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually - so it is likely that the 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years' time, the report adds.
Even the UN reports don't countenance any drastic changes between now and 2100- just a smooth, sliding, and steady increase of about 2 degrees Celsius- over the next hundred years, maybe. Now this triple-progressive report states that maybe, perhaps, there's a point-of-no-return in 10 years time? Let's elect Democrats then.
What's motivating the progressives is that the UN forecasts, as unreliable as they are, aren't scary enough. They've got to introduce that old dramatic cliche, the ticking clock. If we don't progressively address this issue in the next 10 years, then all is lost. It's a bit more compelling than those UN estimates, isn't it? The only problem is that there's no science that says that a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in 10 years time makes anything inevitable. There's no known "danger point".
Update: CNN picked up the story. Meanwhile, another report is issued arguing that we'd have ecological diaster without global warming. Go figure.
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Brian O'Connell.
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