Dr. Judith Curry writes over at Climate Etc about the upcoming Lisbon conference on
“Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate.”
I thought it would be good to touch on this. I was originally scheduled to attend, having been invited early on. I truly would like to be there to represent the readers of WUWT, but unfortunately, my reality is much like that of Jeff Id’s at the Air Vent. I’m a small businessman with a young family, and I simply can’t take a week long leave right now. The economy is hitting us hard.
Dr. Curry writes:
This week, I will be in Lisbon attending a Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate. The Workshop was conceptualized by Jerome Ravetz,Silvio Funtowicz, James Risbey, and Jeroen van der Sluijs.
While I (relatively) rarely travel overseas for meetings, I jumped at this invitation. The topic is certainly intriguing and an issue that I have spent a great deal of time pondering over the last year. Further, I really want to meet Ravetz, Funtowicz, Risbey, and van der Sluijs, whose papers I have been avidly reading over the past year, including citing them on a number of Climate Etc threads:
- Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster
- No Consensus on Consensus
- Decision Making Under Climate Uncertainty. Part I
- Overconfidence in IPCC Detection and Attribution. Part III
- Extended Peer Community
- Waving the Italian Flag. Part I: Uncertainty and Pedigree
- Politics of Climate Expertise: Part II
What has impressed me about their writings is that they recognize that climate change is not only a scientific subject, but also a political, economical, and ethical subject.
She adds:
I am hoping that there is some sort of path for reconciliation in this debate for the benefit of both scientific progress and social consideration of the issues surrounding climate variability and change. I don’t know what this should look like, other than:
- transparency and traceability in the science
- loyalty to truth and the scientific method
- understanding and acknowledgement of uncertainty and the possibility of error
- win-win situations such as no regrets policy.
I know what it DOESN’T look like, and that is reflected by Kevin Trenberth’s essay, where the blame is put on the deniers, the media, etc. (everybody but the IPCC scientists and their supporters). The domination approach only “works” if you can actually pull it off; climate scientists are babes in the woods when it comes to this kind of politics. A partnership approach makes much more sense and might actually produce a good outcome.
The people that really need to be there are from NOAA and NASA. Perhaps they will attend next year if the conference makes some progress that gets noticed this year.
While I regret that I am not going, on the plus side, I have delegated Steven Mosher to go in my place, and he’s all set. I look forward to his reports here.
You can read about the conference here in this summary that was sent to all participants:
reconciliation-rationale-WS2011 (PDF 57k)
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Why have I had my comment not posted? (and another one on another post last week). I have been posting here for years. Is there anything that I am doing that is breaking some rule or other? I would appreciate any feedback.
Thanks
[it was in the spam bin and needed rescuing]
@Jeff says:
January 25, 2011 at 11:36 am
Anthony says “REPLY: The people of Northern Ireland did it, and that involved bombings, killings, and retributions. All we have is angry rhetoric. It would seem less of a challenge. – Anthony”
True, but they had stopped the bombings, killings, and retributions first.
Ammonite says: January 25, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Kev-in-Uk says: January 25, 2011 at 2:12 pm
… but how the feck do you or I know what they did with the data to get their ‘conclusions’ !
Fair enough Ammonite, are there links to published (or not) papers on the proposed methodology and method which were submitted to journals prior to results being published? And papers on the outcome of the choice of these methodologies and methods? Prior again to results being accepted (or not) for publishing?
Notebooks and diaries are always useful as Kev-in-UK suggests.
In regard to Irish discussion (and not mentioned the EU or Lisbon Treaty)
Rebels with a Cause
DonS says: January 25, 2011 at 1:20 pm
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
…………… Which is why email and then skype was invented- to view one’s friends, colleagues (or opponents). Much cheaper and no carbon offsets. If one wants to smell, well then use post or visit (t/you ldd says: January 25, 2011 at 7:52 pm).
Piffle, like the politicians paying back travel rorts the ‘scientists’ are reconciling for the new wave of grant handouts, seeming to reconcile and say “well…. well….umm…. well yes…..we were sort of 20% wrong… maybe even 21% in error …..but… we tried….. and hey……… there’s improved instrumentation (and access) to this now. …….and we can publish our ‘raw’ data on-line….science will be exonerated.” Fingers crossed? http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/pollie-jaunts-slug-taxpayers/story-e6freooo-1225961153191
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/capital-circle/government-pressured-to-release-mps-pay-review/story-fn59nqgy-1225993670387
This discussion on ‘new science’ has been had in a previous WUWT post. I think psychology and climate change or such.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/25/seven-eminent-physicists-that-are-skeptical-of-agw/
This Side Idolatry (fwd in Feynman RP, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out)
“Workshop on Reconciliation in the Climate Change Debate.”
Reconcile what?
Or do they really mean a plea bargain? (To make an agreement in which a defendant agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge instead of not guilty to a greater one.)
I think I’ll stick with Keith, here:
Keith G says: (January 25, 2011 at 5:00 pm)
But a ‘reconciliation’ between ‘truth’ and ‘politics’ is without merit.
xyzlatin says:
January 25, 2011 at 9:50 pm
Did you feel rescued?
You must be a very, very naughty boy. Or girl.
Good post, which I have just read. Except for No.4.
I have to admit that berniel on January 25, 2011 at 3:10 pm raises some pretty disturbing points about the organizers’ ideas – the idea of “minimal assumption” that “everyone agrees” that there is a problem to be solved, the idea that it would be “premature” to debate the scientific questions, and the idea that science “presupposes” a public consensus about what is true (“public consensual knowledge”). If Judith Curry sticks to what’s she’s saying, she will be accused of trying to take the conference off course, and any skeptics will be accused of trying to hijack it altogether.
And to top it off, as Mike D. on January 25, 2011 at 5:33 pm pointed out, there is an effort in the organizers’ language to misrepresent the skeptics as “violent”. That’s straight out of the US Dems’ current playbook, their recent instinctive leap to exploit Jared Loughner’s violence, their seeking since 2009 to pin some sort of violence on conservatives (while ignoring violence by Casey Brezik, SEIU, etc.).
Not promising at all. Sooner than getting railroaded, skeptics attending the conference might be best off openly announcing their effort to take the conference off its planned rails.
The economy is not hitting these climate lunes much. Pity.
Oh! I just realized that we pay for their trips through taxation.
Ammonite says:
January 25, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Unfortunately, it is not realistic to trust virtually any data produced by the ‘team’ in my opinion. The recent post on here…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/10/gross-data-errors-in-ghcn-v2-for-australia/
demonstrates quite clearly that data ‘transferred’ or ‘imported’ into another dataset can easily be erroneous.
But working with the data isn’t the main concern. We are fully aware that Mann/Jones/Schmidt and Hansen have all sent each other ‘data’ – then compared and adjusted to match the findings of the ‘other’ group. In effect, the learning process of how to use the data, e.g. for UHI adjustment or historical errors, smoothing, etc has been corrupted by data being sent back and forth.
As for the term ‘raw’ data, yes, it is a bit strong – but I have yet to see an original dataset that contains warts and all. Obviously, any dataset begins and is updated and modified to correct errors – that’s a given – but what is not a given is to continually ‘adjust’ or massage data – which, as far as I can ascertain, is exactly what has been done over the years. Even the original CET has been revisited and ‘adjusted’ and the original is supposedly now unavailable!
My scientific objection is simple – I’ll bet you cannot take any long term temp station dataset (pick anyone of the main ones you like) and produce an historical amendment list !
So, for example, find the GHCN base data (v 1.0?) – in essence, I mean the original data as entered (with perhaps some data entry errors?) and plot it out.
then find the documented changes and reasons for the changes to each piece of the data (you know, stuff like, Note: Station X was missing Feb 1963 – so we inserted an average value based on the nearest three stations, etc, etc). Then plot each subsequent ‘version’ of the dataset.
The man hours that have gone into these original datasets is possibly huge – but since original ‘manual’ conception and data entry into a computer database – many later adjustments have presumably been done by computer and coded processing? Where is the method/documentation for that?, More importantly, where and what are the error check and validation methods for the subsequent changes (obviously not very good as link above demonstrates).
So my query/point still stands – can you or anyone else – provide a known genuine base dataset, and a scientific, fully documented list of amendments leading the the ‘current’ dataset in use?
The day someone (anyone?) can do this fully and transparently within the public domain, I (and many others) will start to look more closely at it.
Don’t get me wrong – the data we have is the data we have (warts and all) – I accept that – but without clear evidence of all the processing and methodology it is unrealistic to hold this up as ‘definitive’. Such data is even harder to defend given the known ‘faults’ as demonstrated with the climategate emails.
Kev-in-UK says: January 26, 2011 at 1:58 am
Unfortunately, it is not realistic to trust virtually any data produced by the ‘team’ in my opinion. The recent post on here…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/10/gross-data-errors-in-ghcn-v2-for-australia/
demonstrates quite clearly that data ‘transferred’ or ‘imported’ into another dataset can easily be erroneous.
Kev, did you read the responses to that post? The only import error came from Ed Thurstan, the poster himself! I suggest being as skeptical of the “nothing can be trusted” meme as the “everything can be trusted” one.
From Graeme W: November 10, 2010 at 8:42 pm
“I believe that the most likely reason for the errors is simply transcription. The BOM website doesn’t provide a contiguous table from 2010, but has heading breaks after 1972 and 1997. I suspect that Ed copied the tables into a spreadsheet, and had a copy error and shifted the later data by two years. He was thus comparing the 2005 GHCN data with the 2007 BOM data… which, not surprisingly, didn’t agree.
The problem is not an average calculation problem. The problem is that he’s accidentally compared the wrong years.”
The conference is irrelevent political froth. The chances of it having any scientific validity are nil with people like Ravitz peddalling the ‘post-modern’ rubbish of sciological determination of scientific truth.
Its an exercise in promoting the politicization of science via the sociological nonsense of culturally determined ‘truth’ that is of no value to anyone with an interest in scientific accuracy or finding out what NATURE will do.
I can see its attraction for those that are more interested in the political implications of the science than the accuracy of the science however.
Has anyone any more suggestions for criteria of rejection of AGW/unforced variation?
Apologies if posted twice:-
xyzlatin says:
January 25, 2011 at 9:50 pm
If I may, I would like to add further to my comment of your post. Include:-
No. 3 …Nice people can support programmes that are tremendously harmful.’
Pointman | January 25, 2011 at 9:47 am | Reply
http://judithcurry.com/2011/01/24/lisbon-workshop-on-reconciliation-in-the-climate-change-debate/
In Australia today (26/1/2011), our Australia Day, it is a national holiday of celebration of our great nation and peoples.
Yet we have Noel Pearson, Cape York, Queensland speaking out that in his view, a consensus of Aboriginal people is apparent, that our Constitution does not work for the 3% of indigenous Australians. He states this prior to the proposed national referendum, put to 100% of the voting (free) population, of proposed change to our Constitution.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/aboriginal-referendum-a-test-of-national-maturity/story-e6frg6zo-1225994516918
Noel states 3% of his people. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) state 2.3% of the population identify as indigenous. The ABS counts 517, 714 (4713.0.55.001 – Population Characteristics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, Australia, 2006) cf Table 1 30 June 2006). Yet ABS Quickstats writes 455,031 and total Australian population 19,855,288.
But ‘his’ (that’s Noel) people are also an astonishing bulge in a population pyramid; infants and young people.
“The number of people identified as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin in the 2006 Census was 455,028 representing 2.3% of the total Australian population, as counted in the Census. This is an increase of 11% since the 2001 Census, compared with an increase of 3.8% in the non-Indigenous population over the same period.” Ref 4713.0 – Population Characteristics, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, 2006
And for decades, these young indigenous folk have had no choice. No education, no private property, no house, no choice of marriage partner and no jobs. No freedom. No nothing. Just stuck in the ghettos perpetuated by Noel and the earlier proclivity for the Greens (Mother Earth) abetted by the anthropologists, as it suited their data. That’s three generations of data. And people manacled to broad distribution of ghettos.
And Noel is so wrong, ALL women had the vote within the states, apart from Western Australia and Queensland, before the Constitution was set in place in 1901.
http://www.parliament.sa.gov.au/AboutParliament/History/AboriginalAustraliansandParliament/Pages/AboriginalSouthAustraliansandParliament.aspx
So Australia, having learned from her imperial sisters and brothers, eschewed both slavery and the servitude of women. One has to wonder what Noel Pearson and his ‘colleagues’ are really on about.
Ah, the monarchy.
Not the rape, abuse and murder operating under a customary ‘sharia’ law in Australia, not the complete absence of education or the reporting of such absence or eons of fraudulent results, not the total acquiesce of one’s sale of their human rights under the ‘elders’ and their regime, not the horror of being racially conscripted to a cause, ….it is the monarchy that Noel is interested in. But then Noel and his colleagues would be able to know this, they had the luxury of an education, in the cities, unlike the 99% that did not even have an education.
“Over the past 20 years, the Census count of Indigenous people has doubled from 227,593 in 1986. Much of the growth in the Indigenous population can be explained by natural increase (births minus deaths). Other non-demographic factors, such as improvements in Census collection methods and people identified as being of Indigenous origin for the first time in the Census, also contribute to the growth.” (ABS 4713.0) note graph http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@ur momisugly.nsf/Lookup/82742A1B597A338CCA257718002A6FCE?opendocument
Australians had maturity years ago, despite what Noel states. Here in Australia; Science of the Enlightenment, human freedom and Christian belief, in the face of human fallibility, was established and recognised. This is what shaped our nation as it is today, these, and COURAGE. As so amply demonstrated, by Australian men and women who served and serve: in Afghanistan and the other terrible wars; the fires of Victoria; the floods of Queensland, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea and the intervention in Northern Territory.
Ammonite says:
January 26, 2011 at 3:17 am
Yes, I was aware of the error and well, that is/was kinda the point – data was used and abused and errors were introduced and promulgated further. In short, with datasets being bandied around errors get introduced – it doesn’t matter from where, or how – what matters is, ‘are they spotted?’ – is data checked and validated, etc, etc.
It is easy to see how simple transpositional errors and suchlike can be introduced and then NEVER corrected unless full data integrity and checks are made in full transparent glory by unconnected data reviewers.
I reiterate my request (it’s unreasonable in the climate science context, I know that full well) for someone to furnish a start to finish dataset with accompanying detailed documentation of amendments.
As a scientist and an engineer myself, when I first started to look into the AGW issue (having been a lukewarmer before) the first question I asked was where is the basic data and how valid is it. I was stumped at the start!
The skeptic movement seemed very brash at the time, very confrontational, and very anti the ‘established’ science, and I couldn’t understand why. Yes, I could see the various holes in the AGW ‘proof’ but it was only when I myself wanted to look at the basic data that I realised it simply wasn’t available.
It subsequently seemed to me that the main AGW scientists were proclaiming instead of demonstrating their theory as valid.
So, in a nutshell, I don’t care much for the current findings based on ‘so and so’ (2004), or ‘x and Y, et al.’ (1986), etc, etc – because without knowing (and checking) that such starting ‘work and data’ is valid, how can the subsequent work be shown to be valid?
It’s not really paranoia on my part, or total distrust. Perhaps it’s more that if you want someone to believe that you are showing something that is supposedly fully validated, one would normally expect to see the FULL documented history of ‘construction’ of the validation so presented.
Do not the vast majority of all AGW related papers correlate back to surface station data at some stage? Yes? So, surely, you would think that the surface station data had been fully and completely validated beyond any question of doubt, and that this would have been specifically and most dilligently recorded?
In physics, they use various constants as references (e.g. plancks constant, the speed of light, etc, LOL) , which, to be fair, haven’t changed much over the years. In climate science, it seems the limited ‘references’ necessarily include the surface station data – and these appear to have been changed significantly over the years, but nobody seems to know what/why/how!
I don’t want to labour a point that has been discussed too much already – but if I have a metre long stick in my hand and I publish that I measured it, and it’s correct! And then you ask for my calibration certificate, and I say I haven’t got one, but I know a guy who has a metre stick, and I had checked it with his one (but the end was a bit chewed by his dog and so we guessed a bit), and he checked it with another guy a couple of years ago, etc..and so on and so on… How much credibility are you going to give my measured ‘metre’ as valid data?
Perhaps a poor analogy, I know ! – but in the real world, is the current surface station data really much better? and far more importantly, can anyone demonstrate it to be so?
REPLY: The people of Northern Ireland did it, and that involved bombings, killings, and retributions. All we have is angry rhetoric. It would seem less of a challenge. – Anthony
Anthony/moderator
That is a very poor example. The NI agreement came about because of a deep loss support both in NI and in the USA. They were effectively beaten into reality although the war still continues.
What has impressed me about their writings is that they recognize that climate change is not only a scientific subject, but also a political, economical, and ethical subject. ”
This concept is utter rubbish. Science is science. You can turn it to political advantage you can turn it economical advantage but that doesn’t change the fact that science is science and when performed through the scientific method it remains scientific, reproduceable, verifiable and testable. Anything else is just nonsense.
I’m guessing that the idea of the conference is that some of the leaders of the skeptics get to meet some of the climate scientists, and explore each others positions. What would the current views of each camp be?
Well, the climate scientists view of skeptics would be that they are opposed to the science for ideological reasons, but don’t properly understand it. They would see the skeptics as stooping to underhand tactics to create doubt where there is none. For example, getting people all excited by telling them that the 2nd law of thermodynamics proves that the greenhouse effect doesn’t work – when that is such a silly idea that a good university physics student could demolish it in minutes.
The skeptics view of climate scientists is well documented here. Climate scientists are ideologically committed to government control, and have falsified the science to achieve their goals. The fudge data and try to stifle dissent. They are addicted to grants, and have to continue to produce alarmist papers if they don’t want their funding to dry up.
Now I have trouble believing that many of the prominent skeptics are as unreasonable as climate scientists see them to be. Sure some will publish any idea, however stupid, but overall, I’m sure a commitment to find out what is really happening drives most skeptical bloggers, just as it does most scientists.
I also have trouble believing that climate scientists are as bad as all that. To the extent that some might be a bit rude about skeptics, that is entirely understandable given that some skeptics are disingenuous, and do try and make life miserable for climate scientists.
Of course a rather rare person is someone like Roy Spencer, who is both a climate scientist and an AGW skeptic. From what I’ve seen discussions between the pro AGW climate scientists and Dr Spencer are fairly civil. The reason for this, I think, is that Dr Spencer is actually trying to find out what is happening, just like other climate scientists, and he doesn’t try and justify ridiculous positions with weak arguments.
So in terms of reconciliation, it would be nice if skeptical bloggers started by not allowing posts/comments which rehash tired discredited ideas. Imagine trying to have a discussion of mathematical proof, and constantly having people saying, “Look, here is a short proof that 1 = 2, and that can’t be true, so its all rubbish”. Of course the proof that 1 = 2 is in error, and anyone who falls for that error is not capable of sensibly contributing to the debate – and they should realise that!
For their part, climate scientists should realise that if AGW is real, and a big problem, then we will need to make big changes to the way we live. Therefore they carry a heavy responsibility to get it right, and to communicate their work in a way that allows others who are qualified to do so to check it.
You were right not to waste your time over there, Anthony. This is a ‘Trenberth’ moment. An attempt to give AGW a reality it doesn’t deserve. It is a political move to ‘drag in’ skeptics to an agreement which says that they confirm the AGW science is valid and correct.
“Ravetz: “But from my earliest years I combined my concerns for science with an awareness and commitment to politics, which on various occasions was realised as activism, but for most of the time in reflection.”
http://www.jerryravetz.co.uk/work.html
He was a communist.
Baa Humbug says:
January 25, 2011 at 6:34 pm
I’m with Piers Corbyn on this in that we don’t need pseudo reconciliation, we need more polarization.
However I will accept one compromise position, that is..
* All laws, rules regulations, taxation, trading schemes etc are VOLUNTARY.
I use UPS shipping where I work. They have added the capability when shipping to check that you want it to be a green shipment. UPS will increase the cost and use the extra funds to grow a tree or something. I never use the option.
Dr. Curry’s bulleted list is certainly a laudable set of goals and I wish her well in achieving it. I do not, however, think that climate science is an important science that deserves even a small fraction of the money it now receives. I also think it is up to the main players in climate science to get on board with the scientific method that they have forgotten and to open their data, methods, and software. I have not seen any skeptics hiding any of those items and it is not the skeptics who need to prove anything. (See the scientific method and how it works.)
Enjoy the pinewood derby Anthony. You won’t regret it.
The term ‘reconciliation’ immediately brought to my mind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. This Commission forced all concerned to face what they did during the apartheid era in that country, including those who had political power and those who were seeking political power. This forum is not the place to discuss the events brought before the Commission but I thought that the methodology and the underlying tenets of that Commission might have a degree of applicability with regard to the Lisbon Forum.
I have read and re-read the terms of the Commission and I have studied some of the events brought before it. My original thoughts that such a Commission could work in the context of the Lisbon Forum were dashed very early on by one single word, Truth.
For something like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to function in the context of climate change and the science involved, the truth would be required from all participants.
From http://www.beyondintractability.org/articlesummary/10240/ I quote the following, “Justice is achieved not by retribution, but by the restoration of community. Healing communities requires truth-telling, forgiveness, acceptance and trust.” Such ‘truth-telling’ is, I regret to say, apparently anathema to one side of the non-debate insofar as ‘climate change’ is concerned.
I can foresee nothing of any value emerging from Lisbon; the foremost prerequisite for any form of ‘reconciliation’ is a full and frank admission of previous wrong-doings. That is not going to happen in Lisbon or anywhere else. The conflict will continue.
This quote would seem applicable, though I suspect each tribe will think it predominately applies to the other….
“The worst offense that can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatize those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.” [John Stuart Mill, 1806-73]
Good to see that comment, Jessie (January 26, 2011 at 5:52 am).
The hell with reconciliation. Who cares? What is needed is a commitment to honesty and an end to lying in all its forms. That means an end to the defamation, i.e. the baseless smears against people whose views differ. That means an end to the baseless predictions of gloom and doom in order to provoke the public. That means honesty in peer review, etc. It means a return to the scientific method.
I don’t care if people ever like each other. I don’t care if they ever agree on a damn thing. I just want all of them to be honest and fully transparent so that real science emerges.
Thanks for the kind offer, but the flight at this point would be outrageously expensive. Mostly it is about my business and employees, who need me to pull for them right now, as does my family. I’d have to miss my son’s Cub Scout Pinewood Derby this Saturday, and these personal things need to take priority. As somebody pointed out the other day “on your deathbed, you won’t be saying “I wish I spent more time on WUWT” -Anthony
—-
Anthony, as a small business owner and former Assistant Cubmaster of Cub Pack 13 in St. Cloud, MN, I applaud you for knowing what is truly important.
You have many friendly eyes & ears in the world, we’ll watch this opening dialogue with curiosity and interest.
Cheers, man, and best wishes to your son’s competition! The Pinewood Derby is a lifetime remembrance, as all former Cubs know.
mkelly says:
January 26, 2011 at 11:30 am
Is that because trees don’t grow so well in the sea and you prefer to spend your $ more rationally.
Roger Carr says: January 26, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Thank you.
Cape York recently advertised for a position to evaluate their extraordinary ‘non-violent’ intervention that was instituted around 1999. An intervention which repositioned the strength of the very peope that did LITTLE for decades except promulgate hatred for missionaries, re-developed communal lands based on spurious anthropological data in some instances, hatred of the English (by proxy Cpt Cook) and any institution developed by the British.
It is quite incredulous that a 10 year post hoc evaluation of 3000+ people in an area http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/cape_york/pdf/map.pdf (dated map) of the most horrific violence and personal poverty can be conducted for these reasons:
1. There has been no rule of law for ALL
2. That all the education, health and reported welfare (exclude all blackmarket trades and double counting of individuals) over the past 30-40 years can be transparently presented;
3. That the millions upon millions invested, including costing volunteer labour can be accounted for;
4. That freedom can not be measured, as it is truly lacking, as all Cape York young people and children on these communities, as they are in all other gated remote communities of remote Australia, are enslaved by arranged marriages, lack individual rights, are watched when they vote and spend the pittance $ they are allowed, and doubly so with the new ‘family commissions’ aiding and abetting the ‘elders’;
5. That the Peter Sutton’s book reviewing his career of some thirty years in Cape York titled ‘Politics of Suffering’ should be re-written and titled the ‘Science of Suffering’.
The Gulags (acronym for Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements) of Australia.
Many of us wonder, and in horror, we of many races and ethnicities, how this has been allowed to continue here in Australia. Yet, it is only those that are alive and allowed to live, that continue, from Cape York and elsewhere, to tell the story to the Australian public. So the education push + INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS may be worthwhile if that is the grander scheme.
Perhaps the privatisation that Noel Pearson seeks, and the estrangement of the State’ interference he cites will deliver a better life to all those of the Cape and other communities.
I imagine he is saying ‘local government’ with its exemption from the Trade Practice Act is a better alternative. Local government ruled by elders , represented at federal level. Local government which crosses State boundaries, as deemed and so well published, by the ancient marriage lineages and trading routes.
I’d lay my bets that Noel’s children will be educated, personally safe and can choose to marry (or not) whomever they wish.
Stephen Brown says: January 26, 2011 at 12:44 pm
Didn’t do much for Timor
Kev-in-UK says: January 26, 2011 at 6:44 am
Good on you. If the ‘raw’ data was available, along with the notations, as every proper scientsit maintains, even when an anomaly occurs (aka Fleming, Florey et al for example), then all interested professionals and peoples would have a level playing field. The AGW and such has to be applied science and NOT science?
The only types that I understood to profess non-violence were the medical professionals that developed the anti-nuclear front, cf Helen Caldicott and Australian doctor. I am not clear that the art of psychology is non-violent.