It seems that the media down under is turning on newly appointed climate change commissioner Tim Flannery and his ideas. We need a Flannery FAIL blog to keep track of all of these. Have a look:
Read the full article here
This question posed to Flannery sent me reeling for the sheer irony of the question coming from an MSM inquiry:
ABCNewswatch yesterday:
Dear Prof Flannery, Is your continued support of the Blitzkrieg theory for the extinction of Australia’s megafauna (an increasingly marginal theory lying outside the current consensus of mainstream science that claims humans were solely responsible for the extinction of Australia’s megafauna) and apparent ignorance of the overwhelming evidence supporting the long-term role played by changing climate in the decline of the megafauna, a sign that you are a climate change denier?
Wow.
h/t to Marc Hendrickx
Flannery is also on record (in a recent interview) saying that if humans were to cease all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, it would take 1,000 years for there to be any impact on temperatures. Not exactly a great sales pitch for the new “carbon tax” that is meant to “save the planet”.
Newly appointed, he has single handedly lost the propaganda war already. Looks like the media have turned against him.
Ouch, that had to have left a mark.
Not Homosapiens who caused Blitzkreig, rather a distant stronger weapon toting and more intelligent cousin of ours, Neanderthal man. Early Homosapiens didn’t have the physique or intelligence to have a major impact, only later when intelligence and weapons technology developed did he start to dominate the food chain.
ABC, does your comment indicate that in fact that the sharks are now out and eating their own kind?
Perhaps Prof. Flannery knows what he is doing wrt climate boondoggles.
Don’t rubbish our Tim (he is doing a good enough job himself as evidenced by today’s post by Andrew Bolt )
Poor Tim, he hasn’t quite mastered the art of engaging the brain before opening the mouth ……. then again, perhaps not many cogs there to engage.
Just goes to show that the Colonials do not have a monopoly on the lunatics. I feel for my friends down under having to put up with such incompetance.
The progressive loss of local megafauna was initiated well before the accepted period of human continental colonisation. Hence, the data suggest that humans were unlikely to have played any role in the extirpation of the affected local megafauna during that interval. From Quaterary Science Review April 2011.
Amazing if true, this would need to be confirmed, but would completely smother the human caused extinction thesis covered in his book “The Future Eaters”. That’s science folks, hang around long enough and someone will find a flaw in your argument.
Of corse they may just be turning on him in order to get someone who’s able to produce a more nuanced and media-friendly message.
It seems that this question of megafauna extinctions produces some kind of mysterious effect on researcher’s brains, causing them to become simpletons in their quest for an either/or answer. This argument over whether it was caused by humans or climatic changes ignores the obvious answer that it was both. Thus to use the North American example, while the climate had changed many times before the megafauna extinction did not happen until it those earlier effects were compounded by human hunting and other activities (like fire).
To use a modern fairy tale, if polar bears were now stressed out by climate change effects, it would be much easier for humans to wipe them out.
Here’s what that article said that allegedly dismisses the human factor:
“The progressive loss of local megafauna was initiated well before the accepted period of human continental colonisation. Hence, the data suggest that humans were unlikely to have played any role in the extirpation of the affected local megafauna during that interval.”
Read carefully. The loss was “initiated” before the “accepted period of human… colonization.” First, that accepted period could be wrong (as the North American story was until recently). But if we assume it is correct, all this says is that those losses (apparently) started before human arrival. In fact, when read closely this paragraph is actually quite stupid. It basically just says that humans did not play “any role in that extirpation” before they got there. Duh. Nobel Prize?
So, while this study suggest that humans could not have played a role in the beginning of these megafauna declines, it says nothing about the final extirpation. Nothing.
So, as much as it makes me gag to agree with Flannery on anything, I think that this headline and this article is based on a gross oversimplification which is not supported by anything. And I find it rather convenient that so many researchers have similarly jumped on the climate change cause of megafauna extinctions since climate change became such a rewarding topic.
When will they get to New Zealand to try to spin those extinctions into some climate story? Good luck with that.
Flannery was a staggering choice of the Australian Government to head up their Climate Change propaganda machine. In the past he has made outrageous predictions that have failed to happen. He constantly wanders off on a frolic of his own like again recently publicly embracing Giai and talking of climate change as a religion. Never mind the hard core sceptics its the average bloke on the street now sees him as barking mad. The growing feeling is that if Flannery is the most reliable spokesman the Government can find to explain it all to us then something stinks.
Australians are trusting and loyal people by nature, naive even. But once they realise they have been had, as they are increasingly starting to do, they turn angry and will punish those who have let them down. Just look to two weeks ago and the NSW election.
Flannery is one of the best allies we sceptics have.
“A headline I thought I’d never see”
Not to rain on your parade, Anthony, but Cut and Paste in the Opinion pages has a long record of bucking the MSM trend by mocking hypocrisy and lunacy of the Left and, especially, inane babble of climate alarmists. So, inevitably, Flannery is a regular target! It’s (as Simon of Australian Climate Madness says of The Daily Bayonet) “always a great read”. (Confidentially, I have a personal theory that Andrew Bolt has a hand in Cut and Paste!)
“Flannery’s new rule: the only good scientist is one who votes Left”
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/flannerys_new_rule_the_only_good_scientist_is_one_who_votes_left/
Whatever killed the beasties and altered the climate at that time (48,000 years ago) it wasn’t man and it wasn’t the Ice Age as recorded in the Vostok cores. Earth would not start warming until some 36,000 years later. Neanderthals who might have been there would also have gotten equally scrooged.
It has been non-PC to suggest that aboriginal groups (is that non-PC?) were not the stewards of the earth the Suzukis would like us to believe. Historical records show that the locals wiped out the indiginous species on a first-come, first-eat basis. The easier to kill, the faster they went. You do not have to follow many human invasions to see how the middens change with time, reflecting the loss of initial food sources. The Lewis and Clark groups said that in the area of natives there was little food; the best was in the contested places between tribes, like the DMZ zone between North and South Korea.
Of course new arrivals wiped out the local megafauna. In Canada/the US you just have to look at the shrinkage of bison over a few thousand years to see what happens when a hungry and on-foot group do for dinner: big and slow go first.
Next thing you know, they will be wanting humans to pay money to the closest surviving descendants of those animals.
George says:
April 11, 2011 at 1:45 pm
Don’t rubbish our Tim (he is doing a good enough job himself as evidenced by today’s post by Andrew Bolt )
George-
I wasn’t able to use the URL that you provided and I’d like to read Bolt’s column. Any suggestions?
IanM
A headline here in the States may also surprise you if any carbon taxes are tried and if the price of gasoline goes any higher . The media is unusually quiet about gas prices and the cost of food. The populace will turn on the President and so will the media just as it seems they are now going against Flannery.
Excellent!
I’ve always been baffled how stone age man managed to eat so much meat in North America.
[peer reviewed stuff]
Blame man.
Blame climate change.
Blame climate and man.
Blame ET.
Doug Proctor,
Right you are. The Lewis and Clark record is the best and most spectacular documented case of the effects of inter-tribal neutral grounds, where no one hunted. And popular mythology – and the historical revisionists called ‘Conservation Biologists’ – pretend that what they and other people saw in those unhunted areas was typical.
And what you are describing with ‘big and slow go first’ is called ‘optimal foraging theory.’ The best documented examples of that which I know of are analyses of the midden piles around San Francisco Bay which show that when people first got there they were eating big mammals like sea lions but by the time Euros got there they were eating shellfish and anything else they could find (and the sea lions only survived on rocky islets where hunting them was extremely difficult). That is an extreme example because of the extremely high human population densities there.
It’s funny how at the beginning of the 19th century wildlife in Africa was not wiped out by man. Man, afterall, came from Africa so he had plenty of time to wipe out the wildebeest, elephants and hippos and rhinos. He did not! He navigated his way to North America and Australia and decided that this was the time to wipe out the millions of megafauna. Commonsense always trumps the models.
Tim is doing a wonderful Job.
Want a good laugh? Go to this interview with him on his latest book:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3101365.htm
(available as audio or transcript)
Erh, caution though; have a vomit bag ready
In Canada/the US you just have to look at the shrinkage of bison over a few thousand years to see what happens when a hungry and on-foot group do for dinner: big and slow go first.
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Well, us of European descent did hasten the end of the free roaming bison, and thank goodness they did!!! It would give a whole new meaning to “highway hazards”.
Paul Deacon said @ur momisugly April 11, 2011 at 1:15 pm
“Flannery is also on record (in a recent interview) saying that if humans were to cease all carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, it would take 1,000 years for there to be any impact on temperatures.”
Fortunately, when the fossil fool Flannery ceases his carbon dioxide emissions it will take considerably less than a thousand years for him to be well and truly forgotten 🙂
“Tim Flannery reminds me of Indiana Jones, but with the credibility to match the flair” (Robyn Williams)
Mmmnn – Indiana Jones? That’s a new one Tim.
But David Bowman doesn’t quite agree about the credibility part:
“More recently, in the attempt to exterminate megafauna such as buffaloes from regions of the Northern Territory, humans on their own – even with helicopters and guns – haven’t been able to do it. How could Aborigines, armed basically with only a spear and a boomerang?”
But I guess if they had Indiana Jones type leather whips that might have been more effective?
Good on ya Tim. Can some-one pls do a paint box reconstruction of Tim Flannery as Indiana Jones with felt hat and leather whip in hand? No offence. I do not like to ridicule but I do like a laugh sometimes.
Seriously folks, do Tim’s views affect his present role as Australia’s Climate Commissioner? Make up your mind when reading about Tim’s Future Eaters here:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/future/theses/theses.htm
(NB. It is an ABC Science production)