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
Relationship management with Journalists, is reminescent of the Scorpion and the Frog story, or perhaps more akin to parental relationships with animals that eat their young.
More of theses guys (like Flannery) will find out just how fickle Journos can be, as the AGW theorem fragments.
guam says: April 12, 2011 at 12:37 am
Relationship management with Journalists, is reminescent of the Scorpion and the Frog story, or perhaps more akin to parental relationships with animals that eat their young.
More of theses guys (like Flannery) will find out just how fickle Journos can be, as the AGW theorem fragments.
If you are a warmist and have been inviting in the sharks to feed by doling out handfulls of warmist propaganda for years. Don’t expect the sharks to stop coming when you run out of pro-propaganda, nor be surprised that if you don’t have anything to feed them, that they turn to the next most juicy offering in the sea.
But to be more serious, the MSM live on a diet of natural calamity – they need the earthquakes, floods, fires, droughts, famines to sell newsprint/airtime. They also needed global warming to fill that gap between the “there’s a flood, no one died” … and the other 90% of the article which their readers wanted to read.
The MSM need alarmists — it doesn’t matter whether they are warming alarmists, cooling alarmist, or just all-round-any-climate-will-do alarmists they are always on call to add those extra vital column inches to spice up an otherwise largely information void as the next natural disaster unfolds.
So, what will win out? Making hay at the expense of the climate alarmists whose position is now so absurd, that even the readers of the most downbeat tabloid know it, or do they keep their pet “experts” on their pedestals ready for the next disaster?
When asked about Lindzen, he admits his science is imppecable and highly valued by the climate community. Unable to fault his credentials as a scientist he opts for a political smear: “The problem with Richard Lindzen is his politics is to the right of Andrew Bolt and Genghis Khan.” This despicable coward brings disrepute to science as a whole, and Australias government should be ashamed to lend him any credence, much less appoint him to a supposedly impartial position.
Wow!
A white male is using Euro-centric science to blame the Aborigines for mass extinctions! Call out the PC police!
On a related note, I’ve given some thought to the notion of early man causing the mega fauna extinctions. Imagine these early hunters sitting around a camp fire, knowing from experience that a broken leg or cracked ribs can be a death sentence.
Thag suggests, “Let’s pass on hunting caribou, reindeer, elk, or any of those scrawny critters. Let’s go after one of those huge mastodons! You know, the ones big enough to injure or kill everyone in the hunting party!”
So, early man was clever enough to extirpate the mega fauna, but so stupid they went after the most dangerous game around? The entire theory fails the “smart enough to come in from the rain” test.
King of Cool says: April 11, 2011 at 4:37 pm
Flannery as Indy Jones here: http://i51.tinypic.com/30c3n09.jpg
Don’t forget that, after naughty people have killed the megafauna, Prof. Flannery says they can resurrect them (using only stone-age technology with renewable energy, we assume).
Randy says: April 11, 2011 at 2:09 pm
‘..even naive..’ I don’t think so Randy, just polite and allow everyone their voice for a bit.
Tim Flannery’s bizarre, unscientific & globalist rant
Marc,
the usual quip is ‘darling, here, I really like this skirt on you. Aka your arse (fanny I believe in the US of A) looks great in this.’
It is akin to the gals suggesting levis for their fellas.
And
King of Cool says: April 11, 2011 at 4:37 pm
Na, we have real AND real fine men and women in the Oz outback. They work in the livestock, grain and and mining industry. Spare us from this pretension marketed by the ABC and the Gaia group.
Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/apr/10/bolivia-enshrines-natural-worlds-rights?INTCMP=SRCH
And finally, The Australian nailed Monbiot’s sojourne against Caldicott. Fancy a journalist not checking out the primary source data for all those decades. And perpetuating millions to live in poverty because they lacked reliable electricity. And had to put up with intermittent solar power [experiments] on them. Cheap tourism I guess.
Monbiot just wants the coal industry shut down, he’s using Calicott and she, he. Same mind, same argument, same sharing of a double bed.
Allen Graig (of TVOntario) is in conversation with Tim Flannery April 18, 7pm at the Toronto Reference Library to talk with him about his new book “Here on Earth”. When these climate change boffins (thanks Dave Springer) show up its like a love-in where everyone listens to the guru. I wonder if Allen will be asking Flannery pants some of the tough questions:
1. What about the non linear aspect of CO2 IR aborption, the diminishing returns? (at 390 ppm CO2 has absorbed most of the IR it can)
2. As water vapour has a 96% share of the GHG pie and is the more forceful greenhouse gas, why is it called the greenhouse effect and not the greenhouse water vapour effect?
3. Although many times warmer and colder than now, climate has been between the lines of natural variability since the end of the Younger Dryas over 10,000 years ago, what is the concern?
4.Can you explain how the atmospheric heat gain from the downward radiative transfer of IR energy by the man-made CO2 molecule, whose atmospheric concentration is one per 10,000, is going to dangerously warm the planet?
The academic conviction of dangerous man-made global warming is impressive. To think we hominids can willfully change or “save” the Earth’s climate is (IMO) typical of our conceit.
Actually, John W
The evidence is that megafauna game was truly the basis of early human culture because to bring down a single beast was far more energy efficient than say hunting ducks or rabbits. Beside many of the refinements in tool making needed to hunt small game hadn’t been developed yet, such as an accurate bow and arrow. Hunting big animals is more dangerous than hunting small game, but the rewards are huge and life for human males, in particular, was very cheap. The megafauna survived many climate shifts, the only universal correlation with their extinction is the emergence of hungry pack-hunting homo sapiens upon the scene.
I think this may be a little off topic, but I think it is a sign of the times in Aus, a very bleak economic future.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/shell-shelves-refining-at-clyde-20110412-1dbxn.html
From the article…
“Shell looks set to end its refining operations in NSW, labelling the Clyde refinery “no longer competitive” compared with new “mega-refineries” in Asia, which puts hundreds of jobs at risk.
Clyde and the Gore Bay Terminal in Greenwich, Sydney, will be turned into a fuel import terminal.”
I find it rather ironic that there is a terminal in Gore Bay.
The claim that climate caused the Pleistocene extinctions is sheer nonsense, advocated only by the statistically incompetent. Everywhere homo sapiens went, the megafauna disappeared within decades or centuries (no, Neanderthals never made it to Australia or the Americas). Who wiped out the thylacines in Tasmania? The dodo in Mauritius? The elephant bird in New Zealand? These animals that had survived climate oscillations for millions of years–dozens of megafauna in North America–disappeared within centuries of the arrival of humans. The human population increases rapidly with the availability of easy game, and the game quickly disappears. It’s as simple as that. Exceptions (like Irish elk) are rare.
I’ve never heard climate caused megafauna extinctions used as an argument against AGW before, and I find it bizarre–you lose all credibility. –AGF
“his politics is to the right of Andrew Bolt and Genghis Khan.”
The fact that the professor uses this old cliché shows how little brain power he actually has. How does he assess Genghis Khan’s political beliefs, other than by assuming that anyone who conquers and kills millions of people ruthlessly must be right-wing? Were Stalin or Pol Pot right-wing?
Was Genghis noted for a conservative adherence to royalty, or aristocratic privilege? Nope, he encouraged promotion based on merit. Was Genghis noted for supporting an established religious hierarchy or for having intolerant, racial views? Nope, he was particularly tolerant of religious and ethnic diversity.
What makes Andrew Bolt right-wing? He claims, correctly, to be conservative, true, but a man can be conservative yet not right-wing.
Even if Richard Lindzen had rather right-wing political opinions, why should that invalidate any of his scientific work? We might assume, for instance, that Wernher von Braun had (for a time, at least) right-wing opinions; did that necessarily invalidate his research on rocketry?
Of course, Prof. Flannery was merely speaking in code: for him, and for most of his supporters, “right-wing” is just another term for “evil”.
I’ve only been reading WUWT for a year and a half. I had missed this from way back when or dismissed it outright at the time.
I picture this being said in front of a large crowd at which time everyone bursts into fits of laughter and walks out, the ‘scientists’ to never be heard from again. That can be or should have been the only reaction to this.
A G Foster asks, “Who wiped out the thylacines in Tasmania?”
Well, the Aboriginal Tasmanians, during forty thousand years or so, certainly didn’t wipe out the thylacines; when Europeans came, however, with both guns and herds of sheep which looked mighty attractive to thylacines…
Perry says: April 12, 2011 at 12:08 am
Thanks for the links on Neanderthals… Confirms some of my own suspicions.
Animals that were safe from stones were killed by spears. Those that were safe from spears were killed by arrows, and what arrows couldn’t reach, bullets finished off. Obviously the stupid Europeans were continuing the aboriginal trend, and it’s perfectly true that without humans and their dogs and rats, the giant marsupials would still be alive. Hunting, habitat encroachment and exotic species introduction are the true environmental catastrophes, and those who deny it make warmistas look scientific. We know humans hunted mammoths and sabretooths.
Do you people really think the climate did something in the Holocene that it had never done before? –AGF
The most ancient skeletons of humans found so far in Australia were of a robust type similar to Neanderthal man, followed by Homo sapiens an estimated 60,000y ago.
Perhaps the earlier robust arrivals in Australia had a higher Neanderthal gene content but were swamped by Homo sapiens after they had consumed the ‘easy pickings?
As scientists learned more about Neanderthal man, they realized he did not fit in with the consensus theory at all. Apes were supposed to get smarter as their brains gradually evolved in size from about 400 cc to modern man’s 1350 cc brain. It was difficult to explain how a Neanderthal man, with his 1740 cc brain, could fit the theory.
Neanderthal skeletons were more often than not found in graves with hands neatly folded, surrounded by fossilized pollen. This is a pretty clear indication that they were buried with flowers in some sort of funeral ceremony. Only humans do that. Furthermore, they found tools (and possibly a musical instrument) associated with some of the Neanderthal remains. Every indication was that he was as fully human as Homo sapiens. Since then, Neanderthal has become a bit of an elephant in the room amongst paleoanthropologists!
If Neanderthals had ever arrived in Australia we would expect the Aborigenes to have preserved Neanderthal genes, and they have not. Homo sapiens was on the rise before access to the south east islands had opened up, and there is no evidence for Neanderthals in SE Asia, let alone Australia. Caucasians are far more likely than native Australians to have Neanderthal genes. –AGF
A G Foster says:
April 12, 2011 at 12:41 pm
“If Neanderthals had ever arrived in Australia we would expect the Aborigenes to have preserved Neanderthal genes, and they have not. Homo sapiens was on the rise before access to the south east islands had opened up, and there is no evidence for Neanderthals in SE Asia, let alone Australia. Caucasians are far more likely than native Australians to have Neanderthal genes. –AGF.”
While the discovery of Lapedo’s Boy, and the more recent DNA analysis indicates that Europeans have between 1 – 4% Neanderthal genes, this does not mean that the more gracile Aborigines of African descent had to have interbred with the already incumbent more robustly built ‘Neanderthal type’. Don’t forget that Australia is a huge continent and it is quite possible that the two populations never met in any significant numbers.
The fact that no Neanderthal types have been found in SE Asia yet does not prove they were not present, it just means that, due to the low probability of finding ancient remains, none have been found yet.
Mooloo says:
April 11, 2011 at 10:42 pm
When will they get to New Zealand to try to spin those extinctions into some climate story? Good luck with that.
Actually climate change is a major reason for many species in NZ being on the brink. It’s too cold for them.
The Kauri, for example, would like it much warmer. Like it used to be.
———-
I was actually referring to the extinction wave that hit there when the Mauris arrived.
Not all anthroprogenic extinctions involved hunting. The introduction of the dingo (asian wolf) by the aboriginals decimated the Tasmanian devil and thylacine from the Australian mainland. More recent introductions since white settlement such as the fox, cat and cane toad have severely impacted native fauna. The increased fire regime of the aboriginals would have favoured some species and sent others to extinction.
dlb
Dingos were dogs, which helped the first people hunt, so their effects cannot be so neatly separated. The full human effect included humans, dogs, and fire.
Tenuc
There were no Neanderthals in Australia – ever.
If you want to read an example of the best intellectual rubbish Australia is capable of producing go to http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2011/3101365.htm