If Other Experts Were as Qualified as “Climate-Change Scientists”

On the ABC’s “QandA” an awarmist, scamming cretin, Bahareh Sarah Howard*, asked Sen. Cory Bernardi a stupid question:

Senator Bernardi, last week you said it was “good news” that the Federal budget had abolished the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and that the government was “still committed to abolishing the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation”.  As a researcher in climate change and renewable energy, I presume that when your car mechanic, your dentist, or your plumber tells you there is something wrong with your car, your teeth, or your pipes, you listen and act.  Why is it that you ignore the advice of climate change experts, from every corner of this planet who are urging us that climate is changing and we must act to reduce CO₂ emissions now?  Australia is per capita the largest emitter in the world.†

The silly cultist and aspiring hierophant fails to recognise that, currently, car mechanics, dentists and plumbers don’t duplicitously predicate their remedies on a scamming, self-serving, pseudo-scientific conjecture.  We may, however, imagine what a wonderful world it would be if tradesmen, medical specialists and various other experts were as qualified and as proficient as she and her fellow hoaxers:–

Visiting the new-age car mechanic:

Mechanic:  How may I help you?
Customer:  My car just needs a tune-up, I think.


Mechanic: Ho! So you think you’re the expert, eh?


Customer: No, I just—
Mechanic: We’re the experts here; now, your car obviously needs a new, non-polluting electric engine and, of course, a nice new, non-polluting, heavy battery will just fit into your boot very snugly.


Customer: How much will that cost? And where am I going to put the family’s luggage when we go on holiday if you put a great big battery—which is surely not as non-polluting as you say—in the boot?
Mechanic: First, apart from a few charges, imposts, dues, tariffs and levies, and a series of weekly payments, the engine is completely free—


Customer: Free?


Mechanic: Courtesy of the taxpayer, through the engine-change levy and the renewable energy subsidisation tax; and, as for holidays, you ought to know by now that going on holidays is very bad for the planet, so don’t.


Customer: But I can see from all the photos around this garage that you regularly fly overseas for—


Mechanic: That’s different.
Customer: How?


Mechanic: It just is.


Customer: Well, I don’t want to insult you or anything but are you a qualified tradesman?
Mechanic: Of course; I have an associate diploma in automotive studies from the Australian Climate Institute.


Customer: Right, well, I think I’ll drive away and have the car fixed later. You see, it wasn’t anything urgent—


Mechanic: Too late, under provisions of the engine-change legislation I’ve had to seize your vehicle and we’ve already started replacing your old, wicked, fossil-fuel engine.  Trust me, I’m a automotive-change expert.

Visiting the new-age dentist: 

Dentist: Before we begin, just sign these consent forms here, here and here.  Good, well done.  Now, what seems to be your problem? 
Customer:  My upper left premolar smarts, and I think it could do with a filling.  All my other teeth, thank heavens, are fine.

 
Dentist:  Ah, yes, they must be removed.

 
Customer:  They? 
Dentist:  Yes, all of them. 
Customer:  Don’t you need to take an X-ray or something first? 
Dentist:  No, modern dental-change science is beyond nasty, ancient and dangerous techniques now.  I’ll just ring the nurse and she’ll take you and your forms to the dental-change facility.

 
Customer:  Hell, what did I just sign?

 
Dentist:  This is permission to hold you in detention for six months on an anascorbic diet; that one’s garnisheeing your wages for the next fifty years; and that one’s subscribing to a monthly recipe service for nutritious vegetable smoothies.

 
Customer:  Hey, what?  What, what’s an anascorbic diet when it’s home?

 
Dentist:  Well, we remove Vitamin C from your diet so that you develop a therapeutic form of scurvy, which allows all your diseased teeth to fall out naturally and relatively painlessly.  Then, if you recover, you’ll enjoy for the rest of your days slurping nutritious vegetable smoothies or soups without ever having to chew like a beast of the field ever again.

 
Customer:  What about false teeth?  What if I want to eat a steak?

 
Dentist:  All teeth (97% of dental-change scientists agree) are bad for the planet, and so is eating meat:  it’s murder. 
Customer:  Look, are you a qualified dentist? 
Dentist:  Of course; I have an Bachelor of Arts in Dental Studies from Swinburne. 
Customer:  Who were your teachers there? 
Dentist:  An accountant, an archæologist and a career politician.

 
Customer:  Look, I think I want a second opinion. 
Dentist:  Too late.  The science is settled and, anyway, you’ve signed all the forms already.  Bye.  Take him away, nurse.  Next!

 A visit from the new-age plumber: 

Plumber:  Here I am at last. 

Customer:  Good, there seems to be a leaking pipe somewhere, because our garage has been flooded for the last couple of—

 

Plumber:  Wait, I’m the plumbing-change expert; I tell you what’s wrong. 

Customer:  Plumbing-change expert?  So you’re not an actual plumber with a trade certificate? 

Plumber:  Ah, far better than than that, I have a masters degree—in the media’s acceptance of global plumbing change.

 

Customer:  So you’ve studied the history of plumbing rather than learn how to mend broken pipes and such? 

Plumber:  Who said anything about history?  We studied models at the Institute for Plumbing Change!


Customer:  Okay, so how will you mend my pipes?

Plumber:  Mend them?  I’ll get a team of young migrants to pop by in a few weeks and they’ll tear out all the current plumbing and install new stuff.

 

Customer: Why? 

Plumber: Well, just looking at this sink here I can tell you that it has to go. 

Customer:  Why? 

Plumber:  It’s made of stainless steel, you fool!  Do you know how wicked it is to source the components of a stainless steel sink?  My god, man, it even has carbon in it! 

Customer:  I should have thought you’d support a carbon sink.  No?  Anyway, you’ll replace it with ceramic or plastic—

 

Plumber:  Ceramic? Plastic? What are you, a lobbyist for the evil mining or fossil-fuel industries?  Wood, man; the sinks, basins, pipes, sewers and all the rest must be replaced by ethically-sourced, sustainably-harvested wood products.

 

Customer:  Wooden products?  How will they last?  Stainless steel is used precisely because it doesn’t corrode, and the same goes for plastic pipes; what will stop the wood rotting? 

Plumber:  Since you’re so bloody well-educated, can’t you think of anything else which doesn’t corrode? 

Customer:  Don’t tell me that wooden pipes will be gold-plated? 

Plumber:  Ethically-sourced, of course.  Look, trust me:  I’m a plumbing change expert.

*  who intends to “develop scenarios to determine carbon dioxide emissions involved in the transition to a 100 per cent renewable energy sector in Australia and the world”, whose “passion is in social and environmental entrepreneurship, which has the potential to have a broader, multidisciplinary positive impact on the global level.”  Ah, yes, researchers no longer have boring old interests or specialities but, being so unscientific, irrational, eager and fervid, they have passions.
†  a lie:  see “Australia the Highest Emitter of Carbon Dioxide?” at Impact of Climate Change.

UPDATE:  see also by “Dean, King, Krauss and Bernardi on Q and A” by Matt Hayden.

Onus Probendi

At The Drum, in “Toxic week a taste of the election to come”, the irredeemably partisan Barrie Cassidy, in yet another assuete example of special pleading, writes of “a disgustingly sexist and offensive mock menu related to a Liberal Party fund-raising dinner”:

The Coalition released an email from the author of the menu, the owner of the restaurant, who argued he had produced it as a joke, “never for public distribution.”  The email took the heat off Mal Brough, and by extension, Tony Abbott.
The explanation however, raised several points.  Firstly, why then did Mal Brough personally apologise for something that he now says, didn’t happen. That is, the menu was not circulated.  Secondly, why did it take so long for the explanation to emerge?  And finally how plausible is it anyway, that somebody would go to so much trouble producing such elaborate material just for the amusement of a few kitchen hands?

I companionably provided some likely explanations for Mr. Cassidy’s three points in a comment below his article:

1.  It was the decent and honourable thing to do.  Mr Brough, after his being presented with what he was told was a menu from his dinner (though he had not seen it), recognising that it had offended people, rightly apologised in the same way that Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard* apologised for actions by previous governments though they bore no direct responsibility.
2.  The man responsible for the fake menu was unaware, perhaps, of the whole kerfuffle for much of the day.  Would a quicker response be more credible?  I suspect you’d find a swift response even more suss.  Of course, if journalists had investigated the matter thoroughly before testifying to the credibility of the fake menu, no explanation at all would have been required to redress errors.
3.  How plausible is it that people will go to such trouble?  Very plausible.  We have marvellous modern gadgetry which makes that sort of drollery quite easy.  People sometimes spend many hours on an edited graphic, say, or an entire day just creating a fake Facebook group, merely for the amusement of themselves and, perhaps, a few strangers.

Another reader, AT, responded to my comment:

Okay, Deado, but using your own methodology for sussing things out, you'd have to concede you could just as easily construct an equally plausible scenario reaching the opposite conclusions;
1.  Brough didn’t apologise until it became an issue.  A decent man would’ve immediately issued an apology and distanced himself from the whole affair.
2.  The man responsible for the fake menu must’ve been aware his handiwork, his restaurant and his Liberal party fund-raising event was the biggest story of the day.  If his apology was sincere, he would have issued that apology immediately to staunch the damage his party is now experiencing.
3.  It’s totally implausible to believe a successful restaurateur hosting a high-profile fund-raiser for his political party would take time out from preparations to produce a joke-menu for the sole amusement of kitchen staff, none of whom have come forward to corroborate his story.
Whaddaya think?

The Drum has prevented the posting of further comments but, had I been free to supply a response, I should have written something like this:

1.  This point is a lie, based on accepting partisan and probably mischievously erroneous accounts.  Mr Brough did apologise at the first opportunity.  The burden of proof lies on those who doubt this to prove otherwise.
2.  This point makes an unproven assumption:  where is the evidence that Mr Richards, the restaurateur, “must have known”, and where is the evidence that he cared about damage to “his party”?  The burden of proof lies on those who doubt Mr Richards’ account to prove otherwise.
3.  This point is predicated on a baseless assumption that the fake menu was concocted during the preparations of the dinner. The burden of proof lies on those who assert this to prove it.
AT argues, in bad faith it seems, on the basis that Mr Brough has an obligation to provide a account which his enemies will consider plausible; that’s wrong.  The relevant legal maxim here is semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit—“the necessity of proving always lies on him who lays the charges”.  The PM and her minions and all others who doubt Mr Brough must either provide sound evidence that his account is false or accept his explanation.

For further information on the strange case of the non-existent but extremely offensive menu, see “Paul Murray on Menugate”, “Menugate – a story in tweets” and “ABC still pushing menugate” at Catallaxy Files.

*  as I wrote elsewhere, why did Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard personally apologise for the pain and suffering caused by previous governments’ policies?  Were they somehow involved in, say, stealing babies from single mothers, perhaps.

UPDATE I:  see also “SCOOP: ALP Menu Worse than LNP” and “Why Is Main-Stream Media Not on the Menu?” by W. Dallas Brooks:

When journalists lie, what hope have we got?  This past week has been a low point in five years of an ever descending waterline on conduct.  As the ALP and their main-stream media advocates drool, hiss and spit about a menu from a private Liberal Party function that was not even seen by Liberal Party MPs, they now refuse even to acknowledge the existence of a very real, and very offensive menu from a Labor function hosted in May.

UPDATE II:  despite the clear evidence that the supposedly offensive menu was fake, the PM’s feigned outrage and the partisan propaganda seems to be working; for example, see “A little spotted dick, anyone?”: 

That menu didn’t just insult Julia Gillard, it insulted every female in this country.  While I was facing indecision about where to cast my vote, after today I’m DAMN sure I know where I am NOT casting my vote.

UPDATE III (June 15):  see “Chooks on the menu”, by Roger Franklin, at Quadrant Online:

On Tuesday night, a Brisbane chef re-tweeted the alleged menu from a Mal Brough fund-raiser held 10 weeks earlier.  We all know what happened next:  a document of dubious provenance, distributed by a nobody who had earlier said he would prefer to be “raped by an AIDS-infected pit bull” than see Abbott in The Lodge, and whose Facebook page reflects an enthusiasm for centrefold lesbianism,  was hailed as a champion of truth and women’s rights.  Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair and Sinclair Davidson have all done forensic analyses of the so-called Menugate “scandal” and its timeline, and those who need a further reminder of why election reporting by Fairfax and the ABC must be taken with a truckload of salt should visit their posts for a refresher course.

Finally, the ABC Reports a Disaster

Even the ABC, occasionally, can discern a calamity.

A boat at sea, in the middle of a bright, calm day, with high visibility and perfect conditions for sailing, has steamed headlong into an iceberg; gradually, more and more people realise that something is amiss:-

ABC Journalist:  … and, in conclusion, we must ask what rôle the owner of the competing shipping line has been playing in wickedly listening to insinuations that our wonderful captain failed to qualify for a master’s certificate more that seventeen years ago.  Nonetheless, despite baseless smears, everything is going swimmingly on this wonderful voyage.  Well, I shall sign off now … wait, something is happening; here’s the captain being hounded by some hysterical passenger— 

Passenger:  Is this boat sinking?

Captain:  No.  Never.  Not at all.  And I haven’t touched a drop of this whisky, which I just happened to pick up as I walked past the, um, the wheel thingy over there.  Anyway, I have given you my answer.  No enquiry has ever suggested that I drink to excess.  I shall add nothing further.  I’ve done nothing wrong.

ABC Journalist:  As if we were sinking!  Typical nut-job.  This captain is doing a wonderful job!  And she’s a woman!  You ought to talk instead about the worrying infrequency of iceberg sightings because of a dangerously over-heating world. 

Passenger:  But there’s water gushing everywhere, and we’re listing.  Are you sure we’re safe?

Captain:  Please return to your cabins. Nothing is wrong. I have dealt with this issue, and only vexatious loonies are still discussing this ancient history.

Another Passenger:  I say, are you drunk?

Captain:  I shall not dignify that question with an answer but I refer you to my previous response.

News Reporter:  What’s with all this water?  Are we sinking?
ABC Journalist: Typical nut job! Misogynist! You heard the captain, people, things are fine.  Stop hounding her! She’s done nothing wrong; she said so herself!

Passenger:  Well, I think we’re sinking, and I’m off into a lifeboat whether you like it or not. 
News Reporter:  Sir, I’ll come with you, if I may; I’d like some evidence for your allegations—

Another Passenger:  Look, even the rats are leaving, and so am I.

ABC Journalist:  Typical nut job. We aren’t sinking, are we, Captain?

Captain: Well, of course, no; I’m sure the ship leans over for no reason occasionally.  I did nothing wrong.  You’ll find nothing in writing.  I refer you to my extensive previous answers wherein I dealt with all these false allegations.  I shall sue those who defame me!

ABC Journalist: Isn’t this typical of ill-informed, misogynist nut-jobs?  And aren’t you vexed by fools who question your competence by making such hysterical claims?  Hell, my feet are wet.  We aren’t in any danger are we, Captain?

Captain:  Surely not.  Anyway, um, look, I must be going to, ah, fix something or rather—

Purser:  You, the ship is sinking fast.  Why are you still here?  Everyone else has left.  To the last lifeboat!

ABC Journalist:  Tragic catastrophe!  For some inexplicable reason—right-wing misogynists, some might say, could have sabotaged something important—the ship is now sinking; you heard it first here on our ABC!  The passengers and the crew, undoubtedly, and, perhaps, even the captain may have some questions to answer.

Tim Flannery Not a Corpse Animated by Ants

Mrs A. Zimmer, of Blackmans Bay, has reported that some ants recently wrote a message on her kitchen bench. “At first,” she writes, “I thought that I must have spilled some cordial, for that occasionally attracts ants, and was about to wipe them off the bench with a wet cloth when I noticed that lines of the formidable formicidae were forming phrases on the Formica, in a rather elegant, cursive script, so I hastened to grab a note-pad and quickly transcribed their message.”
The ants wrote:

Attention.  Don’t wipe us!  Heed our message!  Greetings humans.  Our queen—in mysterious communion with all other queens of ant-colonies worldwide—bids you publicise our pronouncement.

We ants are not to be blamed for any stupidities recently formulated by the piffling propagandist, pretentious paleontologist, presumptuous prick, and professional prophesier of desiccated cities, Tim Flannery.  He recently predicted, inter alia stulta, that the earth would soon be revealed to be a living, physical manifestation of Gaia, an earth-mother goddess of the Ancient Greeks.

Gaia brought forth Uranus, the starry sky, to cover her, and the hills, Ourea, as well as the fruitless deep of the Sea, Pontus; later, she lay with her son, Uranus, and bore Crius, and the Titans Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe of the golden crown and, of course, mighty, deep-swirling Oceanus and lovely Tethys—ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ*; afterwards, she bore Cronus the wily, youngest and most terrible of her children, for he hated his lusty sire.†  Gaia was the mother (and, at the same time, the grandmother), we recall, of three Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes and Arges.  (Polyphemus, the Cyclops whom Odysseus encountered and blinded, and his brothers were Gaia’s great-grandsons).  Gaia was also the mother of multitudinous other monsters, including the Hecatonchires—Cottus, Briareos and Gyges, who each had fifty heads—and Typhon and Echidna, who were, together—maintaining the family tradition of incest—the parents of the two-headed Orthrus, the three-headed Cerberus, the many-headed Hydra, the Chimæra, and many more.  Does Prof. Flannery expect physical manifestations of Olympian Gods, Titans, monsters and other offspring of Gaia to appear among us soon?

Flannery considers the earth-mother manifest, in majestic spheroidal form, as one living organism, so how would he account for the Greeks’ belief in a separate underworld, a separate ocean, and a separate sky?  Also, if Gaia be one living, homeostatic organism, why is Flannery so frightened by a silly, unproven conjecture which insists that the earth can be completely and catastrophically unbalanced by a small increase of the beneficent gas, carbon dioxide?  Surely, a system which is inherently stable owing to negative feedback should resist minuscule changes dependent on positive feedback.  We ants, who come and go in long battalions, have been around for many millions of years: we have seen the continents drift, the days lengthen, the ice caps increase and decrease, and many fools come and go.  We, horrescimus referentes, have seldom seen a fool as egregiously silly as that Tim Flannery.  We categorically deny having anything to do with such a buffoon.

As for the claim that we were recently responsible for animating the corpse of the late Robyn Williams, we repudiate any suggestion that we should ever authorise anything as stupid as some of his recently published comments.  We shall not discuss the ABC’s Tony Jones, on the grounds that any discussion may incriminate us.

Our queen bids you farewell.

* “Greatest, however, [is] water.” Pindar, Olympian, 1, 1.  The ants appear to be affirming, rather learnedly, that Oceanus and his wifely sister Tethys, whose offspring included all the rivers, fountains, and lakes of the world, were the gods most important for earthly life; even the hills and seas are supported by Oceanus (Hesiod, Theogony, I., 129-31).
† The well-read, myrmidonian account of the origin of Gaia and her offspring is seemingly based on Hesiod, op. cit., I. 115-38. Gaia in Hesiod’s cosmology, is a disk surrounded by Oceanus and floating upon a waste of waters.

Robyn Williams Dead

ABC Radio today released this notice:

It is with deep sadness and not a little relief that ABC Radio announces that Robyn Williams is dead.
We had thought that he might have been in decline for some time as his Science Show, once a deservedly renowned, cutting-edge presentation of scientific debates and discussions of modern discoveries, had become in recent times, too often, merely a regular quasi-religious rant from Williams on the perils of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming—a pseudo-scientific fraud. Revelation came to us recently after he presented yet another biassed show featuring his silly mate, the perpetually wrong-headed, doom-predicting, arch-nitwit Tim Flannery—who dilated on his expectation that, any day now, the earth would be revealed to be the physical manifestation of the Ancient Greek goddess Gaia—then, shortly afterwards, Williams followed that broadcast with a semi-literate scrawl on The Drum suggesting that, among other idiocies, the world will soon be ‘globalised’.
Robyn Williams will be remembered as a man who, at least for a while, years ago, exemplified in his reports the best of ABC Radio presentations.  He will be sadly missed.

An insider at ABC Radio, speaking anonymously, revealed further details:

This news does not come as a surprise.  Many have suspected for several years that there was something seriously amiss with Robyn Williams and, employing Occam’s razor, some of us reasoned long ago that he was actually dead.  The fellows around the office have even had a book on this for some time. In fact, some of us believed that Robyn Williams’ skull might have contained, instead of a decomposing brain, a colony of ants.  After all, even that fatuous fathead, Tony Jones, and other official spruikers for AGW within the ABC were disconcerted by his odd claim that the seas would soon rise by one hundred meters when other shrill, pseudo-scientific shills for the global-warming collective have prophesied that the seas may rise a few centimeters over this century.
The final straw came the other day, when ‘Robyn’ announced that his next show would consist entirely of an exegesis of The Protocols of Zion, as interpreted by his favourite astrologer, which would prove that the Israeli Government was responsible for global warming.  Even for the ABC, a known haunt of crazed Jew-haters and irrational conspiracy-theorists, this was too much; senior programmers suggested to ‘Robyn’ that he undergo a medical test to prove that he was in fact alive and not a reanimated corpse.  Unfortunately, the remains of Robyn Williams then savagely attacked the programmers, and attempted to eat their brains. Fortunately, senior programmers at the ABC are notorious for their lack of brains, and they escaped relatively unscathed; but the enraged corpse of Williams then leapt from a window, breaking several limbs and losing his head in the process, and was last seen stumbling away towards a Scientology centre.  For several hours, however, the head remained on the car-park, announcing certain doom for mankind unless the West raised huge, punitive taxes on everything and committed to eliminating all industries.  It was all very upsetting to his former friends and colleagues.

We too, here at “All Right, All Right”, offer our sincere condolences to the friends and family of the late Robyn Williams.