The carbon-cuttingroom floor

Amongst Young Master Bunyip's many talents, the capacity to read cyberglyphics is one of the more surprising and unsettling, as it suggests a relatively recent insertion of back-door genes in the Bunyip line's DNA. There was, however, scarce time to wonder how the former Mrs Bunyip might have amused herself while the Professor was down at the mooring because the young fellow's discovery in what he calls "the sauce code" for Tim Flannery's new Climate Council website is very amusing. Here is part of the code, which goes on for pages.

YMB explains that the various bits of cuneiform mystery and their associated exclamation marks mean that sections are "comment out" -- erased from public view, in other words --  presumably when someone at the Climate Council realised that the original video link would not do much to advance the cause of separating the gullible and indignantly self-righteous from their cash. Indeed, it would have been a powerful disincentive to heep hands well out of pockets

Here is the video, according to YMB, which the Climate Commission originally intended to present.

As can be seen, there were some very rash predictions tumbling from Flannery's lips in 2010, none of which has come true or is likely to. (No need to endure the full clip;the funny bits about polar bears, massive rises in sea levels and the certainties of experts are near the start). Much safer, on the whole, to have Flannery talking about "the science" and his cause's need for cash, as he does in the substitute video.

Sadly, Flannery does not address the climatic imperatives that persuaded him to leave Mrs Flannery to fill the sandbags at the waterfront home he formerly shared with her and seek higher ground with a prostitute-turned-author. Donations to the Climate Council should be placed beneath the big pink dildo on the night table (the black one is reserved for solstice celebrations).

UPDATE: YMB wishes to make it clear that he did not discover the hidden code. Rather, he was alerted to it via an email now doing the rounds.

 

Bolt's As-Yet-Unzipped Lip

ONE of the hazards of being a rock star warmist must be the admirers who demand your time at public events. That was what happened recently in Launceston, where Tim Flannery touched down to preach catastropharianism. After the service, er, meeting, the following exchange took place with a star-struck fan. Just coincidentally, a stray and open microphone happened to be within earshot.

How nice it would be to silence Andrew Bolt, allegedly twice besting The Australian in court (triumphs of which the Professor can find no record), and the University of Tasmania’s helpful efforts to spread the warmist creed – those were the topics discussed. One gathers the conversation between guru and acolyte might have gone on for hours if Flannery had not been burdened with a more pressing obligation.

“Anyway,” he was heard to say, “I have to take the Commission to dinner.”

Good work if you can get it.   

Admirer: Flannery… Can I ask you a question?

Flannery: Yeah

Admirer: You know the journalist… er… Andrew Bolt?

Flannery: Yes, yeah.

Admirer: He keeps bagging you.

Flannery: Yes, yeah.

Admirer: He got a court order by the Aborigines, because he denied the “Stolen Generations”. I don’t know who was it that took him to court exactly, but he got a court order to stop… to stop… uhhhh…. bagging the Aborigines… [inaudible]... And anyway… now he tries to deny Global Warming.

Flannery: I haven’t really looked… I had to chase The Australian newspaper to court twice last year … I sued them twice over… for defamation. But he hasn’t actually defamed me yet. He just keeps on saying that, you know, I said certain things… whatever… which are not true… But he hasn’t actually said that I’m a lying bastard or anything like that…

Admirer: So, just for denying Global Warming in general…

Flannery: Yeah….

Admirer: Is it possible to get a court order that he stops?

Flannery: I am not aware of it … I do… I have worked with some lawyers [inaudible]… you know… these people… they do… I… I just think they are doing totally the wrong thing… [inaudible]… but I haven’t found a way of achieving that [inaudible].

Admirer: Like… You are not allowed… You know that you are not allowed to write anything about denying the Stolen Generations [inaudible]

Flannery: I do… Yeah… I do… Yeah, yeah…

Admirer: Maybe… it’s just… if we could get him to stop denying Global Warming….

Flannery: That would be great… Then he would have nothing to write about… [laughing]… You’re right… that would be lovely…. yeah.

Anyway, I have to take the Commission to dinner, but great meeting you. Thank you for coming along.

Admirer: Ok, Thank you for… eh… coming to Launceston…

Flannery: What do you do?

Admirer: I am a student in the university.

Flannery: Oh, fantastic. What are you studying?

Admirer: Environmental studies…

Flannery: Oh, fantastic…

Admirer: Yeah…

Flannery: Excellent. Well, I hope you enjoy it…

Admirer: Yeah… The University of Tasmania is very big in promoting “Global Warming”…

Flannery: Yeah… Yeah… Exactly… Yeah.

Dead Wrong

CLIMATE SCIENTISTS, being the settled bunch they are, have decreed with a degree of certainty lesser soothsayers would not dare match that sweaty and premature death awaits a good many more of us than would be the case if only temperatures could be kept at current levels. 

Without international action on climate change to limit temperature rises to 2C, the number of predicted temperature-related deaths in Australia is predicted to rise from just over 6000 in 2020 to about 10,000 in 2070.

Such wisdom is very hard to doubt, as it is more of Tim Flannery’s handiwork and he is widely recognised as being incapable of error, even when he is wrong. Still, those numbers do give you pause to wonder if, before Flannery & Co. go back to tweaking their computer models, they might be well advised to purchase a simple a pocket calculator and a copy of some recent Bureau of Statics projections.

In 2020, according to the ABS, Australia will be home to some 30 million people, of which Flannery insists roughly 6000 will be carried off by dengue fever and other curses that thrive in the heat. By 2070, the same ABS projection posits a likely population of between 46 million and 54 million, depending on which curve you choose to track.

So let’s see how that works out: 6000 deaths per 30 million means a 1-in-5000 chance of being done in by nasty weather as of 2020.

And 10,000 deaths in a 2070 population of 54 million? Well that comes in at 1-in-5400 climate casualties.

So the warmer it is, at least by Flannery’s reckoning, the safer and healthier we will be.

Even if you take the middle curve (forget the lowest one, which is nonsense) and go with a projected population of just 47 million, the mortality rate is only slightly worse – a 1-in-4700 chance of falling victim to climate carnage. Unless they are members of the St Kilda Football Club, those 300 additional lives would be a dreadful pity to see lost. But in the grand scheme of things it is not much of a change. Not much at all.

So we can conclude that climate change is at best a trivial threat to health – and may even be good for us. That’s both official and incontrovertible, vouched for by no less an authority than Tim “my wife is taking notes” Flannery.

Who can doubt a word the great man says?

UPDATE: A very informative comment by an anonymous reader in the comment thread. Very interesting stuff on where they find these people who look at thermometers (and grants) and see only death (and talk of death).

AGGRIEVED UPDATE: Generally speaking, the more grandiose the title of a blog the smaller the mind behind it. Applied Hermeneutics makes the point rather nicely, while its proprietor demonstrates, apart from two-fisted wanking, that other hallmark of the left: an eagerness to lay false charges.

The Rising Rates Of Higher Seas

IF YOU happen to be the sort of settled scientist who frets very loudly about climate change and demands your warnings be heeded -- someone like Tim Flannery, for instance -- there must be no small satisfaction when authorities do as they are bid. Coping with rising sea levels, for example, about which Flannery not long ago had this to say:: "Anyone with a coastal view from their bedroom window, or their kitchen window, or whatever, is likely to lose their house as a result of that change, so anywhere, any coastal cities, coastal areas, are in grave danger."

The sceptics scoffed, as sceptics do, but Hornsby Council was paying close attention, so much so that in 2009 it commissioned a voluminous and extensively footnoted consultant’s report on how best to protect ratepayers as bushfires roar, temperatures soar and the Hawkesbury’s estuarine banks slip beneath the surging tides. As the document explains it -- and with bold type for emphasis, no less -- the science is etched in stone:

Council has already undertaken measures to mitigate climate change impacts by increasing the energy efficiency of Council property .... Adaptation is the next logical step for Council to take in response to climate change. The purpose of adaptation is to prepare Council and the community for the inevitable changes to the climate that are at this stage unavoidable.

The report features a detailed map (fig. 10.1) showing where the waters will reach, and it is bad news on several fronts for Wiseman’s Ferry and a number of other locations, all marked with the cartographer’s red tide of doom.

Residents in those areas will just have to adjust. It’s unavoidable, because the report also announces the council’s intention to spend more money on more reports laying out the specific actions it intends to undertake. So if you are in Wiseman’s Ferry, building restrictions of the sort favoured by Byron Bay and Wellington Shire Council in Victoria could well be part of both your future and your property values. And if things follow the Victorian example, those values could suffer. But what can a ratepayer do? The planet is drowning and the science iron-tight, right? right?

Well, yes and no, because the sybil of the seashore, who just happens to be a Hornsby ratepayer and resident of a low-lying waterfront block, has amended his views on that “grave danger”. As  Flannery explained to today’s Weekend Australian, “There is no chance of it being inundated, short of a collapse of the Greenland Ice Shelf."

The report goes on to note that Flannery refuses to specify where he lives lest enemies drop by and do him a violence. And perhaps he is right, or half-right.

Given how much Hornsby Council has spent responding to his initial warning and the possibility of bylaws demanding lifeboat davits on front porches, the person most likely to punch him in the nose would be a fellow ratepayer.