Category — Australia

First, from the people who just booted John Howard. The good side is that the meat looks great on the red Christmas Spode, and it really sets off the mint sauce. I’m told The Lop-Eared Dwarf is especially tender. Key chain ferules available for the feet at my blog address. The rabbit is probably grill-ready. I’m not sure.

Second, from the people whose Sceptr’d Isle will soon be the Scimitar’d Isle, and Hyde Park corner turned into a hangman’s scaffold. What’s that refrain I hear? “We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom, teachers leave them kids alone….allinallyerjustanutherbrickinthewall!”

Third, from a nation where The War on Poverty produced this grub; he will certainly end up tenured at some squalid Northeastern academic sinkhole. He seems to have attended night courses at the Eldridge Cleaver School of Hair Styling & Tablecloth Design as an H Rap Brown Scholar. America. What a country!

When Sam Walton ran Wal-Mart, they actually used to push American products. Now Wal-Mart sells the cheapest Chinese junk they can find, but those times might be changing:

Millions of Chinese-made toys have been pulled from shelves in North America and Australia after scientists found they contain a chemical that converts into a powerful date rape drug when ingested. Two children in the U.S. and three in Australia were hospitalized after swallowing the beads.

With only seven weeks until Christmas, the recall is yet another blow to the toy industry — already bruised by a slew of recalls this past summer.

There’s a business lesson here—you can outsource the production, but not the responsibility for quality. And my guess is that toys aren’t the only shoddy Chinese products flooding our store shelves. Every company doing business with China should be examining its products very closely. The PR hit from an “incident” could be devastating.

Sadly, we accept substandard Chinese products because companies have been “programming” us to accept slipshod, disposable goods for decades. Think about the durability of goods you bought just 10 years ago compared to their counterparts today. There’s really no comparison. For example, an old fashion mop works ten times better than a Swiffer, but the latter has the added benefit of making you buy disposable pads.

We need someone like Sam Walton to sell us decent products at a decent price. Somewhere along the line, his company and others lost that focus. And it probably wouldn’t hurt you to buy a real mop instead of a Swiffer either.

VERMONT NEWS ABOUT ECOCHONDRIAC MUNCHKINS ALL THE WAY FROM AUSTRALIA!

I don’t know how to hide the links, so here goes….

http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/greetings_from_Vermont

From Australia’s Ollie’s World,  an Interactive Sustainability Resource at:  www.olliesworld.com/planet/aus/rapsong.htm  

Hey everybody, Ollies’ in town

And to save the planet he’s gonna show us around.  

Now come along and let’s do it

Gotta clean up the world, get to it

 There’s lots of things that we can do

To make the planet cleaner for me and  you

And if you want to learn how it’s easy

Anyone can learn - you’ll see

Air - breathe it in, breathe it in

Let’s clean up the air, that’s where we begin

Water, cool and fresh

But we can’t live without  it

What’s next - energy, energy

We’ve got to use it very carefully

Waste - everything that we throw away

Where does it all end up?

Every little thing on the planet is connected

Everything plays its part - I see

But if one part is missing we all get affected

We need biodiversity

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rethink

So stick around and you will see

what’s cool -SUSTAINABILITY!!  

They just zoned out on rhyming couplets and degenerated to free verse after breathing IN and not breathing OUT!  CO2 is THAT dangerous!  

The 2^nd Amendment is not about hunting, target shooting or gun collecting. It is about having the means of overthrowing a tyrannical government.

The Guns of Britain

Following the 1996 Dunblane school massacre, in which seventeen people were killed by a man armed with two 9mm pistols, Britain passed a lawtrain abroad, outlawing the ownership of most handguns, despite researchers finding “no link between high levels of gun crime and areas where there were still high levels of lawful gun possession.” It’s a law so severe that the Britain’s Olympic shooting team is forced to train abroad, lest one of its members try to shoot up a grammar school. So how effective has the law been? A doubling in gun-related crimes since the ban, naturally. The London Times on the spate of gun crime in Merseyside:

Senior police officers have been warning for several months that a growing number of teenagers in big cities are becoming involved in gun crime.

The age of victims and suspects has fallen over the past three years as the availability of firearms in some cities has risen. Liverpool and Manchester are the cities where illegal guns are most readily available, with criminals claiming that some weapons are being smuggled from Ireland. Sawn-off shotguns are now being sold for as little as £50, and handguns for £150.

Despite a ban on handguns introduced in 1997 after 16 children and their teacher were shot dead in the Dunblane massacre the previous year, their use in crimes has almost doubled to reach 4,671 in 2005-06. Official figures show that although Britain has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the world, firearm use in crime has risen steadily. This year eight young people have been killed in gun attacks: six in London and one each in Manchester and Liverpool.

According to the Times, Merseyside alone has seen 552 “gun crime incidents” this year, but, miraculously, only 8 murders.

In 2002, Prof. Joyce Lee Malcolm looked at the British gun ban and its failure to reduce levels of violent crime.

As I have posted in the past, this is serious stupidity on the part of the liberals. The Socialists know they cannot take over an armed citizenry so disarming the country allows for their “revolution.” Quoting Mao, their fave guy, ”All power comes from the barrel of a gun.”

Some excerpts from Prof. Joyce Lee Malcolm looked at the British gun ban:

The results — the toughest firearm restrictions of any democracy — are credited by the world’s gun control advocates with producing a low rate of violent crime….

In reality, the English approach has not re-duced violent crime. [snip]

From 1991 to 1995, crimes against the person in England’s inner cities increased 91 percent. And in the four years from 1997 to 2001, the rate of violent crime more than doubled. Your chances of being mugged in London are now six times greater than in New York. England’s rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are far higher than America’s, and 53 percent of English burglaries occur while occupants are at home, compared with 13 percent in the U.S., where burglars admit to fearing armed homeowners more than the police. [snip]

Even more sweeping was the 1953 Prevention of Crime Act, which made it illegal to carry in a public place any article “made, adapted, or intended” for an offensive purpose “without lawful authority or excuse.” Carrying something to protect yourself was branded antisocial. Any item carried for possible defense automatically became an offensive weapon.

A sampling of cases illustrates the impact of these measures:

– In 1973 a young man running on a road at night was stopped by the police and found to be carrying a length of steel, a cycle chain, and a metal clock weight. He explained that a gang of youths had been after him. At his hearing it was found he had been threatened and had previously notified the police. The justices agreed he had a valid reason to carry the weapons. Indeed, 16 days later he was attacked and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. But the prosecutor appealed the ruling, and the appellate judges insisted that carrying a weapon must be related to an imminent and immediate threat. They sent the case back to the lower court with directions to convict.

– In 1987 two men assaulted Eric Butler, a 56-year-old British Petroleum executive, in a London subway car, trying to strangle him and smashing his head against the door. No one came to his aid. He later testified, “My air supply was being cut off, my eyes became blurred, and I feared for my life.” In desperation he unsheathed an ornamental sword blade in his walking stick and slashed at one of his attackers, stabbing the man in the stomach. The assailants were charged with wounding. Butler was tried and convicted of carrying an offensive weapon.

–In 1994 an English homeowner, armed with a toy gun, managed to detain two burglars who had broken into his house while he called the police. When the officers arrived, they arrested the homeowner for using an imitation gun to threaten or intimidate. In a similar incident the following year, when an elderly woman fired a toy cap pistol to drive off a group of youths who were threatening her, she was arrested for putting someone in fear. Now the police are pressing Parliament to make imitation guns illegal.

– In 1999 Tony Martin, a 55-year-old Norfolk farmer living alone in a shabby farmhouse, awakened to the sound of breaking glass as two burglars, both with long criminal records, burst into his home. He had been robbed six times before, and his village, like 70 percent of rural English communities, had no police presence. He sneaked downstairs with a shotgun and shot at the intruders. Martin received life in prison for killing one burglar, 10 years for wounding the second, and a year for having an unregistered shotgun. The wounded burglar, having served 18 months of a three-year sentence, is now free and has been granted �5,000 of legal assistance to sue Martin.

…Americans still enjoy a substantially lower rate of violent crime than England, without the “restraint on personal liberty” English governments have seen as necessary. Rather than permit individuals more scope to defend themselves, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government plans to combat crime by extending those “restraints on personal liberty”: removing the prohibition against double jeopardy so people can be tried twice for the same crime, making hearsay evidence admissible in court, and letting jurors know of a suspect’s previous crimes.

In spite of the evidence from Britain, New Zealand and Australia proving the insanity of this position, this type of society is what the gun-ban advocates wish for you.

The Brits with the unbridled insistence on PC behavior are going to get their own country. What will they name it?

Voting With Their Feet

At Immigration Watch International they have the numbers for those fleeing Britain:

Britain is facing a mass exodus of people looking to escape the crime and grime of modern living. The country’s biggest foreign visa consultancy firm has revealed that applications have soared in the last seven months by 80 per cent to almost 4,000 a week. [snip]

They are almost all young professionals and skilled workers aged 20-40. [snip]

Like any situation in which there is a lack of resources, enterprising individuals step in to fill the gap:

Liam Clifford, a former immigration control officer, set up globalvisas.com as a one-man band 12 years ago. He now employs 60 people and is in the process of opening new offices in both South Africa and Australia. [snip]

Mr. Clifford says about his customers:

“And time and time again they are saying to us they don’t want to be seen as racist because they are quitting because of immigration. We tell them of course they’re not.”

There is no emoticon after that last sentence, so I’m not sure how Mr. Clifford wants us to take this last statement. Since he is obviously making a great deal of money from his clients, it would behoove him to remain diplomatic. I don’t think it’s racist to feel pushed out of a once beloved neighborborhood that has become unfamiliar and dangerous. No one signed on to live in what appears to be an oupost of Pakistan. And who’d want to be on the tube when some zealous “youth” decides to blow himself up whilst sitting next to you? [snip]

If the rate of emigration continues at the existing rate, about 15,000 less than a ¼ million young Brits will leave by year’s end. Tell me that’s sustainable. The only “refill” is the heathens from Pakistan and other Mideast Musselmen.

They better hope Gunga Din is somewhere in the Cotswold’s with his bugle. Provided any non-criminal has a weapon and a desire to join the fray.

In quoted text bold emphasis mine.

High price for load of hot air

WITH understandable reluctance, Prime Minister John Howard recently donned the political hair-shirt of a carbon trading system.

On the same day, NASA chief Michael Griffin commented in a US radio interview that “I am not sure that it is fair to say that (global warming) is a problem that we must wrestle with.” [snip]

The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.

Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

Third, there are strong indications from solar studies that Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades. [snip]

As leading economist David Henderson has pointed out, it is extremely dangerous for an unelected and unaccountable body like the IPCC to have a monopoly on climate policy advice to governments. And even more so because, at heart, the IPCC is a political and not a scientific agency.

Australia does not ask the World Bank to set its annual budget and neither should it allow the notoriously alarmist IPCC to set its climate policy. [snip]

Not only do humans not dominate Earth’s current temperature trend but the likelihood is that further large sums of public money are shortly going to be committed to, theoretically, combat warming when cooling is the more likely short-term climatic eventuality.

In one of the more expensive ironies of history, the expenditure of more than $US50 billion ($60 billion) on research into global warming since 1990 has failed to demonstrate any human-caused climate trend, let alone a dangerous one.

Yet that expenditure will pale into insignificance compared with the squandering of money that is going to accompany the introduction of a carbon trading or taxation system.

The costs of thus expiating comfortable middle class angst are, of course, going to be imposed preferentially upon the poor and underprivileged.

Professor Bob Carter is an environmental scientist at James Cook University who studies ancient climate change

For all who sold their souls to the Gorbot, put the underwear with the skid marks on your head and join the line climbing into the Wicker Man for the big roast.

The California Republican Party is using the H1-B visa program to hire a Canadian political consultant.  In essence, they’re claiming they can’t find a qualified American to fill the state deputy political directors’ job.  However, I wasn’t aware that our country was lacking in that particular class of political ne’er-do-well.  You can’t shake a stick without hitting a half dozen political consultants causing some mischief. 

But party chair Ron Nehring explains that there are qualifications and then there are “qualifications”:

Nehring defended his choices by saying Matthews and Kamburowski are highly qualified political professionals who will be an asset to the party — and dramatize the GOP ideal of welcoming immigrants. 

I don’t know, Ron, but it seems like the only qualifications that really count are those that win you elections.  Dramatizing your immigrant inclusiveness with the hiring of a Canadian and an Australian probably isn’t that impressive to Hispanic immigrants, legal and otherwise, streaming into CA.  But that’s just a hunch; you’re the political “expert” and all.

‘I thought he would chop my head off’ - gunshop worker

Gunshop director Greg Carvell has no regrets about shooting a man who threatened to kill him with a metre-long machete in his shop last year.

After a day-long depositions hearing at which his lawyer argued there was no case to answer on a charge of unlawfully possessing a gun, two justices of the peace adjourned the case until tomorrow when they said they would decide if there was a prime face case to answer and if Carvell would go to trial.

Carvell said after the hearing in the Auckland District Court he had no choice but to shoot Ricky James Beckham in July last year.

The court was told Beckham threatened to kill Carvell and gunshop worker, Bruce Motley as he advanced on them in the Penrose gunshop, waving a machete over his head.

Carvell fired one shot into the man’s stomach with a.45 calibre Colt automatic pistol he had kept loaded but hidden on a shelf under his desk.

Outside the court today Carvell was asked if he had any regrets.

“No None.” [snip]

However, prosecutor Mark Corlett said the defence had made an emotive appeal and had misconstrued the case. He said Carvell had admitted to police he kept the loaded gun for self defence and he had been charged.

Isn’t this a delightful bit of twaddle by the brain barren liberals. Rationalism (I’m using the word in it’s first dictionary meaning) of this order is what is destroying Australia, New Zealand and Britain. Better you die than a malefactor suffers his fate.

Proof positive admission for the need of a national Castle Doctrine in this country; cut off liberal judges from even looking at these cases.

Four ex post facto lessons extracted from this example are:

• Never bring a knife, no matter how big, to a gunfight.
• Never shoot to wound, the potential for further mayhem is still possible. (With a .45 this isn’t as much of a problem)
• Dead miscreants bear no witness in court.
• Only commit havoc in gun-free zones

Care to add more.

This article is long. I’ve cut much to get it to this size.

Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate’s vote today on a global warming measure (see today’s 5/15/07 AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. [snip]

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg. A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. [snip]

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007. Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” )

The media’s climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it’s ‘completely immoral’ to doubt global warming fears )

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006.[snip]

The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. [snip]

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. [snip]

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel’s top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. “”Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. [snip]

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. [snip] (Evans bio link )

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. [snip]

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears “poppycock.” According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. [snip]
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, [snip]

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. [snip] However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,” Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” [snip]

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” [snip] I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. [snip] In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics.[snip]

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. [snip]

“With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” [snip]

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. [snip] “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. [snip]

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” [snip]

More to follow…

Related Links:

Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate

Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven “Consensus’

Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics

Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic

Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming

Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune’s Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say

Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical

MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming ‘Silly’ - Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids’ Attempting to “Scare Each Other”

Weather Channel TV Host Goes ‘Political’- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect’

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don’t Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes ‘Man-Made Global Warming Hype’

The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics

Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of “Skeptic’s Guide To Debunking Global Warming”

Faye Turney and “Tonight” Trevor McDonal Telegraph.UKphoto

Looks like the diet of goat and couscous agreed with her. If this has any association with the physical condition of the Royal Navy, they won’t need ballast aboard their costal defense force. More treacle

[snip] “Shameful” was the verdict of some bereaved families while the Conservatives warned that the Government had set a terrible precedent.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary who is understood to have signed off the decision, was even facing claims that hostages could have been encouraged to “tell all” to deflect attention from the circumstances of their capture and their “confessions” while in Iran.

The decision emerged amid reports that Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only woman in the group, had agreed a deal of more than £100,000 to give interviews to a television show and a tabloid newspaper. [snip]

According to MoD officials, what the 15 had gone through in Iran was in some ways similar to those who had been awarded the Victoria Cross. [snip]

Righto chums, it’s just a silly bauble for the blokes who performed some attention getting stunt. The Brit MoD has just demeaned the VC which is the equivalent of the MoH in the US military.

Tim Collins, the former officer who led the 1st Bn Royal Irish Regiment in the 2003 Iraq invasion, said: “It reflects the extraordinary incoherence at the MoD and leads to the question of who’s in charge. Their humiliation seemed to be complete but now the MoD seems to have discovered another layer.” [snip]

William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, said the MoD had failed to realise that “we are going to lose steadily respect for our Armed Forces” if personnel could quickly sell their tales. He added: “There are people who have lost their loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they’re not writing their stories.”

In the not too distant future, there will be a tremendous emigration from the Isles. We need to make sure they don’t come here. Let them go to the Falklands, Australia, Canada or India. We have enough liberal losers in this country already.

Can I get an Amen!

Alice: But I don’t want to go among mad people.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.

This blurb contains a very high quotient of CPS. (Calamities Per Sentence) Please shield your logic circuits before perusing. The inserted quotes are only for use in discerning the gravity of the situation.

Billions of people will suffer water shortages and the number of hungry will grow by hundreds of millions by 2080 as global temperatures rise, scientists warn in a new report.

The report estimates that between 1.1 billion and 3.2 billion people will be suffering from water scarcity problems by 2080 and between 200 million and 600 million more people will be going hungry.
[snip]

“There are ominous signs that the earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon… The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are (sic) hard-pressed to keep up with it.”—Newsweek, April 28, (1975)

Rising sea levels could flood seven million more homes, while Australia’s famed Great Barrier Reef, treasured as the world’s largest living organism, could be dead within decades, the scientists warn, the newspaper said.

“In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.”—Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)

The Age said it had obtained a copy of the report, believed to be one of three prepared for release by the IPCC, which is highly regarded for its neutrality and caution.
[snip]

Of course they are!

The World Heritage site, stretching over more than 345,000 square kilometers (133,000 sq miles) off Australia’s northeast coast, will become “functionally extinct”, the scientists are quoted as saying.
[snip]

“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion—guilt-free at last!”—Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue).

The human and economic costs of climate change are likely to be highest in poor countries, with water shortages crippling many African nations and increased coastal flooding hitting low-lying countries such as Bangladesh and many Pacific islands, the report says.

“Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. ( Emphasis mine) We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real.”- Jonathan Schell (in his book, Our Fragile Earth, maybe it’s his 1982 “The fate of the earth”)

Alice: How do you know I’m mad?
The Cheshire Cat: You must be. Or you wouldn’t have come here.

If you go here, you can enjoy moonbat logic. Here, A ≠B except when there isn’t enough B, then some A is B depending on how much B is needed to fudge the answer.

Eg.

– the Gulf Stream, the warm Atlantic current which gives Western Europe its balmy climate despite its high latitude, will slow by a quarter during the 21st century, according to average projections.But fears that Western Europe will be plunged into a regional Ice Age this century can be discounted. The Gulf Stream is “very unlikely” to undergo a brutal slowdown, and in any case, atmospheric temperatures will warm because of the greenhouse effect.

A wave of the chuck’s tail to Overlawyered.com and Drudge

Teachers are being warned to watch what they write and say about students because of the risk of being sued for defamation. …

The advice comes as anger has exploded in schools over new student reports which grade students on a scale of A to E for academic performance. …

Teachers’ Federation vice-president Angelo Gavrielatos said threats to sue meant Australia was “importing the worst of American culture”.

“It reflects, regrettably, that we do live in an increasingly litigious society and that is sad,” he said.

“All too often we hear threats of litigation . . . and what we are seeing imported into Australia and into our schools is that litigious environment or mindset that is so prevalent in the United States.”

(Bruce McDougall, “Teachers warned off criticism”, News.com.au, Nov. 6 (via Jacobs via Tongue Tied)).

After the Australian bit of stupidity, we get this from Britain.

Vandals have daubed Nazi swastikas on a war memorial in West Sussex.

Police officers also found anti-Semitic graffiti painted on one home and a shop close to the memorial in Chapel Road, Worthing, on Saturday morning.

A spokesman for Sussex Police said: “This is offensive and racist graffiti. It’s fairly large-scale.”

The Royal British Legion said it was “dismayed and upset” by the graffiti, which was removed prior to the main service at 1100 GMT. …

John Livermore, West Sussex County Councillor for Worthing West, said he was “utterly appalled” that anybody could behave in such a manner.

“The person or persons that did it are just the scum of the earth. It’s beyond comprehension - least of all this time of year when we have got our boys out in Afghanistan and Iraq serving Queen and country - that somebody can behave in this despicable fashion.

“They should be drummed out of Worthing, drummed out of the country.”

Really? Who is going to do the drumming? Not the government or the courts, They think all is just yummy.

Reaping what one sows, I believe they call it. Just what do they expect? In Britain, punishment for anything is nonexistent, except if you defend yourself. Why should they be upset that some fool decided to “make a statement?”

Junior can do no wrong–let him grow up amoral–I’m late for my spinning class–the government will take care of it–I’ll just move to a gated community.

What will you say after Goldring’s kids take over.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Humans are stripping nature at an unprecedented rate and will need two planets’ worth of natural resources every year by 2050 on current trends, the WWF conservation group said on Tuesday.

Oh no! More doom and gloom.

Populations of many species, from fish to mammals, had fallen by about a third from 1970 to 2003 largely because of human threats such as pollution, clearing of forests and overfishing, the group also said in a two-yearly report.
“For more than 20 years we have exceeded the earth’s ability to support a consumptive lifestyle that is unsustainable and we cannot afford to continue down this path,” WWF Director-General James Leape said, launching the WWF’s 2006 Living Planet Report.
“If everyone around the world lived as those in America, we would need five planets to support us,” Leape, an American, said in Beijing.
People in the United Arab Emirates were placing most stress per capita on the planet ahead of those in the United States, Finland and Canada, the report said.
Australia was also living well beyond its means.
[snip]

Space travel is the sine qua non solution to the presented problem. Either we launch 80% of the world’s population to 4 new planets or 20% (hardworking, conservative, honest, self sufficient and sane) to a new planet, this solves the problem. Then let the moonbats at WWF tell the entire third world how to live. I’m quite certain they’ll listen.

“As countries work to improve the well-being of their people, they risk bypassing the goal of sustainability,” said Leape, speaking in an energy-efficient building at Beijing’s prestigous (sic) Tsinghua University.
“It is inevitable that this disconnect will eventually limit the abilities of poor countries to develop and rich countries to maintain their prosperity,” he added.

Wait a minute; is this about redistributing the wealth or sensitivity to the world’s fellahin?

The report said humans’ “ecological footprint” — the demand people place on the natural world — was 25 percent greater than the planet’s annual ability to provide everything from food to energy and recycle all human waste in 2003.
[snip]

And the answer is, Archer Daniels Midland!

RISING POPULATION

“Humanity’s footprint has more than tripled between 1961 and 2003,” it said.
[snip]

The WWF report also said that an index tracking 1,300 vetebrate (sic) species — birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals — showed that populations had fallen for most by about 30 percent because of factors including a loss of habitats to farms.

But farms facilitate gathering taking pressure off hunting. Is not this what the barkheads want?

Among species most under pressure included the swordfish and the South African Cape vulture.

Well, swordfish grilled with lemon and tarragon is tasty. Vulture just gives me gas.

Those bucking the trend included rising populations of the Javan rhinoceros and the northern hairy-nosed wombat in Australia.

Must be these taste like, you know what.

(Additional reporting by Alister Doyle in Helsinki)

The WWF must be still quoting Ehrlich so, superlative kudos to Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” for its accuracy. He predicted we starved to death in the early ‘80’s.

Let’s hope this ends all the handwringing over developing a missile shield:

South Korean media had earlier reported that an imminent launch of a Taepodong 2 long-range missile was possible, citing informants in Seoul.

North Korea ‘only had to press the button’ to launch the missile, the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo quoted a Foreign Ministry official in Seoul as saying.

The Taepodong 2 missile could carry a nuclear warhead to parts of the US, according to the US military.

Thanks to “prescient” liberals, we are behind the curve yet again. President Bush’s decision to remove the United States from treaties barring us from developing a missile defense shield looks better and better everyday.

Update: This is a very positive move:

The United States has activated its ground-based interceptor missile-defense system amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.

Pentagon officials declined to say whether they would try to shoot down any missile launched by the reclusive Communist state, but other U.S. officials have said that is unlikely, assuming the launch is aimed at open water.