Every country has ’em, but only in Australia would we make them Australian of the Year. We know how to celebrate our ratbags:
Professor Flannery, who has written extensively on environmental issues, spoke at a business and sustainability conference in Parliament House today and suggested a plan to pump sulphur into the atmosphere in order to repel the sun’s rays….
He says radical action has to be taken because of the extremely high speed with which climate change is happening.
“The current burden of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is in fact more than sufficient to cause catastrophic climate change,” he said.
“Everything’s going in the wrong direction at the moment, timelines are getting shorter, the amount of pollution in the atmosphere is growing.”
ABC Online
And then on the other hand we have:
If the ice age is coming, there is a small chance that we could prevent or at least delay the transition, if we are prepared to take action soon enough and on a large enough scale.
For example: we could gather all the bulldozers in the world and use them to dirty the snow in Canada and Siberia in the hope of reducing the reflectance so as to absorb more warmth from the sun.
We also may be able to release enormous floods of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) from the hydrates under the Arctic permafrost and on the continental shelves, perhaps using nuclear weapons to destabilise the deposits.
Phil Chapment in On Line Opinion
The clear danger of the climate alarmism and its disregard for due diligence is that its critics are getting just as hysterical in the other direction. As a result of all this hype some large country, or bloc, might take it into its head that it needs to do one of these two things, and then the neighbourhood really will be gone.
Of course, if they were done simultaneously they’d tend to cancel each other out. But who’d want to live here then?
If Flannery wants to pump sulphur into the atmosphere, one wonders what he is pumping into his veins.
Comment by Mr. Right — May 20, 2008 @ 11:26 am
“but only in Australia would we make them Australian of the Year”
… or let them have a blog …
Comment by Patrick B — May 21, 2008 @ 10:30 am
So now Flannery is a ratbag!
GY you don’arf gityer Y fronts in a knot, don’t you?
Comment by Ginx — May 21, 2008 @ 12:40 pm
Oh well, at least he’s not a maoist-leninist Hitler youth, eh Mr Young?
Comment by Wil — May 21, 2008 @ 12:48 pm
So you’re cool with sulphur dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere Ginx? (I assume it’s that rather than sulphur he’s talking about). Good on you.
Comment by Graham Young — May 21, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
Brownshirts. They’re all a mob of Brownshirts. Maoist-Leninist-Communist-Greeno-Pinko-Lezzo BROWNSHIRTS!!!!!
Comment by Even Righter than Mr Right — May 21, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
That wasn’t what I was referring to Graham, and you know it.
I am cool though; thanks for that!
Comment by Ginx — May 21, 2008 @ 6:39 pm
So Ginx, do I take it you recognise it as a ratbag suggestion? So how many ratbag suggestions must a person make before they can be classed as a ratbag?
I see some of JQ’s mates and their brown-shirt tactics have been on the thread too.
Comment by Graham Young — May 21, 2008 @ 10:59 pm
You know John Queale!!!!!
I thought he was in prison.
(GY; I DO think you have lovely eyes… I do really.)
Comment by Ginx — May 22, 2008 @ 11:18 am
I’m afraid I’m going to have to close this thread. It’s being targetted by a spammer who appears to be able to elude our spam filters. They generally go for the older threads where it doesn’t matter if I don’t clean it up for a few hours. But this is too close to the top to leave un-tended.
Sorry Ginx and others.
Comment by Graham Young — May 23, 2008 @ 6:32 am