A few months ago I visited Prague, home of Kafka. He was a disturbed author, and after my visit I started to understand why. On top of many centuries of conflict, Communism imposed a wicked peace. The dramatic points of Prague’s long history include the 3 (some say 4) defenestrations spread over several centuries.
If you don’t like the town leaders, throw them out the window. If they die, proves the point. But in one instance most survived, apparently because they fell into a heap of horse dung at the bottom. There are many ways to settle disputes, and we should not rule out any options considering the dire state our good nation seems to be in. This is the very window where one such defenestration took place:
Soaring greenhouse gases? Rising electricity prices? Sorry if the repeal of the carbon tax doesn’t lead to cheaper energy, but don’t worry. Just keep building coal ports and opening new fracking shafts. Extreme weather events? Let’s just wait and see, making fine profits while in the meantime.
But we (collectively, don’t look at me) voted this government in, and now the polls say people are having second thoughts.
If you doubt that climate change is a global emergency, I invite you to watch any one of the little videos featured below, and then let me know where exactly are the flaws in their data:
http://climaterealityproject.org/video/
Or better yet, slow down and take an hour to watch this beautiful one, also available from Transition Italia. Don’t worry, it’s in English, and it was made by a photographer, not a scientist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC3VTgIPoGU
Of course, I would never advocate violence (death to non-pacifists is my bumper sticker), but perhaps the occasional defenestration would help our leaders to wake up to the changes that await us and the need to move away from a carbon economy with alacrity.
The delusions of oil wealth in North America match our own identical Plans A, B and C. Beware the coming carbon bubble, some economists are now saying:
http://insideclimatenews.org/todaysnews/20131204/canadas-oil-sands-look-shaky-investment-says-report
Perhaps some of the deniers and postponers could throw their old ideas out the window. Perhaps along with a few pollies, including those who have corruptly benefitted from coal leases. But only from the ground floor window, and please ensure that a load of their own horse shit cushions their fall.
I wish you a Merry Christmas, and leave you with my visions for a world ruled by women. It’s called Stealth in Petticoats, but don’t let that box you in:
This is just so stupid Ronda, when almost any fool can see we can not only turn the alternatives into massive and endlessly sustainable profits, but lower energy costs as well!
Or solutions that simply walk out the door.
The make it more expensive path of the greens has created too much misery and too many excuses for reluctant pollies.
In the UK alone, over a million and a half people, live in energy poverty. Unable to pay their power bills, or heat their homes, in the depths of a UK winter.
This proves that the make it more expensive policy, simply is designed to fail!
And therefore, must be jettisoned by the so called environmental movement, in favor of simple fail safe pragmatism, that even the poorest third world countries and or peoples, can actually afford!
Perhaps then we might get some real change that we can all believe in, and even elect politicians, with no disclosed or undisclosed interests in coal mining or fossil fuels, like say, CNG.
Even so, the latter would be far less harmful if it was used solely to power ceramic fuel cells, which can be adapted to drive cars, buses, tractors and what have you, and even power the home, without ever adding to the carbon load, or smog problems.
And even water as saline as sea water, can be used to grow crops, even in places as dry as the Sahara! So we could live with CNG, if we were just led by knowledgeable pragmatists, rather than the current crop of patent ideologues!?
The real problem Ronda, is the people who vote!
They are the real problem, rather than the asinine pollies, who remain defiantly recalcitrant!?
At least 40% of the vox populi haven’t a clue about politics, or the economy, or the environment, or the harm we do to it, and through it, our own futures!
And it is this very demographic that swallows all the BS and or, decides elections!
Perhaps when sea levels have risen by around 3 metres, we might win over enough of them, to finally get some real preventative action happening.
Let’s hope it isn’t just too late!
Alan B. Goulding.
Comment by Alan B. Goulding — December 19, 2013 @ 10:51 am
I too have just visited Pregue, learned about the defenestrations. That one was about was religious oppression. Although the three people thrown out all survived, it started the Thirty Years War, at the end of which that region of Europe had managed to kill or starve or drive out 40% of their population.
My profession is computer modelling and I have followed the AGW claims with interest. The religious fanaticism of the global warming set is disconnected from the level of actual evidence that anything at all is happening.
After 16 years without warming, the global average temp has now tracked below the error limits of all the major models that the panic was built on. The hundreds of millions of dollars put into research appears to have been wasted, and the many billions spent on misconceived green energy subsidies or hidden in distorted regulatory regimes have done much harm. The ethanol mandate in US fuel has driven up food prices, which some claim resulted in malnutrition in the third world. Each ‘green job’ costs between $120,000 and $300,000 in subsidies and destroys up to five jobs of real people.
Those ‘foolish voters’ that don’t respect your moral posturing have caught on.
Now, how do cults respond to exposure of their leaders’ crimes and errors? Some slip quietly away – maybe they voted for rationality. Some become preachy, because by getting other believers they protect their belief system from failure – as observed in a famous flying saucer cult that suddenly went evangelical when the promised end of the world didn’t happen. And you manifest a third response; you call for the symbolic execution of unbelievers. You, Hamilton, Redfearn and Lewandowsky and all are seriously mistaken. Grab some intellectual honesty – you were fooled, but you can change your mind before you incite any more harm.
Comment by Chris — December 24, 2013 @ 5:42 pm