Day: November 23, 2009

What is Wrong With Catherine Deveny?

November 23, 2009 / Augustus / 0 Comments

Catherine Deveny, comedy writer, stand-up comedian and perpetual sad sack.

I have never encountered a column writer who has such an immense talent for finding something offensive or hurtful in ordinary day to day life and human interaction.

But she manages to slip beneath even her former underwhelming efforts in her column variously titled private schools muck up, watch those grammars, or private school values.

Firstly she is offended by the idea that a private school principal might have some friends who could assist someone in need.

Did you read about the boy who may lose hearing in one ear because a Melbourne Grammar boy threw an egg at him during a muck-up prank gone wrong? Did anyone else feel sickened but at the same time not at all surprised when the principal of Melbourne Grammar said in an interview: “[The injured boy’s mother] asked for help because . . . her son was not able to gain access to a surgeon. I was able to, through contacts, get him an appointment with a surgeon the very next day.’

Well, actually no. I was not sickened by this. I was pleased to hear of school authorities taking responsibility and doing what they could to assist.

It is still not clear to me what Catherine found so distressing.

The idea that some people actually have friends? The idea that some people might be willing to help someone in need? The idea that some people might be in a position to help someone in need?

Baffling.

Then she is offended by being invited to mentor a gifted student at another private school. Well, offended that no pay is offered. The school is surprised that she asks. No one else has done so.

Catherine suggests the school is greedy, attempting to shame her into working for nothing to increase their company profitability.

But private schools are not businesses. They are non-profit organisations whose income goes entirely into providing facilities for students and their communities.

Private schools receive substantially less government funding than state schools – on average $5000 less for every student. Parents and school communities work hard to make up the rest.

Catherine told the schoool that she would mentor a student if the school agreed to donate $200 to the Asylum Seekers’ Resource Centre. They agreed, and she mentored the student.

The school should have just said ‘No thanks’ right at the start.

There are some people who walk into my shop whom I know within thirty seconds of their opening their mouths that I do not want as customers. There are some people you will just never be able to please.

But having agreed, it should have given the money.

Catherine claims the school reneged on the agreement. Maybe they did.

She took their not wanting to communicate with her as proof. Maybe they had just reached the same conclusion about her that I reach about some of my customers – too much trouble when weighed against possible benefits.

If they did not give the money, their failure to do so is reprehensible.

But one incident of one school not doing the right thing does not make greed and dishonesty ‘private school values.’ There is something wrong in thought processes that can lead to such a claim being made with such blind certainty.

What is wrong with Catherine Deveny?

Mainstream Media Picks Up CRU Email Story

November 23, 2009 / Augustus / 0 Comments

This article in the Wall Street Journal Hacked Emails Show Climate Science Ridden with Rancor may be the beginning of some very reluctant coverage by the commercial media.

They were always going to be a bit slow. After all, disastrous global warming has been one of their major headline grabbers for the last decade.

Higher sales of papers, higher number of viewers and listeners, mean more advertising revenue.

So the media are not going to give up on global warming until either it is clearly a scam, and they look like hypocrites if they continue to support it, or some other story comes along which will sell as many papers as AGW (anthropogenic global warming).

It has been clear for several years to anyone who examined the evidence that the anthropogenic global warming scare was a scam.

It has been clear for several years that there is no ‘consensus’ on the nature and causes of climate change.

But just how carefully and successfully this has been kept from ordinary people is demonstrated in the comment by Donna on this story by Miranda Devine Science Cooks the Books, in which Miranda mentions the book Global Warming False Alarm by Ralph Alexander.

Donna says: If your one scientist and his one book are right and the rest of the scientists are wrong, well, then our world would still benefit from less pollution, but if the scientists are RIGHT and Mr Alexander and his book are WRONG, then we may be destroying a world’s health and the health of all our future children. Now, I don’t think I’m prepared to take that gamble. Are you?

There are two things to note here.

First that Donna, who seems an intelligent and concerned person, has bought completely the line that CO2 is a pollutant.

CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a natural part of the atmosphere that is essential for all life on Earth, and which is at very low levels compared with most of Earth’s history. Increases in CO2 reduce desertification and increase crop production. More CO2 is a good thing.

Secondly, Donna seems completely unaware that a large number of scientists have not fallen for the IPCC view.

See previous posts for 450 peer reviewed articles questioning the fundamental science of AGW, or visit the Petition Project site to view the petition signed by over 30,000 US scientists rejecting the claim that human activity is causing harmful climate change.

An objective look at the evidence shows very minor warming of less than 1 degreee over the last 100 years, warming that occurred over the same period on Mars and other bodies in our solar system, and which matches perfectly the natural cycles of climate change which have been part of Earth’s history from the beginning.

But there were vast amounts of money to be made, so evidence was manufactured, graphs were faked, opposing opinions were shut out. See the Hadley emails.

The emails and documents apparently released from the Hadley CRU by a disgrunted insider do not prove that AGW is a scam – there was already plenty of evidence for that.

But they may be turning point at which the mainstream media is finally forced to acknowledge that the science of global warming is very thin indeed.

And that may just be enough to give courage to the sceptics on both sides of the Australian parliament. Which might just be enough prevent the implementation of the devastatingly stupid wealth-of-the-nation-destroying ETS proposed by the current government.

Bishop Hill has a summary of some of the key Hadley CRU emails and their implications.