Make a Difference

Day: February 5, 2011

Clem 7 Tunnel Farce – Just Like the NBN

OK, so Brisbane needs better traffic systems. But this absurdly expensive, oversold, poorly researched, underused tunnel?

The Clem 7 tunnel would never have been built if actual costs and usage had been known beforehand.

RiverCity is carrying $1.3 billion in debt and wrote down its $1.56 billion of assets to $258 million at June 30 last year.

What the heck were they thinking?

At least it only cost taxpayers and private investors about $3 billion.

The NBN is even more overpriced and unnecessary. $40 billion – $6000 for every household in Australia whether they want it or not – when existing and wireless technologies can provide similar speeds at a fraction of the cost with no public investment?

What the heck are they thinking?

The only internet infastructure sector that genuinely needs taxpayer money is rural and remote Australia, where an investment of about $3 billion into satellite and wireless technologies would provide speeds comparable with those currently available to city users.

Historic Health Reforms?

Right up there with the great moral challenge of our time.

Having a single government funder of health services would help to prevent some of the bickering between Sate and federal governments, and reduce some of the cost of bureacratic oversight in health service delivery. So more money could be spent on actual medical care.

Well, maybe that’s wishful thinking. Reducing the size of a bureaucracy is a bit like trying to clean out the Augean stables. The crap just keeps flowing in. But Hercules managed it, so why not Julia Gillard?

Oh. Right.

Anyway, Julia seems to be thinking the same thing. Or something. Because the ‘important, historic Labor health reforms’ of 60% funding of state health services in return for a reduced portion of GST might be replaced by something else.

Something like the Liberal Party’s policy of direct funding to hospitals, bypassing state government coffers and management altogether.

This is a good idea, for the reasons outlined above. Fewer layers of government oversight mean more local autonomy, more responsiveness to community needs, less cost, more money for services.

But the delays and dithering make this yet another stuff up, run around, prevaricating around the bush episode by this utterly inept government.

Federal opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton says Prime Minister Julia Gillard makes her predecessor Kevin Rudd and former environment minister Peter Garrett look competent.

The Prime Minister is more incompetent than Kevin Rudd? Or the Minister for Plastic Bags and Pussy Cats?

Amazingly, this might be true. Has anything they have done worked? Has any policy when implemented had the results we were promised?

Lies Don’t Work

People tell lies, or use statistics, which frequently amounts to the same thing, to get what they want.

Most people acknowledge that telling lies is a bad thing. In general. But in this particular case, their case, the positive outcome justifies a little liberality with the facts.

So the liberal media proclaims about such malicious misportrayals as those in ‘The Rabbit Proof Fence,’  ‘OK, it is completely false, but it speaks to a larger truth.’

No it doesn’t. Lies don’t ‘speak to anything’ except the dishonesty of those who repeat them.

“A reporter might take liberties with the factual circumstances to make the larger truth clear.” O large, large truth. Apparently Mr. Reid believes that imposing a truth is the same as arriving at one. Illogically, he also seems to think that truths may be disclosed through lies.

Lies are like the one ring. You might think that if you only use it once or twice, in an emergency, you will get what you want, and no harm will be done.

But like the ring, lies cannot be used except in a way that benefits the enemy. They always, ultimately, work to do harm.

The global warming lobby is a perfect example of this. Lies. To gain more funding. To do useful, valuable research.

But it wasn’t useful research. And the money was diverted from other, genuine research or infrastructure development which could have saved lives, encouraged democracy, produced useful goods and services, etc. And those same lies have discredited science and scientists.

Just as repeated media lies in the interests of ‘the larger truth’ discredit journalists.

Honest scientists and honest journalists should be very annoyed.

Another long standing group of lies relates to domestic violence.

Christina Hoff Summers has more on this in an article on USA Today:

During the 2010 World Cup, British newspapers carried stories with headlines such as “Women’s World Cup Abuse Nightmare” and informed women that the games could uncover “for the first time, a darker side to their partner.” Fortunately, a BBC program called Law in Action took the unusual route pioneered by Ringle: The news people actually checked the facts. Their conclusion: a stunt based on cherry-picked figures.

But when the BBC journalists presented the deputy chief constable, Carmel Napier, from the town of Gwent with evidence that the World Cup abuse campaign was based on twisted statistics, she replied: “If it has saved lives, then it is worth it.”

It is not worth it. Misinformation leads to misdirected policies that fail to target the true causes of violence. Worse, those who promulgate false statistics about domestic violence, however well-meaning, promote prejudice. Most of the exaggerated claims implicate the average male in a social atrocity. Why do that? Anti-male misandry, like anti-female misogyny, is unjust and dangerous. …

Worst of all, misinformation about violence against women suggests a false moral equivalence between societies where women are protected by law and those where they are not. American and British societies are not perfect, but we have long ago decided that violence against women is barbaric. By contrast, the Islamic Republic of Iran — where it is legal to bury an adulterous woman up to her neck and stone her — was last year granted a seat on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended the decision by noting Iranian women are far better off than women in the West. “What is left of women’s dignity in the West?” he asked. He then came up with a statistic to drive home his point: “In Europe almost 70% of housewives are beaten by their husbands.”

That was a self-serving lie. Western women, with few exceptions, are safe and free. Iranian women are neither. Officials like Attorney General Holder, the deputy constable of Gwent, and the activists and journalists who promoted the Super Bowl and World Cup hoaxes, unwittingly contribute to such twisted deceptions.

Victims of intimate violence are best served by the truth.

Indeed. And so are the rest of us.

Cool Hats, Dudes

More about Egypt a bit later, but for now, these tidbits from the Daily Mail:

A handy supply of stones for peaceful pro-democracy protestors to throw at people who disagree with them:

Peaceful Pro-democracy Protestors Throw Peaceful Stones

 And a selection of creative protective headgear in case one happens to be hit by a peace-loving stone:

Egyptian Head Protection - Bakery Theme

Egyptian head Protection - Cookware Theme

Egyptian Head Protection - Invisibility Theme

Feel the Love

Oh, it’s so warm and cuddly.

Liberal progressives are forgiving, inclusive, welcoming of those who disagree with them. And of course, they never use violent or malicious rhetoric.

Or not.

Just listen to the bile and hatred from some of these folks: Clarence Thomas should be impeached, tortured, sent back to the planatation, and strung up, along with his wife.

Why Climate Change Nonsense Has to Stop

Climate change alarmists need to be called to account.

When they talk about global warming, they actually mean three separate things:

1. The world is getting warmer in an unprecedented, or at least highly unusual and alarming, way.

2. This unusual warming is caused by human activity, specifically, the use of fossil fuels.

3. The world getting warmer is a bad thing.

Is the world getting warmer at an unusual rate?

No.

No one argues about the fact that the world is getting warmer.

But the last century has been one of remarkable climate stability. There has been an average global temperature increase of less than 1 degreee Celsius over the last 100 years.

Given that we have just come out of a period of extreme cold that lasted for 500 years, this minor increase is neither unusual or alarming.

This very small rate of warming has continued unchanged except for minor fluctuations for the last 150 years. There is no evidence of any correlation between temperature change and human activity.

The real ‘climate change deniers’ are the global warming alarmists, who persistently ignore or downplay much faster and larger historical changes in climate, or worse, deliberately alter data to make past temperatures look colder, and recent records look warmer.

Everyone has heard of the HadCRUT/Mann/‘hide the decline’ alterations to the twentieth century temperature record.

But even little New Zealand’s official record keepers have done the same thing – changing the temperature record to hide the fact the raw temperature data show no warming at all.

Organisations which depend on creating alarm over alleged climate change in order to gain funding cannot make their case without lies and exaggerations.

More recently the NASA GISS records have been tampered with in the same way.

Comparing the data they offered as fact in 1999 with data they assure us is correct now, it takes two seconds to see that over that ten year period, earlier temperatures have been reduced, while later temperatures have been increased. The resulting graphs change from one that shows a mild and moderate increase in temperature, to one that shows a much greater increase.

From WUWT:

James Hansen and NASA GISS Telling Fibs Again

Climate change alarmists need to be called to account.

‘Recent extreme weather events are because of global warming!’

Really? Is there any real world evidence of an increase in the number or intensity of extreme weather events?

‘Our modelling shows…’  No. Forget the computer games. Is there any evidence of an increase in extreme weather events.?

‘Well, no.’

“Sea levels will rise catastrophically!’

Really? Is there any real world evidence of an increase in the rate of sea level rise?

‘Our modelling shows…’ No. Forget the computer games. Is there any evidence of an increase in the rate of sea level rise?

‘Well, no.’

‘The world is warming at an unprecedented rate!’

Really? Is there any real world evidence that recent climate change has been unusual?

‘Our modelling shows…’ No. Forget the computer games. Is there any evidence of unusual warming over the last century?

‘Well, no.’

‘Damaging climate change is caused by human activity! We have to stop using fossil fuels!’

Really? Is there any real world evidence of a correlation between human activity and changes in global temperature?

‘Our modelling shows…’ No. Forget the computer games. Is there any evidence of correlation between human activity and climate change?

‘Well, no.’

Over 100 billion dollars has been spent on this farce.

This money, completely wasted, could have made a real difference if spent on, for example:

  • Real environmental issues. 
  • Disaster – flood/fire/cyclone – preparation and mitigation.
  • Fusion research.
  • Building roads, hospitals, schools or other infrastructure.
  • Eradicating malaria, measles, polio.

The list could go on…

Climate change alarmists need to be called to account.

The climate change farce has to stop.

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