Well, I'm half hoping the climate changers are right as we need to reduce carbon emissions. Even so, I am far from convinced. It would be great to have a public debate on this issue. Not a media grandstand but a public debate where all the ideas and science were flushed out. Too important for TV.

I have a few problems with Fielding. He's not up to scratch and only got in on ALP prefs. I bet they're kicking themselves. It's a strange system when two senators (one who's only claim to fame is he's against pokies) can veto government legislation.

We're seeing a curious amalgam of positions. The anti-corporatists sitting next to the anti-populationists. These two groups are diametrically opposed to each other. There will be tears.

Ozandy,

I think that you are the ignorant and biased and biased one. You can think whatever you wish to think, but there is no need to tell me about it. You are one of these people who won't wake up to the lies of "science" until it bites you on the bum; or, at least, until the huge and totally futile costs of stupidly trying to influence climate change bite you on the bum.

You have nothing more to add to the nonsense already sprouted by other green loonies who don't know their elbows from their backsides.

This reference sums up the world-view and "culture" that the Heart(less)land Institute, and its fellow right wing true believers effectively promote.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/exploit-the-earth-or-die.asp

Pure psychosis.

Beder has made a career of questioning the motives of those who oppose the current climate orthodxy, therefore to question her own motives for making statements can hardly be hypocritical. Nor is it anyone's fault that she is more vulnerable to these charges than anyone she attacks. In other words, if Beder or any of her defenders do not like the heat on this issue then they should not start such a debate.
Further, we are still left with the problem that scientists still don't know why the earth flips in and out of ice ages (what they thought they knew about this got knocked over recently); have no idea why the present intergalacial (the break between two ice ages) has proved to be so long compared with the previous two at least, and have no real idea why the roman warm period, or the medieval warm period occured. They know the sun must have a hand in there somewhere - hence Fielding's conversion - but the exact mechanism is still a mystery. There are good grounds of believing that the sun is behind some of the small scale changes recorded recently (the changes in the last 1,000 years count as small scale), yet what scientists thought they knew about the sun also got knocked over recently. So why should we pay the slightest attention to these models based on industrial emissions - models that shed no light on any of the above problems in science? Fielding has a point.

These two very stark images also express the power mad barbaric and psychotic world-view of the techno-"realists" at the Heart-less Institute and the "objective" standard.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Orozco/panel13.html

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Orozco/panal14.html

A quote from my favourite philosopher.

"In the Old Testament it is suggested that Man exercise dominion over beasts and growing things. This is an acknowledgement that Man. in the form of every human individual, is not only functionally or structurally more or greater than anything else in the natural or elemental world, but that his happiness and even his survival depend on his acceptance of responsibility for everything in himself that is common to the rest of the natural world.

Thus, it is not merely that he is naturally superior to cattle, snakes, vegetables, and the elements, and, therefore, should force all such things into degraded submission to his own aggressive and stupid will to eat and use and do everything.....

..... Hence, we "play" with everything, but we cannot control our effects. We slaughter, exploit, poison, and spoil. We achieve power over great natural forces in the environment, but we cannot be the loving master of sex, or population, or industrial wastes, or international politics. Therefore, we are a destructive influence in the natural world, where beasts and elements consistently demonstrate an instinctual economy and harmony that puts our human vulgarities to shame."

These sub-human (even anti-human) vulgarities are what the "objective" standard celebrates as our greatest achievement and imperative.

Never mind that an "objective" point of view always occurs entirely as a subjective process and interpretation.

Plus it is now common knowledge that we never see the world as it is. And that everything we see "out there" is a brain and nervous system created, and projected, apparition or vision.

kulu,

if you have the cruets, put your accusation about the funding of Fielding's trip to the US on the public record, with your name attached, instead of dropping slimy insinuation under anonymity.

And you have the nerve to refer to "underhand tactics"!

Go take a look in the mirror, and count your old boys while you're at it. There should be two.

I'm currently reading Plimer's book before it gets subjected to the book burnings. Clearly a bloke who sees the big picture because he has a big mind, as opposed to those who see the small picture.