Green views

I see dead people

There I was, nearly having a near death experience the other day. Became intimately acquainted with intimations of mortality. They say there are no atheists on operating tables, but there I was, putting my trust in a competent surgeon and hundreds of years of science and medical technology rather than the spaghetti monster, and I seemed to get by alright. No bolt of lightning plunging the room into darkness or anything like that.

But it got me thinking about thinking about death. A little while ago I had read one of those articles, the kind I must have read a thousand times, in which the punch line was "of course humans are the only animals that know about their own death" or words to that effect. But there, in a room that was a much less pleasant (and scarier) version of the Starship Enterprise bridge, I began to question this truism.

Humans the only animals that know about their own death? How do we know that? Not elephants, or whales, or gorillas, or dolphins, or chimps, or bears, or pigs? Are we sure? Mourning (including dogs for their human owners) by birds and mammals for lost or dead young ones, lost friends, is a sure sign of awareness of death and its completeness. How do we know that the understanding of death as loss does not extend to the individual elephant or gorilla being aware that its time must come? Why would it not?

No, I think this is yet another attempt by humans to assert their own superiority, their own separateness from the rest of the animal kingdom from which some are so reluctant to understand we evolved. At various times humans have been said to be different to animals (that is, all animals) because of tool-using, the presence of two brain hemispheres, the ability to feel pain, an opposable thumb, language use. None of these hold up after further study (even chickens, it has been found, have separate brain hemispheres) and so the religious among us now come down to just the knowledge that the bell tolls for all of us as proof of our superiority. More wishful thinking.

In fact it seems to me that knowledge of death is more advanced among animal species. The behavior exhibited by many animal species when a member of their family group dies or is killed suggests that they know for a fact that death has a sting, that it is forever, and that the bones that are eventually all that remains of a once loved mother or baby are indeed all that remains.

Religious humans, on the other hand, don't understand that they will die. They refuse to use the word die, but speak of someone "passing", of being "reunited" with previously dead family members, of being resurrected (whatever that might mean). We don't pass, by the way, we D.I.E, and we won't be seeing anyone over the other side - I'm sure the animals know that. So perhaps that is the ultimate difference between animals and humans. All animals know that death is final. Some humans fool themselves with talk of life after death. Needs a bit more evolution, old Homo sapiens, to start seeing the world as it really is - a matter of life and death.

Some people think the Watermelon Blog is a matter of life and death, but it's much more serious than that.

death

Sailing down the river

I was trying to think what Kevin and Penny, selling their "Emissions Trading Scheme" this week, reminded me of, and then it came to me. A couple of gamblers hitching a ride on the river boat, playing the thimble and pea game with the local yokels. "Here, see the lump of coal? I place it under this thimble, and then I move all three thimbles around. Keep your eye on the one with the coal. There, we stop, now, where is it? Under that one? No, sorry, not under that one, or this one I'm afraid. Done your dough mate. Now, want to play again?"

All of us I think have been yokels for the last couple of days, trying to understand under which thimble the actual greenhouse gas savings were located. Not under petrol, not under power stations, or aluminium smelters, or farming. Not under anywhere you might expect to find them in fact. I'm not sure that Kevin and Penny actually understand the supposed point of the game they are playing. You see at the end of the day an ETS isn't just an illusion to make the voters think you are doing something you are not, but it is supposed to actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia. And reduce them by a lot (not "60% of 2000 emissions by 2050", which apparently has replaced, by sleight of hand, the original goal of 60% of 1990 emissions by 2050, in itself well short of the 90% of 1990 emissions the science tells us is needed) as fast as possible. The shuffling hands, and the postponement of action at least until after the next election, is going to produce nothing.

And since when, out of curiosity, did a Labor prime minister happily admit that he was being criticised "from the left" by the Greens? Long been true of course, but it has taken a phony emissions trading scheme, and a refusal to take any other action, to see it being happily admitted (Mr Rudd said he would "take it on the chin" and I guess brawls do happen on river boats when the gamblers are found to be cheating}.

emissions trading

Just Imagine More

I have been inspired this week by the Pope's visit and World Youth Day with its "pilgrims" (any ladies from Bath among them I wonder, and where is our Geoffrey Chaucer?) and his renaming of Australia as the "Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit" (going to take a miracle to fit that on to a coin or stamp). But most of all I have been inspired by the Federal and State governments coughing up $200 million for this event and not even asking for a cut of the profits from the tee shirts and other tasteful tourist souvenirs. So I have gone into full scale planning for World Atheist Day to be held in Canberra 25 July 2010 (Xmas in July, in the year of the ETS, take that Dr Pell), and have renamed the country Terra Incognita in anticipation. Having made those announcements I can sit back at my keyboard and wait (I already have a cat to comfort me), confidently assuming that Kevin and Morris will have put my cheques in the mail and I can get on with booking the plane for Richard Dawkins who will be coming to run the event (and hopefully rename the country back to Terra Australis), and get tee shirts with the Great Spaghetti Monster on them made in China.

I also confidently assume that while all the happy smiling young atheists, guitars slung over their shoulders in case they want to spontaneously burst into the singing of "Imagine" are here, laws will be passed banning any display of religiosity anywhere in Canberra. No religious clothing, no religious singing in the centre of town, no passing out of pamphlets, no churches with silly slogans on notice boards, no use of the word "redemption" in sporting broadcasts. I get annoyed by these things, and I expect not to get annoyed during World Atheist Day. Or someone is going to pay for it - I want fines consisting of a tithe of all the money made by the church in WYD. A sort of Religiosity Tax on Pellamisms, which should work, hopefully, like a Carbon Tax on emissions.

The event planning is under way. I see it as a kind of Unbelievers Olympics. The initial event might be the race to cast the first stone. Followed by the "populate or perish" three legged race for mixed doubles (wearing uniforms with the slogan - "kiss me I'm an atheist"). There would be a "describe the McKillop miracle" competition for imaginative writing, and the fast eating competition - by candlelight. Catering would be no problem - my pilgrims will be fed carp, enough carp to feed five thousand, on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin.

My only worry is that I can't seem to tie Mr Rudd down to a firm date on which to begin casting out superstition from Australia as fast as snakes were cast out from Ireland. I told him about the photo op when Richard Dawkins arrives at the airport accompanied only (he is a modest man, Saint Richard, once a member of the boy scouts, practically compulsory in England in his youth, apparently) by an entourage of one of Dr Who's assistants, but he muttered something about the religious vote, and someone called Fielding. He also apparently can't see why we need to cast out superstitions quite so quickly - half by 2050 he thought was enough, and in any case, most of them could just be buried rather than removed entirely.

So the way ahead looks stony and hard, like the bed of the Murray River after global warming, but am I down-hearted, not me. There were those who thought that John Howard would rule as long as Robert Menzies, and that we would never sign the Kyoto Protocols, never again have a prime minister who wasn't an honorary member of the exclusive brethren, never again have television screens or streets free of Big Brother. But I know that faith can move mountains of coal, and that somewhere in the desert is a bush that can burn forever without consuming itself, constantly being renewed. Must be a metaphor in there somewhere.

But I digress. Back to the planning. The catholics seem not to have thought of this, but then they seem to be a bit set in their ways, seem to believe they are infallible or something. I think it's important not just to have teenagers involved in the great joy that is atheism, but to get the very young involved. World Atheist Day will have a special section for the Under Sevens, we could call them Dawkin's Youth. I always say if you give me a child until he is seven he will be an atheist for life. It might seem young, but I think you are never too young to learn to think for yourself, whatever the Young Liberals might say.

So all you atheists out there (the silent majority, I like to call you) start saving your Peter's Pence and booking your transport (fishing boats, I'm afraid, you won't be able to afford air fares by then, and it's not as if you have some rich organisation behind you). And if your mothers weep, and tell you not to go off on the crusade, tell them it's a bit like getting married where you are gaining a daughter not losing a son. In this case the movement of the atheists of the world to Canberra will see a great fall in the average IQ in cities around the world, and a great increase in the average IQ of Canberra. There may not be a big increase in financial wealth in Canberra as a result of World Atheist Day (though poor atheists, it is well known, having taken a vow of poverty, will inherit the Earth), but there will certainly be a huge increase in brain power. Mr Rudd could put them to work on global warming - could lead to a renewal of faith in renewables.

Note to readers - this is an extended version of the earlier post, written as a letter to a newspaper. For that purpose the essay need to be both short and rest on a single analogy. By contrast a 1000 word version for a blog can't get away with just piling on more and more detail about the analogy - "we get it already, boring, boring". So I had to extend it by adding another layer of meaning with a metaphor, helped by Cardinal Pell's climate change denialism and his demand for more and more children to be produced, which had come out just after I wrote the short version. Instead of replacing the earlier version with this Director's Cut I thought I would include both so that readers can compare the two approaches, and see, in this case at least, how an idea can develop.

religion

Jam tomorrow

Did you see the story the other day about the glacier in Argentina that had bits of ice falling off it? Wasn't much of a story, just one of those filler "aren't foreigners and their animals and their countries funny?" stories that the mainstream tv news producers now use to pad out most of their bulletins, there being, it seems, not enough real news in the world to fill the 6 minutes or so they devote to items that are not either sport, celebrity, or royalty. Anyway, there was the glacier, bits falling of, and it must have occurred to someone in editorial that this might be verging on a no-go area of news. Not to worry, we will reassure the public, the otherwise meaningless images were concluded with the words - "locals said that this wasn't related to global warming, the glacier melts every year". So that's all right then.

Very similar sequence a few days earlier when there was an announcement that the area of NSW now drought-declared had come back up, and was now once again, 107% as it had been last year (before the "drought-breaking rains" that appear so often on news bulletins for as long as a drought continues). The NSW Minister for Agriculture, in making the announcement, quickly added that it was quite normal for 112% of NSW to be in drought and that it was nothing to do with global warming. And just before that (and still) we had the terrible bushfires in California, not the result, you guessed it, of global warming.

This is the kind of nonsense that denialists (no, they are not "sceptics") pick up on all the time. Nothing, it seems, can be attributed to global warming by the time they have finished, and so, what, me worry? Let me try to spell out reality for anyone confused by these announcements. Of course there has always been weather, and extreme events. There have been storms, floods, droughts, winds, snow, and yes, bush fires, in the past. Recent past and distant past, weather is weather. The issue was never that global warming caused a particular event. But adding more heat to land, sea and air raises the energy levels in the climate systems, and it is those energy levels that affect both how extreme the weather events will be, and how often they will happen. More frequent, longer lasting, more severe droughts - global warming. More frequent bush fires burning with more intensity for longer - global warming. More frequent, higher category cyclones and hurricanes causing more damage - global warming. Glaciers melting more rapidly and out of season (the real story from Argentina was that this glacier was melting in Winter) - global warming.

Next time you come across a denialist suggesting that some particular event is not the result of global warming agree with him (they are almost always men, funny that), warmly. But then go on to point out that the previous one, and the next one, and the one after that, are. You know the old saying - jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, but never jam today. We are certainly in a jam today, and more of a jam tomorrow.

global warming

Just imagine

I have been inspired by the Pope's visit and World Youth Day with its "pilgrims" (where is our Geoffrey Chaucer?) and his renaming of Australia as the "Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit" (going to take a miracle to fit that on to a coin or stamp). But most of all I have been inspired by the Federal and State governments coughing up $200 million for this event and not even asking for a cut of the profits from the tee shirts and other tasteful tourist souvenirs. So I have gone into full scale planning for World Atheist Day to be held in Canberra 25 July 2010 (Xmas in July). Having made that announcement I can confidently assume that Kevin and Morris will have put my cheques in the mail and I can get on with booking the plane for Richard Dawkins who will be coming to run the event (and hopefully rename the country back to Terra Australis), and get tee shirts with the Great Spaghetti Monster on them. I also confidently assume that while all the happy smiling young atheists, guitars slung over their shoulders in case they want to spontaneously burst into the singing of "Imagine" are here, laws will be passed banning any display of religiosity anywhere in Canberra. No religious clothing, no religious singing in the centre of town, no passing out of pamphlets, no churches with silly slogans on notice boards, no use of the word "redemption" in sporting broadcasts. I get annoyed by these things, and I expect not to get ignored during World Atheist Day.

Religion

Dr Yes

Not that anyone would do this, but try to imagine that you know, or strongly suspect, that you have a serious illness. Symptoms keep coming over a number of years, but you take no action, frightened of the treatment you might have to have. Eventually, unable to totally pretend that all is well any longer, you go to a doctor. The doctor says, "yes indeed, you have a really serious illness, so serious that you will die if you don't have a major operation, give up smoking, change your diet, get more exercise". All your mates are listening outside the window, and they say, "No, no, don't listen to her, how are we going to have fun down the pub if you behave like that?" You say, "oh, come on doc, you can do better than that, how about you just prescribe some pills for me?" And she says, "well, ok, but they won't do any more than delay the inevitable, and they have some nasty side effects". "No, no, doc", you say, "no side effects, what about some of those little herbal pills that those nice people wearing white coats, almost certainly doctors, promote on tv that can fix up any ailment painlessly? Or what about a Placebo, they are always good?" "Oh, I can't do that" she says, "you would die very quickly". "Well", you say, "if you don't I'm taking my custom elsewhere to that nice doctor down the road, he believes in alternative medicines and placebos".

No need to go on, you will all recognise the analogy with the farce that went on this week with the first serious report on the actions needed to deal with climate change. Dr Garnaut was the first doctor, "Dr Maybe" we could call him. He knows reality, but with a bit of nudging he seemed prepared to prescribe the placebo that is "clean coal", and to try to make things as painless as possible. And Michael Costa was one of your pub mates cat-calling from the window, telling you there was nothing wrong, and it was time you had a smoke. And Dr Nelson (telescope to the blind eye "Climate change? I see no climate change signal") of course is that good fellow down the road, "Dr No". No nasty medicine from him. Whatever the unions and big business want, which is no action at all, they will get.

We need a Dr Yes. Someone who will acknowledge the serious situation, the wasted years, the need for action right now. Someone Churchillian who can mobilise public opinion while offering nothing but higher electricity costs and long hot summers, very hot summers, on the beaches. Someone who will proceed with the nasty medicine, knowing that in the long run it is the only way to save you.

Can farmer's organisations and country GPs (sorry, MPs) help with this - get Mr Rudd an honorary doctorate from Charles Sturt University and give him the honorary nickname of Dr Yes? Doesn't look promising, they have been among the mates calling through the window. Denying and denying and denying there was a problem. Demanding that tree clearing continue and water allocations increase and coal be dug ever faster, and accusing anyone who tried to contradict them of being "extreme green".

So, is there a doctor in your house? Or are you going to keep listening to your mates down the pub, and visiting Dr No, when it comes to the health of the planet?

global warming

He is baaa-ack

Still in one piece (well, two pieces really, with an extra bit of metal added to an artery). Feeling ok except that the slightest skip of the heartbeat makes me pause and stop breathing, rather as if I was walking through a haunted house at midnight and kept thinking I heard following footsteps. Nothing there yet though, so I guess it's neck into the yolk, back to the treadmill, nose to the grindstone, etc. So, where was I? Oh yes, the climate is still changing ....

Oh and thank you all for the kind thoughts.

Say Aaaaah

For those of my subscribers wondering when normal service is to be resumed, my apologies. I had a week of feeling ill, followed by a rushed trip to the hospital at the end of last week with a heart attack. Spent 3 days being monitored and dosed with every chemical substance known to the medical profession (except, sadly, marijuana). Am now home, briefly, before undergoing what will, hopefully, be a minor operation. After that I should again feel up to writing the sophisticated, witty, and hard-hitting blogs you have come to know and love. In the meantime, feel free to browse among the old blogs while you wait, although I will understand if you see that as about as appealling as reading old Reader's Digest in the Dentist's waiting room. Until my next blog, it's goodnight from me, and it's goodnight from me.

Mirror mirror on the wall

They say you finish up with the face you deserve. I'm not sure that's right. Seems to me most people who deserve bad faces either are so rich that they can afford a special cream to smooth out the wrinkles, repair DNA, increase brain function and decrease weight; or have no idea they have been bad (George Bush for example has no regrets, it seems, about anything).

I know it seems like ancient history now, but there was, was there not, a federal Liberal government in power from 1996 until the end of last year? I ask because increasingly it seems to have become one of those forgotten periods of history like the Dark Ages. Just this week there was a report (again) on the increasing incidence of Alzheimer's Disease in Australia and a call for increased funding for research. The news item ended with the statement - "Funding was previously reduced by Canberra". "By Canberra? No, no", I wanted to shout at the tv as I often do, "reduced by the Howard government". I had shouted the previous week too, when the findings of the investigation into Horse Flu simply blamed the quarantine service, and not the ideological context of the last 11 years in which it had to operate.

So it seems the former government is home free. Its legacies in those areas as well as in the huge gap between rich and poor; young people priced out of houses; public schools massively underfunded compared to private schools; our involvement in Iraq; the rising toll of global warming on our farmers; the failing hospital system, and many others it seems will be forgotten, the decisions merely down to "Canberra". Already forgotten too is the ideological context - the obsessive de-regulation; the privatisation; the deliberate winding down of the public sector; the deliberate winding up of religious roles in society; the tax cutting for the rich; the subservience to America; the attacks on unions; the disparaging of scientific and other expertise. All forgotten it seems, even as we live with the consequences (the media, for example, also makes absolutely no connection between the Iraq war and oil prices). Come January and I have no doubt the American media will go through the same process, and George Bush will be home free on the ranch.

But if individuals get the faces they deserve then so do countries. And Australia is showing the frown lines, the scowl lines, the sneer lines, the dishonesty lines, the "fawning up and kicking down" lines, the lines of ignorance and prejudice, that are the legacies of 11 years of neoconservative ideology applied ruthlessly.

Perhaps the media should look in the mirror. In remembrance of times past.

politics

Louis et moi

I got accused of being an elitist the other day. I was commenting on a particularly silly article by a climate change denier when another denier chimed in and accused me of being elitist. Apparently ordinary people are not interested in the world around them, and us elitists who are better get out of the way because a revolution was coming which would sweep us all away. I suddenly knew how the French aristocrats felt in 1789, a group I had never thought previously I had much in common with.

This is an increasingly common accusation in recent times. In the Democratic primary race Barack Obama was accused of being an elitist (he ate the wrong food, couldn't bowl) by Hillary Clinton, who went on to proudly proclaim that uneducated Americans liked her best. The little lamented former government of Australia had as standard operating procedure the rubbishing of "elites" (a bit rich coming from a party composed of, and acting for, the economic elites) who drank the wrong drinks, and of refusing to listen to anyone who had expertise in a topic. The Howard government could have had as its motto "we don't know much about art (in fact they knew nothing about art) but we know what we like". Expertise gets in the way when you have a government with an ideological position on everything. The government of George Bush, from whom Howard learnt so much, had the same approach. If you are going to do things (on the environment, Iraq, health, education, drugs) that fly in the face of all rational evidence, then you have to destroy the concept that there is such a thing as expertise. No, experts are the elite, and we, governments (in both America and here) of millionaires, are the ones with the common touch.

The government of Kevin Rudd, who has learnt so much from John Howard, is following the same path in slashing funding to research organisations (full of elitists), and also seems unwilling to listen to experts.

Next time our excellent local electrician comes to repair a switch or change a light fitting I will let him know that I am not going to take any nonsense. "You are an expert", I will say, "a member of the elites. I don't have to listen to you. I may not know much about electricity but I know what I like. Now you do it this way." Not sure how that is going to work out, but if you hear a bang and see a flash of light coming from this direction you will know that reality has a stubborn habit of getting in the way of ideology.

As it does on environmental issues, health, education, and all the rest. It just takes a little longer before things fall apart.

science

Eternal truths

I have taken to re-reading many of my old books, something I used to laugh at my grandmother for. Sometimes they are old favourites read a number of times, sometimes classics that I haven't picked up in 40 years. Times change, culture changes, society changes, technology changes (and the price of books changes, I'm currently on Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain", which as a paperback classic cost just $1.80 in 1968!), but the books stay the same. I used to hope some books would change, and I have re-read "From Here to Eternity" a few times, hoping the story would end differently for once, but, just like the story of Robert Kennedy in 1968, it never does.

And, most important of all the changes, the Reader is different each time. Just as you can never step in the same stream twice, so you can never read the same book twice. The act of reading takes the author's words and absorbs them in a way that reflects the reader's age, and experience. When I was a child I understood as a child and so on. Reading, as a teenager, about war, about having children, and growing old, and experiencing the death of others, was something I could (I thought) grasp hypothetically. Reading such books now, from my advanced old age, is quite different. And the world has had different experiences. Reading George Orwell, say, in the 1960s, is much different to reading him now, when his works are not cautionary tales, but have been used as manuals by right wing governments around the world.

Not just books, we see the actual world differently as we grow and mature. George Bernard Shaw said "If you are not a red revolutionist at 20, you will be at 50 a most impossible fossil'. David Horton said "A man who is not left wing as a youth is hard in the heart. One who is not a conservationist when older isn't paying attention". Politicians often rely on people not maturing, not gaining in experience and understanding, when they run campaigns based on fear of change. We can learn to read their words with different eyes. We, and the world, know more about the reality of modern war than we did when reading James Jones or Homage to Catalonia.

And re-reading "Magic Mountain" 40 years on? Well, a number of things jumped out. When it was originally written in the 1920s TB was a death sentence. When I first read it in the age of antibiotics, this was hard to understand. Now incurable TB is back. When it was written the snow and ice of the Swiss Alps, and their glaciers, seemed just a fact of life, eternal as the changing seasons Mann describes so well. Now all is changing as the ice and snow melt. And the speech about how science should defer to religious faith seemed quaint in the time of the rational 1960s, now it seems prophetic.

And finally, as a 23 year old I took it for granted that this was a great book written by a great author - you tend to trust what people (the Nobel Prize committee, say) tell you at 23. Now I think it needed some savage work by an editor - not a very good book at all, really. But he can write, and his larger theme, of the general public closing their eyes, sleepwalking in an artificial, sick world towards the disaster of the First World War, rings true today, as we head for a different disaster.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Times past, and times future, remembered on The Watermelon Blog, where we sometimes dance to the music of time.

global warming

Quiddities and quillets

Usually when we use Titanic metaphors in relation to global warming we find ourselves up on the bridge speaking to the Captain who, blind eye to the telescope, is signaling full speed ahead, and saying "Icebergs, what Icebergs?" Or perhaps in the ballroom with the rich, dancing the night away, literally.

Instead, this time, I want to take you down, past the ballroom, past the second class passenger cabins, and down into the depths of the ship near the third class passengers. There you will find a climate change denier, potentially of course the grandfather of one of our own deniers. Shush, go quietly so you don't disturb him, and so you can hear him above the roar of the engines and the scraping of an iceberg along the hull. Listen ....

"Ssssss, ah the lovely, the lovely hull, my precious ssssssship, greatest ssssssship ever built, and it'sssss mine, all mine, my precious. Sssssee the water coming through that little hole? Ah, lovely water, we lovesssss the water we do. But not very much water, really, just a little bit, and water is sssso natural in a ship. Anyway, there is supposed to be water coming in through the hole, they probably put the hole in so the water could get out again. All ships have holes, I'm sure. And not so much water on the floor yet, really, only covers my feet, oh yes, now my legsssss. It will stop soon, bound to. And if it doesn't, well then, my preciousssss can't sink, nothing can happen to her, unsinkable. Anyway, even if she does sink into the lovely water, full of fishes, lovely fishes, there are life boats on board, we can all escape. But really, my preciousss will be fine, and I can stay in her forever."

Look, I know, I know, easy target, next thing I'll be poking fun at Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientology or the La Rouche movement or Australia First. The world seems to always have an endless supply of gullible-willing-to-suspend-all-diseblief potential followers for any new leader who hoists a flag. I've been poking fun at denialists for some time now, but enough is enough, no more Mr Funny Guy, it's time, deadly serious from now on. For ten years these people have been babbling on, not critical, not sceptical, but just in complete denial, like our slippery friend in the bowels of the Titanic. Nothing will do the trick - not the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap, or the loss of the Barrier Reef, or the complete drying up of the Murray River. They will still keep spouting the same old rubbish, like a player piano roll; ice caps on Mars, climate has changed before, 1970s ice age, sun spots, crops in Greenland, 1998 a hot year, cold in Melbourne today, CO2 good for you, can't predict weather even next week, etc etc. The points can be, and have been, answered a thousand times, but into the piano goes the roll, and the same old tune is played again and again.

And it isn't funny any more, not even with clever "Gollum on the Titanic" metaphors. For over ten years now you have obfuscated and quibbled; turned to quiddities, quillets, cases, tenures, and tricks. For ten long years you have given governments everywhere, urged on by giant corporations, an excuse to believe there was debate when there was none. Out with the lot of you. You have sat here too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you.

We tend to think of climate change denialists as some kind of new breed, new cult, new sect, but there is really nothing new about them. They have infested Australia from the first day they went ashore in Sydney Cove with axes. Ever since then they have resisted all attempts at conservation measures. Pretended to believe nonsense about the large number of trees in Australia, about the natural dryness of the Murray, about pollution blowing away in the wind, about the need to kill native species. Have continued to clear woodlands, withdraw too much water from rivers, woodchip forests, develop sand dunes, over fish. Every attempt to warn of coming problems being met with contempt and obfuscation, and a demand that big business (and big agribusiness) must be allowed to get on with things, unfettered by any environmental regulation.

Well, the last 220 years have been an extended home and away season, where the Denialist Dragons have met and beaten every team of Environmentalist Bilbys that challenged them. And now Global Warming, it's the big one, the Premiership. Greenhouse temperature rise is a massive refutation of the proposition that the world should be run by businessmen for businessmen. Businessmen and conservative politicians hate global warming because it is one of those stubborn facts that keep getting in the way of ideology. Global warming is the final match for the difference of opinion between conservationists and the Right, and the Right know that they have lost the game. So they continue to thrash about, demanding extra time, video replays, injury stoppages, player substitutions, goal kicks to be retaken.

And please, whatever talking points you have left in your supporters kit, forget it. I don't want to hear them. I know it is going to be something (global cooling since 2001 perhaps?) that is just as silly as all the other nonsense you have spouted to an increasingly bored crowd of spectators.

Game over. Go home. Let us get on with trying to work out how to clean up the mess you and your supporters have left us with.

Alas poor Yoricks? No.

Note for non-Australian subscribers and visitors. A version of this post with American cultural references (Jamestown, Spotted Owls, Kansas hurricanes, Super Bowl etc - sadly the similarities are greater than the differences) can be found here.

global warming

I see your $10 billion and raise ...

The nonsense about petrol prices recently, and the bidding war about who would reduce petrol prices the most (remind yourself when listening to the "outrage" from Nelson and Hockey and Minchin that they were in government for 11 years), is yet another indication of the way that, thanks to the rigid party system, Australian politics has become dysfunctional. Party politics wreck chances of doing anything about issues such as climate change, or social issues, or about prison populations.

Consider prisons, where the number of prisoners keeps rising, perhaps aiming for the American record where every second person seems to be either in jail or about to be sent to jail. Why is it so? Are crime rates soaring? More and more criminal types being born every year? Are streets, suburbs, whole towns now unlivable urban jungles? Um, no, in spite of what tabloid headlines in rubbishy newspapers and the tv stations that now aspire to be like them will tell you. No, it is because of the law and order auction that those same tabloids have determined will be one of the few political dialogues permitted in our society. Governments are now terrified of being seen as "weak on crime" because the tabloids will destroy them with blaring front pages and victim interviews on current affairs shows, so every time the opposition promises more police, more jails, longer sentences, more control of judges, fewer juries, the government will feel obliged to not just match the bid but up the ante. And then the opposition, desperate for power, will raise the bid again, and so on. The prisons fill as the levels of testosterone rise in the parliament.

Same process with tax - "we will cut taxes by $30 billion". "Hah, I will see your $30 billion and raise you $5 billion." "We spit on your $35 billion and promise $40 billion" and so on. The media are on the sidelines, egging them on, the one with the biggest cuts will win this mad-brained poker game. And rarely, if ever, does anyone comment that the billions involved could be going to schools, hospitals, roads, environment, aged care, agriculture and so on. That this particular poker game is not being played with Monopoly money but with real institutions that are meant to provide public support services.

And while we are not quite into it yet, the recent petrol price war is an initial skirmish in the political game that may, even now, prevent action on climate change. We will cut petrol prices; we will cut them more; we will cut them even more. A carbon trading scheme will increase electricity costs? We will abolish the scheme and lower electricity costs. Renewable energy targets raise costs; we will lower the targets; and we will lower them more. And so on. Anything which is likely to result in higher prices (except of course higher profits for oil companies and newly privatised electricity companies) will be the subject of another bidding war to reduce actions to nothing.

I wonder how this kind of politics would have played out in Australia in World War 2?

global warming

No going back

Beautiful mind, Stephen Hawking. Saw a question from him the other day - if there is life elsewhere in the universe, why haven't we stumbled across alien broadcasts by now? An alien "Wheel of Fortune" comes to mind, for example, or a radio soap opera starring lovelorn little green men and women. The implication of his question, if I may be so bold, is that there are no other intelligent life forms in the universe. Although I suppose you could argue that an intelligent life form would have better things to do than watch tv quiz shows or listen to radio soap operas, so perhaps the lack of such broadcasts simply means that we are the dumbest intelligent life form in the universe.

A similar question arises from the lack of space travellers arriving on Earth (except at Roswell of course). I can't remember if this was Hawking, or someone else, or me, but this lack of flying saucers also suggests that faster than light travel is not just theoretically but practically impossible, otherwise they would have been here by now. Or it may just mean there is a sign on the space lane to Earth warning travellers "Wrong way, go back".

It was certainly Hawking though who also pointed out another piece of evidence about space time mysteries - there are no people travelling back from the future. We don't get time travellers appearing in our major cities shopping for future antiques in Ikea stores, or sending our bookmakers bankrupt with certain knowledge about the winners of major horse races. Time travel seems to be theoretically possible, but the absence of arrivals from the future suggests that it is not practically possible, and has never been invented any time in the future.

In a sense these ideas are based on the old "mark and recapture" technique, one of the first things young ecology students are taught about field research. The idea is so simple that it makes you (well, it made me) want to hug yourself with delight at the sheer ingenuity of it. Want to know how big a population of wild animals is without the impossible task of counting them? Simple, catch a few, mark them in some way that doesn't adversely affect them (for example rings on the legs of birds) but lets them be instantly recognized when seen again, and then let them go. Let some time go by, and then go out and catch some number of animals, say 100, from the population. Count how many of the 100 have your mark on them. Then the proportion of marked animals in the sample is the same as the percentage of marked animals in the total population. You know how many animals you marked and released, how many you caught, hey presto, solve an equation with three known figures and one unknown and you can calculate the total size of the population.

So Hawking's thought experiment is equivalent to seeing whether space travellers can be "marked", and the absence of sightings means either they can't be, or they don't exist - there is no population of aliens elsewhere in the universe to be marked. In the case of time travellers, Hawking assumes that the absence of strangely dressed lottery winners in our street means that they can't be "marked", time travel simply can't be invented and never will be. But, just as with alien travellers from space, there is a second possibility. We know time travel is theoretically possible, and therefore should be invented by our clever descendants. So what if the absence of time travellers means that there are no people in the future of the planet?

Climate change denialists have lately taken to pretending that the Earth has started cooling. Have continued to claim that two lines trending upwards for fifty years have no implications for the future. I have taken to wondering how long the trend line has to be for these people to admit that the globe is warming as a result of the CO2 being poured into the air by their industrialist friends. At what point do they stop pretending that the modelling that projects that trend forward 10, 50, 100 years has no relevance because we don't know what the future holds (being unable, as they wrongly claim, to predict the weather tomorrow)?

Well, what if the lack of time travellers tells us that the denialists achieved their aim and prevented action on climate change for so long that the upward graph began to accelerate as tipping points were achieved, and that the next big extinction event on the planet included Homo sapiens sapiens? What if Stephen Hawking's observation doesn't show that time travel wasn't achieved, but that human wisdom wasn't? Not enough people saying "Wrong way, go back".

Big responsibility, being a denialist, but they have broad shoulders. And hey, the future is bunk, as Ford said.

There is a future (and not a bad past) on the Watermelon Blog, but for how long?

global warming

Must try harder

The rulers of Burma, and Zimbabwe, have recently made sure, if there was a shred of doubt remaining, that they don't run civilized countries. And they are not alone of course, just think of _ and of course _ . Got me to thinking more generally - how do you recognize a civilized country? Most Australians, perhaps all, believe that they are part of a civilised society. But then people in most countries, perhaps all, believe the same thing (a bit like thinking that Australia is the greatest country in the world, when all the other countries think they are), so that doesn't get us very far does it. Can we think of an objective test? Migrants to the country now have to sit an exam testing their knowledge of Donald Bradman before they are allowed to become citizens of THIS greatest country in the world. How about we scrap the old United Nations and create a new one from scratch. But this time countries have to sit a test to decide whether they are civilised enough to join with others in looking after the good of the planet in a civilised kind of way.

So, imagine if you can, the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations. You are there representing Australia, and all around you are the anxious representatives of other countries, nervously lining up pencils, putting little clocks in place, playing with the exam paper turned face down on the desk, trying to surreptitiously lift a corner to get a look at the questions. And then the second hand reaches the top, and the time is 9 am, and the Secretary-General says "You may start". Your eyes flick over the page quickly, looking for an easy question to get you going, but there aren't any easy questions, and, after chewing your pencil, you start with question one.

The Civilisation Exam
Answer all questions
Four marks for each question to which you can answer "True"; partial marks may be awarded.
Pass mark is 50.

1. The military-industrial complex plays no role in the government of your country.
2. Religion plays a very small role in society in your country; neither forbidden nor compulsory.
3. Scientists, teachers, nurses, artists, are all valued more than sports people and celebrities in your country.
4. Speech is free and the media varied with many different owners in your country.
5. There are few if any guns owned by people in your country.
6. The environment of your country is cared for as the highest priority.
7. The government of your country does not execute its people.
8. Women have full social and economic equality with men in your country.
9. Minorities, whether ethnic, linguistic, cultural or religious, are not persecuted in your country.
10. Your country does not consider sexuality a criterion for human rights.
11. Education of children is universal, free and secular in your country.
12. Other species of animals are respected, valued and protected by the people of your country.
13. Everyone secretly votes in your country, and every vote is openly counted independent of government.
14. Regulation protects people from giant corporations operating in your country.
15. Your armies do not invade other countries and war isn't glorified in your country.
16. Your country does not consider wealth a criterion for political success, or social worth.
17. Art and heritage are valued in your country and literature, film and television increase in quality over time.
18. In your country natural disasters bring massive state support for the hurt and homeless and helpless.
19. The old, the sick, the disabled, are cared for by your country, not profited from.
20. The government of your country tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.
21. Public enterprise is as valued as private enterprise in your country.
22. The courts and police are independent of your country's politicians.
23. Trade unions flourish in your country.
24. Your country aims to make the balance between life at work and life at home a healthy one.
25. Aspirations are achievable by all your country's people.

You finish and look around. The hall is full of people puzzling over some of the answers. Guns? Girls? Gays? God? We lose points for those? Who knew? Sport and war are good, aren't they? What are trade unions? Some representatives left early after reading the paper and attempting no answers.

You decide to add up the points for Australia. Fifty should be easy, we're a civilised country.

But you can't make it, even with some fudging, add up to more than 45 points. Is anyone going to pass this exam you wonder, surely they will have to drop the pass mark.

You walk disconsolately to the front of the hall, and hand your paper in to the Secretary-General. And you just know that when you get it back you will have a fail mark, and a comment from the examiner "Must try harder".

Note to regular visitors (hullo there you lovely people) - if you think this sounds familiar it's not because I am writing the same thing over and over again (though some would argue) but because an earlier version of this has previously appeared. Decided to extend it into something that was an article rather than just a list, and I hope you enjoy it even more the second time around.

civilisation

Smile for the camera

Saw one of those classic television narratives the other day. A visit by the "weatherman" to a primary school where the children were very environmentally aware, were saving water, planting trees, they were the hope for the future in fact. As the story ends the photogenic "presenters" of the show turn to each other and comment, once again, as they do after every such story, how good it was that children were environmentally aware and active and what a good sign it was for the future. I bathe in the warm glow of this feel good story for a moment, and then reality swings back and hits me over the head like a dislodged truck load of pulp mill logs.

This is the same channel (along with all other major media outlets) that will treat with contempt, or refuse to show, any protest by conservationists anywhere, any time, on any issue. At the same time they will lavishly support with footage and interviews, any counter protest by mountain cattlemen, irrigators, timber town residents, coastal developers, rice growers, hunters, four wheel drive clubs, miners, tourism operators, orchardists, freeway builders, fishermen, energy companies. It is absolutely certain that whenever an issue arises that involves a choice between destruction of some habitat, extinction of some species, pollution of some river; as against money to be made as a result of destruction, extinction, pollution, the television stations will put all of their weight on the side of the money. The only "conservation" story they will present positively is one in which a money making venture such as a zoo or wildlife park or tourist resort claims some success in captive (or indeed artificial) breeding some threatened species. This will be presented as a triumph for the environment, without any thought that the species concerned is threatened because of the destruction of habitat they may well have supported the day before, and will certainly support on the following day. And that whether there is success in breeding an animal in captivity has absolutely no relevance to maintaining the species in the wild.

So when those bright-eyed, fresh-faced, photogenic schoolchildren grow up, and attempt to act effectively on their concern for, and love of, the world they live in, they will discover that in the real world, the world of adults, the world of pragmatism, of conservatism (not conservation), that their attempts will be rendered completely ineffective by the media. And their once friendly weatherman won't want to know them, having moved on to some more young children growing trees in the schoolyard, secure in the knowledge that photogenic kids have absolutely no power to alter anything.

Cynical? You think? Oh, you mean the media. Cynical.

conservation

Animal crackers

I was re-reading a book (Steve Jones "In the blood") the other day that I first read a decade ago. I came to two sentences that I had obviously read then without really noticing, and did the same again, for a moment. Then something struck me, and I read again the sentences "Human genetics is done, more and more, on animals. We are, after all, related to other creatures." When I first read this, if I had thought about it at all, it would have been only to question why Jones had bothered to include the second sentence. "Dur" ("obvious, stupid father" a loose translation) as my daughter used to say when a teenager. Reading it then I would have confidently assumed that most of the world's population would also simply have read it as redundant, a tautology. That we all had this knowledge shared by common agreement, in the same way as we agree that the sun rises in the East, or that the date line runs through Greenwich. Reading it now, I do so in the knowledge that education and culture has regressed so much since 1996 that, to a large percentage of Americans, and smaller percentages in some other western countries, the second sentence would either be seen as blasphemous, or as an oxymoron (think military intelligence). As a result of the actions of evangelical christians, their influence in American politics, and the acquiescence of the media, there is no longer a shared world view between most Americans and the rest of the world. Any moment now the terminology for describing sunrise might be unilaterally changed in Kansas, as a result of new interpretations of the actions of Joshua at Jericho.

It came back to me this week when I read one of those "oh, I wish they hadn't told me that" posts, the first by Alison Kilkenny who notes - "A recent ABC poll reports that 16% of U.S. science teachers are Creationists, and worse, one in eight of them admit to teaching Creationism as a kind of valid science in their classrooms". One in six science teachers are creationists? They received, presumably, some kind of science education themselves, and remained creationists? Sounds like a test you could use for Democratic voter registration in West Virginia. And the second news item was about the Louisiana Science Education Act, which has the backing of Religious Right groups such as the Louisiana Family Forum and the Discovery Institute, and "allows public school teachers to use supplementary materials when teaching about evolution".

And I wondered about these teachers. I mean the humblest backwoodsman from the Appalachians knows, even without a college degree, that other mammals are rather similar to human beings. May even know that there are great apes which are very close to humans. Knows that birds are more different, reptiles even more different and frogs more different again. When he catches a fish he might not see much similarity beyond a backbone, but in seeing that would realize that it was more similar to humans than the worm he had put on his fishhook. This kind of classification is fundamental to the way we see the world around us, and, for the same reasons, as Jones points out, fundamental to how we test, say, human medicines (and indeed, how we train doctors in the early stages).

Science is based in large part on classifying the world around us, seeing patterns, similarities, differences, organizing observations into a coherent world view. Biologists see the same relationships your average backwoodsman sees, but take them even further into more detail. Recognize fine anatomical as well as functional similarities and differences, take into account tissues and genetic components, and biochemistry. How do these creationist science teachers do that? And how do they teach their students to make sense of the world around them?

All around the world when native peoples came into contact with western explorers they struggled to make sense of what they were seeing. In some cases they converted observations into their own world views. The Aztecs saw Cortes and his soldiers as gods, Australian Aborigines thought that James Cook and his sailors were dead men come back to life because of their white skins. In the case of sailing ships, some groups simply didn't acknowledge they were seeing them because they were so far outside their experience. Is it like this for the creationist teachers? Are they so blinded by evangelical ideology that they are incapable of seeing the real world? And if they are, then they are also teaching their students to cover their ears, close their eyes, in order not to see the inconvenient truths of the natural world. It is as if we had astrologers teaching astronomy, or crystal worshippers teaching physics, or witch doctors teaching medicine.

Teachers have to be qualified to teach. A teaching test for American science teachers should be "When you read the sentence "We are, after all, related to other creatures" what do you think? Those who answer "Dur" get to teach. The others can work for the Mike Huckabee Vice-Presidential campaign.

And those who answer "Dur" get to visit the Watermelon Blog. Not suitable reading for the others.

creationism

Room with no view

I have been puzzling over the paradox that while the new Australian government has, for the first time, an environmentalist as Environment minister, we find that environmental decisions are being made which are no better than those of the previous government. And now, with the slashing of promotion for solar power with the loss of the rebate, we have, unthinkable just 6 months ago, an environmental decision actually worse than those being made by the previous government. Japan with permanent employment for employees still finds that many workers who are redundant, incompetent, or unmotivated must be retained. These are sometimes assigned to the madogiwa-zoku, "the window-seat tribe." As the name implies, they are expected to do little more than look out the windows, while the valued employees work in the inner offices (which often have no windows).

I conclude that although Peter Garrett has been made redundant, Kevin Rudd is forced to retain him for the look of the thing, to keep up the pretense that Labor is a party concerned with the environment in general and climate change in particular, and Garrett has therefore become a member of the ministerial "window seat tribe". Has become a minister with a desk, and perhaps a sharpened pencil, but with absolutely nothing to do all day but look out of the window, while the hard men of cabinet (who have no vision in their windowless offices) get on with propping up the coal industry with massive subsidies.

global warming

Petrol Tales

Whenever I hear petrol companies talk about petrol pricing I have that uncomfortable feeling I sometimes get that I am part of the movie "The Matrix", you know where the population of the Earth think they are living a normal life in a normal world but are actually hooked up to a giant computer that feeds them images from an imaginary world. We could call this movie "Petroworld". In the real world the price of goods essentially reflects their cost, with a profit margin. If the costs rise so do the prices eventually, but, by and large, barring cyclones destroying all the bananas in Queensland, they tend to change very slowly over a period of months or more usually years. In Petroworld prices bear no real connection to costs, and not only do prices have no long term stability, they rarely stay the same for more than a day, and can, in fact, change within an hour.

In Realworld if someone manages to sell more of a particular product they can reduce the price and still maintain their income. If they begin selling less they may need to raise prices, a downward spiral that may eventually put them out of business. In Petroworld greater demand means that you raise prices, higher and higher, and you only lower them when demand falls. In Realworld petrol prices would slowly and steadily rise to reflect the reaching of Peak Oil and the future downward trend in supplies. In Petroworld price bears no relationship to future supply, only to present profit.

In Realworld retailers buy from wholesalers who buy from processors who buy from producers. Each layer has a cost, sets a price, makes a profit, and the final price depends on those earlier decisions, by a variety of different companies. In Petroworld the same companies control all levels of the process, so that their profitability is a combination of all layers, and the end price is a product of how much total profit they decide to take. In Realworld the producers adjust their output to meet demand, more demand, more output. In Petroworld producers adjust output to maximise profits, and aim to have less production than demand in order to provide an alibi for higher prices. Heads we win, tails you lose.

In Realworld the petrol companies, along with all other citizens, are aware of the coming problems of Peak Oil and global warming. As good corporate citizens they plan ahead by investing substantial amounts of their profits into alternative energy sources. In Petroworld the companies fund groups that deny the reality of peak oil or climate change in order to postpone government action. And in addition promote vile options (oil from coal, biofuels) that make the situation even worse. In the meantime they raise prices ever higher to inflate profits in case the governments of the world suddenly discover the truth.

In the real world journalists would investigate companies that behaved like this, and governments would severely regulate the activities of an industry so vital to the future of the world. In Petroworld journalists ask no questions when petrol companies talk about tiny retail profits per litre; overseas events affecting production; the importance of ethanol; and the "laws of supply and demand" affecting "weekly price cycles". And because journalists ask no questions, governments take no action (except, sometimes, to invade other countries), and giant corporations grow and grow.

Funny way to run a world economy.

petrol prices

Costs nothing to be civil

The rulers of Burma, and Zimbabwe, have recently made sure, if there was a shred of doubt remaining, that they don't run civilized countries. And they are not alone of course. Got me to thinking more generally - how do you recognize a civilized country?

1. The military-industrial complex plays no role in government.
2. Religion plays a very small role in society, not forbidden, but not compulsory.
3. Scientists, teachers, nurses, artists, are all valued more than sports people and celebrities.
4. Speech is free and the media varied.
5. There are few if any guns.
6. The environment is cared for.
7. The government does not execute its people.
8. Women have full social and economic equality with men.
9. Minorities are not persecuted.
10. Sexuality is not a criterion for human rights.
11. Education of children is universal, free and secular.
12. Other species are respected, valued and protected.
13. Everyone secretly votes, every vote is openly counted independent of government.
14. Regulation protects people from giant corporations.
15. Other countries are not invaded, war isn't glorified.
16. Wealth is not a criterion for political success, or social worth.
17. Art and heritage are valued; literature, film and television increase in quality over time.
18. Natural disasters bring massive state support for the hurt and homeless and helpless.
19. The old, the sick, the disabled, are cared for.
20. The government tells the truth.
21. Public enterprize is as valued as private enterprize.
22. The courts and police are independent of politicians.
23. Unions flourish
24. The balance between life at work and life at home is a healthy one.
25. Aspirations are achievable by all.

There, what do you think? Four points maximum for each - how does your country rate out of 100?