A Change on Climate?

Andrew Bolt has decided who’s to blame for those ridiculously high temperatures we experienced last week, and it’s . . .

. . . those evil Lefty Greenies!

That’s right. All those people banging on about stopping climate change instead of trying to protect people from the rising temperatures are the ones to blame.

For some reason this makes perfect sense in his twisted little mind.

Because what we need is more electricity use, not less! If we want to cool the Earth then let’s crank up those air conditioners!

We seem to be at an interesting point in history here.

We’ve just had a glimpse of what Mr Bolt’s focus will be once the fact of climate change is no longer deniable.

He’ll simply shift from ranting about it not really happening, to ranting about not enough being done.

His latest rant beautifully straddles these two lines of thinking, indicating that we might be somewhere near the tipping point.

It goes something like this:

“If the Earth is warming which it isn’t then it’s utterly ridiculous to tell people not to use their air conditioners because that would cool the Earth dummy and anyway it’s cold that kills people not warmth so global warming would be great even though it’s not really happening.”

He even added a caveat to his usual cherry-picked statistic that the Earth hasn’t warmed since 2002, saying “it may soon warm again”.

Andrew Bolt: neo-Greenie?

This is what it feels like

This most excellent cartoon by artist Justin Bilicki was the winner of the 2008 Science Idol competition.



I'll think of this every time I read yet another climate change denial article by Andrew Bolt.

Cool Warming Vase

Science meets art in this cool vase.



Produced by artist Nathan Martell, the shape is based on this graph showing average world temperatures over the last 150 years:



The apocalypse as art. Eat your heart out, Albrecht Dürer.

On a related note, people like Andrew Bolt are fond of showing only the last few lines of this particular graph, dominated by the El Nino peak in 1998, and claiming that warming has stopped.

If you find someone who insists on doing that, smack their fingers out of their ears, force their eyes open, and show them the whole thing.

Once again, Bolt just doesn't get it

Last week Age arts critic Robert Nelson reopened the debate on the representation of children in art by publishing a naked picture of his daughter Olympia on the cover of Arts Monthly magazine.

Professional dyspeptic Andrew Bolt, in his new role as moral crusader (taking a break from his role as fingers-in-the-ears-antiscience-climate-change-denier) was obviously horrified.

On Thursday Bolt published on his blog an earlier piece by Nelson, in which Nelson talks about the ways in which images of children are sexual. Bolt describes Nelson's piece as "disturbing", but as is often the case, he's completely missed the point.

If what Nelson says about the images being sexual isn't true, then Bolt's own argument that the images shouldn't be seen . . . because they're sexual . . . make no sense!

Of course the pictures are sexual. But the point is that the pictures aren't sexualising the children. They're just bringing out, as Mr Nelson says, the latent sexuality that is already there.

You can't make a teapot sexual merely by photographing it naked.

Bolt and Nelson are actually in complete agreement on this point.

The only difference is that Nelson advocates the pictures' public display, while Bolt (along with Kevin Rudd and Hetty Johnston and all our other self-appointed moral nannies) wants them hidden away.

I have to agree with Robert Nelson. Let's bring it out into the open. Hiding our children away in dark corners does not keep them safe.

If we genuinely want to see a reduction in child abuse, then let's give our kids pride in themselves, pride in their strength and most importantly, ownership of their sexuality.

The problem with the current stampede of moral outrage is that it works completely counter to this goal. Kevin Rudd saying he "cannot stand" the picture of Olympia is a case in point.

Olympia was understandably offended by his statement because she's proud of her pictures, as she should be. And does Olympia sound like the sort of girl who would stand to be abused? Of course not.

A child with a healthy sense of his or her own worth is the child that will kick an abuser in the nuts and run away.

Surely that's what we want our kids to be.

Bolt Warms Up

Andrew Bolt has really irked me today. He's still banging on about climate change being imaginary.

Look, I understand that climate change is a difficult problem. I understand that people want it to just go away. I do.

But closing your eyes and putting your fingers in your ears and screaming "LA LA LA LA LA" won't make it happen.

I'm not sure if it's pride or ego or wilful ignorance or all three, but Mr Bolt is revelling in his supposed status as last-man-standing among the climate change skeptics.

His self-image is of a man standing tall, head high and proud. He doesn't appreciate that he's actually the last person on the tiny desert island in a 1950's cartoon (you know, 1 metre across with a palm tree in the middle), staring fixedly into space so he can't see the water lapping at his ankles.

The amazing fervour with which he clings to any piece of evidence, however slight and however manipulated, that climate change might not be real is sad. So sad.

I'll leave aside his insistence on continuing to refer to the phenomenon as "global warming". Presumably this is so he can use it as ammunition when climate models show that parts of the earth will cool as a result of climate change. Memo to Mr Bolt: that's why we changed it to "climate change".

His rant today was simply a reheat of the old chestnut that average warming levels flattened out in 1998, so what are we so worried about? After all, it said so in the New Statesman, so it must be true!

This argument has been going around for months now, and has been comprehensively debunked over and over again . . . for example here, here and here.

The fact that this argument is still getting recycled clearly shows that the anti-climate change brigade is really clutching at straws.

So anyway, I left a comment. It was published, but I reproduce it here for your enjoyment. I begin with a reference to Bolt's statement that many people are skeptics of climate change, some of them prominent scientists.

It's interesting that you say "some of them prominent scientists . . . ". How many of these "prominent scientists" are climatologists? None, I suspect.

I also suspect none of them are statisticians. Your argument, Mr Bolt, is based on a convenient selection of statistics that happen to tell your story.

The fact is that 1998 was an oddly high year for temperature, because it was at the peak of the El Nino cycle. If you cherry-pick 1998 as the starting point, then yes, it can be made to appear that warming has stopped.

But this is noisy data. You can't look at one isolated section and draw any meaningful conclusions.

If you look at the decades-long trends in the data, then it's painfully clear that 1998 was an anomaly, and it's painfully clear that the temperature is still going up.

Now let's have no more of this nonsense.

Gordon Ramsay

Inspired by some recent comments, I went looking for Andrew Bolt's latest missive. The idea being, of course, to disagree roundly with him in my usual indignant yet amusing fashion.

Sadly, it was not to be.

Bolt's latest is an oddly upbeat little column about celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, and what an inspiring model for conservative values he is.

I don't agree with the analysis (I laughed out loud at the observation that Ramsay is not "the sharing and truly caring type we conservatives generally are and admire"), but I must admit to my own sort of fascinated-yet-wary fondness for Ramsay.

Reality television generally leaves me cold, but in Kitchen Nightmares Ramsay seems to have come up with the perfect formula. It's truly great TV, and as Bolt's article shows, strangely wide in its appeal.

But maybe it's not so strange. The characters are interesting, particularly Ramsay himself. The formula is simple, doing away with the usual gimmicky complications that dog so much of reality TV. And the conflict, which in so many other reality shows is clearly manufactured, is very very real.

I must agree with Bolt (there's a phrase I don't use too often) that Ramsay's passion for his work is truly admirable. But I think painting him as a poster boy for conservative values is going a bit far.

I really can't see John Howard sticking a Gordon Ramsay poster up next to his framed photo of Don Bradman and his signed pair of Margaret Thatcher's knickers.

Bagging Andrew Bolt

Everyone's favourite misanthrope Andrew Bolt had a little rant yesterday, about Borders bookstores daring to charge 10c for plastic carry bags.

The upshot was that Bolt stormed off in a huff after rudely refusing a bag, choosing to carry his books rather than, as he saw it, donate 10c to some goddamn hippy environmental group.

The delicious irony in this story, for those of us interested in such things, is that Mr Bolt has illustrated perfectly why a plastic bag levy is such a good idea.

It's not about the measly 10c. It's not about whether or not it's donated to an environmental group. It's not even really about the bag itself.

What the levy does, and what Mr Bolt has shown, is that it makes people stop and actually think about what they're doing.

Some will think "well, I'll just pay the 10c". Others will think "I'll pay the 10c but remember to bring my own bag next time".

Still others, like our Mr Bolt, will apparently think "screw you . . . I'll carry my own goddamn books and never shop here again."

All are valid responses. And that's the point: to get a response. To stop everybody blithely taking plastic bags just because they're offered.

The message is that if you don't need one, then don't use one.

Mr Bolt, you have have illustrated the point beautifully. Well done you.

Earth Hour 2008

We were in the city last night for the comedy festival show Black Bag (review to follow), and so were able to enjoy Earth Hour from ground zero, as it were.

We saw the lights on the Arts Centre spire go out. We saw the lights dim at Federation Square and along St Kilda Rd.

It may be small thing, but standing and watching it happen around us was undeniably powerful.

Over the next few days we'll hear a lot of commentators talk about Earth Hour being "merely" a symbol.

And like ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and saying sorry to the stolen generations, it is a symbol. But symbols matter. Symbols are important. Symbols unite us and provoke us and focus our thoughts.

Andrew Bolt will drag out figures showing that the amount of energy saved was so minute that it clearly wasn't worth the effort. But this is to miss the point entirely.

Earth Hour is not about the level of emission reduction in that single hour. Symbols don't need to achieve anything measurable in themselves. That's not what they're for. Symbols like this work to prompt change in other areas.

Earth Hour is about drawing attention to the problem of climate change. It's about the emissions reduced over the coming weeks, months and years as people come to understand that it's just not that hard to turn off the lights.

We're going to see a lot of change over the next few years. Changes in the weather, changes in our cities, and changes in society as the centres of power and money are shifted.

A symbol like Earth Hour, with its visual and visceral impact, will keep us focused our goals and reminded of the endgame. And that's very important.

Californication

It's nice to see David Duchovny back on TV. Being a sci-fi nerd, I was a big fan of The X-Files back in the day, but I'll be the first to admit Duchovny's not the greatest actor in the world.

He has a limited range, oscillating somewhere between deadpan and wry. To succeed, he needs a script that can make use of his particular style. The X-Files did this well; his matter-of-factness brought a certain level of credibility to the incredible storylines. It's taken another 5 years, but thankfully he's again found a showcase for his talents.

Californication is my new favourite show, and will probably remain so until The L Word comes back next year. Or Battlestar Galactica in November. Or Heroes later this month. Ah, I'm so fickle.

After the first episode aired last Monday, Andrew Bolt had a little rant about Channel Ten peddling pornography.

Anything that gets Andrew Bolt worked up is usually pretty good value, and this is no exception.

Californication is a story about a guy bored with his life, living a joyless existence pining after his ex and the happy family life he's left behind. Even a constant succession of beautiful young women in his bed doesn't help. Most of the time he looks like he'd rather be taking a nap. The only time he perks up is when he's around his ex and his daughter.

Mr Bolt has clearly missed the key element of pornography, which is its fundamental lack of story. Pornography is, as he points out, "the depiction of erotic behaviour . . . intended to cause sexual excitement", and that's it. It's not intended to tell you a story, or teach you anything.

I'm not aware of Mr Bolt's personal predilections, but if he gets sexually excited by watching an ageing Lothario boredly shag his way through a succession of less-than-satisfying encounters, then he's seeing something I'm not.

Californication has those rarest of commodities in television: story and characters. And it's not pitched at ADHD 15-year-olds. It's pitched squarely at adults who can understand the emotional undertones. Adults who can look past the tits 'n' ass and see a sad guy looking for an emotional connection in the only way he knows how, and failing miserably.

Adults unlike Andrew Bolt.