Well, spank me and call me a deluded, disinterested denier.

Ahhh, Doctors for the Environment Australia. Deludedly Eager Arses. Dickheads for Energy Abuse. However you choose to think of them, have struck again in the name of pulic health idiocy. This time, they have gone all Mad Men on us and decided that its the language of the climate change debate that is backwards, so since we are talking all arse-about-face, try this on for size:

Peter Tait, proud banner-waving member of DEA (The Australian no-fun-doctors, not the arm of US law-enforcement more commonly known as "narcs"), has decided that if we all just stopped dignifying the climate skeptic crowd with the term "skeptic", then the public would stop being so regrettably disinterested in crippling our economy fighting climate change. Instead, he proposes the following:

Deniers: believe that there is no climate change, or deny it is anthropogenic. (see distressed and doubt sowers)

Disinterested: don’t care one way or another.

Distressed: recognise climate change and some may be responding appropriately. Others if using psychological defence may appear as disinterested or deniers. They may need help to engage and act.

Doubt sowers: may or may not accept the reality of climate change but publicly deny its reality or effects in order to avoid or delay responses as they are protecting vested interests. Their action needs to be publicly named.

Deluded: accept the reality of climate change but argue that it will be beneficial, effects are overstated, action is too costly and the time is not right. They also need to be publicly named.

To which one droll, liberated and no-doubt devastatingly handsome commentator with the handle "Gederts Skerstens", replied with the following comment on the Croakey blog that published Tait's BS:

Man-made climate change is disappearing as a serious issue because those that support it are now revealed as falling into these unappealing categories:

THE HUMBLY OBEDIENT
A large group of very wise men were paid to assemble and tell the ignorant what to do. Lots of trailing letters after their names, lots of acronyms for all the groupings. Best do as they say. Stumble around muttering “Must-Save-Planet, Must-Save-Planet…”

GOERS WITH THE FLOW
The Green petition sheet circulating the dinner table gets signed because everyone else signed it.

AGENDA OPPORTUNISTS
The noisiest portion of the set. The science is irrelevant. Setting up disaster Aversion Mechanisms is the objective. An easy method to establish unelected, publicly funded,
autonomous clusters of Lefties to run pretty much any social engineering they want.

DELUDED APOCALYPTICS
The most easily dismissed. They believe The End Is Nigh and then some. And when the winters are the coldest on record and the sea level doesn’t rise at all, they go from revered prophets to clowns within two or three years.

It’s Over.

I'm still here!

Sorry 'bout that. I AM still here, and haven't completely dropped off the map, or fallen off the perch, or whatever your metaphor of choice may happen to be.
I've just had a busy few weeks with my current hospital rotation, and had some family issues crop up that needed some sorting.
There will be posting in the near future, I assure you!
Just give me a couple of days and I'll be back.
Cheers,
Paua.

Climate change good for your health. If you're English.

Finally, a research team has pointed out the blindingly obvious: that Britain can only be improved by climate change.

A recent study published in the UK in the last week has examined the possible effects of climate change on human health in the West Midlands, and worked out that it could save thousands of lives over the next 70 years. Of course, after that, the researchers warn, things could get a bit hairy for the locals with all those nice warm summers, so they caution against any wild parties celebrating the fact just yet.

The researchers then go on to add, in a fairly predictable display of British weather-pessimism, that whilst less cloud cover resulting from climate change sounds good, it could cause more skin cancers and cataracts. Kind of like retiring to the med, I guess. No mention of the fact that nicer weather in the West Midlands would completely change the meaning of the phrase "to be sent to Coventry", too.

Just in case the reseachers were going to be accused of being climate-disaster apologists, they ignore major advances in refrigeration technology i.e. the invention of the 'fridge (which owes much to an Australian penchant for keeping beer cold), and further caution that warmer weather will cause more food poisoning. Kind of like retiring to the med...

Is this love?

I just came across a columnist for the Santa Monica Daily Press by the name of Steve Breen, and its like hes me, only with better verbiage and a paying job. (And presumably, with a name like Steve, obligatory man-tackle.)

I give you exhibit A:

one could only reasonably conclude that environmentalism's intellectual life or death is dependent on earlier entangling random events such as the leaked Climategate e-mails, the IPCC's retreat from several of their key global warming positions and Greenpeace leader, Gerd Leipold, admitting that Greenpeace has lied and exaggerated about global warming and melting polar ice caps regardless of Milankovitch's spank-me-Daddy solar calculations to the contrary.

Oh, stop, you naughty thing. He even mentions Tofurkey in that article. I was an instant fan.

Then I perused some more of his articles and discovered this:

...allow me to introduce the first annual Golden Gobbler Award for 2009. This accolade is bountifully bestowed, by me, to any person, place, thing, organization or focus group that has, by its merit, demonstrated a complete and utterly inarguable talent for being as smart as the dumbest animal on the chopping block, the classic Thanksgiving turkey.

And he gave it to Al Gore and the AGW, environmentalist crowd.

Huh, says I, thats kind of familiar. Maybe he is me. Don't I bestow a poultry-esque award for something similar? In fact, my first ever Tofurkey Award predates his Golden Gobbler by one week. Coincidence?
With further perusal I have discovered he seems to have a problem with publically funded abortions. Damn. I was prepared to get past the similarity to my own work, but why can't you find a funny, misanthropic conservative guy who keeps his mind in his own pants, and not mine? Wait, that didn't come out right....You know what I mean. This is like that time I discovered P.J. O'Rourke had a problem with stem-cell research. Sigh.

Anyway, Steve. If you're not busy later, lets have a few drinks and discuss my royalties...