SBS want me for a sunbeam

Hi all,
This comment turned up at my blog the other day:

Kyle said...
Hi Paua,

Nice blog! I'm interested in getting in touch with you for a TV program I'm doing. We need lots of articulate climate change skeptics like yourself! Could I send you an email with some of the details? Cheers, Kyle - my email is kylet@sbs.com.au if you want to touch base.
(I have left the email address as is, because they posted it in a public comments box that I cant edit due to the way Blogger works, and because I am fairly unconcerned by the thought of SBS recieving spam.)

Kyle from Insight then went on to explain in an email that they are going to have a panel of climate scientists (no politicians) and allow an audience of people who aren't climate scientists, but are skeptical or "confused" by climate science, to ask questions of the panel, which they then get to rebut. Nothing like a bit of balance in the media, don't you think?

I will hereby post my reply as follows:

Dear Kyle from Insight,
Thanks for your kind offer, which I must respectfully decline. I don't often talk about several years of my life spent around the documentary film industry, as I like to think I've, y'know, Changed. However, apart from acquainting me with a level of bitchiness not often seen outside of teen movies of the 1980's, I also learnt how to recognise a media set-up when I see one. Given that prior life experience, a passing acquaintance with the program you represent and a clearly stated desire for anonymity, I think you must be out of your cotton-picking mind.
When I first saw your comment on my blog, I must confess I did for a second entertain the notion that you might be working on a novel project out of keeping with the general level of SBS alarmist hysteria. Wishful thinking, and all that. Luckily, gifted with an uncanny ability to use an internet search engine, I soon discovered you were just another petty-echelon research schmo from Insight. I even noticed that you had invited the boys over at a footy lover's forum to contribute to the same show you invited me to contribute to. I thought I was special, Kyle. I also noticed that they invited you, in return, to "suck" their "big, fat hairy balls." Given that I am unencumbered by testicular tissue, I will have to proffer something else instead*.
Sadly, I will be unavailable to contribute to the program described on your web site as being for people "confused by climate science" and will not be able to play the straight-man to your panel of Tim Flannery-esque comedic talent. I think I'm washing my hair that night.
Good luck with the program.
Paua.

* "Something else" is not what I initially said, but I'm trying very hard to keep my potty mouth in check these days.

Now, in a bid to suspend my utter disbelief, I will consider for a nano-second that the upcoming Insight program may be a great expose of the problems inherent in climate science, but somehow I doubt it. History will show whether I was right or not. If the skeptics come off looking great, then I will heartily apologise to Kyle, and he will be well within his rights to ask me to suck something of his. We're all adults here.
I just have a bad feeling about this, and unfortunately in a bid to get me to contribute, they mentioned someone who has already agreed to appear on the show as a skeptic, I won't say who it is, but I wish them well, and hope to hell they aren't going to end up being an ersatz patsy for the edification of the Flannery's of Australia.

Like Lazarus, only with a worse attitude and better dress sense...

Hi All,
Im back, but probably will only have intermittent posts for the next few weeks because I found myself on the wrong end of a colorectal surgery rotation. Which wasn't meant to be a joke, but the pun was pretty good, now that I read it. I will describe the joys of long, long days, a permanent line across my forehead from a surgical cap and exactly how you stick you finger up someones whotsit in an investigative sense another time.
Right now, I just wanted to poke fun (once again, no pun intended) at the interestingly named "Code Pink" activist group of wimmin..ummm...feminists...sheilas. Apart from possibly breaking a raft of laws that prohibit excessive use of a colour reminiscent of a baboon's arse, they also smack slightly of misinformed opportunisim.
This they did by protesting the latest hippy-horror-de-jour, the Gulf oil spill, by marching on BP's headquarters wearing not much more than strategically placed packing tape (be careful when you take it off, BTW) and the aforementioned simian pink. Whereupon they chanted "BP, what do you say? How many fish did you kill today?". To which I would like to reply, ummm, not as many as you'd think. Y'see, oil often floats, fish don't. Unless they're dead, and thats the thing, if there were millions of dead fish, you would see them from the air, everywhere, because they would be doing the dead-fish putrefactive bob on the surface. Now, some of the oil has probably been emulsified (hence the reports of an alleged underwater plume) but it doesn't take long for it to re-coalesce on the surface, and most larger fish can move quickly enough to get away from the oil, anyway. So there may be some sprat sized fish that get offed by the oil, especially in coastal areas, but it wont represent that much of the total number of the fish that are out there.
The CodePink founder, Madea Benjamin, then went on to state:

“This is the crude awakening that our country is on the wrong track and that we need an energy system that doesn't kill workers, that doesn't destroy our ocean and that works with nature, not against nature,”

That would be nice, and I have seen something like this in action before, but I don't think Madea would like it. Probably because the options available to us down that track seem to wind up with women slaving over wood stoves or spending their days engaged in such career edifying past-times as hauling water. Oh, and puh-lease, dont even begin to talk to me about solar power either, because as anyone who has ever had to live with a 12-volt solar system would know (and I have), its probably less hassle to burn tallow-rush lamps and beat your laundry on a rock by the river.
The BP oil spill is immensely regrettable, for everyone concerned, but somehow I don't think its going to singlehandedly destroy our oceans, or even the bit of ocean that its occurred in. At the end of the day, we either accept the fact that we go without oil and the attendant consequences, or stop the pity-party and deal with the occasional oopsy. It might also reassure readers to know that oil gushers are much like bleeding, and all bleeding stops. Eventually. Even if we did nothing, the oil would lose pressure after awhile and stop. The fish will be fine, a few seabirds and otters will die tragically, much to the continued erections of news photographers and environental activists everywhere, and before long the oil will have mostly broken down and that part of the planet will be back to business as usual. If you dont believe me, then I invite you to read about the Mina Al Ahmadi oil spill during the Gulf War, which remains the biggest oil spill in history, where transects of the affected coral reefs only a few short years later revealed that they had escaped "remarkedly unscathed".
I strap myself in and await your hate mail.

Whats the opposite of Tofurkey?

When I heard a story, (possibly an urban myth) about nurses showering an obese patient and finding a TV remote under a fat roll that the patient reported losing nine months before, I thought, "Now, Ive heard everything." I was wrong.

Stop press! Hippies are coming out as climate skeptics!

Maleny in south-eastern Queensland has just had one of their local, prominent environmentalist "come out" as a climate skeptic. For those of you not acquainted with Maleny and the Sunshine coast hinterland, they are well known for organic produce, a rockin' folk festival (is that an oxymoron?), tenancies in common, craft markets and all-round hippy goodness.

Jon Woodlands has top-notch green credentials, and is probably one of those people who would see me as slightly to the right of Genghis Khan. He doesnt like uranium mining, logging rainforests, large corporations opening supermarkets in his town or things that endanger platypii. Good for him. I come from a town full of people just like him, and the yearly tradition of "special" christmas cakes certainly made for fun teenage years.

Then one day he decided to write an article for the local paper describing how he became skeptical of climate change alarmism, and the proverbial cow-pat hit the windmill.

''I've had people go off the Richter scale even if you suggest there's any doubt [about climate change science],'' the former TAFE teacher says. ''It's like a religion.''

Which was reported (with a fair amount of poorly concealed distate, by an SMH article bemoaning increasing climate skepticism.)
You know what they say, "Swings and roundabouts". As I understand it, after being dumped by his local alarmist friends, Jon found himself embraced by the skeptic community, which FYI are more fun at parties.

The Daily Suppository would like to say "Welcome Aboard, Jon!"
For more on Jon's views, see here.

Look! Over there!

If you've been wondering about the lack of posts lately, I have managed to put a couple up at the Daily Bayonet. G'awn, take a look. I will try and keep all the medical related ones here at the Daily Suppository in future, and will go over there for ranting and obligatory "hotties".

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...

Tofurkey of the Week # 8

Yay for Tofurkeys, the award for those found acting like a total turkey, albeit sustainably.

This week the Daily Suppository was put in a difficult position, on the basis that the Tofurkey really should go out to anyone who switched off their lights for Earth Hour. In the end, since it was problematic to award this virtual mock-fowl to so many, and technically that would have meant awarding it to North Korea, we went with the environmental group Rising Tide instead.

The protest group Rising Tide are a bit concerned about Australia's coal mining industry. Even though Australia's coal reserves make us energy secure for at least the next 150 years, essentially float our economy and make China vewy vewy happy to call us mates, they don't like it. No, sir, not one bit. So they decided they were going to put a stop to all this carbon nefariousness by attempting to block coal-transport freighters entering Newcastle harbour, with....wait for it....kayaks.

No news on how successfull they were at stopping several hundred feet of dry-bulk carrier with one of those itty-bitty yellow plastic paddles. Ouch.

Not surprisingly:

Newcastle Port Corporation says the six hour protest did not interrupt ship movements, with several ships loaded during the day.

But Rising Tide spokeswoman Naomi Hodgson insists the protest did have an impact.

"Usually the shipping movements are publicly available online and the only time they ever take it down is when we're holding one of these protests and sure enough five days ago they took the schedule down," she said. Source here.

I'm sure the Newcastle Ship-Spotter's Club will rethink their carbon footprint immediately.

So many double entendres, so little time...

Just stopping by to tell y'all about some amusing green-on-green action thats set to get any hippy Mac-whores out there (you know who you are) all riled up. Which is fun for everyone involved.

Greenpeace has just put their birkenstock-clad foot into the side of the new i-pad touch, claiming that whilst they look schweet, they are causing climate change. Oh, dearie me, where's the app for that?

Naturally, this has annoyed several of Greenpeace's erstwhile supporters, who have quickly moved to defend the gadgets, claiming that the benefits outweigh the disadvantages (which interestingly, isn't seen to be a good enough reason not to cripple our economies in the name of carbon reduction):

"If Greenpeace really wants to get up in people's grill about something that needs to change, it should start with their cars," says Steffen, a self-described Greenpeace supporter. He also argues mobile devices like the iPad can ultimately save energy by allowing people to work and shop from home.
Jonathan Hiskes of Grist, another eco-minded blog, agrees. He writes: "These technologies bring far more promise than peril for engineering sustainable societies."

Quoted from this source.

Reefgate update

I recently blogged about an unfolding drama that is (naturally) being referred to as Reefgate, involving academic malfeasance and misrepresentation by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, particularly in reference to a recently published study that appeared in the well known scientific journal PNAS.

The marine scientist at the centre of exposing this mess. Walter Starck, has written to PNAS with his concerns. A full copy of his letter has been reproduced over at OmniClimate, with the author's permission.

Read it here. This is going to get interesting, so stay tuned.

Don't be a joiner

The University of Tasmania is recruiting for a new study they are conducting into the health effects of climate change on chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.

Reasons you should be concerned:

* What they are actually researching is the health effects of "extreme temperatures". That means the effect of extreme temperatures on you, the sick volunteer. Whats wierd is that global warming isn't expected to make Tasmania have extremes of temperatures. If anything it would make it nicer there. Why aren't they researching the health effects of a sub-tropical holiday on people with chronic health then?

* Their hypothesis is that the health of chronically ill people will suffer from subjecting them to extremes of temperature. (Once again, let me point out they mean you.)

* Somehow, presumably, this got ethical approval.

Reefgate

There is a story brewing here in Australia that is rather major. Its a big deal, and the Australian population at-large, let alone the world, doesn't seem to realise what is happening. Many people would be aware of the Great Barrier Reef, and most have a nebulous, erroneous idea that it needs to be "saved".

Marine scientist Walter Starck has just outlined some of the mismanagement issues of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), as well as an emerging issue of gross academic misconduct, and has published these over at Quadrant Online. Rather than copying and pasting the story from Quadrant, I would recommend people go there and read the whole thing, which is available in pdf.

In a very simple nutshell: GBRMPA has just been outed for some major academic malfeasance, which they had perpetrated in the hopes of turning the entire Coral Sea off of the north eastern coast of Australia into a Marine Protected Area (which they would then get to "manage" - leading to a massive increase in the size, power and funding of their organisation.) They are acting in concert with NGO's such as the Pew Trust which is slinging around major funding dollars behind the scenes. Given GBRMPA's and the Pew trust's track record, this can only be a bad thing.

There is a huge backstory to all of this that is desperately at odds with much of the public's (generally wrongful) perception of the reef,which I will try and outline in upcoming posts.

Suffice it to say this story has everything:

* Beaurocratic bungling.
* Misrepresentation of research.
* Failure to declare major conflicts of interest.
* A major US scientific journal.
* Huge and poorly concealed hidden agendas.
* Destruction of people's livelihoods and an entire, almost extinct fishing industry.
* Collusion between politicians and NGO's such as the Pew Trust (aka "The Face of Evil"). (Which is so poorly concealed its scary. When you look at the story on Quadrant, cast your eye to the google ads on the page - a frequent one to appear based on the key words in the article is one inviting you to sign a petition to make 100% of the Coral Sea a reserve. If you go to the site, it is maintained by a bunch of conservation societies, including the Pew Trust. Which is such a perfect illustration of their presence in all of this.)

Edit: After pointing out the google ads from the Pew Trust over at Quadrant, it appears they have disabled them on that page. Update me if you find something different!

Yeh, what he said.

I have noticed that my posts tend to be preaching to the choir these days. I figure I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, Im writing to my skeptic buddies who are on the same page as I am. So for this reason I dont often bother refuting issues scientifically or otherwise fleshing out issues that seem pretty much self-apparent to me.
I missed the testimony of Princeton Physicist William Happer to the US senate at the time it was made (February last year), but watching it now, I just want to say that damn, its good:



Not least because it garnered a fairly hysterical reaction from some people at the time.

Mirth Hour

Im having a crap week and am mourning some close family members. This makes me quite cranky, and its bound to show somewhere. Like this blog. Believe it or not, my regular posts actually represent a restrained version of what I am actually thinking, with much less swearing. In everyday life I swear like a sailor with tourettes, just ask my children. I know this is terribly uncouth (unless you're turned on by pretty young women using the words "c*nt" "m*therf*cker" and "c*cksucker" as the second word in every sentence. I don't know, there may be some of you.) So please, I will try and reign back the worst of it, but every now and again I may need to unleash the cranky. You have been warned.

I really, REALLY dislike frickin' earth hour. (That doesn't count as swearing). The whole idea stinks. Not only is switching your lights off for an hour completely pointless and tokenistic, it encourages hippies to feel good about themselves, which should be avoided at all costs. Smug bastards. (OK. That was technically swearing, but its better than the word I was thinking.)

So in honour of Earth Hour, I plan to do a little bit of celebrating, Daily Suppository style, join me if you wish:

* Tyres. Burn them. I plan on having a backyard luau around a merry bonfire of Bob Jane All-Rounders. If I pull this one off right, you should be able to see my own little private ecological disaster from space. Call Red Adair and pass the matches, 'cause Mamma's making a barbeque tonight.

* Don't tell Mr. Paua, but I know all about his little private incandescent light bulb stash that he bought in a panic after the government planned to bring in those toxic mercury bombs that flicker in a visible range of hertz. Old school lightbulbs are just the ticket for building my very own redneck chandelier:



This puppy makes my electricity meter spin faster than an ecologically friendly front-load washing machine on a spin cycle.
Optional extras include a safety switch (if you're of a nervous disposition. Pussy. Whats a little house fire if it helps the cause?) Or red bulbs and a prominent position in a window facing the street, for that authentic "late night in the Reeperbahn" feel.

* If these little festive options don't appeal, you could always drive to your closest airport in an SUV and fly to an exotic destination very, very far away from where you live. (Or next door, just be sure to fly there the long way around.) Make sure when you get there you take a long hot bath and wrap everything you purchase in double layers of plastic bags, just to be safe. Then make sure you call some friends who are sitting in front of their Mac tweeting by candle-light, and tell them all about it. I recommend India and China, as this way you can support their carbon emitting economies by spending your money there and irritate annoying hippy friends with your profligate air travel and cool ethnic purchases.

* Or better yet, maximize your carbon output and take a holiday on a cruise ship, making sure to leave the lights on in keeping with conventional maritime law.

In your face, Al Gore!

Counting the carbon cost of cancer

Doctors in the United Kingdom have once again exceeded my expectations on wierd climate alarmism by agreeing that they need to cut the carbon cost of cancer treatment, and make cancer treatment more "environmentally sustainable".

Which is just odd.

At a recent summit, a group of doctors representing key organisations in the field agreed to:

• developing a carbon reduction strategy,
• signing up to the 10:10 climate change campaign, and
• supporting the research, dialogue and action necessary to create environmentally sustainable cancer services.

Whats a bit of a worry is that "treating" cancer isn't envrionmentally sustainable at all, if you want to make cancer therapy environmentally sustainable, then it probably makes more sense to not treat it.

Its not a real stretch to get to this point, once they build more "sustainable" buildings to give treatment in, they really have nowhere else to go with this campaign to cut the carbon footprint of cancer care, other than reducing services.

The other option is to reduce cancer rates so there is less to treat, unfortunately, this group has thought of that already:

“High-carbon lifestyles are a cause of cancer and chronic disease and, indeed, many preventative measures for cancer encourage low-carbon lifestyles. Moreover, lower carbon cancer care can, in itself, contribute to prevention,” Frances Mortimer, medical director of the Campaign for Greener Healthcare, said.

FYI, a "high-carbon lifestyle" is the one you are enjoying now. The one with cars, mains electricity, pop-tarts, steak and out-of-season produce shipped in from afar. The "low-carbon lifestyle" they are talking about is the one that many of the recent immigrants to your developed nation of residence can tell you all about. They probably wouldn't recommend it on an ongoing basis, though.

You say potato...

Clearly the days of having some young media lacky check for continuity are finished. Over at the Daily Telegraph, in their dedicated climate change news section (which Im having a bit of trouble even believing they have) they are running two stories side by side.
One story is about how marine biologists are desperately trumpeting that waters are warming on the east coast of Australia, with predictably catastrophic predictions ensuing. (did y'see what I did there?)
The other is an article about how the 3km open water swim at the World Master's Games was cancelled in Sydney because the water was too cold.

Tofurkey of the week # 7

I think we are up to our seventh Tofurkey award now, I'll double check later. The latest environmentally sensitive turkey(s) to garner the kudos of our favourite faux-poultry plinth, is a bunch of Australian Greenpeace protestors. Cunningly dressed as ninjas to conceal their identity (beware of future arse-whoopings from the real shadow-warriors when they find out about this), the protestors scaled the Sydney Opera House to unfurl a banner that said something unimaginative about, yawn, climate change.

In the process they managed to create a safety hazard to the public, drain untold amounts of taxpayer funding in the form of police time, helicopters etc, and risk the lives of actual police men and women who had to work out how to get them down.

The Tofurkey is thusly handed out on the following basis:

* They got arrested for trespass. (Yay!)
* The accoutrements of a ninja warrior should not EVER be co-opted by any outfit as lame as Greenpeace.
* The police who had to respond to this were dragged away from actual real police work, and were rightfully pissed about it. Somewhere a granny got rolled for her pension money, a junky stole a car stereo and some twit smashed my car window even though a 12 year old could pick the lock with a coat-hanger and I dont even have a stereo, and its all Greenpeace's fault.
* This protest has been done to death. I mean, cliched, much. (In 2003 protestors painted "No War" on the opera house in red house paint and had to pay compensation for "willfully marking a building without consent".)
* Their protest slogan and cause de jour was lamer than the organisation they represent. "Stop the politics climate treaty now"?! Awww. C'mon. Really?! You climbed the opera house for that?
* And finally, they used the same slogan in december last year, and got arrested that time, too.

Fat people: apparently not just annoying on 'planes...

According to an excessive amount of Australian doctors, fat people are at fault for climate change. Or climate change is causing obesity. No. Wait, obesity and climate change are both caused by rampant consumerism funded by the tobacco lobby. No, thats not right....hang on, I'll get it in a minute....

Oh! Rampant consumerism is causing climate change and obesity and we are all going to die horribly and climate skeptics are acting just like tobacco companies to obstruct anyone trying to fix it. Thats it!

Over 300 Australian doctors published (another) open letter (which you probably can't read because its not open in the sense that you don't have to pay to see it) in the Medical Journal of Australia, explaining the above position. According to the climate doctor in-crowd:

“We are now seeing the emergence of health risks caused by excesses in market driven consumerism (including the consumption of energy dense processed foods), energy subsidised exertion-free living, an over-arching pre-occupation with gross domestic product and ... population growth."

According to a Herald Sun Article (which you actually can read):

“As health professionals, we urge Australian politicians (and the public) to recognise the overlap in the underlying cause of two great health threats that our population now faces,'' the experts wrote.
''... the rise of obesity and its life-threatening disease consequences and the great threats to health from global climate change.

I also particularly like that they didn't hold back from not-so-subtly lumping climate skeptics in with tobacco companies, which they described as an example of:

“the well financed, doubt-fostering opposition of vested interests'"

There they go with that "well financed" crap again. Or maybe Im doing this skeptic thing wrong, and I really needed to go to tobacco giant Philip Morris for funding (after all, what could be more Australian than Philip Morris? They own Kraft, which owns Vegemite.)

The many and varied authors of the abysmal piece of catastrophising excresence that parodies an open missive, also didn't hold back from blaming impending, hypothetical climate woe on a growing population. Clearly they don't read my blog, or they'd know that our actual birth rate is below replacement value, and the only reason our population is increasing is immigration. Sure, its something to bear in mind, but lets face it, Australia hasn't exactly thrown open the gates Corey-style and said "house party, and you're all invited".

What I would like to know, is where in the rolling, bucolic hills of their imaginations did this group representative of one of the highest earning professions in the country, not see the blatent hypocrisy of a political stance that smacks of socialism? Seriously, some of these people have stethoscopes that are worth more than my car (I'm not kidding, although mind you, some people have electric tea kettles that are worth more than my car). Especially considering that its actually POOR people in this country who are more likely to be obese. (If you don't believe me, I invite you to conduct your own literature review. Or alternatively you could go to your local McDonalds.)

I realise that I have strayed far into unexplored victriolic territory today, but I am on the wrong end of too many early mornings, sick kids, cranky husbands and chlorhexidine hand-rub, and it was a given that the next person(s) who messed with me were gonna get torn a new one. Much to an entire teaching hospital's continued relief, it turned out to be a bunch of histrionic, hypocritical alarmist doctors that irked me first, and in a virtual sense.

Sadly, I know some of the people who put their name to this, and all I can do is shake my head in a rueful, slightly sad kind of way, and say: "Y'all are gonna be REAL embarassed about this some day, and the internet (and a certain under paid and overworked blogger) never forgets..."

Tofurkey of the Week # 6

Ahh, the Tofurkey. The Daily Suppository's award for all those found acting like a total turkey in an environmentally sensitive manner. This award has become somewhat of a fixture around here, athough everyone has been very kind to not point out that it hasn't been as weekly as the name would indicate.

Regardless, I have found another candidate for the award, and this week it goes out to the wife of fellow Tofurkey alumni, Pete Bethune.

Pete Bethune, erstwhile "Captain" of the doomed Ady Gil Trimaran and all 'round danger to the public, has just landed in Japan, where all his, um...tofurkeys, have come home to roost in the form of an arrest for tresspass. This charge is for his ill-advised boarding of the whaler Shonan Maru II, and may attract a sentence of up to three years or a hefty fine. Pete can console himself with the fact that it could have been worse, he could have been charged with piracy.

Sharyn Bethune, Pete's wife, has earned herself a tofurkey for expressing "shock" at his arrest.

Sharyn was quoted as saying:

“You can't just shrug it off. It's a long way for his kids to go and see him - a Japanese jail.”

Which came as a bit of a shock to me, too, as I assumed given the way Pete has been gallivanting around the southern ocean throwing butyric acid missiles around and generally having a, forgive me, whale of a time, that he mustn't have any kids.

Blind Freddy could have seen this arrest coming, so the Tofurkey is also awarded on the basis that people with dependent children should not knowingly put themselves in such a compromising situation and then plead for sympathy when the inevitable happens.

The New Zealand foreign minister has also stated that he is not going to intervene on Pete's behalf, and is happy to leave him to the tender mercies of the Japanese judicial system. Which, as mentioned previously, has a track record of a 98% + conviction rate.