There are a few things I don’t understand about these rabid climate change sceptics that are tearing apart the Liberal party at the moment.

1. Why the Earth is Flat

Forget the science, forget the sceptics, forget the climate change evangelists, forget the climate cliques, cables and secret societies. The whole debate boils down to a very simple idea.

Remember 20 years ago when there were people around who were still a little sceptical about the dangers of smoking. Back then I would say to smokers, “Breathing in smoke is never going to be good for you.” All the science of the anti-smoking lobby did is prove what any person with half a brain could have figured out for themselves.

The climate change debate is exactly the same. Is cutting down half the Earth’s rainforest going to be good for the environment or bad? Is paving over a surprisingly large percentage of the Earth’s surface going to be good or bad? Digging up coal and sucking oil out of the ground and burning it is going to affect the environment, no?

There is such a thing as natural climate change, but to suggest that humans do not have any meaningful impact? Well you better start smoking because cigarettes do not cause cancer. You haven’t seen proof that the earth is round, better start believing it is flat – just to be safe.

2. Who’s your sceptic?

It continues to amaze me the impact that green house sceptics have. It seems to me that most of them are geologists who at one time or other worked for the coal or oil industry. Scientists are sceptical by nature; they have to be as they are continually having to come up with new ways of testing each other’s theories.

A theory is only valid if it can stand up to testing and experiment. In this scientific world it is very difficult if not impossible for a lie or mistake to go undetected for long. It is only after a theory has been tested by multiple individual scientists and universities that anybody outside that world ever hears of it.

The theory of man-made global warming has undergone more testing than any other theory you can think of. It is different from many other theories in that it is difficult to perform experiments on, as we don’t have more than one Earth. Instead scientists use increasingly detailed simulations. They are also able to find ways of looking into the Earth’s past, such as analysing gases trapped in Antarctic ice for thousands of years.

The average person isn’t going to understand the intricate detail of the science. We are not scientists, but we can come up with thought experiments like mine above to figure it out. We can also choose to believe science. You believe in science every day when you drive your car or use your computer. Science is more than a group of nerdy men and women, it is a system that has given us amazing things. In this world it is really the only thing we can trust.

What these liberal rebels don’t understand, is that if you don’t know you should defer to an expert, preferably an expert whose work has been backed up by other experts.

3. It All Comes Down To Warcraft

I think that the many Australian politicians who are sceptical of climate change believe that it doesn’t really matter if they are wrong, because Australia only releases 1% of the world’s greenhouse gases. This assertion appears correct when you first look at it, but under analysis it is quickly proved false. Consider this example:

A few years ago my brother and I were playing World of Warcraft. WoW was all about killing monsters. Some monsters are so big they require cooperation to beat them. For the biggest monsters 40 players would need to gather together and form a raid group. Every player would need to do as much damage as magically possible to bring down the boss.

One day my guild was completing the dungeon Molten Core. We had one more monster to kill his name was Ragnaros. We were all there ready to kill the monster, but one guy’s mum wants him to go walk the dog – now or else. So 39 of us start killing the monster and we are succeeding. We get him down to 50% health and after a bit longer 9%. At this stage people start dying and the amount of damage that the group can deal plunges down. The numbers tick down slower and slower. Finally we get to 1% and the last one of us dies.

What this example shows us is that: everybody needs to do their bit. If every other country that only releases 1% emissions also decided to do nothing – that really would matter.

4. Did John Howard Complain?

I don’t understand how the Liberal rebels are unable to follow what the majority of their party has decided. I’m not sure if they fully respect democratic tradition. The majority decide on a course of action and those in the minority have to respect it -without resorting to drastic measures. When John Howard was in charge there was no way in hell that this would have been allowed to happen. When Howard lost his seat he respected what his electorate had decided and he never complained.

The rebels are also going against what the majority of Australians want. They seem to think they know better. Or they are playing some strange political game that involves tearing apart the party they were elected to represent.

RIP Liberal party

I am not the biggest fan of the Liberal party, but I will feel sad if it does die. Australians don’t like it when political parties are unable to contain internal disagreement – look at the Democrats.

One of the things that makes Australia such a good place would have to be its political stability. I believe the two-party system plays a big part in this even if it pisses us off sometimes. One thing I am just itching to see is the polls – although it isn’t difficult to predict which way the Liberal party will have gone.

Maybe a new party will form led by Tony Abbott. It doesn’t take a climate change scientist to figure out what that party should be called…

I haven’t been able to blog for the past week because I’ve been busy setting up my new computer. The excitement of getting a beast of a computer is sort of ruined by the pain of installing all the software, getting all the drivers working and setting the preferences so the computer is just right.

Here is my new computer:

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Intel Core i7-870 CPU
Antec 900 Advanced Gaming Case
4 GB of RAM (needs more, 16 GB maybe)
NVIDIA GTX 295 graphics card
Seagate 1.3 terabyte HDD

A very nice machine.

One good thing about setting up my new computer is it forced me to go through the my documents folder to find what I wanted to keep and wanted to throw away. I have got into the habit of writing comments I leave on other blogs in Word before I submit them. In this way I don’t lose the comment when I accidentally hold down backspace or the cat decides to jump onto the keyboard, but it also allows me to keep a record of comments. Look at these few gems I dug up. I don’t know the blogs I left them on and I don’t know when I left them.

In this one I was obviously having a discussion about the health system with a bunch of libertarians. They believe in a user pays system and that the government should but out on any kind of regulation at all.

Ra, SB, Yobbo,

I have spoken to many people who have lived in the US. Their number-one complaint is the nonexistent public health system. You really want to live in a country where you have a car accident then have many operations to get put back together then receive a $50,000 bill?

You’re a moronic, uncaring fool if you want the same for us.

Yeah I know you’d rather the money spent on public health care went back into your pocket. I don’t know how greedy people like you sleep at night.

I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be alive today if it wasn’t for our public health system. If you don’t like the way things work in Australia go live somewhere else. We happen to be a caring nation. Deal with it.

Can we still be considered caring with Kevin Rudd’s refugee policy?

This next one is from when I made the mistake of leaving a comment on an ultra-right-wing site. As I found out they don’t like having their views challenged.

“…site for leftoid scumbags or pretentious wannabe intellectuals to strut their pathetic wares.”

The problem for someone like me who visits a site like this is that none of you want to engage in a legitimate discussion. What happens to so many people who have firm views is they engage in personal attacks, instead of defending their views using reason. How can you hope to convince anybody of your beliefs if you are unable to defend them without verbal violence.

Of course all of you are entitled to your opinions and I would fight for your right to have them even though I disagree with them. I believe that opinions should have a firm foundation if they are to mean anything. This means a lot of discussion a lot of thought and argument.

I would really love you guys to make me think. Tell me what is actually wrong with what I have said and why.

See you, I probably won’t be back.

I seem to be really good at getting into fights on my blog. I dared to write a post about the protests in Tibet just before the Chinese Olympics in 2008 and a Chinese person by the name of Yun really didn’t like what I had to say. This started a very heated discussion in this post that just degenerated into pointless insults. I agreed to disagree, but this wasn’t enough for Yun and he started to spam my site with copyrighted material supporting his views. I was forced to ban him.

Yun, you are setting a marvelous example to the rest of the world of the quality of people in China. In case you can’t realize, I’m being sarcastic.

This is my favourite quote of yours, I feel it demonstrates your true character: “I will lay back and enjoy more of the terrorists masterpieces in the years to come. And I will have no sympathy for you westerners at all. YOU GUYS WELL DESERVE IT!” In Mao’s day, they would line someone like you (a nationalist) up next to a mass grave and stick a bullet in the back of your head (see, I can be nasty too).

I hope to hear more from you in the future.

I am a bit ashamed about my reaction. Suggesting that someone deserves a bullet in the back of the head is not a worthy thing for anyone to say. I find it very scary that there are people around with views such as his.

Many bloggers have no doubt heard about Rupert Murdoch’s swipe at Google, Wikipedia and blog sites over theft of news articles. He believes that free online websites should not quote news articles without paying for them. To some people this may sound fair, but I think if Mr. Murdoch goes through with this plan to try and make blogs and news aggregators pay for quoted content it will seriously damage his business.

Rupert Murdoch is forgetting that almost every single time one of his precious news articles is quoted there is a link showing where the article came from. 99% of bloggers quote a small part and then link back to the article that inspired their story. There are not many bloggers who will quote an entire article and if they do that is stealing. Fair use provisions in copyright law in most countries mean that it is legal to quote a small part of a copyrighted article as long as you say where you got it from.

By taking a swipe at Google he is also on the wrong track. Seldom does Google News contain an entire article. Google News collects the most popular articles and then provides numerous links to a wide variety of similar articles. I never visit the website of the Sydney Morning Herald or the Washington Post I get sent there by Google News. These sites probably wouldn’t get half the visitors they do without the Google search engine and news site.

Wikipedia does cop a lot of flak from academics and those in the media. Wikipedia does seem to be updated very quickly, but it is not a news site. Users of Wikipedia are not allowed to copy articles word for word and if they do the piece is quickly taken down. An absolute defence against plagiarism has always been to write what you have taken in from a particular article in your own words. Wikipedia articles also link to the source material.

I believe Rupert may be upset about the slow death of traditional media. It is sad when a newspaper dies, but I believe there is no reason why newspapers cannot transform themselves for a new age. It is possible to make money online and if the Murdochs embrace their entrepreneurial spirit their empire will not crumble. If Rupert picks a fight with the Internet, that is kind of like fighting the ocean or the weather – it is not a fight a man can win.

It seems totally bizarre to me that there are people protesting against the wind farm to be built near Colac, Victoria. There are protest movements around the world against the creation of wind farms. Some people find them ugly and claim they make noise that keeps them up at night. Some environmentalists claim they kill birds and bats.

Contrary to what a lot of these protesters believe windfarms do not create a lot of noise. There are many videos on YouTube that prove this, at least to my satisfaction.

Recently there is a new complaint against windfarms. Apparently windfarms create massive amounts of infra-sound that can cause a very rare and little-known illness called vibroacoustic disease. This sounds very plausible, but there are several things wrong about this theory.

1. Every scholarly article you find about vibroacoustic disease appears to be co-authored by the same man, Dr. Nuno Castelo Branco. This is a problem because until there is a number of papers supporting the theory that infra-sound can cause disease it can only be considered conjecture. There doesn’t seem to be agreement in the medical or scientific community that the disease exists at all.
2. If infra-sound from windmills created disease hospitals would be filling up around the world. Just as some people believed, and some continue to believe that mobile phones can cause brain cancer, but there is no epidemic even though virtually everybody in the Western world uses a mobile phone.
3. There are many other sources of infra-sound the wind itself for one. There are many machines that we live with every day that create huge amounts of infra-sound. How come this does not seem to cause any ill effect?
4. Some animals such as whales and elephants use infra-sound to communicate. If infra-sound is damaging to life surely these animals would have died out or stop using infra-sound to communicate.

Even though there is virtually no scientific evidence to say that infra-sound could be damaging there is also no scientific evidence to say that it isn’t damaging. Being a scientific person I’m forced to say there is a very remote chance it could be damaging. Any concerns about sound, infra or otherwise, can be solved by situating windfarms away from houses. The Colac windfarm will be situated on grazing land between Mount Gellibrand and the Princess Highway – not in residential areas.

There are people against any kind of new technology. People by their nature are also scared of change. When the printing press was brought to Europe it helped spark some of the worst wars the world has ever seen. These days people are far more open-minded, but there are still those that use the fear of job loss, disease and large corporations changing the landscape to resist development.

There are pundits who use the results of a Spanish study to say that windfarms cost jobs. The study authors claim that for every one green job created two are lost. In subsidising the cost of creating green power the cost of electricity goes up. Companies have to pay more for energy and therefore employ less people. But the fact is we don’t all live in Spain. Companies can always increase efficiency and reduce energy wastage saving money. They can also install solar panels reducing the need for electricity from the grid and getting paid for the energy they return to said grid. The green energy jobs knife cuts both ways. By supporting the green energy industry in a given country that country could become an exporter of green technology creating more jobs.

Another complaint about windfarms is the way big corporations seem to have overtaken the industry and claim to be making large profits from green energy. The green energy industry is subsidised and of course those subsidies to go to help windfarms achieve a profit. But there are also average people making a profit from windfarms, such as the farmers that allow turbines to be built on their properties. Subsidies are needed to encourage the development of green energy projects – even if you ignore global warming. We need to transfer over to renewable energy simply because fossil fuels are finite. All those electric cars need to get their electricity from somewhere.

Windfarms make a positive difference for the environment. They are needed to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and to help battle climate change. Even if you are a climate change sceptic you cannot deny that fossil fuels, particularly oil, are running out. Possible possible disease affects from infra-sound can be completely eliminated by situating windmills away from people. Offshore windfarms are ultimate solution out of view of everyone except fishermen. Yes some birds may get killed by wind turbines, but climate change kills animals too. Windfarm protesters really do have very little to complain about, but of course this won’t stop them.

The other night I was watching the Empire Strikes Back. You know the part where Boba Fett says one of his few lines to Darth Vader, “he is worth a lot to me?” That line now really pisses me off because George Lucas thought it would be a brilliant idea re-do all of Boba Fett’s dialogue with that of Temuera Morrison. In short Boba Fett now has a New Zealand accent. I really hate it when someone bends over your favourite movie and fucks it.

Anyway, I would now like to catalogue all the ways George Lucas has fucked Star Wars for life.

The new movies episodes one two and three are badly written, badly acted and badly directed. They have so much computer animation that they look very fake. Jar Jar Binks needs to die. They seem to be written for kids and not adults. Many of the scenes are utterly ridiculous and completely unbelievable even if they do occur in the Star Wars universe.

Battle droids: This one counts for two. First, the great thing about the original Star Wars movies is that they did not reference popular culture. They attempted to create a new popular culture one for the Star Wars universe. In the new movies the battle droids engage in slapstick comedy. I am sorry, but the Marx brothers belong to our own universe not the Star Wars universe. Battle droids are also meant to be incredibly powerful and scary combat machines, it says so in all those Star Wars books I read. I do not find comedians scary even if they are made of metal and are armed.

Anakin Skywalker made C-3PO: What the fuck? Need I say more?

In the 1997 special edition Star Wars: A New Hope they modified the scene where and Greedo confronts Han Solo to make it so Greedo fires first.

At the end of Return of the Jedi they have inserted Hayden Christiansen instead of Sebastian Shaw who played the dying Anakin skywalker earlier in the film. They have also changed the music of this end scene.

In the 1999 Star Wars novel Vector Prime they killed Chewbacca. This event prompted me to sell my large collection of Star Wars books on eBay in protest.

I really don’t understand why or how George Lucas completely fucked up Star Wars. If you have any more fuck ups to add, I would love to see them in the comments.

The time has come for my blog to have some rules. My blog is my own personal corner of the net, it is mine and it is not a democracy. I try to be fair I listen to everyone’s opinions, but everyone who comes to my site is a guest. For 4 years this has worked just great, but then I made a post about Tibet (I thought I was quite fair to the Chinese in this post) and this fellow named Yun was drawn to my site.

Yun didn’t seem to be able to handle any criticism whatsoever of the Chinese government. People are entitled to their opinions, but I don’t think Yun agrees with this. I believe this may be due to a cultural difference.

In Yun’s first sentence he referred to the US, UK, France, Spain, Australia and New Zealand as enemy countries. Later on in the same comment he threatened the world with nuclear weapons on China’s behalf. He later tried to back pedal by saying he wasn’t really threatening.

Of course tried to argue with him his statement is becoming more and more offensive. Things like: “I will lay back and enjoy more of the terrorists masterpieces in the years to come. And I will have no sympathy for you westerners at all. YOU GUYS WELL DESERVE IT!” Opinions like this are impossible for me to understand. I still didn’t ban him for it. But after this he started posting articles from various sources probably infringing copyright laws. At one stage he posted the same article in several different comment threads. I deleted them all and banned him.

This whole incident set me thinking that I do need some rules.

1. Don’t post copyrighted material or any other material that isn’t your own and in response to the original post. Limited quoting and Links is okay.

2. Don’t make death threats.

3. Try not to accuse people of being Nazis, the next Hitler, Osama Bin-Laden, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama!

4. Don’t spam.

I will properly think of some more at a later date.

A few days ago I received an email informing me of the outing of anonymous blogger CB from Bastards Inc. I’ve had a few fights with CB over the years.

He said this two years ago: “What’s the hardest part about cooking vegetables? Getting Fryers’ wheelchair into the stock pot.”

I was bloody pissed off at this, but I cool down quickly so I called a cease-fire on my blog war. It looks like this time he pissed off someone who was not quite as forgiving as I.

I find it amusing how some bloggers just disappear when they cop a little heat. Have you noticed that you now need a password to enter Bastards Inc? You would think he’d be happy to suddenly have shit loads of visitors to his site. Seems he can dish it out but not take it.

Update: CB is not a coward after all, his blog is now free for anyone to visit. Maybe he is learning to take it.