This story “Cloud hangs over head of Qld rape judge” l is the logical consequence of a state and federal government policy of cultural appeasement towards aborigines.
Just to give you some background. The Australian government for the last 100 years or so has badly handled the management of aboriginal affairs. I dare say there are few examples of systematic neglect than Australian treatment of aborigines. There was I guess some justification decades ago, when they had no idea what they were doing. Sadly it still looks like they have no idea. Why? Because this is not an “aboriginal problem”, it’s a PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM. Governments evade issues because they don’t know how to handle issues. The problem has culminated in 2 policies:
1. Monetary: Throw billions of dollars at the problem, whether its into welfare funding used to finance drug & alcohol consumption, or health services which only diagnoses and treats the short term problem. There is no preventative strategy. With the birth rate for aborigines far higher than for other Australians, we can be assured that the problem is just going to grow. That’s not to suggest all aborigines have a problem.
2. Intellectual: Evade the problem. Its easy when the problem is 2000-4000km away. With most Australians living within 100km of the coast, they don’t see what I saw as I drove through central Australia. Australians just are not empowered by the political system, and those that have the authority to do something are just not accountable for their results, which harps back to the general inadequacies of government, and the sense of powerlessness that voters have to do something about it. So what can be done? I guess you could email my article to the pertinent minister for aboriginal affairs.
The problem for state & Federal governments is that they have harboured a contradiction. On the one side, they want to empower aborigines and to give them a sense of ‘aboriginal identity’. The problem is the ‘aboriginal identity’ is not a paradigm that has much utility or standing in the modern world. The healthy aborigines are the ones that know it, the unhealthy ones are the ones that don’t, or who want to believe the government’s rhetoric that it should matter.
So we have this silly policy of not invalidating aborigines by allowing them to settle their civil disputes by ‘traditional means’. This is seen as avoiding the high cost of placing a lot of aborigines in prison. But the problem is not resolved, it is skirted around. There is no pride in being ‘aboriginal’ is so much as that word is equated with throwing spears, dancing and sleeping in bark huts. Its not a paradigm you can sell to anyone who enjoys a better standard of living. But the government does it so that don’t feel so empty.
The incoming PM Kevin Rudd has apologised to the ‘Stolen Generation’, those thousands of Aboriginal children placed in the care of foster homes so they can have a semi-normal life. I think this policy was not all wrong, it was just ill-conceived. The policy was executed through coercion rather than persuasion. The policy did not address the ‘aboriginality’ of the participants in the program. The other aspect was that these kids were treated as ‘sub-human’ by perverts and pedophiles in the religious order who molested these kids. Another recipe for disempowerment. But consider that these kids today stand a better chance of adapting to the western world than a great many that come from a traditional background.
Of course it does make sense to keep families apart, and I dare say if kids were taken away again, they might just have more of them.
So when the media says that Queensland Judge Sarah Bradley sparked outrage last year “by not imposing jail sentences on nine youths and men who gang raped a 10-year-old girl” and gave another defendant “time to gather evidence that he was educating his victim in "men's business" in another case, after he “admitted to forcing an 11-year-old indigenous boy to perform oral sex on him”, I would suggest the judge is dealing with a highly dubious policy.
The District Court Judge Bradley allowed the teacher, James Last to plead guilty, but also adjourned proceedings to allow his lawyers to find anthropological evidence to support his claim that he had been trying to introduce the boy to "traditional" Torres Strait islander sexual practices”.
I think the judge does not have the luxury of acting with the same contempt displayed by the media, and if the judge is unaware of the culture of Torres Strait islanders, then the judge took the appropriate action in the context of the government’s policy towards aborigines. This is a criminal matter, not a common law issue.
The problem is philosophical in the sense that there is an attempt to offer aborigines empowerment by allowing them to “keep their aboriginal identity and snub it as well”. There is utterly no respect for reality in the policy. Either the facts support aboriginal ‘traditional’ values or they don’t. There is no justification for aborigines having one set of laws, and other Australians having another set of laws. The other implication is that aborigines are ‘marked as prospective victims’ by their genetic code. This attitude is also apparent in the Western World’s appeasement of rogue states, and even states of lesser evils.
You might argue that it is not ‘traditional’ aboriginal values that incited this act. I too believe it is a gross rationalisation, but consider that there are a great many traditional laws that are abhorrent to supporters of the ‘traditional’ western justice system, so the principle in question still remains critical. Also since aboriginal laws were not written down, it strikes me that what certain people regard as ‘law’ might be confused with common practice. There is no objectivity in taking this path. You can’t have a law for whites and a different law for blacks. You can’t apply a white law for whites victims, and a black law for blacks. That would of course be a racist policy of the worst kind. Heading off topic a little – it is no more appropriate to have a policy towards drug takers in Australia and accept far harsher policies (like the death penalty) in Asia. I am not suggesting that Asian polict is lacking reality, but clearly we will know better by debating the issue.
The fact that these issues do not get debated is because of the poor thinking skills of the combatants, so bad in fact that they skirt issues rather than raising them.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
Monday, February 18, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The politics of structural control in Australia
Have you noticed that both sides of government seem equally contemptible? Have you noticed why there are only ever two sides to the debate, and all other minor parties are ignored? Who is served by that strategy? Do we really have competition? Why do politicians advocate competition in industry, but in the realm of policy debate and politician salary setting there is very little choice or competition? The great fear for a political party is that a 3rd force might emerge in politics. We all saw how the Liberals 'took out' Pauline Hanson. Notwithstanding her flaws, there was a tremendous campaign to discredit her in Australia. It wasn't that she has a small, loyal support group, she was a symbol that a 3rd force was possible.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
Friday, January 18, 2008
The greatest robbery ever conceived – robbery by collusion
The greatest thefts of all time occur because:
Well thought out plans
By great minds with illegitimate interests
A perception of security
Where a pool of wealth exists
There are numerous pools of money – they lie in institutions, the capacity of banks to create money, but more often than not the prospect for mass ‘illegitimate’ transfer of wealth comes as a result of government favours. Consider that governments have often been behind the great success of business leaders:
Bankers were behind the financing of the post-WWII reconstruction
Bankers are behind the current derivatives market expansion
Corporate executives are granted a free reign to set their own pay levels
Corporate leaders are given exclusive licenses to operate a certain area of business
Corporate leaders are given grants
Corporate leaders are in a position to leverage their companies money. They have options on the upside, but no exposure on the downside – unlike shareholders. How can such benefits be considered fair?
What possible justification is there for the huge salaries that these executives are paid. There is no justification for paying them that much. They aren’t that special. Ayn Rand created in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ the symbol of the ‘producer’ who supported the world through productive capacity. Whilst such symbolism works well with novels, the reality is that executives depend on a huge team of talent. Why are the leaders so special? Does the enterprise fall apart because the leader is away. He is the leader generally because he is the best candidate – not because he is the only candidate. So where is the competition in this market? Why aren’t politicians enforcing the notion of competition? Well surprise surprise – political pay is another area lacking competition. Its not unusual in the Australian parliament for politicians to vote for pay rises in the last Xmas session of parliament. Might corporate leaders be turning a blind eye to political largesse for the sake of preserving their own? Ask yourself how many politicians end up in corporate boardrooms? Well only the leaders. But what is the boobie prize for the idiots that populate our parliaments? Well they get a generous pension for life – they just have to serve one term.
SMH reports that Wall Street CEOs “who presided over the subprime mortgage crisis awarded themselves bonuses totalling $US33.2 billion – down just 5% on the previous year. That is despite the fact that -of the major banking groups Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers - only Goldman Sachs largely avoided the risky loans which have since resulted in a financial crisis. In their defense, these 7 firms earned $US39 billion during the first half of 2007, a 41% gain over 2006, but they lost $US28 billion in the third and fourth financial quarters. Total pretax profits for the 7 firms totalled $US11 billion in 2007, less than one-fifth of the $US60 billion record set in 2006. Employee compensation (includes bonuses) accounted for 61% of the firms' revenues in 2007, up from 45% in 2006. The bulk of the earnings go to the employees working in mergers and acquisitions and in equities. They are rewarded with bigger bonuses than the employees in the fixed-income units handling mortgages. But the problem is – these staff aren’t the reason for the huge profits – it’s the boom. They don’t make these profits when equities are falling. Are they really so clever? The problem is the market actually supports high rates of pay because:
Rates are set on your ability to make money which is often not sustained and not tied to actual contribution
There is no competitive market since the executives who set junior pay rates have a vested interest in raising them to justify higher pay rates for themselves. The directors are thus in a weak position to argue for the CEO not to get more pay.
Incentive schemes reward on the upside – which in a boom is likely to be achieved – but don’t penalize on the downside
Often huge bonuses don’t reflect sustainable earnings, but rather the benefits of consolidation mergers & acquisitions. Of course its easy to buy the market to increase earnings in a boom. CEOs don’t have to live with the downside – the premium paid for these assets. But they make sense in the short run.
See http://business.smh.com.au/wall-st-execs-collect-us33b-bonuses/20080118-1mq1.html?sssdmh=dm16.298124
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
Well thought out plans
By great minds with illegitimate interests
A perception of security
Where a pool of wealth exists
There are numerous pools of money – they lie in institutions, the capacity of banks to create money, but more often than not the prospect for mass ‘illegitimate’ transfer of wealth comes as a result of government favours. Consider that governments have often been behind the great success of business leaders:
Bankers were behind the financing of the post-WWII reconstruction
Bankers are behind the current derivatives market expansion
Corporate executives are granted a free reign to set their own pay levels
Corporate leaders are given exclusive licenses to operate a certain area of business
Corporate leaders are given grants
Corporate leaders are in a position to leverage their companies money. They have options on the upside, but no exposure on the downside – unlike shareholders. How can such benefits be considered fair?
What possible justification is there for the huge salaries that these executives are paid. There is no justification for paying them that much. They aren’t that special. Ayn Rand created in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ the symbol of the ‘producer’ who supported the world through productive capacity. Whilst such symbolism works well with novels, the reality is that executives depend on a huge team of talent. Why are the leaders so special? Does the enterprise fall apart because the leader is away. He is the leader generally because he is the best candidate – not because he is the only candidate. So where is the competition in this market? Why aren’t politicians enforcing the notion of competition? Well surprise surprise – political pay is another area lacking competition. Its not unusual in the Australian parliament for politicians to vote for pay rises in the last Xmas session of parliament. Might corporate leaders be turning a blind eye to political largesse for the sake of preserving their own? Ask yourself how many politicians end up in corporate boardrooms? Well only the leaders. But what is the boobie prize for the idiots that populate our parliaments? Well they get a generous pension for life – they just have to serve one term.
SMH reports that Wall Street CEOs “who presided over the subprime mortgage crisis awarded themselves bonuses totalling $US33.2 billion – down just 5% on the previous year. That is despite the fact that -of the major banking groups Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers - only Goldman Sachs largely avoided the risky loans which have since resulted in a financial crisis. In their defense, these 7 firms earned $US39 billion during the first half of 2007, a 41% gain over 2006, but they lost $US28 billion in the third and fourth financial quarters. Total pretax profits for the 7 firms totalled $US11 billion in 2007, less than one-fifth of the $US60 billion record set in 2006. Employee compensation (includes bonuses) accounted for 61% of the firms' revenues in 2007, up from 45% in 2006. The bulk of the earnings go to the employees working in mergers and acquisitions and in equities. They are rewarded with bigger bonuses than the employees in the fixed-income units handling mortgages. But the problem is – these staff aren’t the reason for the huge profits – it’s the boom. They don’t make these profits when equities are falling. Are they really so clever? The problem is the market actually supports high rates of pay because:
Rates are set on your ability to make money which is often not sustained and not tied to actual contribution
There is no competitive market since the executives who set junior pay rates have a vested interest in raising them to justify higher pay rates for themselves. The directors are thus in a weak position to argue for the CEO not to get more pay.
Incentive schemes reward on the upside – which in a boom is likely to be achieved – but don’t penalize on the downside
Often huge bonuses don’t reflect sustainable earnings, but rather the benefits of consolidation mergers & acquisitions. Of course its easy to buy the market to increase earnings in a boom. CEOs don’t have to live with the downside – the premium paid for these assets. But they make sense in the short run.
See http://business.smh.com.au/wall-st-execs-collect-us33b-bonuses/20080118-1mq1.html?sssdmh=dm16.298124
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
New Australian Labor Government ceases pay rates review
According to the SMH (http://smallbusiness.smh.com.au/managing/legal/afpc-ceases-pay-rates-review-902643447.html) the new Labor government has requested that the Australian Fair Pay Commission (AFPC) should cease to review junior wages and overall pay scales, thus dropping the previous Liberal governments initiative. The Workplace Relations Minister Julia Gillard terminated the review “pending establishment of the new industrial umpire, Fair Work Australia, in 2010”.
I cant help thinking there is a lot of political deception in this decision. Is it possible that the incoming government is worried about:
1. The possibility that ‘real inflation’ might be raised, given the increase in prices
2. It wants to avoid the need to address any disparity in youth wages
Would it not be better to complete a review already committed to, and might any findings be used as a basis for its policy. Why do young workers have to wait until 2010 for a resolution – that means any policy intiative will come after the next election. How convenient!
Gillard said that “awards would be modernised and simplified by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) from early 2008”. The government argues that “the AFPC's review of pay scales and junior and training wages will both overlap with and duplicate the [AIRC] award modernisation process”. So why not fold the role of the ARPC into the AIRC. Its politics. I suggest the reason is that the previous committee was stacked full of Liberal MPs, which only highlights the reality that, parliamentary committees are not object fact-finding processes. On the contrary, having submitted a number of submissions to such committees, its evident that such proceedings mean very little. Its all about political clout. So where is the objectivity in parliament if not in the parliamentary committees, which get very little public scrutiny. Well there isn’t any.
Gillard suggested that ”the various reviews being conducted by the previous Liberal government was a piecemeal approach”. But having been in government for 11 years, might a little tinkering be all that is required? So what is Labor going to do? Apparently “modernising and simplify more than 4,300 awards”. Well perhaps its warranted, but that strikes me as tinkering, not a profound policy shift. Hence my belief that Labor is just deferring action. Trying to be uncontroversial. Might they have a confidence problem? Do they have any substantive policy. Secretly I think they are very happy with what the Liberals have given them. Interestingly, I would suggest the Liberals lost the election at precisely the right time. Labour will oversee the ‘period of pain’.
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
I cant help thinking there is a lot of political deception in this decision. Is it possible that the incoming government is worried about:
1. The possibility that ‘real inflation’ might be raised, given the increase in prices
2. It wants to avoid the need to address any disparity in youth wages
Would it not be better to complete a review already committed to, and might any findings be used as a basis for its policy. Why do young workers have to wait until 2010 for a resolution – that means any policy intiative will come after the next election. How convenient!
Gillard said that “awards would be modernised and simplified by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) from early 2008”. The government argues that “the AFPC's review of pay scales and junior and training wages will both overlap with and duplicate the [AIRC] award modernisation process”. So why not fold the role of the ARPC into the AIRC. Its politics. I suggest the reason is that the previous committee was stacked full of Liberal MPs, which only highlights the reality that, parliamentary committees are not object fact-finding processes. On the contrary, having submitted a number of submissions to such committees, its evident that such proceedings mean very little. Its all about political clout. So where is the objectivity in parliament if not in the parliamentary committees, which get very little public scrutiny. Well there isn’t any.
Gillard suggested that ”the various reviews being conducted by the previous Liberal government was a piecemeal approach”. But having been in government for 11 years, might a little tinkering be all that is required? So what is Labor going to do? Apparently “modernising and simplify more than 4,300 awards”. Well perhaps its warranted, but that strikes me as tinkering, not a profound policy shift. Hence my belief that Labor is just deferring action. Trying to be uncontroversial. Might they have a confidence problem? Do they have any substantive policy. Secretly I think they are very happy with what the Liberals have given them. Interestingly, I would suggest the Liberals lost the election at precisely the right time. Labour will oversee the ‘period of pain’.
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Australians named worst emitters
According to BBN News (source http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7092989.stm) Australia is the world’s worst emiiter of CO2 gases. Well I have 2 basic responses to this:
1. So what? And…
2. Why should that be surprise?
The first issue is whether Australia is threatening the globe by producing more CO2. Its an over-simplification to say that CO2 is pollution, when it exists naturally in the atmosphere and is a fertilizer for plants. They need it to live. Are we not then greening the planet? The argument will be made that we are upsetting the natural balance. But the earth was never in balance. The Earth’s CO2 concentrations have been bouncing around for years without any threat to man. Are we too powerful now? There is too little evidence to say? We could be on the precipice of an Ice Age, which occur every 5000 years. So maybe Australia producing CO2 is actually a good thing. The computer models run by the climatology ‘experts’ are so out of sync with reality, that they are not worth the paper they are printed on. They are truly on a steep learning curve. So what should we do to on a policy level:
1. Increase awareness of the benefits of saving energy
2. Create incentives for people to buy energy efficient light bulbs, eg. Information on packaging that tells people which bulb is the cheapest over its economic life
3. There are easy way Australians and everyone else can save energy. The next issue – should we be surprised Australia is the worst emitter per capita?
4. No, its logical. There are several reasons why we have high energy consumption:
5. Travel distances are huge – big issue
6. Australiians live on larger 600-1200m2 suburban lots compared to 60-250m2 in Tokyo, Manila or elsewhere, so our cities are big relative to their population –big issue
7. Australia doesn’t have a very good train system
8. Australia has a lot of cows that produce methane
9. Australia has a high proportion of coal-fired power stations because it has ample cheap coal up the east coast where the population lives – big issue
10. Australia has no nuclear power stations
11. Australia is the driest continent in the world, so we have the lowest capacity to generate hydro electric electricity
12. Australia's natural gas resources (until coal seam gas was recognized) have historically been very remote and offshore for power generation
13. Australia consumes a lot of energy in metal processing, eg. Alumina refineries, etc.
Australia did not select the determinants of ‘pollution’. Consider water vapour, its also a greenhouse gas, and Australia has scarcely any of that, but that is not considered in these studies.
Yet there are several reasons why Australia should be better:
1. It spends a lot of money on air conditioning when in fact most of the population lives in a mild climate
2. It hardly produces anything – it is a service economy
3. It could invest more in rail than cars – rail is more efficient, safer, yet its taxed more harshly
But Australians are mostly paying the price for factors they have no control over. The sillyness of the argument is highlighted by the statement “Australian power stations are the least efficient on a per capita basis”. You don’t measure power station efficiency on a population pro rata basis. That’s lunacy. That would imply virtue lied with the poor who used none. Not necessarily you say - we could embrace technology. But we do. We just do it when it makes commercial sense. Alternatively fuelled cars and solar cells are still not efficient enough, so we delay the expense, but I am sure when they do make sense, Australians will embrace them faster than mobile phones. The best way to measure efficiency is compare the energy produced against the cost or lost energy to produce a unit of energy. By those ‘realistic’ measures Australian plants are very modern. We have the electrostatic precipitators to remove particulates and scrubbers to remove nitrous and sulphur dioxides. China has scarcely little of this equipment, and is the world’s worst emitter with the USA (which has the equipment). More incredible is that most new industrial capacity - that consumes the great bulk of energy - is going to be based in China, which will not sign on to Kyoto, nor is it required.
The BBC, a big greenhouse advocate gets its stories from The Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma) - a green lobby group. So that’s the quality of their journalism. None of the arguments I made above were considered in the BBC article. Their agenda instead is to spread fear where it counts. Not in China, where the people couldn’t care and politicians have no ‘green’ conscious, but in western nations where there is this ‘guilt’ for being human.
Statistics are very easily manipulated. Consider that South Africa produces as much CO2 as Australia, but because of apartheid the bulk of the black population live in poverty, so this lowers the per capita CO2 emissions from South Africa. India is perhaps the most impressive – but that’s because they need to be – they have little energy or money to buy it. Hence they have few trees. Should they not be penalized for lack of birth control? If we are going to talk about carbon footprints – why don’t we look at those countries that burden the world with too many kids? Eg. Catholic and Muslim countries like the Philippines and Nigeria. And what about energy efficiency? The third world is spewing out millions of tonnes of particulates from poorly maintained trucks, tricycles, jeepneys, and what about those oil-fired power stations, using cheap high-sulphur fuel. So why don’t these countries rank highly. Because they have the good fortune to be over-populated and poor, oohh and most of their governments couldn’t care a shit. Emissions are not an electoral issue there. Surprising power failures are not even an electoral issue in the Philippines, but that’s good news right? It saves the environment.
I think it is folly to lack critical analysis of such articles, and at a political level it is folly to apply costs on the economy which undermine productive output, as we are only undermining our capacity to deal with real problems based on ‘real’ evidence. Having said that – there are low cost measures that can be taken to reduce carbon emissions, and that’s mostly a ‘energy cost’ that people should consider more. People don’t think about the lights they leave on, the energy rating of their houses. But that’s because they rely on governments to do it. Governments only get points for the cheap shots. So it comes back to our system of government – democracy sux!
But despite not considering the points above, CARMA has this to say: “We feel quite confident that no-one else has [this power plant] information in such detail”. “In this website, we do not push a particular agenda or outcome”. "In fact, we are very interested to see how people choose to use the data” explained Mr Ummel. I don’t think I have ever seen such blatant misinformation in my life. This guy posits as a scientific authority. It just supports my view that you can’t trust the media, nor even scientific authorities to deliver ‘facts’. Its all lobbying to reach baseless goals, and the problem is our system of government.
-----------------------------------
Reason is the standard for debate.
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
1. So what? And…
2. Why should that be surprise?
The first issue is whether Australia is threatening the globe by producing more CO2. Its an over-simplification to say that CO2 is pollution, when it exists naturally in the atmosphere and is a fertilizer for plants. They need it to live. Are we not then greening the planet? The argument will be made that we are upsetting the natural balance. But the earth was never in balance. The Earth’s CO2 concentrations have been bouncing around for years without any threat to man. Are we too powerful now? There is too little evidence to say? We could be on the precipice of an Ice Age, which occur every 5000 years. So maybe Australia producing CO2 is actually a good thing. The computer models run by the climatology ‘experts’ are so out of sync with reality, that they are not worth the paper they are printed on. They are truly on a steep learning curve. So what should we do to on a policy level:
1. Increase awareness of the benefits of saving energy
2. Create incentives for people to buy energy efficient light bulbs, eg. Information on packaging that tells people which bulb is the cheapest over its economic life
3. There are easy way Australians and everyone else can save energy. The next issue – should we be surprised Australia is the worst emitter per capita?
4. No, its logical. There are several reasons why we have high energy consumption:
5. Travel distances are huge – big issue
6. Australiians live on larger 600-1200m2 suburban lots compared to 60-250m2 in Tokyo, Manila or elsewhere, so our cities are big relative to their population –big issue
7. Australia doesn’t have a very good train system
8. Australia has a lot of cows that produce methane
9. Australia has a high proportion of coal-fired power stations because it has ample cheap coal up the east coast where the population lives – big issue
10. Australia has no nuclear power stations
11. Australia is the driest continent in the world, so we have the lowest capacity to generate hydro electric electricity
12. Australia's natural gas resources (until coal seam gas was recognized) have historically been very remote and offshore for power generation
13. Australia consumes a lot of energy in metal processing, eg. Alumina refineries, etc.
Australia did not select the determinants of ‘pollution’. Consider water vapour, its also a greenhouse gas, and Australia has scarcely any of that, but that is not considered in these studies.
Yet there are several reasons why Australia should be better:
1. It spends a lot of money on air conditioning when in fact most of the population lives in a mild climate
2. It hardly produces anything – it is a service economy
3. It could invest more in rail than cars – rail is more efficient, safer, yet its taxed more harshly
But Australians are mostly paying the price for factors they have no control over. The sillyness of the argument is highlighted by the statement “Australian power stations are the least efficient on a per capita basis”. You don’t measure power station efficiency on a population pro rata basis. That’s lunacy. That would imply virtue lied with the poor who used none. Not necessarily you say - we could embrace technology. But we do. We just do it when it makes commercial sense. Alternatively fuelled cars and solar cells are still not efficient enough, so we delay the expense, but I am sure when they do make sense, Australians will embrace them faster than mobile phones. The best way to measure efficiency is compare the energy produced against the cost or lost energy to produce a unit of energy. By those ‘realistic’ measures Australian plants are very modern. We have the electrostatic precipitators to remove particulates and scrubbers to remove nitrous and sulphur dioxides. China has scarcely little of this equipment, and is the world’s worst emitter with the USA (which has the equipment). More incredible is that most new industrial capacity - that consumes the great bulk of energy - is going to be based in China, which will not sign on to Kyoto, nor is it required.
The BBC, a big greenhouse advocate gets its stories from The Carbon Monitoring for Action (Carma) - a green lobby group. So that’s the quality of their journalism. None of the arguments I made above were considered in the BBC article. Their agenda instead is to spread fear where it counts. Not in China, where the people couldn’t care and politicians have no ‘green’ conscious, but in western nations where there is this ‘guilt’ for being human.
Statistics are very easily manipulated. Consider that South Africa produces as much CO2 as Australia, but because of apartheid the bulk of the black population live in poverty, so this lowers the per capita CO2 emissions from South Africa. India is perhaps the most impressive – but that’s because they need to be – they have little energy or money to buy it. Hence they have few trees. Should they not be penalized for lack of birth control? If we are going to talk about carbon footprints – why don’t we look at those countries that burden the world with too many kids? Eg. Catholic and Muslim countries like the Philippines and Nigeria. And what about energy efficiency? The third world is spewing out millions of tonnes of particulates from poorly maintained trucks, tricycles, jeepneys, and what about those oil-fired power stations, using cheap high-sulphur fuel. So why don’t these countries rank highly. Because they have the good fortune to be over-populated and poor, oohh and most of their governments couldn’t care a shit. Emissions are not an electoral issue there. Surprising power failures are not even an electoral issue in the Philippines, but that’s good news right? It saves the environment.
I think it is folly to lack critical analysis of such articles, and at a political level it is folly to apply costs on the economy which undermine productive output, as we are only undermining our capacity to deal with real problems based on ‘real’ evidence. Having said that – there are low cost measures that can be taken to reduce carbon emissions, and that’s mostly a ‘energy cost’ that people should consider more. People don’t think about the lights they leave on, the energy rating of their houses. But that’s because they rely on governments to do it. Governments only get points for the cheap shots. So it comes back to our system of government – democracy sux!
But despite not considering the points above, CARMA has this to say: “We feel quite confident that no-one else has [this power plant] information in such detail”. “In this website, we do not push a particular agenda or outcome”. "In fact, we are very interested to see how people choose to use the data” explained Mr Ummel. I don’t think I have ever seen such blatant misinformation in my life. This guy posits as a scientific authority. It just supports my view that you can’t trust the media, nor even scientific authorities to deliver ‘facts’. Its all lobbying to reach baseless goals, and the problem is our system of government.
-----------------------------------
Reason is the standard for debate.
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
Sunday, October 28, 2007
The Greenhouse Hoax
On many occasions over the last 100 years the science community has made assertions about natural disasters and impending doom. These assertions have included warnings of mega-tsunamis, meteorites striking the earth, impending ice age, and none of these events have come true as foretold. Thats not to say they can't. The issue is more one of: (i) Perspective, (ii) Facts supporting their evidence, and (iii) the way evidence is presented.
The current assertion warning of global catastrophe is 'global warming' or more precisely the assertion that humans are largely causing global warming. There have been several reasons why I have always been skeptical of this latest threat:
1. The argument that all climate scientists believe there is a global warming phenomena, and that humans are largely the cause of it.
2. The argument that scientists had a high level of understanding of the processes that cause global warming
3. The argument that a computer model was going to predict climate change 100 years into the future when they cant even get a 3 day forecast right
4. The philosophical values that underpin most people's lives. My concern here is that climate scientists are 'normal people' - they are not critical thinkers. They are empiricists who look at sensory evidence from an emotionally charged philosophical context.
5. There has been no 'great debate' where opponents have had an opportunity to present evidence or question the evidence against climate change.
Since forming those conclusions I have always remained open to new evidence that might cast into doubt my existing beliefs. In the last few years there were 3 compelling sources of information that have shaped my opinion:
1. Media articles: Particularly in Japan I was reading weekly articles asserting scientific conclusions that just didn't stand up to scrutiny. Some were even inherently contradictory. There was the occasional article suggesting that scientists had it wrong. One could be forgiven for thinking that the media has no interest in presenting conclusive arguments for or against climate change. I would suggest the media has a vested interest in keeping us in doubt. If you think about it the best story is the one that never dies, that evokes great passions, that poses a great threat, because everyone will be interested in it. There are plenty of 'crackpot' scientists in specialised fields that you can get quotes from to support your cause.
2. Al Gores movie:
3. Global Warming Primer published by the National Center for Policy Analysis. This document grabbed my attention because as a geologist I took great interest in paleo-climates, fossils, and I knew that ancient landscapes could be understood by looking at evidence from rocks. Its interesting that no advocate of 'man-made climate change' has made any assertion or refutation based on rocks that date back billions of years.
suggesting that human I have come across a number of media articles that have reinforced in my mind the belief that scientists still dont know what they are talking about.
4. Personal observation: There are places on earth like China where we are actually seeking 'regional cooling'. China is of course the dirtiest polluter on the planet because its power stations dont remove nitrous oxides and particulate matter from their emissions. Only the newer plants built from the 1990s have these anti-pollutant plant installed.
The last document I read presents several points that reinforce my belief that the dire warnings of climate change are misguided, and that humans are largely to blame. The pertinent arguments are:
1. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It accounts for 95% of greenhouse gases. It makes sense that if the earth was naturally warming (in a documented natural cycle) a higher percentage of water would be concentrated in the atmosphere. Humans account for just 0.28% of global greenhouse gases.
2.
PS: I dont give much credence to the assertion that the National Center for Policy Analysis is independent of private money or government agencies.
-----------------------------------
Reason is the standard for debate.
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
The current assertion warning of global catastrophe is 'global warming' or more precisely the assertion that humans are largely causing global warming. There have been several reasons why I have always been skeptical of this latest threat:
1. The argument that all climate scientists believe there is a global warming phenomena, and that humans are largely the cause of it.
2. The argument that scientists had a high level of understanding of the processes that cause global warming
3. The argument that a computer model was going to predict climate change 100 years into the future when they cant even get a 3 day forecast right
4. The philosophical values that underpin most people's lives. My concern here is that climate scientists are 'normal people' - they are not critical thinkers. They are empiricists who look at sensory evidence from an emotionally charged philosophical context.
5. There has been no 'great debate' where opponents have had an opportunity to present evidence or question the evidence against climate change.
Since forming those conclusions I have always remained open to new evidence that might cast into doubt my existing beliefs. In the last few years there were 3 compelling sources of information that have shaped my opinion:
1. Media articles: Particularly in Japan I was reading weekly articles asserting scientific conclusions that just didn't stand up to scrutiny. Some were even inherently contradictory. There was the occasional article suggesting that scientists had it wrong. One could be forgiven for thinking that the media has no interest in presenting conclusive arguments for or against climate change. I would suggest the media has a vested interest in keeping us in doubt. If you think about it the best story is the one that never dies, that evokes great passions, that poses a great threat, because everyone will be interested in it. There are plenty of 'crackpot' scientists in specialised fields that you can get quotes from to support your cause.
2. Al Gores movie:
3. Global Warming Primer published by the National Center for Policy Analysis. This document grabbed my attention because as a geologist I took great interest in paleo-climates, fossils, and I knew that ancient landscapes could be understood by looking at evidence from rocks. Its interesting that no advocate of 'man-made climate change' has made any assertion or refutation based on rocks that date back billions of years.
suggesting that human I have come across a number of media articles that have reinforced in my mind the belief that scientists still dont know what they are talking about.
4. Personal observation: There are places on earth like China where we are actually seeking 'regional cooling'. China is of course the dirtiest polluter on the planet because its power stations dont remove nitrous oxides and particulate matter from their emissions. Only the newer plants built from the 1990s have these anti-pollutant plant installed.
The last document I read presents several points that reinforce my belief that the dire warnings of climate change are misguided, and that humans are largely to blame. The pertinent arguments are:
1. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It accounts for 95% of greenhouse gases. It makes sense that if the earth was naturally warming (in a documented natural cycle) a higher percentage of water would be concentrated in the atmosphere. Humans account for just 0.28% of global greenhouse gases.
2.
PS: I dont give much credence to the assertion that the National Center for Policy Analysis is independent of private money or government agencies.
-----------------------------------
Reason is the standard for debate.
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
Friday, October 12, 2007
The democratization of the media
One of the profound shifts in the last few decades has been the concentration of media ownership that has resulted in about 4 large media barons controlling the bulk of the world’s media. The problem with this process is that:
- Media content becomes politically motivated
- Media content becomes populist drivel
- The barrier to entering conventional media markets is very high because of the high costs of publishing and establishing news gathering networks and establishing a brand
But that is all going to change. Internet service providers like Digg.com promise to transform the media business by allowing anyone to post content on the internet and allowing users to vote on its merits. The implication is that everyone becomes empowered – whether as a content publisher or reader. This mode of media delivery allows people to promote their services as well as critique their opponents. I think this media solution will work better if friendships are based around personal interests – which is usually the case.
If you are interested in how Digg.com works, see http://life-tools.blogspot.com/2007/10/art-of-self-promotion.html. There is further information on the Digg FAQs page - www.digg.com/faq.
- Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com
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