There is a picture on the SMH of Mr T (Turdball) "selling" watermelons at the market to make the ends — of his crummy ScotMo budget — meet... Of course one should note that this new non-unionised watermelon carrier has the latest iWatch on his left wrist as if all watermelon carriers had one as well. I was impressed with the relaxed "I'm one of youse bloke" picture of Mr T playing with grand-junior, in the weekend papers. Mind you, kids should be left out of election campaigns. In that relaxed picture, Mr T sported an ordinary shirt that you would have in your ordinary wardrobe — possibly a RM Williams special to go with your R M Williams rabbit fur hat. I know, we all shop at Target and Lowes...

 

Yep, Mr T's policies are more watery than a ton of watermelon, except they're not as sweet. Bitter actually.

 

Meanwhile we know that Uncle Rupe abhors the science of global warming and will pull all stops to drown the concept in a cacophony of media noises. His Daily Telegraph is a disgraceful parody of "news" designed for the poor unquestioning punters while for the more conservatives. Uncle Rupe does it with class: see

 

can't argue with that...

 

For those who want to believe in creationism, Uncle Rupe gives his blessings:

 

intelligent design is a dumb idea, promoted by uncle rupert to retard the science of global warming...

 

Should you want a little war to spice things up, don't go further than Uncle Rupe's it's far fetched... but is this fellow the joker?

 

and the neocon promotion department is winning...

 

But should you want to read about the Great Barrier Reef bleaching you need to read the adverts because Uncle Rupe's paper don't want to talk about it...:  advertising the news... because the murdoch-run newspapers don't want to talk about it...

 

 

Greenland is melting. The Barrier Reef is turning white from the heat. Ecosystems across Australia are collapsing as the climate changes. An area of Canada bigger than Singapore is being consumed by wildfires. Dams in India have armed guards as a fierce drought makes people desperate for water. March and April were the hottest months ever recorded across the planet. Melting polar ice has literally knocked the Earth off its axis. We have caused this by burning fossil fuels, and all available evidence suggests that it’s only going to get worse from here.

Last week Scott Morrison delivered a budget that appeared to relate to life on some other planet, one where none of this is happening or important. His speech to parliament was big on jobs, growth and the future but somehow made no mention of climate or environment.

Labor’s reply was a little better: Bill Shorten talked about climate change, at least, and committed to generating 50% of Australia’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. The Greens went further again, with a promise of 90% renewable energy by 2030 and plans to wind down the coal industry.

None of these is really enough to address the problem. In 2016 drastic emissions reduction in Australia and worldwide needs to be a primary goal of any budget, any government plan, any thought about the future.

(It’s very easy to start sounding like a zealot when you talk about climate change. That’s because it is a problem way outside the scope of our normal political discourse and any solution will necessarily involve radical change. But radical change is inevitable: we can either do it now and hope to control it, or have it forced upon us by a changing world. It’s hard even to contemplate, because the likely future of the planet and you and everyone you love is a nauseating abyss, and you don’t want to gaze into for too long. There’s a reason that more and more climatologists struggle with profound despair.)

All the economic activity that budgets are about, and that the election campaign will be about – all the jobs and growth, all the abstracted flows of value, all the layers of financialisation and social agreement that make superannuation, for example, a concrete enough concept to be worth reforming – all of that is built on the foundation of a planet that can support life, agriculture, and civilization as we know it. It’s easy enough to forget this, especially when you live in the elaborate technological bubble that a modern city provides. It’s worth remembering that practically all of recorded human history has happened since the last Ice Age, in a rare plateau of climatic stability that has lasted only a cosmic eyeblink.

A budget that was at all serious about jobs and growth – let alone the hazy future beyond the forward estimates – would take climate change as a fundamental and serious threat. Politicians who were serious about a future beyond the next election would also acknowledge that our existing commitments are inadequate (as is the Paris Agreement) if we want to keep climate change within tolerable limits. Taking jobs and growth seriously might mean viewing climate change as an existential threat – a threat on the scale of the World Wars, say. In 1942–43 we spent 34% of GDP on defence. What would it look like if we spent even a tenth of that on getting off fossil fuels?

This is not hyperbole, by the way. Climate change, according to some American and Australian strategists, presents us with something more like a hundred-year war. The Middle East and North Africa might well be uninhabitable in a few decades. (Our militarised border security actually makes more sense if you assume that our governments are preparing for a future of hundreds of millions of climate refugees.)

To be fair to the Coalition, by the time they got around to launching the campaign proper, they had remembered at least to pay lip service to climate concerns. You might argue that the budget’s not the place for climate strategy. You’d be wrong: our politics is structured around economic arguments – whether clearly stated or buried to some degree – and the election will be fought on them. Until emission reductions are viewed as a primary economic goal, there will be no real change.

Our economy runs on fossil fuels and the waste they send into the air. Our society is built on them. For the last 200 years we’ve grown rich by moving carbon from the ground to the sky and skimming off some excess heat on the way past.

And for a long time we thought that the energy from coal and oil and gas was free, more or less; it is only recently we have realized that we didn’t read the fine print. Every kilojoule we extracted for heat and light and work had its cost marked in an unseen column of the ledger, where the amount of carbon in the atmosphere was slowly adding up over the years and the decades.

That carbon is what we need to be keeping an eye on, first and foremost; the carbon budget is the one that matters most. By some estimates, for a business-as-usual planet we need the concentration of carbon dioxide to be at around 350 part per million. At present it’s around 407 ppm and rising. As Scott Morrison likes to say, we must live within our means. We can’t afford to go on like this, and we can’t afford to keep pretending.

 

From The Monthly. Link not available to my old computer. But I know you can find it yourself.

 

GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC.

For a carbon budget to be below natural maximum for our point in time it needs to be below 300 ppm (maximum variation for the last 500,000 years). Despite La Nina on the way, and sunspots activity decreasing ("cooler sun"), the temperature average of the surface of the earth will stay high and possibly climbing throughout 2016. 

 

 

From Media Watch
Non apology of the week from the Daily Telegraph

A graphic that suggested being gay was a health hazard caused an uproar.

But now to the Daily Telegraph, which caused outrage last week by suggesting same-sex relationships make you sick. 

Surely more likely to happen from reading the Tele. 

So, loud was the uproar that the paper’s editor Chris Dore was forced to apologise or not claiming he’d just been misunderstood. 

Unfortunately the presentation of the story has been misinterpreted.
The story in no way suggests, or intends to suggest, that same-sex relationships are unhealthy.
There is no judgement expressed at all in the story other than about diet.
Chris Dore
Editor

— Facebook, Daily Telegraph, 12 July, 2017

Really? 

Yes, sorry, not sorry. 

So, what was the fuss all about?

Well, it was this graphic, highlighting the poor health of under 24-year-olds in NSW. 

FAT CHANCE OF BEING HEALTHY 

Young Aussies only have themselves to blame

— Daily Telegraph, 12 July, 2017

And maybe that’s true. 

Because, as the graphic showed, roughly a third. 

Drink too much.

Are overweight or obese.

And/or take illicit drugs.

But for some extraordinary reason the Tele added another marker to the mix.

Citing this as another cause of young people’s ill-health.

16.8% of secondary school students … are attracted to people of the same sex as them or to both sexes

— Daily Telegraph, 12 July, 2017

Not surprisingly, the Tele was hit with a tsunami of criticism.

Daily Telegraph Just Claimed Being Gay Is Bad For Your Health & People Are Disgusted

— 2Day FM, 12 July, 2017

DAILY TELE OUTDOES ITSELF, SAYS YOUNG LGBTQI AUSSIES ARE A 'HEALTH CONCERN'

— Pedestrian TV, 12 July, 2017

And again, not surprisingly, the Tele also put Australia in the headlines right around the world.

So, was it just a misunderstanding? 

I hardly think so. At best, it was a stupid mistake. 

And we reckon the Tele should take a leaf out of Karl Stefanovic’s book and go the full mea culpa. Which, in case they’ve forgotten, goes like this: 

KARL STEFANOVIC: … I get it wrong, and yesterday I got it very wrong … 

I am an ignorant fool at times and my humour is skewed in a very strange fashion. I get it wrong. I probably always will. But as a result of yesterday, I truly have learned the lesson …

— Channel Nine, Today, 29 July, 2016

But the Tele learning a lesson is probably too much to hope.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4703174.htm

 

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