From Elsewhere:
Look Bjorn. Why hasn’t the Copenhagen Consensus moved on? You cannot just lock in the first position you come to (which one has to admit appeared reasonable at first.) You know now that this CO2 is underwhelming as to its effects if indeed it does warm anything. Yet your organisation is still running the turn of the century triangulation as if the CO2 could hurt our remote descendants. Where is the evidence for this?
There is no excuse for your position now Bjorn. Or the position of your organisation. Now do you want to be a Professor or not. Because if you are not serious about it there is still time to pack away your books and make good in some sort of less serious undertaking. Since no-one is going to take a think-tank, or a Professor who triangulates with these goons seriously any more.
Committed Intellectual? Or Transplanted Male Model?
I’ve watched all your stuff on video thats available. And what used to seem like commonsense now seems like a betrayal. Its like a comment that Sugar Ray made about his memories of Michael Spinx when they were on the team training for the Olympics. He said he was a bit strange because he would set you up for the the big punch but then he wouldn’t throw it.
You whip these guys on every constituent part of their argument but then you sign onto their goals? Thats alright for you in academia if you want to be a smarty-pants about it. Supposing you kept your job, (and if it was up to me the triangulaters would get sacked in the first wave) you will be able to look after yourself and your family no matter what. But thats not the case for billions of people.
ARTISTIC SHOT: “LOVE IS HIDING BEHIND EVERY TREE”
Pleasing The Babes? Or The Greenies? The Picture Is Called "Love Hides Behind Every Tree"
IS HE PITCHING TO THE BABES OR APPEASING THE GREENS. BECAUSE HE’S ALLOWED HIS ADMITTEDLY PATH-BREAKING ACT TO FALL INTO POLICY DRIFT AND DECREPITUDE.
We have global food shortages out there. And it looks like fresh water will be a problem in a lot of places. You know full well the science says that, in economic terms, that industrial-CO2-release is a POSITIVE EXTERNALITY.
So what is going on here?
I expect you to set things right in your next meeting. Don’t take no for an answer from the neoclassical economist lunatics. These guys are all Sado-Pigouvian. And the new idea you have of sponsoring solar research stinks of neoclassical economics modelling quackery.
Don’t go to Copenhagen pretending that the alarmists aren’t frauds and incompetents. Or that industrial-CO2 isn’t the best dumb luck the human race ever had. The nightmare of sending faux-scientists to Copenhagen still reverberates around the world. The last time a bunch of bonehead science-workers showed up in Copenhagen we wound up stuck with the idea that a cat can be both dead and alive at the same time.
Everyone can change their mind. Your institution has to change its mind. It has to admit that it was wrong.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Its unbecoming of one man to hassle another for having looks, brains and personality. And clearly Bjorn has all the above. What is more his position was my default position. Embarrassingly enough I can remember thinking about a carbon tax in 1990. So its worse than the above. My position was the Humphreys position as terrible as it is to admit as much. But time has moved on. It might be in the way of things that human institutions reinforce their mistakes. If Bjorn had been twenty years older he would have known by the time this gig rolled around that the environmentalist movement were committed liars. His response to what he perceived to be genuine concerns from well-meaning people has to be seen as really quite brilliant……. THEN.
But what we are seeing now is policy-drift. He ought to have sorted out by now that we are dealing with a seriously wicked array of forces. He might have been too young to catch that at first but he’s all grown up now. And he’s got to decide whether he wants to be a rock star or whether he wants to get serious.
A Better World: Graeme Bird For High Office 
Yes, he is very pretty. Which makes his job so much easier than Lee Rhianon’s, or the dancing eyeballs of Lord Monckton.
By: Peter Patton on March 12, 2011
at 5:24 am
Check this out Patton. Here is Daddy Dave moonwalking backwards out the door in the face of evidence-free leftist anti-science whining.
” …..not just inconsistency, Steve. You can accept all the scientific claims, and still there’s no case for going it alone.
Okay, so climate change is on. What good will a carbon tax or ETS do? And why is this worse than adapting? Because Al Gore had some scary maps of coastal flooding?…..”
What do you think Patton? Now that Bjorn is in town is Dave attempting to be his “special friend”?
I often check Catallaxy out. Its a kind of twisted-sister-site. And I notice that you sometimes ask economics questions, you never get a straight, full and honest answer ……..
…… Channeling Vito I might say “Why did you go to Catallaxy in the first place? Had you asked me you would have the best answers that very day.”
By: graemebird on March 13, 2011
at 5:00 am
Must say that Bjorn does nothing for me. He looks like a gormless cow’s hoof. NTTIAWWT.
Now here’s a sexy man (in the same general issues ballpark) with a very sexy voice to boot and twinkly, kind, intelligent eyes. And did I mention a GSOH? And that he has hard, not soft hands.? Very important to a woman.
By: Philomena on March 13, 2011
at 5:58 am
Unfortunately he’s an idiot, a whore, and a sellout.
By: graemebird on March 13, 2011
at 9:13 am
No, he is none of those things. You’ve quite wrong about that and being silly.
By: Philomena on March 13, 2011
at 9:37 am
No good Philomena. Promoting treasonous charlatans like Flim Flammery, is as bad as running down matyred heroes like Joe McCarthy.
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 5:22 am
You use of the the world treason is a category error when applied to the gentle and genial Flannery and his work, and therefore can be dismissed for that reason from the start.
Flannery is not a charlatan, he is a scientist and historian, someone who cares about the big environmental issues and what hangs on their resolution or amelioration for the viable future of this country and its inhabitants.
He is an effective populariser of crucial environmental messages about practical issues of water use, biodiversity, species depletion, land use, etc. You might not agree with him but that is not relevant to the fact that he plays an important role in raising these issues.
Some of what he has said about the ancient past is not proven and is challenged by others, i.e. that indigenous people themselves wiped out the mega-faunas. When he first came on the scene he put a lot of other scientists’ noses out of joint because he was speaking outside his academic specialty. That cuts no ice with me. As John Ralston Saul and others have explained very well, specialisation is a way of silencing people and leaving unscrutinised what the so-called experts would like to see as intellectual closed shops. In the end it’s anti-knowledge and profoundly undemocratic.
Specialisation also inevitably makes people more stupid and to the extent that education at the highest level encourages that, it is a very bad thing for the overall culture, knowledge base and critical thinking capacity of not only academia but society as a whole.
As for McCarthy, I’ve never attacked him or criticised him to you in writing. But you know my views.
But why is it (or perhaps I’m wrong, if so tell me, but it’s my not uninformed impression) that every depiction of him in US literature and film has been overwhelmingly negative and that the consensus today amongst the US intelligentsia is that his role was overwhelmingly negative for democracy, freedom, and even the stability and security of the US itself?
By: Philomena on March 14, 2011
at 6:01 am
“Mc Carthy accused the army of promoting known communist sympathisers. This was not true. They were promoted under draft provisions he voted for.”
Mark Hill. Lets have your quote. What exactly are you claiming. Why would you assume he was wrong on this matter when his track record had been so good?
By: graemebird on March 13, 2011
at 5:52 pm
“Not guilty of what they were executed for. ”
Mark you are lying. And McCarthy had nothing to do with these people. Just slow down, accept your logic deficit, and tell me what your problem with McCarthy is.
By: graemebird on March 13, 2011
at 5:54 pm
Philomena. You cannot get away from the fact that global warming is a clear and transparent case of science fraud. Flim Flammery is promoting this fraud. He is therefore, without any doubt, and by definition, a charlatan. And he is a conman, who is doing this for money. And now worst of all for taxpayer money.
In sober reality Tim is an out-of-shape and ungainly dweeb. But the female of the species always has a soft spot for the apex predator. Nature will not be fooled.
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 6:07 am
Out of shape? Well if he is, wtf does that have to do with anything?
So for everyone who at some point of their lives is “out of shape” that means their views may be rejected and their entire character and life’s work must be considered flawed and despicable? Graeme, this is a ridiculous argument and you know it. Besides, he is an attractive man right now and probably always will be.
I don’t think the climate science is a fraud. And since you can’t prove it is false then your accusations of anti-science are themselves let us say anti-scientific not to mention hypocritical themselves.
I don’t wish to debate climate change science with you as you are biased. And that is a very poor starting point for dispassionate inquiry.
There is a slight chance things might not pan out the way the majority of scientists predict, but I wouldn’t want in all conscience to be on the side of those who urge do nothing, or claim – when they cannot know or prove this themselves – this is now problem, as described. For me that would be a profoundly personally irresponsible and unethical course of action.
Recognising the possibility at least of the projected outcomes being realised, in not the far distant future but a couple of decades, is on balance, the first necessary step. And from that further steps are dictated. What to do about it is the debate. And I’d note that even the Liberal Party accepts the science of climate change.
By: Philomena on March 14, 2011
at 6:26 am
“I don’t think the climate science is a fraud. And since you can’t prove it is false ”
But I can. Billions of dollars spent and no evidence. Were CO2 a powerful agent of warmth retention this would show up clearly in the record. It doesn’t show up at all. Ever. Not now or at any time in the past. Except for the fact that objectively it looks like a long-term NEGATIVE influence if you compare the ice core and temperature graphs.
Thats it, thats the proof. We don’t know for sure whether the effect is positive or negative. We know for a fact that either way the effect is tiny AT OUR AIR PRESSURE.
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 6:38 am
From elsewhere:
Is it really too much to ask that we be quits with the Orwellain language and the gratuitous stupidity?
I don’t think its too much to ask!!!
“Your comment is a little worrying. You completely disregard the facts of the matter (climate change is happening, it threatens our survival)…..”
You moderators are to blame here. You let this rubbish through so that we are oppressed by this Orwellian idiocy endlessly.
Your irresponsibility, and refusal to do your job, does nothing to enhance debate.
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 6:10 am
The deeply ignorant and incurable Keynesian ……. Sinclair Davidson:
“My initial view would be that corporations should not hold too much cash.* Lazy balance sheets and all that. So a number coming out of the US looks troubling at first glance….. “
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 6:25 am
Moderated elsewhere:
“Has Australian politics ever been more depressing?”
Never. So you guys are feeling it too? Democracy has descended into a racket. Only hyper-cantonisation can save it.
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 6:52 am
Greame, have you ever seen such a complete and utter grub and nong in Australian politics than this creep?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cory_Bernardi
By: Philomena on March 14, 2011
at 7:42 am
Oh come on Philomena. I’ve never heard of him. But surely you would see him as a reasonable specimen?
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 7:52 am
Specimen is an odd choice of words. You mean as in blood or urine sample for the purposes of diagnosis? Or perhaps as in insect?
Look, women don’t think of men (other than perhaps momentarily in weak moments, as specimens). There’s so much more needed to factor in whether a man is attractive or not and believe it or not physical attributes can play little role when other more important attributes overwhelm: such as intelligence, wit, humour, kindness, courage, resourcefulness, etc.
This guy is the force behind Menzies House blog apparently. He is Abbott’s parliamentary secretary. He doesn’t appear to be at all cultured or bright and is at last count, homophobic, anti-semitic, racist, and anti-Muslim. In other words a bigoted nasty grub. I’d bet he is a patriarchal misogynist too.
And as for his physical features. Bland as. No-one home.
And the photo. Taken from below looking up. The guy is a meglo. Thinks he is a living statue. As if.
By: Philomena on March 14, 2011
at 8:16 am
Right.
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 8:25 am
108. Graeme Bird Says:
March 10th, 2011 at 10:34 am
You are talking nonsense Phillip. Yes a close-by supernova will indeed lead to a series of catastrophic events. This is not only bad information you are giving out here. Its irresponsible, since we humans need to invest ahead of catastrophic events.
You are capable of testing this:
I think you will find that every supernova visible to the naked eye came from the same shockwave that caused Vela. Prove that interpretation wrong and you may have a case.
By: graemebird on March 14, 2011
at 8:04 am