Any other outcome than the endorsement of Dutton by the Gold Coast Liberals would render the party not worthy of a vote across the country.
(Dutton lost).
The argument [on climate change] is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.”
I am very committed to my service to the people of Wentworth and I’ve got no plans to leave,
(on this, see JK Galbraith)
the fact is that you can articulate a position on climate change that does not dispute man’s contribution without buying into a complicated ETS,
John Quiggin 
The brain is an evolved computer whose programs were sculpted over time by ancestral environments and selection pressures experience by the hunter-gatherers from who we descended. Individual behaviour is generated by this computer, in response to information the person experiences. Although the behaviour these programs generate would, on average, have been adaptive in ancestral environments, there is no guarantee that it will be so now. Modern environments differ markedly from ancestral ones, especially social environments.
– Leda Cosmides
Interesting how this pans out, I heard there is a possibility for a couple of safe seats where the MP might be tapped on the shoulder…
As Peter Brent says, a 2010 election with Turnbull as leader will yield a 53/47 in favour of Labor and seats in the high 80s (88 he mentions). He also says, anyone but Turnbull (such as Abbott or Bishop), make it 54/46.
I think these are sound, but certainly are not party destroying stuff.
Mal will negotiate on the ETS, it will be passed with increased industrial protections we will go to Copenhagen and it will fail.
Does anyone listen to Milne anymore?
Hmm, I suppose I can’t do anything without a quote.
“The rich man was the innocent beneficiary of his own superiority. To the enjoyment of wealth was added the almost equal enjoyment which came with the knowledge that one had it because one was better.”
J.K. Galbraith’s The Age of Uncertainty
Tony Abbott says, “The argument [on climate change] is absolute crap.”
Apparently Tony Abbott knows more about climate change than all the leading scientists in the field. Mr Abbott refutes their position (which is based on empirical evidence and many of the known laws of physics which have been derived and devloped since about Newton’s time until the present day) by saying it’s “crap”.
Let’s apply Mr Abbott’s method to other areas of human endeavour.
1. Nuclear physics is crap. The bomb was just a fluke.
2. Medical science is crap. The fact that appropriate antibitotics stop bacteria is just a fluke.
3. Shakespeares works are crap. All the major critics are wrong and I’m right.
4. Beethoven’s music is crap. All the major critics are wrong and I’m right.
5. Einstein’s theory of relativity is crap. The fact that predictions made by theory have been verified empirically is also crap.
6. GENERAL RULE – Anything asserted in any field by the best minds in human history is crap. My own untutored prejudices count for far more and I have this magically powerful and dismissive word (crap) which I can use to prove to myself I am right about everything.
That, my friends is the level of Tony Abbott’s intellect. And that guy gets elected to parliament! Scarey isn’t it?
@Ikonoclast
“Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren’t worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It’s that simple.”
Ikonoklast, applying your own rule 6 to your own comment says that that is crap. For instance, for all you and I know Abbott has taken different expert advice and that remark of his is not his reasoning at all but his conclusion. I do know that Steve Fielding’s very similar position was arrived at in just that way. It might still be wrong, but it is not vacuous.
@Ikonoclast
Really – how much longer do people have to put with Mr People Skills?
Its really scary – Ill never forget the night he spoke hellfire and brimstone pro war Iraq rhetoric downloaded from US republican websites and read straight to the audience ( in North Sydney at a debate)…I wondered how, then, a man like that gets elected to parliament? There is not an eloquent bone in his body. Not even an Australian view. Not even a speech written beforehand (the lazy creature didnt fool anyone..).. John Vale ran absolute rings around Abbott
“(on this, see JK Galbraith)”.
This one? “Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists”?
@P.M.Lawrence
“For instance, for all you and I know Abbott has taken different expert advice”
While different advice might have yielded conclusions different from those of the experts, it would not thereby be “different expert advice”, unless you interpret “expert” to mean something other than “expert in climate science”. To confirm this you need only look at the Inhofe/Morano list of “dissenting scientists” which includes such prominent climate scientists as Jennifer Marohasy and Alan Moran.
At this point, the only ones deceived by this stuff are those who want to be deceived, a category which unfortunately includes most of the Liberal backbench. Abbott is reaching the point of cognitive dissonance where he realises that he would be much better off if he believed the experts than if he continued to accept the favoured myths of his tribe.
Alice writes: “John Vale ran absolute rings around Abbott.”
Wasn’t it John Valder, rather than John Vale?
PM Lawrence, all the experts agree on one issue that greenhouse gases endangers the public’s health and that should be sufficient for Australia to clean up its act.
PM Lawrence:
The liberal party are on the wrong side of:
-Public opinion.
-International political momentum.
-Science (more likely to be right that someone sucking facts out of the end of their finger)
-Nature (If the science is right that’s the killer; as it heats up they are going to look sillier).
Business (there is money to be made in going green)
and
-Country voters (farming is changing and the smart ones know there is money to be made converting carbon dioxide back to trees)
How can a political party be so dam stupid.
@P.M.Lawrence
I rather thought it was this one:
Rationalist, just a while ago one of the smart arses, Victorian Liberal Senator Mitch Fifield argued against any ETS amendments before Copenhagen on grounds there is not enough info as to ‘what a majority of nations intend to do’. What a lot of codswallop.
@robert
Yep
@Michael of Summer Hill
I am all for amendments but Copenhagen will fail.
@P.M.Lawrence
PM – both Tony and Fielding are VACUOUS. SO are the AGW denialists. OK OK I admit they are not VACUOUS. many of them are making a whole lotta money pushing the VACUOUS views – so maybe they are self interested, rather than VACUOUS. It doesnt matter, they are still WRONG.
@charles
because they ahve an ageing shrinking constituency and no young blood. Plus they ignore the young. Plus they just are stupid (cant help themselves…). JH did them in for street cred. Its gone.
@P.M.Lawrence
I dont recall the quote of Galbraith’s you made PM Lawrence (do you have a page no??)
What JK actually said was “conomists have a passion for refinement. It is also a useful form of employment. And the ability to know and understand refinements is our test of whether an economics student is a genius or only a near genius.”
Galbraith also noted (and this is not directed at you PM but just generally) that “the theory (neoclassical economics always glossed over the fact that the rich balanced their satisfactions at the margin with a lot more purchases than the poor.”
The idea of a geneal equilibrium was that of Walras (Ernestine knows this) (professor at Lausanne) – this system depended on the competition of many small fims and thus an uninhibited rule of the market – no-one had sufficient power tio control the price…
Fast forward. This no longer exists. We are teaching 19th and 20th century economics in the 21st century. Marx’s monopolising capitals have monopolised globally. The world has changed and the models are a century behind.
The Coalition is a rabble.
For all you believers out there: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/5389461/the-great-global-warming-scam-ctd.thtml
The more these stories come out, the more it begins to filter to people that climate change is not an issue. It is, but I think you are arguing the case poorly.
Rationalist, now give me your reasons as to why Copenhagen will fail.
I disagree P.M.L. Abbott’s position is clearly vacuous. The notion of “different expert advice” in the hard physical sciences is a nonsense. Climate science is physics and chemistry and nothing else. Admittedly, it is extremely complex, has an immense number of variables to take into account and is still a work in progress. Nonetheless, it belongs to the realm of hard science.
Those who think science is about seeking opinions are wrong. Science is about seeking real world evidence. I seem to recall that Steve Fielding took advice from the government scientist and other scientists expert in climate science. He then went away and sought other opinions. Clearly, he didn’t like the real world evidence presented by experts in the field so he sought others who would tell him what he wanted to hear.
The clear problem with people like Abbott and Fielding is that they are scientifically illiterate. They don’t understand what science is or how it works. They are also philosphically illiterate. They clearly don’t understand the basics of epistemology and they confuse belief with knowledge.
Dare I add, Abbott (despite his alledged education) is probably even theologically illiterate, both in the head and in the heart. Otherwise, he would show a little more humility, a little more sensitivity to others and a great deal more concern for stewardship of the earth.
SeanG, give me your reasons as to why the majority of scientists are wrong on global warming.
This article is about politics as a form of sport. It’s half time and despite the red team playing a rather ordinary game the blue team is down several points and losing badly. The score is all anybody really cares about when suddenly the blue captain starts swearing at his own team and now the crowd is egging for some biffo. What a day, what a game!!
@Michael of Summer Hill
I don’t think they are wrong – I think the policies are wrong and that is a problem of politicians.
“Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren’t worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It’s that simple.”
‘Fess up, you ripped this line off a creationist.
Ken: it’s a quote from a Nobel Prize Winner no less. Kary Mullis is a chemist with the genius to not only unveil the Great Global Warming Scam, but also the HIV Causes Aids Scam and the Conspiracy Against Astrology prevalent amongst many UN-sponsored so-called “scientists”. I suspect he could be The One to finally disprove the egregious myths of smoking-induced lung cancer and NASA moon landings.
@Ken Miles
“Global warmers predict that global warming is coming, and our emissions are to blame. They do that to keep us worried about our role in the whole thing. If we aren’t worried and guilty, we might not pay their salaries. It’s that simple.”
* Kary Mullis, Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
Is this person a creationist? I don’t know, nor do I care. I thought it was witty since so many people involved in this AGW thing rely on it for their income, such as JQ and others.
@Michael of Summer Hill
I think it will plausibly fail because politicians are negotiating it :).
To be honest, my blunt OP does not explain the situation well enough, it is more complex an issue. I think in the current circumstances, without a breakthrough of some kind (I don’t seem to see one happening, although I am not a mystic), the conference will fail to achieve anything meaningful. In turn, the Democrats will lose at least 3 or 4 Senate seats in 2010 and perhaps more in 2012 and the issue could be up shit creek for years to come.
Waxman Markey won’t get to 60 votes, it might die in committee, it could be carved to pieces if reconciled, the Parliamentarian may reject it completely. Nothing is happening without the US.
Then again, a breakthrough of some kind might occur and something more meaningful will then eventuate.
@Ken Miles
Oh no Ken – creationism eh…(how simply tragic).BTW Kary Mullis who was responsible for the quote is also an AIDS denier and (get this) an LSD enthusiast
I Mullis took one too many trips!!!
But wait for it – I can top that one…..Burger King Franchisees are supporting the denialists as well…
http://watchingthewatchers.org/article/17066/burger-king-franchises-try-sell-climate.
The world would be much less interesting without lunatics wouldnt it…???
@John Quiggin
So I have been told by former colleagues, Alan Moran’s great acomplishment when he was a public servant (and was in charge of regulation review) was to have food saftey deregulated along with the getting rid of food inspectors. Apparently, you don’t need these regs and regulators? Maybe it is a social darwinist view. The occassional bout of food poisoning will weed out the weak!
I am not sure what his ‘scientific’ qualifications are, unless, we economists are now classified as scientists? Maybe we should be making that claim? After all the Nobel is for ‘Economic Science’.
Friedman was another who didn’t think you needed food regs. The market solves these problems. For example, if you buy a defective parachute, after you use it you probably won’t buy a parachute from that place again, and they are likely to go out of business without the repeat trade, or so the argument goes.
The Ig Nobel’s have been awarded: http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2009/10/ig_nobels_hold.html
The Economics Ig Nobel
“Economics: The directors, executives, and auditors of four Icelandic banks — Kaupthing Bank, Landsbanki, Glitnir Bank, and Central Bank of Iceland — for demonstrating that tiny banks can be rapidly transformed into huge banks, and vice versa — and for demonstrating that similar things can be done to an entire national economy.”
My JK
“The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character building values of the privation of the poor.”
Worth his weight in gold.
@Freelander
says “Maybe it is a social darwinist view. The occassional bout of food poisoning will weed out the weak!”
Thats the whole problem I have with mindless deregulation EXACTLY like this. The weak can get sick and die as a result of someone elses shabby business practices and that will cure them. Someone tell me why we pay governmnets to be governments, if it is not to regulate business practices in a sensible fashion.
Call me old fashioned, but with de-regulation like this, the government itself is doing us more harm than good.
Here is another piece of mindless de-regulation Freelander. A relative of mine has worked many years for the Department of Health, monitoring the physiotherpists registration board. This board hunted down people who were illegally putting up shingles to say they were physiotherapists. Down back alleys they hunted and closed down people who were twisting other people’s appendages and backs with no training whatsoever. Now this board is to be privatised, effective nest year. Tell me what incentives a private sector organisation has to close down the shonks and illegal physiotherapists and to chase them down back alleys to close them down???
No, my guess is the new private physiptherpists registration board, will have little interest in anything but collecting registration fees on an annual basis from proper physiotherpaists.
Its like a union gone horribly wrong. Pay up for nothing.
Another case of mindless de-regulation. We have or we “had” these government controls for a good reason – to protect the general public from fraud but now it seems fraud, even in governments, has become acceptable.
Alice,
Maybe if you worked in the private sector you would see how soul destroying regulation can be!
@Alice
Friedman argued that such shonks shouldn’t be regulated at all. He claimed that the market would sort it out. Apparently though, there is a neck cracking manoeuvre that some manipulators, whose training is not science based, like to do that runs the risk of a person dropping dead a day or two later. Conveniently, not at the partitioner’s premises. The problem with cracking someone’s neck is that there is a large blood vessel that is wrapped around the spine at the neck and if you crack someone’s neck you stand a reasonable chance of creating a tear in this vessel. A day or two latter the tear can open up with a quick loss of blood or the tear can provide a good site for clotting to form. When a clot breaks off it provides a different way to depart.
As for unionism, a couple of the strongest unions are the medical union and the pharmacists’ union. Given that you need very little training to do what pharmacists do which is take the box specified by the prescription off the shelf and put a typed sticker on it, why do you need to be trained a pharmacist at all. Once apon a time you did need the training. Back when pharmacists made the potions. Now you don’t. In third world countries, so I have been told, you don’t need any pharmacist training to do the same.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124001085271530767.html
The longer the recession lasts, the more each natural disaster is attributed to “catastrophic climate change” and the longer politicians are focused solely on an ETS and this type of article will become more and more prominant and precipitate a change in public opinion.
@Freelander
says “Friedman argued that such shonks shouldn’t be regulated at all. He claimed that the market would sort it out”.
Friedman is part of the freaking problem. The market does NOT SORT IT OUT.
Id rather have my pharmacists trained bso they know what dosages the doctores SHOULD NOT be prescribing. Pharamcists were always a double check.
As for Friedman – he can go to an unregulated retirement home where the food is crap and teh care just as unregulated….its a shame he id dead and he cant experience the rest of his life in a place like that…
Im over Friedman. A MUCH over rated economist who set himself up to challenge the greatest economist of this century,,,,but in the end, his challenge has failed miserably.
spelling is shocking …sorry
@Alice
Agreed. I would like to have seen Friedman and his ilk ship-wrecked on a desolate island where they open up the box of emergency provisions, etc., and find nothing but vouchers entitling the bearer to all sorts of useful things, backed by the issuer, which can be exchanged for those goods with any provider they choose. Maybe this would be their first experience of market failure?
@Freelander
Sounds exactly like the “market sorting it out view” that Friedman helped create…a a box of useless transactional promises on a desert island for a market with nothihng to sell and no public sector agency to set up a search party. Sounds a good end for Friendman and ilk to me Freelander. Let them experience the unkind psychotic market at its worst first hand…but Ill bet Friedman never minded getting paid lots to write economic theory for the wealthy who advocated the character building values of the privation of the poor (as long as it wasnt the wealthy stranded on the desert island of course).
Friedman was a conservative who lent his economic skills to other conservatives. He did not work for mankind.
Alice. Most economists, even the really left-wing ones, have a lot of respect for Friedman even if they disagree with his views. People who call Friedman names and say he was an idiot and didn’t care about the poor (he very clearly did) look silly to economists on all sides of the debate.
@Joseph Clark
Joseph. I dont like being misquoted, misinterpreted or misprepresented and you have managed at least two of those three. What I said was, Friedman was a conservative who lent his skills to other conservatives and he dedicated most of his career to furthering the conservative cause. Thats reasonably well known Joseph.
I said Friedman was a much over rated economist. This is a comment… not “calling Friedman names” Joseph. There is a difference, and no one here called him an idiot (but dont tempt me Joseph).
@Joseph Clark
Nonsense. I am not left-wing and I am not alone in thinking that Friedman was extremely silly. He wasn’t an idiot, but he was an excellent sophist. He was great at debating and had a reputation for making up facts to support his position. His convoluted nonsense arguments did have some artistry. A good example was his essay “The Methodology of Positive Economics” which was quite rightly ridiculed when it first came out by Paul Samuelson, and less astringently by Herbert Simon and Ernest Nagel. Nevertheless, this essay became much read and has misled generations of young economists and encouraged them to engage is similar silliness. His Magnum Opus, “Free to choose”, is one of the silliest books I have ever read. It is a riot. That said, it would be unfair to characterise everything he did or said as totally vacuous. Work on the consumption function wasn’t too bad although the PIH seems wrong. Dusenberry’s theory, although not as elegant and hence ignored, is probably a more accurate characterisation. Also, there is nothing wrong with the Friedman test. Maybe he should have stuck to statistics?
@Joseph Clark
I will also suggest Joseph – you get yourself a ciopy of “free to choose” – the much feted book by Friedman and if it takes you longer than a day or two to read it, I will be amazed. Thats how long it took me and to say I was underwhelmed is an overstatement.
@Freelander
You are making my point. I’m not sure if you are an economist but you display some understanding and respect for Friedman’s work, though you disagree with it.
I’m not sure how many people would agree that FTC could be called Friedman’s ‘Magnum Opus’.
@Alice
I didn’t like FTC when I read it many years ago. I thought it was completely wrong. But it challenged my ideas and made me think. I remember having arguments with people who agreed with Friedman at the time.
Friedman is not overrated either in his work or in his influence. Indeed, when it comes to influential economists Friedman is right up there with JM Keynes, Adam Smith and David Ricardo.
@Joseph Clark
Who are the left-wing economists who have a lot of respect for Friedman?
For some reason I can’t get the name Pinochet and the term “Chicago School” out of my head when I hear of Friedman.