One of the weird things about Brisbane the last few days has been how some large areas of the city are pretty much untouched, though people’s lives are disrupted in all sorts of ways, with the CBD closed down, many workplaces shut, bread and milk shortages, and, obviously, in many instances, helping out family and friends who’ve been worse affected. Other areas – still not under water – are ghost towns as most people have left as the power went off. Access to media and communications is also differential. Yet, wherever people are, I think there has been a good and co-operative mood, in general, and most folks have been very impressed by the quality of leadership from Anna Bligh, Campbell Newman and Mayor Paul Pisasale in Ipswich.
As noted at Grog’s Gamut, though, the Tony Abbotts of the world couldn’t resist getting in a few political jibes from fairly early on. That’s disappointing, and the best thing opposition leaders and spokespeople really can do in these sorts of circumstances is keep their heads down and get on with giving some practical help. Abbott is probably lucky that no one much, as far as I can tell, in Brisbane has been thinking about politics. No doubt Anna Bligh will reap a political dividend, but that’s precisely because of the leadership and humanity she’s been showing, not the usual marketing speak of the spinmeisters.
But the usual suspects nationally just can’t help themselves, sadly: Witness this and today’s round of cheap shots at Kevin Rudd.
There really is a difference of perspective going on here, I think, with uninformed criticisms being made on some blogs and by some commentators about alleged deficiencies in warning systems and disaster response in Withcott, Grantham and Toowoomba. Those who want to seize upon anything as evidence of “government mismanagement” really need to reflect on the fact that I’m sure the vast majority of Queensland residents feel that the state – and community – responses have been measured, appropriate and well organised.
Elsewhere: Unrelated to the topic of political discourse, but there’s a neat little post from blue milk at Hoyden on West End, and an amazing image of the flood sculpture at the Brisbane powerhouse at the ABC.
Elsewhere: At Crikey, discussion of the related topic of calls for a Royal Commission.
No mention of LNP’s ‘flood the Wivenhoe dam’ on this “Catallaxy Files” teabagger blog?
Come on Kim, don’t be so uncharitable. If it were bushfires they would have been greeny-bashing while the fire-fighting was still going on. Taking two days to get the narrative in place is positively respectful from this mob of scumbags.
This is a great idea for a thread Kim. I’m glad someone is trying to nip that rubbish in the bud. There are towns still mourning FFS, Mr Ackerman.
Well, if Sinclair Davidson and Joe Cambria want to put their prints on Stalin’s policies in the 1920s and 1930s, and Mao’s policies in the 1950s and 1960s, they do so at their own risk.
I just posted a comment which might set the cat among the pigeons. I’m astonished it was published.
I hope most people will see those cheap shots for what they are and judge their authors accordingly. Dolt & co have been leading the RW douche bag charge, apparently.
Really?
I won’t be putting money on any “political benefit” for Bligh.
See Brumby, J., “Black Saturday”, 2009.
Plus they’re a fairly rough-and-tumble crowd at Catallaxy. You may find that you’re the pigeon amongst the cats.
Elsewhere: At Crikey, discussion of the related topic of calls for a Royal Commission.
Yes but, HC
1. Brumby was slated to win fairly comnfortably until about the last 10 days of the campaign. For all we know he lost despite getting assistance from Black Saturday
2. I’m not sure Black Saturday played all that well for him anyway. There was controversy about the adequacy and timeliness of warnings, inter-service cooperation, and of course surrounding Ms Nixon.
At this stage, the situation in QLD seems to be playing well for Bligh. She currently appears to be on top of the brief and fully engaged without sounding like a compassion-bypassed technocrat. She’s saying and emoting the right things and playing the Queenslander card very strongly. This is all good from an authenticity POV. Not a few coalition types are saying nice things. (In fact, even Rudd managed a positive mention.) For the first time, she really looks like the Premier.
What this will look like come 2012 is another matter entirely of course, but it’s hard to escape the view that this will be a net boost for the Queensland ALP and by extension, the Federal ALP since QLD was where the Feds did worst. Being able to run a second stimulus package under the slogan “rebuilding QLD” won’t hurt them at all and will narrow the scope for Abbott to carp without significant risk. Given that much of the building will be in the SE corner, some of the benefits will spill over into northern NSW, which won’t hurt them the Feds there either so you have to think that Gillard will be generous.
Something I’ve noticed: the persistent tendency not just in the MSM but also in the blogosphere to compare Bligh’s response with Gillard’s, and, by some unnoticeable elision, Bligh the person with Gillard ditto (“human” v. “wooden” etc etc gag), as though it were a competition. (Grog notes this, and is good on why it’s silly; see the same post Kim links to.)
Hello, boys, Patriarchy 101: pitting women against each other to compete for your approval is the oldest trick in the book. Did any of them make these sorts of comparisons between J Brumby and K Rudd in the summer of 2009? I sure as hell don’t remember seeing any of this sort of nonsense back then.
But Fran! All that rebuilding will require a GREAT BIG TAX! And insulation workers will die in roofs!
How an opposition responds to things like this can really destroy them. Remember Latham and the Tsunami? Very bad look…
HC, I think the floods will work in a different way than the Victorian bushfires, in that the latter were mainly over in a day. Whereas with these floods Bligh able been able to supply leadership informing the population what was going on, on a two hour basis for days on end. In Victoria, public leadership could only occur after the event.
Two points
Firstly, I just saying wait and see with Bligh and any rise in her popularity. After the disaster comes the recovery, and that is when people start getting angry, either rightly or wrongly. Much too early to tell.
Secondly, the stuff about Gillard is a beat up. Plenty out there to criticise her for other than how she goes at a presser next to the Premier.
Theres no doubt that Bligh has milked this for all money. And it’s got her back in the game, no doubt about it. But hey, thats what Premiers can do. Whether it will be enough or close enough to the election remains to be seen.
Did any of them make these sorts of comparisons between J Brumby and K Rudd in the summer of 2009?
Yes, from my recollection.
HC @7 Maybe, but the nature of the disasters is different.
Bligh was visible and vocal before, during and after the flood hit Brisbane and Brumby didn’t have that chance. I seem to remember people in the media (tho who I can’t remember) saying that all this fuss about what became Black Saturday was overreaction – its always hot in summer in Australia etc- in the days leading up to it.
In this case in the days leading up to the flood Bligh got lots of coverage and was able to use it to effectively deliver messages.
How the recovery works will be important in peoples perception of her overall tho.
At Black Saturday people felt let down, and maybe there’s some justification for that, despite the impossibility of the situation on the ground. That may have influenced the way the whole situation panned out.
So far she looks good, and trustworthy, If she can maintain that through the recovery and associate herself with it being successful then perhaps if the recovery stretches beyond the election people will associate her with a continuity of the successful recovery.
If she does well then the natliberals will have to attack the recovery. If they make that look obvious then in the lead up to the election it could hurt them alot.
I had a chance to compare the coverage from the OZ and Courier Mail today on the floods. It was obvious that there were two separate floods in two separate states called Qld. I live in the CM Qld. Not sure where the OZ Qld is.
The OZ was had headline “Bligh’s tough people need a tough inquiry”. The lead story was all about beating up a sensible comment from Newman into something it wasn’t.
The black Saturday inquiry was allowed to become a witch hunt driven by people who didn’t have a clue about the reality of major emergencies. Hope Qld doesn’t make the same mistake.
PC @ 11.
FWIW, Gillard did exactly what you’d expect from someone in her position and she did it well. That sort of leadership is actually really important too. I can imagine Abbott charging in and telling everyone what to do (tho to his credit he was absent while the important stuff happened, well I didn’t see him in the MSM. I noticed cos of the relief…)
This is Bligh’s show and to a lesser extent Campbell Newmans.
There ain’t much else Gillard can do other than show up, be seen in the background obviously paying her respects and showing her support for everyone. The one thing she can do – provide the necessary resources, well she did that, clearly.
It would be easy for a PM to get in the way here and stuff up the response to what is, by any standards, an immense logistical problem.
I’m not that up on feminism issues (really) and I dunno if I want to be. One that is clear tho is that the treatment of Gillard by the Australian main stream media is appallingly sexist.
If she was a man there is no way people would even frame issues the way they do.
Brumby undoubtedly got political benefit from his handling of the crisis. It’s just that it wasn’t sustained enough to save him.
There’s a good chance that the same will be true for Bligh, but it’s a slightly different situation to “no benefit”.
She’ll abdicate before the next Qld election,to whom, i’m not sure.
definitely not Paul Lucas.
You still read Catallaxy, Kim? That’s soooooooo 2008.
Yes Pav @ 11. It would be simply impossible to have two women in Australia at the same time who are good leaders. Simply could not happen. Therefore, one of them must be a bad leader.
@22 – Heh!
@11 – Dr Cat, too right. And all over Twitter too.
Right on Pavlov and Jules.
Exactly what I was saying to my hubby whilst in the car and listening to yet another critique of Bligh and Gillard.
I think they are handling it exactly as leaders in this situation should. Gillard understands that it’s not “all about me” and I love that she is making the space for her colleague to lead.
Three. You’re forgetting Keneally.
Brumby squandered his fire benefit by hanging on to Nixon way past her use by date.
@25 – yep, Starling. The primary responsibility for coordinating disaster response, communications, rebuilding, etc. is with the Queensland Premier and Council Mayors and leaders. Feds really just help with dosh and moral support, and making some facilities (eg military) available. Julia is playing exactly the role she should be.
One can only shudder to think what an interventionist meddling PM might have messed up in this circumstance.
“So far she looks good, and trustworthy.”
For the record so does Campbell Newman for exactly the same reasons.
Quite right Jules. When I have seen both of them on stage together there is a very strong impression of mutual respect and a will to co-operate. Hope the poison press doesn’t succeed in interfering with this.
Perhaps what we’re seeing here is the Nixon effect. It’s characterised by a pathological fear of being accused of “not being available”. The remedy is to be constantly commenting on every aspect of the unfolding drama. Whether it’s praising your fellow provincials or trying to explain some feat of engineering the main thing is to keep going. In Bligh’s case it appears to have set in with a vengeance. She seems to be at the point of a nervous breakdown and has slipped into some sort of stream of consciousness otherworld or perhaps Waterworld.
Having said that at least Bligh’s marathon has some point to it unlike Abbott’s election “stay-up-a-really-long-time” stunt. Wanker.
@11
I hate to be a pedant (well not really) but the MSN is not entirely made up of males. And I’d be more concerned with the choice of simple binary narrative over analysis/reportage before I start worrying about the gender issues.
@26
Four, what about the GG?
Jane @ 5
I read that thread – looks like a mob of angry retired geezers venting their anger about the ‘system’. I blame their parents for this – obviously they were not taught manners when young.
Perhaps that site should be called Cataplexy.
Quite a juxtaposition those catallaxy posts – lamemting the nanny state, and the state has failed to do enough to prevent floods!
There’s ideology and then there’s taking any opportunity to give your perceived ideological foes a kick.
No, of course it’s not. Would you like me to change ‘Hello, boys’ to ‘Hello, people’ or is it something else you’re objecting to? Being biologically female does not guarantee that one understands gender bias, nor does it exempt one from being a sexist porker. Need I say “Miranda Devine”, “Janet Albrechtsen” or “Angela Shanahan”?
In this case the one is determining the other, which was my point, and even if it wasn’t, why does it have to be either/or? Besides, I was simply observing what I was seeing, not making up trivia like ‘the gender issues’ simply in order to irritate teh poor menz.
Regarding Kenneally, there’s no reason for her to have a media presence on the subject of the Qld floods, is there? And therefore no excuse to compare her with Bligh and/or Gillard. Besides, binary constructions are far more powerful when your mission is to make one half look bad.
Sorry, I’m a little confused. Enlighten me please.
I realise the left in general and this blog in particular are irony free zones. But does absolutely nobody think that there is something of an inconsistency between the premise of this thread – the appalling nature of “political cheap shots” (which is to say what others might describe as legitimate questions about how and why a disaster of this magnitude could happen in Australia in the 21st century) – and the premise of the recent thread (and forgive me that I haven’t read the entirety of 700 comments of self-indulgent, mutual backslapping) on the Arizona shooting, which is that cheap shots blaming political opponents for a disaster, while the bodies are still warm and the motivation unknown, are not just legitimate but obligatory?
Actually when I think about it I can answer my own question. Political shots are never cheap when they target the right. And any questions ever asked of the left – do you guys really think that issues such as the role and number of dams, or development planning practices, under a government that has been in power for more than 12 years, should just be swept under the carpet? – are dismissable as cheap political shots, no further discussion required.
Oh, and Jane, I do so empathise. You were very brave to venture into the lion’s den. No-one of course could have expected you to stick around and provide facts to answer the responses to you. That would be so un-LP.
But why should you be expecting (?hoping for?) consistency, Michael?
Wozza has a realisation…
No, Wozza. You are incorrect, perhaps you were thinking about some other blog?
Er its flooding in NSW too. Its been declared a disaster area twice since Christmas where I live.
Kenneally has been drowned out in the understandable shock at the power and size of the Queensland floods. And the media’s response. Especially wrt to the Toowoomba event.
She has been out there and pretty much doing as well as anyone, tho there isn’t a lot for her to do. The NSW floods are no where as devastating to the infrastructure and population as Qld’s have been.
Great response Joe. Compeletely annihilates my point.
I am humbled.
Yes, Wozza, you are confused.
Looking at the very real voilent political rhetoric (particularly the gun references) within the US and wondering what role it may play in people shooting policticians, seems a very reasonable exercise.
Using the floods (while the search for bodies is still on and the water is still rising) to push your anti-green / pro-dam agenda , ala Tony Abbott, is the epitome of cheap political point scoring.
Mum said:
The shorter Michael: “er, yes Wozza, it works exactly the way you thought it did.”
And Joe, I think you have misjudged the strength of whatever it is you are currently on. A good lie down and you might even make sense in the morning. Relatively speaking of course.
SG @12, not to mention the fires!
John D @30, they’ll do their level best.
marks @35, lol!
Wozza:
Joe:
Indeed, this is not an irony free zone. The air is thick with irony.
Oh Wozza, why even call this opinion?!! Right again! My drug addled brain thought you were just acting childish. You sack of spasming neurons, you…
@37
“In this case the one is determining the other, which was my point, and even if it wasn’t, why does it have to be either/or?”
Because if you continue to view every-effing-thing through your narrow gender politics lens you’re just gonna become a bore. For xs sake broaden your agenda.
OK, I think I’ve got a handle on Wozza-Logic;
That here, cheap political shots are only seen to be taken by the right, and that talk about the current Qld govt and dams (or lack of) is not a cheap shot at the moment, while talking of Palin and violent conservative rhetroic in the US is, and how the apparent irony of this is lost on us LP’ers, all without the slightest hint of irony or inconsistency.
PC,
re Keneally. I’ve always thought her, for want of a better word, charismatic – ie is some-one having charisma. Being in NSW I haven’t seen heaps of Bligh, but this week she has certainly been very impressive. Gillard can be quite charismatic in Parliament, but outside the chamber she loses it for some reason or other. My inclusion of Keneally was as a successful woman politician, in terms of her impact on the public. Similarly with Bligh. Gillard, as much as I like her, doesn’t have the power of either of them.
Can someone direct Patrickb to Sexist Bullshit Bingo? I think he’s just won quite a lot of money.
I can remember Brumby on the radio on the Wednesday before the fire telling people to evacuate early because the fire index was predicted to be 530+ when 100 is extreme. I was so impressed I modified my weekend activities.
However Victorians had become very complaisant about bushfires and holiday home owners travelled to their holiday houses because if a house is empty it is not a priority to save.
The bushfire was all over in 24 hours but the flood just rolls on and on. After that fire people became aware of how vulnerable their property is or how congested their access road is and will evacuate early
@38
“No-one of course could have expected you to stick around and provide facts to answer the responses to you. That would be so un-LP.
As I read that thread at Catallazy the main point was: Bligh and Swan and Shorten had ‘threatened’ the insurance industry, and were demanding that the insurance industry pay out to people who were uninsured.
Others provided the Facts and quotes to show that no such demands were made.
So what further ‘facts’ were required?
However, the presentation of facts had the following effect:
*Quick regroup by the Catallaxettes*
Now, it was proposed that the mention of the need for compassion etc was actually a threat to the insurance companies, which meant that they were supposed to pay out to those uninsured. Whew! Original proposition that the nasty left were unjustly forcing the insurance companies to pay out to uninsured people is now restored to status of correctness.
Those the sort of ‘facts’ being talked about?
I suppose that pointing out that the combined resources of the insurance industry worldwide are vastly greater than the Qld Government would not be accepted at Catallaxy? Or that those forces would in all likelihood be mobilised against the Qld Government if it tried to make the insurance companies pay to the uninsured? After all large chunks of that risk would have been re-insured overseas, and hence the insurance industry world wide would have skin in that particular game.
Trouble is, the evidence from that thread is that at Catallaxy, facts do not mean anything unless they reinforce the particular point of view of the Catalleptics. The whole point of the thread at Catallaxy was to nitpick everything that Bligh and Gillard did, to ignore the sterling efforts made through the crisis, and the suffering of the flood victims, just so they could find some plausible line to criticise, and then hammer. That is merely a page out of Bullying 101.
Pointing that out, of course, was the point of this thread.
@55
Pooh to you with knobs on.
Sorry, @54, you know who you are …
I nominate Patrickb for the silliest blog comment in 2011. The wimmenz are talking about gender. Let me tell you what you must talk about. You must amuse me and my superpowerful menz brain, wimmenz.
marks @56, I hadn’t read wozza’s comment until later, but you’ve said everything I would have and far better.
I didn’t think it could get any worse but seriously, reading the latest lot of postings on Akerman’s blog you really do need to wonder about the agenda here.
It’s quite beyond sick. These people are seriously deranged.
I really think Insiders has something to answer to if this man continues to get a gig on the program.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/blighs_human_touch_strikes_a_chord/P120/#commentsmore
As a general point, the floods really show the benefits of well funded, well resourced government.
Imagine how utterly useless the private sector would be in forming a state-wide response to a disaster like this.
Connex to the rescue!
@59,
Well done Fine. I fully accept the idea that wimmenz do have a unique position from which to criticise the dominant ideology. However in this case it’s not about male mud-wrestling fantasies. The pathetically shallow reporting is driven by the unceasing and ever more desperate quest for binary oppositions. I think you’ll find the same practice in news stories where both nominal protagonists are male as someone above pointed out in the case of the Brumby/Rudd opposition. To my mind this is far more pervasive and damaging. It’s a free country, PC and fellow travelers, good luck staying within the bounds of your chosen academic critical sub-genre.
I also think that the last thing we need right now is 100 op/eds and a million blog comments saying Julia Gillard is “robotic” and silly comparisons with Anna Bligh. I don’t think much of this stuff is coming from Queenslanders…
Bolt et al should also shut up in general imo.
@ 64 Mark
Quite so. But how do we get him an offer he just cznt refuse? There are big cities out there baby (per Austin Powers)
Fascinated, we need to tell him it’s his brains or his signature on the agreement to STFU.
DDI(nr): How would he recognise which was which?
Brains is the stuff he dips his pen in.
I do not think Gillard is a “bad leader”, in fact the reverse. I remain a very strong supporter. I do think that having women in charge is a great thing as well, but I do think he Julia has been on a bit of a script and it shows, badly. Which is s shame, she’s better without one. I have not seen any of the wingnuts mentioned above talking like this so my apols if I sound like one!! I don’t read ‘em and I don’t have TV…so I am not saying this from some right wing position. Mostly only been listening to radio on the floods, but caught a brief moment of Julia on chanel 7 round at a chums house and it was awful I thought. That bad. She really doesn’t need to do it. But it’s not a huge deal, and yes she’s taking the right role.
It is also excellent to note that with the Premiers of NSW & QLD, the Prime Minister and the GG all woman, the flood response has been well managed, with good attention to detail in resource mangement, that most men would just panic, get angry and cry a lot. IMHO.
Back to back television press conferences of Bligh and Gillard were certainly a study in contrasts. Gillard did seem wooden and not terribly real. Her manner and inability to connect had more to do with shortcomings in her beingness than it had to do with her her femaleness.
It’s neither possible nor desirable to judge women using the same set of criteria for which we judge men. Feminists who are still demanding ‘equality’ have in my view missed the point entirely. I certainly don’t want to be an equal to man in an unjust, corrupt, cruel, greedy, and violent world such as he has created and imposed.
Less cosmetic enhancements on Gillard’s face would allow her true character to be more easily discerned and thus she might seem a tad more real. But on her face and facial expressions, the dial upon which we discern a person’s inner motives, nothing much moves. And it is incongruous to watch. She is a total sucker to the mainstream L.C.D. ideology that she must remain young looking. it’s a shame that she is a very average person in this regard.
Jacques Chester is not correct in alleging Catallaxy ‘encourages debate.
Here Sinclair Davidson writes an inaccurate piece. The person who points this out ( The Journalist in question made it clear in the SMH that very day Davidson’s premise was very wrong) was not allowed to further comment.
We then have Sinclair Davidson’s impression of Monty Python where he never replies to A FDB’s queries at all except at one stage to accuse him of trolling.
I should have compared Sinclair Davidson with Ken Parish.
One of them when confronted with facts differing to their opinion state it and admit they are wrong. The other does nothing
FRAN@70
“”It’s neither possible nor desirable to judge women using the same set of criteria for which we judge men.”"
Can you please explain the two sets of criteria you use?. In the context of “political leadership ” of course.
Sorry FRAN
LINK @70
God I wish people would stop judging leaders as if they were entrants on Dancing with the Stars. It’s about leadership what they do rather than their latest tv appearance.
JOE2@73
EXACTLY !
Leaders should be judged on the competence of their team
Anna danced beautifully in the flood genre,no argument .
But in most areas,pre-floods,she fell flat on her face.
CRAIGY, at least she got up to have go, in contrast to the LNP characters which can’t make out whether they are Arthur or Martha on your political dance floor.
2 questions pop out for me from the discussions about floodplain management-
Firstly I think in the Greer article(from the Gruniad )she mentions that the Wivenhope dam could have had water released so that the torrential rains wouldn’t have overwelmed the river system.Is this correct?
Following on for this point is there a floodplain management plan which allows the public to know whenrelease are being made?
The second question which is also touched on by Akermann and Greer is the role of councils/state agencies allowing development in ianappropriate areas along the floodplain.
Was the drought possibly influencing the acceptability of the new developments? There apparently was report about this but it was buried around 2003(?). This will play into the responsibilty of insurers and may be used to minimise their responsibilities and defelct claims in away that tries to have the Qld goverment accept some share of the responsibility.
These questions are asked in the spirit if seeking to find the truth- I have no axe to grind with any party or politician and hope the public jibes aimed at the leaders subside.
Mark @64. Didn’t take Dolt and his fellow petty low lifes to start sinking the slipper. Gillard sounded like she should have and so did Bligh.
@68. Paul Burns, I dispute your statement that he would actually know what brains are.
Perhaps the PM was trying to keep her emotions in check. Seeing the damage for herself must have been awful; tears and a wobbly voice keep threatening me when I see the photos and read some of the first hand accounts.
I’m sure it would have had the same effect on her, but it’s of no help to the victims to have her weeping and wailing. At times like this you need someone who is calm and in control; it helps you to keep going, doing what has to be done.
Ootz@75
Its not MY political dance floor, its OURS. And the others cant do much,its not their show yet.
And I do think that if the PM were to indulge in histrionics, it would be an insult to the victims who have suffered so much. That would be a reason to castigate her.
She did it right for that point in time, tears can be shed and victims embraced at a more appropriate time.
“We won’t know about Coronation Drive for a week… About the potential for a bank slump, there’s a real risk of it going into the river.”
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/brisbane-needs-to-get-back-to-work-mayor/story-fn7ikbtj-1225988902283
Gee, that Campbell Newman should be careful what he says. Nervous o/s money markets might interpret that badly and freak out. Especially when it is translated from the english.
I would’ve thought the first priority would be to make Brisbane liveable again. Everybody going flat out every day to achieve that until it is achieved. You can always rely on the Libs to insist on business as usual. Even if ordinary people have to live in stinking sludge to achieve it.
Bob Browns cheap shot.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/coal-miners-to-blame-for-queensland-floods-says-australian-greens-leader-bob-brown/story-e6frfku0-1225988806619
I’m not always a supporter of Bob Brown. Got quite upset with him recently when he backed the retailers call to up the GST limit on on line shopping, and very upset when he had the brain fart about privatising Telstra a few years ago.
But, since when is telling the truth about climate change, its causes and its consequences a cheap shot?
Quite right Paul, it isn’t. Cheap shots only come from the right of politics. We established that quite a few comments back.
Please paul,can he at least wait till after the funerals?
Wozza, in the light of Paul Burns @83, your comment isn’t relevant. And Craigy, since everyone else is eagerly discussing proximate causes and possible mitigation factors, I don’t see why discussing larger-scale causes and cures is out of order. Unless you have an agenda, of course.
Joe2 @80 – looks like Newman’s statement needs translating into the English.
Well said PB … perfectly fair comment from Brown
Helen@86
Its the timing that is insensitive ,inappropriate and awkward.
Maybe your agenda prevents you from admitting it?
CRAIGY,
I see where you’re coming from, but if not now, when? One thing about the Brisbane floods that almost certainly will be put on the back burner are the larger consequences of climate change, and how they caused the floods, not just in Queensland, but over most of Australia. If, by getting in now, BOb Brown can actually get our pusillanimous politicians to at least address them, then he’s acted appropriately. I don’t like his chances. My impression is, nobody wants to listen about this, even at the best of times.
Paul@90
Sorry mate,i can’t agree that this is the right time.
I call it an inappropriately timed cheap shot.
‘Outrageous’
The price of a plasma
has plummeted.
The ice making ‘fridge
is on sale.
Oh where is our next
shop lease coming from
With whom can we share
our huge costs,
Oh the pain
A flood,
a deluge
Quite remarkable!
GST, of course, will be paid.
Craigy, I have a friend whom I would really like you to meet. Yes, here in this room right now, with you and me. Okay with you?
Alright then: Craigy, meet Horton.
Horton, meet Craigy.
Oh deary deary me … Craigy, do come back. Horton’s only an elephant.
Fiona
What?
Helen@87 I’ve had it translated to Dutch then German and back to the English and it came out thus…
“We will not know about Coronation Drive for one week … About the potential for a banking crisis there is a real risk is in the water.”
Rather proves my point I would say.
I tend to agree with CRAIGY on the Bob Brown angle. Brisbane’s river goes into flood mode, on average, every 30 or so years. This has been recorded since the 1820s (Lockyer, in 1825, found the detritus of a recent major flood up to 50 feet above river level — a feature of the river which had not been seen by Oxley a year before), long before the onset of AGW.
And there are only two operating coalmines in SE Queensland that is east of the Great Divide’s watershed, and neither of them are in a geographic position to directly contribute to the Brisbane River / Lockyer Valley flood.
If Brown is talking about the broader issue of atmospheric warming caused by the burning of coal, then one could argue that other mines in other countries are larger contributors to that situation than the West Moreton field coalmines which, even by Australian standards, are puny.
I read Brown’s comments in a broader context, terangeree. After all, the Bowen Basin (home of the Fitzroy River, I understand – the one wot flooded Rocky) has lots and lots of coal mines, and a bit of gas production on the side, so to speak.
Meh, its always the right time to tell the truth. There’s major flooding in Au, Bangladesh, sri lanka, Brazil and Sth Africa – right now, this week.
Warmer air carries more water vapour – global warming is therefore making La Nina weather patterns more destructive.
Id say the “economic” arguments against comprehensive action must be just about dead now. Doing nothing is *definitely* going to cost us more – even in straight budget terms. Here in Australia, and elsewhere.
When Julia Gillard visited the evacuation centre in Prisbane – it was on the Wednesday I think – she appeared on TV next to the woman who ran the centre. This woman asked Gillard a few questions, and the tone and nature of her questions sounded quite hostile to me. (Sorry, but I don’t remember exactly what this woman said.) Gillard did her best to ignore the hostile vibe and say positive things to the camera instead, with her calm, reassuring voice.
Did anyone else catch this? I want to know who this woman was and whether she has any connections to the Nats or Libs in Queensland.
Talking of cheap shots, there is a story going around that Bligh over-rode the technical people on the release of Wivenhoe water, though I’m not sure exactly what the claim is. This article says that at one point 640,000ML was released. Remember the dam’s water storage is 1.15m ML and I recall at one point the catchment was accumulating water at the rate of one million ML per day, for at least a portion of a day with more predicted to come.
So peaking at 190% of dam capacity when 200% is panic stations and the focus turns to preserving the dam wall shows how near a thing it all was.
It’s conceivable to me that Bligh was briefed and signed off on the 640,000ML release.
There are IMO, three basic considerations for commenting on a public policy matter during a crisis: truth; salience and capacity to improve the quality or quantity of public goods.
If the comments pass these tests, which Bob Brown’s comments easily do, then it is not a “cheap shot”. Certainly, the approach of funerals or prospective distress to bereaved or others (even assuming these concerns are real) are not things that stand higher than the demand for timely commentary on matters of public import, particularly when, as in this case, the commentary aims at alleviating new distress to new classes of people in the future.
The coterie including the world’s filth merchants and their fellow travellers would love to separate themselves from this mess and to silence those who point the finger in indignation at them, and what better than raising “respect for the dead” as a slogan? These social taboos are of long standing, but they do this precisely because they have almost no respect for the living and those who will come to live. Their complaint (and that of those who reiterate it in one form or another) are the most swingeing of self-serving cheap shots.
Ah…Acts of God vs Acts of Man.
Unfortunately Bob Brown has put himself in Pastor Danny Nahlia or Al-Halali territory.
Its an insensitive comment, poorly timed and will do nothing but demonstrate to everyone, except those who are already converts, what a fundamentalism looks like.
Australia’s history of La Nina’s is well documented and our biggest floods were in the 1800′s. As to what happened before white occupation, who knows. Many indigenous peoples have compelling flood motifs in their oral histories, (KuKu Yalangi in the Daintree have a story with eerie parrallels to Noah’s flood).
Perhaps there is truth to what Brown and Nahlia and Al Hilali say ….but ffs even Mary Poppins knew a spoonful of sugar makes all the difference. Sheeze.
SCG …
Comparing Brown and Nahlia is just wrong all over the place, and would not look out of place in The Blotosphere. Whatever can have motivated you to write such tosh?
What can one do but gasp at such bizarre juxtaposition?
Ah … it’s a Poe. Well played.
Queensland coal is used for making steel, not burning in power stations. But let’s not let facts get in the way of a good ideological rant.
How is that relevant Sam? its the dirtiest power source either way.
I actually like Bob Brown, but the point i’m making is about fundamentalism, timing and nuance.
Its the rush to lay blame before the dead are buried.
Its blaming the victims for their own misfortune.
Its the preaching to the choir and ignoring anything that doesn’t fit your hypothesis.
I’ve been cleaning up a few friends homes that went completely under. Its always been clear to me that when the next flood came, they would be in this position, but now is not the time to bring this up.
I could choose to lay the blame with Anna Bligh and Campbell Newman for not forcing them to relocate, or build levies, but not today…..
Sam said:
Not true, FTR — Kogan Creek for example — but even if it were true, so what?
Is QLD coal GHG free? Of course not.
Are there no CH4 emissions from QLD mines? Absolutely
Shouldn’t steelmaking be subject to the same CO2e intensity costs as all other businesses? Of course they should.
So instead you choose to smear someone you claim you “actually like”. You’re either being disingenuous, or you “friends” should be nervous.
Its not a smear Fran, there are still bodies in the Queensland’s rivers.
From Bob Browns Twitter account 16th December.
Clearly at some level of generality, weather congeals into climate.
But when?
Ask Bob Brown. He knows.
Fran @102 – would appear you support Andrew Bolt then.
Hardly, SCG, but it seems you have adopted the Blot methodology. Always dissembling and slandering all the time.
Dont accuse me of slander Fran.
People we know are dead.
If you dont think the fall out for Bob will be huge you dont get what has just happened.
@Fran, please be more restrained.
I agree that Bob Brown’s comments are wrong and unhelpful at this stage.
The floods are not exceptional in terms of past La Nina events, though weather systems affecting Australia do appear to be shifting due to climate change, causing more instability and less predictable patterns. But it is:
(a) drawing a very long and overstretched bow to ascribe causality to coal mining in Queensland;
(b) pretty insensitive.
I don’t think now is the time for these “debates”.
While I’m not going to resile from my support of Bob Brown on this -somebody had to say it, and the sooner the better so its up there in peoples’ consciousness as something we must deal with, if not for ourselves, at least for future generations, its clearly a difficult and sensitive issue, given the timing
My deepest sympathies go out to people who have lost loved ones and friends in the Queensland floods. And that’s not just an empty form of words. I know I don’t know a lot of people personally who contribute to LP, except for some in the New England area, and Don Wigan in Victoria, but even though you’re on-line friends I know I was deeply worried about what was happening to you all in Queensland, and now about those of you caught up in the floods on the NSW North coast and in Victoria. It must be doubly difficult for people like SC who have lost friends in this flood in such a horrible way. I know I would have been distraught if any of the LP community had died in the floods, even the RWDBs. I think, perhaps we should frame our observations on Bob Brown’s statement with a little more gentleness, if only for the sake of those who are grieving.
I also think comparing Bob Brown with Pastor Danny is drawing a fairly long bow. One is talking about a scientifically valid phenomenon; climate change. The other is talking about some weird kind of bigotry.
Professor David Karoly points out that we can never link any individual weather event to climate change. But the weather extremes we’re currently experiencing replicates what climate change science has predicted for our weather patterns.
However, I agree that Bob Brown’s intervention isn’t necessary at the moment. Eventually, we are going to have to have a conversation about what we’re going to do about climate changes in light of these floods. Currently, there are also towns flooding in Victoria, that I could never imagine would ever be flooded. It’s quite gobsmacking. But also, predictable.
“..paraphrasing a few things that he did say doesn’t give you the right to put quotation marks around it. This is pretty elementary stuff that any high school student would know.
It’s a bad look for a news organisation to be passing off their own interpretations as direct quotes, the type of little mistake that undermines their credibility.”
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/purepoison/2011/01/17/news-verbals-bob-brown/#more-8664
Look we’re okay – its just friends of friends so not so harrowing.
Look i know comparing Brown and Pastor Danny and Al Hilali is hyperbole, but it’s worth realizing you;re wading in dangerous territory to make causal claims and lay blame before the facts are settled.
Indeed, Duncan: lets all bear in mind the story was a complete New Ltd furphy anyway.
Here’s what Brown actually said: http://bob-brown.greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/coal-barons-should-help-pay-catastrophes-brown
Oh, thanks Duncan.
http://bob-brown.greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/coal-barons-should-help-pay-catastrophes-brown
So, what he actually said was that coal mining causes climate change and that the very rich blokes who get the profits should cough up a little. Goodness me, how heartless of him.
Bastard, etc, etc.
SC I hope you are okay. Of course you will go easy on yourself as well as you will have seen some terrible things these past days. Best wishes, Casey the Witch.
Yes, what’s he’s actually saying is completely reasonable.
Admirably restrained language there, Fine. (@#$%@#&*@!)
As the links above make clear, Brown did not ascribe causality of this event to anything or anyone, let alone Australian coal miners.
News Ltd said that Brown ascribed causality of this event to Australian coal miners.
Experienced observers of Australian media may be able to pick up the subtle distinction between these two sentences.
Nice trolling Craigy. Gotta give you points for the derail.
Remember, this is the newspaper that has proudly announced a clear editorial position that the Greens should be destroyed at the ballot box. So a wise reader would take that into account when reading their “reportage”.
I’d say that The Australian‘s mischaracterisation of what Bob Brown actually said is a pretty good example of a political cheap shot.
@Martin, taking that into account nevertheless, I still think what he’s saying is highly questionable and unhelpful *at this time*.
Bob Brown ascribed causality. Here is his direct quote:
Mark said:
Petitio principii AND directed at the wrong person. I didn’t compare someone making a perfectly valid public policy observation to someone declaring that the wrath of God over abortion law or some such other thing was at the heart of ecosystem behaviour. Still less did I entertain such notions myself to support a specious cultural claim. Your request ought to have gone to SCG.
This is in a broad sense your blog and you’re obviously entitled to any view you like. I’ve stated that I know to whom the comments are “unhelpful”.
In pro-rata terms, it isn’t. There’s a direct link. And if one excludes QLD coal mining, one must exclude all coalmining and all recovery, transport and combustion of hydrocarbons everywhere. So which is it?
If it is indeed the most serious such event since April of 1893, (and possibly longer) then your comment seems unfounded. In 10 days of March this year 403 cubic km was dumped on QLD and NT. Put them together and that is pretty amazing. David Karoly made the point that SSTs are a factor in the magnitude of these events.
it’s pretty insensitive
How so? Are periods of human loss times when speaking truth to power takes a holiday? Does the curtain falling on truth telling only extend to Australia, or do we have to be silent everytime someone suffers in some paert of the world as a consequence of cliamte-related disaster? Should we wait until the whole world has moved on, or is our pain more salient than that of others and our responsibility for the suffering of non-Australians just by the by?
That sounds parochial to me.
I don’t think now is the time for these “debates”.
oops Mark said:
I then said:
That sounds parochial to me.
I blame that damned butterfly in the Amazon Jungle.
Well, Helen feelings are obviously a bit raw here. But, Pastor Danny’s rhetoric helps creates a culture of misogyny and homophobia which actually kills people. I think comparing Brown, as a gay man, to this rhetoric is a tad distasteful.
On the broader causal point …
Severe weather events are multi-causal. They represent the confluence of several necessary and aggravating or predisposing causes. Remove any one of them and there will either be no event at all or it won’t be severe. If it occurs in the wrong place it won’t even be news and the comments of climate scientists won’t be widely reported. If a scientist says that the severe weather event was caused by Cause1 it can fairly be objected that (s)he has been misleading or deceptive, but of course, that would be true no matter which cause the scientist specified. On that logic, no cause can be said to have caused the severe weather event, which is obviously paradoxical.
Scientists will generally qualify when speaking of causality and note that an event represented the confluence of a number of causes, but what would it mean if, essentially for political or cultural reasons, they left out one of them or averred doubt when they ought to have known there was no doubt that it was amongst the causes?
When we examine road trauma, for example, we know that factors such as driver competence, fatigue, sobriety, emotional state, speed, vehicle and road condition, road contention etc operate independently and dynamically to vary the risk and extent of trauma. Policy seeks to bear positively on each of these factors — improving the quality of roads, drivers, vehicles and altering the culture attached to driving by vehicle operators. If fears of the nanny-state caused policy makers or downplay speed or sobriety and people began saying “you can’t blame this accident on speeding/alcohol because there were other factors and this is just a revenue grab/desire to take my freedom to drink and drive fast” would sensible people entertain this? I think not. Would people like you say “we need to see what we find when all the evidence is in?”
When we look at causes, we surely want to distinguish necessary and aggravating conditions that are beyond our reach to manipulate from those that are. It is not within our power to manipulate the ENSO, or even to make radical changes to the topography of Australia’s East coast. Yet if elevated SSTs of Australia’s east coast (1974 + 1.5degC of which, probably 0.5degC was climate change forced) are a factor in the volume of water dumped by a La Nina event then is it not scandalous to pass over this? I’d say so. Just as a person with a blood alcohol level of 0.08 is considered a lot more than 4 times as likely to have an accident as someone with one of 0.02 so too one may say that had SST been at the levels they were in 1900 there may have been nothing more than a significant rainstorm in Queensland, and even that is on the assumption that the force and periodicity of the ENSO cycle is independent of climate change.
We do know that an increase in the frequency and intensity of severe weather events is a consequence of climate change and it really doesn’t matter how much each individual event is caused/aggravated by climate change. We must assume that a measurable proportion of them will be and since none of them are desirable we must act to mitigate the possibility of any of them. Moreover, the onus really should be on those objecting to the presence of climate change in the causal chain to show that it could not have been a predisposing factor.
@Fran – people in Queensland have been undergoing significant distress. I do not think that attempts to seek out and ascribe “blame” are helpful.
As to emissions from coal mines in Queensland, sure. But bear in mind that they have nothing to do with building power plants, petrol used in cars, etc. On a global level, obviously it’s all part of the picture, but there seems to me to be little logic and less sense in claiming that one industry is the “culprit” – Bob Brown’s words. To be honest, reading the press release, the News Ltd headline writers aren’t far off the mark. The implications jump out from it clear as day.
Frankly, I think he’s just taking a cheap political shot.
As to your comments, you should yourself reflect on the way in which you characterised SC.
Casually expressed, but essentially accurate.
I’m sure you understand the the word ‘share’ means that there are other causes, and in this case, many other causes.
Of course you could argue about what the precise meaning or implication of the word ‘major’ but I think there is unlikely to be an easy resolution on that.
In short BB did not say ‘Coal mining caused the floods’. At most he said something like ‘coal mining is a major cause of climate change which is a major part of weather conditions that lead to the floods’.
Bob Brown’s coal mining comments aren’t cheap shots anyway you look at it.
Keep on digging Bob. See you in Peking.
Yes, I understand the concept of monocausality.
And I understand the concept of complex chains of causality.
I’m not disputing that Brown most likely had other causes in the back of his mind when he made that statement.
However, it cannot be denied that Brown privileged the burning of coal as “the single biggest cause”.
Fine, with respect, i’m not trying to score points, and i find bringing Bob’s sexual orientation into this in any way is not helpful. I take your point, but arguments like this go nowhere. There are many who feel the govt’s rushed insulation program, motivated in part by the need to mitigate global warming/reduce the use of coal fired energy directly killed people too.
Bob’s point, which may or may not hold up, was ill timed and debatable. Take a politician standing up after a nasty gang rape and saying all men have to take responsibilty for the patriarchy and compensate rape victims (which is true to a large extent). The prob with Bob Browns comment, was that it seems akin to singling out a particulaly problematic aspect of the patriarchy, say violent middle eastern gangs, and saying all Muslims that ascribe or tolerate misogynist ideology must compensate any person gang raped by an bunch of these men. I’m not sure how that is helpful at this time.
Mark said:
I don’t doubt that they are undergoing significant distress. What I don’t accept is that Bob Brown’s comments aggravate this distress in any measurable way. They are almost certainly helpful to those who wish the harms of uncontrolled climate change (of which this latest is almost certainly at least in part an exemplar).
If someone’s negligence causes a serious harm, are they entitled to relief from exposure because their victims are still grieving? That’s a scandalous proposition, surely?
Where does Kogan Creek source its coal? Also, don’t you suppose that coal for steel helps build power plants?
That wasn’t what he said. His use of the word culprit was as follows:
Other quotes are above. It’s doubtful that Brown would have intended to say that coalmining alone leave aside QLD coalmining alone was the culprit. He’s also opposed to deforestation, favours a carbon price on oil and gas and so forth.
And as Katz quoted above:
Note: burning coal, single biggest, major share …
In what way(s) were they unfair? They seem upon reflection entirely apt. SCG made a specious amalgam first between Danny Nalliah and Sheikh Hillaly on the one hand and Brown on the other and then tried the tactic again by asserting that there was a similarity between Brown’s objections to Blot’s demand that the PM resign over deaths off Christmas Island. If she wasn’t doing a Poe, then she was doing Blot.
If the shoe fits …
SC@ 137. I agree that it would have been wiser for Brown not make this comment right now, even though I agree with it. My point is that comparing what Brown said to Pastor Danny’s hateful ravings isn’t fair and would be very hurtful to some people as well. You kind of admit that by saying it was ‘hyperbole’. I think you can criticise Brown’s lack of tact without making another tactless comment.
@Fran, I have a lot of work to catch up on that’s urgent and was delayed by the floods, so you’ll have to forgive me for not getting into the nitty gritty of your comments. I’ll leave others to reflect on all this for the moment.
Reflectionating now:
Fran
If you accept the thesis that one of the people, that you seem to have no doubt are undergoing significant distress, as referred to in your comment:
actually must logically be the person on this blog, who wrote:
Then you may be able to answer your own question of:
Maybe. If you are in a generous mood.
And then, pushing the limits of your generosity – if you can see that your comment:
is collapsed by the measurable evidence that at least two of the two people who actually went through the floods on this blog seem to have been aggravated by them, then maybe you might have cause to reconsider this assertion.
Maybe. In an unguarded moment. On the porch. Which reminds me:
What a mess is Epping! Now I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that with the council cleanup and all, Epping might look like a war zone right now, but it could be that it’s nothing compared to parts of SEQ this day. Could be. Now I don’t reckon that what Bob Brown said was out of line. But then I’m not living in Mud City and I don’t know people who drowned and I don’t have to turn my cynical eyes to the heavens and wonder when politicians will stop using the plight of the people around me to play politics. And even if Brown is sincere, and even if he is right, he is out of time – according to them. Aren’t we bound to listen to the people we converse with on a subject which is their lived existence at the moment? Not even a bit?
Of course, you feel free to write me your 245 responses, telling me all the ways I done got it wrong, insulting, unfounded allegations, sloppy logic, grammar sucks, can’t do magic, etc, etc, etc but please bear in mind that my brain spontaneously breaks into an internal rendition of “The Hills are Alive” every time I read your defensive stuff. Oh nearly forgot. Don’t forget to tell me that’s not the real title of the song.
Okay then.
But that was specifically in reference to current climate change.
It would only be a problem if he had then said that current climate change was the sole or even dominant cause of the flood. Neither his press release nor the quoted statements contain such an assertion.
FWIW I agree with this but disagree that Brown’s comments do this.
I find it curious that we can all listen to David Karoly (and others) explaining how these events can be partially attributed to current climate change, and that makes perfect sense, but when Bob Brown says something entirely analagous he is simplisticly blaming the coal miners.
That is true.
It may have been more politic were he to have made that point a little clearer.
I can write the press release for him:
“While I believe that the burning of coal is the single most potent cause of climate warming, and while I believe that climate warming predisposes the world to more violent weather events, such as this late unfortunate flood, I wish to stress that I am not asserting that the burning of coal caused this particular flood.”
[Signed] Bob Brown.
Casey @ 143,
“The Hills are Alive” is an el-cheapo horror movie that came out a few years ago. About cannibalism, I think, from what I saw of the trailer. Something in the style of Texas Chainsaw Massacre if I’m not mistaken. I am NOT recommending you get it out on DVD.
Bob Brown defends what he said, himself.
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201101/s3114621.htm
I think what he says in the press release is fine. It doesn’t mention the current situation at all, rellay, just points out that what we understand about climate change means that we will face more of these events in the future, and we should establish mechanisms for dealing with that.
His spoken comments where he does draw in the current flood are more confusing and problematic.
…and sorry for the bad tagging above.
In fairness, I wouldn’t call it Brown’s best press release. Wording probably too loose for this time.
But in essence, he’s right – and in fact he never did blame the coal industry for the QLD floods – he said they were contributing to climate change. So its a dishonest verbal by News – admittedly with a opening to do so from whoever drafted it so breezily.
Anyway…I’ve just today confirmed my father’s ashes have certainly been washed away from their final resting place in the Brisbane floods, which makes me sad, and rather uninterested in wider debates, but I still say its never too early to think about preventing this happening more often.
Brisbane does flood, by nature – at least twice a century, and sometimes more. But good grief, lets do all we can to minimise the risk of it becoming more regular.
Sadly some of the ABC is up to the same game
Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown says coal industry directly responsible for Qlnd floods
where you can download an mp3 to hear Bob Brown not directly blame the coal industry for the current floods. (In fairness thae actual radio interview is quite balanced.)
Bob Brown is toast. He might not have said that. Or it might be taken out of context.
But all the talk around the water cooler today was what a
—-Bob Brown was.
And the word was was used several times.
And this is the value of the Oz. If this is a stich-up consider Bob stitched. He’s political career isn’t only over but he’d find it risky to even fly over Queensalnd now let alone visit it.
Casey, you suggest that my question about the way I characterised SCG:
Could be answered simply by recourse to the knowledge that people in QLD, including SCG were suffering significant distress.
The fairness or unfairness of the observations was and is a function of their contextual accuracy and salience, rather than SCG‘s emotional position. Are you claiming that SCG‘s rather bizarre claims are a reflection of her distress, and that I should have taken that into account when responding? Is that the species of “fairness” you are describing?
You say that:
They seem to have taken political or perhaps cultural exception to them, which is not the same as pressing upon their personal distress. Mark seems to have found them impolitic, without specifying why, and SCG is yet to make clear why precisely why he has taken umbrage. I’m not seeing a connection between these comments and their emotional state.
One might have thought if there were a connection, at least one of them would have made this explicit. LeftyE says he isn’t bothered by them.
Well there you go. In the interest of decorum, I’m going to resist the temptation to make some obvious observations. Perhaps it’s time for you to reflect on yourself, in a metaphorical mirror.
You see, this is the problem. You think that politics is simply a game, like the footy or the cricket. It isn’t. It ought to be about getting public policy right, not some frivolous game of etiquette and pandering.
Tssk, no offence, but you’re a predictable doomsayer from way back, with a record of rather disingenuous concern trolling as long as your arm, and unless your water cooler was surrounded by an unrepresentative sample of the 11% of Australians who vote Green, or the 4% close to deciding they might – then the verballing of Brown by News hasn’t and wont make the slightest impact.
Sorry to hear about your father’s ashes Lefty E. It must be a sad thing to come to terms with.
Casey, you’ve been told. You’re frivolous. Now go away and and don’t come back until you’re suitably serious and solemn.
Fran, you do realise you responded in the way precisely characterised by Casey, don’t you?
Fine, half of them are here in Melbourne with the rest of his family, but yes, I had it confirmed today his old back yard in West End was flooded, as it was ’74, and have now seen a photo a friend went round and took for me. the ashes will be gone,as is the tree we planted over them: but in a poetic enough way, over the places he loved.
Sa la vie.
I certainly dont say this to discipline anyone – and I wasn’t there this time, as I was in ’74, nor have I lost a house or a loved one who was living, which would obviously be far worse – so if some people would rather not discuss x, y, or z as a result then that is their choice, and I respect it.
Im merely suggesting one cant assume people will feel that way. I respect Mark and others decision to play that one safe (which is how I read their comments), but I for one dont think that should stop others thinking about causes and contributing factors in a public way, provided its constructive.
Yes, Lefty E that is a very sad outcome for you. I am sorry about that.
Ah, Fine, so what you are saying is that there is a whopper of a comment to be read?
Fiddle sticks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIHOJ2dq_UU&feature=related
Thats for you Fine.
If I wuz Bpb Brown I wouldn’t be worried too much. Australians, whatever they go through, are a bunch of political amnesiacs, if the affront is long enough away in time. If its not, then, like Julia you might be cactus, or maybe not. Anyway, time will tell.
Thanks Casey. A friend did his Ph.D on the SoM. The things you can do in academia these days.
Matthew Wright in the tele, by golly!
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/our-changing-climate-has-brought-flood/story-fn6bmfwf-1225989006754
Sorry, I just pop in now and then so don’t get to follow regular form but:
Wow.
Fine said:
The opinion of someone who blocks their ears to preserve their superego is not one that weighs heavily upon me.
So, I can take it from that, you won’t be trash ‘n treasure hunting Epping with me, like, for real Fran?
Maybe bob should have said” the ultimate culprits are the people who drive cars, use electricity, eat cows that fart, grow lawns not trees and fly on aeroplanes.
That would be more accurate.
But there are no VOTES to be gained is saying that.
No, GRAIGY, Bob has a better aim than that. King Coal is in his sites.
http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2011/01/king-coal.php#more
Fran @ 104 et seq:
Sublime Cowgirl is not the only Queenslander contributing to this blog who has learnt that friends and/or acquaintences have been killed in the Lockyer Valley / Brisbane Valley floods.
Your blatherskiting about “respect for the dead” being nothing more than a political ruse is offensive on many levels. Your continuing on that point just increases the offense and hurt you are causing unnecessarily to others.
From my perspective, it appears that you view everything as being merely political in nature and that personal lives and feelings have no place in your world.
I hope I am wrong, for the paragraph above portrays a truly pathetic individual. For your sake, I hope that you are not such an individual.
But please, Fran, for the sake of those of us here who have funerals to attend and grieving to do, can you please desist in your current argument.
You are winning no friends, and only making yourself appear to be a public fool.
Terangeree
Nothing I’ve said or implied should deter people from dealing with their loss as they think apt, nor implies want of respect for their sentiments. If you have funerals or other engagements to attend to deal with your pain, you go with my well wishes. I hope they help you all.
My objection begins and ends with the constraint that the suffering of loss is said to impose upon comment on public policy. Providing that public commentary is accurate, salient and aims at imrovement of public goods, I see no constraint in comment.
It is no disrespect to those who have lost to note that some people will seek to hide behind taboos attaching to human loss to cover their perfidy. That can never be acceptable.
And FTR Terangeree, “winning friends”, while agreeable, always yields to speaking the truth and doing what is right, as best I understand it. As a teacher, one learns that quite early, or fails.
Of course, Andrew Bolt wouldn’t rush to lay blame while people are grieving.
FRAN
Referring to post 167.
Should you feel any guilt?
“Nothing I’ve said or implied should deter people from dealing with their loss as they think apt, nor implies want of respect for their sentiments.”
I note the ‘should’ Fran. There you go telling people what they should feel and showing no respect to them whatsoever, because you’re not respecting what they do feel. But hey, as long as you get to speak truth to power, causing unnecessary pain to people already under stress is completely unimportant.
Zoot @72
Every time I follow a link to Andrew Bolt’s horrid site I feel dirty and violated.
Terangeree said:
No … I said they should not be deterred, as you quoted. Why would you misrepresent me so carelessly?
petitio principii Absurd.
Craigy asked:
No, of course not. I’m not in charge of policy,didn’t vote for this government and like Brown, I advocate a radically different and better one.
oops my apologies to Tangeree … @175 should be to Fine …
FRAN@175
You must be the only person,i have ever heard of, whom has never contributed to global warming. No carbon footprint. Just a victim of the rest of us.
Or hypocrisy is you favourite flavour .
Oh please, Fran your nit-picking semantics are ridiculous and just way of avoiding responsibility for your words and the hurt they cause. You’re being misrepresented; the argument being put to you is circular. Blah, blah, blah. That’s just using smart-arsed debating tricks that most people recover from post university.
You’ve been told you’re being insensitive and hurtful. It’s basic decency to apologise when you’ve hurt someone whether you meant to, or not. But you even refuse to admit your words are hurtful, even though people have told you so.
Why don’t you just get over yourself and admit you’re behaving like an idiot. It’s quite simple to do.
Yessus beeple,
leave Fran alone! She seems to be an adult and attempts to teach her how to behave are OTT IMO.
If people feel offended by what she has to say they can say so, but third parties should just chill a bit…
But how do you know who is a third party Joe? There are a lot of people on this blog who have been directly or indirectly affected by the flooding in SE Qld and Northern NSW. Maybe they are making their feelings known?
Trolling Lefty E? No. Probably being a bit of a Cassandra. I saw Latham unhinged back in the ay because he has opposition leader didn’t make a public annoucement about the tsunami, and I still see Rudd blamed for everything under the sun. I’ve given up on adding to the watercooler debate ever since I got in a very heated debate over the whole roofing thing. In Rudd I’ve seen that being good is not enough sometimes. It saddens me that he and many others are in there actually helping out and still the armchair kingmakers wait for that one mistep, that one mis-spoken word.
On a more sombre note, my condolences on the loss of your father’s remains. I understand all too well how that feels, it’s like you lose an anchor.
I hope that you find a new anchor the same way I did, in odd photos or failing that in your memories of him.
I am quite happy for Bob Brown to come out and lay blame on thick and fast. I think he should have done it the day the Locyer Valley was decimated. Just would have confirmed what a sanctimonious, out-of-touch, arrogant git that he always has been.
Fine said:
You say they are hurtful but nobody has explained how or why. Unless there’s some discernible connection between my words or Bob Brown‘s words and their pain, how are my words relevant to their pain?
How ironic! Such a noise and yet so little substance.
Anna Bligh herself stated that honouring the victims entailed understanding what happened. Don’t you think an inquiry is going to rake over a lot of painful memories? Won’t there be people there in terrible distress? Surely that’s insensitive, at least according to you?
Dear fellow Political trash tawkers–
yes, well that’s ok, say whatever they like about Fran. I mean the mods have supreme and ultimate power and I just think Fran should be able to express her opinion and people can respond to that directly however they like– especially if they were directly effected and they think that it’s not the right time to be expressing what she thinks. But for everyone else, who kind of has a friend, who used to live… etc. and are kind of taking the voice of the injured, well, I just think it’s a bit ridiculous. What is this political correctness?! If you think it is, explain that, because I’m not getting it as is.
What’s the implication here? You’re best friend gets shot by a crazy gunwoman and you can’t say, “Guns should be banned,” until you’ve had 40 days of silence?
And, if this statement by Bob Carr does him and his party political damage, is it going to be an expensive shot? Or is it just a shot that backfired? Maybe he missed because there was no target on the map?
You know, even after all these years, I’m a bit amazed this has carried on much the same before *and after* working out Brown was substantially verballed by a known and sworn enemy (NewsLtd).
If you havent by now worked out it was a press release about Australian tax policy (and insurers, for that matter) placing the burden on ordinary punters, rather than big coal (contributing disproportionately to climate change) – which was then willfully misconstrued as “Coal miners cause QLD flood BLAMES BROWN!”, then you aren’t arguing from good faith, since its plain as day in his press release.
As for the Fran bash, give it a rest people. Peace. Its a comment blog y’all. Anyone grieving a lot either aint hear to read it – or is trying to make sense of it all, if they are.
Im neither, btw, did my grieving years ago – so please so fire away if you have a problem with this comment.
And what Joe said.
OMG, I wrote Bob Carr
I meant that other Bob.
It was the excitement.
Well said, Joe and Lefty E.
Bob Brown was evoking a tenet with which most people here would agree — we need to stop privatising profits and socialising losses. In the abstract, most people here would find that an agreeable sentiment.
Well, unless you want to spend forever noisily supporting abstract ideas to no effect, at some point you have to put some rubber to the road and working out what your agreeable ideals would mean if they were to become a reality. Having extractive industries pay more into public coffers would be one such example. And, since they’re not going to do it voluntarily, some measure of negotiation, backed up with legal coercion if necessary, will be required — so that’s a job for legislators. It’s entirely apropos for a Senator to raise such issues, at any time, IMHO. In fact, there were plenty of supporters on this blog of just such a proposition last year…
…and if you can’t work out why, when a Senator attempts to resurrect the ghost of the RSPT, the leading media organ that led the charge against it and spooked the Labor Party into auto-decapitation last year, starts up its too-successful machinery once again, and everybody bites…
…well, I think you can work it out…
So.
We’re operating in a frame of conservative social taboos that pretty well secures the status quo. I mean, when there’s a gun massacre in the USA, we’re not allowed to talk about gun control or violent political rhetoric because, I don’t know, that would be mean, or something. And when there’s disastrous bushfires, and flooding, and more and more extreme weather events (220mm daily rainfall in catchments, etc…), we’re not allowed to talk about how carbon polluters have had the use of a free public rubbish dump (the atmosphere) without paying any levies for decades, because, I don’t know, that would be mean, or something.
It’s hard to express the fully human range of sympathies and emotions in a forum like this. An uncharitable reading of Fran’s behaviour is that she’s being cloth-eared to the cries of the distressed. A charitable reading of Fran’s behaviour is that she’s not addressing the cries of the distressed, because she can’t do so in a forum like this.
Well, peace out — my dad was in an apartment on Coronation Drive in Toowong on peak flood day. Yes, I was distressed last week. Yes, it was unpleasant. No, I didn’t want to emote or fret about it online, and I still don’t. And no, Fran’s behaviour hasn’t personally caused me distress, and although it would keep the peace better if she could express greater empathy or recognition/respect of the distressed, we also have to recognise that mediated forums like this make those sort of human connections a little harder to achieve than in person.
@Merc, people respond to these sort of events according to their disposition – there’s nothing wrong with a little reticence.
I’d also mention, though, that having lived through the thing, I’m very well aware of the distress it does cause, and even to those not directly affected. We’re all connected to someone who has been badly affected, and we’re all saddened – as citizens – by the damage to our collective well being, which will take a long time to repair. Over and above all that, these sorts of events create significant trauma for quite a few.
One benefit of the announcement of an inquiry is to hold over the questions of causation, adequacy of response, but also to deal with them through a process which will hopefully be open and informed by evidence. It’s good timing from Anna Bligh, but I’d repeat, whatever one thinks of the worth of Bob Brown’s comments, the timing is very ill judged, and not, I think, driven by any necessity.
Bob Browns comments were ill timed. This isn’t going to drop out of the news tomorrow, he could have held off, as Sublime Cowgirl said, until after the missing had been found. There seems to be a whiff of because he’s Bob Brown he can do no wrong. Well he did. It may be the truth, once you untangle it from what the MSM said he said and what he actually said, but the point still stands that he didn’t need to say it now.
This comment thread hasn’t been about Bob Brown for a while now.
yeah well said lefty E.
I mostly concur with what grog’s gamut said, while what he said may be pretty accurate, it’s politically deaf and very easy to misrepresent. of course, the Australian will go to great lengths to misrepresent you, but even the ABC finds it easy.
From the Grog’s Gamut link:
@190-191 Yep we can agree the comments were ill-timed, and I do. We can also agree there is substantive truth in them.
But, are they ill-timed in the sense of ‘Bob Brown has political feet of clay on this issue because of how it will be received by people in distress and how it will be used by his political enemies’ or, is it ill-timed in the sense of ‘Bob Brown is a terrible person who says terrible things and is a terrible so-and-so’? It’s an important point, I think, because there’s been no shortage of reaction from the usual predictable quarters of the latter type. Some people are quick to identify the comments with some terrible purported personal deficiency (and maybe there is…) — but that to me seems excessively judgmental and unnecessary as a personal attack. We can’t and shouldn’t overlook the fact that The Australian and the media in general are anything but an innocent player in these circumstances.
We are in furious agreement, I think.
@ Mercurius – because of how it will be received by people in distress. I don’t think BB would have expected to have a completely made up quote attributed to him. That was a low shot by the MSM.
Bob Brown can’t win on this now. In fact were he to release a comment either clarifying his commments or even apologising for the verbal it would add to the story. “Indignant Brown adds another insult to injury” etc etc.
Clarification by Bob is here:
The Role of Global Warming
Media Release | Spokesperson Bob Brown
Monday 17th January 2011, 5:35pm
Share4
in
* Climate Change Adaptation
* Climate Change Impacts
* Climate Change Science
* Coal
* Coal Mining
* Drought
* Fossil fuels
* Mining
* Resource Use
* Water
After the hottest and wettest year in recorded history, the seas off northern Australia are also currently warmer than ever before. This heat has led to increased evaporation and so, rainfall.
Sceptics and defenders of the coal industry may dispute this scientific data, but they don’t. Instead, they are arguing that there should be no debate – not, at least, until some undefined time in the future when the cataclysm has passed and its injuries are behind us.
A week after the “inland tsunami” struck the Toowoomba region, with the flood crest having passed in Brisbane, and Rockhampton beginning to recover, Australia’s newspapers are now carrying letters expressing frustration at the absence of debate on the causes of the floods across the nation and, indeed, in Brazil, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Like the drought, heatwaves and bushfires, these floods are predictable calamities and worse is in store as the planet is heated by human actions.
We may collectively choose to do nothing about the rapidly increasing of burning of coal, here and overseas, from coal being mined in Australia by wealthy corporations largely owned overseas. However, that choice should not be made without informed debate. If there is a later time better for this crucial debate to begin, let the critics name it.
Australian Greens Leader Bob Brown
Paul Burns,
The horror movie you’re thinking of is ‘The Hills Have Eyes’. It’s a remake (of the original ’77 film by Wes Craven) that came out in 2006 by the same two guys that did the excellent French horror movie ‘Haute Tension’. It’s pretty graphic though and despite being a horror buff it even managed to make me recoil in 1 or 2 parts.
Abbott has topped it by edging Julia into a corner.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/scrap-nbn-to-pay-for-floods-abbott-20110118-19uzt.html
Very clever.
NBN dead.
Tssk,
You’re a clown. Bob Brown is not “toast” and the NBN is still going ahead.
I too have had enough of your concern troll stunts. It was bad enough up to and during the election campaign but please keep your pearls of wisdom for the water cooler with your Lib mates.
I applaud the determined, unapologetic tone of Bob’s latest release. They expected some retraction after stating the scientifically well evidenced case and then being verballed? Get real. This isn’t charm school, or a morality play , it’s about disaster management for the future.
When all the talkback howls die down, Brown’s intervention will convert another 1 percent, alienating no one already onside.
That stuff works on the ALP – it inly makes the Greens stronger. Wrong tactic.
“Bob Brown can’t win on this now. In fact were he to release a comment either clarifying his commments or even apologising for the verbal it would add to the story. “Indignant Brown adds another insult to injury” etc etc.”
The fact is Bob can’t lose.Bob will increase his vote next election over this disaster end of story. I just hope Abbott keeps opening his cake hole to let the usual bull shit flow, that is his stock and trade.
Bob can’t win! Yea right.
Actually the real clown is Tony. His continual spoiler game on NBN is not clever politics but pure poison and will infuriate the majority of people who just want to get on with it.
It is received wisdom in conservative discourse that the right time to talk about, or do, anything, is always…not now.
We’ve had more than 30 years of the polluters praying that they would like to be pure…but not yet.
Do we really want to perpetuate that discourse?
No, I believe most of us want to disrupt that discourse. So yes, when people have just been massacred by a gunman, it is not a “political cheap shot” to discuss gun control and violent political rhetoric, and ask ourselves “How did this happen? Can we do anything to mitigate or prevent reoccurance?”. John Howard risked a lot of political skin after Port Arthur, and, as the Simpsons would say, it ‘embiggened’ him.
I believe examples such as this are instructive at the present time. We don’t know when the next catastrophic bushfire or flood is coming. Further delay increases the risk that we will be caught unprepared for the next event. We need to go through the catharsis of preparation. Now.
One of the comments to the OO story re: Abbott made the point that, if anything, the floods proved the need for an NBN, as the amount of traffic to government and emergency authority websites in the quest for information caused those websites to crash and for a low-bandwith replacement to be cobbled-together to provide some sort of service.
An NBN would provide sufficient and excess capacity to accommodate such crises and disasters.
Another of the comments observed that the proposed NBN expenditure is a mere bagatelle when compared to that spent on health, education and defence — and yet no one’s calling for the abolition of the ADF to pay for flood relief and reconstruction.
I would like to point out that Bob Brown did not lay blame on the coal industry, as some have suggested. The term he used was culprits, which implies culpability.
The main contributing factors to these floods are La Nina, which set the wind patterns, and abnormally high sea surface temperatures, which led to the tremendous amount of rain. (Tip of the hat to Fran @ 130 for providing the exact figures on the SSTs.) La Nina is a natural event, but these high sea temperatures are due to anthropogenic global warming. Bob Brown is correct in attributing culpability to the coal/power industry (although in reality, the oil/auto industry is equally culpable).
In truth, the entire global coal and oil industry must accept culpability, but Australian legislators are not in a position to tax overseas companies, only local companies. Grog has argued on his blog that in order to hold Australian coal companies liable for global warming, we should be applying a carbon tax, rather than an RSPT, which should only be applied to recover economic rent. Although Grog is technically correct, the point that he and many others miss is that a carbon tax does not fall on the coal companies, while an RSPT does. Carbon taxes fall on the power companies. It also must be pointed out that most of the coal that is mined here is shipped overseas, while only about a third of coal mined here is consumed here. This means that a carbon tax would only affect a third of the coal mined here. To tax the other two-thirds of the coal mined here can only effectively be achieved with an RSPT. In effect, an RSPT would act as a de facto carbon tax on power generators in India, China and elsewhere.
JdM @ 198,
That’s the one. Haven’t seen it. Gone off horror a bit as I get older.
How’s this for a political cheap shot?…
On the bus to work this morning, I overheard a talkback shock jock (bus driver’s choice) lamenting the fact that Australia has been paying foreign aid to developing countries all these years, since that money could’ve been used to help out victims of the SEQ floods instead.
Nice.
Dragonista’s take on Brown’s comments.
I agree with Dragonista.
The end user, us
YOU AND ME
But not fran,apparently,and bless her that.
It strikes me that when a person asks themselves if they’re doing any harm, they might also ponder whether they are actually doing any good. Without a sense of community, so much of what happens in the online world is just preaching to the choir.
@209-211 OK, well this is isn’t really the thread to have a greener-than-thou p*ssing contest, but, you know, I can already say ‘done that’ to all the things on Dragonista’s list (I pay more for my electricity thru ‘green power’) plus I always look for and buy the produce that’s been transported the shortest distance I can find, grow what I can in the back yard, go through the rigmarole of locating all those bloody reuseable shopping bags when I go to the supermarket, and avoid pre-packaged food where possible, have chosen to go without the far-transported out-of-season food that one can buy these days, and re-use whatever materials and containers/packaging I can — and I’m really not a raving hippie. Far from it.
But you know, what I’m doing — which is about as much as a sole civilian can feasibly manage short of living in a cave — won’t matter a piece of p*ss unless we find a way to stop relying on fossil fuel industries for our energy. Won’t matter a jot.
But, hey, let’s keep serving it up! It’s not as though we have to worry about an extreme weather event ever happening again, or getting more severe over time…
jeebus.
@ 212:
Yes.
As you say, Mercurius, it’s not a p*ssing contest (though I bet MY mum and dad would amaze you all
) – it does in the end come down to a global change.
We all know that this requires change from every person and every corporation and every government. What we don’t know is whether the two latter categories have the desire, let alone the will.
To clarify, I was simply talking about the harm vs good in what one chooses to type on a lefty blog.
Sarah Hanson-Young this morning:
“A fair go and the spirit of goodwill are not the everyday currency of our nation’s Parliament, but they should be. Images of politicians getting their hands dirty and showing compassion shouldn’t be cause for shock or amazement. We should learn to pay credit where credit is due.
In that vein, I must acknowledge the incredible job Premier Anna Bligh has done these past few weeks. She must be exhausted, but she has done herself, and her community proud with the leadership she has shown.
She has been a strong, compassionate presence, providing information and empathy but no spin or bullshit at a time of such dreadful ruin and heartache – putting politics aside and simply getting on with the job. Australians should expect this from politicians every day.”
Mercurius says little above that I can’t endorse. I’ve been busy much of today, and I’d like to make some remarks on the direction this topic took, but it’s late and I’m going to leave it for the moment.
Re: the dragonista link … much of the H20 jibe is part of a very old troll that was doing the denier circuit 3-4 years ago on usenet. No points for originality there.
The more substantive point not only misses the mark but is actually regressive, for it tries to run a wedge against those who favour mitigation. The reality is that in terms of decisions over what may broadly be called “social arrangements”, people have no say at all.
Ordinary folks are not asked how they’d like their power, or water or any other good produced or delivered. We don’t get, as a community, to decide how transport or urban planning will look. Indeed, the details and rationale are never even the subject of generally available public information. It’s a bit rich to blame households for emissions.
Each of us comes seeking goods as a supplicant and one chooses from what is available. If we had a society which were truly inclusive, where informed consent were the norm, then Dragonista and Craigy might have a point but that isn’t the case in any jurisdiction on the planet and certainly not here.
What the defenders of the system of using the biosphere as a free industrial sewer want to do is to invite us all to shut our mouths because we aren’t willing to wear metaphoric hair shirts. Those who do can then be mocked as loonies and those who won’t hypocrites. Bob Brown can be smeared as insensitive or as taking cheap advantage. It’s a way to demoralise and disempower everyone and allow the privileged polluting minority to continue business-as-usual. These people will say and do nearly anything, manipulating our own ethics as long as the answer is the same: Allow us polluters to remain unchallenged.
Those who support action on mitigation ought to tell them with candour where they can stick their crude attempts at spin.
Abbott’s calculation:
JG cans the NBN => Labor is a do nothing government.
JG does not can the NBN => Labor is a spendthrift govt. which drives up interest rates.
IMO Abbott will not be harmed by his ‘can the NBN’ non-idea. Those who see it for what it is, political opportunism, will be balanced by those who see it as practical budgeting.
Abbott is extremely cunning, stands for nothing and is as empty as a tin of XXXX on the Birdsville racetrack.
“I will build more dams” => Tony is action man. Flamin’ heck, he’ll need a fair few of them as Climate Change increases the intensity and occurrence of major storm events.
Brown’s comments were indeed poorly timed IMO. I agree with Merc’s comments that Australian political discourse is bounded by a framework of conservative conventions (though in slow but constant regression) that inhibit progressive politics but some respect for those with dead and missing is called for. Like Howard on Gun Control, let Brown go as hard as he likes after the funerals have been conducted.
Fran, if you accidently offend someone its good manners to say sorry even if you are right or meant no harm or can’t see how your words were harmful.
Jacques, Lefty E and the rest…I really really hope to be proven wrong. Humble pie would not be eaten with such zest by anyone else.
I’ve seen the media go people before but nothing like the way they’re going Bob Brown. It’s almost unprecedented. I’d love to see what Media Watch would say about this.
My mates aren’t exactly Lib loving trolls. And that’s what I find so dispiriting, that it’s being lapped up hook line and sinker.
Maybe it’s just my circle but sometimes I feel like the guy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
They can’t all be falling for it.
Surely?
Well Casey, it appears @151 is affected by the floods but unfazed by Brown’s comments. Over to you …
Golly, maybe we should have a register so we can determine how many people will have to, through direct or indirect loss, attend funerals over the next two weeks. I’d be interested to know as it looks like a tiny death toll compared to other recent floodings. I do hope the insanely hyperbolic rhetoric at large in the public arena hasn’t become the norm. I’d hate to have to find the next source if rational debate if this one succumbs to the tsunami of bullshit.
And a big +1 to @186. Effing News Ltd for Dog’s sake! Don’t let the personal mitigate the political.
Patrickb @222:
The death toll from the 2011 flood is now almost twice that of the 1974 flood.
tsssk@220, in risk management it is sometimes called the Shoot the Messenger Syndrome. Further, psychology lists a basket full of cognitive biases failing human judgment.
Just make sure you won’t fall for that Availability Cascade too.
The sad thing is, the action is very likely not over yet, or as a fellow weatherzoner wrote “I wouldn’t lay the new carpet yet”! The current conditions driving the Australian weather are so volatile, that the existing models, including the one BoM relies on, have difficulties to adjust to. So the odds are someone will cope another good bucketing or possibly a Larry equivalent blow before the wet season is over.
The question is, how will Bobs Browns offending statement stand then. Who will the rant for rant sake crowd blame then? Surely, the circus can only last for so long.
The corollary of Mercurius’ personal testimony @212, when he proclaims:
is how much does an entire society or the entire world need to do to matter a jot.
As Mercurius implies, his energy-saving gestures are merely symbolic, not worth “a piece of p*ss”.
The glum fact of the matter is that despite decades of research no one has come up with an alternative that has a fraction of the fine qualities of hydrocarbons — high calorific value combined with chemical stability and storability.
Unless some substitute is found for hydrocarbons, a decision by any society to forego usage of hydrocarbons necessarily entails self-denial of the benefits. A society without hydrocarbons will be slower, darker, colder, hungrier, and poorer, and/or much less populous.
Rationing the use of hydrocarbons at (let us say) 1950 levels simply delays slightly but does not avoid the crash. For Australians a return to hydrocarbon consumption at 1950 levels would represent a shocking diminution of material living conditions.
Bob Brown is trawling in some very troubled waters when he pinpoints the major cause of global warming. Queensland folks who listen to him know that he is saying that the material culture that they are enjoying at the moment is implicated in their present diluvian predicament. As they stack their current hoard of sodden hydrocarbon guzzling stuff on their nature strips and start negotiating with their insurance companies to shell out for another batch, they don’t want to be told that they are part of the problem.
But the fact is that they are part of a problem and on a worldwide per capita basis they are a huge part of the problem.
But any solution to that problem that leaves them slower, darker, colder, hungrier, and poorer is rejected angrily and with denialism.
Jacques de Molay @200: Yes, I’ve suspected that myself.
Katz said:
Yes, that’s is beyond dispute (she said biting her tongue to avoid a thread hijack.) Yet even passing over the obvious elephant in the room, this statement is misleading. Some of the “benefits of hydrocarbons” are a mixed blessing or downright pernicious.
I disagree. Trying to do this tomorrow or even next year would not be feasible on any number of grounds. Phased in over 15 years it could work. Yes, we’d eat a lot less meat, live closer together, rely a lot more on public transport, cycling and shanks pony, hold onto our consumer goods a fair bit longer. Repairers would come and fix things. We would require less packaging. People wouldn’t often be commuting for 10-15 hours per week, but we wouldn’t be worse off in any qualitative way. Indeed, if road trauma fell, if we spent less on our cars and on housing and power, if obesity declined, if our shops were more often local, if our air were cleaner, if we had readier access to greenspace and so forth, we would be better off.
Radically cutting the amount of land used for raising livestock in the world would make a huge difference.
We could radically cut the amount of land raising sugar without losing much either. Refined sugar (and HFCS for that matter) production are not essential to human wellbeing, but they do demand significant water and fossil fuel and land.
And let’s not even explore the resources being put into running the world’s war machines and patching up/carrying the victims of it. We could lose most of that without anyone being worse off. You don’t need anything like the resources to defend your own terrain as you do if you are going to threaten others. Thjose forces are really designed to threaten one’s own populations by proxy.
On paper we’d be consuming less and therefore, by economists’ standards “worse off”, but we’d be healthier, happier and there’s be fewer traumatised folks in places far from these shores.
@224
Yes, a very small death toll when compared to other recent catastrophes. But lets not get into a p*ssing contest, that would be unsavory.
That’s why I chose the term “material living conditions”.
At this point the folks dumping their defunct dishwasher on the nature strip aren’t particularly interested in meditating upon the benefits of eating less meat and living closer together.
Bob Brown either (1) didn’t think about this or (2) didn’t care what these folks might think about him.
If (1), then he is an incautious politician.
If (2), then he is a courageous (h/t, Sir Humphrey Appleby) politician.
Katz quoted me:
On paper we’d be consuming less and therefore, by economists’ standards “worse off”
then said:
Just so but you also said:
This is fair of course (assuming non-replacement of HCs with something else) but assuming your HC consumption at 50s levels benchmark talking of being slower, darker, colder, hungrier, and poorer, and/or much less populous does seem misleading and hyperbolic.
Bob has no ambition to be PM, AIUI. He speaks of replacing the majority parties with the Greens but realistically he would be thrilled to be kingmaker with 20%. And the people who might ultimately compose his 20% aren’t going to be offended by this, especially when they understand that being Green doesn’t entail misery.
I said at “1950″ levels, not “1950′s” levels. but I’ll let that pass, despite the fact that hydrocarbon consumption per head of population rocketed during the 1950s.
In what ways “misleading” and “hyperbolic”? In 1950 many persons did not own a car. Air conditioning was virtually unheard of. Many people still used ice chests. There was no television. There were no wish washers to throw away. According to the ABS, since the early 1980s (the earliest figures I could readily find) per capita energy consumption in Australia has risen by 2.2% per annum. The residential sector is consuming 52% more energy now than it did in 1983.
A trip back to 1983 would be a surprise for Australians.
A trip back to 1950 would be a big shock.
A trip back to 1950 would be a big shock..
Maybe, but a trip foward to 2050 would be a far greater shock if we continue in our current state of denial.
So by logical extension we can assume a trip back from 2039 to 2011 would be equally surprising for most Australians, then also those looking back from 2072 will be equally shocked for sure.
All this talk about going back to the caves upthread and the gloom and doom vision of a nil carbon energy future.
Talking about cheap shots.
Have you considered the obvious alternative scenario and how future generations may look back at our reaction to these floods and reflect on what B B actually said?
Broader perspectives are always useful in my view. Lets not forget Sri Lanka’s experience this La Nina is apparently very anomalous and even more people affected than here.
And as the saying goes climate is what you expect and weather is what you get, let me just remind Australians the UK went through its own record floods in 2007-not that it gets mentioned any more, certainly not in Oz. The wettest summer in 240 years, biggest ever peace time rescue operations by RAF, 1/4 million people without mains water for 2 weeks, 5 inches rain in a day in some parts. Maybe someone remembers seeing Evesham 6ft of water through the street on a sunny day?
I was reminded of this by re -reading Alistair McIntosh’s Hell and High Water: Climate Change, Hope and the Human Condition (2008). In his chapter Spirit of the Blitz he notes the reporting of the costs of the 5 Billion pound flood. The growth rate was knocked from 3% to 2.75% Similar reports here, MacIntosh notes that the floods swamps not turnover ‘but mere growth in economic turnover.’ Like car crashes, such disasters actually generate economic activity as measured by GNP. “the uninsured will go into debt which means they ‘ll have to run faster on the economic treadmill to keep up payments.’(p.98). Harvey Norman etc are going to be selling lost of sofas and the like that otherwise they would’nt have expected, all those ‘tradies’will keep Bunnings busy for months. Credit cards are in for a real work out. “Capitalism, always so effective at absorbing and defanging dissenters, is transforming an existential challenge into yet another opportunity for shopping.” (Paul Kingsnorth from Victim of success :Green politics today)
Below is an example of what real leadership would look like for Brown read Gillard.
MacIntosh wrote a letter published 23 July 2007 in the Scottish Herald. I will reproduce a slightly shortened version:
Sir: As the nation is deluged the government has much to say about flood protection but very little about its underlying causes…I propose to him(Gordon Brown)the following emergency address to the nation.
‘The evidence suggests that climate change is now the most pressing problem of our times. England’s floods are but a symptom of the turbulent future we face. The root causes are greenhouse gases produced by our appetite for carbon based energy. Action is called for on a scale unprecedented outside wartime. Therefore I wish to reintroduce and escalate those carbon taxes that the fuel protesters thwarted in 2000. Climate change demands a greater patriotism than that of economic self interest.
With due protection for the poor, we must tax carbon-based energy profligacy until Britain’s share of greenhouse gas emissions is consistent with the best scientific advice.The proceeds from these taxes will, first, provide relief for uninsured flood victims. Secondly, they will institute a massive programme of public works for flood protection.And thirdly, they will be used internationally to mitigate climate change and to compensate those who suffer more:the poor.
…I will require the World Trade Organisation to introduce discriminatory tariffs on trade with nations that would otherwise seek competitive advantage by shirking their responsibilities. And starting with the elimination of nuclear weapons and the recall of our troops abroad, we will shift resources from the war on terror towards true security- environmental security-within a new framework of life-giving international relations….Yours etc Alastair MacIntosh (p.100, op cit)
Katz asked:
The question is whether, given some change in the design of housing and its location/distribution, we could live on something like the per-capita energy consumption we had then while retaining what would be considered important now? If for example, instead of living at 30 ppHa as we do in Sydney now (I shudder to think what it would have been in 1950) we lived at 80 ppHa would we use less energy pumping water and sewage? If large developments had communal laundries and the waste heat portion or a centrally controlled AC allowed clothes/linen drying in secure communal drying areas, if the living spaces were more thermally efficient and also smaller and the water within groups of developments was managed more or less locally, could we not get down to a better balance between energy and functionality? I think so.
I was born in 1958 and of course the cottage at West Ryde where we shared with my grandparents wasn’t airconditioned, though we did have an old Kelvinator fridge, Kriesler stereo and AWA mantelpiece radio. (Memories of Sa-mmy Sparr-ow) Yet a lot of that space was thermally very inefficient and certainly that backyard needed mowing all the time. We were hot when it was hot and cold when it was cold.
Ok, now tell the good folks of Brisbane that if they did their laundry in communal washhouses, they’d be less likely to be wading up to their waists in brown water.
It’s probably true, but they don’t want to hear it right now. And my guess is that it’ll take a long time before they are willing to do anything with that useful piece of information, apart that is, from chasing you down their street waving a shovel.
A laundromat-led economic recovery?
@ 232. Katz, I’d love a ‘wish-washer’ myself.
It’s amazing to think about how acceptable standards of living have just escalated drastically. You’re right, even going back to 1983 might be a shock. But, we can’t just keep escalating how we live. Something’s gotta give. How we manage this and how and what needs to change is a series of conundrums that I don’t think we, as a society, can handle.
Katz said:
That really would be a long bow — not even the ripple in the pond. On the other hand, wherever this were done, it would make a significant contribution to reducing every person’s ecological footprint without leaving each person worse off in personal terms. Being relieved of the cost of maintaining a washing machine, the rent and lighting on the floor space for a laundry, the costs of a dryer and the necessary energy and being able to dry things you can’t actually dry in a dryer (like many synthetics) sounds like a good trade. As a side benefit, you get a chance for a brief chat with the neighbours while doing something that is otherwise rather irksome.
You could be right, which is why I’d hardly put it that way. I’d be inclined to sell it on the benefits both of the cost savings and the lowered footprint — feel ethically sound and save money — win-win. After all, if you don’t need a laundry, then you can save on rent/debt service.
Smuggles is obviously choosing to ignore that Queensland will need to replace all of its infrastructure, so why would any one with two brain cells to rub together replace it with last century’s technology? Next thing he’ll be calling for manual exchanges and party lines in the interests of false economy.
If the government has any brains, they’ll start pushing that line, making the opposition look even more stupid than usual.
This from Graham Readfearn
http://www.readfearn.com/2011/01/floods-climate-and-a-tiny-bit-of-coal-outrage/
He covers that timeline very well, Fran. Thanks.
If I was the government I’d also be saying that Queenslanders, especially Queensland businesses have been through enough. In the big rebuild ahead why not add the NBN to give them a foot up?
In fact I’d be looking at rolling it out there first as everything’s being rebuilt from scratch anyway.
Surely the Libs aren’t against rebuilding Queensland are they?
Sen. Eric Abetz does not believe in anthropogenic climate change, not because he is a fossil fuel apologist, but because he is a religious fundamentalist. Yesterday, in response to Bob Brown’s renewed call for an RSPT on the coal industry, Abetz had this to say:
http://abetz.com.au/news/brown-should-apologise
Oh great, silkworm. Coalition policy will firm up soon for guaranteed ark provision for all. It’s a winner.
silkworm @ 245,
Abetz has definitely got it right. Next time round the world will end in fire.
I know the Bible says the world will end with fire (2 Peter 3:10), but that is not what Abetz was getting at. He thinks that AGW cannot be happening because that would mean that humans would be causing a global flood (rising sea levels…). In Abetz’s/ fundamentalist mind, only God can cause a global flood, just as he did in the time of Noah. Put in another way, he does not believe in AGW because it is not part of God’s plan.
But … but I thought AG WARMING was about destroying the world by fire.
We haven’t had the rain of frogs yet, have we?
I won’t be happy about the world ending with fire if I don’t get the frogs first.
That’s the line run by John Shumkis in the US for the delusionals
DI(nr), I want the boils and the firstborns too.
@250, mmmmm, roasted frogs legs.
The Coalition will guarantee the rain of frogs and end the waste.
According to Eric Abetz, only God or the Devil (Hi there, The Demon Drink!) can cause anything.
So, according to this view, it is entirely possible that the Devil will cause global warming.
Therefore Eric Abetz is a heretic and should be burned (or drowned).
“The Coalition will guarantee the rain of frogs and end the waste.”
joe2, billie@22 over on the open thread reported:
“Anyone else walked through paddocks littered with hundreds dead eastern long neck tortoises/turtles because a mine pumped out in the river system.”
Ergo the COALition has delivered and Dog has spoken and the world will end.
Guess there’s no need to wheel the barbeque out tonight, Ootz. The cooking should take care of itself.
“New levees, dams could protect towns: Bligh”
ABC news
She agrees with tony, on this
.http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/20/3117684.htm
Well, in case your Tetum is a bit rusty: this says the East Timorese govt has approved US$500,000 for the QLD flood appeal. Which is an incredible gesture, and much appreciated I am sure.
http://temposemanaltimor.blogspot.com/2011/01/australia-nasaun-boot-sempre-aijuda-tl.html
Obrigadu barak husi Australia!
@260 Lefty that news is breathtaking. Just breathtaking.
This week I’ve heard RWDB commentary to the effect that Australia should stop paying foreign aid and stop assisting refugees because, you know, there are flood victims in Queensland (and now Victoria). And then one of the world’s poorest nations can find half a million bucks to help us. If those RWDBs could extract their heads from their fundaments for five minutes, they might realise that the rest of the world is not nearly so mean or selfish as they are…
And don’t forget the donated tea..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sinhala/news/story/2011/01/110110_australia_tea.shtml
Lefty @ 259,
Am I right in thinking the headline translates as something like:
“Australia always helps Timor Leste, now Timor Leste must support the kangaroo nation”?
Never going to happen. For one thing, they haven’t got their heads up their own fundaments(HT Fran Barlow). They’re the hapless victims of a self-created, self-perpetuating human centipede (Google it if you must, but don’t blame me if you don’t like what you find).
I would be the last to defend stupid comments about suspending foreign aid in order to address flood reconstruction. That is, I am with the general feeling on the particular point.
Nonetheless, I do find the notion of the usual kneejerk adherents to political correctness as defined by LP blogthink accusing any other group of having its head up its fundament more than a trifle ironic.
@259. That’s just awe inspiring. The generosity of one of the poorest countries in the world.
Ditto about Timor L’Este. The whole country should get a Nobel Peace Prize. What Fine says.Lets hope we treat them with similar generosity over Timor Gap etc. Can’t recall that we have.
Which, in a roundabout way brings me to the as usual mean-spirited Mr. Abbott, protesting about the imposition of a flood levy because its a “new tax”. I have news for Tony Abbott. Since you were last in Government Australia has changed. WE are no longer buying the stingy Liberal leit-motif. If the behaviour of Brisbane-ites and Queenslanders in general over the past week has not taught you that, ypu have learnt nothing.
A ome-off levy sems to me to be the only sensible way to deal with it given the extent of flood damage all over the country. (I wouldn’t even mind a one-off hit on my pension, spread out over 2 pay periods. We’re usually exempt, I think.)And, of course, given the Howard Government’s fondness for one off levies, Abot’s hypocrisy has its usual breathtakingness.
More or less blacked out of the news ctcle in the Qld. floods, I notice Abbott has rushed to Victoria a day or twp ago to get himself on the news beside the newly elected Liberal Premier.
Still learning from Howard I see.
LOL @264:
It’s so nice to know that Wozza’s head is in the same place as ours!
Oh, wait, where is that head?…
…In that case, Wozza, what level of irony would you say attends your declaration that you are ‘with the general feeling’ in one breath, and then affirm in the next breath where you consider the anatomical location, of ‘LP groupthink’, to be?
You winz the Irony Olympics! Gold gold gold for Australia!
Anyway, thanks for the lulz.
Adam, as you probs know, Tetum is a language with an Austronesian language with a lot of Portuguese influence.
Australia Nasaun Boot Sempre Aijuda TL Agora TL Mos Apoiu Fali Nasaun Kangaru
literally: Australian nation big helps TL now TL also supports in return nation Kangaroo
In this sentence are:
-Austronesian Tetum words: Boot (really bo’ot), mos, fali
- Tetumised Portuguese words, i.e. now spelled phonetically: Nasaun, Apoiu (Portuguese Nação, apoio)
- unchanged Portuguese words ie. because they were already phonetic: sempre, agora
err: ‘Adam, as you probs know, Tetum is an Austronesian language with a lot of Portuguese influence…’
etc..
Thanks Lefty. Very interesting.