BONZ0
2007-04-02 05:50:20 UTC
Andrew Bolt
March 23, 2007 12:00am
Article from: Herald Sun
NO kidding, all these celebrity water-saving secrets are as useless as bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon
To seem good once meant you actually had to do it. You know the kind of thing -- work as a missionary in malarial Africa, or at
least spoon out soup to the poor. Make a difference.
But now?
To seem good in the fashionable way means now doing the most useless thing in the most hopeless cause in the most public way.
It means, in short, showing you're an idiot. It means . . . well, here's a few examples.
The Sunday Herald Sun last weekend asked nobly ecological celebrities for their water saving secrets to stop the city's dams from
running dry.
Here, no kidding, are some of their answers.
We learned that Livinia Nixon, television star, "puts a bowl in the sink whenever she is washing vegetables or the like, with the
leftover water going straight into the garden".
Gosh, make that sacrifice a mere three or four trillion times a year and we might not need a new dam after all.
Rebecca Maddern, TV newsreader, turns off the tap when brushing her teeth.
Premier Steve Bracks has a watering can in the sink to catch the water from the hot tap while he waits for it to run warm, and
Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu declares: "When I swim I take particular care not to splash."
God spare us.
Of course, we didn't really need Productivity Commissioner Neil Byron, who has led inquiries into our water use, to point out the
elephantine obvious this week -- that all this would be as useful as bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon.
"The little water-saving gestures, like putting a bucket in the shower, or turning off the tap while you brush your teeth -- while
they are good measures, and I do them myself -- are exactly that, gestures," he said.
"They are going to contribute almost nothing to solving Australia's water crisis and we are deluding ourselves if we think it's
going to be enough."
But deluding ourselves is now seen as the acme of holiness. The Useless Gesture is the benediction of a saint. In fact, 'tis nobler
not to splash in the pool than to just build that damn dam.
So far has the rot spread that the Useless Gesture has become government policy, especially when it comes to saving the planet from
allegedly frying.
Think only of the Bracks Government's crusade to build wind farms on the prettiest coastal views to give us green power (at twice
the price). Calculate how truly useless that gesture is.
First, we can't actually be sure the globe is warming because of us, or even that it will keep warming.
Second, the difference a few wind farms in Victoria could make to the world's temperature is so invisibly tiny you wouldn't even
find it with Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery's Giant Exaggerating Microscope.
After all, China alone is building a new coal-fired power plant every five days. And studies show that even if all gassy Europe --
never mind tiny Australia -- cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, this would simply delay the warming we expect in 2100 by a mere
two years.
So our wind farms are the ultimate Useless Gesture -- money-grinding monuments to remind us of the seem-good lunacy of our times.
Yet, this Government skites that it has plans for plenty more.
"Victoria's wind farms are saving more than 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year -- the equivalent of taking 60,000
cars off the state's roads," burbles "No Water" Minister John Thwaites.
BUT that claim -- based on an official assumption that the wind blows enough for wind farms to generate 33 per cent of their
installed capacity -- is another of the wild exaggerations typical of this seem-good faith.
As the annual planning report of Vencorp (which oversees our power network) reveals, the wind is actually so unreliable that our
wind farms cranked out as little as 4 per cent of their maximum power on our hottest days -- just when we needed them most for our
airconditioners.
A consultant report to Vencorp warned: "In the past two years . . . load at maximum demand times has averaged 16.1 per cent of
installed capacity".
In short, these expensive wind farms, already useless at best, aren't even half as good as the Government claims.
But who cares? The gesture is everything. Seeming counts for more than doing.
How many examples of the Useless Gesture do you want? We have young world-changers who think they can Make Poverty History just by
going to a rock concert -- a free rock concert, where all they have to donate to the poor is their applause.
We have 200,000 Australians who think ending Aboriginal poverty is as easy as walking across Sydney Harbor Bridge on Sorry Day,
offering nothing but apologies. And only once, in 2000.
We have eager global-warming believers who think we can stop the planet from melting simply by installing better light bulbs, and
get the timid Howard Government to insist on it.
We have the Sydney Morning Herald organise an "Earth Hour" for March 31 to fight global warming and think it enough to turn off just
some of its lights for just one hour, on just this one Saturday evening, when almost all its staff have already gone home anyway.
On it goes. A Google founder shows off the solar-panelled rucksack he uses to charge his mobile phone, before stepping on to his
private Boeing 767 jumbo.
British Conservative Party leader David Cameron announces he's cycling to work to cut emissions, yet has a car follow him each
morning with his briefcase.
As the eminent climate scientist Prof Richard Lindzen said this month of the global warming preachers now so popular: "Just as in
many religions, the route to personal salvation lies in the performance of superstitious rituals, such as changing a light bulb or
arranging for a tree to be planted after every plane journey."
How did we become so trivial? So devoted to the Useless Gesture? So concerned with seeming rather than doing?
I ask this often as a guest speaker at fundraisers for groups such as Rotary last Monday or Friends of Epworth today.
The people there say they are baffled too, and shrug.
Then we draw the tickets for the raffle. Last Monday's proceeds went to a rehabilitation track for patients at a nearby clinic. The
doctor accepting the cheque said it would make a real difference.
That seemed good to me.
Regards
B0NZ0
"...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a
degree panic us"
Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT meteorology professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences
March 23, 2007 12:00am
Article from: Herald Sun
NO kidding, all these celebrity water-saving secrets are as useless as bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon
To seem good once meant you actually had to do it. You know the kind of thing -- work as a missionary in malarial Africa, or at
least spoon out soup to the poor. Make a difference.
But now?
To seem good in the fashionable way means now doing the most useless thing in the most hopeless cause in the most public way.
It means, in short, showing you're an idiot. It means . . . well, here's a few examples.
The Sunday Herald Sun last weekend asked nobly ecological celebrities for their water saving secrets to stop the city's dams from
running dry.
Here, no kidding, are some of their answers.
We learned that Livinia Nixon, television star, "puts a bowl in the sink whenever she is washing vegetables or the like, with the
leftover water going straight into the garden".
Gosh, make that sacrifice a mere three or four trillion times a year and we might not need a new dam after all.
Rebecca Maddern, TV newsreader, turns off the tap when brushing her teeth.
Premier Steve Bracks has a watering can in the sink to catch the water from the hot tap while he waits for it to run warm, and
Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu declares: "When I swim I take particular care not to splash."
God spare us.
Of course, we didn't really need Productivity Commissioner Neil Byron, who has led inquiries into our water use, to point out the
elephantine obvious this week -- that all this would be as useful as bailing out the Titanic with a teaspoon.
"The little water-saving gestures, like putting a bucket in the shower, or turning off the tap while you brush your teeth -- while
they are good measures, and I do them myself -- are exactly that, gestures," he said.
"They are going to contribute almost nothing to solving Australia's water crisis and we are deluding ourselves if we think it's
going to be enough."
But deluding ourselves is now seen as the acme of holiness. The Useless Gesture is the benediction of a saint. In fact, 'tis nobler
not to splash in the pool than to just build that damn dam.
So far has the rot spread that the Useless Gesture has become government policy, especially when it comes to saving the planet from
allegedly frying.
Think only of the Bracks Government's crusade to build wind farms on the prettiest coastal views to give us green power (at twice
the price). Calculate how truly useless that gesture is.
First, we can't actually be sure the globe is warming because of us, or even that it will keep warming.
Second, the difference a few wind farms in Victoria could make to the world's temperature is so invisibly tiny you wouldn't even
find it with Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery's Giant Exaggerating Microscope.
After all, China alone is building a new coal-fired power plant every five days. And studies show that even if all gassy Europe --
never mind tiny Australia -- cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, this would simply delay the warming we expect in 2100 by a mere
two years.
So our wind farms are the ultimate Useless Gesture -- money-grinding monuments to remind us of the seem-good lunacy of our times.
Yet, this Government skites that it has plans for plenty more.
"Victoria's wind farms are saving more than 250,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year -- the equivalent of taking 60,000
cars off the state's roads," burbles "No Water" Minister John Thwaites.
BUT that claim -- based on an official assumption that the wind blows enough for wind farms to generate 33 per cent of their
installed capacity -- is another of the wild exaggerations typical of this seem-good faith.
As the annual planning report of Vencorp (which oversees our power network) reveals, the wind is actually so unreliable that our
wind farms cranked out as little as 4 per cent of their maximum power on our hottest days -- just when we needed them most for our
airconditioners.
A consultant report to Vencorp warned: "In the past two years . . . load at maximum demand times has averaged 16.1 per cent of
installed capacity".
In short, these expensive wind farms, already useless at best, aren't even half as good as the Government claims.
But who cares? The gesture is everything. Seeming counts for more than doing.
How many examples of the Useless Gesture do you want? We have young world-changers who think they can Make Poverty History just by
going to a rock concert -- a free rock concert, where all they have to donate to the poor is their applause.
We have 200,000 Australians who think ending Aboriginal poverty is as easy as walking across Sydney Harbor Bridge on Sorry Day,
offering nothing but apologies. And only once, in 2000.
We have eager global-warming believers who think we can stop the planet from melting simply by installing better light bulbs, and
get the timid Howard Government to insist on it.
We have the Sydney Morning Herald organise an "Earth Hour" for March 31 to fight global warming and think it enough to turn off just
some of its lights for just one hour, on just this one Saturday evening, when almost all its staff have already gone home anyway.
On it goes. A Google founder shows off the solar-panelled rucksack he uses to charge his mobile phone, before stepping on to his
private Boeing 767 jumbo.
British Conservative Party leader David Cameron announces he's cycling to work to cut emissions, yet has a car follow him each
morning with his briefcase.
As the eminent climate scientist Prof Richard Lindzen said this month of the global warming preachers now so popular: "Just as in
many religions, the route to personal salvation lies in the performance of superstitious rituals, such as changing a light bulb or
arranging for a tree to be planted after every plane journey."
How did we become so trivial? So devoted to the Useless Gesture? So concerned with seeming rather than doing?
I ask this often as a guest speaker at fundraisers for groups such as Rotary last Monday or Friends of Epworth today.
The people there say they are baffled too, and shrug.
Then we draw the tickets for the raffle. Last Monday's proceeds went to a rehabilitation track for patients at a nearby clinic. The
doctor accepting the cheque said it would make a real difference.
That seemed good to me.
Regards
B0NZ0
"...and I think future generations are not going to blame us for anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a
degree panic us"
Dr. Richard Lindzen, MIT meteorology professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences