so you think you know how to ride a bike?

For those people who haven't seen it yet, this clip below of Danny Macaskill riding his mountain bike is (in my opinion) the coolest thing I've ever seen. Not just the best mountain biking clip, but the best clip ever!

And if you think that that's nothing, how about a bunch of chinese girls doing a stage show on bicycles, jumping from one to the other, human pyramids, standing on heads and all that good stuff? Quite amazing stuff, I think you should definitely check it out.

Harry out...

Because once is never enough...

Having put up a picture of Dita just to mix things up a bit, I realised that once just wasn't good enough. So, with no copyright permission I give you; more photos of Dita!

I fought Jude Law and Jude Law won...

You know, it's a pretty good gig being involved with "climate change". You can tell people to change their ways and live an earth friendly lifestyle, but you're allowed to fly around the world spewing carbon (and other things) into the atmosphere everywhere you go. This is because your message is so important that it justifies doing some of the "bad things" to spread it.

This is very machiavellian really, announcing that the ends justify the means (part of the reason I don't believe in anthroprogenic global warming).

Anyway, amongst the perks of international travel and first class accommodation, attendees at Hopenchangen now get free sex from prostitutes. Talk about a great metaphor for those people pushing the global warming bandwagon. Except of course in this case it's the prostitutes offering the free sex, not the hopeychangeys demanding it as some inalienable right associated with their saving the planet.

Dr Harry

and now for something completely different...

Sick of reading about politics and the ETS? Have a look at a beautiful woman instead...

It's getting hot in here, so hot, so take off all your clothes...

Is it getting hot in here? Apparently not, if the people of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia are to be believed. And they probably should be believed since they're the people that have data from all over the world and have provided the majority of the data for the findings of the IPCC report.

Anyway, whether or not it's getting hotter is actually completely irrelevant to this particular post. However, I will outlay my own feelings, just so there's no misunderstanding.

I don't believe in anthroprogenic climate change.

The earth maybe warming. The earth maybe cooling. Both these things have happened many many times before. What's the difference? How can you believe computer models that can't even replicate what's happened in the past let alone look into the future? How can you ignore the role of sun spots, the fact that many measuring stations are now in built up areas, that changes to CO2 levels seem to historically occur AFTER major climate events, or the fact that the Mediaeval Warm Period was far warmer than current global temperatures?

Anyway.

My question for today is: Why do we need an Emissions Trading Scheme?

I do understand the basic idea, that the market will decide the price of carbon and by limiting the amount of the CO2 produced we get to utilise the benefits of the free market (possibly the only time many greenies would ever be interested in the benefits OF a free market). However, for me, the big problem is that any such scheme is impossible to administer without massive bureacracy and the invasion of government into many aspects of personal and business life, aspects that the government doesn't really need to be involved in.

Surely there is a simpler way?

If Australia wants to reduce the emissions of CO2, let's just whack a tax on all those things that produce it, or at least the main ones. A whacking big tax on coal and oil, basically. For good measure we could ban the export of coal as well, a good way to do our bit to cut global emissions. This will let the market decide the value of CO2, but it will be done in a much simpler, much cheaper way. If you burn coal, you pay more for it (do powerstations even pay for the coal they use at the moment?). You then pass on your costs to your customers, who will presumably use a bit less. Your customers then pass on their costs, and so on. Such a chain reduces overall use while not requiring any invasion of bureacracy, except into the start of the chain where you need to do the taxing.

For me, one of the big issues is this. If I truly believed (TRULY BELIEVED) that humans were causing the globe to warm and as a result everybody would die in fire and brimstone, I would be doing something about it. Not something like telling people to use 1 sheet of toilet paper or setting up some half arsed ETS that will have zero impact on global emissions, but will have the benefit of increasing govt (and therefore politican's) power and reach.

No I would be acting drastically to actually have a real and meaningful impact on emissions. Such a policy might be electorally unpopular, but if you can sell it as a life and death mission that you really believe in than it is not only possible, but mandatory to try.

What really gets me are those people who are fixated on climate change, but don't REALLY believe in it, they just use it as a way to exercise their own little hobby horse. Lots of greenies just believe that we should be leading simpler lives, growing our own food, recycling more, living in harmony with mother earth. Lots of other lefties just believe that they know better (symptomatic of their kind really) and this is a great excuse for telling people what to do. Not that they lead by example, (of course) but they're quite happy to tell you to have a short shower or not eat meat or not take holidays or not buy a new TV.

Hypocrisy people! I'm afraid I can't take hypocrites very seriously. If you tell me that global warming is the greatest threat to mankind in history and you arrived on a private jet to tell me that then I automaticall regard your opinion as being null and void. Don't like it? Don't be a hypocrite!

ps I'm not the biggest supporter of the Greens, but at least they put their money where their mouth is. They voted to defeat the ETS last time because it wasn't strong enough. The wishy-washy compromise hammered out by Gillard and MacFarlane is a steaming dog turd and the Greens are right to vote against that as well.

Is that a greenhouse in your pocket?

So, the Liberal Party.

There seem to be an awful lot of the commentariat making noises about how confused they are, how the Liberal party is fracturing itself, how it's the wets versus the drys, how it's power brokers doing their best to remove Turnbull because they hate Turnbull. I think that they're all wrong.

The Liberal party is in opposition. The opposition's role is to "oppose". They need to present an alternative government to the people, the key word there being "alternative".

For the past two years or so the Liberal Party hasn't actually stood up for anything. Nelson and Turnbull (both massive disappointments as far as I'm concerned) have been to busy agreeing with the ALP to come up with any realistic or useable policies. Agreeing with the government or nitpicking on minor but populist policies is no way to get elected.

To many people keep on insisting the lessons of the last election were that Howard lost because of work choices and climate change. Bullshit!

Voters wanted a change from Howard. Rudd offered that change, in a Howard-Lite package. Sure, people were worried by the scare campaign about work choices. Sure, lots of people were worried about climate change (not so many now). But basically, everything was going well and people wanted more of the same, just not from Howard. I sincerely believe that Costello would have had a real dip if he had led the Liberals to the last election, not because he was necessarily better, but because he was different while still providing more of the same.

So will the Liberals lose 20 seats in a climate change election? I doubt it. A few weeks ago the Liberals were looking at losing 12 to 20 seats in an election anyway. And worrying obsessively about polls and votes can cripple you so much that you do nothing and fail from inaction.

The current goings-on in the Liberal Party are not about Turnbull, at least not directly. They are about people in the party finally growing a backbone, standing up and saying that a policy direction is crap and that something needs to be done. If Turnbull could stand up and announce that the whole ETS is crap, that he is going to fight it because it's crap (which he should have done a long time ago) than none of this would have happened.

Those people standing up have realised that you have to STAND for something. Not being Labour is not enough. The Liberal Party is never going to win an election by moving to the left of centre. That territory is already owned by Labor and in a time where maybe 10 percent of voters of genuine swing voters, Labor voters are not going to vote Liberal, no matter how many trees you save, no matter how sorry you are and no matter how many stupid and incomprehensibly complicated emissions trading schemes you enact.

This is definitely an issue worth fighting over, but if it hadn't been this it would have been something else.

That's why the commentariat are wrong, it is about the policy, not about Turnbull specifically.

Edit

So the votes are in and Tony Abbot won, 42 votes to 41. Joe Hockey totally shot himself in the foot, how on earth could the Liberals countenance getting a new leader and then seeing this legislation that caused all the problems get passed? People know where Tony Abbot stands, that's a good basis for rebuilding the party.

Link to article here.

Edit 2

Another point of view. Basicallyit's saying that Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard were all controversial and unlikeable in their own ways. You don't need to be a populist or universally popular to be the Prime Minister. Potentially means Abbot is a real threat as opposition leader, because he actually stands for something.