Genuine qualified scientists have identified five major ice ages over the last three billion years, which were before human intervention. One does not require a PhD from Oxford to realise that man induced global warming, (sorry, climate change), is a load of old codswallop. Should there be any doubt, the facts that there has been no statistically significant global warming since 1995, and the Middle Ages were probably warmer, makes the hypothesis nothing more than alarmist rubbish. Indeed, it looks like nature is taking its course, and a little ice age may be on the way.
If, as Tim Flannery stated pontifically that the oceans are about to rise and inundate coastal Australia while the dams become empty, it is about time they rose. If you go to Ephesus in Turkey where Saint Paul preached and which was once a port, the ocean has now retreated nine kilometres caused by a four-metre drop in sea level.
Across the Aegean, the once narrow coastal pass where King Leonidas and 300 of his Spartans held off hundreds of thousands of Persians for three days in 480 BC before he was betrayed, is now five kilometres inland.
Similarly in England, the so-called Cinque Ports on the English Channel, once used for trade with Europe, are now kilometres inland because of the drop in sea level.
In those days there was no coal-fired plants, cars or Al Gore flying around in his private jets. It was, and is, just part of the natural cycle.
Anyhow, be that as it may, it has always been human nature for as long as I can remember, to embroider rumour or conjecture with certainty, and sell it to the masses as gospel. In the days of pre-political correctness, the fibs were known as old wives’ tales. More recently, they have been known as urban myths (why rural areas have been excluded, I am uncertain). In the political arena, they are the in-thing.
Who can forget Kevin Rudd declaring that climate change was “the great moral challenge of our generation”and Julia Gillard proclaiming that “climate change is real and it is caused to a significant extent by human activity.”Maybe if she was around 2,000 years ago to point out to the Ephesians the errors of their ways and impose a carbon tax, Ephesus would still be a port today, and she might rate a mention in the Epistles.
Maybe Greta should have been there also, so that she could have compelled Saint Paul to write a letter to the Ephesians condemning the use of coal gas in order to power their chariots.
Or maybe Al Gore could have flown in from Damascus on his gas-powered chariot, with Harry and Meghan close behind in theirs.
One may well ask how anyone could believe in the changing arguments in favour of man-induced global warming, given that many of the most strident apologists have no relevant scientific qualifications at all. The answer lies in the infamous statement by Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.
When I was young, it was believed, almost universally, that if you swam within one hour of eating a meal, you would develop a cramp and sink like a stone and drown. I can still remember mum watching the clock after we had eaten lunch at Fremantle’s South Beach. There were many more such beliefs.
I was brought up to believe that reading in a dim light weakens your eyes; that eating carrots improves your vision; that breaking a mirror brings seven years bad luck, as does opening an umbrella indoors or walking under a ladder; and that if you wear damp socks or undergarments, you are sure to catch pneumonia and die. Old habits die hard, with the result that I continue to half believe the myths. I still find it difficult to wear socks made wet by rain and will never walk under a ladder.
There is however a myth of my own making which continues to hold me in thrall today. Over forty years ago, I used to drive my daughters to school in North Sydney via Artarmon Road. A little before that in 1974, Colleen McCullough had published her Novel “Tim” about a rich middle-aged spinster in Artarmon who had seized upon a beautiful young man who was not the full quid and married him.
As we drove down Artarmon Road past where once until recently there was Channel Nine, I would watch the right side and the girls would watch the left in order to ensure that the “old lady” didn’t get me. I still drive down pretty regularly to do shopping in Crows Nest, and always keep a weather eye out at the roundabouts in case she jumps out and grabs me. My son just told me that she will get me in the end.
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One common misconception, included in books of advice to the young, was that masturbation causes blindness. In the bed next to me at boarding school was a boy who shall remain nameless, who would make suspicious groaning noises at night. During an earth tremor which shook the beds and caused the stone cross to fall off the school chapel, he repented out loud as his bed rattled. Years later, I learned that he went blind. I report that simply as a fact. Make of it what you will.
In more recent times, my favourite urban myth concerns a gentleman who lit a cigarette while sitting on the toilet, which his wife had cleaned with petrol. On dropping the lighted match into the bowl, the resulting explosion caused third degree burns to his derriére, a fractured skull when he struck the ceiling as a projectile, and a broken arm when he hit the floor.
Finally, myths are nothing new. In the Old Testament we are told of Jonah spending three days in the belly of a whale, only to be regurgitated alive and well, and Noah building an ark and taking on board every living creature – including salt-water crocodiles, elephants and lions no doubt. And then of course there are Adam and Eve and the talking snake in the apple tree.
Anyway, all of the above are more credible than the man-induced global warming(sorry, climate change) hypothetical rubbish. We have enough to worry about due to the vicissitudes of life without that crap.
further reading:
http://aoi.com.au/bcw/Sealevel/index.htm
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