Floods, Climate Change and the Media

The floods in Australia had been dominating the news cycle for over a week now. To be fair on the news agencies with the spread of the water into New South Wales and Victoria this has been one of the larger ones of the last century. It is certainly not the largest but in the era of the talking heads media that has sprung up in the last 20 years it is certainly the largest.

As the waters recede and the TV shots show dry and muddy land the focus has switched to the cleanup efforts. The public response in terms of manpower has indeed been something to report about. The use of terms like "hero" has as usual been overdone. The use of the term "obviously" continues on unrestrained. When the latest crop of media reporters, we can hardly call and journalists any more, run out of date like how high the water has risen by necessity they need to fill in the empty space with whatever pops into their head. The art of journalism is a dying one. Facts are rarely checked and if they are single sourced so that these days anybody with Internet access and a couple of minutes on their hands can verify or more commonly find that the report is false or based on very dubious sources.

The field of climate change is a classic one I read a report talking about how the snow cover was receding. The report came from a member of NOAA in the United States. Visiting their website and looking at the snow cover date published on their own site the 2010 figure was the third-highest over the time this metric has been tracked. The report them was a complete fallacy disapproved by their own data. The mainstream media listens to the report never checks the source and reports the story has given. Sadly, given the number of people are actually check stories, this is all with the general public gets to hear. Given that they never get to find out the real facts it is easy to see why many still believe in this scientifically denuded field.

Heros and Not

When someone does their job well we call them diligent, efficient, a good worker, dedicated, an arse kisser, and a number of other employee related nouns. Our media and the powers that be are more and more commonly starting to call them heroes.

A hero is someone who risks their life to save others. If it is your job to do this, e.g. a rescue worker then when they do this they are just doing their job unless they have gone above and beyond their duty. A hero is someone someone who has given their life that another might be saved. Rescue workers are taught not to place their own lives in peril to effect a rescue.

If a batsman saves a Test Match they are not a hero they just did their job. The media is cheapening the word hero so that real heroes are marginalised. There is a fine line between an idiot and a hero, the idiot fails where the hero succeeds. 

The Bendigo Rape by 7

Four men and three boys were charged recently with raping a woman in Bendigo. Since this happened in Victoria details are sketchy but since four of the perpetrators were adults we have their names. All of the names are Middle Eastern sounding in nature. Don't know if they are recent immigrants at the victim was an Australian woman.

While this information has not been provided, we can reasonably assume that all the perpetrators are followers of the Islamic faith. The sacred writings of Islam allow for the rape of non-Muslims, in particular those considered inappropriately dressed. A boy aged 14 was included in this group, the lessons start early.

We can expect to see many more incidences like this in the future simply because our legal system is weak and their faith is strong, certainly much stronger than our resolve to limit behaviour sanctioned under Islam. I am continually surprised by the lack of basic understanding of tenants and fundamentals of this religion. Worse is the way that the weak-willed members of our leadership and the Left are always putting a positive spin on everything done in the name of Islam.

The fanaticism that Islam is such that any criticism is not tolerated. If anybody ever reads this blog the simple act of writing the analysis above could put me in their crosshairs. This is not some irrational fear that a recent analysis based on reading hundreds of examples. The amount of effort in the amount of support given by a local organisations to quash any form of freedom of speech when it comes to the subject of Islam shows how far as a society we have slipped.

The Floods

it has been a while since I wrote a blog entry here and now that started writing my computer column here I've decided to continue with this series.

The recent floods in Queensland have demonstrated how unprepared we are in Australia to face nature. At the same time the Australian news media has spent a lot of time pretending that these floods in some way unusual. They desperately want to say that these are the worst floods we've ever seen but history had shown that those of the 50s were worse.

To some extent the amount of mitigation of the damage could have been increased if our politicians and leaders had spent far less time listening to global warming alarmists. With predictions of an ending drought and dry dams councils allow people to build on floodplains. The elevated Queenslander style homes which are designed to deal with flooding had been replaced by ground level dwellings which were the first to be affected by the floods.

Increasing population means a demand for more housing. If you don't have to worry about nature and planning becomes easy and you can build anywhere. Nature however doesn't care what our predictions are and continues to follow the natural cycles as they have for thousands of years. The irony in this situation is that those responsible for these outrageous theories are the same ones that rail against the building of dams and at the same ones that never seem to get blamed for their false predictions.

In times past when we were less enlightened people who made false predictions were often put to death. In our modern society they are continually rewarded with TV spots, books, the lecture circuit and even  regaled with titles like Australian of the year. Sadly while institutions like the ABC are allowed to present opinions based on a dearth of facts the general public will continue to be misled. There exists more sensible new sources online but many only have the television and in newspapers as their primary sources of information.

Until this changes people will build houses in floodplains, and people will lose them.