John Carter Need Not Apologise

National MP John Carter has been pilloried - especially by Tv One News tonight - for swearing in the presence of a traffic cop. Note: In the presence of, not at.

This may come as a surprise to some people but policemen are often arrogant, swaggering, sarcastic bullies who hide behind their uniform.

It was said that the police should be shown more respect. Wrong. The police have to earn respect, and they do so by the quiet, firm, professional manner in which they carry out their duties. Indeed, it can be argued that given the appalling performance of the police force in many respects over the past 20 or 30 years - and I hark right back at least to evidence-planting in the Arthur Thomas case - that the police have an uphill job to re-establish the respect and trust that ought be their due.

I have a fair idea what happened in this case. The cop stopped Carter because he failed to indicate at a corner - not exactly the crime of the century. I wish I could get this much police attention when marauding vermin steal my property. The cop, looking at a late model vehicle which clearly belonged to the local MP then passed the remark "Is this vehicle registered?" or some such equivalent. It was a smart-arse sneer intended to intimidate the driver - and that cop knows it.

At which Carter said "Have a look at the fucking window". He was not challenging the issue of a ticket for a traffic offence, he was responding to a provocative statement by the policeman.

Two points seem relevant:

1: Carter was not abusing the policeman. The remark was directed at the window. Had he said "Have a look at the window" there could be no issue.

2: I challenge that policeman to swear an affidavit that he has never used that word himself. If he is unable to do so then he can hardly claim to have been offended by the word. In which case, where is the problem? The only problem is that Carter had the temerity to bite back at the bully.

I'm certain many, many people could recount situations where smart-arse cops pass sneering, sarcastic remarks knowing that they have the other party at a major disadvantge. I know I certainly can.

The stupid cop in this instance should get over himself and grow up.

All of which begs the question: Who put the case in the puiblic domain.

Global warming: Is the science settled?

I watched the Great Global Warming Scam doco on tv recently and the discussion that came after it.

The first point I noticed was a curious disclaimer by the presenter who told us that the programme did not necessarily represent the view of the channel. Why say that? Tv channels don’t usually preface their programmes with a denial of this sort.

It occurred to me that the “excuse me” was because man-made global warming believers are so fanatical that to even suggest that the idea may be flawed is to put yourself in the same league as Holocaust deniers – a connection that is frequently invoked in this debate.

Having watched the programme I am as bewildered as ever.

I do not believe in man-made global warming. I don’t disbelieve it either. It’s possible. It’s also possible that there are other explanations. There are just too many heavyweight scientists who have serious doubts for it to meet proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Please don’t pull the IPCC rabbit out of the hat . . . there is as much controversy about the scientific/political make-up of that body as there is over the subject itself.

And for sure do NOT quote An Inconvenient Truth to me. It’s maker is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Al Gore is a failed politician on the make, and what he most wants to make is money. I have not seen the film. Don’t need to. As soon as I saw a clip from it showing Pacific Islanders coming off an aeroplane in New Zealand being held out as “already island people are fleeing their homes under the threat of rising sea levels” I knew it was a crock. I challenge that crook to find me a single PI in this country who has come here because their home island is making like a submarine.

Go on Al, suck that up. If you can’t do it you are a liar, a cheat and a fraud.

So, from the perspective of an unbeliever, where are we with global warming?

Before we inflict significant economic harm on ourselves globally, before we wreck the jobs and businesses of millions of people worldwide, before we launch policies that have unintended consequences of a disastrous magnitude – look at world hunger/food prices v. biofuel as an example – it does seem to this sceptic that we need to have rock solid answers to two basic questions:

1: Is the planet actually getting warmer? The evidence suggests that it might be. It appears to me that the pro-warmers claim that in the last 50 years the planet has warmed significantly, and I use that word in its scientific sense. Ie, more than can be explained by random probability. Yet, we are also told that peak temperature was in 1998 and since then things have cooled down. If the latter fact is true are we certain beyond reasonable doubt that it will rise again and continue to rise?

2: If warming is occurring is it because of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gasses? As I apprehend it, the “science” here is not direct. Nobody has shown that the GHGs are demonstrably trapping solar warmth. The greenhouse effect is proposed as an explanation for two observed series of statistics: 1) Global temperatures have risen in the past 50 years and 2) In that same time there has been an explosion in industrial activity and fossil fuel consumption thus releasing CO2 stored by rain-forests millions of years ago.

But are these two series related?

When I was a laboratory technician at DSIR Grasslands Division, about three lifetimes ago, I remember the then director, the highly acclaimed Dr Peter Sears, giving a hilarious after dinner speech at a staff function in which he proved conclusively that the statistical rise in gin consumption was mirrored by a rise in curate’s salaries. His point to all us young scientists was that just because there is a statistical correlation there may not be a causal relationship.

So I ask this of the science fraternity: Have there been any experiments which prove that GHGs reflect heat back to the earth’s surface and that it is this reflected heat that is causing the earth’s surface to warm up?

I have tried to follow the debate on the web and in various blogs but every one of them ends up as a yes-it-is/no-it-isn’t slanging match. Surely, if there is that much disagreement the science can not be said to be settled.

We are certainly not at the same point as knowing, for instance, that the earth is an oblate spheroid, not a flat pancake (held up on the back of a giant turtle). Nor are we at the point that resolves the beginnings of the planet vis-à-vis the idea that it was made by some big old white guy up in the sky.

There are interesting parallels with the creation story and global warming. There are religious nutters who simply do not believe the scientific version of creation. The question, for me, remains open as to who are the nutters and who are the scientists in The Great Global Warming Schemozzle.

Perhaps we could start by getting answers to the two simple questions above.

David Morris writes a travel guide to New Zealand. Read it at http://New-Zealand-Travel-Guide.com. He also runs a rental car business called Downtown Rentals at http://New-Zealand-rental-cars.com.

Yahoo! you're pushing me around!

It's as though some e-sites set out to really piss people off.

My current bleat is about Yahoo. Yahoo recently hooked up with NZ telco xtra. So now the Yahoo website in NZ is Yahoo!xtra. Ok fine. But if I want to go to http://yahoo.com, it defaults to the New Zealand page at http://nz.yahoo.com/ and it will not accept any other URL. If I retype, it simply defaults again to the local site.

Sure, if I go to the bottom of the Yahoo!xtra page I can click through to Yahoo USA - the real Yahoo (?) - but why should I have to.

It would, surely, be an interesting consumer case that if I ask for yahoo.com that's what I should get, and not be palmed off with some local substitute that suits the company.

Google at least gives me the option of local or international.

Last hurrah For The Hypocrits

When I saw Helen Clark mouthing an official Government apology to the Vietnam vets last week I wanted to spit blood.

But not for the obvious reasons - you know, she was an anti-war protester etc. etc.

Firstly, because she never actually said "sorry", and her word spinners had carefully crafted the wording so that it was the Government - not her - that was doing the apologising.

But mainly because when the guys came back they were given the rubbish treatment by the government, govt. departments, and most disgracefully of all by the army and the RSA.

The reason they were given the official bucket of shit on the head was because of pressure on the then Labour Government from the Labour Party and its activists. Now who would that include? Er? Umm? The Princes St Labour Party Branch for sure. Guess who were members of that unlovely little cabal? Clark and Goff among others. Yet here she is now apologising for it all.

Angry as I might feel about her hypocrisy and the mealy-mouthed kiss-off she gave last week, it's the army and the RSA that really boil my blood.

If any two organisations should have stood four square behind their mates, their comrades in arms, it was those two organisations. They, of all, should know what the troops went through in combat and should have told the Labour politicians and their peacenik running dogs to piss off.

The Great Auckland Billboard Hoo-hah

So the panjandrums of Auckland City want to ban billboards from the centre of the city in order to make the place a world-class city, whatever that means.

The town's clowns, aka Auckland City Councillors, have by their neglect allowed the construction of one of the ugliest cities imaginable. The best thing you can do to many of Aucklland's more recent buildings is plaster as many billboards over them as you possibly can.

Where else would you get multi-story apartment buildings erected litterally only a metre or two apart?

With rare exceptions - parts of the Viaduct Basin, Chancery, Metropolis - the design of multi story buildings over the past 40 years has varied from post-Stalingrad to post-Hong Kong.

Example: Those god-awful apartment buildings on the old railway goods shed site. Scene One, Scene Two etc. This had to be one of the most important building sites in the city. Right on the waterfront, not another building near it. It should have been the site of a truly awe inspiring building. What did we get? Three of the ugliest shit-houses that some cretinous designer, kow-towing to his overseas owner-client, could possibly have conceived.

When you think about it, the architectural "profession" has a lot to answer for in this city. Just walk around and look at the structures we will have to live with for many, many decades. With few exceptions they are just plain butt-ugly. Yet every one of them passed across the drawing board of an architect. It's like allowing the Visigoths to rebuild Rome.

When I become king, the architects will be lined up and shot, just after I deal to the town planners, those phillistines that allowed it to happen.