The climate change debate continues.

[facthunter]

Talk to Scotty. Nev

[old man emu]

On 26/02/2026 at 10:04 PM, kgwilson said:

digital migration

Back in the day this was called hitchhiking.

[onetrack]

The Tuvaluans are planning on thumbing their way to high ground?? How innovative of them!

[nomadpete]

2 hours ago, old man emu said:

Back in the day this was called hitchhiking.

Nah, that's not digital, unless a thumb is a digit?

[onetrack]

The thumb is classed as a digit of the hand, according to my information source. But that source also tells me that an upraised centre digit, conveys unspoken messages more effectively. 😄 

[nomadpete]

OK you got me there. You are obviously more digitally competant than I.

 

However I'd say that the 'upwardly raised middle finger' is unlikely to result in any transport.

[facthunter]

Do it to a copper and you will be transported somewhere. Nev

[Marty_d]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

The thumb is classed as a digit of the hand, according to my information source. But that source also tells me that an upraised centre digit, conveys unspoken messages more effectively. 😄 

Good luck getting a lift though!

[onetrack]

The upraised middle digit is for those departing vehicles that refused to give you a lift!  😄 

[facthunter]

There is so many weirdo's about I wouldn't advise anyone to give people a lift. Unfortunately THAT is the world we NOW live in, Way back you Left doors unlocked and  left Cars with dodgy Batteries, idling in the street, while you ran into the shop.  Nev

[red750]

Used to doing a bit of hitch hiking in my late teens. Family lived in Warragul and I was employed in the bank in Melbourne. In those days, banks opened on Saturday mornings, so I didn't knock of until the last train for the day had departed. Had to get home to get my washing done.

 

I remember being picked up one day by a woman in her 50's/60's. She was prepared with a hammer on her knee.

[Jerry_Atrick]

You got out alive! Well done.

 

[pmccarthy]

I Come To Bury Howard

by David Archibald

10 February 2026

 Certainly not to praise him. The evil he did as Prime Minister has gone on for too long. Howard’s last dark deed, after he lost the September 2007 election, was to pass the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act. To put that in context, when he was a teenager Howard used to cross Sydney to sit at the knee of Sir Philip Baxter, former head of the Australian Energy Commission, and hear of the wonders of nuclear energy. As an elected politician, he became a one-man sleeper cell of nuclear advocacy.

 

In private conversations, Howard used to call global warming nonsense. Nevertheless, he worked towards bringing in a carbon tax. He wanted Australia to adopt nuclear energy. To force Australia to that result, he needed to make coal-fired power generation more expensive. He was being two-faced and too cute. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act was the accounting basis for the tax. The idea was to bring it in, settle it down over a couple of years and then start taxing.

Some 1,000 Australian companies continue to report their carbon consumption under that act. The total cost of employing all the accountants for this may be of the order of $500 million per annum. All of which is wasted. Close to $10 billion has been wasted over the years, for nothing. Fifteen years ago I used to be invited to give speeches at anti-carbon tax rallies on the east coast. After one such rally in front of Parliament House, I went in to meet Senator Nick Minchin, then considered to be the hard man of the Liberal right. I said to the Senator that the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act should be repealed. He replied “Why would we do that?,” which meant that he had no idea how the world worked. He also said that nobody in cabinet asked Howard why he was proceeding with the carbon tax. Not that they weren’t curious about doing something so stupid, they were afraid of upsetting him. They would rather national self-harm than lose their spot in cabinet.

Abbott won the 2013 election on a platform of getting rid of the carbon tax. Three days later Greg Hunt, then Liberal member for Goldstein and a Klaus Schwab protégé, talked him out of repealing the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act. Why get rid of the carbon tax but keep the accounting basis for it? So stupid, but he did it. The carbon tax came back in other forms. The price of electric power tripled. Businesses and whole industries are closing.

Last year the Liberal Party formally abandoned a commitment to carbon taxes, but they still yearn to remain in the Paris mutual suicide pact of 2015. This confused position means they don’t believe the words coming out of their own mouths. The electorate have noticed and are now looking elsewhere for the promise of rational government. But there is an easy test of any party’s grip on reality. If their platform does not include repeal of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, they don’t understand anything and their professed concern for the future of our country is only performative.

So far, no political party has undertaken to do so and the country remains on a glide slope to oblivion. In the meantime, as our standard of living keeps falling, curse John Howard. Curse him in living and curse him in dying. He could have killed the global warming monster in its crib but chose instead to live a lie. We continue to suffer because of his contempt for the Australian people.