Whales Speak Oxford English

Optus and WSPA have combined forces to give wales a voice. Just not their voice.









This is the website: http://www.givewhalesavoice.com.au/?utm_source=Empowered&utm_medium=eDM&utm_content=URL&utm_campaign=Give_Whales_A_Voice

Apparently wales are one of the loudest animals on the planet, but they suffer in silence when hunted.

"But together we can make their voices heard"

The site encourages us to record a word from the Oxford English Dictionary, then this list of words will be sent to the waling commission.

Do wales want to speak with an Oxford English accent?

My whole problem with this campaign is my problem with the whole animal rights movement.

This ad talks about the wales' voice, but it's really our voice. People are making these recordings. It's not wales sneaking ashore and surreptitiously recording a word in Ahab's Internet Cafe.

People who get caught up in the animal rights causes do so because they have given human characteristics, human prerogatives, human feelings and human motives to animals.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm against animal cruelty, but that's not the same things as seeing animals as the same as humans. That's just bad logic, it's not empirical and it's just plain dumb.

I was talking about this very thing to someone the other day who mentioned their pet dog and how important he was. And I pointed out, gently, that it was your attachment to the dog, your human characteristics that made cruelty to the animal seem so wrong.

We are different to dogs. They don't actually mind cruelty (unless we teach them otherwise). Ever seen a dog play with a rabbit? Ever seen a fox rip a lamb out of a ewe?

Let's shepherd creation, fish the wales humanely and sensibly if we have to, and not at all if we don't have to. But let's keep things in perspective.

Making a human being out of a wale is making a mountain out of a molehill.

In fact, it is this effort to give wales a human voice that actually robs the wales of their own unique voice.

Knutty Environmentalists

Get some perspective. That's all I'm going to say.

Get some perspective.

Wake up to yourselves.

Two different articles in the same SMH bulletin.

The first one speaks for itself. Have a look around, PETA. Get some perspective. What's really important here?



The second one is the same tragic environmental myopia carried through to a sadly enviro-logical end.

A couple in Argentina attempted to kill one of their children, succeeded in murdering the other, then killed themselves and "wrote in a suicide note they were scared about the effects of global warming" (http://www.smh.com.au/world/baby-survives-three-days-with-bullet-in-chest-after-parents-suicide-pact-20100303-pgtm.html)

They don't have to worry about global warming now.

This sad story reveals the stupidity of the extremist end of environmentalism because this is the logical conclusion of the rhetoric.

Get some perspective. Take a breath. Pull your head out of the clouds of rhetoric and propaganda and have a look at the real issues that face the world.

Gunpowder Words

What should we call them? Gunpowder words? Explosive words? Fart bomb words.

We all know about weasel words, right?

What about explosive words? What did Orwell say about them?


I noticed that environmentalists, in particular, love exaggerative words

These are words that carry an emotional content, a powerful resonance, shocking connotations, words that are inappropriately applied.

Let me give you the two examples I have heard recently.

Pollution and Destruction.

There was a lady on the radio the other day while I was in the car talking about something going on up in the Liverpool Plains. Coal mining or something, I didn't catch the whole story.

As she was talking she without a stumble talked about stopping the destruction of the Liverpool Plains. Now, think about it. They don't want to bomb it, to bulldoze it all down, to dam the rivers, to wipe it off the face of the earth, they want to run a long wall under the Liverpool Plains a kilometre underground or whatever they do.

That's just not 'destruction'. Damage may be appropriate, but it's not even despoil. It's mine under. The Liverpool Plains will be visibly unchanged by longwall mining.

The second one was pollution.
An environmental ad, I think by the government. Anyhow, in the ad, the lady talks about carbon pollution.
Hang on. Hang on there, carbon is not pollution.
Pollution is dirty, foreign, destructive, despoiling. carbon belongs in the atmosphere. Now the media has the dog by the bone trying to work out whether the balance of carbon in the air is out of kilter. But carbon is not a pollutant. It's a part of the system.

If you think carbon is a pollutant there's only one solution, hold your breath until you drop dead and then you can have a clear conscience about carbon pollution because you breathe carbon dioxide out every breath.

Fart Bomb Words, I like that name.

I just realised this kind of writing and speaking already has a name, propaganda. Gonna have to forget fart bomb words.

Wrong End of the Stick

I can't help reacting to this.

Water is plentiful. There's lot's of it. And we can reuse it.

Water is the ultimate plentiful, renewable resource. We live at the bottom of a huge recycling system.

Now, I care about the environment, but I still think you've got to get things right. I can't believe it when an environmental spokesperson says things like this in the Sydney Morning Herald

"Water is a scarce resource that is only going to become more scarce with climate change and we must readjust our habits on a permanent basis, not just when dam levels get low."

Water is not a scarce resource. It is plentiful. Some theories suggest that's why there is life on earth, plentiful water. It is unevenly distributed, for sure. In some places it is scarce but Sydney is not one of them.
And how will climate change affect Sydney's water? Isn't the dominant theory that the polar ice caps will melt and there will be more water in the global water system, that ocean temperatures will rise, wouldn't that make Sydney more tropical, more wet?

I'm not sure why environmentalists say things like this.

* Is it all too emotional to think clearly?
* Do you have to follow the party line to show how environmental you are?
* Do you have to overstate the case in order to get heard?
Or is it all three feeding back into a great sensationalist loop?

I don't know. All I know is that common sense sometimes goes out the window when we start talking about climate change.

There are some issues with water use:

1. Waste. We are used to luxury. For too long we have just poured water down the drain. That should stop.


2. Inefficient Collection. In the early days the policy was to discourage private water collection in order to subsidise the public infrastructure. When it rains on Sydney, most of it is unused. So get a tank.


3. Demographics. Infrastructure (dams etc) has not been increased at the same rate as population growth. So get a tank.

So, I'm all for permanent changes in water use. Reuse water - wash the car on the lawn etc. Reduce water - save up flushes etc. Recycle water - use grey water to flush the loo.

But I also think we have to get the thing right.
Water is plentiful, but it's also valuable, in fact essential, so let's use it wisely.