Myths Busted

I read many news articles about Climate Change on a daily basis.  Some offer hope by telling readers about new hope from renewable energy projects, environmental conservation efforts, protesting about the construction of pulp mills, or massed activism such as "Walk against Warming" taking place this weekend.  All of these are positive ways we are changing the way we live for the better.

On the other hand, there are sometimes articles in the paper about people like Professor Ian Plimer who is a known climate change sceptic.  He is currently Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide.  Herein lays the problem.  A Geologist who is a climate change sceptic, telling the public that "If you thought Y2K was a scam, you wait for this one". 

So lets work through this one. 

a) The man, who is not a Climatologist, but claims to know for certain that Climate Change is a myth, so much so that he gave a speech titled, "Human-induced climate change is a load of hot air", to the Sydney Mining Club last week.  WTF?  Sound like the mining industry trying to cloud us with another typical self interested smoke screen!  Another Mining expert that says it is good to burn coal and that it will not hurt the Earth.  I bet we are all surprised with that little gem of information.  Personally I would be asking a Climatologist, who most by the way, all agree that CC is due to human influence.  Would you ask your GP to diagnose a problem with your car’s gearbox?  I certainly would not.

b) Y2K was a scam?  WTF again.  Being an IT professional, I personally worked on the Y2K issue for two years, and mark my words, it was not a scam.  Billions of lines of code had to be re-written so that it would function correctly when the millennium ticked over.  Non-compliant hardware had to be replaced or code rewritten so it would function after 1 January 2000.  So much hard work went into preparing for the event, and it was completed and tested so thoroughly, that on the actual day, only very minor issues were found, and civilisation did not end as the media hyped.  Strike two Prof.  Now comparing Y2K to Climate Change, and you see that in both situations we know/knew how to avert them, whereas Y2K, everyone took action because of the high risk, however, due to people like Prof Plimer muddying the pristine waters with this crap, there is a huge lack of action towards Climate Change.

So if Professor Plimer is a so called expert on Climate Change, I invite everyone to buy my new book out on the shelves soon, titled "Gravity is a Myth.  The Force that Sucks".  After all, I’m a "Computer Expert" who uses gravity all the time! It should be a best seller I reckon.  Maybe all the Climate Change sceptics will buy it.

It just goes to show we must be ever vigilant should we accidentally confuse education with intelligence.