Lots of warmists

I was at a performance of the Bill Bryson Show “Many a True Word” at the State Theatre in Sydney last night, in which the author was interviewed by Ray Martin, and read passages from his books. It was entertaining, if you were of the Left and a warmist, that is.

Almost the first thing Martin quoted from Bryson’s Down Under was that no-one outside Australia seems to know who the Prime Minister of Australia is. “Kevin Rudd?” Bryson quipped. Gentle laughter from the audience. But when Martin mentioned Tony Abbott, there were actually jeers and boos from the partisan crowd, and the resident ‘sand artist’ on stage had a disparaging puppet with budgie smugglers and big ears. Cannot imagine the same kind of treatment being meted out to, for example, Julia Gillard, can you? But Tony’s just a thick bogan and fair game for the intelligentsia of Sydney, right?

If that weren’t enough, there were video clips from some of Bryson’s pals interspersed within the interview. The first was president of the alarmist Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse, a well-known climate propagandist who stitched up James Delingpole on an episode of Horizon (see here). The programme was based on the typical ‘science under attack’ line, with Delingpole misled into believing it would be an investigation with ‘no preconceptions’, when in reality it was the usual BBC alarmism, criticising ‘deniers’ for daring to ask awkward questions of The Cause. Watts Up has more here.

If that weren’t enough, the third clip was of another of Bryson’s ‘pals’, failed end-of-pier crystal ball reader and Gaia freak, Tim Flannery. Go here for a list of all the posts on ACM that deal with this twit. My evening was going rapidly downhill by this point.

To finish off, Paul Nurse was back on video for the Q & A session at the end, to ‘ask’ Bill why politicians wouldn’t listen to scientists – a question which sounded more like a plea. “Who is the science minister?” Bill asked. “We haven’t got one,” replied Ray, followed by a general shaking of heads in disbelief at the morons we now have in charge here in Australia. Politicians in the last Labor government listened to ‘scientists’ like Flannery, and we ended up with pointless carbon taxes that did nothing for the climate, and sent our economy into a tail spin.

And yes, we do have a science minister, it’s Ian Macfarlane, under whose portfolio science falls (see here).

With friends like those, Bill, there’s not much hope.