As reported by The Australian, the final Newspoll for the year records Labor’s two-party lead unchanged at 53-47, from primary votes of Coalition 36%, Labor 38% (steady), Greens 10% (down one) and One Nation 3% (up one). Scott Morrison’s personal ratings are unchanged at 44% approval and 52% disapproval, while Anthony Albanese are respectively up two to 39% and down three to 45%. The report says Morrison is down one on preferred prime minister to 45% and Albanese is down two to 36%. The poll also finds 47% expect Labor to win the election compared with 37% for the Coalition. It was conducted Wednesday to Saturday from a sample of 1518.
Newspoll: 53-47 to Labor
A boost to Anthony Albanese’s personal ratings, but otherwise steady as she goes from the last Newspoll of the year.
Wat Tyler
Definitely the most important one!
B.S. Fairman @ #2850 Friday, December 10th, 2021 – 10:12 pm
As long as Charles’s branch keeps having children and don’t die prematurely, he will be irrelevant. Within a few generations, his branch will be so distant from the throne he will be a footnote in history, as far as the royal aspect is concerned (although what he allegedly might have done or been party to is not his descendants’ fault, of course.)
Biden’s regime same old depraved republic….
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/dec/10/julian-assange-can-be-extradited-to-us-to-face-espionage-charges-court-rules
How very “Book of Genesis” of you!
Ethics and morals are totally artificial constructs invented to make us as a civilization feel bad about being anti-social, or vice versa. I’m surprised that such a pagan place as Poll Bludger, where most spell “God” as “Dog” would entertain such a Biblical concept as human kind being “ethically” responsible for the little furry creatures. Believe me, if we fuck it up, they’ll be fine. In fact I think I can hear them cheering.
I haven’t heard one explanation tonight for why we should preserve the planet exactly as it is today (or better, as equivalent to some halcyon time in the relatively recent past) that isn’t outright sentimental or maudlin. It’s all very anthropocentric.
I fully accept the Science of Climate Change. I live in a bushfire zone and near shat myself in November 2019 to January 2020. I’d just like to see something better than touchy-feelyisms used to justify why we deserve to continue as a species.
Kakuru
I don’t know the sources but Boris made the comment at Rome before Glasgow and i’ve heard a few historians say there is evidence of droughts occurring in central Asia leading to forced migration.
Bushfire Bill
Well actually that will happen, irrespective of our impact on the climate. In around a billion years or so the sun will become brighter as it ages, increasing surface temperatures on Earth and causing the oceans to boil into the atmosphere as water vapour, which will cause the runaway greenhouse effect.
Wat Tyler says:
Friday, December 10, 2021 at 10:41 pm
I mean, a big difference between humans and other animals is that:
1. We’re capable of destroying everything
2. We’re aware that we’re capable of destroying everything
3. We’re aware (at least some of us are on some level) that it’s wrong to do so
4. We’re the only species capable of making churros.
And we are capable of knowing that this planet is an insignificant rock around an insignificant sun in an insignificance galaxy. We don’t know if it is an insignificant universe.
We are able to destroy the environment that supports our puny colonies, we may be able to save ourselves from nature and ourselves for a short time, but destroy everything. Not a hope.
Bushfire Bill,
You won’t accept arguments based on human self-interest and you won’t accept arguments based on morality/ethics.
Not sure what’s left!
The greatest legacy of climate change can be seen everyday our skin colour.
Ah, now we’re starting to get all “Pale Blue Dot” up in here…
I wonder what Sagan’s thoughts on things would have been if he were still around today…
JimmyD says:
Friday, December 10, 2021 at 10:52 pm
Bushfire Bill,
You won’t accept arguments based on human self-interest and you won’t accept arguments based on morality/ethics.
Not sure what’s left!
___________________
🙂
It is of course possible that “nature” has given humans a necessary off switch (suicide gene). I mean a species that couples super intelligent stupidity with contempt for its own environment must have a necessary flaw..
I mean look at who Australians have chosen as their highest representatives: Scott Morrison and Barnaby Joyce,
“Lower orders” as defined by us, of course. If we stuff it all up, I wonder if whoever’s left will be so cocky about how “low” the “lower orders” were.
Frednk
I dunno… if we can find the infinity stones we could have a shot at half of everything.
BB. I wish I could instantly turn you into a bird. Something tells me you’d enjoy it.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake…”
Wat Tyler,
Given Sagan was a life-long user of marijuana, I think he’d be getting stoned.
Asha @ #2866 Friday, December 10th, 2021 – 10:31 pm
“DID ANY OF YOU ACTUALLY LISTEN TO ANYTHING I SAID?!”
Seriously, all other things aside, I think his heart might have broken to learn how mainstream flat-earthers are becoming…
You left out “personal self-interest”. No need to get all noble about the planet, or our “responsibilities”, Man’s Destiny or any other mawkish stuff like that. I just don’t want my house to burn down.
Nevertheless, I still haven’t heard why preserving our climate as it is now (or was until recently) is so important to the future of the planet. Plenty of other species have coped with warmer, colder, wetter and drier, and will continue to do so when we are gone. The hinterlands of Fukushima and Chernobyl are encouraging in that regard: we left, Nature came back.
JimmyD @ #2867 Friday, December 10th, 2021 – 10:33 pm
I wouldn’t blame him.
And he’d be in my top 5 famous people to get stoned with. Right after Snoop.
BB is the shittiest Nihilist ever. 🙂
Wat Tyler says:
Friday, December 10, 2021 at 11:08 pm
JimmyD @ #2867 Friday, December 10th, 2021 – 10:33 pm
Wat Tyler,
Given Sagan was a life-long user of marijuana, I think he’d be getting stoned.
I wouldn’t blame him.
And he’d be in my top 5 famous people to get stoned with. Right after Snoop.
________
Two serious stoners, Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron. Imagine that for a group session.
Bushfire Bill,
The localised effects of the nuclear explosions at Fukushima and Chernobyl, while utterly tragic, cannot be compared to the systemic effect of climate change.
For example:
“The Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second”
https://skepticalscience.com/earth-warming-5-atomic-bombs-per-sec.html
If you don’t want your house to burn down, and if in fact if you want to continue being covered by insurance despite living in a bushfire-prone area, you would be invested in doing something about climate change.
nath @ #2872 Friday, December 10th, 2021 – 10:43 pm
I’d be dead. This is just a fantasy my brain is producing while I am dying, as it burns the last bit of energy it has in its synapses before the blood flows out and there’s eternal darkness… 😛
Lizzie @ #2700 Friday, December 10th, 2021 – 4:41 pm
The Loch Ness Monster.
Anyone who’s been around this board for more than a week would know where my thinking on action to mitigate Climate Change lies.
I am not a denier, nor a nihilist. You don’t have to convince me of anything.
Having said that, it’s often occurred to me to wonder what’s so special about preserving the here and now. It’s also often occurred to me that the best favour we could do the planet would be to leave it, or wipe ourselves out. Anything else seems vaguely religious to me.
If we regressed or progressed to some other climate, one hotter or colder (both of which have seen their ecosystems thrive), why would that be a bad thing (other than for selfish, anthropocentric reasons)?
I mentioned alien civilisations before. Why haven’t we heard from any, or seen any signs of one, anywhere? Could it be that, if they existed, they all wiped themselves out before interstellar communication became possible? And if so, why would that be? What makes us so special?
I don’t think the answers are self-evident.
Perhaps civilisation is intrinsically self-limiting, and we are reaching that limit.
Bushfire Bill,
I’m not not sure why you’ve constructed and persisted with this strawman argument:
I don’t think anyone is actually advocating that we preserve this exact moment of Earth’s climate history in stone. That’s impossible – the climate is subject to innumerable natural variables, any one of which can alter the climate in major ways.
What the argument over climate change boils down to is that human activity should not be one of those variables – in as much as that is possible.
Because unlike any of the other variables, the impact of humans is playing out over a devastatingly short period of time. We’re on par with an asteroid in terms of the devastation being wrought.
Or we could simply undertake reasonable measures to reduce our emissions. That seems less complicated.
Thank you bludgers for the conversation tonight. It has been a pleasure to scroll back this evening!
And on ominous omicron, here is a tweet from our friendly Victorian CHO pointing out a good explanation of what might be happening right now:
And here is an interesting thread on twitter for ItzaDream regarding T-cell response to omicron. Promising news.
It seems to me that our current human species / civilisation is the only known example of an observer capable of appreciating the grand show of the Universe, from the ghostly showers of neutrinos that pour through an entire planet like it wasn’t there up to the unimaginable scale of galaxy filament structures. It is a comfort to imagine a future child learning the Fibbonacci sequence, someone contemplating the Collatz conjecture, the future art yet to be envisaged that will stir emotions in generations far removed from the present. It seems a pity for all this to be here, a beautiful stage production with no audience to appreciate it, however fleetingly.
The universe got along just fine for billions of years before any of us showed up to appreciate it, and it’ll get along just fine for billions more after.
Asha says:
Friday, December 10, 2021 at 7:49 pm
Meher Baba, and others:
Weed is a depressant. Awful shit. I haven’t smoked or eaten it for more than 45 years and am very glad of it. Life is too short to spend any of it in an unnecessary stupor, feeling like a bucket of poo.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/dec/10/julian-assange-can-be-extradited-to-us-to-face-espionage-charges-court-rules
New thread.
OMG. ALBO is on ABC in my electorate (Bass) and going to town on the funds rorts exposed by the SMH this morning.
He is speaking like a Prime Minister, authoritative, strong, not stumbling and bumbling. If he keeps up this good form to the election I am becoming more and more confident that he is offering a genuine leader of Government to the swinging voters. Go get em ALBO.
Chit, he was really good today here in Bass.