CROCKER ON PREDICTIONS.

More Tim Foolery!
Now recognised here as one of “Australia’s Greatest Living Twits” Professor Tim Flannery announced his most amazing discovery yet, and his timing was a masterstroke of oratory genius. His audience sat spellbound.
The controversial professor must be running short of causes worthy of his shamanic prognostications. His mostly failed predictions have become jokes though his annual stipend of $180K puts the joke on us—the beleaguered taxpayers.
Still resonating, and smarting, is his declaration that Queenslanders were never again to see water in their dams; the parched earth would suck it all up beforehand. That prediction went international when dams threatened to burst and half of Brisbane floated down the river and out to sea. A sandstone obelisk should be erected in a park inscribed; “Timmy of the Overflow.”
I don’t know if Flannery is seriously deluded or simply grabbing the cash before he is tarred and feathered and run out of town, as they once did to all snake-oil salesmen in days of lesser tolerance of frauds?
Investors now holding devalued shares in geothermal energy projects may remember Mr. Flannery as a vocal shareholder in Geodynamics, a geothermal company that the Rudd government granted $90 million. You might remember the weather/energy guru’s statement about geothermal energy: “the technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is relatively straightforward,” he often chirped.
Geothermal Energy’s setbacks through costly cave-ins and finance-draining equipment failures were little reported. Sadly for investors the stock exchange now seems to suggest that “caveat emptor” in such ventures would be prudent—to put it mildly.
However, Flannery’s hide must be thicker than Jessie the elephant’s because, when addressing the Australian Medical Association’s national conference in Melbourne recently, he puzzled his bored audience for a moment with a profound statement that, “an awareness campaign was needed.” The auditorium of doctors, thinking they had dozed off for a while, grappled to understand exactly what “…awareness campaign was needed.” Some automatically muttered, “hear, hear”, oblivious to the reason, though most slurped the pricey, Chardonnay regardless.
Flannery began to detail his “campaign” causing listeners to gasp for air as they found him serious about pulling mercury-filled teeth from the skulls of those gone to God. At this, members looked at each other in utter bewilderment.
“I think people would be comfortable with removing the fillings, it is just a matter of awareness,” Flannery added. It might have been the wine; or perhaps temporary insanity that urged Tim to greater doltishness.
“Undertakers should be required to remove the fillings, and families also could request it.” Having gained the ear of all, including the waiters’, Flannery shared his jaw-dropping revelation.
“For mercury to become dangerous, it has to get into the atmosphere, which happens when we are cremated, then blow over the oceans and go into the ocean depths, where there is very low oxygen, and then transform by bacteria into a methylated form of mercury,” he said authoritatively.
“This is then ingested by fish and the fish get put on the dinner plate.”
The AMA members began to fidget, waiting for someone to burst out laughing and everyone would see the joke, but no one did—you could hear a pin drop.
“You just need a pair of pliers,” Flannery continued. “It is a $2 solution.”
The audience recognised Flannery’s earnestness and seemed haunted by conjured visions of a mortician armed with a pair of $2 pliers (made in China) prying teeth from mother’s jaw. How would an undertaker determine which tooth harboured atoms of mercury? Rip ‘em all out to be sure, might well be the professor’s fix!
Perhaps sensing alarm, Flannery said he had not yet raised the issue with the Federal Government, but felt it was significant and could be dealt with easily.
I couldn’t care less what this fool says or thinks, but I do care that such incredible stupidity and insensitivity comes from a man, a university professor; that our government employs as a commissioner and advisor on official government policy.
Flannery’s book, “The Weather Makers” sold over a million copies according to his web site. “…and is proving to be one of the most pivotal and influential texts in our understanding of global warming.” One of many epithets written by himself perhaps?
That claim appears doubtful. Dr. Weston Allen thought Flannery needed to account for his determinations and thus examined his book finding, “The Weather Makers is shown to contain 23 misinterpretations, 28 contradictory statements, 31 untraceable or suspect sources, 45 failures to reflect uncertainty, 66 over-simplifications or factual errors, 78 exaggerations and over a hundred unsupported dogmatic statements, many of them quite outlandish.”
Dr Weston wrote that, “…after Flannery has diagnosed his beloved Gaia [Earth] as suffering from a raging fever, he has nothing more to offer her than some feeble homeopathic remedies.”
Maybe the mystic’s next dissertation on mercury-filled teeth pulling might include yanking the gold ones as well to help reduce a national debt which he helped cause.

Thought for the week: “Excuse me sir, your village just called. They’re missing an idiot.”