Tea parties, corruption and climate change

At end August in Musings on the changing world of blogging, I talked about changes in our little blogging community. Thomas responded in Rebuilding the village. Since then he has had a very interesting series of posts on the US elections, with a special focus on the Tea Party Movement.

• Centrists in the US Senate? looks at the prospects of a hung parliament US style.
• Tea Partiers in the US Senate? and More on the Tea Party takeover are as the title says.
• finally to this point, The Tea Party looks at the movement's basic principles.

Thomas writes from a particular perspective, but he certainly educates me.

In Life with remorseless forceps beckoning, Marcellous deals with absent-mindedness, something that I am prone to too. In Corruption, Marcellous looks at at a small but intriguing case of apparent corruption within the NSW system; the problem appears to be not so much the action as the apparent denial of the action.

In a reasoned piece on Skepticslawyer, Climate change, scepticism and elitism Legal Eagle discussed her views on climate change in the context of a forthcoming SBS Insight program in which she participated. Marcellous responded in $50 a month. My own position can be summarised this way:

1. Like LE, I have been concerned at the way in which a polarised debate blocks out alternative views.
2. On the balance of probabilities, my feeling is that climate change is a real issue that needs to be dealt with now, although I have expressed frustration at the way (at least as I perceive it) polarisation limits discussion on possible responses.
3. It is clear that any form of action has costs whose impact will be differential; different people will be affected in different ways. The analysis of costs is essentially a factual one. Here, again, I would argue that the current debate is superficial. Crudely, one side wants to present costs as minimal, the other to present maximised costs.
4. My feeling has been that the cost issue has actually been the real elephant in the room. Look at the NSW electricity price discussion as an example. To many households, the proposed cost increases linked to climate change action were quite worrying. In combination, the potential rise in costs is far more than an average of $50 per month per household.
5. Once the pattern of cost increases associated with particular responses or combination of responses has been analysed, then and only then can social equity issues be properly analysed.

This post is meant to be a blog round-up, so my apologies for inserting my own views. However, I simply couldn't resist on this issue.

Turning to other matters, Neil Whitfield (Ninglun) has been much involved with his move from inner city Sydney down to the Illawarra.  We can see the influence already. His latest post, Bravo, Richard Harrison, quotes the Illawarra Mercury, not a paper referred to before!

In a comment on Thomas's blog, I described Neil as the godfather of our internet village. This led to a series of related comments. I think that Neil was worried that he might find a horse's head in his bed! Still, that was actually the godfather's response, so I don't think that the rest of us need to be worried!

My real point about Neil, though, lay in the way he interlinked a variety of bloggers and thus helped from the village.

Well, I am into working hours and have a lot to do. More later.