Here’s a thing that’s true about modern politics and also has probably been true about politics forever: You can say whatever you like and it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. With the way information is disseminated, it doesn’t matter if it’s fact-checked or scrutinised, the message — however false or misleading — will reach its intended audience who will accept it on face value. Politicians can lie as much as they like and while the ABC is writing lengthy pieces explaining why they are wrong, voters are hitting the share button on their ageing laptop so hard that the trackpad breaks.
[jwplayer CwUqv6Y6]
This is why it is perfectly normal for Pauline Hanson to (falsely, obviously) use the extinction of the dinosaurs as an argument as to why anthropogenic climate change is fake and why it will not matter to any of her supporters if she is challenged on that issue or made fun of for it. Still, we’ve got to get out fun where we can.
This morning, Hanson went on Today to put forth her support for the Adani coal mine, while dubiously claiming that there is no peer-reviewed support for the existence of climate change. When asked whether she believed mankind had any involvement in climate change, she said that it was all part of a process that had always been going on:
This has been a fact of life right from the time that earth was here in place, that we’ve been going through climate changes on Earth. There was once an ice age, there was once a flood throughout Australia here, water, it was all through Central Australia. People weren’t around at that time, we didn’t have the industrialists here in this country at that time. What happened to the dinosaurs, how did they die off? Humans didn’t create it.
I’ve never said this before but I agree with Pauline Hanson: Humans did not create the asteroid that impacted in the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago, triggering rapid global cooling as a result of the debris thrown up into the atmosphere.
Jesus wept.
You can watch the clip below:
“What happened to the dinosaurs, how did they die? Humans didn’t create it.” Pauline Hanson has put her support behind the controversial Adani coal mine ahead of protests this week, denying the effects of climate change. #9Today pic.twitter.com/PZMBjcE3xy
— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) April 22, 2019
