Recent Posts


Hockeysticks don’t die, they just get more corrupt

“The IPCC remains addicted to hockeysticks”

In the 6th dimension of Intergovernmental Climate Propaganda, which arrived last week, the long discredited Hockeystick is not just a sidenote, it’s the very first graph the IPCC uses in their Summary for Powerful people (the ones who make policy).

As per usual, hundreds of years of warmth has been retro-extinguished. Thousands of proxies around the world all deviated from the real temperature and non-randomly in the same direction. It’s a conspiracy I tell you! Luckily the IPCC has found scientists who can correct these simultaneous errors of proxiness which mostly they do by just tossing out the results they don’t like. They ignore whole series they don’t like, delete the years that don’t work for them, and flip that data upside down if they need to. And if that’s not enough they use trees that grow larger rings when CO2 is higher.

And when they are not deleteing data, they’re using the wrong trees. No one is even pretending anymore. They’ve done it all before and no one went to jail or even lost a job.

As Steve MacIntyre tells it the PAGES2017 data set winnowed down the thousands of proxies to their […]

Tuesday Open Thread

8.8 out of 10 based on 13 ratings

Gladys Berejiklian is Big Pharma’s best friend. No one has done more in Australia to generate profits

Could Pfizer have wished for more?

Eight weeks ago, Australians weren’t that interested in the vaccines to an exotic foreign disease. Back then, only 7% of the population were fully vaccinated, and now, viola, it’s 21% of the nation (which is a quarter of all adults).

By letting the virus leak in to a Limo Driver, who could have been protected with a $50 Hazmat suit, and then being too slow to act, the Premier of New South Wales has lit a fire under the rush to vaccination, not just in NSW but indirectly across the rest of Australia, since nearly every state has now been infected with a Covid strain that has a post-mark from Sydney. By trying to do a minimalist response, she ensured maximal type of lockdown.

On June 24th, only 2.8 million doses of vaccines have been given, now it’s 15.3 million. That’s some uptake. Eighty percent of all the vaccinations in Australia have happened in the last eight weeks.

Guardian Graph plus annotations by Jo.

She’s now saying the Delta virus can’t be eliminated, even though most other states have done that, and everyone knows it.

Big Pharma must be delighted. The […]

The Red Terror stalking the weak Western Elites

Lithuania, 1955

There are almost no brave people left in academia, or sport, or the land of celebrity. When one of their own faces the axe for some random transgression of an invisible rule book on political niceties, their colleagues abandon them.

In academia, they’re supposed to be the intellectual cream of the crop –the individual giants who fought their way to the top. But it’s like we’ve selected for wary herding people instead. And perhaps that’s the point. When universities were turned into schools and businesses, and quirky philanthropist funding became predictable Big-Government largess, the mavericks and rebels didn’t fit and one by one were expelled, sacked — or just pushed sideways til they fell out. What’s left in the wasteland of academia, apparently, are the mid-wit networking climbers. The middling Ordinaires rose into positions above their due and became afraid of losing the sweeter deal than they deserved. If they were the top dogs in their field, and if that mattered, they could speak their mind, get sacked, and still be offered a new position at a competing institution. But second rung players don’t have that option. They won’t put their head above the parapet and […]

Weekend Unthreaded

9.4 out of 10 based on 15 ratings

Petition the Australian TGA to consider cheap drugs as well as expensive ones!

Please share and sign. Closing tonight!

Some drugs are apparently too cheap to approve.

They want us to trust them, but if they won’t investigate cheap options, they don’t appear to have our interests at heart. Who do they serve?

Even if a long-used safe cheap drug reduced infections or deaths by 10% the cost-benefits of using it are obvious for everyone (except the companies that sell expensive competing products). The studies we have suggest one antiviral (and there are many others) could reduce infections by 86% and deaths by 50% or more. The antiviral successes against Covid in India, Mexico and Peru are there for all to see. If antivirals were being used in Sydney perhaps they could have halved the Ro (or more), slowed the spread, saved lives and businesses and shortened the lockdown?

Which brings us to the awkward questions that almost no one seems to be even asking: Why aren’t cheap low risk drugs already well tested ten times over? Why aren’t the TGA and Health Ministry urgently working to fix obvious clinical vitamin deficiencies like D3? Where is the ABC and our publicly funded institutions and our academics? Isn’t the point of publicly funded universities […]

Thursday Open Thread

9.5 out of 10 based on 15 ratings

Climate change causes arson in Greece, Turkey, Algeria and California

Arson must be one of the easiest crimes to hide by anyone half competent, but in Greece arrests are already happening. People were caught with cans of gasoline. There are so many fires, the Supreme Court prosecutor has called for an investigation into possible organised arson and is asking for sweeping investigative powers. On social media people are blaming arsonists and slow or inept government responses.

In Media-World, people are blaming climate change, because if the world was a degree cooler, the fires would put themselves out or something. Who knows?

Coincidentally, over in Algeria, strange things are happening too. The Interior Minister says 50 fires were started at the same time. In Turkey, recent arson is suspected to be a terrorist activity. A few days ago the Israeli airforce bombed Hamas targets to “counter #arson attacks“. And in California a professor of criminology was actually tracked, caught and arrested for setting fires “on the edge” of the huge Dixie blaze. He might be nuts, but the others may have a plan. Has anyone asked them?

Apparently CO2 turns nice people into arsonists, but it’s surely also possible there may be other interests at work, or who knows, even […]

IPCC taps into Global Witchcraft: Stop fires, storms and floods with solar panels and windmills!

Current Witchdoctor Warning: Severe levels of Voodoo likely on all channels

Climate Fear Week is Here.

Your car exhaust causes bushfires, your roast beef leads to droughts and the wrong lightglobes could flood the nation.

Hurry, hurry, it’s your absolute last last-chance after the last last-chance to save the world. According to an unaudited, unaccountable UN committee, It’s Code Red for Humanity! Rush and install Solar Special Protection Shields on your home today to be sure no one inside is at higher risk of Malaria, Asthma, Obesity, Eco-depression, and to save Nemo from feeling reckless. (Why haven’t you done that already, you evil reef killer?)

Despite installing more renewables than any nation per capita on Earth, Australia is failing to cleanse the Earth of pollution. Likewise the USA and UK which have both reduced actual carbon emissions by more than nearly everyone else are only leaders when they vote for socialists. Too many windmills are never enough! (Don’t mention the eagles or the whales, but praise the Sharks, for they are the sacred spirit of Virtue Signalling.)

There are many things you can do to play your part to make the weather nicer for our grandchildren, or at least reinforce […]

Tuesday Open Thread

8.5 out of 10 based on 25 ratings

Big Pharma spent $4.7b lobbying Big Government which never affects rules, regulations or drug prices, right?

Which industry spends more than any other in Washington? Big Pharma

Over the last 20 years no industry spent more than Pharmaceuticals and Health products on lobbying and campaign contributions. Fully $4,700 million dollars traveled from pharmaceutical giants to politicians, parties and lobbyists.

In 2018 the citizens of the US spent $345 billion on prescription drugs in pharmacies… which works out to about $1,000 per person per year. Adjusted for inflation, that has doubled since 1999 which is not that long ago. Despite competition, discovery and efficiency gains, Americans are spending more than ever.

Maybe Americans are getting much better painkillers, antibiotics, and blood pressure medications than ever before, or maybe government regulations are doing more to protect profits rather than people?

All that lobbying is quite legal, but it isn’t enough. Somehow Big Pharma keep getting caught being naughty as well, lying and hiding things from customers. And if there is no reputational damage from outright deceit and fraud, perhaps the billion-dollar fines are just another cost on the balance sheet. (If only The Media wanted to shine a light on that…)

The Black Pigeon lists some crimes: ..

Oliver Wouters study on Lobbying…

Lobbying Expenditures and Campaign Contributions […]

Fully vaccinated can be just as infectious as unvaxed (What’s the point of a Vax Passport?)

These first generation vaccinations are not the Get-Out-Of-Pandemic Card some politicians dream of

What a can of nematodes

Fully-vaccinated people who catch Delta Covid variant really may be JUST as infectious as the un-jabbed, Government figures suggest

Emily Craig, Daily Mail

Public Health England say viral loads appear similar among people infected with the Delta variant in both groups, meaning, theoretically, they are equally contagious.

But health chiefs insisted the current crop of vaccines still cut the risk of catching the virus in the first place.

Vaccinated people may be less likely to catch Covid (at least for a few months until it wears off) but when vaccinated people do get infected the viral loads are pretty much the same as when unvaccinated people do. In other words, fully vaccinated people can still be dangerous to the people around them. And if they fly in without quarantine, they can bring outbreaks and new mutants too. So much for the freedom jabs. Though, in fairness, at the moment, they still offer some freedom from hospital, just not freedom from masks, quarantines, and restrictions.

Vaccination clearly isn’t going to stop the spread, eliminate the […]

Weekend Unthreaded

7.9 out of 10 based on 18 ratings

US Democrats thinking of telling car companies what they can make: communist control of production by stealth

The people don’t really want Electric Vehicles, so the US Government is thinking of forcing them on the buyers by squeezing the industry that makes them. There is talk of new rules which apply to the companies selling cars. The control of production could be hidden in something called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy or CAFE standards. By averaging the fuel consumption across a whole company, those brands will have to find a way to sell more EV’s and to limit their own sales of gas guzzlers. It’s a supply and demand thing, if a company can only make so many large internal combustion engine cars, the prices of those will be artificially high. Only the wealthy will be able to afford them. The poor will still pay more for cars than they do now, but the cheapest cars on the market will be EV’s — subsidized by inflated prices on petrol driven cars.

This is just a thought bubble for now, but obviously, the message is to buy your big cars and look after them. They’ll be hot property in the second hand market.

Say goodbye to the free market: The Soviets would be proud of […]

People deficient in Vitamin D are 14 times more likely to get severe Covid

How badly do our Health Ministers want to reduce Covid infections and deaths? Not much. If they were at all serious — before they hand out free vaccines, they’d hand out free Vitamin D supplements.

In a study conducted in a Galilee hospital, 26 percent of vitamin D-deficient coronavirus patients died, while among other patients the figure was at 3%. — Times of Israel

If only black lives mattered? Dark skins are so much more likely to be deficient, this is one of those absolutely easy wins for any politician, yet none of them are doing it?

Nearly half the people in the study were deficient, and half of those who were seriously deficient in Vitamin D would go on to develop a severe case. These were the people with levels below 20 ng/ml. Of all the people above that, only 10% would get a severe case. And just being “above 20ng” would still be classified as moderately deficient by many measures, yet it made such a huge difference.

It was a life and death thing — the mortality rate was 25%, fully five times higher for those who fell below the 20ng/ml bar.

The Israeli study […]

Thursday Open Thread

8.5 out of 10 based on 23 ratings

New York Times sells out the US to China for a mere $100,000 a month

How cheap was it for the Chinese Communist Party to buy the American media? Like adding a room to a house.

Practically nothing.

The New York Times, the “paper of record” since 1851 in the USA became a tool for China for just $100,000 a month. It put stories out for years that were essentially nothing but Communist advertising. They and other newspapers had a deal with state run China Daily which sanitized and covered up human rights abuses like Uighur concentration camps.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the former “stories” were suddenly deleted:

Acting guilty, what?

The New York Times quietly deleted hundreds of advertorials that the Chinese Communist Party paid to publish on its website.

China Daily, an official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, has been purchasing advertorial spaces in the pages of mainstream U.S. media outlets for the last decade, using the space to disseminate Chinese propaganda to millions of unassuming Americans. In return, U.S. newspapers such as the Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal received millions of dollars.

The NYT has run over 200 advertorials over the last decade,

Key newspapers helped to hide that […]

John Lennon’s “Imagine all the people — sharing all your stuff”

John Lennon’s “Imagine” (the Gulag).

Get this into schools.

Leave no child in ignorance about the greatest threat to life and liberty…

The Babylon Bee at its best.

Share the information before they share your life savings.

h/t David E.

9.7 out of 10 based on 46 ratings

China, India and 85 other nations can’t be bothered meeting UN emissions target deadlines

Despite headlines declaring the World is Committed to Cutting Emissions, and that ( pick a nation) is an “isolated pariah” — the truth is they were all supposed to “update their emissions targets” but 42% of nations, including the two largest, haven’t. Worse, the updates were supposed be done by the end of 2020, and the UN extended the deadline, so they are already double late. And since China effectively promised to do nothing til 2030, all it had to do was say it would do nothing again, so that’s double-late on a non-promise, and it can’t even do that?

h/t GWPF

China, India ignore UN deadline to update emissions targets in COP26 warning shot

In a warning shot across the bows of Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, China, India and 85 other nations have decided to ignore a UN deadline to submit its pledges for cutting CO2 emissions in time for the UN climate summit in Glasgow later this year.

South Africa hasn’t put in its own update, but it has asked for money:

Meanwhile South Africa has demanded that developed countries should set a target of $750 billion a year to help poorer nations […]

Approaching a tipping point in the power supply

Guest post by Rafe Champion

We are installing wind and solar power at a great rate and the expectation is that this will go on and RE will increasingly penetrate the system as coal power fades away. In the SE we still have just enough conventional power to get by almost all the time but the tipping point will come when we lose another couple of coal stations and we will need to have a continuous supply of RE. There will not be enough conventional power to keep the lights on through windless nights. The point is that RE can DISPLACE coal power but not REPLACE it.

Note from Jo: With the sad demise of Catallaxy, I invited Rafe to continue here blogging about energy and electricity in Australia. So the format of the blog will flex somewhat to try to fill some of that void.

9.6 out of 10 based on 92 ratings