JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).

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Isn’t it strange that this website is continually subject to DDoS attacks.
Why? What is the point?
None of us are going to physically disrupt lives, damage property or incite others to do so.
I am university educated. Yet I want to learn more. It is why I read this site. It is why I sometimes comment.
We are free to speak here. Debate, share personal knowledge, learn and sometimes disagree.
We have a diverse community of contributors. From all walks of life. Many of those whom are experts in their field.
Rather than someone outside wanting us to use free speech and debating freely.. They are trying to shut this site and therefore your free speech comments down.
Understand.. An attack on Jonova.com is also an attack on your free speech.
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The globalist Western intelligentsia have have become intellectually inbred.
Their insular world is threatened by the very principles of openness that produced them.
They blame Donald Trump and ‘populism’.
They are so devoid of self-awareness that they fail to understand that Donald Trump is not to blame for the coming of Donald Trump.
Their actions and attitudes conjured him.
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Excellent comment William.
If you don’t have time to investigate a matter to find out which side is correct, there is a simple way to tell.
The side that wants to shut down free speech is wrong.
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They attackers don’t care about free speech. Nor do they believe in it and neither does Australia’s Uniparty hence the “misinformation” laws which narrowly failed to pass but will no doubt be reintroduced, and Australia’s e Safety Kommisar, both inventions of the fake conservative Liberal Party.
The Left in general don’t believe in or want free speech. Notice Leftoids are allowed to come here to express their opinions, as wrong and as offensive as they may be, but most conservatives who post here who have tried to post on one of “their” sites have found themselves censored.
And just in the last couple of days Australia cancelled the visa of Hillel Fuld, an American-Israeli citizen, who was coming here to speak for a charity fund-raiser. He was banned because he also has strong anti-terrorist views (his brother was murdered by a terrorist).
I would have gone to the charity event to hear him speak. How dare Tony Burke (Minister who cancelled the visa) deny me the right to peacefully hear his opinion.
Now Mike Huckabee and the Trump Administration have rebuked Australia fir doing so.
And as is the case when the Australian Government bans conservatives from coming here, it’s always at the last minute after arrangements and bookings have been made. They even denied Donald Trump Jr coming here, his visa was eventually allowed, but only at the last minute which was too late for Trump Jr and venues had been cancelled etc. so he couldn’t come.
40
A look at the background of Rolf Gardiner as he got involved in youth culture movement through the Scout Association as a child and morris dancing at Cambridge, arguably influencing the Hitler Youth. At university he also got interested in Social Credit, a new economic philosphy devised by retired army major C H Douglas. In trying to promote his student journal overseas, Gardiner imparted knowledge of Social Credit to leader of the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift, John Hargrave. Hargrave’s movement shifted to regard Social Credit as necessary if people were to have the economic security required to reconnect with nature and become healthy again. He started campaining alongside the unemployed with his rebanded movement, The Green Shirts of the Social Credit Party calling for an end to capitalism and for Social Credit to lead Britian to a post-industrial ecological utopia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiL6cgPC8QI
20
A partial SUCCESS as Britain is post-industrial.
40
There is much caterwauling about the US national debt, and how it presages disaster.
Balderdash by attention-seeking charlatans!
The debt is an issue only within the arcane world of how government’s are managed….
as enterprises that take in lots of revenue, sucked from the private economy, and waste most of it,
fully crediting the GDP with government expenditure as if it were worthwhile.
Let’s do a little thought experiment about what happens when it looks like its gonna be hard to borrow more …
that the coffin corner of interest on the debt has been reached.
The crisis is only because only tax revenues are used to finance government. Whoever is elected as the turn-around artist to fix the
mess will, finally, in an emergency, be able to look at the balance sheet, not just the income statement. ANd the balance sheet of the US government is
very healthy indeed, as it is an organization with vast assets that, nonetheless, hoplessly undervalues them and depnds instead almost wholly on
income confiscation for funding. Considering only the mineral rights on federal land more than covers the debt, not to mention the value of the land itself.
Fees for real usage of real assets, rather the confiscation of income from the private sector, provides a vastly different picture of the US government’s
financial position.
Which is part of the reason folks will buy US bonds for quite a while yet.
The US has turned the corner on energy before grid failure and shortages. We can produce food for ourselves plus surpluses…..huge surpluses if we make the dumb
corn to ethanol non-business disappear. There is virtually no commodity needed not without our jurisdiction should we chose to extract it, and the rare-earth
kerfuffle with China is bringing some rationality to that process. I’m banking on young people unlearning the drivel taught in schools and learning about capitalism
when they finally get a job and are faced with real life issues …we’ve allowed many a long federally funded delay that is no on the budget cutting block.
The US has begun the process of adaptation to its self-inflicted issues.
Europe?
China?
AUs?
00
The debt issue isn’t simply solved by having more assets than debt. Having assets to cover your debt just solves a problem for the creditors when you can’t service your debt.
The US spends almost a trillion dollars per year just on interest on its debt. Approx 18% of revenue goes on interest.
So while you might be very happy with the “balance sheet”, spending about a fifth of revenue on interest while increasing that debt and interest bill is not sustainable.
40
The “vast assets” you mention are illiquid assets –items that cannot be quickly or easily sold for cash. Further, they can only be sold once. However, year-after-year non-discretionary expenses in the U.S. include mandatory spending programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal civilian and military retirement benefits, and interest on the debt, and a few others.
40
Agreed.
Those assets have zero real monetary value because no government is ever going to sell national parks, important government buildings and lands, military assets etc..
They should not be included in any government balance sheet.
10
America is rapidly moving from having the only reserve currency to being one of several, with the rise of Brics. They also don’t suffer from huge debts nor take funds that were deposited with them.
00
Irony: German Town Cancels Climate Heat & Drought Event – Due To Cool, Wet Weather!
From the NoTricksZone
By P Gosselin on 7. June 2025
To combat climate change, German towns and cities are busily implementing “heat plans”. Germany has ambitious climate neutrality goals, aiming to be climate-neutral by 2045. The lives of millions of people are at risk!
…
The town of Mühlacker (near Stuttgart) has taken the Heat Plan act seriously and thus have organized a Heat Action Day, scheduled for June 6th. The aim was educating the public about heat, drought and climate change and provide tips on how to protect against heat.
Ironically, the event yesterday had to be cancelled due to “forecast weather conditions,”,the above newspaper clipping reports.
The heat action day has been postponed to Friday, July 25, 2025. The weather yesterday, June 6, in Muehlacker was indeed rainy and cool, with highs not even reaching 20°C – obviously too harsh for the organizers!
…
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/06/07/irony-german-town-cancels-climate-heat-drought-event-due-to-cool-wet-weather/
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Reminds me of those first photos – was it almost 10 years ago now? – of a special needs child in Sweden, wrapped in beanie / scarf / jacket / gloves / ski pants / boots, sitting on the cold pavement holding a sign warning about ‘heat’ … in Stockholm!
As Homer Simpson yelled as he fell into a black hole as the universe collapsed all around him in glorious 3-D: Crack! Crack! Crack!
20
Of course, now she’s moved on to supporting Hama%
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14792229/Freedom-flotilla-doubles-says-not-turn-Israel-issues-chilling-warning-vowing-Greta-Thunberg-wont-make-Gaza.html
00
Too bad she was exploited as a child actress by her selfish parents and they never let her complete a proper education.
10
Coal Is the New Bridge Fuel
By Bernard L. Weinstein
Once again, the consensus of government and private weather forecasters is that this coming summer will witness above-average temperatures in most parts of the United States.
…
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) summer reliability assessment published on May 18 cited the 15-state Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) as the regional grid most likely to see a meltdown this summer.
NERC’s warning proved to be prescient. On May 25, more than 100,000 customers in and around New Orleans lost power for most of the day when electricity demand exceeded supply
…
The strains on America’s power grids are easy to explain. After remaining relatively flat for a decade, electricity demand is now projected to jump 50% over the next 10 years.
…
At the same time, construction of new base-load power plants—natural gas, nuclear, and coal—has plummeted. Driven by federal, state, and local tax incentives, wind and solar have accounted for the lion’s share of new installed generation in recent years. The problem, of course, is that these power sources are intermittent, which is why New Orleans lost electricity in May and why the Iberian Peninsula suffered a blackout in April.
…
Since 2010, 300 “always on” coal-fired power plants have been closed, reducing its share of generation from 45% to 16% nationwide. Only about 200 remain on the regional grids today.
…
The era of tearing down existing, well-operating power plants before reliable replacement capacity is built and connected to the grid is over. The on-demand power plants already in service are more valuable than ever. While coal’s long-term future remains in question, its near-term importance is clear. Our existing fleet of coal plants can help us manage the transition to a more reliable and resilient energy future as we build the next generation of base-load resources.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/06/08/coal-is-the-new-bridge-fuel/
20
There is an idea of using nuclear explosives for peaceful engineering purposes. It has been around since the late 1950’s.
Look at Project Plowshare in the US.
In Australia there was the Cape Keraudren Atomic Harbor Scheme.
https://ozgeology.com/blogs/news/cape-keraudren-the-forgotten-nuclear-harbor-plan-in-australia
00
The Soviets did, in fact nuke some gas wells to extinguish fires:
From Goolag AI:
00
Interesting video about Neanderthals and the now-extinct animals they hunted.
https://youtu.be/DFnThonHSW4
00
As it continues to rain in Melbournistan I am reminded how Australia wastes all this rainwater.
Instead of throwing away hundreds of billions of dollars to the wind and the sun and destroying the economy, it should have been spent on something useful like dams for irrigation systems, flood mitigation and some hydro where possible. We could have reliably irrigated vast areas and mitigated floods.
Of course, Australia no longer “thinks big” and you can forget about nearly any big project due to regulatory hurdles and lawfare, except for expensive, wasteful and useless “green” projects like SH2 where environmental destruction is acceptable.
Another lost opportunity for Australia!
20
I think it’s a myth Left over from the 1960s that Australia is a free and rational-thinking country.
10
I had an unsatisfactory encounter with my bank’s AI yesterday and it couldn’t answer a simple question and it kept on thanking me for my question and it asked could it help me with some else even though it never answered the question.
I had to keep asking to speak to a human which I eventually did but the AI took some convincing. The whole encounter was typewritten, not speech.
10
I was impressed with Goolag AI yesterday.
I asked it to check my answer to the question:
what is impedance of series rlc circuit with resistance 100 ohms capacitive reactance 50 ohms and inductive reactance 100 ohms
And it got the right answer, with workings. 111.8 ohms.
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