By Jo Nova
Congratulations World!
Roger Pielke Jnr celebrates another great year where humanity had a near record low in deaths due to climate disasters.
He reminds us of a paper from a few years ago showing that the richer we all are, the less likely we are to die from floods, cold, drought and wind.
When we adjust against GDP per capita we find that GDP itself is the big protector of humanity.
The best thing we can do to help Africans defeat climate hazards is not to send them solar panels, but to help them get filthy rich.
And anyone who cares about vulnerable people will be protesting at the reckless destruction of what was a cheap, efficient electricity grid. We will surely kill more people by reducing our GDP with unreliable generators, than we will ever save with solar panels.
Once income is accounted for, the apparent relationship between climate hazards and mortality largely disappears. In other words, economic development—not renewable energy—dominates human survival outcomes.
Follow the Science, girls and boys,
If man-made emissions do anything at all, the more we emit the lower the death rates are. We can see that as man made emissions ramped up from 1980 to 2010, deaths due to extreme weather fell.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378019300378
I could add in a snarky line about using “Green reasoning”, but the truth is that countries that emit more CO2 tend to increase their GDP.
All those fossil fueled rockets, ambulances, satellites, mobile phones and private cars are saving people.
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Richer societies have far lower vulnerability to floods, droughts, heat, cold, and storms
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The decline in deaths has occurred despite population growth and urbanisation
The data suggest that GDP growth has done more to protect humanity from climate-related deaths than any climate policy ever implemented.
REFERENCE:
Giuseppe Formetta and Luc Feyen (2019)Empirical evidence of declining global vulnerability to climate-related hazards, Global Environmental Change, 57, 101920.
Climate related deaths have declined in almost every nation.
This cannot be entirely attributed to capitalism, which does not even exist.
Nearly every country operates a mixed economy, blending capitalist elements (private enterprise, markets) with socialist ones (government regulation, public services like schools/healthcare, welfare programs).
Pure capitalism or socialism are theoretical extremes
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Capitalism creates wealth. Socialism doesn’t.
Wealth saves lives according to the post.
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And sometimes satirically, and to push the buttons of leftist ideologues, I speak their language, back at them.
Capitalism lifted us out of poverty. Communism killed 100 million people.
We’re in a battle of ideas through one-liners and we’re losing. We don’t have to.
Richard, the farming, antibiotics, heaters, and phones of the third world that save their lives were copied from capitalist nations.
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Exactly. Socialism, Marxism or Communism did not invent the automobile, the aeroplane, the jet engine or the mobile phone.
The Market Economy did that and a lot lot more besides.
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In a purist sense … what you say about capitalism and socialism is not wrong.
BUT
Capitalism creates wealth (via the free trade of goods and services) and wealthy people are less likely to die from climate extremes (Malcolm Turnbull or Gina Rinehart have more available resources to flee/endure an extreme climate event then someone receiving a centrelink payment)- whereas socialism confiscates & redistributes that created wealth via government, making wealth creators less wealthy from their free trade of goods and services and less able to flee/endure a climate extreme.
ALSO
Socialism is much better at re-directing confiscated resources to combat an emergency than capitalism, because there is less profit involved
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Socialism is very good at destroying ambition and entrepreneurs and that leads to less wealth to redistribute. Elon Musk left California, a socialist state, and moved to Texas, a capitalist state.The socialist countries of Norway and Sweden where everything is free or subsidised have realised they need to change track because they are going broke. When France started taxing the uber rich at 90% they simply packed up and moved. Socialism is a killer and always has been because sooner or later it runs out of other people’s money. Australia is on that road right now.
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A non-sequitur.
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The Climate Scam has been the most successful scheme to kneecap western civilisation in our lifetime. It is shameful that our politicians have largely gone along with it instead of seeking to understand the genuine science which is the carbon cycle, essential to life on earth. Blackouts Bowen will have to own up to his perfidy one day, as should the entire green/Teal gang.
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Spot on, but I would add Mass Immigration as a contributor to the kneecapping.
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There is a corollary to this:
The fast way to reduce CO2 emissions is to make your citizens poor.
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I think that you are confusing cause and intent.
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And the pushers of a world wide carbon catastrophe also change the language. Literally, there are no ‘carbon emissions’. No one, nothing emits carbon.
My neighbour suggests most people know no chemistry and really have little idea what carbon is. Or carbon dioxide. And they have zero idea how much is in the air. So they are easily taught to fear carbon with every article about the evils of carbon and dreaded carbon emissions as a world ending toxic emission. And carbon is black as in burned toast or a housefire or bush fire so black is awful and a psychological tool to conjure dread.
By this logic, even childbirth is a carbon emission.
But if ‘carbon’ is the real problem and not invisible and harmless and essential carbon dioxide, man made diamonds are pure carbon emissions. They should be banned. If only to save De Beers who have kept prices artificially high for more than a century. World diamond prices are falling.
Of course people who can afford diamonds usually suffer far less from natural disasters. Usually because they can afford to leave, at least business class.
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As for carbon dioxide emissions, that’s called breathing. Every living thing is made of carbon dioxide and every living thing breathes. Clearly life itself is a toxic emission and is the real problem. So let’s remove all the atmospheric carbon dioxide and within a year there would be no life on land. And no living thing in danger. That’s climate science.
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I wonder how many of the clueless understand that exhaled breath is around 4% CO2 which is around 100 times the concentration of atmospheric CO2?
And as you say, most people, including politicians and their “experts” have no clue how much CO2 in the atmosphere, even though the actual figure is endlessly repeated.
E.g. https://youtu.be/bJfrKNR3K2k (USA House committee)
I found a similiar video from Australia with politicians or advisors also similarly clueless about atmospheric CO2 and posted it here the other day but can’t find it now.
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4% CO2 resting. from 0.042% in to 14% out with hard exercise. It’s the same process which occurs at the sea/air interface. CO2 and O2 transfer goes as the fourth power of air speed. In both directions. Which is why all CO2 cycles through the ocean every five years.
It is true of water too, which you can see on a mirror. H2O gas also evaporates from the 37C salt water which is blood plasma.
The whole idea that 53% of ‘fossil fuel’ CO2 is stuck in the air permanently is just ridiculous, but the foundation claim of man made Climate Change. And people sit there reading this and breathing and wondering if CO2 really swaps rapidly between the ocean and the atmosphere.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_ventilation
The most important function of breathing is the supplying of oxygen to the body and balancing of the carbon dioxide levels. Under most conditions, the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (PCO2), or concentration of carbon dioxide, controls the respiratory rate.
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What we have in the air is the partial pressure of CO2 from the ocean, given 98% of ALL CO2 is in the vast oceans. 50x as much as in the air. But as the oceans are 350x the mass of the atmosphere (average depth 3.5km), it is a tiny 1/7th of the concentration. But we are told to believe that the oceans cannot absorb any more CO2. Which like the entire story is non science. As for CO2 threatening civilization, it is an amazing construction, half religion, half baked science. And very, very profitable.
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In England 1968 I woke up one morning to find black specks all over our white car. Soot. Carbon.
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Same in Bangkok in 1968. Soot everywhere from endless two stroke scooters and diesels. You would run your hand over your face and it would be black from incomplete combustion.
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The public by and large mix up that kind of thing with co2. People who know better often encourage this conflation along with conflation of real pollution and climate change. So, do people who don’t know better.
Air pollution caused in part by ICE vehicles was mostly solved 40 years ago. But here we are decades later throwing trillions at a problem that doesn’t exist. Even if it did exist it is all an exercise in futility. Think of the things such as real pollution, cancer research, child health, and so forth that a fraction of that money may have paid better dividends on.
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Plus people stupidly tend to build in inappropriate places like flood, fire, cyclone/hurricane or earthquake zones; or on low-lying coral attols or volcanic islands like most Pacific Island nations.
Hence fully woke Australia paying tribute to Pacific nations and allowing population transfer to Australia from such nations as “climate refugees”.
Also Australia is willingly destroying its economy to stop supposed “sea level rise”. And stupid voters keep voting for Lib/Lab/Green/Teal parties for more of the same.
In addition, if Australia hadn’t thrown away billions on useless solar, windmill and Big Battery plantations, the money could have instead been used for something useful like flood proofing and drought proofing the country with dams and irrigation projects. It won’t happen now of course, not with such massive Government debt and Third World style economic mismanagement and politicians who are remarkably ignorant if not malevolent.
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Our Dear Leader, Prime Minister Albanese, is keeping us safe from Climate Change. As our leading politician, our well being is his whole concern and he is in charge of Australia’s climate and he and assistant minister Chris Bowen can prevent Australian storms, droughts, floods and sea level rise but only to the limits of Australian sovereignty, which is 12 Nautical Miles and perhaps our exclusive economic zone at 200 Nautical miles. We should be grateful.
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>Our Dear Leader… We should be grateful
Congratulations, your social credit score just boosted 100 points! You now qualify for a Trabant.
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Heil Albo.
All heil Albo.
The greatest leader Australia has ever had!
As Australia becomes increasingly dumbed-down, indoctrinated, censored and socialised, how long before Australians start singing praise for Albo like they do for Kim Jong Un in North Korea as in this video? I am not entirely joking either.
After people get sufficiently dumbed down, such sycophancy is inevitable.
https://youtu.be/-_YQgCDxpXQ
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In this video Albo explains how his friends the Chicomms sang tribute to him.
Albo is obviously doing a good job for China (but not Australia).
https://youtube.com/shorts/YhsBOsEMQlE
He said they sang for him:
Paul Kelly – To Her Door
Midnight Oil – Power and the Passion
And others.
Albo loves sycophants.
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After Scott Morrison called for an inquiry into the origins of covid, China imposed crippling tariffs costing Australian producers billions of dollars.
Soldiers on Chinese ships direct sonar pulses at Australian navy divers and their jet pilots release flares in dangerous proximity to Australian aircraft. Chinese ships conduct live fire drills in trans-Tasman flight paths unannounced.
Salt Typhoon hackers targeting critical Australian cyber networks.
Xi Jinping wheels out a choir trained to sing a few Aussie songs from Albo’s playlist and all is forgiven.
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Presumably everyone’s heard the joke by now.
What’s the difference between a flying pig and a politician?
The letter F.
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And despite decades of economic destruction of the West with trillions of dollars spent, can someone please point out on the Keeling curve any visible sign of any difference that any of this has been made, and in particular, the bit that Australia’s contribution has been.
I keep asking but no one is able to point out any change, not even the True Believers.
Surely it’s not a scam…?
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Ahhh, but the curve is always up so it must be caused by us. How could nature create a compounding rise?
Correlates with increase in population and industry.
https://www.acs.org/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/keeling-curve.html
😁
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What I hate about the Hawaiian ‘Keeling’ curve is that it is incremental, not absolute. The ‘problem’ with CO2 driven Global Warming is allegedly caused by total CO2, not incremental. When drawn with zero on the graph, it is nearly a low slope straight line, not a rocket ship scaled from bottom left to top right. I note also that in the temperature NZ latitudes, there is no obvious ‘Henry’s Law’ CO2 summer and winter cycle effect with CO2 released and absorbed at the tropical 21 North latitude of Hawaii.
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Even global average GDP per capita tells the same story and OWI Data shows a near vertical graph from about 1820 ( INDUSTRIAL REV) up to 2024. This has been adjusted for inflation.
Fossil fuels have been our savior and today the world still generates about 80% of our energy from FFs.
When will our silly donkeys look up the data and WAKE UP?
This takes 5 minutes online, so why have the OECD countries WASTED TRILLIONs of $ since 1990 on clueless TOXIC W & S and all for a ZERO return on their LOUSY investment?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-average-gdp-per-capita-over-the-long-run?stackMode=relative
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Lomborg was able to update his teams’ deaths from extreme weather events in 2024 and he claimed a reduction of 97% at that time.
Since then he has calculated a 99% reduction and his block of little squares at the end for a hundred years ago compared to one tiny little square representing 2020s tells the truth.
His reduction graph is now 2% lower in 2025.
https://humanprogress.org/freedom-from-climate-related-death-risk/
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Here’s a number of countries’ GDP per capita adjusted for inflation etc and Norway is now at the top.
UK, Japan, NZ have similar GDP per capita.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-project-database?tab=line&country=ISR~AUS~NOR~USA~Western+Europe+%28Maddison%29~NZL~JPN~CHN~ZAF~Sub+Saharan+Africa+%28Maddison%29~IRL~GBR~DEU&focus=~USA&mapSelect=~ISR
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Norway – an oil and gas giant. Just shows how much the world still desires those nasty ‘fossil fuels’.
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Again, the OWI Data death rates from all extreme weather events have seen a massive reduction since the 1960s.
We are now living in the safest period in Human history.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates?country=Flood~Extreme+weather~Wildfire~Drought~Extreme+temperature
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It’s not rocket science is it?
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Look at it another way. Recently Monique of Kooyong was sounding off about how the evil SUVs and tradie utes were causing more pedestrian deaths. And yet, in the 15 or so years prior to 2023 in which these vehicles dominated sales, the number of pedestrian deaths dropped significantly. It’s only in the last two years where pedestrian deaths have increased. But in those two years EV numbers have increased significantly. Therefore, contrary to Teal spin, SUVs and tradie utes have caused a drop in passenger deaths, whereas EVs have caused an increase. This mirrors energy: the more you have the safer you are. Science.
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Any visitor to a major city CBD will observe pedestrians focusing on their mobile phones even as they cross an intersection. Awareness of their surroundings is diminished by their preoccupation with a device. In turn, drivers are increasingly reliant on electronic GPS based directions, which can end up in tears in a real world situation.
For example, I live on the verge of the Dandenong Ranges. Uber drivers trust their e-maps rather than their common sense let alone failing to heed the 4WD only signs. I’ve walked up this road a few times, it’s seriously steep, probably steeper than the nearby 1000 steps.
https://ferntreegully.mailcommunity.com.au/news/2025-03-24/olindas-hacketts-road-trouble-continues/
The combination of device focused pedestrians and drivers dependent on electronic navigation will always result in bad numbers.
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All of our western civilisation has been built on Cheap, Reliable and Abundant energy.
Ruinable energy can only fill two of those criteria, and those not reliably.
I hope we can change the course we’re on but it’s not looking good.
Welcome to 3rd world status.
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Until the West is prepared to address the elephant on the floor of sovereign nation political houses, then th e younger inattentive generation will keep buying what grifters are selling.
Marxism needs chaos to exist. Marxists spend billions on propaganda to drive wedges into the natural small cracks of free enterprise economies.
Angst ridden teens/twentysomethings are furtile petrie dishes for hating their own society and with no idea why, they latch onto any moronic poorly thought out ‘reason’ why their world isn’t a utopia.
2026 has to be the year where the propaganda trashmedia is shown for what it is. Consensus driven mindless clickbait.
Trump has started the fight by singling out the BBC, every Western country needs conservative minded individuals and groups to push for political representatives who refuse to bow to sanctimonious leftwing media business as usual!
It’s a big fight, but the West can’t afford centre left apologists masquerading as conservatives.
The CCP is in its last quarter of their 100 year plan and the last quarter was the media anaesthetic of the West to their true plans to be the only super power.
If not for Trump’s Outsider Administration 47, we’d be in the full grip of the deliberate chaotic destruction of democracy designed for the next 4 year CCP block of removal of individuals rights.
Albo’s Marxist circus is as complicit as Carney, Starmer, Macron and a slew of EU useful idiots and the under 16 social media ban is a deliberately designed policy for one ideology to brand minds in a single ideology education system without serious outside interference.
The climate chaos shows the consensus works over data driven logic, now they’re moving onto the real work where middle class wealth is defunded and individuals voting power devalued so the globalist elites control is paramount.
Trump showed how quickly sovereign status can be restored with dedicated outsiders. Farage, Meloni and other are showing resistance.
Where’s Australia’s Outsider?
Hastie/Price are needed right now, not in a short election campaign designed by Marxists.
Show the corruption, use US Admin 47 templates and remove the propaganda trashmedia hold!
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Jo, you are doing wonderful job and please keep doing it. I do have, however, a little favor to ask. Do not use the term “carbon emissions”. This is the terminology used by the warmist retards in an attempt to spook people into submission, by convincing them, if we continue to spew this dirty soot like carbon into the atmosphere, we are all going to die. Carbon is a solid, so it can not be emitted anyway.
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…and to use the term “ capitalism “ is to adopt malignant Marxist terminology. I use “ free enterprise “.
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“Overall capitalism and carbon emissions saves lives” is just another a nail in the coffin of a science economic political scam which has more nails than coffin.
The principle of all science is theory confirmed by validated predictions. But every single prediction of man made CO2 caused rapid tipping point Global Warming has proven wrong.
It hardly matters as it was never confirmed science, just a barmy pseudo science version of the Rapture, a religion, a hoax. Proving the predictions wrong again after 38 years of wrong predictions is unnecessary. Is there a single prediction which has been correct?
Our Australian governments are in absurd public denial. But then again they are in denial on every front. Like all communist led governments, once they are elected they do what they like and are not answerable to parliament or the people. Their concentration is on getting elected until they are strong enough to destroy the Constitution legally and take over the institutions and control the police and the army and disarm the people. With the support of the communist state governments.
Capitalism and democracy have to go because they threaten the political power of our third rate politicians. Proving capitalism and democracy are superior is offensive. Australia will keep rattling down the slide captained by opportunists with a very different agenda than the best interests of the people.
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