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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Statistics
With a doctor’s appointment in Sydney and taking a long way home I did about 1,000 km last week in the back seat of a daughter’s new Chinese EV.
It was a nice new car. My only complaint was the charging time. She was pleased with the energy cost. I didn’t study the economics..
The most striking feature was the silent start. No starter gears. Plenty of acceleration.
Came back via Kangaroo Valley. I had been through there about 50 years ago, but don’t remember it like this. Recommend it and allow time to go slow for a good look.
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They say that Chinese EV’s have kill switches that cause explosions and fires if you criticise China. Also, Chinese-made gas separator units, including air separation plants (ASU) and oil-gas-water separators, are manufactured by Chinese companies like Nuzhuo and Jiangsu Hongxun.
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Hence the fire which has broken out at the Viva Oil refinery in Geelong?
Supposedly from a gas separator unit.
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Don’t worry about these little mishaps. Our super PM has managed to find us an extra 1 day’s supply of much needed diesel fuel. Thank heavens for this PM’s foresight & negotiating skills. Imagine how much better the country would be without him & his collection of morons!! 😥
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The Strait is open to all shipping except those leaving or going to Iranian ports. Tankers already enroute. Xi says no weapons to Iran.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJDhSYAVeZ8&t=134s
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Still not much marine traffic through the Strait. And there appears to be still none through the declared mine field.
That main channel is up to 200m deep so anchored mines could not be deployed readily without winching gear and time. There may be drones sitting on the bottom waiting to detect ships but that is what USN is looking for now. There may also be mines that can be remotely armed.
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Is Trump punishing his fair weather friends? It is becoming clear that the US could have “solved” the Hormuz blockade sooner than they did.
The converse is that had “we” provided [mostly] moral support much of this pain could have been avoided.
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Some credit must be given to Beijing for being a mediator. All sides want Xi to play an active role in peace negotiations.
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How does shipping manpads count as “mediating”?
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US disinformation from an Intelligence source.
“China has never provided weapons to any party to the conflict; the information in question is untrue,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., told Military.com. “As a responsible major country, China consistently fulfills its international obligations.
“We urge the U.S. side to refrain from making baseless allegations, maliciously drawing connections, and engaging in sensationalism. We hope that relevant parties will do more to help de-escalate tensions.” (Military.com)
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I’ll give myself an uppercut.
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I don’t think the US has the mine detection gear on hand. There are a couple of ships coming from Japan – USS Chief and USS Pioneer. The two mine sweepers passed Singapore on 10 April but their AIS has been off since. They should be well up into the Arabian Sea by now. There were steaming at 10kts. They are only 74m long wooden vessels now 30 years old so 10kts would be economic/safe speed rather than full speed, which is stated as 14kts.
My understanding of the assistance POTUS Trump requested was for mine sweepers. US went ahead with plans to decommission four minesweepers just before the conflict. It may have been possible to bring them back into service but I think he expected help from Europe because it was their oil they needed to get out. The decommissioned mine sweepers were in the US anyhow.
The fact that the two sweepers currently have AIS off means they are considered targets.
I just happened to visit the Isotta Fraschini factory in Italy when USN were negotiating purchase of their low magnetic signature engines/gearboxes for the mine sweepers. At that time, Isotta Fraschini held the would open water speed record with a diesel powered vessel.
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FWIW – I haven’t seen these threads woven together like this before
“The Price of Nothing, The Cost of Everything”
“There is a man called Ben Southwood who understands things about Britain that most of her ministers prefer not to. He is the sort of figure who accumulates quietly and is now the editor of Works in Progress, a journal published under the auspices of Stripe that concerns itself, earnestly and rigorously, with why the modern world cannot seem to build or grow or think as well as it once did. He lives in South East London. He tells us he likes natural wine and chicken thighs and hard science fiction. He reads the thermal dynamics of power grids the way other men read the racing pages, and when he finds something important, says so without ceremony.
In August 2025, he said: “if you are not following Robert Boswall, you are missing out on some incredible recent threads on energy and energy policy”. Then he quoted the opening line of one such thread, which has the quality of a sentence that ought to be carved above the door of every energy department in Whitehall: Negative electricity prices are not a sign of abundance; they’re the butter mountains and wine lakes of the power grid: a subsidy-induced glut.
It is a line that deserves to stop you cold.”
More at
https://gawaintowler.substack.com/p/the-price-of-nothing-the-cost-of
Via https://instapundit.com/789907/#disqus_thread
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And – UK but
“Solar Power Threatens to Overwhelm Electricity Grid”
“Solar power is threatening to overwhelm the UK electricity grid this summer as gluts of supply create a risk of blackouts and leave households and businesses facing being asked to consume excess power.”
More at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/04/14/solar-power-threatens-to-overwhelm-electricity-grid/
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With my new computer up and running, I am now able to run bigger models in Excel. I currently have a daily solar intensity model for 1000AD to 2200AD.
This model gives some unexpected insights and has pushed me to look into more detail on some aspects of Earth’s energy balance.
Peak solar intensity south of 15S has been declining for the last 1000 years. Peak at 15S bottomed around 1200AD and has been almost flat since. The NH south of 25N has bottomed in the last 1000 years but north of 25N the maximum is yet to bottom out.
Broadly, I would expect the SH to be mostly cooling and the NH to be mostly warming. However both hemispheres have increasing ocean heat due to increased advection this century. But the OHC in the SH is decelerating and may actually be losing heat by 2030. The NH is accelerating. (This is something you will not read in popular press)
One significant difference is the SH this century is that Net radiant heat retained is outpacing ocean heat by a big margin – now twice as much per year. The Net was calibrated to the OHC for the decade 2005 to 2015. So this departure is the last decade.
Accepting that this difference is real and not measurement error, I went looking for reasons why the Net radiation could be higher than the retained ocean heat. It can be due to more atmospheric moisture, more biomass and more ice on land. I know the atmospheric water is higher and biomass in the SH has increased. I did not know that some glaciers in Patagonia are now at new Holoscene maximums:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annals-of-glaciology/article/greatest-holocene-advance-of-glaciar-pio-xi-chilean-patagonia-possible-causes/7F3D1F2DB75C6783DE33153C1D415905
—
[I assume the abbreviations are SH – Southern Hemisphere, NH – Northern Hemisphere, OHC – Ocean Heat Content. – Raquel]
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During full glaciation something inexplicable happens.
‘During the last ice age (approx. 110,000 to 12,000 years ago), there were at least 25 events where temperatures over Greenland rose by up to 16.5°C within just a few decades. These fluctuations were not local phenomena.
‘Researchers like Bradley Markel from Seattle University demonstrated that these events had global impacts, such as the shifting of tropical rain belts or the “bipolar seesaw” effect (where warming in the North coincided with cooling in the South).’ (Notrickszone)
.
[Link added https://notrickszone.com/2026/04/15/73934/ – Raquel]
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The BBC says it will “review” its climate coverage. BBC executives caught ignoring widespread evidence of [snip] falsehoods, lies, misinformation, malinformation, disinformation, propaganda, fake news and malicious edits. And the BBC’s “best scientific experts” don’t have any scientific qualifications: https://x.com/Electroversenet/status/2044430558420439105
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New malware hits 23,500 hosts in 124 countries
A digitally signed adware tool has deployed payloads running with SYSTEM privileges that disabled antivirus protections on thousands of endpoints, some in the educational, utilities, government, and healthcare sectors.
In a single day, researchers observed more than 23,500 infected hosts in 124 countries trying to connect to the operator’s infrastructure, with hundreds of infected endpoints present in high-value networks.
221 academic institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia
41 Operational Technology networks in the energy and transport sectors, and at critical infrastructure providers
35 municipal governments, state agencies, and public utilities.
24 primary and secondary educational institutions.
3 healthcare organizations (hospital systems and healthcare providers).
networks of multiple Fortune 500 companies.
According to the researchers, the update process retrieves an MSI payload (Setup.msi) disguised as a GIF image, which is currently flagged as malicious on VirusTotal by only five security vendors.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/signed-software-abused-to-deploy-antivirus-killing-scripts/
PUP’s until now have been pretty harmless, but that just changed.
If your AV suddenly disappears, you could be infected.
Check your HOSTS file at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc.
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Frog gut bacterium completely eradicates 100% of tumors after a single dose in mice
A newly published peer-reviewed study in Gut Microbes has uncovered a previously unknown cancer-fighting bacterium isolated from amphibian and reptile gut microbiomes—delivering results that exceeded modern oncology treatments.
In an immunocompetent mouse model of colorectal cancer, a single intravenous dose of Ewingella americana led to complete tumor elimination in 100% of treated animals, with no recurrence upon re-exposure to cancer cells—suggesting durable, long-term immune protection.
https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/new-study-frog-derived-gut-bacterium
Pity they didn’t find it in cane toads…
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I wish it said a single intravenous dose of led to complete elimination in 100% of politicians and bureaucrat,s who think that spending taxpayers money without care —suggesting durable, long-term immune protection.
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More belated mRNA pusher confessions
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2026/04/15/cleveland-clinic-medical-director-apologizes/#comments
Some of the comments align exactly with what we observe of the frequent boosters in our contact group. They are , to put it mildly, the most fragile members.
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I wonder how many vehicle buyers complete a cost-benefit analysis to understand the total cost of owning pure plug in EV, Hybrid or ICV?
Depending on how many kilometres a year each owner will drive their vehicle average a year it appears that ICV are mostly the most cost effective.
* Retail Price differences
* Depreciation every year
* Insurance premiums
* EV tyre wear and cost of those specialised tyres
* Electricity costs verses liquid fuel and for example, a recent NRMA reader report;
High-speed charging provider have leapt from a standard 54 cents/kW to 68 cents/kW and higher charge, and peak demand period charges are higher still.
Retail power from the grid is/was 20-24 cents/kW .
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and to eventually add a road user tax to find the missing fuel excise that ev owners don’t currently cough up
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Oh, how do I wish to see it happening in Australia: !https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O-dYHAs7BY
In my view the best path is to clearly (constitutionally?) prohibit Government propaganda, that is :
a) cut government broadcasting and publishing, falsely called public, to the barest minimum,
b) made “commercial in confidence” and similar false pretences to hide information illegal,
c) prohibit government questioning itself during Question Time in Parliament.
d) nothing wrong with government owing means of broadcasting and publication, but they should be called as such and being paid for out government operating budget.
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” nothing wrong with government owing means of broadcasting and publication, ”
No Vlad, no no no!
Any means of propaganda owned by the Govt will be exactly that, just absolute propaganda in the Govt’s favour! They should own NOTHING!
They should have no questions of their own side in Parliament, and all Govt meetings/decisions should be public. There should be nothing secret!
You do realise the day they give up the ABC they will broadcast directly to your phone and over-ride any calls you may be making!
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This is their ABC video with comments still open:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JKCNHcMm8o
Go your hardest.
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FWIW
“The Real Danger Isn’t Dumb People — It’s Smart People Without Wisdom”
https://pjmedia.com/jamie-wilson/2026/04/15/the-real-danger-isnt-dumb-people-its-smart-people-without-wisdom-n4951830
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There are a lot of smart people on this forum.
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