Recent Posts
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What if Global Warming was just because something made the clouds go away…
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Wednesday
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Snowy 2.0 is the Trillion dollar Black Hole of Australia — sucking in energy, money, land, industrial relations, the dollar, our lifestyle
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Winter Solstice
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Saturday
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We were throwing-renewable-energy away at record levels in 2025
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Friday
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Pauline Hanson, the centrist, just wants a free market in electricity, and an end to the renewable energy bribery
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Thursday
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Blame the Climate Yeti again for making your life more expensive! (It’s a smokescreen)
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Wednesday
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The Sunrise Project funneled $343 million from overseas to push net zero
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Sunday
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The US government has been secretly funding 120 dangerous biolabs around the world
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Saturday
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New report shows renewables are a drag on our national productivity
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Friday
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Thursday
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Well, how convenient. AI data centers have arrived to be the fall guy for the Energy Minister
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Wednesday
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Billionaires are leaving the room with excuses — Bezos says “AI will solve climate crisis”
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Sunday
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The Craziest eco laws against Farmers. Let’s check that science…
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Saturday
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China cooks the carbon accounting books by 400 million tons
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Friday
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The Wind Power Puzzle (add more wind turbines and get the same output)
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Thursday
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To save the world, Cement Australia stops burning coal and burns trees instead
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Wednesday
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On Fire! US hunger for gas power so large, wait time for turbines blows out to 5+ years
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Sunday
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Saturday
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Perth event Saturday May 30th: Green Greed and the Grid
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Catastrophic warming already happened in Antarctica 130,000 years ago
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Friday
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Suddenly the Paris Agreement grows teeth
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Thursday
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Australian renewable investments evaporate in 2025: reaching a ten year low
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Wednesday
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The Bubble Pops: Big Miner BHP quietly backs away from decarbonization
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Tuesday
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Monday
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When you can’t persuade people to fight your imaginary enemy, declare a war.
New Republic We’re under attack from climate change—and our only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.
BY BILL MCKIBBEN August 15, 2016
Translated: Expect 200 million imminent deaths (equivalent to WWII). Give us your firstborn, and lots of your money.
Not quite a dispassionate scientist at work:
In the North this summer, a devastating offensive is underway. Enemy forces have seized huge swaths of territory; with each passing week, another 22,000 square miles of Arctic ice disappears. Experts dispatched to the battlefield in July saw little cause for hope, especially since this siege is one of the oldest fronts in the war. “In 30 years, the area has shrunk approximately by half,” said a scientist who examined the onslaught. “There doesn’t seem anything able to stop this.”
Panic now? In late 2015, Antarctic sea ice shrank by 13 million square kilometers, and nothing seemed to be able to stop it.
Then autumn came. Sea ice is projected to recover by September (like it does every year). Nature is full of cycles. Nothing about the current batch of climate shifts […]
The key moment making headlines from the Q&A “Science Weak” episode — Brian Cox shows a temperature graph. Malcolm Roberts said the GISS temperature data has been “manipulated”. The Particle Physics Genius’ reply was argument from incredulity: gushing, gratuitous astonishment spread over six attempts to form a complete sentence:
By who? NASA? The people the… Hang on a minute. No, no, see this is quite serious. But can I just – just one thing. NASA, NASA… The people that landed men on the moon?
In a blink of reductio ad absurbum, Cox sweeps aside a potentially useful discussion about thermometers near car-parks, airports, skyscrapers, and mysterious 1,200 km homogenized smoothing. In its place he gives cheap theatrical tricks. Follow his thought to its logical conclusion — everything that NASA does (or presumably will ever do) must be 100% correct. NASA becomes an apostle of the holy order. He treats the brand name as untouchable, but NASA is not just Neil Armstrong and a Big Step, it’s an agency with 17,000 employees. But hey, none of them have ever produced a manipulated graph.
Since experts matter (so Cox tells us) let’s ask the experts — like say, Buzz Aldrin, […]
On the Eastern side of the country the new skeptical Senator, Malcolm Roberts is on Q & A.
Monday, 15 August 2016
Greg Hunt – Minister for Industry, Innovation & Science Linda Burney – Shadow Minister for Human Services Brian Cox – Particle Physicist and TV Presenter Lily Serna – Mathematician and TV Presenter Malcolm Roberts – One Nation Senator-elect for Qld
As usual it is 6 against 1 the skeptical views that 54% of Australians share. Glaciers will form in hell before the ratio on the ABC would run 1:6 the other way. For Groupthinkers it’s very important that the group discussing a “controversial” topic agrees with each other. This neutralizes any damaging effects of hearing a lone voice put forward counter arguments.
John Cook has sent in a Question about empirical evidence.
Cook points at “less heat escaping to space” – Jo says –this doesn’t mean anything. We assume he means less heat escapes at certain frequencies (which he should have said). Sections of the outgoing spectrum are missing (e.g. Harries et al), which shows that CO2 is stopping some outgoing radiation and is a greenhouse gas (and we knew that already), […]
In 2009: The 2016 Rio Games predicted be the last
Global warming could make 2016 Games ‘the last Olympics in the history of mankind’, says Tokyo governor.
“Global warming is getting worse. We have to come up with measures without which Olympic Games could not last long.
“Scientists have said we have passed the point of no return,” said Ishihara.
August 2016: The 2080 Games predicted to be the last
Move that disaster by 60 years:
“A sobering new study shows that by the 2084 Olympics, rising temperatures will make it practically impossible for most cities to host the summer games.
How will the Olympics cope with a 1.5C rise?
Answer, easily. Assuming the world warms, the IOC could shift games a whole 400km from Rio, where the average max is 28C in August to Sao Paulo where it’s 3 degrees cooler. Or they could shift the timing by all of eight weeks. If Moscow held the Olympics in September instead of July the event could survive an apocalyptic nine degree future rise. (Moscow in July has a 24C average max temperature, by September that has fallen to 15C average.)
The government […]
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8.7 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
Code Red: How the Bureau of Statistics bungled the 2016 census by Peter Martin
Reading Cod Red in the Sydney Morning Herald, the real problem of the 2016 census is laid bare. Budget cuts and DDOS attacks are not the issue. If the ABS had not been greedy for too much information, or totalitarian with threats of fines, their servers could have coped on the night. In a single day the big achievers trashed the reputation of the ABS and the Census, and of IBM.
A former head of the ABS described the grab for names as the “without doubt, the most significant invasion of privacy ever perpetrated by the ABS” — like an “Australia Card”.
Because of the invasive private information they demanded, some Senators (Greens and Xenophon) refused to comply. So the ABS threatened the public with $180 a day fines, and advertised that threat. They knew that they were asking too much, risking the good name of the ABS and of the census, and feared that citizens might object. That’s why they aggressively took the totalitarian route, threatening punishment to reduce conscientious objections. This combination created a recipe for millions of people to dutifully […]
Analogies don’t get more dead than this one. Whole sentences have been killed in the quest for a soothing salad. The poor souls at Reneweconomy …
A Valiant Eco-Worrier, Evan Stamatiou, imagines climate change as an influenza pandemic.
If you imagine climate change as a flu that the world is coming down with, then you could probably say that the physical symptoms are only just starting to be felt.
On the other hand, thinks Jo, if you imagine climate change as like the tide, then you don’t bother trying to stop it.
On the third hand (which is really my foot) I don’t imagine anything. Instead I hop along to a tide gauge and check the data. At 1mm a year, this is a flu that will hit in 3016. Panic in 500 years then.
….interventions to fight the symptoms of ‘Climate Flu’ still touch on a raw nerve for so many today.
No sir. “Interventions” to fight Climate Flu don’t touch any raw nerves at all. Skeptics couldn’t care less if someone wants to hand-wash their hair shirt and drive a hybrid. What touches a nerve are the way people with imaginary illnesses want to […]
Thirty years of propaganda has only reached a quarter of the population.
When asked “Is the scientific debate about global warming over?” 75% of US voters will not get their IPCC badge:
… 61 percent said the debate is not over. — Washington Times.
Most people don’t believe, despite all the 97% consensus surveys, all the two week junkets, billlions in government funding, and speeches by Leonardo Di Caprio. What tactic is left? Double the bullying and namecalling?
These are pretty dreadful numbers for the Global Worriers.
And look at the breakdown by political party:
Just 26 percent of Republicans and 28 percent of Democrats agree that the debate about global warming is “over,” as opposed to 19 percent of unaffiliated voters.
There are almost as many obedient, trusting Republicans as there are obedient, trusting Democrats. At least on this question, there is not the usual polarization along political lines. We can see why polls paid for by Climate Worriers rarely ask this question about the debate.
“Do you believe in climate change” is a better thing to ask if you want a “certain kind of result”.
Skeptics are winning.
A climate debate […]
There are hours of entertainment today with the radioactive fallout from Australia’s “census night”. In terms of Australian drama, running an online census produces more laughs than anything ScreenAustralia is subsizing. The 2016 Australian CensusFail is the stuff of legend.
In theory, last night 10 million Australian Households were meant to log in to one site, and fill out sensitive personal details which the government would guard in perpetuity. We were threatened with 180 dollar per day fines for not filling out the form and told the site was secure and private and could not fail. The system was tested to handle a million submissions an hour which was supposedly “twice as many as needed“. But do the numbers — it was utterly predictable that five million households would try to fill out the form between 7 and 9 pm on the East Coast. By 7:30pm Australia’s first online census had collapsed, the site was closed. “The service won’t be restored tonight. ” As of lunch time the next day, it’s still down. h/t ColA, Dave B.
The ABS tells us proudly that “2 million people” were able to fill in the form. Bravo for the 20% success rate, […]
Eggs and Bacon Bay, Tasmania
Their billion-dollar-ABC reports every irrelevant thought bubble a greenie group can dream up:
“PETA launches bid to change Eggs and Bacon Bay to healthy alternative”
The ABC can’t find a single local who wants the change, but they treat the fantasy to a three-photo feature, complete with expert opinions and interviews. The locals think the idea is a bad joke. Listen to Doug:
…Doug said locals were perfectly happy with the name.
“These single-interest groups ought to go overseas and annoy the shit out of ISIS,” he said.
The only person outside the ABC who thinks this issue is worth discussing is some poor chicken mayor who is happy to sell out the locals for fear of offending the busybody control-freaks:
Huon Valley Mayor Peter Coad is willing to consider the idea.
“Obviously these issues should be taken seriously and have some merit,” he said.
Dear Mayor Coad, PETA are demanding a meat-free map. You think this is serious?
One type of Eggs And Bacon Flower.
The town, by the way, is named after a flower. That’ll be next on the hit list, and before […]
Malcolm Roberts, Lateline, ABC
This is what we pay the ABC a billion dollars for, so they can investigate the really big questions we were all asking, like why Malcolm Roberts used such odd grammar five years ago, and is he connected with other groups that use odd grammar?
One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts denies links to Sovereign Citizens movement
Yes, I’ve never heard of them either.
The big breakthrough was that Malcolm Roberts wrote some letters five years ago with highly suspicious grammar:
The senator has been quizzed about his knowledge of the Sovereign Citizens movement because of the existence of documents he began writing five years ago in a style similar to that used by the group’s adherents.
The crime:
Among the documents’ distinctive characteristics was an unusual style of punctuation.
593,000 people voted for One Nation, but the ABC wants to ask about semi-colons.
Similar stylisation of names is often employed by those within the Sovereign Citizen movement, in the belief that hyphens and colons can help them evade governments’ use of grammar to enslave their citizens.
And it takes three people write up about some tenuous […]
It’s everything the Green revolution was supposed to offer — jobs, energy independence, money money money, and massive reductions in CO2. Australians hear how bad fracking is but not much about the transformation of the US. h/t GWPF…
The Black Gold Rush
Exploitation of new oil and gas reserves by fracking shale rock has transformed the US economy since it started just 11 years ago – creating at least a million jobs and slashing electricity bills and greenhouse gas emissions.
The scale of this energy revolution is almost unimaginable.
The Marcellus shale bed in Pennsylvania is thought by geologists to contain enough gas to power and heat every home in America for 50 to 100 years. Yet a few hundred feet beneath it lies another giant formation, the Utica, that contains enough gas for a further century. — Daily Mail UK.
Emissions from electric power in the USA are back to 1987 levels
There’s a message here about how Australia could meet its obscene 28% reduction targets for carbon emissions. A caring Greenie would say No to more gifts for windfarms — and get cracking on the fracking. (Do they want to save […]
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Malcolm Roberts
Some in the love media have real trouble understanding preferential voting. Big numbers seem to confuse them.
There are headlines that Malcolm Roberts “only got 77 votes” as if to delegitamize the skeptic. The Courier Mail put it on the front page. What they couldn’t find was one voter who voted for Pauline Hanson who was unhappy about where their vote went. And there were plenty to ask: Hanson’s party got 593,000 first preference votes nationally and won four Senate seats.
Apparently to be considered a real senator the magic number of first preference votes this year is “100″.
In South Australia, Stirling Griff of the Nick Xenophon Team won “103″ votes, and Sky Kakosche-Moore won “129″. Alex Gallacher, Australian Labor Party, won with “330 votes”. No newspapers seem to be suggesting that they don’t deserve to be there, or that their success is a reason to axe preferential voting.
In WA, the Liberal Party won fully 3 of their 5 Senate seats on a average of just 600 “votes” each. Let’s ignore that the Liberal group ticket in WA had 510,000 votes. They ended up getting five senators elected with less votes than […]
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8.2 out of 10 based on 10 ratings
Cut the blob and the blob reforms
Thanks to Prof Peter Ridd for the nice one-liner.
Back in February, the new head of CSIRO, Larry Marshall, agreed that the “debate was over” and sacked 350 pointless climate researchers who were studying stuff that was already settled. Marshall’s crime was to hire people to solve the climate problem rather than just keep the cheer squad. But the eco-carers were outraged. Seems that a cheer squad is important.
What does this mean? Not much for climate science or skeptics, its only fifteen jobs and $37 million over 10 years. It’s just another line of press releases advertising The Blob. More government waste.
Mr Hunt has announced an extra 15 jobs focusing on climate science, as well as additional support, costing $3.7 million a year. He said it would increase the number of climate researchers from 100 to 115 after the latest round of job cuts is taken into account.
These researchers are being paid to find a crisis, so they will only find the truth if it happens to coincide with a crisis. Imagine the outcry if Hunt had hired 15 full time skeptical scientists for ten years? Imagine […]
The final Australian Senate was announced today with 11 wildcard “cross benchers” (people who are not in the four largest parties). Turnbull is going to have to choose to go conservative or go left. For foreign readers — sorry about more Australian politics but this finally maps out who holds the power in the Australian government.
Senators include: Hanson, 4. Nick Xenophon, 3.
plus Bob Day, David Leyonhjelm, Jackie Lambie, Derryn Hinch.
The Coalition needs 9 of them to get legislation through the Senate. Somehow Turnbull has to deal with both Hanson and Xenophon candidates, an impossible combination on any climate or environmental issue. Turnbull will have to do deals with the Greens to get through any pro-climate-industry legislation The Greens have exactly the number of Senators that the Coalition needs. But a Greens deal risks a Liberal party room revolt for a weak PM. Potentially the Hanson team could up the ante in protest at a climate deal by holding out on approving other legislation as a price.
Skeptics, Defcons must keep the pressure on Coalition members to stop Turnbull doing Green deals.
In this messy senate, Turnbull cannot hold the threat of […]
Brexit was seismic. Even Nature can see the threat — The UK was big promoter of Climate witchcraft, but it’s gone now:
“Brexit might be an excuse for some EU countries to withhold their signature,” says Oliver Geden, head of the EU Research Division at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. Before the Paris talks, the EU had pledged to cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030, relative to 1990 levels.
“The UK not being part of the negotiating mix means there is likely to be less pressure for ambitious targets and ensuring that the EU delivers on its Paris agreement commitments,” says Martin Nesbit, a policy expert at the Institute for European Environmental Policy in London.
But don’t relax, the Clexit movement is needed more than ever
Czech President Dr. Václav Klaus recognises this, and he Monckton, Morano, I and many others from 60 countries have joined the new Clexit movement started by Viv Forbes. Check it out. Brexit gave us a big advantage but we must press it home.
There are lots of reasons Paris may still succeed
The Paris agreement may appear to be struggling with […]
Map from Climate Analytics
It was all a grand theater. Greens brag that the Paris agreement was signed by “179 countries”, but it means nothing until they get 55 nations controlling 55% of the worlds (man-made) emissions. Right now, they’ve had a resounding response from no country that matters. (Forgive me Norway, with 0.14% of man-made emissions, right now, you are in a small group which includes Palestine, Palau, and North Korea.)
What they need:
Entry into force
In accordance with Article 21, paragraph 1, of the Paris Agreement, the Agreement shall enter into force on the thirtieth day after the date on which at least 55 Parties to the Convention accounting in total for at least an estimated 55 % of the total global greenhouse gas emissions have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession with the Depositary.
What they’ve got: 22 states which produce 1% of man-made emissions.
Paris Agreement – Status of Ratification
As of 2 August 2016, there are 179 signatories to the Paris Agreement. Of these, 22 States have also deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance or approval accounting in total for 1.08 […]
Star discovered in our solar system.
The Onion, ahead of the worlds scientific societies, reports on a “watershed moment” in scientific history:
Scientists Trace Heat Wave To Massive Star At Center Of Solar System
PASADENA, CA—Groundbreaking new findings announced Monday suggest the record-setting heat wave plaguing much of the United States may be due to radiation emitted from an enormous star located in the center of the solar system.
Scientists believe the star, which they have named G2V65, may in fact be the same bright yellow orb seen arcing over the sky day after day, and given its extreme heat and proximity to Earth, it is likely not only to have caused the heat wave, but to be responsible for every warm day in human history.
The “tremendous ball of energy” may explain everything from drying puddles to hot car seats.
Governments will have to act, though the path is unclear:
When asked if anything could be done to prevent or counteract the star’s heat production, Kivens expressed skepticism.
“No, for the foreseeable future, I think we’re locked into orbit with this thing,” he said. “Although the star seems to […]
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7.6 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
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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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