h/t to Speedy and Helen. :- )
Some people think Green voters have a Marxist grand plan to take over the levers of power.
But it’s more mundane…
The Chaser. Nine years ago.
Good satire hurts.
9.7 out of 10 based on 49 ratings
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Just letting readers know that I and the moderation team are trying to find ways to improve the quality of the comments in some threads. In a frustrating, difficult era, we’re especially looking for old fashioned good manners. That and the ability to ask good questions. Thanks for making a special effort.
9.8 out of 10 based on 40 ratings Kamala Harris is running to be the next US President. In case anyone hasn’t heard, rumors are that Joe Biden health is iffy and he is the temporary filler to get over the line, and if so, the VP then becomes The P. It’s not just a fringe idea. In a Rasmussen poll, 59% of voters say “it’s likely.” So, the pocket guide to Kamala Harris for skeptics is that according to Progressive Punch, she’s further left than Bernie Sanders which is quite the feat. Appropriately she has a $10 Trillion dollar plan to get better weather, and “aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2045” — which would be five years quicker than the famous Green New Deal. How extreme is Kamala Harris? Pretty extreme says Kyle Smith, National Review There are various measures for these things, but according to Progressive Punch (“Leading with the Left”), Kamala Harris is the fourth farthest-left of any senator with a score of 96.76 percent out of 100 on “crucial votes,” despite moderating very slightly in the period when she was running for president. Elizabeth Warren is fifth, Kirsten Gillibrand is sixth, and Bernie Sanders is tenth. Here is […] Lessons from Coronavirus Lockdowns and border closures mean many diseases have been prevented It’s peak season for flu here in Australia and there’s almost no sign of it. As Chris Gillham wrote here back in May, we know lockdowns stop viruses, because flu cases are 85% down. Now he shows that this extends to other diseases too, and Chris has used data from the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System to calculate that just shy of 200,000 fewer Australians contracted any of the notifiable diseases in the first seven months of 2020 compared to the first seven months of 2019. Is some of that disease burden just the price of holiday-makers bringing back diseases from overseas each year? No one wants to stop the planes returning to the skies, but it begs the question — do we have to accept the onslaught of winter germs every year? The answer may lie with other things we’ve discovered in the Covid pandemic too — that sick people should stay home from work and school, and that we have a lot of anti-viral tools we can use. Perhaps it’s time that travellers considered taking preemptive anti-virals, which might improve their holidays and also reduce […] August 12th, 2020 | Tags: Antiviral, Coronavirus, Gillham (Chris), Influenza | Category: Microbiology |  Print This Post | | One of the most abrupt climate change events in human existence was the Younger Dryas period about 13,000 years ago, and even though it was so sharp, and so severe, and so recent (geologically speaking) we still don’t know what caused it. A new paper argues that it is likely it was a volcano. But previously researchers have said “asteroid”. The Earth was warming out of the last ice age, when it suddenly cooled, and stayed cold for twelve centuries, then warmed again, just as abruptly. This is what real climate change looks like, something we mere mortals are unprepared for and apparently have no way of predicting. Spare a thought for the people alive at the time. They were subject to a fall of three degrees Celsius, apparently in the space of just one year, perhaps triggered by volcanic dust that darkened the sky. What is still far from explained, whether it was by volcano or falling rock, was why the coldness continued so long then so suddenly ended. The snap change wiped out some species, like possibly the last mammoths, and in some locations camels and horses. The volcanic dust is thought to have fallen out within a […] Something that marks how strange times are, was that in March and April, a group of seismologists found seismic activity fell by 50% at 185 stations around the world (at least in certain high frequency bands from 4 – 14 Hz). For example the three graphs below show seismic activity in Brussels, Barbados and New Zealand. A slight downturn happens at Christmas but the lockdown period fell far below that. For the first time seismologists could identify small quake signals they had missed before. Co-author Dr Stephen Hicks, from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: “This quiet period is likely the longest and largest dampening of human-caused seismic noise since we started monitoring the Earth in detail using vast monitoring networks of seismometers. Who knows what they might figure out now they have a handle on human background “noise”. (B) Lockdown effects in hiFSAN compared with audible environmental noise and independent mobility data in Brussels, Belgium. (C) Lockdown effect in Barbados compared to noise levels in the last decade (in gray) and correlation with local flight data at the Grantley Adams International Airport (TBPB) (24). (D) Lockdown noise reduction recorded on borehole seismometers in […] Sadly, long time commenter and moderator Roy Hogue passed away this week. People may not realize Roy spent countless hours moderating as “AZ”. Many thanks to him for his patience — and likewise to all the moderators who make it possible for the conversation to continue here. After 12,535 comments he will be missed. Roy’s first comment was in November 2009. As a “computer science type” who lectured at college level, Roy said: At a lecture for students on AGW the best a pair of professors could come up with to support their alarmism was Al Gore’s movie and the usual statements that it’s a done deal, no more debate, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Our students have no means of protecting themselves from this proof by authority. Commiserations to his lovely wife Catharine and family. I know he was much loved. A good man to the end. 9.9 out of 10 based on 106 ratings The scandal from the Swamp: Too rich to get a cheap drug? Poor countries all over the world are using Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and it appears to be very useful. The new HCQTrial suggests that despite the billion dollar budgets and expert staff, people in wealthier countries are dying from Coronavirus at far higher rates than people are in lands where HCQ is being used. And the effect of HCQ apparently holds even after researchers correct for patients being older, heavier, with higher blood pressure, living in high density apartment towers, or with getting tested more. If word ever gets out that the Politico-Academic-Corporate-Swamp buried useful drugs because they were unprofitable and out of patent, there will be hell to pay. The HCQTrial was done anonymously by @CovidAnalysis — who say they are PhD researchers, scientists. You can find our research in journals like Science and Nature. For examples of why we can’t be more specific search for “raoult death threats” or “simone gold fired”. We have little interest in adding to our publication lists, being in the news, or being on TV (we have done all of these things before but feel there are more important things in […] August 8th, 2020 | Tags: Antiviral, Coronavirus, Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) | Category: Microbiology, Mortality | Print This Post | | Do 10,000 extra infections matter? JoNova — cheaper and faster than a Parliamentary Report — said two months ago that it was baffling that the UK locked everyone down, but kept flying in the virus. Now British MP’s are saying the same. UPDATE: Given Boris Johnson suddenly changed policy on flights from Spain last week, immediately adding a mandatory quarantine, what’s the bet someone told him this report was coming? No 10’s ‘inexplicable’ decision to lift quarantine at height of pandemic: MPs’ damning report condemns ‘serious mistake’ that allowed 10,000 infected people into the UK David Barett, DailyMail Delaying quarantine measures at the border was a ‘serious mistake’ that allowed 10,000 infected people into the UK accelerated the virus spread, a major report by MPs says. The cross-party inquiry is highly critical of the Government’s ‘inexplicable’ decision to lift its initial quarantine measures in mid-March, ten days before lockdown. Experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine calculated that up to 10,000 infected people, largely from Spain, France and Italy, imported the virus into the UK. Viruses can only survive in people temporarily, so to beat a rogue chemical […] August 7th, 2020 | Tags: Borders, Coronavirus, Herd-immunity, UK | Category: Microbiology | Print This Post | | On average, every 3 days, wind farms generating as much as one coal fired unit, fail on the Australian grid TonyfromOz exposes a failure rate so common it’s hidden in plain view. Wind “Farm” intermittency is even worse than we thought. On average, every three days within a one hour period there’s a sudden failure of 500 MW of wind generation — equal to one industrial coal turbine. That’s four full wind farms or about 250 spinning turbines that stopped spinning. Every time a coal plant trips out, it’s reported as a problem of relying on our “old coal fleet”. But when the same power output fails from wind, it’s the new clean green future at work (!) , and a sign we need to spend another $20 billion to “upgrade the grid” with interconnectors we don’t need, and Hydro schemes we don’t want. A few wind farms are bad for the grid. More windfarms are worse. 100 times a year we get a 500MW outage TonyfromOz (Anton Lang) laboriously finds and documents two different kinds of failure. The largest and longest outages are when wind farms are becalmed. But there are many more short sharp and very sudden failures […] August 6th, 2020 | Tags: Wind Power | Category: Global Warming, Renewable, Wind Power | Print This Post | | More ironies. One fifth of all soil carbon is stored in peat bogs. Unfortunately when industrial wind turbines are built on them, the damage turns them from carbon sinks to carbon sources thus neutralizing the point of building the wind farm. The headline evokes some supernatural power: Wind farms built on carbon-rich peat bogs lose their ability to fight climate change As if the magical whirly totem stick loses the gift of weather control when placed on a peat bog? But the real damage is not just to wallets for another pointless windfarm. Peat bogs are so much more than carbon sinks — they are also an archive of paleohistory and the ancient climate. Indeed, even though cattle, wind and rain can damage the bogs, the researchers now say the wind farms now pose the “most serious risk” of all. Apparently the vehicle access tracks create artificial streams that drain the peat. The drainage changes are pervasive and “affect the whole peatland” not just the part near the track. The “blanket bogs” are rare, but occur from Spain to Norway in Europe as well as in Canada, New Zealand and Korea. The paper is a thinly disguised plea from bog […] An open thread, with remarkable footage and terrible state of affairs in Lebanon. Pray for the people of Beirut. Apparently someone didn’t think much about storing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in one spot in a city for six long ticking years. Two tons of the same was used to kill 168 people in the Oklahoma terrorist bombing. In this case, the worst “terrorist” appears to be bureaucratic negligence. Lebanon is in a dire state, with hyperinflation ruining life savings, and coronavirus accelerating. Chatter suggests the explosion was set off by workers welding the doors to stop thieves? Because there was a smaller fire, many cameras were on when the second explosion started. Phenomenal footage and news on #BeirutBlast Afterwards Beirut port after explosion. Fully destroyed. Too much bodies to count. #beirutexplosion @akhbar pic.twitter.com/TYMVx0WZVo — Jenan Moussa (@jenanmoussa) August 4, 2020 The danger of uncontrolled chemistry. 9.9 out of 10 based on 36 ratings The global economy has been sucker punched by a world wide pandemic, but ABC propaganda writers don’t miss the chance to push their ultimate fantasy, that coal has turned a magical point in a terminal decline. Global coal fired capacity fell by an awesome 0.14 percent for the “First Time On Record”. Hyperbole knows no bounds. How excited can someone get over a decline of one sixth of one percent? This much: The world is now shutting down coal plants faster than it’s opening them by James Purtill, ABC The world’s combined coal power capacity has fallen for the first time on record as the closure of generators outstripped stations being commissioned. That’s good news for global emissions. Note the numbers: Coal power capacity fell by 2.9 gigawatt in the first half of 2020 — a small though significant drop of about 0.14 per cent, according to US research group Global Energy Monitor, which monitors fossil fuel developments. By comparison, the global coal fleet had grown by an average of 25GW every six months over the previous two decades, from 2000-2019. In a nutshell, or just a nut, coal power grew by […] A telling incident in Western democracies about borders The electoral power of strong borders is vastly underestimated. Western Australia has hard borders at the moment, and no coronavirus — other than a few cases getting caught in the mandatory quarantine. That’s 2.5 million people who are almost living a normal life. This is not to boast (we wish you could be here), but to point out how politically popular closed borders are in the current pandemic. The Premier is wildly popular, polling close to 90%. To all the people who said “states can’t close borders” the message is that it’s bonkers not to close borders. When the Commonwealth government joined the bizarre High Court push to force them open, the pushback was ferocious. A poll today showed that West Australians are fed up. The West Australian collected 245,000 signatories to a petition supporting the border closure. Not only do 96% say the borders should stay shut, but when asked, a whopping 34% of Western Australians said the state should secede. How fast did it come to that? Never, have I seen such vitriol towards the Commonwealth from WA. …the Commonwealth’s decision to effectively join hands with […] August 3rd, 2020 | Tags: Coronavirus, Western Australia (WA) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | No wonder the Chinese lockdown a million people with every outbreak. Two thirds of these cases were not hospitalized. These studies are small and need confirmation, but the medical specialists are asking if it is possible that Covid infections create new cases of heart failure which may trigger problems long after infection? A startling number of COVID-19 patients suffer lasting heart damage Fermin Koop, ZME Science A study from the University Hospital Frankfurt looked at the cardiovascular MRIs of 100 people who had recovered from the coronavirus and compared them with heart images of people who hadn’t been infected. Most of the patients hadn’t been hospitalized and recovered at home, with symptoms ranging from none to moderate. Two months after recovering from COVID-19, the patients were more likely to have troubling cardiac signs than people in the control group. Up to 78% of them had structural changes to the heart, while 76% had evidence of a biomarker signaling cardiac injury typically found after a heart attack, and 60% had signs of inflammation. The Puntmann study was based in Germany, and the average age of cases was 49. Troponin is a marker used in standard […] August 1st, 2020 | Tags: Coronavirus, Long Covid | Category: Evidence, Global Warming, Health, Microbiology | Print This Post | | For Peter Ridd, it would have been so much easier if he had gone quietly. This battle is not for him, but for our Australian Universities. He shouldn’t need to take this to the High Court, or even the Federal Court. The Scott Morrison government could turn off the tap to every institution which won’t guarantee free speech and enshrine it in their employee contracts. Dan Tehan is reviewing the university model code, but they don’t need a review. They know, we know, everyone knows, without free speech our universities are just Big Government advertising agencies, or victims of the latest FashionThink trend. Those funds could be frozen tonight, and watch how fast the universities can rewrite their contracts. At the speed of light… Donations are already flowing in for the High Court Battle. Thank you to all who can help his GoFundMe Campaign. From John Spooner, The Australian. Peter Ridd Seeks High Court Appeal Charlie Peel, The Australian Sacked James Cook University professor Peter Ridd will go to the High Court over his controversial sacking for publicly criticising the institution and his colleagues over their climate change science. A week after the Federal Circuit Court overturned […] New research shows that families with teenage children were three times more likely to get Covid (odds of spread , 18%) than families with children under ten (5%). It appears that it’s more dangerous to live with teens than to live with adults (12%). It may be that teens are more likely to be asymptomatic which means people don’t realize they need to isolate from them. The question of opening primary schools is potentially very different to high schools. Quite possibly puberty affects immune systems in ways that make teens effectively young adults. Older Kids May Transmit COVID-19 as Much as Adults Do, New Evidence Shows ScienceAlert The results also showed up something unexpected, however. When index patients were categorised by age (0–9, 10–19, 20–29, 30–39, 40–49, 50–59, 60–69, 70–79, and >80 years), households with older children (index patients of 10–19 years) had the highest rate of infection spread to household contacts, with 18.6 percent of household contacts later showing the infection. By contrast, young children (index patients 0–9 years of age) seemed to confer the least amount of spread of the virus, with just 5.3 percent of household contacts contracting the infection, which […] For 450 years Typhus ravaged Europe. The death rate without antibiotics is somewhere from 10 – 40%. Warsaw Ghetto workers There is still no vaccine to typhus, but overcrowded ghettos of partially starving people managed to stop the spread in 1941. The Nazis crammed some 450,000 people into a 3.4km2 area in Warsaw. In the first round, typhus spread rapidly, infecting 120,000 people and killing 30,000. But the Jews got organized and just as everyone was expecting rates to rocket with winter approaching, the exponential curve fell off suddenly “to extinction”. A new paper claims they beat it with social distancing, hygiene, and home quarantine. Typhus is due by a bacterium transmitted by lice and fleas. It causes a fever, headache and rash. It was such a scourge that in 1759 one estimate suggests as many as a quarter of all prisoners in England died from typhus. Infection rates were so bad in prison that the disease was called ‘gaol fever’ and prisoners on trial would even infect court members from time to time. In the early 1600’s more than 10% of the total German population may have been killed by typhus. Currently it is infrequent except for in […] UPDATE: Scroll through the Twitter thread #ChinaFloods See the spectacular and heart-wrenching footage of raging torrents. I have never seen water move on that scale. Why isn’t this on the news? But NO evacuation #Hefei #Anhui? Like demons in the night #4thReichChina #Chinazi #Xitler #CCP blew up dams & intentionally flooded & killed a city of 60 million PEOPLE to try save richer more important areas. #ChinaFloods #ChinaTruth #HumanitarianCrisis #EnvironmentalDisaster pic.twitter.com/My8pqbZHUY — Binni (@ExpelChina) July 25, 2020
There is remarkable footage coming out of flooding in China #Chinafloods. I can’t verify the authenticity, or dates, but it seems likely that terrible things are happening in China. There are shots of levees being deliberately broken to allow waters to flood fields to take the pressure off the dams, and some say the flooding is done without warning and even at night. One shot shows a barge with people on board crashing into bridge pillar and breaking apart. Lord help them. There are reports that the grain crops have been hit hard. “Agriculture wiped out”. There are multiple other reports of thousands going without food or water, with no attempts to rescue them. And there are scores of videos […] There’s a reason the Romans wore Togas A new study near Sicily shows the sea surface temperatures were a whole two degrees Celsius warmer then. The worst-case scenario of the Paris Agreement has already happened, and it was nearly 2,000 years ago. And instead of being a baked-earth apocalypse, the Roman empire flourished during the warmth and declined as it cooled. Time to burn oil and Make Rome Great Again? The expansion of the Roman Empire coincided with the warmest period in the Mediterranean of the last 2,000 years. Probably just a coincidence. / A formanifera with the awkward name of Globigerinoides ruber apparently likes to live near the sea surface around 10 to 50 m down. Depending on the temperature, it ends up with slightly different ratios of calcium and magnesium. At some point it dies, sinks and sits in a mud layer on the sea floor 475m below. Eventually, for this lucky mud, someone digs it out and analyses it. This new study suggests the Mediteranean warmed up during Roman times from AD 1 to AD 500. This was the Roman Climatic Optimum — an era we are spending trillions to avoid. The researchers suggest that cooling and […] |
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