The year 2019 saw the rapid rise of climate hysteria, but as the saying goes: “You ain’t seen nothin yet.” Now that the hysteria is firmly established and well organized, it is sure to get bigger and louder. But I see very little coming from it except the noise, as long as skeptics keep up the good fight.
This is especially true in the U.S. Presidential race, which is climate policy-wise by far the biggest thing going on in the world. Many of the Democrat candidates are going to try to ride the hysterical wave to victory. Their winning is not likely.
My take is the further left you go the fewer votes you get, and these folks are going far left on climate. In my view the only viable candidate in the pack is Biden and he may not be crazy enough to get the nod. Nor can he beat Trump, so things are looking good on that front.
Another big unknown is what the hysterical demonstrators are going to do. Bigger marches? More disruption? (The police now have glue remover.) Or maybe something we have not seen before, hopefully not more violent. I am sure the advocacy insider email traffic is buzzing over this. (Maybe some new wacky signs. “I don’t want to die!” seems to be catching on.)
For that matter, will the hysterics endorse specific candidates for the Democrat nomination? Or perhaps get active in specific Congressional races? They might even form their own party (but Greta Thunberg cannot run, more’s the pity). Political action seems like the logical next step for the extremists, which could further destabilize the green movement, given that most of the political action groups are moderates.
There are lots of other climate crunch points in progress as well. In a recent meeting the EU failed to come up with a more ambitious emission reduction goal for 2030, despite its hysterical leadership calling for one.
The next meeting on this proposal will be in June. No doubt we will see lots of “Action Now!” marches and demonstrations then, but ambition may well be lacking at the EU national member level, which is all that counts. Several countries are already missing their 2020 target and there are anti-action demonstrations too boot, from yellow vests to farmers and coal miners. The political leaders are running a bit scared of this stuff.
The UN will have several semi-summits, leading up to the grand COP 26 in Glasgow, beginning in November. Given what happened in Madrid’s COP 25 we are likely to witness the progressive collapse of the entire UN climate action process.
The UN’s Paris Accord process is entirely too slow and compromising for the Action Now! hysterics to tolerate. This will be especially certain if the Action Now! hysteria builds during 2020, which is very likely. That the mythical $100 billion a year promised to the developing countries does not show up in Glasgow will compound the collapse.
Then too there is a lot going on at national levels around the world. Especially promising is the rapid rise of new populist parties that oppose the drastic actions demanded by the Action Now! radicals. Left wing hysteria typically generates a conservative reaction. How could it not? Angry mobs are dangerous.
Mind you I expect to see a lot of meaninglessly symbolic green action in response to the hysterical noise-making. This includes toothless declarations of “climate emergency” and pointless promises of zero emissions by far off 2050. Politicians promising the impossible, to be delivered in the far distant future, do no harm. Hence their popularity.
My definition of winning the great climate change debate is that no serious harm is done by the alarmists. While I expect an escalating crescendo of hysterical shrieking during the course of 2020, the reason will be that my side is winning and the loud side is losing.
As things stand now, skeptics have a chance to win big in 2020, but we must keep the pressure on. Hold your nose, plug your ears, and hit them hard. You ain’t seen nothin yet.
But the next steps in the global fight against the climate crisis remain far from clear. In the speech she delivered to US Congress in September, Thunberg maintained: “No matter how political the background to this crisis may be, we must not allow it to become a partisan political question. The climate and ecological crisis is beyond party politics. And our main enemy right now is not our political opponents. Our main enemy is physics.”
For once Greta got it right, probably accidentally. The Main Enemy of the Climate Movement is Physics.. What they demand is physically impossible. Hence they must eventually fail. But a lot more harm can happen before then.
Sock puppet Gremlin Greta’s read polemic fails on two counts:
physics and democracy.
Her political handlers prefer neither.
The neo-Marxist corporatist globalists fuelled the fire, provided their ‘final solution’ and balk hysterically when unsurprisingly the worldwide basket of deplorables reject their mantra.
Going forward into this next seminal decade, keep your eyes firmly on the line in the sand, the 2030 objectives of the UNEP/ECOSOC/ proclaimed and implemented in September 2015 by the UN General Assembly, blessed by the rainbow socialist Pope, Jorge Bergloglio. The UNs euphemistically termed “transformational” agenda will indeed trasform freedom, prosperity and happiness into de-industrialisation, destitution, and despair. People will be required to identify themselves and be socially privileged according to their victim status. The only way out of this social, economic and moral impasse will be a calamitous global civil war.
It is time. There MUST be a counter-2030 agenda, the one that sees a conglomeration of liberty loving populist nationalist nations freely associating and trading, sharing common ideals of liberty, prosperity, happiness and a complete rejection of the divisive, exclusive, identitarian neo-Marxist secular globalist ideology that will be the ruination of the West if the UN ‘transformational’ 2030 agenda is ever implemented.
Make no mistake. To think we are not in an outright vicious no-holds barred ideological war now is a bad mistake.
This is no damned sitzkrieig.
A blessings filled, happy and WINNING! new year to all.
I really hope we don’t see real violence from them. Here in Chile we’ve gotten a few bomb incidents from so-called “eco-terrorists”. No deaths but a couple of injuries (they even managed to send a bomb to the house of the president of CODELCO, the state-owned copper mining company, that luckily didnt cause much damage). I can easily see that type of insanity raising elsewhere. Oh and it could easily divert into mass suicides as well. That’s why its important for each of us to educate on the REAL science. Lets hope for a good year!
Violence is emblematic of the neo-Marxist Left, their useful eco-idiots and servile MSM not getting their way.
I will not remain on the sofa while a thief plunders my house.
The Yellow Shirts haven’t, the youth of HK refuse to, Chilean authorities had to cancel the UN CO25 climafest and Asia Pacific summit, Poland will not accede to EU Climatism diktat, US rejects climatism and globalism, UK rejects the EU … Being on the right side of history is all that counts now.
30 Dec: BBC: Australia fires worsen as every state hits 40C
Meteorologists say a climate system in the Indian Ocean, known as the dipole, is the main driver behind the extreme heat in Australia…
Scorching temperatures, strong winds and thunderstorms created dangerous conditions in Victoria on Monday…
The island state of Tasmania also struggled to contain bushfires amid a sweltering heatwave…
Temperatures exceeded 41C in parts of the state, including in Sydney, Australia’s largest city…
Have you been told to evacuate? Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk ETC ETC https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50938504
note their hearts aren’t in the following:
30 Dec: BBC: India cold wave: Delhi reels from coldest day in more than a century
India’s capital Delhi has recorded its chilliest day in more than a century amid a severe cold wave across the northern part of the country.
Thick fog blanketed the city on Monday as the maximum day temperature dropped to 9.4C and pollution levels peaked.
Delhi started tracking temperatures in 1901 and the earlier record was set at 9.8C on 2 January 2013, according to the meteorological department.
Maximum day temperatures in large parts of the north dipped 10C below normal.
Delhi’s nearly 200 night shelters have been filling up as the city’s homeless seek refuge from the biting cold – the minimum temperature has remained between 1C and 3C over the past few days.
Unlike in European and US cities, where most buildings are equipped with central heating, homes in some of India’s coldest cities are not built for chilly winters…
LINKS:
◾Can Delhi ever clean up its foul air?
◾Delhi’s rickshaw pullers: Toxic air is killing us but we can’t quit
The cold wave has also hit large parts of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, where many places saw the maximum day temperatures fall below 10C on Monday. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-50953950
LINKS below: More on this story:
Winter’s heavy toll on Delhi’s homeless 22 Dec 2019
Can Delhi ever clean up its foul air? 8 Dec 2015
Many happy returns from the old continent . Another 10 hours and the new year will be here . Our old european leadership will cling to their power and is not very likely giving up their new world fantasies especially nurtured by our bankers who are using the new green deal , identical to the old red dream to create more liquidity out of thin air . If elections would be held right now everywhere in europe the socalled populists would evaporate the present new-world-order-leadership and the green deal would be finished once and for all . However all present governments have a few years to go and will not give up their present powers . In the meantime they are capable to
mobilize their leftist base and to ignite a lot of noise giving the world the impression that their power-grip is a mass movement , which it is absolutely not . The green agenda will be further pushed through the undemocratic rule of the european council and it will only be a matter of time when the european population will turn against it. How the EU will desintegrate is up to the present new-world-order-elite .
Judging by history, we will get more government which will make government more of a problem. Significant factions of We the People will act as if the cure for the bad consequences of more government is still more government. Which, in turn, will result in even more problems caused by more government. This has been the case since the first government. As always, the more things change the more they will stay the same.
Modern technological civilization is vastly different from the stone age civilizations of prehistory by almost every possible measure. We got here by minimizing the intrusiveness of government and allowing a free people to cooperate freely to mutual benefit. Yet the cry is “more government and still more government” to correct what has already been eliminated as a real problem. Freedom vanishes and the possibility of a free people cooperating freely to mutual benefit is destroyed. Thereby destroying modern technological civilization.
It is all rather like that snake who wanted to gain weight and started eating its own tail. Soon, all it had left to eat was its own head. One last bite and *poof* no more snake.
It is clear that we can choose differently but will we, can we choose more wisely? Maybe, maybe not.
As one of the few parts of the world to see the New Year First, Trump is still President, Bojo Prime Minister and our Scott Morrison continues to be just plain sensible and getting things done, as always. I hope it is the year when Donald Trump is reelected and the Republicans regain control of Congress without Paul Ryan and the other never Trumpers. And we get better news from North Korea and Iran, the remaining two world threats on the Axis of Evil. And if the world temperate increases another 1.2/100 or 0.012C and the seas rise another average 1.8mm, that no one notices and blows up more power stations.
When the Climate Crisis, Climate Emergency is over and the chickens stop running around in circles with no clothes, we will reflect on thirty two years in which there has been no actual debate over man made Climate Change. Not between scientists anyway. And by scientist, I mean someone who can add and multiply, so that leaves out most politicians, journalists, Tim Flannery and all self appointed climate scientists for whom ecology was a very soft degree and frogs or dead kangaroos a PhD thesis.
And Greta Tunaburger will be a memory of the day the UN allowed itself to be lectured on science and berated by a teenage school drop out. Pure theatre.
At least this year the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was given to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, not Al Gore. What sort of peace is announcing man made Global Warming? And exactly what good have Al Gore and the IPCC done before and since 2007? Not a thing.
Nobel Peace prize recipients, Mikhail Gorbachov, Anwar Sadat, Andrei Sakharov, Nelson Mandela, Willy Brandt, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa and Al Gore. Spot the one who does not belong.
A happy New Year to One and All.
Even you, Peter F.
One can hope and wish for peace and understanding.
One can expect, at best, somewhat less chaos.
Perhaps the most used phrase in the past year has been “Really, are they kidding?”.
May the world once again be blessed with the common sense of those who live in the real world, and not a narrative bubble.
There are natural disasters enough to cope with, and an inhospitable nature continues to assault us between provision of
scenes of unsurpassed beauty. Let try to remove man-caused disasters and political idiocy from the things we have to deal with.
Nothing says irony more than the thousands of Northern State plates on cars also sporting climate change slogans that have come to Florida for Winter Warmth.
Nonetheless, be warm and be happy.
“May the world once again be blessed with the common sense of those who live in the real world, and not a narrative bubble”.
At the moment the world responds only to the histrionic hyperventilating newscasters acting on behalf of the guiding Elite.
Occasional T.V. viewing shows that the aim is to build a verbal framework that makes the topic appear to be the only point of view that is acceptable.
Nobody is allowed to be in touch with reality any more.
We need proper management of the government broadcasters before any turnaround can occur.
My Grandmother came from Béal an Átha Móir, meaning “mouth of the big ford” – The small Irish town Ballinamore in County Leitrim, Ireland.
I did not know her, but like the connection. Thus, to all – –
May the Good Lord take a liking to you — but, not too soon.
May your troubles be less and your blessings be more and nothing but happiness come through your door
May your pockets be heavy,
Your heart be light,
And may good luck pursue you
Each morning and night,
Like the warmth of the sun,
And the light of the day,
may the luck of the Irish shine bright on your way.
Jo – You do a fantastic job with this website. I look forward to the day when you are not needed, but right now we need you just as much as ever, and I hope you have the energy to keep going for as long as it takes.
One more thing that many may be unaware of: Jo has probably the best entry for an individual in the whole of Wikipedia (there should be an award for this). In one fairly short entry, she gets described as “promoting pseudoscientific views on climate change”, “promotes various falsehoods about climate change”, “promotes the myth …”, an indirect “promoting [] the harms of smoking”, a “falsely claimed”, and a “flat-out wrong”. Jo, you must be doing something right!
Wikipedia entry. Amazing rubbish. It’s why this time I refused the demand for cash. So I leave it to the editors of Wikipedia to fix this drivel. Or no more money.
It’s interesting in ref #9 ” It is vital that the public understand how anti-science ideologues, pseudo-scientists, and non-scientists have bamboozled them.”
Wikipedia makes it clear that Jo is a very qualified scientist. And then she gets labelled by clear and intended implication as anti science, a pseudo scientist or a non scientist. By whom? A journalist?
And the 32,000 qualified scientists who signed the Oregon petitions 22 years ago are also anti science? Non Scientists?
Wikipedia is anonymous but this entry is outrageously libellous.
I suppose though that everyone knows Wikipedia is rubbish, no one would take this seriously and there is after all a complete disconnect between Jo’s credentials and the idea that she is a non scientist. Like the writer. So it is just insulting and completely illogical, like much of the Climate industry.
I came across that Wikipaedia entry a few weeks ago. Wiki has beefed up the entry on Jo recently with much stronger language including denier, pseudoscience and falsehoods. Talk about pot calling kettle black! But then very few people actually know what science is anymore.
I used to tip in a few bucks to the Wikipaedia appeals until they called Anthony Watts a climate denier. Since then I have made no donations, even though I use the site quite often.
Because I had previously made donations I got a personal email from one of the Wiki moderators and so I was able to explain my objection. She acknowledged that at the time.
However nothing has changed for the better and now Jo’s entry is even more scandalous. So they get no money from me and sail on in ignorance.
Good on you Peter C.
It’s good to see I am not alone. I too turn down Wikipedia’s pleas (every recession!) because of clap-trap like this. But, of course, they don’t pay any attention. Perhaps they don’t understand “NO!”
EV manufacturer’s theoretical range with 100% battery charge.
Recommended maximum regular recharge level 80%.
Range reduction estimate on average 30% of energy level to account for passenger and luggage, accessories like air conditioning on, highway speed limits (faster EV goes more energy consumed), number of hills, head winds, etc.
Reliable range on average 56% of 100%.
So 500 kilometres for a very expensive EV is for country travel 280 kilometres without anxiety, maybe 300 kilometres, which is not what I would accept as a country driver.
And more affordable EV still double the retail price of an ICEV equivalent around 300 kilometres with 100% battery pack charge.
As compared to my 4WD diesel ICEV that can comfortably achieve 850 kilometres on a full fuel tank, retail price less than half a Tesla S EV car.
Was talking to a Toyota salesman yesterday – my son was buying a Toyota Hybrid. Salesman said 60% of Camry sales were Hybrids; mostly to fleet buyers and taxis. Overall he said around 50% of the passenger car sales from their premises are Hybrid while utes were also a strong seller for them. The waiting list for the new RAV4 Hybrid in Australia is 3 months or more: https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/toyota-rav4-hit-with-fresh-stop-sale-order-and-supply-issues-121576/
Toyota has issued a fresh stop-sale order for its petrol-powered RAV4 SUV and confirmed waiting times of up to six months on popular hybrid variants.
Ex-Nissan boss Ghosn turns fugitive in daring ‘musical case’ escape
“Beirut: Carlos Ghosn is believed to have fled guarded house arrest in Japan smuggled out inside a case for a musical instrument.
The ousted Renault and Nissan boss reportedly organised a concert at his Tokyo property to dodge detectives who had been watching him for nine months, before making his dramatic escape to Lebanon via two private jets.
It means the 65-year-old will now avoid a blockbuster criminal trial for corruption which had been due to start in April – and makes him the most high-profile white collar fugitive in global history.”
Carlos has other things to think about now:
Carlos Ghosn escaped to Lebanon from Japan followed weeks of planning by associates aimed at getting the former auto executive to a country they believed would provide a more friendly legal environment.
May sanity return to our government and the education system in this new decade.
Jo, some of your articles should be on school agendas to illustrate clear thinking and excellent presentation.
The New South Wales Government has announced that they will re-introduce “back to basics” subjects in 2020, the plan that the Federal Coalition Government elected in 2013 stated was their objective after consulting with the state governments, and to replace Labor’s very expensive and no gain in education Gonski grants to state governments.
Happy New Year, Jo. Thanks for all you do in the service of the truth. And new year greetings to all here from whose helpful comments, sometimes, but not always, in response to mine, I have learned much.
My 2020 vision is Brexit followed by closer economic relations between Commonwealth of Nations members which of course includes developing nation India. And for the Commonwealth Nations to be joined in trade by the United States of America, as President Trump has mentioned. Also a possibility that Japan will also cooperate.
And then, I hope, President Trump’s warnings during addresses to the UN become reality and the UN stop interfering in the affairs of member nations and gets back to the roles it was established to deal with and the socialist globalist infiltrators are neutralised.
Also more EU nations exit after Brexit.
I hope this is not like the new year resolution that a person apparently made years ago, to give up alcohol, cigarettes and s*x. He said it was the hardest couple of hours he has ever suffered.
Prime Minister Morrison is flying to India soon for talks on closer economic relations and other post Brexit matters.
Late in 2019 former Prime Minister Abbott said that Australia must negotiate with India on trade and other matters of mutual interest between the two countries.
I’ll join with you in wishing 2020 to be a good year for all the other denizens of this blog,
and especially our hostess, Jo, and David (her `Uvver ‘arf’) 😀
I don’t know about that Hatband so far he seems to have kept all the promises he could but has had to fight the dumbocrats the whole way .
He got out of the Paris accord.
Record unemployment.
Brought manufacturing back to the states.
Stopped the Obama war on fossil fuel .
Appointed some great judges etc etc .
But above all he has tortured the leftist socialist rabble almost daily .
The wall has been a problem because the Dems have obstructed everything Trump has tried although there is some progress .
Have not heard anything negative from the republican side about the new judges so until I see evidence to the contrary I will wait and see .
Shillary and others are getting nervous with actions not far off I believe to bring them to justice .
That swamp is getting leaky but it’s a vast swamp and will take time .
Trumps motto is his biggest asset and the reason the majority of Americans are with him and it’s just a pity we don’t have a Trump here in oz .
In accordance with Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, the earliest possible effective withdrawal date by the United States cannot be before November 4, 2020, four years after the Agreement came into effect in the United States and coincidentally one day after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
“Fracking has stopped because the costs of production exceed the current Oil Price.”
Thank you, Jo and all the best to you, David and your family. We look forward to what you will bring to us this year and, hopefully, we can all have some influence on those around us who do not think as we do or know what we know.
I think those protesters should now be prosecuted. Not sure of the charge , but something along the lines of interfering with authorities in the course of their duties, causing death; a similar one causing destruction of property; and a third similarly causing destruction of wild life in protected areas.
Possibly terrorist conspiracy causing the above.
Cheers
Dave B
Obstructing an emergency services worker is a crime under Summary Offences Act 1966 and the Emergency Management Act 2013.(Vic). The maximum penalty is 6 months jail.
He hopes his video goes viral and I wish it would but it won’t simply because most Australians are being sucked into the CAGW agenda thanks to the MSM, schools Universities and all our governments, state and federal. What we really need now is for PM Morrison to come out and call out the CAGW scam. I will not hold my breath waiting for him to do so.
Its the game of politics Peter, public perception is important, so when an issue like climate change hoax has become entrenched via media and other propaganda outlets a politician is branded accordingly if that politicians dares to step out of line and tell the truth.
Consider Christopher Moncketon’s video warning that PM Abbott here and PM Harper Canada were being targeted by the climate change industry, and PM Abbott had dared to say that IPCC climate data was “cr*p” and that he would not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism. Of course in both examples there were socialist globalist rivals ready to take over the leadership.
President Trump is of course their primary target now for similar reasons, he is political enemy number one.
It takes a real leader to go against the game of Western politics. Occasionally we do get them, such as Winston Churchill. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know Trump is another. It remains to be seen if Morrison is another since he has some time to make the necessary moves. I doubt he will but we will never know for sure until he stops being PM.
It looks like we will have to get used to extreme hot and extreme cold seasons for the coming years due to an alarming reduction in overall solar activity, which is predicted to be repeated in the next solar cycle. So get used to the CAGW scam to grow as they focus on the hotter seasons and brush the colder seasons under the carpet. It’s a perfect set up for the scam to escalate and force the West to collapse while much of the rest of the world laugh and clap at our stupidity, while at the same time they build hundreds more coal fired power stations. Some of us know what’s really happening. Popular ignorance and propaganda by the elite mixed together provides a powerful force attacking the West.
‘Intensifying swings-in-extremes are in the weather globally has been a correlation of a historical shift to solar activity going into a minimum phase.’
That story that the IOD is being overwhelmed by CAGW has been around for a few months, Graham Readfern at the Guardian is pushing it. The hypothesis is bunk.
If it can’t be predicted accurately it can’t be blamed on anything but nature.
Just listening to ABC radio and the cause of the fires is clear it’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuel .
6 Nov: New Scientist: Naomi Oreskes asks “why trust science” in an age of denialism
In Why Trust Science?, Naomi Oreskes’s asks bold questions but knows there are no clear answers – and critiques herself as the book unfolds
by Michael Brooks
(review: “Why Trust Science?” Naomi Oreskes, Princeton University Press)
“I DON’T want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists.” That is what climate activist Greta Thunberg told the US Congress in September when she offered a report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rather than her own words as testimony…
Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, Oreskes explains that, contrary to popular belief, there is no single scientific method. Rather, the trustworthiness of scientific claims derives from the social process by which they are rigorously vetted. This process is not perfect — nothing ever is when humans are involved — but she draws vital lessons from cases where scientists got it wrong. Oreskes shows how consensus is a crucial indicator of when a scientific matter has been settled, and when the knowledge produced is likely to be trustworthy… https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432550-200-naomi-oreskes-asks-why-trust-science-in-an-age-of-denialism/
13 Nov: Princeton: Q&A: Naomi Oreskes on “Why Trust Science?”
Q: What vital lessons can we draw from instances where scientists got it wrong?
Oreskes: In most cases where we think that scientists “got it wrong”, when we look closely we find there was no consensus. So we need to attend to real debate, when it occurs, in the scientific community, but also not to be distracted by manufactured controversy… https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/naomi-oreskes-on-why-trust-science
A happy and peaceful New Year to you all, especially to you Joanne, and your family. It’s a hard thing to imagine how much time it actually takes to keep a ‘blog’ site going, and to keep all that going as part of a family is a huge time consumer.
I’m going to put this prediction here, because it may be easier to locate at a later date.
My prediction is that Annastacia Palaszczuk will resign as premier of Queensland, and retire completely from Politics in the lead up to the next State election. An excuse will be found, maybe health issues, as is usual with the Left, because she can’t really use the family fallback.
Jackie Trad will then be the Premier, in the hope that she can win that State election, a good probability, because no one wants to be a Conservative politician in this State.
Jackie Trad owes allegiance to the Union who gave her preselection, and now, as the largest and most powerful faction in the State Parliament, it’s their ‘turn’ to supply the Leader, and that is Jackie Trad, no matter how much ‘in the news’ she is. It’s their Union’s turn.
There’s a little known fact about Annastacia Palaszczuk. In the Newman landslide, when Labor was reduced to so few seats, they held their Party Meeting to replace Anna Bligh. No union backed member wanted the poisoned chalice, and as the only unaligned member in the room, she put her hand up for the job, and the Union backed MP’s thought it safe enough to let her lead when Labor was so ‘on the nose’. It then became the Union’s task to get new members preselected, and it was perceived that this landslide loss would see at the very least two full election cycles before they got back to where they might win that third election, and then they could put a Union backed MP in as Leader, thank Annastacia Palaszczuk profusely for the job she did, and she could just go back to being the MP for Inala, perhaps the safest Labor seat in the Country.
However, what happened to Campbell Newman is now well known and Annastacia Palaszczuk came from nowhere in one election to be the Premier, and now, those Labor factions just could not get rid of her, because of the image problem that would cause, and that those Unions and their MPs would be seen for what they really were, callous faceless power seekers.
So now, here we are, and she’s had a good run, and the factions are putting the heat on, and it’s Jackie Trad’s ‘turn’ now.
How soon it all happens is the only thing that is unknown at this time.
Isn’t it just so amazing that politics has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the people.
I was told last night that Dan Andrews is in for a shock next Vic State election, and the attack by his government and the unions on volunteer fire fighters coupled to the bushfire emergency, and fires coming from poorly managed National Parks (state lands and managed in each state), plus list of other black marks.
May it rain swing voters to the Liberal ( right wing ) camp.
My self made, very wealthy great aunt, has an opinion on Comrade Andrews and the CFA attempted unionization that I just cannot put in print.
The biggest danger to Victoriastan is Dear Leaders *social* agenda…think the horrific infamous marxist “safeschools” program….
The electrical power issues are a smoke screen…the real danger is the communist planned destruction of normal middle class families … divide and conquer…make the State every childs parents…what a nightmare…
It just proves the adage that you don’t need to know what needs to be done if you’re the boss, or the three levels of bosses between the bosses and the people who ‘do stuff’.
I’m always reminded of a song from a movie every time I see or hear something like this, if I can Segue from this to that, and then back again.
That song was from the movie MASH, not the TV Series, which just used the theme music, but the same theme from the movie, only with the lyrics added.
That song was titled $uicide Is Painless. It was only required for the one scene in the movie, just the song to accompany, umm, what was happening, and if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m alluding to, the first word of the song title, of one of the characters from the movie, and that scene was made into a comedy in the form of a party, and nowhere near as serious as the word suggests.
The Director of the movie, Robert Altman gave specific orders to the writer of the song, Johnny Mandel, (who wrote numerous movie themes) to write the music, but the song had to be called by that title, and it had to be the most stupid song ever written, to go along with the premise of the movie.
Mandel wrote the music and couldn’t get the words done, so Altman himself tried to write the lyrics, and gave up, finding the task too difficult.
Altman’s 14 year old son Michael asked his dad if he could try to write the lyrics, and he duly knocked out the lyrics for the song in five minutes flat.
Father, (the Movie’s Director) liked it so much, they reworked the Start of the movie to include the song during the opening credits, and the end credits as well, although Mandel who wrote the music was not keen on that at all.
The song then became a hit as well on the popular music charts, on the back of the movie’s reception.
Robert Altman, the Director, later commented in an interview for late night TV, that he was paid the standard fee as director for the movie, a sum of $70,000, and his son, who wrote the lyrics in five minutes and was credited as the writer, made more than a million dollars in royalties from the song.
The son had never done anything like that before, or since, evidently.
Robert Altman wryly added that it seemed that you didn’t really need to know what you were doing to actually do it.
That works some of the time.
Imagine here a line engineer, ringing up the boss and telling him/her that they had an intermittent problem with the primary excitation on one of the Units and that they would need to shut it down.
The boss informs the line engineer to hold off till he talks to the Minister and would get back to him, and in five minutes the boss calls the line engineer and said that the Minister has a suggestion, that they stop telling jokes near the primary.
If that’s right, then Labor will have to do a deal with the Greens to run dead in South Brisbane, because Trad can’t win there with LNP preferencing Greens.
Either that or she switches to Inala. That would be a bummer, especially if she lost the Election anyway and was faced with living in Inala as an opposition backbencher.
31 Dec: Harpers Bazaar: Prince William Launches Earthshot Prize with New Photo Taken by Kate Middleton
“The earth is at a tipping point and we face a stark choice … ”
By Amy Mackelden
•The prize will initially be run by The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
•Per the BBC, “The cash prize will be for individuals or organizations who come up with solutions to environmental problems.”…
The Earthshot Prize, which was announced in a new film narrated by Sir David Attenborough, will encourage people and organizations to create new and innovative solutions to environmental problems. A statement from Kensington Palace referenced some of the crucial issues as being related to “climate and energy, nature and biodiversity, oceans, air pollution, and fresh water.”…
Led by Prince William and a global alliance, the @EarthshotPrize will inspire the the planet’s greatest problem solvers to solve Earth’s greatest problems: the emergencies facing our natural world.”
29 Dec: Daily Mail: Extinction Rebellion targets key media sites including the BBC’s Broadcasting House and newspaper print works in war on free speech
•Document details how six key print and broadcast media sites would be targeted
•The plans include staging ‘occupations/blockades’ outside media headquarters
•A ‘Great March for Truth’ with be held on April 16 to the Broxbourne print works
By Holly Bancroft
Extinction Rebellion activists plan to unleash an unprecedented attack on the British media, sparking accusations that they want to infringe free speech.
The Mail on Sunday has obtained a copy of a document entitled The Great March For Truth & Blockade, which details how six key print and broadcast media sites would be targeted by environmental protesters next spring.
They include a print works in Hertfordshire where millions of national and regional newspapers are produced; Broadcasting House, which is home to the BBC; and the offices of newspaper groups including News UK, which publishes The Times, and DMG Media, publishers of The Mail on Sunday.
30 Dec: Albuquerque Journal: Get real data behind record temperature claims
By Frederick L. Vook, Director Emeritus, Physical And Chemical Sciences, Sandia National Laboratories
This data shows that record-high temperatures occurred over 100 years ago in Albuquerque. That means that, for that date, over 100 attempts to exceed that temperature have failed. They also show that the record-high temperatures are also flat over this long period. The record-high temperatures also occur independent of season from April through November. My recollection is also for all other seasons.
Albuquerque was a quite different city 100 years ago. Smaller population, lower CO2, fewer heat-trapping streets and buildings. All those changes would tend to give higher temperatures in recent years.
XR appear to be fully controlled by the Establishment.
They are disposable clowns who are a created stalking horse as an artificial “enemy”..a false flag in the making…
Interestingly, I clearly recall back when the bali bomb occurred, the ex-Indonesian president dropped a mind blowing statement that all the terrorist groups were state controlled ( presumably he was talking about his country only ).
This interview and its transcript appeared on one australian broadcasters web site, but dissappeared for “fact checking” and then appears to have been flushed down the memory hole, never to be seen again. Presumably the honest journo that put it up got fired as a result….?
I saw the video and read the transcript, and was blown away. Assuming it was all correct and the ex-president was honest, it raises questions, but may put XR in a new light…..
20 Dec: AnchorageDailyNews: Alaska’s government retaliates after Goldman Sachs drops Arctic oil investments
by James Brooks
Now, Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he is reconsidering whether Alaska should do business with the bank, and the Alaska Department of Revenue has already booted Goldman from a billion-dollar plan to borrow money to pay oil and gas drillers.
“In response to Goldman’s pledge, the governor’s office has directed the review and where possible without financial or progress impairment, the removal of Goldman from business relations with the state,” acting Revenue Commissioner Mike Barnhill wrote in a Friday letter to Goldman’s CEO.
Wrapping up a weeklong trip to the East Coast, Dunleavy told reporters on Thursday that he has “serious questions” about doing business with any company that isn’t willing to work with Alaska.
19 Dec: WSJ: Virtue Signal from Goldman Sachs
Given the characters with whom Goldie has done business, lawful U.S. energy production is beyond the pale?
by James Freeman
Here’s a new strategy by the warmists. First they were calling pro-science people like us stupid, and “deniers” but now they realise there are some very smart people among us so now they talk about “Why smart people do stupid things”.
And there are various reasons why that could be but I think the best example from my perspective is if we talk again about climate change, if you look at people who have more right-wing politics, then it’s actually the more intelligent among those people who are more likely to be climate change deniers. So they are clearly not applying their brain power to the evidence in a very rational way.
31 Dec: Albuquerque Journal: It’s time to repeal New Mexico’s Green New Deal
By Larry Behrens / Western States Director, Power The Future
As more New Mexicans learn the truth about the Energy Transition Act, or ETA, the less they support it. Called New Mexico’s own “Green New Deal,” the ETA will kill jobs, raise electric rates and will only enrich green energy companies at our expense.
That’s why it’s time New Mexicans come together to repeal the Energy Transition Act.
Not long after the ink was dry on the ETA, it was revealed how Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration worked closely with PNM and radical environmentalists to write the law. New Mexico’s energy workers and ratepayers were left behind while “big green” and PNM were allowed insider access…
Of course, supporters of the ETA promise your electric bills won’t increase due to the forced transition. They want you to ignore how green initiatives like the ETA have raised rates across the country and across the world, but apparently New Mexico is different. What can’t be ignored is their own faulty math.
Recently PNM put out a press release saying it “miscalculated” the impact to customers in the ETA transition. It admitted trying to figure out the different scenarios is “complex.” This is the beginning of a sad pattern of every regressive energy transition: Promised savings always evaporate once we have to come to terms with economic reality…
My organization, Power The Future, asked the Legislature for the emails between one of the sponsors of the ETA and legislative staff. We wanted to take a look at the bill while it was being created. What we received in return was a denial to disclose more than 300 emails because they have been deemed “confidential and privileged.”…
Thousands of energy workers and many communities across New Mexico depend on our energy industry for high-paying jobs that allow their families to grow stronger. They develop our state’s natural resources that help our nation be energy independent. And the billions of dollars in revenue they generate support every classroom, every road project and every family in New Mexico. The ETA and its radical supporters want to see that come to an end.
They believe our way of life is a threat. We know they’re wrong.
31 Dec: The Hill: Biden tells coal miners to “learn to code”
The 2020 presidential hopeful advises coal miners to move into new industries — but it’s not that simple.
By Alexandra Kelley
At a rally yesterday, Joe Biden advised a crowd in a coal mining town to learn computer programming…
New Year gift for you Jo
I just amended your Wikipedia entry.
Hopefully they’ll leave it alone for a while, and hopefully i got it a bit closer to the truth.
cheers
bob
30 Dec: UK Telegraph: Energy bills rise by inflation-busting 40pc despite battle to cut costs
by Ed Clowes
Energy bills have increased by an inflation-busting 40pc in the past five years – saddling UK households with an average annual cost of £1,813, according to new research.
If charges had risen in line with inflation, they would only be 11.6pc higher now than in 2015, data from the Office for National Statistics shows.
It raises questions over whether market controls intended to cut energy costs are having any success.
A study from comparison website Comparethemarket found the rising cost of electricity and gas this year has led to larger energy bills for most homes.
The study revealed that dual fuel bills, which cover both gas and electricity, come to an average of £1,813 a year. This is up from just £1,289 in 2015…
30 Dec: WSJ: Idaho Needs More Power but Parts of Oregon Object.
Utilities are trying to build lines to transport clean energy across states but face local resistance
by Jim Carlton
LA GRANDE, Ore.—In this small town in eastern Oregon, renewable energy is widely popular. But the power lines needed to transmit it aren’t.
La Grande is one of many communities nationwide fighting against transmission lines being built to keep up with a surge in clean-power generation.
“We need to develop more renewable energy, of course, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of damage to our last remaining wild places,” Brian Kelly, who helps lead a green group in the area, said of a proposed transmission line that would run through the nearby forest.
Utilities are under pressure to put up more power lines because many clean-energy plants are being built far from major cities. ???Renewable energy is generated from sources like the sun or wind that don’t get depleted, unlike finite amounts of oil and coal…
“Regardless of where you go, there’s always some issues—whether it’s bats, whether it’s birds, whether it’s wealthy landowners who don’t want their view interrupted,” said Dan Shreve, wind-energy research director at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. “As a consequence, you see these initiatives drag on forever.”… https://www.wsj.com/articles/idaho-needs-more-power-but-parts-of-oregon-object-11577712600
29 Dec: Guardian: We can take the Labour party back into power. Here’s how
We need to win back the country’s trust, champion progressive patriotism – and unite proud communities failed by the Tories
by Rebecca Long Bailey, Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, and the shadow business secretary
LINK: Rebecca Long Bailey makes opening pitch for Labour leadership
Working with campaigners, trade unions and experts, I have been proud to champion our party’s plans for a green industrial revolution to tackle the climate crisis through investment in good, unionised jobs and the reindustrialisation of our regions and nations. It will spark the growth of new industries as well as guarantee that the renewable technologies of the future, from electric vehicles to solar energy, are available to every home in Britain. Labour can deliver radical change… https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/rebecca-long-bailey-labour-party-britain
31 Dec: Guardian: Convert half of UK farmland to nature, urges top scientist
New woodlands and wild places are needed to fight climate crisis and improve people’s health
by Damian Carrington
Half of the nation’s farmland needs to be transformed into woodlands and natural habitat to fight the climate crisis and restore wildlife, according to a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government. Prof Sir Ian Boyd said such a change could mean the amount of cattle and sheep would fall by 90%, with farmers instead being paid for storing carbon dioxide, helping prevent floods and providing beautiful landscapes where people could boost their health and wellbeing.
8 Dec: UK Times: Former government scientist turns vegetarian to help plant seeds of a meat-free future
by Jonathan Leake
A top government scientist who oversaw the UK’s post-Brexit food and farming policies has said that his work on farming turned him into a vegetarian — and has suggested that new policies are needed to push more Britons towards plant-based diets.
Professor Sir Ian Boyd will also warn this week that farming needs to change and humans will need to eat more manufactured food if the world is to stand a chance of combating climate change.
“The meal of the future will have very little animal protein,” said Boyd, who will give a lecture at the Royal Society on Thursday. “It will have to be based on plant protein. We cannot feed the 11bn people who will be on the planet by mid-century — including 75m or so in the UK — using the food production system we have now.”… https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/call-for-meat-tax-to-turn-people-vegan-5sl8pp8wg
Erhlich said in 1965 that the world couldn’t feed 2.5 billion people, so by 1975 cannibals would be roaming the Mid West of the USA.
Time to recycle the prediction.
Now we are told that the world cannot feed 11 billions.
Why not? And who says that the population will reach 11 billion?
31 Dec: Breitbart: James Delingpole: A Few Things We Could Happily Live Without in 2020…
Greta Thunberg
How sad it will be in 2020 when the world wakes up to the fact that this teenage school drop out is nothing but a puppet for green crony capitalists in her native Sweden, who have choreographed every stage of her progression from ‘lonely schoolgirl protesting against climate inaction’ to Nobel-Prize-nominated superstar. No one likes being taken for a fool – and Greta the Puppet has fooled almost everyone…
Never Trumpers
For four long, miserable, embarrassing years they’ve been testing their fancy writing skills, their imaginative powers, and our credulity to the very limits with erudite commentary abundant with gossamer theories ‘demonstrating’ how the Trump presidency has been – and will be – a disaster for the U.S. and the world beyond. Meanwhile, on everything from the economy to black employment to the Dow Jones to the killing of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi to the great escape from the Paris Climate Accord, President Trump has just gone on #winning. Imagine the Never Trump butthurt when the Never Guy comes back even bigger in 2020…
31 Dec: AmericanThinker: The Russia Hoax Was Aided by NGOs Peddling Junk Science
By Leo Goldstein
Some of the most vicious anti-Trump voices have come from US government-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), affiliated with the State Department, Big Tech, and Soros afiliates. Many of these NGOs have existed since the Cold War, with a mandate to promote freedom and democracy abroad. They are forbidden to operate in the US, especially in partisan fashion.
Apparently, they have disregarded that mandate and have instead positioned themselves as pillars or guardians of the “global civil society.” They found a reliable ally in State Secretary Hillary Clinton. They have been interfering in US political campaigns and elections since at least 2016, frequently in coordination with their UN/EU counterparts.
One such NGO is the National Democratic Institute, headed by Madeleine Albright. It receives federal funding, which it mixes with money and influence from the Open Society Foundation (George Soros), UN agencies, the European Commission, multiple foreign governments, Amazon, Google and others.
30 Dec: CarbonPulse: Queensland govt carbon fund opens first investment round for offset projects
The Queensland state government has launched the first proper call for projects through its Land Restoration Fund, which aims to invest A$100 million ($70 mln) in new carbon offset projects in 2020…
27 Dec: Queensland Government: About the Land Restoration Fund
The Queensland Government’s $500 million Land Restoration Fund (the Fund) aims to expand carbon farming in the state by supporting land-sector projects that deliver additional environmental, social and economic co-benefits.
The Fund will empower farmers, land managers and landholders with the support needed to generate additional, regular and diverse income streams and protect their business in tough times, through carbon farming projects.
A robust carbon farming industry in Queensland will create regional jobs and contribute to reducing Queensland’s carbon emissions, as well as providing valuable co-benefits like healthier waterways, more habitat for threatened species, and more resilient landscapes.
Applications for the first round of funding will open on 28 January 2020…
The LOOC-C (pronounced look-see) web tool, produced by CSIRO, is a landscape options and opportunities for carbon abatement calculator. It can assist land managers to decide which methods will be most suitable for their property… https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/climate/climate-change/land-restoration-fund/about
19 Dec: World Bank: China: Improving Forest Ecosystem Management and Resilience
WASHINGTON: The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a US$150 million loan to help China improve sustainable forest ecosystem management in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River Basin.
“China’s environmental challenges are unique in scale and complexity, and of global importance,” said Martin Raiser, World Bank Country Director for China. “The new program will demonstrate ways to restore and better manage forest ecosystems and conserve biodiversity. We hope it will contribute to China’s efforts to green its development path and reduce carbon emissions.”…READ ON https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/12/19/china-improving-forest-ecosystem-management-and-resilience
Here, the speaker suggests resurrecting the woolly mammoth from frozen DNA (questionable, but possible) and reintroducing them to Siberia to fight “climate change”.
The theory is that the mammoth will demolish the trees and reintroduce grasslands which supposedly are better than trees to combat alleged warming.
Not really. Rotting vegetation is a primary source of methane. In fact, the main natural source is microbial activity in oxygen-deprived soggy soils and wetlands. Trees can scrub methane from the air using methanotrophs. In some cases trees will absorb methane near their base and emit methane further up. Also note that grasslands can contain significant numbers of methane-emitting termites, especially wet savanna.
Thought you would reference that paper. It is not discussing trees in a normal forest environment, only the specific trees in the very wet conditions of the Amazon. It’s a specific case and not representative of trees everywhere else.
Sigh… Your assertion was that trees are better methane emitters than grasslands. When questioned, you provide links only to articles about tree emissions. Nothing to backup your assertion. Somebody else does that frequently here.
Sigh… Your assertion was that trees are better methane emitters than grasslands.
Incorrect.
My assertion is that Trees, and there are Trillions of them, are problematic emitters of Methane.
Grassland, pasture in particular is a superior Carbon Sink.
Pasture also has value in itself, as the primary food source for our primary food source, Beef Cattle.
It’s not lunacy David, it is an essential element of todays grant application process. I you can’t tie climate change to your proposal it will be rejected. They don’t give money for science anymore only the warming religion is given grant money.
31 Dec: CNBC: Climate change investing catches on with millennials who believe it’s pressing — and profitable
by Patti Domm
As climate warnings become more dire, investors have become more interested in climate change-related investments, which did well in 2019 but haven’t had a good track record longer term…
PIC: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg at COP 24, the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Katowice, Poland on 5 December, 2018.
The millennial investor is the most interested in impact investing, with nearly 90% setting it as a first investment criteria, in an investor survey, according to Bank of America Securities. That contrasts with just under half of baby boomers, who invest with a similar top priority on ESG or environmental, social and governance criteria…
BofA estimates in the next 20 years there will be more than $20 trillion of asset growth in ESG funds — equal to the current size of the S&P 500. While that does not measure climate change investment alone, Israel said climate change has become a much higher priorty for BofA clients, who are surveyed periodically on macrothemes. Climate change jumped to the top theme in November, from number five a year earlier.
But investing in climate change-related shares has been far from a winning strategy for everyone. In a study last May, J.P. Morgan analysts found that global pure play climate change funds underperformed by 5% per annum for the past 10 years…
Earlier this month, for instance, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon pledged the investment bank would invest $750 billion through 2030 in initiatives that include fighting climate change…
Extreme weather, in increased fires and drought, hurricanes and flooding, is making its own case for investment.
“This is real money. It means real money, a real loss of money and real opportunity,” (Grant Thornton chief economist Diane) Swonk said. “What you’ve got at the end of the day is money talks. If people won’t listen to mother nature, they will think of the greenback.”…
If the CAGW story were true (which of course it’s not) climate change investment at the moment is mostly in building more coal fired power stations allegedly leading to higher temperatures. So what are the fools going to do about it? Declare war on China, India and Japan? How about they form their own army and attack said countries. That way they we can get rid of the fools once and for all.
A pre-emptive strike to desperately get people to look away from any policies that appear to have obstructed proper fire fuel reduction….?
Its a clever ploy, but , as they say, the internet never forgets…
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
– Joseph Goebbels
“Greens call for a Royal Commission
The Federal Greens have called for a Royal Commission to examine Australia’s bushfire crisis, saying the government needs to do more to tackle the root cause of the blazes.
“Greens Leader Richard Di Natale has called on the Prime Minister Scott Morrison to establish the inquiry into the fires, to ensure enough is being done to address the immediate threat.
“He says there needs to be a national response to the issue, addressing everything from land management to climate change strategies.
I can remember buying the beer for a widow and her coterie on Anzac Day. I remember emphasising that it takes an whole family to put one boy on the field. Best New Years wishes to your family. Blackballing is destructive to human capital and its never a fun thing to go through. I consider Bill Mollison the greatest Australian but your family is the most valuable family on the continent right now. I trust your moderation 100%.
All of my love to your family. Great patriots with the sort of grit that we seldom see these days. If I swing out of control let your punishments not be permanent.
I think in the New Year we need a new SWALES ideology on this dry continent. I get it. This is a libertarian blog. I had a libertarian blog. At one stage before a miscreant started rigging the voting system my blog was winning a vote as the best libertarian blog. So I get it. But the issue of SWALES is almost so powerful that it ought to transcend left and right. Looks like the libertarian philosophy cannot fly despite its philosophical richness and all that. Because what it amounts to is throwing all your weapons on the ground and asking the dumb left to have mercy. We need to strategically, and with industry policy (STALIN!!!!!!) bring every sector closer to the Misean well-balanced economy.
We really need to explore low-cost ways to put swales everywhere.
Happy New Year, let’s all resolve to make this the year that climate activism is finally kaput.
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My wishes:
A year of ineffective climate madness looms
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2019/12/26/a-year-of-ineffective-climate-madness-looms/
The year 2019 saw the rapid rise of climate hysteria, but as the saying goes: “You ain’t seen nothin yet.” Now that the hysteria is firmly established and well organized, it is sure to get bigger and louder. But I see very little coming from it except the noise, as long as skeptics keep up the good fight.
This is especially true in the U.S. Presidential race, which is climate policy-wise by far the biggest thing going on in the world. Many of the Democrat candidates are going to try to ride the hysterical wave to victory. Their winning is not likely.
My take is the further left you go the fewer votes you get, and these folks are going far left on climate. In my view the only viable candidate in the pack is Biden and he may not be crazy enough to get the nod. Nor can he beat Trump, so things are looking good on that front.
Another big unknown is what the hysterical demonstrators are going to do. Bigger marches? More disruption? (The police now have glue remover.) Or maybe something we have not seen before, hopefully not more violent. I am sure the advocacy insider email traffic is buzzing over this. (Maybe some new wacky signs. “I don’t want to die!” seems to be catching on.)
For that matter, will the hysterics endorse specific candidates for the Democrat nomination? Or perhaps get active in specific Congressional races? They might even form their own party (but Greta Thunberg cannot run, more’s the pity). Political action seems like the logical next step for the extremists, which could further destabilize the green movement, given that most of the political action groups are moderates.
There are lots of other climate crunch points in progress as well. In a recent meeting the EU failed to come up with a more ambitious emission reduction goal for 2030, despite its hysterical leadership calling for one.
The next meeting on this proposal will be in June. No doubt we will see lots of “Action Now!” marches and demonstrations then, but ambition may well be lacking at the EU national member level, which is all that counts. Several countries are already missing their 2020 target and there are anti-action demonstrations too boot, from yellow vests to farmers and coal miners. The political leaders are running a bit scared of this stuff.
The UN will have several semi-summits, leading up to the grand COP 26 in Glasgow, beginning in November. Given what happened in Madrid’s COP 25 we are likely to witness the progressive collapse of the entire UN climate action process.
The UN’s Paris Accord process is entirely too slow and compromising for the Action Now! hysterics to tolerate. This will be especially certain if the Action Now! hysteria builds during 2020, which is very likely. That the mythical $100 billion a year promised to the developing countries does not show up in Glasgow will compound the collapse.
Then too there is a lot going on at national levels around the world. Especially promising is the rapid rise of new populist parties that oppose the drastic actions demanded by the Action Now! radicals. Left wing hysteria typically generates a conservative reaction. How could it not? Angry mobs are dangerous.
Mind you I expect to see a lot of meaninglessly symbolic green action in response to the hysterical noise-making. This includes toothless declarations of “climate emergency” and pointless promises of zero emissions by far off 2050. Politicians promising the impossible, to be delivered in the far distant future, do no harm. Hence their popularity.
My definition of winning the great climate change debate is that no serious harm is done by the alarmists. While I expect an escalating crescendo of hysterical shrieking during the course of 2020, the reason will be that my side is winning and the loud side is losing.
As things stand now, skeptics have a chance to win big in 2020, but we must keep the pressure on. Hold your nose, plug your ears, and hit them hard. You ain’t seen nothin yet.
Here’s to a fun New Year!
210
Around that area
“Delingpole: A Few Things We Could Happily Live Without in 2020…”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/12/31/delingpole-a-few-things-we-could-happily-live-without-in-2020/
50
The next decade will be interesting indeed.
For once Greta got it right, probably accidentally. The Main Enemy of the Climate Movement is Physics.. What they demand is physically impossible. Hence they must eventually fail. But a lot more harm can happen before then.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/12/29/the-guardian-climate-denial-was-defeated-in-2019/
120
Sock puppet Gremlin Greta’s read polemic fails on two counts:
physics and democracy.
Her political handlers prefer neither.
The neo-Marxist corporatist globalists fuelled the fire, provided their ‘final solution’ and balk hysterically when unsurprisingly the worldwide basket of deplorables reject their mantra.
Going forward into this next seminal decade, keep your eyes firmly on the line in the sand, the 2030 objectives of the UNEP/ECOSOC/ proclaimed and implemented in September 2015 by the UN General Assembly, blessed by the rainbow socialist Pope, Jorge Bergloglio. The UNs euphemistically termed “transformational” agenda will indeed trasform freedom, prosperity and happiness into de-industrialisation, destitution, and despair. People will be required to identify themselves and be socially privileged according to their victim status. The only way out of this social, economic and moral impasse will be a calamitous global civil war.
It is time. There MUST be a counter-2030 agenda, the one that sees a conglomeration of liberty loving populist nationalist nations freely associating and trading, sharing common ideals of liberty, prosperity, happiness and a complete rejection of the divisive, exclusive, identitarian neo-Marxist secular globalist ideology that will be the ruination of the West if the UN ‘transformational’ 2030 agenda is ever implemented.
Make no mistake. To think we are not in an outright vicious no-holds barred ideological war now is a bad mistake.
This is no damned sitzkrieig.
A blessings filled, happy and WINNING! new year to all.
140
I really hope we don’t see real violence from them. Here in Chile we’ve gotten a few bomb incidents from so-called “eco-terrorists”. No deaths but a couple of injuries (they even managed to send a bomb to the house of the president of CODELCO, the state-owned copper mining company, that luckily didnt cause much damage). I can easily see that type of insanity raising elsewhere. Oh and it could easily divert into mass suicides as well. That’s why its important for each of us to educate on the REAL science. Lets hope for a good year!
70
Violence is emblematic of the neo-Marxist Left, their useful eco-idiots and servile MSM not getting their way.
I will not remain on the sofa while a thief plunders my house.
The Yellow Shirts haven’t, the youth of HK refuse to, Chilean authorities had to cancel the UN CO25 climafest and Asia Pacific summit, Poland will not accede to EU Climatism diktat, US rejects climatism and globalism, UK rejects the EU …
Being on the right side of history is all that counts now.
40
Happy new year one and all
150
Happy 2020 Jo and David! May this be the decade that the climate industrial complex finally collapses!
180
happy New Year everyone.
BBC’s thousandth piece on the bushfires:
30 Dec: BBC: Australia fires worsen as every state hits 40C
Meteorologists say a climate system in the Indian Ocean, known as the dipole, is the main driver behind the extreme heat in Australia…
Scorching temperatures, strong winds and thunderstorms created dangerous conditions in Victoria on Monday…
The island state of Tasmania also struggled to contain bushfires amid a sweltering heatwave…
Temperatures exceeded 41C in parts of the state, including in Sydney, Australia’s largest city…
Have you been told to evacuate? Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk ETC ETC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-50938504
note their hearts aren’t in the following:
30 Dec: BBC: India cold wave: Delhi reels from coldest day in more than a century
India’s capital Delhi has recorded its chilliest day in more than a century amid a severe cold wave across the northern part of the country.
Thick fog blanketed the city on Monday as the maximum day temperature dropped to 9.4C and pollution levels peaked.
Delhi started tracking temperatures in 1901 and the earlier record was set at 9.8C on 2 January 2013, according to the meteorological department.
Maximum day temperatures in large parts of the north dipped 10C below normal.
Delhi’s nearly 200 night shelters have been filling up as the city’s homeless seek refuge from the biting cold – the minimum temperature has remained between 1C and 3C over the past few days.
Unlike in European and US cities, where most buildings are equipped with central heating, homes in some of India’s coldest cities are not built for chilly winters…
LINKS:
◾Can Delhi ever clean up its foul air?
◾Delhi’s rickshaw pullers: Toxic air is killing us but we can’t quit
The cold wave has also hit large parts of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab, where many places saw the maximum day temperatures fall below 10C on Monday.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-50953950
LINKS below: More on this story:
Winter’s heavy toll on Delhi’s homeless 22 Dec 2019
Can Delhi ever clean up its foul air? 8 Dec 2015
what a joke.
110
Happy New Year to Jo and David, and all the other regulars I’ve got to know, by name at least.
From an old phart, too old to go out, too old to go to bed and sleep. 😀
170
Happy new year to the Mexicans. 🙂
60
Arriba! Arriba! Ándale! Ándale! 🙂
60
Many happy returns from the old continent . Another 10 hours and the new year will be here . Our old european leadership will cling to their power and is not very likely giving up their new world fantasies especially nurtured by our bankers who are using the new green deal , identical to the old red dream to create more liquidity out of thin air . If elections would be held right now everywhere in europe the socalled populists would evaporate the present new-world-order-leadership and the green deal would be finished once and for all . However all present governments have a few years to go and will not give up their present powers . In the meantime they are capable to
mobilize their leftist base and to ignite a lot of noise giving the world the impression that their power-grip is a mass movement , which it is absolutely not . The green agenda will be further pushed through the undemocratic rule of the european council and it will only be a matter of time when the european population will turn against it. How the EU will desintegrate is up to the present new-world-order-elite .
120
It depends on what the EUs handlers want…if its power at all costs, then a war or some form of martial law isnt out of the question…
10
“2020 is sooner than you think” Sir Humphrey said to Jim Hacker in Yes Prime Minister’s first episode in the 1980s in relation to nuclear defence.
Now it’s here!
Happy New Year everyone.
150
Judging by history, we will get more government which will make government more of a problem. Significant factions of We the People will act as if the cure for the bad consequences of more government is still more government. Which, in turn, will result in even more problems caused by more government. This has been the case since the first government. As always, the more things change the more they will stay the same.
Modern technological civilization is vastly different from the stone age civilizations of prehistory by almost every possible measure. We got here by minimizing the intrusiveness of government and allowing a free people to cooperate freely to mutual benefit. Yet the cry is “more government and still more government” to correct what has already been eliminated as a real problem. Freedom vanishes and the possibility of a free people cooperating freely to mutual benefit is destroyed. Thereby destroying modern technological civilization.
It is all rather like that snake who wanted to gain weight and started eating its own tail. Soon, all it had left to eat was its own head. One last bite and *poof* no more snake.
It is clear that we can choose differently but will we, can we choose more wisely? Maybe, maybe not.
110
Happy New Year from Melbourne!
As one of the few parts of the world to see the New Year First, Trump is still President, Bojo Prime Minister and our Scott Morrison continues to be just plain sensible and getting things done, as always. I hope it is the year when Donald Trump is reelected and the Republicans regain control of Congress without Paul Ryan and the other never Trumpers. And we get better news from North Korea and Iran, the remaining two world threats on the Axis of Evil. And if the world temperate increases another 1.2/100 or 0.012C and the seas rise another average 1.8mm, that no one notices and blows up more power stations.
When the Climate Crisis, Climate Emergency is over and the chickens stop running around in circles with no clothes, we will reflect on thirty two years in which there has been no actual debate over man made Climate Change. Not between scientists anyway. And by scientist, I mean someone who can add and multiply, so that leaves out most politicians, journalists, Tim Flannery and all self appointed climate scientists for whom ecology was a very soft degree and frogs or dead kangaroos a PhD thesis.
And Greta Tunaburger will be a memory of the day the UN allowed itself to be lectured on science and berated by a teenage school drop out. Pure theatre.
At least this year the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was given to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, not Al Gore. What sort of peace is announcing man made Global Warming? And exactly what good have Al Gore and the IPCC done before and since 2007? Not a thing.
210
Nobel Peace prize recipients, Mikhail Gorbachov, Anwar Sadat, Andrei Sakharov, Nelson Mandela, Willy Brandt, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, Mother Teresa and Al Gore. Spot the one who does not belong.
100
only 1?
70
Happy New Year to everyone, I hope 2020 brings with it some clear vision!
90
Will the Woke folk awake?
20
Wow, we got through all that smoke.
Happy New year to everyone.
KK
60
And waking up to 2020, the smoke is the heaviest it’s been for a couple of weeks.
It’s a constant reminder that our Governments have Failed us.
These fires are a government created disaster of massive proportions.
What government?
120
Happy New Year Jo and all.
120
A happy New Year to One and All.
Even you, Peter F.
One can hope and wish for peace and understanding.
One can expect, at best, somewhat less chaos.
Perhaps the most used phrase in the past year has been “Really, are they kidding?”.
May the world once again be blessed with the common sense of those who live in the real world, and not a narrative bubble.
There are natural disasters enough to cope with, and an inhospitable nature continues to assault us between provision of
scenes of unsurpassed beauty. Let try to remove man-caused disasters and political idiocy from the things we have to deal with.
Nothing says irony more than the thousands of Northern State plates on cars also sporting climate change slogans that have come to Florida for Winter Warmth.
Nonetheless, be warm and be happy.
160
Happy new year to you too, Richard I. And my best wishes to Jo and the rest.
130
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/01/abc-deleting-facebook-posts-on-how-protesters-stop-prescribed-burns-more-worried-about-climate-change-than-wildfires/#comment-2248488
Yes. Or no. He’s not sure.
00
Richard, this line sums it ;
“May the world once again be blessed with the common sense of those who live in the real world, and not a narrative bubble”.
At the moment the world responds only to the histrionic hyperventilating newscasters acting on behalf of the guiding Elite.
Occasional T.V. viewing shows that the aim is to build a verbal framework that makes the topic appear to be the only point of view that is acceptable.
Nobody is allowed to be in touch with reality any more.
We need proper management of the government broadcasters before any turnaround can occur.
KK
70
And the same to you Jo, and David.
80
My Grandmother came from Béal an Átha Móir, meaning “mouth of the big ford” – The small Irish town Ballinamore in County Leitrim, Ireland.
I did not know her, but like the connection. Thus, to all – –
May the Good Lord take a liking to you — but, not too soon.
May your troubles be less and your blessings be more and nothing but happiness come through your door
May your pockets be heavy,
Your heart be light,
And may good luck pursue you
Each morning and night,
Like the warmth of the sun,
And the light of the day,
may the luck of the Irish shine bright on your way.
130
Happy New Year to Jo, David and All.
Jo – You do a fantastic job with this website. I look forward to the day when you are not needed, but right now we need you just as much as ever, and I hope you have the energy to keep going for as long as it takes.
One more thing that many may be unaware of: Jo has probably the best entry for an individual in the whole of Wikipedia (there should be an award for this). In one fairly short entry, she gets described as “promoting pseudoscientific views on climate change”, “promotes various falsehoods about climate change”, “promotes the myth …”, an indirect “promoting [] the harms of smoking”, a “falsely claimed”, and a “flat-out wrong”. Jo, you must be doing something right!
180
Wikipedia entry. Amazing rubbish. It’s why this time I refused the demand for cash. So I leave it to the editors of Wikipedia to fix this drivel. Or no more money.
140
And Democrat Congressman Al Green from Texas admits the decision to impeach Donald Trump started before he was even elected.
100
That’s sneering, heavy duty denigration of Jo.
A lesson to the uncertain; you must “believe” or you will be seen in the same light.
Can we escape the narrative bubble.
70
Yes we politely tell them to thier faces to go jump.
20
It’s interesting in ref #9 ” It is vital that the public understand how anti-science ideologues, pseudo-scientists, and non-scientists have bamboozled them.”
Wikipedia makes it clear that Jo is a very qualified scientist. And then she gets labelled by clear and intended implication as anti science, a pseudo scientist or a non scientist. By whom? A journalist?
And the 32,000 qualified scientists who signed the Oregon petitions 22 years ago are also anti science? Non Scientists?
Wikipedia is anonymous but this entry is outrageously libellous.
I suppose though that everyone knows Wikipedia is rubbish, no one would take this seriously and there is after all a complete disconnect between Jo’s credentials and the idea that she is a non scientist. Like the writer. So it is just insulting and completely illogical, like much of the Climate industry.
140
TdeF
Never forget the trouble Wikipedia got itself into with a bloke named William Connolly and sundry other “editors”
50
Thanks Mike Jonas,
I came across that Wikipaedia entry a few weeks ago. Wiki has beefed up the entry on Jo recently with much stronger language including denier, pseudoscience and falsehoods. Talk about pot calling kettle black! But then very few people actually know what science is anymore.
I used to tip in a few bucks to the Wikipaedia appeals until they called Anthony Watts a climate denier. Since then I have made no donations, even though I use the site quite often.
Because I had previously made donations I got a personal email from one of the Wiki moderators and so I was able to explain my objection. She acknowledged that at the time.
However nothing has changed for the better and now Jo’s entry is even more scandalous. So they get no money from me and sail on in ignorance.
140
Good on you Peter C.
It’s good to see I am not alone. I too turn down Wikipedia’s pleas (every recession!) because of clap-trap like this. But, of course, they don’t pay any attention. Perhaps they don’t understand “NO!”
70
Wikipedia is a disgrace, allowing such abuse of Joanne Nova.
It doesn’t deserve the title of encyclopedia. Do not send them money.
140
I’m going with “loon” …
In 2010, Nissan chief Carlos Ghosn predicted EV sales would be 10% of new car sales by 2020.
‘Carlos Ghosn is either a brilliant visionary or crazy as a loon.”
https://www.wired.com/2011/06/qa-with-carlos-ghosn/?mbid=social_twitter_onsiteshare
REALITY: EV sales are about 1.5% of new car sales by 2020.
h/t: @JunkScience
Happy & safe silly season to all!
120
And most of that 1.5% are by government regulations. An electric car would drive you mad. Range anxiety. The polar opposite of care free.
90
EV manufacturer’s theoretical range with 100% battery charge.
Recommended maximum regular recharge level 80%.
Range reduction estimate on average 30% of energy level to account for passenger and luggage, accessories like air conditioning on, highway speed limits (faster EV goes more energy consumed), number of hills, head winds, etc.
Reliable range on average 56% of 100%.
So 500 kilometres for a very expensive EV is for country travel 280 kilometres without anxiety, maybe 300 kilometres, which is not what I would accept as a country driver.
And more affordable EV still double the retail price of an ICEV equivalent around 300 kilometres with 100% battery pack charge.
As compared to my 4WD diesel ICEV that can comfortably achieve 850 kilometres on a full fuel tank, retail price less than half a Tesla S EV car.
120
… and don’t ever run those batteries down to zero charge!
50
This video shows why EVs, of current technology, will not provide useful transport in Australia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb0W8GJd1A
Was talking to a Toyota salesman yesterday – my son was buying a Toyota Hybrid. Salesman said 60% of Camry sales were Hybrids; mostly to fleet buyers and taxis. Overall he said around 50% of the passenger car sales from their premises are Hybrid while utes were also a strong seller for them. The waiting list for the new RAV4 Hybrid in Australia is 3 months or more:
https://www.carsales.com.au/editorial/details/toyota-rav4-hit-with-fresh-stop-sale-order-and-supply-issues-121576/
40
Toyota has a Hi Lux utility Hybrid being prepared for release in the not too distant future.
20
My opening gambit for 2020 – I’ll stick to a howling ferarri V8 ..normally aspirated. If you’ve ever heard one, you want one. Why is that?
A performance engine is a mecahnically perfect bitr of drama, thats fun to drive.
EVs ( which I call “sparks” ) are dull. Yes a Tesla can out accelerate most things, but its a souless tin can.
We have no climate emergency, why bother with the hybrid stuff?
At least a petrol engine is a living, breathing thing, that’s a bit of fun.
The fun police can go jump!
90
OriginalSteve said:
Teslas are not even “tin cans” but made from glass-fibre and epoxy — effectively a plastic box.
That’s why they burn so well! 😀
Burn a Tesla today!
Return its carbon to the atmosphere
The trees need it!
90
Slangly known as “Tupperware”
10
Ex-Nissan boss Ghosn turns fugitive in daring ‘musical case’ escape
“Beirut: Carlos Ghosn is believed to have fled guarded house arrest in Japan smuggled out inside a case for a musical instrument.
The ousted Renault and Nissan boss reportedly organised a concert at his Tokyo property to dodge detectives who had been watching him for nine months, before making his dramatic escape to Lebanon via two private jets.
It means the 65-year-old will now avoid a blockbuster criminal trial for corruption which had been due to start in April – and makes him the most high-profile white collar fugitive in global history.”
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/ex-nissan-boss-ghosn-turns-fugitive-in-daring-musical-case-escape-20200101-p53o1x.html
10
Carlos has other things to think about now:
Carlos Ghosn escaped to Lebanon from Japan followed weeks of planning by associates aimed at getting the former auto executive to a country they believed would provide a more friendly legal environment.
10
May sanity return to our government and the education system in this new decade.
Jo, some of your articles should be on school agendas to illustrate clear thinking and excellent presentation.
70
The New South Wales Government has announced that they will re-introduce “back to basics” subjects in 2020, the plan that the Federal Coalition Government elected in 2013 stated was their objective after consulting with the state governments, and to replace Labor’s very expensive and no gain in education Gonski grants to state governments.
100
Good ..get rid of the messed up gender nonsense too…..that just cripples kids minds with stupid PC…..
60
Happy New Year, Jo. Thanks for all you do in the service of the truth. And new year greetings to all here from whose helpful comments, sometimes, but not always, in response to mine, I have learned much.
30
Happy New Year everybody.
My 2020 vision is Brexit followed by closer economic relations between Commonwealth of Nations members which of course includes developing nation India. And for the Commonwealth Nations to be joined in trade by the United States of America, as President Trump has mentioned. Also a possibility that Japan will also cooperate.
And then, I hope, President Trump’s warnings during addresses to the UN become reality and the UN stop interfering in the affairs of member nations and gets back to the roles it was established to deal with and the socialist globalist infiltrators are neutralised.
Also more EU nations exit after Brexit.
I hope this is not like the new year resolution that a person apparently made years ago, to give up alcohol, cigarettes and s*x. He said it was the hardest couple of hours he has ever suffered.
90
Prime Minister Morrison is flying to India soon for talks on closer economic relations and other post Brexit matters.
Late in 2019 former Prime Minister Abbott said that Australia must negotiate with India on trade and other matters of mutual interest between the two countries.
50
Trade is a two way street, Dennis, and Coalition Governments have been telling us of the need to ”engage”
with India for the last 60 years.
What does India produce that Australia could possibly want or need, and why should Australia want to become
an Indian economic colony?
25
“What does India produce that Australia could possibly want or need, and why should Australia want to become ”
That is where we get back those Australian products now made in India
00
Yeah, so why aren’t we paying Indian prices, since there’s no Tariff, and the Freight per
unit is only a few cents?
00
Happy new year to Jo and David and everyone else on the forum , hoping everyone has a great year.
70
thank you Robert. Enjoy yours, too.
I’ll join with you in wishing 2020 to be a good year for all the other denizens of this blog,
and especially our hostess, Jo, and David (her `Uvver ‘arf’) 😀
40
What will the greatest American President. Ever, be doing in 2020?
The Green Nude eel.
This speech from @realDonaldTrump triggered the eco-socialist of the world.
Why? Because @realDonaldTrump is 100% correct!
https://twitter.com/DamoPelham/status/1211860535358050305
20
The Trumpster talks a good talk, just like he did in 2016, but he hasn’t walked the 2016 talk since them, and
he’ll do the old Bait and Switch again if the voters are foolish enough to re-elect him.
19
I don’t know about that Hatband so far he seems to have kept all the promises he could but has had to fight the dumbocrats the whole way .
He got out of the Paris accord.
Record unemployment.
Brought manufacturing back to the states.
Stopped the Obama war on fossil fuel .
Appointed some great judges etc etc .
But above all he has tortured the leftist socialist rabble almost daily .
53
There’s a 4 year gap between giving notice of leaving the Paris Agreement and actually leaving.
At the moment, the U.S. are still signed up until 2021.
You’re right about record unemployment.
Manufacturing can’t come back while he continues to sign Trade Deals with Sweat Shop Countries
Fracking has stopped because the costs of production exceed the current Oil Price.
He appointed Gorsuch and Kavanagh to the S.C.. Gorsuch now regularly votes with the Liberal Justices and
Kavanagh has started down that path.
Trump was elected to Build The Wall. He hasn’t even started.
Most importantly, he gave the impression that he would LOCK HER UP.
That went out the window on his first day.
17
The wall has been a problem because the Dems have obstructed everything Trump has tried although there is some progress .
Have not heard anything negative from the republican side about the new judges so until I see evidence to the contrary I will wait and see .
Shillary and others are getting nervous with actions not far off I believe to bring them to justice .
That swamp is getting leaky but it’s a vast swamp and will take time .
Trumps motto is his biggest asset and the reason the majority of Americans are with him and it’s just a pity we don’t have a Trump here in oz .
53
Hi Hatband.
In accordance with Article 28 of the Paris Agreement, the earliest possible effective withdrawal date by the United States cannot be before November 4, 2020, four years after the Agreement came into effect in the United States and coincidentally one day after the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
“Fracking has stopped because the costs of production exceed the current Oil Price.”
The decade that blew up energy predictions
“America’s energy sources, like booming oil and crumbling coal, have defied projections and historical precedents over the last decade.
https://www.axios.com/energy-predictions-reality-check-524b9be9-2c0c-407e-86cb-37b11aa72ed2.html
U.S. Oil And Natural Gas Led For New Energy Jobs in 2018
“Our shale revolution is revitalizing the U.S. economy and making us more competitive in the global marketplace”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/judeclemente/2019/03/08/u-s-oil-and-natural-gas-led-for-new-energy-jobs-in-2018/#36fbddf56805
“Most importantly, he gave the impression that he would LOCK HER UP.”
Four more years should be enough to slow-baste that turkey.
22
Fracking, Shale Oil and the Tar Sands industry about to go belly up.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/08/bleak-financial-outlook-for-us-fracking-industry.html
00
“President Trump’s spot-on critique of Paris as dozens of cars set alight on New Year’s Eve”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/01/president-trumps-spot-on-critique-of-paris-as-dozens-of-cars-set-alight-on-new-years-eve.html
And Trump’s tweet
00
“I get asked sometimes by people who are on the fence or who aren’t very politically active:
“What has @realDonaldTrump done or fixed as President?”
It’s a good question deserving of an in depth answer, so here’s a thread listing some of what he’s done in 3 years. Read it all!”
https://twitter.com/robbystarbuck/status/1210703199906205697
50
“President Donald J. Trump’s Accomplishments List: ”
In more dot-pointish form
http://www.magapill.com/
50
Happy New Year to all.
40
Thank you, Jo and all the best to you, David and your family. We look forward to what you will bring to us this year and, hopefully, we can all have some influence on those around us who do not think as we do or know what we know.
60
This is an area that went up in smoke …
Sept, 2019: PROTESTERS HAVE HALTED PLANNED BURNS IN TWO LOCATIONS TODAY
“Crews were unable to ignite the planned burn near Nowa Nowa due to protest activity and again had to call for assistance from Victoria Police.
“The majority of planned burn areas are declared as Public Safety Zones under the Safety on Public Land Act 2004.
This is to ensure the safety of the public and firefighters as burns are undertaken. No unauthorised personnel can enter a Public Safety Zone.
“These protestors were behaving irresponsibly, endangering their own and other people’s lives through their actions.
https://www.trfm.com.au/articles/planned-burns-halted/
50
I think those protesters should now be prosecuted. Not sure of the charge , but something along the lines of interfering with authorities in the course of their duties, causing death; a similar one causing destruction of property; and a third similarly causing destruction of wild life in protected areas.
Possibly terrorist conspiracy causing the above.
Cheers
Dave B
40
Obstructing an emergency services worker is a crime under Summary Offences Act 1966 and the Emergency Management Act 2013.(Vic). The maximum penalty is 6 months jail.
00
Merry New Year! HaHaHaHa! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14ycMqFysJ0
20
Why Australia is burning …
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/12/the-real-reason-australia-is-burning/
50
He hopes his video goes viral and I wish it would but it won’t simply because most Australians are being sucked into the CAGW agenda thanks to the MSM, schools Universities and all our governments, state and federal. What we really need now is for PM Morrison to come out and call out the CAGW scam. I will not hold my breath waiting for him to do so.
60
Its the game of politics Peter, public perception is important, so when an issue like climate change hoax has become entrenched via media and other propaganda outlets a politician is branded accordingly if that politicians dares to step out of line and tell the truth.
Consider Christopher Moncketon’s video warning that PM Abbott here and PM Harper Canada were being targeted by the climate change industry, and PM Abbott had dared to say that IPCC climate data was “cr*p” and that he would not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism. Of course in both examples there were socialist globalist rivals ready to take over the leadership.
President Trump is of course their primary target now for similar reasons, he is political enemy number one.
80
It takes a real leader to go against the game of Western politics. Occasionally we do get them, such as Winston Churchill. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know Trump is another. It remains to be seen if Morrison is another since he has some time to make the necessary moves. I doubt he will but we will never know for sure until he stops being PM.
51
Morrison is following in the footsteps of every other Liberal P.M., i.e., he will undermine and salt
the ground for his successors, except when he’s finding ways to implement the dopier aspects of Labor
and Greens Policy.
23
President Trump treated Prime Minister Morrison very well, but was not so welcoming to Prime Minister Turnbull by all accounts.
30
If the president is impeached then Pence would take over and Donald could tweet orders from the bunker.
00
Happy New Year one and all,
A tip from LinkedIn I read that I thought was quite pertinent.
When signing documents this year, use the full year otherwise it has the potential to be backdated. 1/1/20 -> 2000….2019
50
Thanks, a good point.
30
It looks like we will have to get used to extreme hot and extreme cold seasons for the coming years due to an alarming reduction in overall solar activity, which is predicted to be repeated in the next solar cycle. So get used to the CAGW scam to grow as they focus on the hotter seasons and brush the colder seasons under the carpet. It’s a perfect set up for the scam to escalate and force the West to collapse while much of the rest of the world laugh and clap at our stupidity, while at the same time they build hundreds more coal fired power stations. Some of us know what’s really happening. Popular ignorance and propaganda by the elite mixed together provides a powerful force attacking the West.
See this warning: Bangladesh Death Toll from Extreme Cold – A Warning to us All!
61
‘Intensifying swings-in-extremes are in the weather globally has been a correlation of a historical shift to solar activity going into a minimum phase.’
That is true.
30
Just overheard someone on the radio from ANU? say that CAGW was affecting the Indian Ocean dipole .
30
G’day r r,
This SMH story could be the same.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/experts-warn-extreme-bushfire-weather-risk-growing-20191231-p53nw1.html?btis
Cheers
Dave B
10
That story that the IOD is being overwhelmed by CAGW has been around for a few months, Graham Readfern at the Guardian is pushing it. The hypothesis is bunk.
10
If it can’t be predicted accurately it can’t be blamed on anything but nature.
Just listening to ABC radio and the cause of the fires is clear it’s CO2 emissions from fossil fuel .
00
Happy New Year everyone.
May this be a year of bountiful CO2 for everyone, even the warmists.
Here is Tony Heller’s latest video on the anthropogenic global warming scam. He talks about how there is no such thing as “consensus science”.
https://youtu.be/oaFDkX3G2GI
60
David Maddison
Naomi on consensus – behind paywall:
6 Nov: New Scientist: Naomi Oreskes asks “why trust science” in an age of denialism
In Why Trust Science?, Naomi Oreskes’s asks bold questions but knows there are no clear answers – and critiques herself as the book unfolds
by Michael Brooks
(review: “Why Trust Science?” Naomi Oreskes, Princeton University Press)
“I DON’T want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists.” That is what climate activist Greta Thunberg told the US Congress in September when she offered a report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rather than her own words as testimony…
Tracing the history and philosophy of science from the late nineteenth century to today, Oreskes explains that, contrary to popular belief, there is no single scientific method. Rather, the trustworthiness of scientific claims derives from the social process by which they are rigorously vetted. This process is not perfect — nothing ever is when humans are involved — but she draws vital lessons from cases where scientists got it wrong. Oreskes shows how consensus is a crucial indicator of when a scientific matter has been settled, and when the knowledge produced is likely to be trustworthy…
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432550-200-naomi-oreskes-asks-why-trust-science-in-an-age-of-denialism/
13 Nov: Princeton: Q&A: Naomi Oreskes on “Why Trust Science?”
Q: What vital lessons can we draw from instances where scientists got it wrong?
Oreskes: In most cases where we think that scientists “got it wrong”, when we look closely we find there was no consensus. So we need to attend to real debate, when it occurs, in the scientific community, but also not to be distracted by manufactured controversy…
https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/naomi-oreskes-on-why-trust-science
60
The NAO ensemble has it above the line, so no beast from the east.
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao_index.html
30
I may have put this up before, just joining the dots to understand the mechanisms.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364682616300360
20
Only the Abstract EG. Sounds interesting, but not prepared to shell out the $50 required to find out.
50
Abstracts are best.
10
But the devil is in the detail….
00
A happy and peaceful New Year to you all, especially to you Joanne, and your family. It’s a hard thing to imagine how much time it actually takes to keep a ‘blog’ site going, and to keep all that going as part of a family is a huge time consumer.
I’m going to put this prediction here, because it may be easier to locate at a later date.
My prediction is that Annastacia Palaszczuk will resign as premier of Queensland, and retire completely from Politics in the lead up to the next State election. An excuse will be found, maybe health issues, as is usual with the Left, because she can’t really use the family fallback.
Jackie Trad will then be the Premier, in the hope that she can win that State election, a good probability, because no one wants to be a Conservative politician in this State.
Jackie Trad owes allegiance to the Union who gave her preselection, and now, as the largest and most powerful faction in the State Parliament, it’s their ‘turn’ to supply the Leader, and that is Jackie Trad, no matter how much ‘in the news’ she is. It’s their Union’s turn.
There’s a little known fact about Annastacia Palaszczuk. In the Newman landslide, when Labor was reduced to so few seats, they held their Party Meeting to replace Anna Bligh. No union backed member wanted the poisoned chalice, and as the only unaligned member in the room, she put her hand up for the job, and the Union backed MP’s thought it safe enough to let her lead when Labor was so ‘on the nose’. It then became the Union’s task to get new members preselected, and it was perceived that this landslide loss would see at the very least two full election cycles before they got back to where they might win that third election, and then they could put a Union backed MP in as Leader, thank Annastacia Palaszczuk profusely for the job she did, and she could just go back to being the MP for Inala, perhaps the safest Labor seat in the Country.
However, what happened to Campbell Newman is now well known and Annastacia Palaszczuk came from nowhere in one election to be the Premier, and now, those Labor factions just could not get rid of her, because of the image problem that would cause, and that those Unions and their MPs would be seen for what they really were, callous faceless power seekers.
So now, here we are, and she’s had a good run, and the factions are putting the heat on, and it’s Jackie Trad’s ‘turn’ now.
How soon it all happens is the only thing that is unknown at this time.
Isn’t it just so amazing that politics has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the people.
Tony.
140
I was told last night that Dan Andrews is in for a shock next Vic State election, and the attack by his government and the unions on volunteer fire fighters coupled to the bushfire emergency, and fires coming from poorly managed National Parks (state lands and managed in each state), plus list of other black marks.
70
May it rain swing voters to the Liberal ( right wing ) camp.
My self made, very wealthy great aunt, has an opinion on Comrade Andrews and the CFA attempted unionization that I just cannot put in print.
The biggest danger to Victoriastan is Dear Leaders *social* agenda…think the horrific infamous marxist “safeschools” program….
The electrical power issues are a smoke screen…the real danger is the communist planned destruction of normal middle class families … divide and conquer…make the State every childs parents…what a nightmare…
41
Tony
Might be of interest
“The qualifications and experience of the energy regulators”
http://catallaxyfiles.com/2019/12/31/windwatch-plus-the-qualifications-and-experience-of-the-energy-regulators/
00
$tupid is as $tupid does.
It just proves the adage that you don’t need to know what needs to be done if you’re the boss, or the three levels of bosses between the bosses and the people who ‘do stuff’.
I’m always reminded of a song from a movie every time I see or hear something like this, if I can Segue from this to that, and then back again.
That song was from the movie MASH, not the TV Series, which just used the theme music, but the same theme from the movie, only with the lyrics added.
That song was titled $uicide Is Painless. It was only required for the one scene in the movie, just the song to accompany, umm, what was happening, and if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m alluding to, the first word of the song title, of one of the characters from the movie, and that scene was made into a comedy in the form of a party, and nowhere near as serious as the word suggests.
The Director of the movie, Robert Altman gave specific orders to the writer of the song, Johnny Mandel, (who wrote numerous movie themes) to write the music, but the song had to be called by that title, and it had to be the most stupid song ever written, to go along with the premise of the movie.
Mandel wrote the music and couldn’t get the words done, so Altman himself tried to write the lyrics, and gave up, finding the task too difficult.
Altman’s 14 year old son Michael asked his dad if he could try to write the lyrics, and he duly knocked out the lyrics for the song in five minutes flat.
Father, (the Movie’s Director) liked it so much, they reworked the Start of the movie to include the song during the opening credits, and the end credits as well, although Mandel who wrote the music was not keen on that at all.
The song then became a hit as well on the popular music charts, on the back of the movie’s reception.
Robert Altman, the Director, later commented in an interview for late night TV, that he was paid the standard fee as director for the movie, a sum of $70,000, and his son, who wrote the lyrics in five minutes and was credited as the writer, made more than a million dollars in royalties from the song.
The son had never done anything like that before, or since, evidently.
Robert Altman wryly added that it seemed that you didn’t really need to know what you were doing to actually do it.
That works some of the time.
Imagine here a line engineer, ringing up the boss and telling him/her that they had an intermittent problem with the primary excitation on one of the Units and that they would need to shut it down.
The boss informs the line engineer to hold off till he talks to the Minister and would get back to him, and in five minutes the boss calls the line engineer and said that the Minister has a suggestion, that they stop telling jokes near the primary.
Tony.
30
If that’s right, then Labor will have to do a deal with the Greens to run dead in South Brisbane, because Trad can’t win there with LNP preferencing Greens.
Either that or she switches to Inala. That would be a bummer, especially if she lost the Election anyway and was faced with living in Inala as an opposition backbencher.
00
lol.
31 Dec: Harpers Bazaar: Prince William Launches Earthshot Prize with New Photo Taken by Kate Middleton
“The earth is at a tipping point and we face a stark choice … ”
By Amy Mackelden
•The prize will initially be run by The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
•Per the BBC, “The cash prize will be for individuals or organizations who come up with solutions to environmental problems.”…
The Earthshot Prize, which was announced in a new film narrated by Sir David Attenborough, will encourage people and organizations to create new and innovative solutions to environmental problems. A statement from Kensington Palace referenced some of the crucial issues as being related to “climate and energy, nature and biodiversity, oceans, air pollution, and fresh water.”…
Led by Prince William and a global alliance, the @EarthshotPrize will inspire the the planet’s greatest problem solvers to solve Earth’s greatest problems: the emergencies facing our natural world.”
So far, Hillary Clinton has pledged her support for the initiative and tweeted, “With Australia on fire and the Arctic in meltdown, it’s clear we’re in a climate emergency. I’m proud to support @EarthshotPrize from @KensingtonRoyal, a new effort to inspire Earth’s greatest problem solvers to repair the natural world.”…
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a30369120/prince-william-launches-earthshot-prize-kate-middleton-photo/
60
That’s enough to turn me off the monarchy.
Cheers
Dave B
20
more light, decency–beginning at square one–
https://aumladder.blogspot.com/2019/12/worldwide-opioid-picture-today.html
10
and they will be welcomed:
29 Dec: Daily Mail: Extinction Rebellion targets key media sites including the BBC’s Broadcasting House and newspaper print works in war on free speech
•Document details how six key print and broadcast media sites would be targeted
•The plans include staging ‘occupations/blockades’ outside media headquarters
•A ‘Great March for Truth’ with be held on April 16 to the Broxbourne print works
By Holly Bancroft
Extinction Rebellion activists plan to unleash an unprecedented attack on the British media, sparking accusations that they want to infringe free speech.
The Mail on Sunday has obtained a copy of a document entitled The Great March For Truth & Blockade, which details how six key print and broadcast media sites would be targeted by environmental protesters next spring.
They include a print works in Hertfordshire where millions of national and regional newspapers are produced; Broadcasting House, which is home to the BBC; and the offices of newspaper groups including News UK, which publishes The Times, and DMG Media, publishers of The Mail on Sunday.
If accepted by Action Circle, the planning committee of Extinction Rebellion (XR), the fortnight of direct action in mid-April would focus on forcing the media to ‘tell the truth’ about climate change…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7833201/Extinction-Rebellion-targets-key-media-sites-including-BBCs-Broadcasting-House.html
30 Dec: Albuquerque Journal: Get real data behind record temperature claims
By Frederick L. Vook, Director Emeritus, Physical And Chemical Sciences, Sandia National Laboratories
This data shows that record-high temperatures occurred over 100 years ago in Albuquerque. That means that, for that date, over 100 attempts to exceed that temperature have failed. They also show that the record-high temperatures are also flat over this long period. The record-high temperatures also occur independent of season from April through November. My recollection is also for all other seasons.
Albuquerque was a quite different city 100 years ago. Smaller population, lower CO2, fewer heat-trapping streets and buildings. All those changes would tend to give higher temperatures in recent years.
What is the explanation?…READ ON
https://www.abqjournal.com/1404991/get-real-data-behind-record-temperature-claims.html
10
XR appear to be fully controlled by the Establishment.
They are disposable clowns who are a created stalking horse as an artificial “enemy”..a false flag in the making…
Interestingly, I clearly recall back when the bali bomb occurred, the ex-Indonesian president dropped a mind blowing statement that all the terrorist groups were state controlled ( presumably he was talking about his country only ).
This interview and its transcript appeared on one australian broadcasters web site, but dissappeared for “fact checking” and then appears to have been flushed down the memory hole, never to be seen again. Presumably the honest journo that put it up got fired as a result….?
I saw the video and read the transcript, and was blown away. Assuming it was all correct and the ex-president was honest, it raises questions, but may put XR in a new light…..
10
20 Dec: AnchorageDailyNews: Alaska’s government retaliates after Goldman Sachs drops Arctic oil investments
by James Brooks
Now, Gov. Mike Dunleavy says he is reconsidering whether Alaska should do business with the bank, and the Alaska Department of Revenue has already booted Goldman from a billion-dollar plan to borrow money to pay oil and gas drillers.
“In response to Goldman’s pledge, the governor’s office has directed the review and where possible without financial or progress impairment, the removal of Goldman from business relations with the state,” acting Revenue Commissioner Mike Barnhill wrote in a Friday letter to Goldman’s CEO.
Wrapping up a weeklong trip to the East Coast, Dunleavy told reporters on Thursday that he has “serious questions” about doing business with any company that isn’t willing to work with Alaska.
Visiting New York City, Dunleavy spoke about his concerns regarding Goldman to the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Seventeen state legislators also signed a letter asking Goldman to reconsider…
https://www.adn.com/politics/2019/12/21/alaskas-government-retaliates-after-goldman-sachs-drops-arctic-oil-investments/
behind paywall:
19 Dec: WSJ: Virtue Signal from Goldman Sachs
Given the characters with whom Goldie has done business, lawful U.S. energy production is beyond the pale?
by James Freeman
Letter to Goldman Sachs from Rep Sara Rasmussen et al, Alaska State Legislature
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6590181-191220-Rasmussen-letter.html
30
Here’s a new strategy by the warmists. First they were calling pro-science people like us stupid, and “deniers” but now they realise there are some very smart people among us so now they talk about “Why smart people do stupid things”.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/why-smart-people-do-stupid-things/11747416
60
The “denier” insult is still prominent — many times over.
It’s a piece of plausble crap.
“We’re being so nice and reasonable but you’re still a Denier! Honest.”
10
a stupid Denier …
20
31 Dec: Albuquerque Journal: It’s time to repeal New Mexico’s Green New Deal
By Larry Behrens / Western States Director, Power The Future
As more New Mexicans learn the truth about the Energy Transition Act, or ETA, the less they support it. Called New Mexico’s own “Green New Deal,” the ETA will kill jobs, raise electric rates and will only enrich green energy companies at our expense.
That’s why it’s time New Mexicans come together to repeal the Energy Transition Act.
Not long after the ink was dry on the ETA, it was revealed how Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration worked closely with PNM and radical environmentalists to write the law. New Mexico’s energy workers and ratepayers were left behind while “big green” and PNM were allowed insider access…
Of course, supporters of the ETA promise your electric bills won’t increase due to the forced transition. They want you to ignore how green initiatives like the ETA have raised rates across the country and across the world, but apparently New Mexico is different. What can’t be ignored is their own faulty math.
Recently PNM put out a press release saying it “miscalculated” the impact to customers in the ETA transition. It admitted trying to figure out the different scenarios is “complex.” This is the beginning of a sad pattern of every regressive energy transition: Promised savings always evaporate once we have to come to terms with economic reality…
My organization, Power The Future, asked the Legislature for the emails between one of the sponsors of the ETA and legislative staff. We wanted to take a look at the bill while it was being created. What we received in return was a denial to disclose more than 300 emails because they have been deemed “confidential and privileged.”…
Thousands of energy workers and many communities across New Mexico depend on our energy industry for high-paying jobs that allow their families to grow stronger. They develop our state’s natural resources that help our nation be energy independent. And the billions of dollars in revenue they generate support every classroom, every road project and every family in New Mexico. The ETA and its radical supporters want to see that come to an end.
They believe our way of life is a threat. We know they’re wrong.
Power The Future has launched EnergyTransitionTruth.Com (LINK) to allow New Mexicans to sign up and support the repeal of the regressive Energy Transition Act.
https://www.abqjournal.com/1405336/its-time-to-repeal-new-mexicos-green-new-deal.html
31 Dec: The Hill: Biden tells coal miners to “learn to code”
The 2020 presidential hopeful advises coal miners to move into new industries — but it’s not that simple.
By Alexandra Kelley
At a rally yesterday, Joe Biden advised a crowd in a coal mining town to learn computer programming…
According to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, Biden said, “Anybody who can go down 3,000 feet in a mine can sure as hell learn to program as well… Anybody who can throw coal into a furnace can learn how to program, for God’s sake!”
According to Weigel, the comment was met with silence from the audience…
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/476391-biden-tells-coal-miners-to-learn-to-code
50
New Year gift for you Jo
I just amended your Wikipedia entry.
Hopefully they’ll leave it alone for a while, and hopefully i got it a bit closer to the truth.
cheers
bob
90
Watch for editing!
20
No change evident on badWiki
00
Just looking now 3pm Vic time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Nova
No Denier labels but this “She is prominent for promoting pseudoscientific views on climate change.”
Still a negative write up with no real facts except an argument from authority, well done Wikipedia.
20
… which is back to the libellous crock of rubbish again.
Better luck next time.
00
behind paywalls:
30 Dec: UK Telegraph: Energy bills rise by inflation-busting 40pc despite battle to cut costs
by Ed Clowes
Energy bills have increased by an inflation-busting 40pc in the past five years – saddling UK households with an average annual cost of £1,813, according to new research.
If charges had risen in line with inflation, they would only be 11.6pc higher now than in 2015, data from the Office for National Statistics shows.
It raises questions over whether market controls intended to cut energy costs are having any success.
A study from comparison website Comparethemarket found the rising cost of electricity and gas this year has led to larger energy bills for most homes.
The study revealed that dual fuel bills, which cover both gas and electricity, come to an average of £1,813 a year. This is up from just £1,289 in 2015…
Following a cold winter and climbing oil prices, the so-called big six energy providers have all raised their prices despite the introduction of a price cap…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/12/30/energy-bills-rise-inflation-busting-40pc-despite-battle-cut/
30 Dec: WSJ: Idaho Needs More Power but Parts of Oregon Object.
Utilities are trying to build lines to transport clean energy across states but face local resistance
by Jim Carlton
LA GRANDE, Ore.—In this small town in eastern Oregon, renewable energy is widely popular. But the power lines needed to transmit it aren’t.
La Grande is one of many communities nationwide fighting against transmission lines being built to keep up with a surge in clean-power generation.
“We need to develop more renewable energy, of course, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of damage to our last remaining wild places,” Brian Kelly, who helps lead a green group in the area, said of a proposed transmission line that would run through the nearby forest.
Utilities are under pressure to put up more power lines because many clean-energy plants are being built far from major cities. ???Renewable energy is generated from sources like the sun or wind that don’t get depleted, unlike finite amounts of oil and coal…
“Regardless of where you go, there’s always some issues—whether it’s bats, whether it’s birds, whether it’s wealthy landowners who don’t want their view interrupted,” said Dan Shreve, wind-energy research director at consulting firm Wood Mackenzie. “As a consequence, you see these initiatives drag on forever.”…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/idaho-needs-more-power-but-parts-of-oregon-object-11577712600
10
29 Dec: Guardian: We can take the Labour party back into power. Here’s how
We need to win back the country’s trust, champion progressive patriotism – and unite proud communities failed by the Tories
by Rebecca Long Bailey, Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, and the shadow business secretary
LINK: Rebecca Long Bailey makes opening pitch for Labour leadership
Working with campaigners, trade unions and experts, I have been proud to champion our party’s plans for a green industrial revolution to tackle the climate crisis through investment in good, unionised jobs and the reindustrialisation of our regions and nations. It will spark the growth of new industries as well as guarantee that the renewable technologies of the future, from electric vehicles to solar energy, are available to every home in Britain. Labour can deliver radical change…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/rebecca-long-bailey-labour-party-britain
10
u have to sign in to read all – why bother?
31 Dec: Guardian: Convert half of UK farmland to nature, urges top scientist
New woodlands and wild places are needed to fight climate crisis and improve people’s health
by Damian Carrington
Half of the nation’s farmland needs to be transformed into woodlands and natural habitat to fight the climate crisis and restore wildlife, according to a former chief scientific adviser to the UK government. Prof Sir Ian Boyd said such a change could mean the amount of cattle and sheep would fall by 90%, with farmers instead being paid for storing carbon dioxide, helping prevent floods and providing beautiful landscapes where people could boost their health and wellbeing.
The professor spent seven years at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before stepping down in August. Half of farmland, mostly uplands and pasture, produces just 20% of the UK’s food and would be better for used other public goods, he said…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/31/convert-farmland-to-nature-climate-crisis
behind paywall:
8 Dec: UK Times: Former government scientist turns vegetarian to help plant seeds of a meat-free future
by Jonathan Leake
A top government scientist who oversaw the UK’s post-Brexit food and farming policies has said that his work on farming turned him into a vegetarian — and has suggested that new policies are needed to push more Britons towards plant-based diets.
Professor Sir Ian Boyd will also warn this week that farming needs to change and humans will need to eat more manufactured food if the world is to stand a chance of combating climate change.
“The meal of the future will have very little animal protein,” said Boyd, who will give a lecture at the Royal Society on Thursday. “It will have to be based on plant protein. We cannot feed the 11bn people who will be on the planet by mid-century — including 75m or so in the UK — using the food production system we have now.”…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/call-for-meat-tax-to-turn-people-vegan-5sl8pp8wg
40
Erhlich said in 1965 that the world couldn’t feed 2.5 billion people, so by 1975 cannibals would be roaming the Mid West of the USA.
Time to recycle the prediction.
Now we are told that the world cannot feed 11 billions.
Why not? And who says that the population will reach 11 billion?
30
31 Dec: Breitbart: James Delingpole: A Few Things We Could Happily Live Without in 2020…
Greta Thunberg
How sad it will be in 2020 when the world wakes up to the fact that this teenage school drop out is nothing but a puppet for green crony capitalists in her native Sweden, who have choreographed every stage of her progression from ‘lonely schoolgirl protesting against climate inaction’ to Nobel-Prize-nominated superstar. No one likes being taken for a fool – and Greta the Puppet has fooled almost everyone…
Never Trumpers
For four long, miserable, embarrassing years they’ve been testing their fancy writing skills, their imaginative powers, and our credulity to the very limits with erudite commentary abundant with gossamer theories ‘demonstrating’ how the Trump presidency has been – and will be – a disaster for the U.S. and the world beyond. Meanwhile, on everything from the economy to black employment to the Dow Jones to the killing of Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi to the great escape from the Paris Climate Accord, President Trump has just gone on #winning. Imagine the Never Trump butthurt when the Never Guy comes back even bigger in 2020…
Bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes…
George Soros
Do I really need to explain why?…READ ON
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/12/31/delingpole-a-few-things-we-could-happily-live-without-in-2020/
31 Dec: AmericanThinker: The Russia Hoax Was Aided by NGOs Peddling Junk Science
By Leo Goldstein
Some of the most vicious anti-Trump voices have come from US government-funded Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), affiliated with the State Department, Big Tech, and Soros afiliates. Many of these NGOs have existed since the Cold War, with a mandate to promote freedom and democracy abroad. They are forbidden to operate in the US, especially in partisan fashion.
Apparently, they have disregarded that mandate and have instead positioned themselves as pillars or guardians of the “global civil society.” They found a reliable ally in State Secretary Hillary Clinton. They have been interfering in US political campaigns and elections since at least 2016, frequently in coordination with their UN/EU counterparts.
One such NGO is the National Democratic Institute, headed by Madeleine Albright. It receives federal funding, which it mixes with money and influence from the Open Society Foundation (George Soros), UN agencies, the European Commission, multiple foreign governments, Amazon, Google and others.
The day after the 2016 elections, NDI published a piece called: The distributed denial of democracy. Its author expressed dismay at Trump’s victory and blamed it on Russia, bots, Russian troll farms (IRA – the Internet Research Agency), and social media misinformation, all mixed together…READ ON
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/the_russia_hoax_was_aided_by_ngos_peddling_junk_science_.html
50
30 Dec: CarbonPulse: Queensland govt carbon fund opens first investment round for offset projects
The Queensland state government has launched the first proper call for projects through its Land Restoration Fund, which aims to invest A$100 million ($70 mln) in new carbon offset projects in 2020…
27 Dec: Qld Govt: Land Restoration Fund 2020 Investment Round
In 2020 the Land Restoration Fund (the Fund) will invest $100 million in projects.
Applications for the Land Restoration Fund 2020 Investment Round will open on 28 January 2020 via an online application portal (Smarty(?) Grants)…READ ON
https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/climate/climate-change/land-restoration-fund/2020-investment-round
27 Dec: Queensland Government: About the Land Restoration Fund
The Queensland Government’s $500 million Land Restoration Fund (the Fund) aims to expand carbon farming in the state by supporting land-sector projects that deliver additional environmental, social and economic co-benefits.
The Fund will empower farmers, land managers and landholders with the support needed to generate additional, regular and diverse income streams and protect their business in tough times, through carbon farming projects.
A robust carbon farming industry in Queensland will create regional jobs and contribute to reducing Queensland’s carbon emissions, as well as providing valuable co-benefits like healthier waterways, more habitat for threatened species, and more resilient landscapes.
Applications for the first round of funding will open on 28 January 2020…
The LOOC-C (pronounced look-see) web tool, produced by CSIRO, is a landscape options and opportunities for carbon abatement calculator. It can assist land managers to decide which methods will be most suitable for their property…
https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/climate/climate-change/land-restoration-fund/about
10
19 Dec: World Bank: China: Improving Forest Ecosystem Management and Resilience
WASHINGTON: The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved a US$150 million loan to help China improve sustainable forest ecosystem management in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River Basin.
“China’s environmental challenges are unique in scale and complexity, and of global importance,” said Martin Raiser, World Bank Country Director for China. “The new program will demonstrate ways to restore and better manage forest ecosystems and conserve biodiversity. We hope it will contribute to China’s efforts to green its development path and reduce carbon emissions.”…READ ON
https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/12/19/china-improving-forest-ecosystem-management-and-resilience
10
Paul Ehrlich hpyed it up a far bit with the cannibals, but he was rught.
We Couldn’t feed 2.5 Billion then, and we cant feed 7 Billion now.
Why?
Because the human is a carnivore, and most people are forced to eat mouse and rabbit food just to
stay alive. A recent poll showed that 90% of South Koreans wanted to emigrate to the U.S..
Why would that be? My guess, to be able to eat a proper diet.
Yet the propaganda in Australia says that being a Vegan and eating rabbit food is great,
while The Rev. Scotty plots to take Beef and Lamb off the menu to satisfy our Paris obligations.
12
”It can assist land managers to decide which methods will be most suitable for their property…”
The Queensland Government is going to buy off the Farm Lobby?
00
It will have to be a bloody big pay-out being as far off side as the Qld government has gotten land managers!
00
They’re throwing $100 million out there for a start.
That’s got to buy some love, particularly if the lobbyists are handing out the largesse.
00
Alternatively, it could be a funding scam like the Bicentenary Grants of 1988.
I.e., the beneficiary kicks back 25% to the ALP, and nobody ever checks on where the rest went.
00
Is there any end to the lunacy?
Here, the speaker suggests resurrecting the woolly mammoth from frozen DNA (questionable, but possible) and reintroducing them to Siberia to fight “climate change”.
The theory is that the mammoth will demolish the trees and reintroduce grasslands which supposedly are better than trees to combat alleged warming.
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/resurrection—should-we-try-to-bring-back-once-extinct-animals/11823514
50
That will have as much impact on the climate as closing down all our coal fired power stations in Australia. In other words, ZERO impact.
30
They should bring back the Dodo so warmists have something to reflect upon when they become completely irrelevant.
30
The finders of that Woolly in Siberia ate the meat, so there may be some sense in repopulating Siberia,
though mustering could be a problem.
Perhaps the boffins could recreate a few Sabre Toothed Tigers for that purpose?
20
That’s correct, trees are the major source of Methane Pollution, whereas grassland is the best Carbon Snk.
00
References on that please?
20
Not really. Rotting vegetation is a primary source of methane. In fact, the main natural source is microbial activity in oxygen-deprived soggy soils and wetlands. Trees can scrub methane from the air using methanotrophs. In some cases trees will absorb methane near their base and emit methane further up. Also note that grasslands can contain significant numbers of methane-emitting termites, especially wet savanna.
10
David
Any references on grass being better than trees?
That would sink the Qld veg management act!!
10
It’s stated in the piece. I don’t know if it’s correct or not.
00
No, the history of the Climate Wars shows that Governments creates their own realities.
Here’s your link on Trees and Methane:
https://www.wired.com/story/trees-emit-a-surprisingly-large-amount-of-methane/
Carbon Sink qualities of Pasture is well known.
Just my opinion: even if the Governments did a full 180 on CFPS, they’ll still take out the Pastoral Industry.In my opinion, that’s the real target.
00
Thought you would reference that paper. It is not discussing trees in a normal forest environment, only the specific trees in the very wet conditions of the Amazon. It’s a specific case and not representative of trees everywhere else.
10
Of course you did.
Here’s a paper you didn’t think of:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257521768_Dark_aerobic_methane_emission_associated_to_leaf_factors_of_two_Acacia_and_five_Eucalyptus_species
00
Sigh… Your assertion was that trees are better methane emitters than grasslands. When questioned, you provide links only to articles about tree emissions. Nothing to backup your assertion. Somebody else does that frequently here.
10
Incorrect.
My assertion is that Trees, and there are Trillions of them, are problematic emitters of Methane.
Grassland, pasture in particular is a superior Carbon Sink.
Pasture also has value in itself, as the primary food source for our primary food source, Beef Cattle.
00
It’s not lunacy David, it is an essential element of todays grant application process. I you can’t tie climate change to your proposal it will be rejected. They don’t give money for science anymore only the warming religion is given grant money.
10
??? read all:
31 Dec: CNBC: Climate change investing catches on with millennials who believe it’s pressing — and profitable
by Patti Domm
As climate warnings become more dire, investors have become more interested in climate change-related investments, which did well in 2019 but haven’t had a good track record longer term…
PIC: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg at COP 24, the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Katowice, Poland on 5 December, 2018.
The millennial investor is the most interested in impact investing, with nearly 90% setting it as a first investment criteria, in an investor survey, according to Bank of America Securities. That contrasts with just under half of baby boomers, who invest with a similar top priority on ESG or environmental, social and governance criteria…
BofA estimates in the next 20 years there will be more than $20 trillion of asset growth in ESG funds — equal to the current size of the S&P 500. While that does not measure climate change investment alone, Israel said climate change has become a much higher priorty for BofA clients, who are surveyed periodically on macrothemes. Climate change jumped to the top theme in November, from number five a year earlier.
But investing in climate change-related shares has been far from a winning strategy for everyone. In a study last May, J.P. Morgan analysts found that global pure play climate change funds underperformed by 5% per annum for the past 10 years…
Earlier this month, for instance, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon pledged the investment bank would invest $750 billion through 2030 in initiatives that include fighting climate change…
Extreme weather, in increased fires and drought, hurricanes and flooding, is making its own case for investment.
“This is real money. It means real money, a real loss of money and real opportunity,” (Grant Thornton chief economist Diane) Swonk said. “What you’ve got at the end of the day is money talks. If people won’t listen to mother nature, they will think of the greenback.”…
J.P. Morgan strategists analyzed the decade long performance of climate-related investments and found the biggest laggard was alternative energy, which actually declined by several percent over the past decade…
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/31/climate-change-investing-catches-on-with-millennials.html
20
If the CAGW story were true (which of course it’s not) climate change investment at the moment is mostly in building more coal fired power stations allegedly leading to higher temperatures. So what are the fools going to do about it? Declare war on China, India and Japan? How about they form their own army and attack said countries. That way they we can get rid of the fools once and for all.
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Pat
Realisation yet to dawn?
” Climate change investing catches on with millennials who believe it’s pressing — and profitable”
Just likely not for them
10
A pre-emptive strike to desperately get people to look away from any policies that appear to have obstructed proper fire fuel reduction….?
Its a clever ploy, but , as they say, the internet never forgets…
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
– Joseph Goebbels
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-01/nsw-vic-bushfire-emergency-follow-live/11835494
“Greens call for a Royal Commission
The Federal Greens have called for a Royal Commission to examine Australia’s bushfire crisis, saying the government needs to do more to tackle the root cause of the blazes.
“Greens Leader Richard Di Natale has called on the Prime Minister Scott Morrison to establish the inquiry into the fires, to ensure enough is being done to address the immediate threat.
“He says there needs to be a national response to the issue, addressing everything from land management to climate change strategies.
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I would welcome a Royal Commission. At least it would make an interesting show.
50
Absolutely, as long as the lack of hazard reduction burning is put sharply in focus, all good.
I have my concerns though – as Sir Humphry used to say on “Yes Minister” :
“Never hold an enquiry unless you know the outcome beforehand”
This makes me think any sensible outcome that threatens the human hating occult UN agenda, will be likely ignored….
40
Morrison should jump at the opportunity.
10
Minimum power consumption time (the Base Load) at around 4AM this morning.
Coal fired power delivering 87% of the total power being consumed.
EIGHTY SEVEN PERCENT
Huh!
And they want to shut that down.
Wind power was delivering …..well, who cares really.
Tony.
110
Tony, do you know the average export output of SA over one year, compared to its imports?
00
“2019: The Stupid In Review”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2019/12/31/2019-the-stupid-in-review/
00
I can remember buying the beer for a widow and her coterie on Anzac Day. I remember emphasising that it takes an whole family to put one boy on the field. Best New Years wishes to your family. Blackballing is destructive to human capital and its never a fun thing to go through. I consider Bill Mollison the greatest Australian but your family is the most valuable family on the continent right now. I trust your moderation 100%.
All of my love to your family. Great patriots with the sort of grit that we seldom see these days. If I swing out of control let your punishments not be permanent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0DAnu5Sq6k
20
I think in the New Year we need a new SWALES ideology on this dry continent. I get it. This is a libertarian blog. I had a libertarian blog. At one stage before a miscreant started rigging the voting system my blog was winning a vote as the best libertarian blog. So I get it. But the issue of SWALES is almost so powerful that it ought to transcend left and right. Looks like the libertarian philosophy cannot fly despite its philosophical richness and all that. Because what it amounts to is throwing all your weapons on the ground and asking the dumb left to have mercy. We need to strategically, and with industry policy (STALIN!!!!!!) bring every sector closer to the Misean well-balanced economy.
We really need to explore low-cost ways to put swales everywhere.
10