JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
Video:
Some comments about the NZ Navy ship that sank, captained by a presumed DEI hire.
https://youtu.be/4nMm9QP62oM
61
You know it’s baaad when even the Scots are taking the proverbial.
In keeping with the Giant Leap Backwards agenda, our/their NZ Navy could emulate that other famous Yorkshire captain, who managed to circumnavigate the globe three times without sinking a ship (OK, 2 1/2 times because it didn’t end too well in Hawai’i) by purchasing shallow-draft flat-bottomed sail/wind-powered colliers to defend the realm. Besides, they’ll be saving the planet at the same time!
As for ‘rainbow lanyards’ however, that may be a step too far. Ahoy ahoy!
110
I believe some of our nautical charts are still the original surveys done by that particular Yorkshire captain – done with lead lines and chains dragged between row boats.
How the f*** did our new Yorkie not know that the rock was there? She has a ship with every modern means to measure depth and identify rocks – forward-looking sonar, and exact position identification (well, down to a couple of meters) with GPS, to not know exactly where she was and what lay ahead. There was not even a storm on the horizon or engine failure to blame!
‘Out of her depth’ is probably the best description for her.
20
First time I sailed up inside the GBR – with a pilot – as a newly certificated officer, in 1976, we were using a chart ‘based on an original survey by Lieutenant J. Cook’.
Whilst the charts will have been modernised – maybe even metric – they all have a small ‘source diagram’ showing the surveys on which they are based. Now retired, I don’t wish to be dogmatic, but I would be very surprised if there aren’t some charts which still refer to that Yorkshireman.
Auto
20
FWIW
“Lesbian Captain Crashes After Insisting Ships Don’t Have To Go Into Ports”
https://babylonbee.com/news/lesbian-captain-crashes-after-insisting-ships-dont-have-to-go-into-ports
10
Excellent post, David. I think this is the article relating to it, with pics showing cultural appropriation of Maori symbolism and service medals. The lesser on the left with the massive, er, thing, has only got one medal. Clearly she hasn’t crashed a ship. Yet.
This is the document
I wouldn’t scroll quickly through and look at the pics if I were you.
50
A ‘rainbow tick of approval’?
Gordon Bennett – thought ‘ticks’ would be the least of their concerns: wonder how many armed forces attended Queenstown’s Winter Pride festival last month (in disguise of course). So far 16 cases of Military-pox [sic] have been registered after the ‘happy get-together event’ with, no doubt, more cases lurking beneath the surface.
Aren’t they trained to use hazmat suits when going into battle/action?
20
And don’t go the internet for any more sharticles like this
10
Wow, NZ is a mess, so far down the diversity road, far worse than Australia and perhaps even worse than the UK?
My mother went to NZ for a holiday probably 8 years ago, returned with a magazine she had been given on the tour. It contained a NZ history article. That’d be an interesting read I don’t know that much about it so I read. It went on and on about Maori tribes. Then got to the last small paragraph where it read along the lines of, “then white people came.” The author was some western name, female.
My jaw was on the ground. It was at that moment I confirmed we have a serious problem within our western culture. Self-loathing is terribly dangerous. If you start doing it within your own mind you get to a therapist (well, I wouldn’t but that is the modern era course of action), but what does an entire culture do about it?
110
OMG you’ve got to be joking? Laugh out loud, as they say.
20
An oceanographic vessel of all things manages to hit a reef?
A lesbian captain?
Talk about going down on the job…
50
Remember that WW2 propaganda warning about ‘loose lips’ endangering allied ships? A friend texted me his latest improvised updated version: Lesbian Lips Sink Ships. But wait, there’s more!
Bluebridge’s inter-islander ferry, Connemara – the one which broke down last month and had to be towed back to port – today crashed into the wharf at Picton, and is now doing loops in Queen Charlotte Sound while the damage is being assessed. Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
Meanwhile via state radio RNZ, referring to the Samoan debacle, Minister of Finance, Nicola Willis, is quoted as saying: “I think it’s fair to say that we now need an extra vehicle that me might not have thought we knew that we needed” [sic].
Say what?! That’s worserer than a Kamala mumbo-jumbo word-salad. Anyway, we’ve finally hit 20*C today (joy!) so maybe the skipper was suffering from heatstroke or sumpfink: I’m sure the ensuing ‘official probe’ will get to the bottom of it.
30
A general comment, not referring to the NZ ship case, is that many otherwise unqualified or inexperienced people who are the subject of DEI promotions might appear to be able to perform their duties when everything happens in a routine manner and things go according to plan. Qualifications, experience and mental attitude come to the fore on those relatively rare occasions when things do NOT go according to routine and something unusual happens. That’s the main time when the deficiencies of DEI hires become obvious.
171
How soldiers or sailors put up with it is what I ask. In civilian world many people have problems with inept bosses at work. One thing I’ve noticed in most jobs I’ve done, people complain about their boss and how inefficient or hopeless they are, especially at working class level. But I guess that military discipline must put that to bed?
20
From a comment on the YT – DEI = Didnt Earn It.
20
Canada’s Carbon Tax Faces the Axe
Got a bad taste in the back of my mouth after stumbling across this steaming pile of misinformation and disinformation.
The number of wide-eyed useful idiots who credulously swallow this propaganda is shrinking but this rag keeps churning out the lies.
Read it if you’ve got the stomach for it. It’s Hollywood-level crap.
>”the sustained environmental damage from unfettered emissions.” In Canada?
>”Canada’s carbon tax is popular, innovative and helps save the planet” Three lies in one sentence, one after another.
>”recent report from the Canadian Climate Institute found the national carbon levy, which targets both consumers and industry, is projected to reduce emissions by as much as 50% by 2030.” Magical projections!
80
De-population = carbon zero.
Does not ca-nada mean ‘what, nothing’ anyway?
50
Standard waffle from The Guardian. I didn’t read it much beyond the headline.
I mentioned sometime ago that when I was in the UK in the 1970’s I checked out the various popular newspaper and (from the bottom) The Mirror, The Sun, The Guardian and The News of the World. (The “News” I bought several times – to while away a Sunday morning – because it was so weird. When I returned in 2013 I got a copy of The Guardian as it was the only one left in the shop. It hadn’t improved. Why some believe it is beyond me, but I was told it was popular with people at The BBC.
70
Hmmm!
“DEI Lesbian Navy Captain CRASHES $100M Naval Ship Causing Oil Spill off Samoa Coast
”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/10/dei-lesbian-navy-captain-crashes-100m-naval-ship/
30
Not only did she crash an oceanographic ship on a reef, but it then caught fire and sank.
00
Toon of the day
Chairman/woman/they/them doesn’t have a nose ring. Sackable offence?
I once shared an office with a morbidly obese, one-legged lessbian. People came to her for counselling. Except that they didn’t come back.
70
“Hurricane Milton Intensifies with 175 Mph Winds”
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/07/hurricane-milton-intensifies-with-175-mph-winds/
20
Fueled by record ocean heat: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/07/climate/gulf-mexico-ocean-temperature.html
210
Paywalled link.
This is what what the article is highlighting. Gulf of Mexico Ocean Heat Content chart, shown at the bottom of this https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/ohc/
20
advertised at 156 knt’s, Windy shows it at 50 knts
https://www.windy.com/-Hurricane-tracker/hurricanes/milton?21.719,-88.835,6,m:ei2adD5
20
The Gulf of Mexico seems unusually warm and it might be due to the Hunga Tonga eruption.
Similarly, world temperature is stuck on a high plateau and reluctant to fall, even with La Nina lurking in the wings.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_September_2024_v6_20x9-scaled.jpg
12
In the charts I linked above at #6.1.1, showing “heat content” in the Caribbean, Tropical East Atlantic, and the main hurricane developemnt region of the Atlantic. They were all below the average 2013-2023 average and then notably started a change to warmer in April 2023.
The Gulf Of Mexico was slightly delayed following in May 2023.
I assume that fits a pattern of currents with the small delay in the Gulf and the east Atlantic just a little after the main area.
In this case the warming skipped the northern summer of 2022 (shortly after Hunga Tonga) and was implemented across the summer of 2023. Does that timing fit with Hunga Tonga’s influence if it was to be an influence?
20
Your argument is sound, Hunga Tonga played no part.
11
I was asking a genuine question. Not so much making an argument to say it wasn’t Hunga Tonga. Something has made the water warmer than typical which started per the above timings. It has has persisted since then to now. And I imagine water takes a while to warm, but I wouldn’t have a clue as to what delay we would see to any warmer water from Hunga Tonga .
10
The warm water ended up in the stratosphere and took a couple of years to envelop the earth, producing a temperature spike.
Nought to do with sea surface temperatures.
01
OK. Thought you were suggesting a warming from Hunga Tonga in the atmosphere was influencing the water temp at and near the surface.
00
I heard on the grapevine that the oceans were boiling.
00
Milton is travelling over the SST roundabout, might slow it down a bit.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-82.84,29.50,2129/loc=-83.082,25.562
01
Some Blathering British Clown (BBC) was shouting at me out of my radio claiming Milton was “the 9th major hurricane this year” as it “barrelled” towards Florida.
Moving eastwards at 17 km/h doesn’t conjure images of barrelling to me, plus it’s only the 3rd (?) to reach Cat 3 or higher this year.
Surfers be happy there’s swell on the way.
60
They tend to exaggerate to make it newsworthy, link it to global warming any way they can. Dr Roy Spencer is a breath of fresh air.
‘Modern concern centers on the possibility that warm sea surface temperatures from global warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions is making hurricanes stronger or more frequent. But studies of coastal lagoon sediments along the Gulf coast and Caribbean deposited by catastrophic hurricane landfalls show large fluctuations in activity on centennial to millennial time scales, even in the absence of the unusually warm sea surface temperatures measured today.’
00
FWIW
“Electric Big-Rigs Don’t Make Sense Even With $40,000 In Tax Credits”
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/electric-big-rigs-dont-make-sense-even-40000-tax-credits
40
What about Dr Twiggy and his monster battery Tonka truck on display at the recent mining expo? Where by the way he was shooting his mouth off saying he wouldn’t approve one more coal mine.
30
Same Zerohedge page- Nobody wants to own up to the Blackhawk that hovered around a North Carolina aid station, no markings on it, masked pilots, but a military code on Flightracker.
..and no-one shot at it!
https://x.com/hartgoat/status/1843158426509258957
30
I thought they’d bought ALL the judges.
Clearly some are hanging out for a bargaining chip in the next round of Judges payrises from the independent body.
20
FWIW – latest Kunstler
“Like a Prayer
“Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or X or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control. . . .” —Hillary Clinton”
https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/like-a-prayer
Take note of the last paragraph
40
Randall Carlson: Here Be Dragons (video)
10
Suggestion: Anyone posting a link, please include some hint as to what it’s about. Example, like David’s comment at #1.
Sometimes the link itself is a descriptor. But even then a little extra doesn’t hurt.
Thanks.
90
climate, comets, etc.
Randall Carlson is a geologist who explores heavily such topics so his name was my hint 😀️
21
Around two hours long. Nodded off after the first 10 mins…
10
Preferably a title, an introductory summary, a cleartext link and your comments last. 😎
11
geeze – you ask a lot – I’m a busy man
00
Yes much better that others do it a 100 times
10
Strop
You do that with “doubtful content” that you hope the mods are too busy to check
Wouldn’t work if I was a mod
10
A cost benefit analysis with no real benefits.
Offshore wind’s bogus benefits bragged on
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2024/10/07/offshore-winds-bogus-benefits-bragged-on/
The beginning: “Resources for the Future (RFF) has produced a combined cost benefit analysis for 32 U.S. offshore wind projects now in development. They proudly point to the benefits outweighing the costs by a whopping 14 times. But these supposed benefits are not just exaggerated; they are fabricated. They simply do not exist.
Their lengthy title is “Offshore Wind Power Examined: Effects, Benefits, and Costs of Offshore Wind Farms along the US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts”. See https://www.rff.org/news/press-releases/new-modeling-shows-offshore-winds-benefits-to-climate-health-and-energy-bills/.
The analysis is fairly simple which makes it easy to see the fallacies. There are just four basic benefit claims. And of course it is all based on highly questionable modeling.
Before looking at each of these benefit claims it is worth noting a pervasive misconception. They assume that when a MWh of wind displaces a MWh of coal or gas fired power the emissions of the latter are reduced by the amount it takes to produce a MWh. As I have written at length this is not true. Baseload fossil fueled power plants run on very high pressure steam produced by gigantic boilers. These plants have to be ready to produce power while wind and solar run intermittently. They are typically running while their output is temporarily displaced by offshore wind.
The reduction in emissions is relatively quite small compared to the power displacement. Each of the RFF benefit quantities is based on this mistaken displacement assumption. Thus each would be much smaller than they estimate if it were real. But as we shall now see they are not real.
The first and by far the biggest purported benefit is in changing climate change. This benefit is greater than the other three combined. The claimed climate benefit is in reducing global climate change deaths for just under the next 300 years. I am not making this up. Here is their preposterous explanation:
“The GIVE Model, one of the three models on which the EPA (2023c) social cost of CO2 is based, projects that each million short tons of CO2 emitted in 2020 will cause 43 premature deaths globally between then and 2300 (after which the GIVE model does not project effects). Using this deaths-per-million-tons value, we estimate that the CO2 emissions reductions caused by the modeled offshore wind farms, in each year of their operation, will prevent 1,600 premature deaths. This mortality reduction is a major part of the overall estimated dollar value of the GHG emissions reductions caused by the offshore wind farms.”
Our emissions are not causing any climate change deaths, much less from now until 2300 so this benefit does not exist.
The next biggest benefit is in reducing the purported deaths caused by power plant pollution.”
Lots more in the article. Please share it.
At least RFF did not include jobs which is a cost not a benefit.
A bit of nostalgia. I was the lead author on the first cost benefit regulations for justifying federal water projects, especially flood control dams. I was not supposed to be the lead just a consultant but they hired academic economists who had no idea how to write a reg. They produced an academic treatise that even argued with itself. We needed something that told a GS 9 what to do, a cookbook. So I pulled the methods out of the economists’ heads and wrote her up. Interesting stuff.
21
Tuesday funny: the achievements of Kamala Harris
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1843065716179939370
She has a lot of achievements all right…
30
Dammit, their books are so cheap! $15!
10
Ex-ICBM Silo In Kansas Dubbed A ‘Zombie-Proof Underground Fortress’, Listed For $749k
An abandoned missile silo complex in Kansas, listed on Zillow, has gone viral on X. The latest surge in interest in doomsday bunkers might stem from the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous foreign policy choices over the last 3.5 years, which appear to have set the world ablaze (also, failed domestic policy has sparked what some believe as a nation-killing migrant invasion).
“Welcome to your ultimate prepper’s paradise! Nestled within 23 acres of secluded land, this rare gem offers an extraordinary opportunity to own your very own Atlas E. Missile silo, complete with a nuclear missile base and bunker,” the listing on Zillow reads.
https://www.zerohedge.com/military/zillow-gone-wild-ex-icbm-silo-kansas-dubbed-zombie-proof-underground-fortress
“It’s a very nice but we already got one!”
– spoken in an outrageous French accent.
20
Gee I hope its off the Russkis targeting list. Oh well if not there wont be any zombies at least.
10
Tuesday wtf: when an electrician has artistic tendencies
https://64.media.tumblr.com/0448d7f30ab58d3c00ccd1cce3fc714a/5b7fbc0bddc3dfaa-88/s1280x1920/a3e9d00442b80b246f9e244fdb691d924e2f7e24.jpg
Impressive!
10
In equipment rooms that had many cables travelling overhead on “rat races”, staff were trained in “boxing” cables by lacing them together into rows of cables, with many rows neatly tied together to form a box structure. The lacing, originally waxed string but later plastic, went in and out of the cable box bundle. I never had to learn this pattern thankfully, but it did look very neat when done properly.
10
Tuesday fail: can a teacher be this stupid?
https://youtu.be/vZ_v6pyqaw4?si=4VQ-mKuQQ5Vgw6T1
11
What is a woman? Part 1.
The_StateMedia came up with a fairly accurate, stable definition.
gender identity
noun
The unmeasurable and shifting notion of what a person thinks they may feel at any specific moment in time about a fluid and changeable concept that either correlates with or denies their innate biological sex or alternatively corresponds with that person’s estimation of their opposite sex predicated on their own personal perception of a stereotypical yet ultimately unknowable and reductive abstraction of an assumption for which they have no frame of reference to even begin to understand.
20
Part 2
J.K. Rowling
Unlike sex, gender identity is neither scientifically observable nor testable. In spite of the million word salads attempting one, there’s no stable definition of gender identity. The term is variously but not exclusively applied to an innate certainty that one is not the sex one was born, to a constantly shifting sense of self that may be male, female, neither or both, to the extent to which one identifies with often regressive sex stereotypes, or to something akin to a gendered soul, which may be trapped in the ‘wrong’ body.
Gender identity is an unfalsifiable idea, a socio-political construct, a quasi-religious belief. At bottom, it is defined by little more than a person’s subjective feelings, or (more accurately) their claim to feel those feelings. We are told we must believe in the existence of those feelings and that those feelings constitute a new form of fact, even though in literally no other sphere of human life is it held that a person’s self-perception must be accepted unquestioningly as true or real.
Gender identity ideology is doing measurable, serious harm to some very vulnerable young people and to women. We’re watching a medical scandal of terrifying proportions unfold in front of us, along with an assault on the rights of women and girls in the developed world that is unparalleled in my lifetime. I’ve read treatises on astrology that make more sense than the spiel written on gender identity and I believe that those who continue to push gender identity as ‘real’ or scientifically observable are guilty of causing widespread damage. The effects are being felt not only by vulnerable individuals, but in once- impartial and rational disciplines and institutions, which, like you, have embraced a form of faith-based fundamentalism masquerading as intellectual sophistication.
If you’re “gender fluid” then at what temperature do you become gender solid?
60
Part 3
JK Rowling: An explanatory chart.
https://imgbox.com/v77k4KJw
10
According to the script, this time of year is renown for changeable weather.
‘Snow has fallen in Tasmania with some brief very light falls on the alpine areas of the mainland as a strong October cold front swept through southeast Australia on Monday night into Tuesday morning.
‘Spring is a season notable for its dramatic day-to-day temperature contrasts and that has definitely been the case in the last 24 hours, with Monday’s summery conditions transitioning to wintry weather on Tuesday morning across much of southeastern Australia.’ (Weatherzone)
21
FWIW
“Civil War Breaks Out in the Green Blob But Don’t Expect the BBC to Report it”
“Greens hate hydrocarbons but open warfare is breaking out in their ranks as the world outside their luxury millenarian cult realises it is impossible to run a modern industrial society without hydrocarbons. In the U.K., the penny is finally dropping that gas is the only realistic backup to an electricity system powered by unreliable breezes and sunbeams.”
More at
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/10/07/civil-war-breaks-out-in-the-green-blob-but-dont-expect-the-bbc-to-report-it/
50
Study shows EV owners have bigger carbon footprint than average because they are wealthier
A pair of psychologists and an economist at the University of Turku, in Finland, have found that because the average electric vehicle (EV) owner is wealthier than the average person, they still have a bigger than average carbon footprint.
For their paper published in the open-access journal PLOS Climate, Nils Sandman, Elisa Sahari and Aki Koponen analyzed questionnaires sent to thousands of random adults in Finland regarding lifestyle choices, car use, environmental opinions and how they felt about EVs.
As global warming, exacerbated by human-origin greenhouse gas emissions continues, makers of some goods have begun to alter their products in ways that reduce emissions. One such product is the automobile.
The vast majority of cars and trucks on the road today are still powered by burning gasoline—a primary source of greenhouse gas emissions. In response, car makers have been developing and selling EVs, which produce no greenhouse gas emissions while they are driven.
In this new study, the research team investigated whether consumers who purchase and drive such vehicles have a smaller carbon footprint than other consumers who continue to drive gasoline-powered vehicles.
https://phys.org/news/2024-10-ev-owners-bigger-carbon-footprint.html
I’m shocked! Shocked I say. 😆
30
Ted Postol: “We Are Looking into the Abyss of the End of Human Civilization” (video)
00
At the risk of seeming like I’m picking on you after comment #10.
Suggestion: Anyone posting a link to a video, please include the link to the video. 😉
.
And a little more description pls for those like me who have no idea who Ted Postol is or whether his views suggest the End of Human Civilization is a real threat or satirical, or what. 🙂
50
With you in spirit Strop. I rarely click on a link posted by itself, why bother?
50
I haven’t the time to watch it now but from what I have seen of Ted Postal he seems to be someone who knows what he is talking about with regard to missiles and nuclear weapons. A very interesting man.
Here’s the link – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_6Sk2eMEB4
20
Just now reading an article titled “Tesla driver killed in head on crash”
It was and initial report so just four or five paragraphs. The journalists chose to include the following:
“In a statement, police said the Tesla Model 3 and the HiLux were travelling in opposite directions.”
I am not sure if I am more in awe of police investigative abilities or the journos ability to convey useful information.
10
FWIW
““Late you come, but still you come”
“I’m republishing this piece by the late George Jonas from April 02, 2008 – because it’s even more relevant today.
My misgivings about hate-speech legislation and Human Rights Commissions go back to 1977. In those days such laws seemed progressive. Only a few considered that compelling liberalism may be illiberal.
In time, second thoughts and questions emerged. A National Post editorial published in January, 1999, viewed Canada’s hate-speech legislation as “potentially sinister” whose proposed new provisions “could be put to authoritarian and illiberal purposes.” I wrote that hate-speech laws were sinister by definition and could only be put to illiberal purposes.
Certainly John Stuart Mill thought so. He phrased his objection rather forcefully 150 years ago: “The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it… We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.”
More and comments at
https://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2024/10/07/late-you-come-but-still-you-come-2/
20
FWIW
“Smart money’s on Trump.”
https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1843330348438225285
Via https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2024/10/smart-moneys-on-trump.html
20
FWIW
“Canada Says Inflation Is Caused By Climate Change”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-10-07/canadas-newspeak-government-says-inflation-caused-climate-change
And remember “The budget will balance itself”
20
FWIW
“Too Many Women In The Wrong Places (Again)”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-10-07/too-many-women-wrong-places-again
20
FWIW
Fixing the power lies
https://patriotpost.us/memes/110864-no-were-not-2024-10-07
10