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
I took the opportunity yesterday to visit an old acquaintance, who some readers here will remember as ROM.
ROM was a farmer from the Wimmera region of Victoria, but is currently living in a nursing home. He took a wide interest in geography, science and the weather and was an early sceptic of Climate Change.
He is a bit debilitated now and has not contributed to this blog for a few years but still takes an active interest in what is going on around him.
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Yes I remember ROM, but I am not ready yet for a nursing home , I think.
But I’m thinking that perhaps I should be starting a hospice, partly for myself , but mostly for the friends and relatives who are going down like flies around me with very invasive cancers.
I know that “turbo” has been bandied about , and folks like Van den Bosch have been issuing warnings, but I took it with a grain of salt.
I might lay off the salt , I’m thinking.
And yes , the folks who are succumbing are all ” vaccinated” – perhaps just coincidence.
No idea.
But I was going to talk about the weather, in the light of the East Coast of NZ having had an official 2 deg.C cooler late summer, not to mention the snowfall on the Mt. Hutt ski-field yesterday.
We may need to start a conversation about the PDO and multi-decadal oscillations, it being now 25 years since the big switch called by Augie Auer (look him up) in 1999.
His prediction of milder winters and greener summers has been spot on, at least on this farm.
Are we now returning to the “climate ” of 1975 -2000 . . . . colder winters and droughty summers?
Again , no idea.
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I would love to find that statement that he made around 1998, regarding the switch in the PDO.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augie_Auer
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I can’t find much about the effects of PDO (orIPO) on the Australasian region ; we seem to be on a boundary which is not clearly defined, or is variable.
https://www.clearias.com/pacific-decadal-oscillation/
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Augie Auer – the last great weatherman this country had, even if he was an American immigrant with an odd name (and a cheeky grin).
Having upset the anthropogenic apple-cart by stating, correctly, that CO2 was a minor trace gas which had zero effect on our weather, he was relieved of his duties and banished to nowheresville, as was the UK’s David Bellamy amongst others.
Sadly, his nemesis Jim-Jam Salinger and NIWA’s present talking-head, Chris Brandolino, are still around, delivering a diatribe of mumbo-jumbo UN-approved gibberish.
Just give me the weather – not a sermon!
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18 years ago :-
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/two-top-weathermen-at-odds-over-global-warming/A7ILXNOBY54NXA35D3GNZKXFWY/
“At a time when MetService and Niwa are at such loggerheads that a mediator has had to be appointed, it’s time for the Government and the Opposition parties to disband Niwa to stop its nonsense statements,” Dr Auer said.
“Dr Salinger’s statement is as unscientific as it is incorrect. If warming of the air encourages more moisture in the atmosphere, how come there’s no rain over the deserts? The mere presence of moisture in the atmosphere will not produce rain unless there is an associated atmospheric and meteorological process, which last week was the great volume of warm, saturated tropical air that funnelled down on to New Zealand.”
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Good to know ROM is still about. I used to love reading his posts on the Weatherzone forum and the endless battles he had with one Cee Bee. Who’s ultimate goal was to get the Weatherzone climate change topic closed and eventually the entire forum shut down, which was achieved. I don’t think it was just Cee Bee that got the forum closed down, it was a change of ownership on Weatherzone that I think lead to it being shut down. Lots of the WZ members scattered across the WWW into other weather forums, including here I believe, (and I’m one of them)
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It’s really good to have an update on ROM Peter C. I used to enjoy reading his comments. Thankyou.
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I still miss ROM. A source of wisdom and wit.
Peter C, please pass on our thoughts and best wishes. Is he able to email or message at all? I would like to stay in contact.
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I hope everyone in Sydney, Melbourne and other coastal cities are getting ready to move to the summit of the Snowy Mountains
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14328807/Global-sea-levels-rise-6-2-FEET-2100-plunging-entire-cities-underwater.html
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Finally.
Beach front real estate prices will start going down.
Oh, and so will beach front property taxes.
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I don’t think you are right. The beach front properties will just be somewhere else and those prices will go up!
Or me thinks you are correct if you add: old…
But would they not become fishing grounds?
Happy days!
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” according to a terrifying study.”
The real terrifying part of this is the stupidity.
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Even if there were a Waterworld type scenario, which of course is impossible, and Australians had to move to higher ground there, they wouldn’t be allowed (except for Elites) as all that land is claimed as National Park. The Left would rather people die than be saved to moving to “sacred land”.
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Sydney you say? Just off the wires:
Severe Weather Warning©️ issued by BoM for Sydney’s coastal parts this afternoon as a cold front, aka southerly buster, slides northwards, despite earlier two-minute hate shout-fests of heatwaves and hottest ever and frying fish…
To provide balance, via BoM 12:40pm today:
40.2 C, NW, Sydney Airport
35.2 C, E, Observatory Hill
30.2 C, NE, Sydney Harbour
That’s a handy mean temp in the middle (can’t get more ‘middle’ than that) yet will the official top temp be ballyhooed as OVER FORTY DEGREES PLUS before the wind switches and that southerly busts all their max doom wet dreams?
Other state capital max temps today:
20 C Hobart
22 C Melburnistan
27 C Adelaide
mid-30s Perth
Where’s all the heat gone?
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Wow, really? 2025 and they are still trying to sell that tripe?
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-27/little-desert-bushfire-dimboola-victoria/104865044 – this area?
“There’s a lot of energy that this fire is creating, and what that means is it’s effectively creating its own weather system,” Mr Heagerty said.
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Fires do not create energy. They just move it from one place to another.
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Energy bars made from insects? Just what Aussies will need as they flee the coastal cities to the Snowy mountains to avoid the expected catastrophic sea level rise.
https://www.rebelnews.com/would_you_try_eating_ze_bugs_at_the_world_economic_forum
If its good enough for the Worlds elite we should be honoured to be allowed to eat the same food as our betters. As Marie Antoinette nearly said “let then eat Cake made with insects.”
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The Elites are already feeding insects to Aussie school kids.
As of 2022 at least 1000 Aussie schools had insect chips.
Shocking indoctrination of children.
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I know the authorities have tried to downplay Australia Day in recent years but did this event attract any attention?
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-hate-filled-australia-day-prayer-that-made-me-storm-out-of-church/
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I read it. It’s written by Peter Collits and it would have had the same effect on me. I have been known to walk out of church services in Melbourne.
My husband amended the Anglican collect for Australia Day, to rid it of the PC grovelling rubbish.
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Yeah, just trucking along behind New Zealand… We’ve had that for decades on Waitangi Day, the whole thing is meaningless to 90% of the population now, it just a stage for political plays.
It will get just as cynical here and it makes the sort of speeches thrown about by the ‘official’ players all the more cringy and laughable. Still, its adds to the general population’s cynicism and disdain of all things political, which is good.
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The Donald is reinstating troops booted over COVID vaccine. 🇺🇸
They will be restored to their prior rank and will receive back pay and benefits under Trump’s order.
I suspect some now have natural immunity and are healthier than those that got vaccines.
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The purveyors of the defective covid “vaccines” and Fauci should be taxed or charged to pay for the soldiers’ back pay.
Obviously Fauci will only be able to make a relatively small contribution but it should be enough to hurt. Big Pharma is big enough to pay for all of it, apart from a small contribution from Fauci.
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After the Colombia deal, TRUMP posted this on his Truth Social account.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113896394915126793
Hilarious!
I believe FAFO on the picture means “F–k Around and Find Out”.
What a leader!
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He did that while playing golf. What a guy!
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Something the censorious Left ( tautology, I know) should understand.
Anything posted they disagree with they find offensive e g. the statement that “women can’t have penises and men can’t have babies”. If they disagree with that biological fact, just move on and don’t demand the statement be censored.
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5 million Europeans to be killed by excess heat in years to come
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14328877/study-predicts-people-DIE-climate-change-2099.html
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No. Allah will not let that happen.
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lol!! More useless academics looking for a propaganda payment!! Those deaths will be nothing compared to the deaths from the vax!
I suppose they used chicken entrails to predict how many people would die in 75years time from heat problems. Lets go back to 1950 and ask acedemics how many people today would die from expected causes then. They certainly wouldn’t pick lung cancer, dementia, diabetes, or covid 19, yet here we are..
All the hallmarks of a religion overlayed with the trappings of science.
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Boiled in hot water?
Perhaps the scare could include people switching to cannibalism.
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interesting number, I looked up annual average deaths in Europe and surprisingly the number for 2022 was, 5.2 million, so by extension the annual European death rate will either increase significantly, or, every death in Europe will be attributed to “climate change” and excess heat.
A little like covid, where, even if you got hit by a bus, it was covid what caused it!
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The weather bomb, complete with stingjet, turned up in the UK pretty much as predicted a week out.
They reckon it was the strongest storm for a decade.
A record gust of 114mph was recorded in ROI Ireland, but NI Ireland has had stronger recorded guests, so not really much of a record.
Still quite a storm.
“A central pressure of 939 mb (hPa) was measured at the M4 buoy off the northwest coast of Ireland as the center of Éowyn passed overhead, and some truly enormous waves were measured at the M3 buoy off the southwest coast: a peak significant wave height of 41 feet (12.6 meters) and a peak wave height of 66 feet (20.1 meters).”
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Those crazy Irish surfers will be LOVING it – along with the tribe of international big wave riders who hunt down these monster storms. Look for videos of Mulloughmore and Aileen’s over the next week, jetski-assisted tow-in waves off Ireland’s NW coast… it’ll be YUGE.
Is not Eowyn part of the same system which brought such ‘refreshing’ temperatures to the USA last week?
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Yes, it was ultimately a result of the cold plunge in the US.
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Gaelic’s a tongue-twister: Mullach Mor now Mullaghmore, the Emerald Isle’s version of Waimea Bay or Mavericks or Cloudbreak or if you squint your eyes Tahiti’s Teahupo’o (on a cloudy day with extra wetsuits).
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FWIW – “Oh to NOT be in England”
“My TCW week in review – no one says it better than Steyn”
“It should have been the start to a glorious week, with eyes focussed on the other side of the Atlantic since last Sunday on President Trump’s inauguration. That diversion of attention was no doubt what the authorities hoped for when they delayed the date of Axel Rudakubana’s trial to Monday, January 20. They didn’t succeed. While one side of the Ocean represented hope, the other side, here, revealed a horror that not even the worst of Trump derangement syndrome could deflect from. Horror at the unmitigated evil represented in the remorseless guilty plea of the monster that is Rudakubana, and despair at what our once decent country has blindly (or deliberately, I sometimes wonder) has nurtured and seems still determined to nurture. That is unless this week’s sickening revelations that, it turns out, the man this country elected did know about it, proves a turning point. If it doesn’t, God knows what will.”
More at
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/my-tcw-week-in-review-6/
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Today’s word is:
trypophobia.
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I see your fear of patterns and invent a new one. Typophobia, a fear of typing something wrong.
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I hated trype as a kid
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Cbus claims that the anti-ESG movement threatens climate targets.
Maybe they will get out of offshore wind farms before they condemn their contributors to negative returns.
The reports I could find are paywalled but someone may find a useful link.
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Why they think making statements on that topis has anything to do with superannuation remains a mystery. You can only imagine the overweaning wokeness pervading that fund.
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A quote from many years ago that is still valid:
“What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that carbon dioxide was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin.
It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that carbon dioxide, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.”
Professor Richard Lindzen
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Nvidia no longer world’s most valuable company after losing $589 BILLION in biggest stock drop in history
Nvidia is no longer the world’s most valuable company after suffering the biggest stock market drop in history.
Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang personally saw $21 billion wiped off his net worth on Monday due to the stock he holds in the company.
The losses came after investors panicked about the implications of a new Chinese AI that appears to compete with its American rivals but for a fraction of the cost.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-14331051/Nvidia-no-longer-worlds-valuable-company-losing-560-BILLION-biggest-stock-drop-history.html
Panic over Chinese LLM? Oh please. Probably fake or pirated.
The REAL panic in the west over quantum computing is mind blowing.
The end of quantum computing and/or did mankind just advance its understanding of the universe by centuries?
It was shut down fast and no-one knows what to do next.
THIS time, they pulled the plug.
The Black Monolith rears its powerful head again – careful what you play with mankind.
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The Chinese AI is open source, but it won’t comment on anything to do with China.
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FWIW – on that AI “turmoil”
“Time will tell but if you think across the business space where everything that has spoke the two letters “AI” has shot the moon in valuation over the last few years will not see a collapse far worse than 2000 if this proves up you’re certifiable. Even if those firms take the public domain code and run with it, and they will if they become convinced its real, from a standpoint of sunk cost and zero-value expenditures made to date every one of these companies is in serious competitive and quite-possibly financial trouble.
Place your bets gentlemen.”
https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=252731
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My interpretation of the acronym AI is “Avoid Assiduously”
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FWIW
“‘Miracle’ of Green Hydrogen Becomes Fading Mirage”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/27/miracle-of-green-hydrogen-becomes-fading-mirage/
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A comment on the rate of fires in EVs and the poor data available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIDZT55rwh4
7 mins
Fascinating
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FWIW
“Exhausted Media Begs Trump To Take A Day Off”
https://babylonbee.com/news/exhausted-media-begs-trump-to-take-a-day-off
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FWIW – latest Kunstler
“Glug Glug. . . .
That’s the sound of a swamp being drained. And much fetid water is still backed up over the 68.3 square miles that comprise the District of Columbia. You might be just realizing that the “Joe Biden” regime was not a government at all, but rather, a colossal racketeering operation. And let’s be clear and precise: racketeering is making money dishonestly. Thus: the grubby Biden Family itself at the top of that putrid food-chain, and their smalltime harvesting of mere table-scraps. Where trillions got creamed off by the big gators, the Bidens risked all for a measly few million, like newts gorging on gnats in a drainage ditch.”
More at
https://www.kunstler.com/p/glug-glug
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FWIW
“He Did It: Trump Calls for Ending the Federal Income Tax!”
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/01/27/he-did-it-trump-calls-for-ending-the-federal-income-tax-n4936418
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And
“Death to DEI: This Is the Real Reason White Lefties Are Panicking”
“What if I told you that the primary beneficiaries of DEI were white progressive women, and the loss of their cushy, bossy, “bulls**t” jobs is the real reason for all the panic?”
More at
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2025/01/27/death-to-dei-this-is-the-real-reason-white-lefties-are-panicking-n4936392
The tangled web gets “un-tangleder”
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More around that –
“Lights, Camera, and Crocodile Tears!”
“What “BIPOC” people and illegal immigrants seem unable to grasp, at least on many occasions, is that they are viewed as being here for the convenience of the wealthy, left-wing, frequently white demographic of American society. Yes, the elites find that these people make excellent caddies, housekeepers, cooks, groundskeepers, and day laborers. But they are also the perfect foils and talking points for those who occupy and wish to retain their places in the upper echelons of the hierarchy.
As I have said before and will probably say again, white leftists thrive on social status and the ability to look down on others. They hate conservatives and the middle class because they need villains who can be blamed for every ill under the sun. They look down on black and brown people and illegal immigrants because they are hapless, helpless, and clueless and need the grace and largesse of the Left to keep them from walking off cliffs or into telephone poles. And their votes come in handy, too.
Despite the rhetoric of progressives, they value privilege and place above everything else. Their biggest fear about immigration reform is that they may finally have to treat minorities like human beings.”
https://pjmedia.com/lincolnbrown/2025/01/27/lights-camera-and-crocodile-tears-n4936408
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FWIW
“Trump Truth Bombs ‘Green’ Energy (Five EOs)”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/27/trump-truth-bombs-green-energy-five-eos/
Rita MacNeil has a song “Reasons to believe” – not about wind /solar endeavours
This looks like a good start for a song “Reasons to not believe” about wind /solar endeavours
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The Leviathan grows another bit of the control grid: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F28588%2F0017%22
We moved quickly to establish the National Anti-Scam Centre, a sender ID registry, and a website take-down capacity within ASIC. We worked with banks to cut transfers to high-risk crypto exchanges.
I wonder if the framework of prevent, detect, report, disrupt, respond can be applied to the climate scam and those involved?
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-23/abortion-australia-politics-gambling-government/104847500 – No mention of the COVID Royal Commission TOR or the Excess Deaths, no, what we are really worried about is gambling ads and pelvic pain
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Media Diversity inquiry – from the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society submission:
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Mediadiversity/Submissions
The COVID-19 experience provided many examples of the importance of the media in communicating scientific information. Less than a year ago, few would have imagined that reports focused on frequency distributions and statistical confidence would have captured such interest in the general public.
Unfortunately, 2020 also saw a spike in media disinformation and Muller (2020a) provides several examples where the media played an unhelpful role. As he states “COVID-19 is a huge story. It directly concerns the health and welfare of the public at large, puts great pressure on public resources, stretches the capacity of governments to respond, disrupts the economy and brings risks that so far are not fully understood … it imposes a heavy obligation on journalists to apply the highest ethical standards in how they tell it”.
AMOS views that these comments also apply to climate change
Unlike with media reporting on COVID-19, inaccurate reporting on climate change has a long history. Part of the problem here is that many news outlets have abandoned factual coverage of climate, whilst choosing to politicise it, resulting in a divided media landscape. Many audiences think of climate change as a ‘debate’, in the community, or amongst politicians, rather than a matter of the physical world, that turns on science and not opinion.
AMOS had hoped that the independent reviews of the national temperature dataset would have resolved any doubts about the veracity of these data and the strong warming trend for Australia it clearly showed.
Unfortunately, the media again provided a platform for some politicians to continue this disinformation.
An MP claimed that the BoM was publishing information on temperature records in NSW which were “completely and utterly false” (Sky News, 2020a). A Senator expressed several concerns over the BoM’s data and methodologies and sent numerous questions to the organisation to respond to (Sky News, 2020b). He described the BoM as demonstrating “at the very least, incompetence”.
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My objective in life now – stay out of care homes. I don’t need assisted dying though – there are plenty of cliffs….
https://biologyphenom.substack.com/p/newnever-forget-2025
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Posted the original the other day – here a correction: https://substack.com/@brianpotter/note/c-88239413?utm_source=activity_item
Wind and Hail is the biggest damage category.
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Somebody asked what was happening with Snowy2, and the answer is… nothing! The problem is that its being done in Australia by Australians, so obviously it will be more and more expensive while taking longer and longer, and everyone involved gets rich at our expense.
They should have ordered a turnkey project by China or Russia!
“Work has stopped on tunnels at the trouble-plagued Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project after workers raised concerns about underground “refuge chambers”.
The portable chambers are a “last resort” for workers trapped underground. They are about the same size as a shipping container and are designed to provide protection for up to 24 hours.
Two tunnel boring machines carrying the chambers have now stopped work after staff raised concerns about them with management.”
The sooner they dump it the better for Aussie taxpayers!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-28/snowy-hydro-tunnel-work-stops-refuge-chambers/104868652
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A reminder of ROM’s adventureous side: always looking for a bit of a lift..
https://joannenova.com.au/2016/05/abc-national-tribute-to-vegan-lecturer-climber-who-died-on-everest/#comment-1806982
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