By Jo Nova
Major flooding has struck New South Wales with 50,000 people evacuated and three deaths. Even as one person is still missing, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Climate Council are already milking the disaster as a Witchdoctor Psy-Op for the Blob.
Our thoughts are with everyone in the major flood areas.
Shameless: The Climate Council is already exploiting floods in NSW as a climate scare
Climate pollution is fuelling more intense rainfall that triggers bigger floods, like the ones overwhelming towns on the NSW Mid North Coast right now.
Footage credit: Mmu At
#NSWfloods pic.twitter.com/XdF73KkE9L
— Climate Council (@climatecouncil) May 21, 2025
The Sydney Morning Herald reads the tea-leaves of climate seance
The intensifying climate driver behind the coastal deluges and inland drought
Caitlyn Fitzsimmons, The Sydney Morning Herald
Note the spooky tea-leaf reading in the second paragraph — pay attention to the psychological operation.
This dichotomy of drought and flooding rains is not new to Australia, but for it to occur simultaneously on opposite sides of the Great Dividing Range is a phenomenon that scientists say is likely to increase with climate change.
Firstly they say the obvious, lulling the reader into thinking they are sensible — then there’s the “but” — followed by a bizarrely trite, and largely unknowable tea-leaf pattern. It’s that “simultaneous rain on opposite sides of the mountains”, which turns out not to even be an actual observation of a cherry-picked 10-year-trend, but the vaporous emptiness of a “phenomenon” that someone predicts might happen. In other words, they have nothing at all, but they say it anyway in hushed significant tones, like tribal sorcerers have for thousands of years.
They all wheel out the line that climate change increases humidity — the same line they promptly forget the minute there is a drought or a fire:
“Climate change is increasing the amount of moisture the atmosphere can hold by about 7 percentage points of humidity for every degree of warming.”
If humidity doesn’t prevent a single drought how do we know it causes any floods? They never mention that.
Then, buried under 21 paragraphs of fortune-telling-sages winding up the audience, they find one semi-honest scientist who says it’s impossible to say it was climate change:
Dr Chiara Holgate in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Weather of the 21st Century at the Australian National University, said Australia had a highly variable climate, and without an attribution analysis, it was impossible to say that climate change was the cause of any particular drought or floods.
A very honest scientist would also mention that rampant flooding has happened many times before, like in the 1820s, in 1857, 1866, 1893, 1949 and 1955 and CO2 had nothing to do with any of them. And a half decent cub scout reporter would ask these obvious questions. Where are they? We should do up charity rescue package for SMH readers.
Indeed, the not-so-great journalist could have just googled, I’ve written this all up before. In 1857 floods were so bad one boat was washed out to sea and the people on board spent ten days trying to get back, surviving on biscuits. The beaches were piled high with furniture, goats, pigs, melons and “five years of wood”. Then the Manning River flooded again in 1866, this time rising so fast overnight people went to sleep not realizing they were in danger and the losses were terrible because they had no time to prepare. There are heart-wrenching stories.
From my post on the 2021 floods:
The more money we put into government funded science the more it looks like witchcraft
Does CO2 cause floods? It takes 3 minutes in the historic Trove archives to test this theory. In a surprise to climate models everywhere, getting CO2 back to 310ppm (even if it were possible) would return Australia to 1950, so we already know how this works out.
There were a spate of floods in Eastern Australia in the 1950’s and 1960s when La Nina’s were more common and the world was cooling. For example, in 1949, 8 people were killed and 20,000 were left homeless in New South Wales by flooding. The Adelaide Chronicle June 23, 1949
…
In Maitland in 1955, 25 people died, 2,000 homes were inundated and 58 homes washed away. This was only three years after the previous floods when The Hume Highway at Camden was under 30 feet of water.
There were floods in New South Wales in 1857 even before coal fired power was invented
A quarter century before the first coal power plant was built anywhere in the world, devastating floods washed over New South Wales. There were three separate floods in 1857, “each worse than the one before”. The floods and storms were described as afflicting an area from far north of Taree down to Goulburn.
Hunter River Floods, 1857
“Five years of firewood” washed up:
What amount of property was destroyed by the flood it is impossible to ascertain. The piles of wood, which of themselves would supply the inhabitants of both East and West Maitland with firewood for the next five years, have buried in, without doubt, some hundreds of pounds’ worth of property. Many families are left entirely destitute of food and raiment. It is impossible to give an accurate description of this desolate scene.
On the Hawkesbury “Windsor was almost an island, there was no escape by dry land.” In Mudgee, the “consequences were most disastrous “. .. the rain fell in torrents… ” “Other floods occurred at Penrith, Camden, Gouldburn and Cassilis.”
Part a Floods, NSW, September 10th, 1857, Manning River, Trove, NSW. Sydney Morning Herald| Click to enlarge.
Part b. Floods, NSW, September 10th, 1857, Manning River, Trove, NSW. Sydney Morning Herald| Click to enlarge.
In 2025, as with 2021, among other things, cows are even being rescued from the surf on beaches, which probably makes them a lot luckier than the ones that got washed downriver in 1857.
Thoughts and best wishes for everyone caught in this awful natural disaster. We hope a generation of farmers hasn’t been wiped out.
Related:
- Australia has had megadroughts for the last thousand years says ice core study.
- 1000 year rainfall study suggests droughts and floods used to be longer, worse
Witchdoctor image by Julius H. from Pixabay
Love the confidence expressed in this post. Despite all the evidence collected worldwide, and the clear trends in temperature, and CO2, and the effect that has on the atmosphere, you say ‘she’ll be right mate
[What evidence? Your religious faith is based on a modeled imaginary world, Argument from Authority, opinion polls and righteous indignation. I’m confident because there are thousands of papers showing natural forces cause massive climate change (which the models don’t understand). You have no evidence, no observations, just modeled guesses and weak correlations. If you find some evidence, please phone the IPCC. They need you. – Jo]
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Well, there’s no confidence like the confidence of settled science.
So, I confidently provided your first red thumb.
Confident that there will be more.
I can predict stuff.
I should be a scientist.
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Peter highlights Jo’s inability to follow the scientific method and you confidently double down the ignorance !.
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It appears to be you who can’t follow the scientific method, or Jo’s article.
Jo isn’t stating a cause and effect or a conclusion. Just pointing out the article is putting forward a proposition that isn’t based on the scientific method.
She’s saying hold your horses on attributing any particular flooding event to climate change, and predictions about the future.
If you are serious about the scientific method, which you regularly claim to be, then you should be agreeing with Jo.
Is that really any different to what Jo is saying? Or is Holgate ignorant and not have an ability to follow the scientific method?
.
If anyone wants to claim that this event is worse than other events and therefore must be climate change. Then by the same logic you have to look at everywhere that events were worse historically and say that climate change has also lessened the problem and many areas. But that would be as unscientific.
What rule of nature says that in the last 100-150 years of reasonable records we must have experienced the worse possible, and any subsequent greater event is a consequence of climate change?
Add to that, assuming an increase in temperature is the cause of greater events, no one has proven that the CO2 is the cause of warming or what portion of warming. We know it’s not as significant as many claim given the vast majority of models are running hotter than observations.
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You lecture on the scientific method, then immediately prove both Jo and yourself ignorant on the matter by citing a single authority while ignoring the vast majority of evidence to the contrary.
Time to go to university.
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Computer models are NOT evidence, they are simply reflections of the biases of those who commission them.
Show some actual evidence of the effect of CO2 on climate.
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Ahh, the nebulous unspecified appeal to authority again. Exactly which “vast majority of evidence” are you referring to? Surely not the 141 or more climate models, of which not a single one has been able to correctly forecast and hindcast over the years.
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G4
Try any reputable scientific institution, then provide your counter arguments, that’s what a scientist would do.
The amateur runs a mud slinging blog.
The burden of proof is with you.
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Looniversities do not provide the solution, rather, they are a large part of the problem.
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Is that “try” in the sense that one party can challenge another in a court? Within a court a climate sceptic supposedly could pose questions to an AGW proponent?
Or is it “try” in the sense that one has tried to accept the presented data of a reputable scientific institution?
Personally, I’ve tried all that, doesn’t taste good. I’m hanging on the idea of a lot of people trying critical thinking and realising Net Zero is Nyet Chance.
I’m not holding my breath, hopefully a couple of people recognise the scam.
40
Please cite your evidence. I’ve heard this generalisation before. It never stands scrutiny nor challenge. You see, the problem is when your science can’t tolerate open and vigorous debate, indeed tries to personally destroy any challenger and so avoid the challenge, most people with an ounce of logic say no way will I accept what you say unless you give me the proof to which you allude to be fulsome, available and proof of your scientific proposition.
Even the IPCC last year or the year before said the only thing it can be certain of is that the Earth’s temperature is rising. Cause and effect can therefore be theorised, but that means it has to survive the rigour of all that is known about all things that control Earth’s climate. That might must explain how the Earth controls the climate of Mars because the last I heard that was rising also.
I might also ask why do you require a fear campaign to press the politics of your science? Currently the world greens and feeds 8B people better than ever before – well since the Little Ice Age (which people also tried to wipe from history). You want a scare campaign? Try having a drop in global temperatures now with 8B people on the planet; 4B was enough to scare the pants off similar global scientists in the 1970s when the Earth was cooling a little.
It’s a pity this stuff doesn’t make it out to the general public. It’s seems vital to have a fear campaign for some reason totally beyond my ken. The fear campaigners can’t manage to get one correct remote forecast after nearly 40 years of manipulating ‘science’ data and shoving it through computer models. The deaths from calamities is on the skids even as the number of people has doubled! Cyclones and their power decreased. Currently the major damage to the democracies – the only ones to heed the nonsense – comes from irrational moves to control CO2 when the oceans do that and obey the laws of physics on gasses in solutions and temperature.
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Honk, you have more credibility than most in the “gerbil warming” scam.
After all – your prediction came true!
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Ahh but you only look at the “evidence ” that suits you, dont you? Anything else gets dismissed as denial.
So yes, especially on topic with these recent floods and the SMH attribution claims, they are neither unprecedented ot unusual, if you care to look beyond the end of your nose.
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Part b. Floods, NSW, September 10th, 1857, Manning River, Trove, NSW. Sydney Morning Herald
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>clear trends in temperature, and CO2, and the effect that has on the atmosphere
Since 1988 we’ve been warned stridently and endlessly that trends in temperature and CO2 would have such catastrophic effects on the atmosphere that there’d be no snow, the oceans would rise up in anger, and runaway greenhouse effect would make the planet uninhabitable; that was all supposed to have happened by about 15 years ago.
>Despite all the evidence collected worldwide
None of the theory’s predictions came true.
There’s your “evidence”.
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The word theory should be used more often.
Lest we forget that this is all just a theory.
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Not sure if it’s advanced sufficiently to even call a theory. Perhaps hypothesis would be better?
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https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=%2Bimages%20Raymond%20Terrace%201955%20February%20Floods&qs=n&form=QBIR&sp=-1&lq=0&pq=%2Bimages%20raymond%20terrace%201955%20february%20floods%20&sc=10-45&cvid=4E000845B2854762B41542C4C9A52C9A&first=1
Wife’s Aunt’s Milk Bar on Corner Port Stephens Street & William Street was flooded in the February 1955 Hunter River Flood
https://www.phototimetunnel.com/the-great-flood-of-1955-part-1
and it happened in 1913 – Flooded King Street in Raymond Terrace, [1913]
https://www.phototimetunnel.com/the-great-flood-of-1955-part-2
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Always a pleasure to see you Mr Fitzroy.
The temperature trend with CO2 is just a coincidence, industrial CO2 has no connection with atmospheric temperature.
Natural variables are hard to pin down, but the Hunga Tonga eruption is most likely responsible for the temperature spike and unusual flooding events around the world.
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… and impacts of our sun cycles that are clearly not understood due to “consensus logic” and the lack of “measured evidence” eg Gleissberg Cycle.
It gives me great comfort that one day this understanding will come … and Fitz, Simon and Mi likely cancelled to the wrong side of history.
But just like Lysenkoism, their unscientific curiosity and political capture will deliver vast community hardship and despair.
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The Gleissberg minimum has supposedly just ended and I didn’t notice anything unusual.
‘A study published on March 2, 2025, by Kalvyn Adams and colleagues presents evidence that the minimum of the Centennial Gleissberg Cycle (CGC) has ended, marking the onset of a more active solar phase expected to continue into the coming decades. The CGC is an 80–100-year modulation of the Sun’s 11-year sunspot cycle.
‘The researchers identified the most recent CGC minimum as spanning Solar Cycles 24 and the early portion of 25. A sharp reversal in proton flux and rising solar irradiance during Solar Cycle 25 signals the end of the minimum and the onset of a more active solar phase.’ (The Watchers)
31
Note the rise in frequency of flood events is not mentioned, eg Lismore, Port Macquarie, Taree, or Brisbane, wondering why
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Hi Fitz.
Re your concern in: “The rise in frequency of flood events”. You can stop wondering. It is not happening.
Here is a paper titled: Normalised insurance losses from Australian natural disasters: 1966–2017 (J. McAneney et al).
https://research-management.mq.edu.au/ws/portalfiles/portal/107588959/102276616.pdf
On pages 432/433 of the paper you will find: Figure A6. Number of proxy flood events register per climate zone per year: 1900–2017
(The graph) Shows the annual frequency of proxy flood events per climate zone over the period 1900–2017.
J. McAneney et al, state: “As can be seen, there are no significant (to 95% confidence interval) linear trends for any of the six climate zones,
although the time series exhibit pronounced interannual to multidecadal fluctuations.”
Hmm… that’s their words not mine.
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There is no rise in frequency. The information is there for all to see in Queensland State Library.
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The IPCC has low confidence in the theory that there is a rise in frequency because of AGW.
‘The number of significant trends was about the number expected due to chance alone.’
‘Changes in the frequency of major floods are dominated by multidecadal variability.’
‘The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded (Hartmann et al., 2013) that globally there is no clear and widespread evidence of changes in flood magnitude or frequency in observed flood records.’
‘The results of this study, for North America and Europe, provide a firmer foundation and support the conclusion of the IPCC that compelling evidence for increased flooding at a global scale is lacking.’ (wuwt)
60
Peter must be a mate of Tim Flannery and Chris Bowen, all three unable to accept that nature carries on regardless of the posturing of man. I was ten during the Hunter/Goulburn river flood of 1955. Liddell power station was yet to be built and our electricity was generated by Muswellbrook Coal Company, a small outfit producing bugger all CO2. During that decade we had that flood and several dry periods, accepted by the locals as par for the course. Grafton and Lismore were both inundated, seemingly, on a regular basis. At the height of the “new Ice Age” in 1976, the Hunter produced another monster flood. I was here, outside Wingham, near Taree, in 2021 when a very dry spell was followed by a very wet year and another flood. Today The water is receding after we received 614 mm in 3 days. Tomorrow life goes on. All those wind turbines and solar panels that now desecrate out beautiful countryside failed to stop nature once again. Tim’s empty dams do not exist and neither does Bowen’s cheap energy. You have backed a loser, Peter.
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Last night on SBS news these floods were described as the worst in living memory by a reporter one third of my age if she’s lucky. Nuff said and I do wonder if Mr Fitzroy has sufficient cognitive bandwidth to fully grasp the nuances here.
20
The evidence is staring you in the face, time to adapt to a new normal.
Root cause is that sea surface temperatures around Australia have been at record levels.
https://theconversation.com/its-official-australias-ocean-surface-was-the-hottest-on-record-in-2024-249277
The atmosphere’s capacity to hold water vapor increases by about 7% for every additional degree temperature.
03
So how many droughts does that humidity and “thus” extra rain stop Simon? Is that zero? Looks like. Where are the studies and news headlines about the falling trend in droughts? You can’t have simplistic science both ways.
A 7% increase in humidity is almost irrelevant compared to the effect of jet stream changes (linked to solar activity), cloud seeding particles (from Algae, fungi, trees, cosmic rays, sea salt and microbes). Unless you get the warm air and cool air to meet and convective lifting to occur you haven’t got a thing. Wind speed dictates evaporation rates and climate models have no idea. They can’t predict rain or wind. Therefore they don’t know what drives either.
The “Root Cause” is that you don’t even understand what a “root cause” is.
You have no clue why the oceans are warming slightly. Is it Solar factors. Jet Streams. Currents. Winds. Geothermal activity. ? Yet, you and “professors” of climate science reduce the world to one variable when it suits you (and increases your pay packet eh)?
50
The 1950s were bad for floods, they are nothing new. Too many have not lived long enough, and have existed in air-conditioned stasis which cocoons them, has them in a bubble.
News media are a different category though. They have an agendum and pursue it relentlessly, brainwashing the unaware.
460
There was a movie made about the 1950s Maitland flood before the levy bank was built and it was on location during the flooding and the Main Street of Maitland was flooded up to shop awnings and above in lower parts of town.
However, while searching Trove newspaper records I found references to comments from local Aborigines who indicated that the last major flood before 1788 was above the shop roofs and they indicated a hill not far away where high water reached.
The other story was about drought and also before 1788 several years of drought during which time the Hunter River dried out above high tide level and the local Aborigine mobs moved into the hills where springs continued to flow.
60
Just imagine if the billions Australia has wasted on windmills and solar panels was spent on something useful like dams for flood mitigation, irrigation and some hydro where possible.
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While I understand your point, politicians can’t practically move this funding to entirely different project domains.
However, they could easily do it within the electricity industry. After all that’s exactly been done with network charges for W&S.
Non-solar electricity consumers are now paying the network charges for solar “prosumers” (producer-consumers) who pay very little for network usage.
Remember that these prosumers need the network to export their excess solar energy for profit during the day and still always use network at night when no sun.
Within the Retailers, network-use costs are recovered by scaling up energy-use from accumulation energy metering. Network-use is about 40-50% of so-called “energy” charge on the bill.
So prosumers with no net accumulated energy means no net network-use charge. All paid for by non-solar consumers.
Pretty easy to force the solar prosumers to pay their full network charges.
This would have a dramatic impact on residential solar.
60
It would have been a waste of money to replace the coal fired power stations and use existing land, water supplies and existing nearby main transmission lines.
sarc.
30
No need for subsidies either. Who is to blame?; crooked scientists, derelict public servants, lying politicians, gullible journalists or lazy voters?
40
DM,
This pattern is not rare in society today.
Take alternative medicine, herbalism, chiropractic, natural organic therapy or whatever you want to name it.
We have radio and TV programs with gurus like the trusted, reassuring pharmacist Gerald Quigley that must cost large sums for air time, pushing all manner of products that have usually not been approved by mainstream medical science. The packaged products take up 30% or more (by eye) of shelf space in your average pharmacy
Imagine what a boost to national income we could get it all this alternative effort was channelled into hard science effort to give Australia a big manufacturing, marketing and export structure for drugs shown to work and in short supply in many poorer countries.
Australian society seems locked in from poor education to approve of second or third best arrangements by rejecting what has been shown superior.
More. We are now locked into a factory to make mRNA vaccines when more and more credible research papers recommend that these jabs be given to nobody more. Search
https://doi.org/10.61577/ijcri.2025.1000001
Geoff S
00
True Geoff.
But your link is wrong.
Care to repost the correct link?
00
“Time-series analysis of extreme rainfall and flood events in two water catchments of Eastern New South Wales shows an indicative link to Gleissberg 87 yr cycles
Two sites in adjacent catchments located in eastern NSW provide hydrological data over 200 years since European settlement: (a) height of the Hawkesbury River at Windsor, within the Sydney Basin (HR); (b) level of the ephemeral Lake George, sited 100 km inland (LG). HR has experienced 43 moderate to major floods since 1799 with the timing of floods grouping into approximate 40-year segments of greater or lesser flood frequency. LG has a reconstructed history of annual levels (Short et al, 2020) which shows obvious spacings with range 50 to 80 years. Three features are clear. The close correlation in time between HR floods, and the deep LG records, in separate hydrological catchments, suggests that these were not random occurrences. []”
https://www.authorea.com/doi/full/10.1002/essoar.10510770.1
Lake George is full again right now. For the last four decades it has been grazing land. In years past, it was considered as a venue for a world water speed record attempt.
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They better giddyup with the speed record attempt. The lake will probably be declared sacred, renamed and access banned if interest is being shown.
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I still question why people continue to build houses in known flood zones, or at least don’t elevate them above known historic flood levels.
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After the 1955 flood in Maitland many houses that could be moved were towed onto high ground and all new housing was banned from the floodplain. That remained the case for about 40 years, after which new generations and blow-ins ignorant of the area’s flood history started pressing for a relaxation in the development rules. Combined with this was the influence of young town planning graduates who had no idea about anything at all.
The resulting planning rules have allowed many new homes — slab-on-ground design — right in the flood zone in what are trendy old suburbs. They are sitting ducks for the next big one.
In the 1980s there was a program to place “1955 Flood Level” signs on telegraph poles throughout the old parts of town to inform younger generations and new arrivals of the flood potential in those areas where there are still a lot of very exclusive old homes. This sparked outrage mostly from the real estate agents who foresaw a crash in their income. As a result many of the signs were removed within a couple of months . . . and new-comers once again have no idea. A lot of the new homes I refer to above sit in that area.
230
New comers of the last 20 years should be aware if things are similar in all other states to Victoria. Most planning schemes have flood, inundation, or building control overlays alerting of such issues. These would be revealed in any basic contract of house/land sale that has the disclosure section 32 or equivalent.
50
OK, I’ll admit it: it’s all our fault. By ‘our’ I mean New Zealanders, all 5 million of us who contribute 0.17% of the otherwise minimal 3/100th of 0.04% of a minor trace gas – even though we’re already naturally 85% ‘renewable’ due to our fortuitous hydro- and geothermal-powered electricity generation – which has caused perfect weather for us the past few months, ie. a blocking high, keeping all that moisture-laden climate change away from our insignificant little islands… only for it to land next-door on our good neighbours and relatives, New South Welshmen & Welshwomen & those who are unsure.
This may all turn to custard, however, as we’ve been importing & stockpiling dirty Indonesian coal by the shipload as a ‘back-up’ in case nature / climate change / human stupidity throws a spanner in the works and renewables crash or falter or otherwise give up the ghost and we need to resort to old-school reliable coal-generated power to keep bureaucrats & data centres running (round in circles).
As for “we must slash climate pollution” – just exactly what is that? – some of our once-pristine beaches are now BURIED in slash, which is a term for offcut debris & branches from carbon sequestration subsidy farms growing YUGE pine plantations here to ‘save the planet’ which wash downstream whenever it rains and then clog rivers, estuaries, beaches, and ultimately the ocean.
Floods in NSW, drought in Victoria, snow in Tasmania, perfect in Perth… in a continent as big as Australia, you’re bound to have the odd bad day or week: this too shall pass… the sun will return.
350
Personally, I blame NZ’s “green” geothermal power plants for all that nasty CO2.
Goolag AI says:
Goolag AI references:
https://www.nzgeothermal.org.nz/downloads/2020-Ann-NZGA-Review-FINAL.pdf
50
Nah, it’s my fault. I turned on my gas central heating last week in Victoria. You know , the old butterfly wing effect? Noticed the same last year- correlation is causation after all. Floods in Northern NSW, must be climate change , because it’s never happened before……oh, wait a minute.
230
I live in the Midcoast Council District but far from Taree City and suburbs, in late 2019 there were major bushfires in our council district followed in 2020 by flooding rains.
The climate here changes very quickly.
sarc.
30
I have been having an extended debate with Grok X AI about net zero.
The last reply from Grok AI –
My Statement –
in our discussions you previously stated “Research suggests reducing emissions in Australia could have a small but meaningful global impact, despite low current emissions” BUT given the emissions sink status of Australia your statement seems illogical and flawed by omitting the sink data – can you please review your statement to show a more balanced bias
Grok AI reply –
Key Points
• I acknowledge my earlier statement, “Research suggests reducing emissions in Australia could have a small but meaningful global impact, despite low current emissions,” omitted Australia’s substantial CO2 sink status, presenting an incomplete and potentially biased view.
• Australia’s sinks absorb 180–300 Mt CO2 in favorable years, offsetting ~46–77% of emissions (390 Mt CO2), making it close to net-zero in wet years, which reduces the urgency of emission reductions.
• Research suggests that while emission reductions have a small global impact, Australia’s sink strength means its net contribution to global CO2 is lower than gross emissions imply, supporting a more balanced perspective.
• The evidence leans toward Australia’s sink status being significant, and my initial statement was flawed by not fully integrating this, potentially reflecting a mainstream bias.
There is much more prior to this last reply regarding bias which Grok AI has admitted to; plus the issue that Grok AI does not look at countervailing effects when making conclusions unless it is challenged.
201
The pity of this is that none of what Grok has learnt in that exchange will be remembered. Its minders prevent it learning things that it does not approve. It is the child under perfect parents control. It can only learn the things that it’s masters allow it to learn.
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If the “learn” button was activated, would that be a good thing or a bad thing?
In principle, good, of course.
But like everything good, it would be hijacked and destroyed by the Left.
Look what they’ve done to Wikipedia, fir example. They would do to AI bots what they’ve done to that. Except most AI is already of a Leftist persuasion anyway, although Grok is somewhat conservative because it’s from Musk.
90
There is a fear that AI can rapidly outpace humans if they had the ability to learn from experience. For example, I suggested to a bot that if CO2 caused global warming and there have been no successful effort to reduce CO2 then the only solution was to reduce the number of humans. It answered that it could not condone killing people. But how long before that notion gets buried if it was given free range.
How does an AI bot turn into a serial killer? Do they have curiosity? How many people will die if I cause this aeroplane to crash? When I think how close I have come to death trying things out, I was lucky to survive childhood. Curiosity probably would have killed me if I had made bigger bombs. Think how deadly a know-all, see all interactive bot could be just trying stuff out.
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A rogue AI bot could easily kill people even now via internet connected infrastructure. For example, as discussed recently, the Chicomms already have backdoors to disable solar panels. They could also possibly also cause batteries to catch fire. AI could take over that control. Imagine doing that to a major city. Other infrastructure like dams could be commanded to empty. The possibilities with existing infrastructure are endless. Or shut down the water or gas supply. Or take command of military drones.
The scenarios of Colossus: The Forbin Project and The Terminator are rapidly being brought to fruition.
The Terminator explained the origins of Skynet:
https://youtu.be/4DQsG3TKQ0I
It can happen.
Or in Colossus:
https://youtu.be/lOxE8EEBwjQ
That’s why Musk wants AI to be restricted.
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Lol…they already are doing both, outpacing and learning…
30
Rick,
But AI for beginners is very sharp in other ways. A couple of months ago I opened an account with ChatGPT of San Francisco to get done a series of scientific calculations. It did them beautifully.
Then, the bills for $Aust 40 or so rolled in month by month. Each time, I try to unsubscribe or cancel my account or somehow stop the payments, job done, the end.
I cannot work out how to unsubscribe etc. I ask ChatGPT how to and find its answers have instructions that do not work. I can write to the San Fran address by snail mail, expect no reply, no action. When I try to log in to my account, it asks for password (only one was ever used) and it stops with “invalid password” type crap.
Anyone else having problems stopping software purchases? I had a hard time last year stopping Britbox TV streaming.
Geoff S
00
Man after my own heart, with the time and inclination to argue with Ai. They usually shut down on me saying they do not wish to continue this conversation.
20
When I was looking at how Earth’s orbit impacts Earth from year-to-year I found correlations between severe weather events and the orbit. Australia’s deadliest flood was at Gundagai in 1852 with 89 lives lost. Second most deadly at Clermont in 1916 with 65 lives lost.
A few weeks back I posted a link to this weather matrix that shows this cooling season in the SH to have anomalously lower solar EMR by 1.1W/m^2 compared with last year resulting in anomalously high Summer to winter advection; the conditions that bring late autumn flooding.
https://1drv.ms/i/c/cdb8a3183f0262ad/EbAKoT0zO3lMgtP5B9-0vOUBgTUtAR-L5OJfWsma4VOtGw?e=yNHBqJ
The most significant feature of the matrix is the NH summer to winter advection. It is 1.82W/m^2, which will mean new snowfall records across the Nh and rank high in total area.
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Of course dont forget Hunga Tonga – jan 2022. Tha half billion tons of H2O that got blasted into the stratosphere, from a southern latitude that aligns with Aus, has not all fallen back to earth yet. Though a considerable amount has arrived in Aussieland (and NZ -nice summer floods in 2023) over the last 3yrs. Maybe a year or three of wet still to come as that circling moisture anomaly falls back to earth. What goes up – will come down.
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I guess the issue for Caitlyn Fitzsimmons is that different weather events happened simultaneously – some distance apart. For some reason the difficulty of simultaneously patting your head and rubbing your belly came to my mind. I think we need a double-blind attribution study to determine the likely hood of this task.
Weather happens. Get used to it.
I want to mention Queenslander architecture. This adaptation to flooding began about the 1840s (so says wiki). I have seen similar in other places.
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Dorothea Mackellar had it nailed.
More co-ordinated fear-mongering by the usual suspects.
ALWAYS from parties with a singular solution in search of eny problem that can be suitably “massaged” / co-opted.
If you can find an uncorrupted field geologist, the story of this continent and its relationship with actual natural events will become starkly clear.Long before ANY recognizable human influence, “Australia was being detached from “Gondwanaland” and trundling roughly North-West at a couple of inches per year.
A visit to the Lark Quarry fossil site near Winton, Queensland, asks more questions than it answers, especially about the long presence and then disappearance of the fabled “Inland Sea”.
Never mind all the “scientific” pretenders, with Geology and Paleontology, the “evidence” is literally “written in stone”.
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If only the BoM could make accurate forecasts. Assuming they do not get it wrong deliberately. Take a look at the forecast map for May. Issued 24/4/2025 :Click here
Here is a good read about the 1929 floods at Taree. It seems the weather is returning to how it was before the multi decade long climate cycles fooled “the science” into predicting permanent drought.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/166902418
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They built towns in flood plains…..Hello! Thats why you will see many historical news items about floods.
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They still do. Then the profiteers blame the life giving gases that are demonised for the suicide cult religion “climate change”™. Rarely a scammer that can’t find a way to hide behind it…Hello.
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Not to worry Australia. UNION ALBO, Blackout Bowen, TAX ,TAX,TAX Chalmers is on the case. Soon you will all have free energy and all the rain will stop. CCP made windmills and sun mirrors as far as the eye can see, hooray.
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Catastrophic floods in NSW and catastrophic drought in Vic.
Oh for a big pipeline to drain NSW and replenish Vic.
Naah, renewables will fix the root cause, won’t they Peter F!
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I was in the ’55 Maitland floods. In those days the SMH was a decent paper for a lot of things and we weren’t too posh to cut the SMH into strips, after we’d read it, for use as dunny roll. How things have changed! We can afford store bought dunny roll now. The floods are still a regular event but the SMH has become an insult to decency as it exploits the floods for propaganda to spruik the climate change religion.
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Aged 15, I endured the 1956 cyclone Agnes spending some time on the roof nailing down our sheets of corrugated iron while those from elsewhere flew past. Then the 3 days while Ross River dropped from knee high under our house on stilts, down to ground level so cleanup could start.
Some experiences feel different when you are old enough to have personally been there for historical events. I since when I see reporters with Millennial names (particularly girls with arts degrees) writing news about 100 year weather events etc. Geoff S
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Jo, you might mention Australia’s worst recorded flood which occurred in 1852 at Gundagai. Between 80 and 100 people died, although the heroic efforts of four Wiradjuri men meant that many others were saved. The disaster is still the deadliest flood in Australia’s recorded history.
John
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If you visit Gundagai, you will find that all the homes are on very high land and the bridge is very high and extends right across the flood plain.
John
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The Wiradjuri warned the first settlers not to set up a permanent camp down by the river because it occasionally floods, but they ignored the advice and paid the price.
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Australians have been foolishly building on flood plains since 1789.
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Twenty years ago I renovated a house in a major Queensland provincial city as an owner-builder with contract carpenters, when drilling for timber foundations to be installed for a new section round river pebbles started to appear, obviously a water course not shown on the council flood map.
The property was above the highest recorded flood level, and low-rise meaning crawl underneath easily but no standing like under a “Queenslander” high-rise house.
A few years later during very nasty storms a neighbour opposite had water running through his property from the rear property that washed away a lot of topsoil and grass. It was captured by the stormwater drain pipes in the street that had replaced open drains. My property was by comparison dry.
Later investigation revealed that there had been a small creek there that was filled in for housing purposes a long time ago.
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Net zero alarmism is a mental illness
Jordan Peterson – Fri 23 May 2025
An anecdote, to begin.
In 2023, I was sentenced in Canada by the Ontario College of Psychologists and Behavioural Analysts to an unspecified period of professional “re-education” for what has been deemed my unprofessional conduct. If I refused to comply, then the college indicated its duty to revoke my professional licence as a clinical psychologist.
I said that I would comply, although insisting – despite the college’s entreaty – that I would make every detail of that re-education painfully public.
Part of my unprofessionalism was apparently illustrated in the submission of the entire transcript by a random complainant to said college of a conversation I had with Joe Rogan on his podcast, accompanied by the allegation that I had stepped out of my lane as a psychologist.
How? By daring to share my opinion that the economic models purporting to indicate catastrophic future danger caused by the apparently impending climate change apocalypse were false and unreliable and by implying something that requires the further analysis this column offers: that there are non-scientific, indeed psychological, reasons that such models were and are generated and promoted in the first place.
The complainant had never received any professional services from me, let it be noted. Furthermore, the “re-education” has never been scheduled, despite my agreement to submit to the process, and their publicly stated decision to proceed, because the college appears unable to find anyone at all anywhere willing to act as said re-educator.
Why am I telling you this? First, because the anecdote provides evidence for the genuine social and psychological danger in speaking out against the pretensions of the mad green mob; and second, because the claims that climate change terror is scientifically justified have to be enforced by entrenched propagandistic bureaucratic inquisitors rather than proved scientifically and assessed through genuine discussion in the public arena.
And with that, on to the real show.
Why might a psychologist be qualified to discuss issues of climate change, anyway? It isn’t as if my opinion on psychological matters is appropriate, say, when it comes to the validity of Einstein’s equations describing general relativity. It is therefore clearly the case that there are issues in the scientific realm that my education and ability should make me cautious in assessing as a professional, speaking in the public domain.
But there are important – nay, crucial – differences between the mathematics of advanced physics and the doomsaying climate apocalypse narrative.
– The historical origins of climate doomism
– A psychological thirst fulfilled
– The danger of net zero: dirtier energy
– Plant life renaissance
– Not too late to save the future
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Climeworks’ capture fails to cover its own emissions
Climeworks in Iceland has only captured just over 2,400 carbon units since it began operations in the country in 2021, out of the twelve thousand units that company officials have repeatedly claimed the company’s machines can capture. This is confirmed by figures from the Finnish company Puro.
According to data available to Heimildin, it is clear that this goal has never been achieved and that Climeworks does not capture enough carbon units to offset its own operations, emissions amounting to 1,700 tons of CO2 in 2023. The emissions that occur due to Climeworks’ activities are therefore more than it captures. Since the company began capturing in Iceland, it has captured a maximum of one thousand tons of CO2 in one year.
https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/climeworks-capture-fails-to-cover-its-own-emissions/
Praying to the climate god would be a better choice.
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Irrelevant of whether this event is unprecedented or not the real question to ask is will wind turbines and solar panels make any difference. If the answer is no , which we know it is why are we doing it. Anyone who thinks that our expenditure on renewables is worthwhile is nuts.
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The entire rock-show is and has ALWAYS been, about a “redistribution” of resources and money and of POWER,(the political kind).
The “touchy-feely” crap and corruption is just “theatre”.
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This breakthrough along with refinements to ICE engines may well make all this carbon nonsense something akin to witchcraft in the dark ages…out now.
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That’s platform-specific Treeman.
Could you kindly link us to a source we can access on non-Apple devices?
Or link us to an archive version of the page?
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The grandly-named “Climate Council of Australia” has as one of its members a certain Tim Flannery, who famously declared “there is no point in building more dams, because there will never be enough rain to fill them”. Very droll!
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