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by Jo Nova
Australia is too poor to use air-conditioning and dishwashers on a warm day
Welcome to Bananaustralia.
The Premier of NSW issued death threats about electricity bills to get attention:
“If you use electricity this afternoon, you’re going to get killed in terms of how much you pay, the amount of money (to run appliances) this afternoon will be through the roof,” he said.
The NSW Minister, Penny Sharpe told eight million people to avoid using the dishwashers and pool pumps between 3 and 8pm, close the doors and blinds, and turn the air conditioner up to a higher temperature. “Stay hydrated and avoid going outside in the hotter parts of the day where possible” she said, like she was talking to four year olds.
All around New South Wales and in Canberra people spent the day wandering around turning off lights and appliances, and rearranging their plans. Public servants were asked to pull the blinds and turn off appliances at work. The four water utilities, the dams, and water management, were also asked to help. And the Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) condition was instigated, which means some businesses were paid to stop using as much electricity. Presumably, Tomago smelter had to go on an electron-diet — since it uses 10% of the entire state’s electricity. But who needs aluminium right?
So most of the state tried to do something useful in the dim light, so they could pay the rest of the state to do nothing.
But it’s OK, because you could do whatever you wanted up until 3pm:
Energy should be used as normal prior to 3pm when rooftop solar panels are powering much of the state. During the peak from 3pm to 8pm, every small step to reduce demand makes a difference.
You can take your productivity and stir-fry it.
The human brain is the most complex known thing in the universe, and this week millions of those biological powerhouses were distracted from whatever they do best by the complexity of living in a world of Green witchcraft trying to make the weather perfect next century. The productivity loss might have been modest this time, but the long term trend is a slow motion trainwreck. The more weather dependent generators we have, the more time we waste thinking about electricity. Should we cook dinner for 10pm? The kids will be hungry.
Killer electricity prices came anyway — $17,500 a MWh for a whole hour
All the effort stopped the blackouts, but they didn’t stop the bank raid. Wholesale electricity prices hit the price cap Tuesday and Wednesday.
Despite all the solar power Australians are swimming in, the bonfire started at 2.30pm and lasted a full sizzling hour. Even though many prices in the wholesale market are hedged, that square wave on an 11 gigawatt grid is a $200 million dollar price signal. The people writing those futures contracts for next year got the message they will have to raise their forward contracts. The price spikes we see today turn up in our electricity bills sometime down the track.
Say what? You were surprised by 38 degrees in Sydney in November?
Summer came early, say all the people looking for something to blame. On Wednesday the temperature reached 38°C at Sydney airport. Barely five years ago in 2019 there were nine days that November above 30°C. Thirty percent of the whole month was above 30.
It hit 40°C at Sydney airport on November in 2006. There were six days that month over 30C. Somehow, with barely any renewables and no batteries at all, the lights stayed on thanks to coal power. Paul McArdle noted at the time that during the 40°C heat, the whole national grid used 29GW of electricity but there was 6GW of surplus power in reserve and ready to go. When electricity was cheap, and no one had to hide behind the blinds or cook dinner after 9pm, the coal fired grid had a 21% reserve plant margin.
If renewables fail we should do more renewables:
By Alex Dimitriadi and Robert White, The Australian
Mr Bowen blamed volatility in the electricity grid on coal-fired power stations, saying on Thursday that they were its “biggest threat”, spruiking a second-term Labor government’s plan to prioritise renewables and underpinned by gas.
“The least reliable part of our energy grid is coal-fired power,” he said. “There hasn’t been a day in the last 18 months when we haven’t had a breakdown in a coal-fired power station.
Someone needs to tell our Minister of Energy that there hasn’t been a day in the last 18 months when solar didn’t fail.
There was not a single day we could make the wind blow at 6pm on command like we do every day for gas.
There was not a single day when retail electricity prices were cheap.
“What the Australian Energy Market Operator told me was that batteries were essential for getting NSW through yesterday.”
What the AEMO should have shown you was this graph done by one man (why can’t the AEMO draw graphs as useful as Andrew Miskelly?).
Where are the batteries? Not visible. What kept the lights on: black coal, brown coal, and when solar failed as the clouds came over, natural gas arrived to save the day.
Seems people at the AEMO were sweating bullets this week, because they are rushing to sign new reserve contracts.
The contracts, which could be signed within days, come as authorities brace for a summer when demand for electricity will spike, and the industry remains anxious after a precarious day in NSW on Wednesday when the grid struggled to meet demand.
— Colin Packham, The Australian
Why didn’t they see this coming?
10 out of 10 based on 112 ratings
9.4 out of 10 based on 11 ratings
By Jo Nova
 … Just to be clear, yet again, the 29th United Nations Conference of Parties was a smashing success, 70,000 people got a free trip to Azerbaijan, millions of dollars were siphoned from taxpayers, nobody was asked any hard questions, and everyone gets to schmooze it all again next year.
In a big win, nothing at all was achieved in solving “The CrisisTM” which means The Gravy Train rides again.
Last year the UN was excited because of the “historic” move to use the phrase “transition away from fossil fuels” for the absolute, first time ever in a global document. It marked the “beginning of the end of fossil fuels” according to the UN. But one year later, and the phrase was quietly dropped. Nevermind. This time, Saudi Arabia and the petrostate allies were able to nix that promise — possibly because the world still needs their oil. Where were the honest headlines: “UN backslides from key historic transition away from fossil fuels?”
The new $300 billion “goal” replaces the last $100 billion target, which achieved almost nothing, and wasn’t reached, except with accounting games, like relabeling foreign aid and rebadging loans. Seven years after the last target was set, Kiribati had received nothing except a half a million dollars to help them write a new application.
The $300 billion goal is just a Grifter Target to aim for in ten years. It’s part of the Psy-Op to gaslight the citizens of the rich world to keep paying billions to unaccountable foreign committees.
The WEF puts the best spin possible on the pork, and it isn’t that big:
A broad target of $1.3 trillion in annual funds by 2035 was adopted, yet only $300 billion annually was designated for grants and low-interest loans .
The deal has tripled finance to developing countries up from the previous goal of $100 billion annually.
The deal has done nothing of the sort. “Has tripled” makes it sound like a done-deal, but the only thing that tripled was the language. It’s just another acronym of a distant promise:
… crucially agreeing on how much money developing countries will get to tackle and prepare for climate change in what is known as the ‘New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance’ or simply ‘NCQG’.
–SEforall
Tony Thomas found the event has become a kind of “Hunger Games” — where businesses in the host nation charge extortionate fees to soak the rich world taxpayers, while third world delegates can’t even afford a meal. The UN was sponsoring some delegates for $291 USD a day, but almost all that was going on accommodation. The top hotel in Azerbaijan was charging $12,000 a night, while delegates from Africa were living off sample cheese crackers and free coffee. A “dinner date” was part of the menu…
Tony Thomas, Quadrant
Nation’s reporter, Leon Lidigu, cited many accounts from famished Third World delegates, including “Isabella” our Brazilian food seductress. She told him, “I’ve been low-key surviving off lunch and dinner date invites from my male global north friends who can afford it here. To be honest, it feels like they are ‘living’ around here while we merely exist.”
Calorie-scrounging was so common that one COP smarty created a WhatsApp group listing all events involving coffee urns and free biscuits and cheese. “The document has spread like wildfire,” said Isabella to Lidigu.
…a delegate from Tanzania told Nation he had been obliged to skip a session, Making Climate Finance Work for Climate Action in Agriculture and Food Security, “because I have to go to a local market that I am told is quite far, to see if I can get affordable food to eat. The cost of food at COP is just too much for me.”
Baku’s hunger games put a new perspective on COP’s hordes. Kenya, for instance, had 288 delegates, Uganda 412 and Tanzania 353. Few, I’d say none, paid their own way: [4] it was all sponsored by First World grants, delegates’ own long-suffering national treasuries, or diverted from charities’ funds meant to conquer poverty.[5]
How many grants does it take to send 288 Kenyans to Azerbeijan, and why did the climate need a planeful of people from Uganda and Tanzania?
Most of the money in “climate change” is not spent changing the climate, it just rains cash in the Believer Tent.
10 out of 10 based on 94 ratings
10 out of 10 based on 8 ratings
By Jo Nova
Thanks to Elon, many people are wondering “Why Mars?” and the answer might be “mining the asteroids”
Devon Eriksen has the best answer I’ve seen. He compares the race to space with the industrial revolution. Just as wood, coal and oil set us free of lives of manual labor, a whole new set of materials beckon… if minerals that are rare and expensive on Earth can be mined in the asteroid belt, and processed on Mars, all kinds of new tools and toys may follow the boom.
The Earth, Eriksen says, is like a jar that’s been shaken until most of the heavy stuff settles to the bottom. The heavy metals mostly end up in the Earths core, with the lighter stuff on top. But apart from the distance, asteroids have easy access goods, and are split already into handy size chunks, conveniently parked out in the open, far from gravity wells and not hidden under crustal plates, oceans and magma. The rocks under our feet are so much closer but there is a whole planet in the way. It might be a lot cheaper to get the rare metals we need on asteroids than out of our core.
The 16-Psyche asteroid is one of the bigger ones, at 279 km across, or 173 miles, and spectroscopic analysis and radar indicates it’s mostly metal. Judging by other bits of meteorites that fall on Earth, speculation is rife that Psyche contains nickel, iron, and things like palladium and platinum, but of course, no one knows.
Humanity has collected so far all of 255 grams of asteroid space rock (5g from a Japanese launch and 250g from NASA). But China plans to launch Tianwen-2 next year and collect samples from the near-Earth asteroid Kamoʻoalewa.
 16-Psyche asteroid, theoretically (possibly) a mine worth $100 Quadrillion dollars (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) The race is on:
By Devon Eriksen, Substack
Earth is a metal-poor, heavy-element-poor environment.
We just don’t think of it that way because it’s what we are used to. And it’s a major bottleneck holding our industrial development back. Not because these elements will run out, but because the expense of extracting them limits availability, and drives costs up.
Well, the mass of the asteroid belt is roughly 0.05% of Earth’s mass. But, unlike the Earth, the asteroid belt isn’t a big lump of material, sitting in its own steep gravity well. It’s a powder. A spray of fine dust orbiting the sun. The largest asteroid is only about the size of Texas, and most are much smaller.
One single asteroid, 16 Psyche, some 140 miles across*, has an estimated value at today’s market prices of 100 quadrillion dollars. You read that right. That’s roughly 900 times the value of the entire world economy.
On Earth we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, and all the hard part of a journey to the asteroids is just getting out of the driveway accelerating at 10 meters per second per second. But Mars has a much smaller gravity well, and suddenly so much more interaction with space is possible:
… Mars’s gravity acceleration is about a third of Earth’s. A little over 3.5 m/s². Rocket science is not so difficult on Mars. [Closed caption for the hard-of-thinking: Devon is speaking comparatively. Rocket engineering is still difficult.]
So if you think SpaceX can move stuff to Earth orbit cheaply now, with their fancy reusable rocket boosters, and all their lightyears-ahead-of-NASA space tech, and their $2 million dollar Starship launches, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
On Mars, with its ⅓ gravity, and thin atmosphere, you wouldn’t even need a rocket to achieve escape velocity.
It’s the fact that here you have a planet, where people can live in sealed habitats (above or below the surface), and it’s really, really easy to throw things into space, and get them to and from the asteroid belt.
In other words, if Earth is the suburbs, and the Belt is the mine, Mars is your industrial zone.
Hell, you don’t even need to mine asteroids in place.
Depending on the delta-v cost, you can just attach boosters to your smaller rocks and push them right into Mars orbit. It’s called a Hohmann transfer. But whether you are moving metal from a mobile refinery, raw ore, or entire rocks, cargo is cheap to move in space, at least compared to space launch from Earth’s surface.
Space isn’t an ocean, you see. There are no waves, your cargo can’t sink, and there’s no air to slow it down. So you don’t load it up into a ship, and sail the ship somewhere.
There’s no place like space for those self-driving vehicles.
The man who builds Tesla cars,
May set up a workshop on Mars,
With rich ores to smelt,
From the asteroid belt,
Which could pave our way to the stars.
–Ruairi
h/t to David E
*It’s the average diameter, which is why it’s different to the NASA figure which is the longest width.
9.9 out of 10 based on 79 ratings
9.3 out of 10 based on 17 ratings
By Jo Nova
It’s not even summer and the Australian grid is having heart palpitations.
The Blob are in concert — blackouts might be at hand, and they want us to blame the heat (it’s code for climate change). Let’s get a grip, we’re only talking about a Sydney forecast of 33°C (all of 91F).
The ABC calls this “sweltering” and files it under “extreme weather events”. Channel Nine call it a “major heatwave”, which it might be if it were London.
For most of the last week, the AEMO (Australia Energy Market Operator) has been flashing red lights and ringing the LOR3 bell. That means they’ve been forecasting a full Level 3 Lack of Reserve, which means they can see blackouts coming. A level 3 is the most serious warning alarm. Not only is there no reserve power available if something goes wrong, there’s not even enough power for normal operations.
A week ago the AEMO saw blackouts coming for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday — but by hook or by crook with finagling, they’ve got enough promised power now to turn off the sirens, though the lights are still flashing. Think of this an emergency room visit where the heart attack didn’t quite happen today, and probably won’t happen tomorrow, but the patient needs to pay attention.
Quite often in the last few years the AEMO would issue a level 1 warning and forecast a few hundred megawatts of shortage for a couple of hours. But by yesterday morning, in forecasts for Wednesday’s mildly warm day they were looking down the barrel of a 1,700 MW shortage. The full emergency period was not just an hour or two long but started at 11:30am and ran right through to 7:30pm at night.
And of course, it’s old coal’s fault:
Discussion at WattClarity suggest that Australia is running short of spare coal and gas plants to operate. It’s a combination of forced outages, unforced outages, and some maintenance taking longer than expected. Nearly one third of all thermal units bigger than 150MW in generation are out of action.
So geniuses, if a lack of coal causes blackouts, what’s going to happen when we shut down more coal?
Andrew Forrest’s Squadron Energy said the warning underscored the dangers of an energy system still largely reliant on coal.
“AEMO has confirmed that the combination of high temperatures across NSW and Queensland, along with coal plant outages will cause tight electricity supply forecasts in the coming days,” said Squadron boss Rob Wheals. “We know that Australia’s coal fleet is nearing the end of its economic and technical lifespan, with coal plant outages driving high price periods.”
— By Perry Williams, The Australian Heat spike puts NSW power grid on edge
There’s plenty more of that at Squadron Energy’s site, where they say ““Coal is killing affordability and reliability. Renewables are the answer.” The mystery is why even The Australian thought any of it was worth printing, except as a giggle.
Twenty years of Soviet style management is what is killing our grid
We got exactly what we paid for: Government subsidies to boost unreliable energy have, shock, created an unreliable grid. We used to have enough coal power so they could take a few units out for maintenance and it didn’t matter. But when we pay more for random generators, we drive reliable ones out of business. We then expect the owners to run vast finely tuned 500-ton machines faster and slower all the time to “fit in” with the wind and solar machines we don’t need. This reduces efficiency, which increases their costs, and no doubt the maintenance time. Then we kill off the long term prospects for the industry, call them stranded assets, and wonder why companies don’t value them, build new ones or fix up the old ones properly.
Crazy subsidies, make for crazy thinking, and then we get Squadron Energy telling us coal is killing affordability…
The Australian Grid is running close to the edge
The latest update suggests the level 3 alarm for Wednesday and Thursday has dropped to a level 2. The AEMO tell us the reserve requirement on Wednesday for our most populated state is 1,202 MW but, not so reassuringly, “the minimum capacity reserve is 0 MW”. That means, they think, that if everything works as expected, and the weather is not hotter than forecast, or more cloudy, or less windy, and nothing breaks, then the system will be just barely OK.
Usually the people in the control room like to have enough spare capacity on call, so if the biggest single generator trips out, the back up is there to keep the lights on. The minimum capacity reserve is not just a nice thing to have, its considered an essential part of normal operation. It’s the difference between the first world and the third world.
h/t David of Cooyal in Oz.
REFERENCES
AEMO notice 120894 contained the LOR3 1,731MW notice at 4:37am Monday. Later notice number 120946 updated the situation in NSW and number 120949 has cancelled the LOR3 in NSW for Thursday too. The AEMO have put out something like 1,000 notices in the last three weeks. It didn’t use to be this way.
9.9 out of 10 based on 110 ratings
9.6 out of 10 based on 17 ratings
9.2 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
8.3 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
By Jo Nova
More proof that wind power can’t be used to make wind turbines
The one and only Australian manufacturer of wind turbine towers is going out of business, despite Australian electricity reaching 35% glorious renewable, and the Prime Ministers big plan to have the $22 billion dollar Future Made in Australia, as well as our galloping Net Zero fantasy to reach 82% renewable by 2030. We are, in theory, supposed to install 40 new wind towers a month somewhere in Australia, but none of the towers, it turns out, will be Australian made.
Imagine what we could do if Australia were the largest exporter of iron ore and coal in the world? The government could still screw it up.
Right now, we ship the iron and coal 7,000 kilometers away with heavy fuel oil, to be made into windmills to save the world, only to ship them right back, rather than make them here.
Renewables are the cheapest source of electricity on Earth, they say, and Australia has twice as much as China (proportionately). But China makes 65% of all wind turbines globally, and soon Australia will make 0%.
The company Keppel Prince don’t mention the cost of electricity, although the boss of Glencore claims Australian prices are double or more the cost in China, which can’t be good for any business. Instead the company blames Chinese subsidized competitors for dumping, which may have some truth to it, but Keppel Prince has been living off renewable energy subsidies themselves in Australia for years. In 2009 the company warned of job losses if the government didn’t set a bigger renewable energy target (which it did), but then they had to sack 100 staff in 2014 when the target was cut. After that they got help from the Victorian State Energy Targets, and the requirement that 60 per cent of the manufacturing was done locally. The truth is there has probably never been a wind turbine built in Australia that wasn’t subsidized. The only question is “how big were the subsidies?”.
The Opposition here, are naturally making fun of the abject failure of the Future Made In Australia plan:
The Australian
“They’ve got to look really bad that they are losing the only tower manufacturer accredited to build the things,” Stephen Garner [the Executive Director of Keppel Prince] told The Australian.
“The federal government continues to say, like Albanese says, we want to get back to manufacturing. Here we have a manufacturing facility already in place.
“It’s set up for renewable energy, which is what the government talks about every day of the week, and yet we’ve got to mothball it because we can’t compete with China because our government won’t do anything about it.”
Mr Tehan said the government’s pledge to build Australia’s manufacturing base was in disarray. “What a complete embarrassment,’’ the member for Wannon said. “Their renewables only policy has been such a success it has closed our last remaining wind tower manufacturer.
“So the government is not in breach of its own misinformation and disinformation laws, it needs to immediately pull its Made in Australia ads that proudly displays a wind farm. “It would actually be funny, if workers weren’t losing their jobs…”
We don’t like seeing any Australian business go under, but there is an element of live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword as the saying goes. Hopefully the expertise in Keppel Prince can be put to better use manufacturing things the market wants, instead of what the government wants.
Ultimately, no Australian business can compete with slave labor and cheap coal fired and nuclear power. The only thing more stupid than that would be competing in an industry to make things the market doesn’t want, the country doesn’t need and which won’t save the environment.
9.7 out of 10 based on 129 ratings
9.3 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
8.4 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
By Jo Nova
What looks, smells, and works like a Trojan horse to force all adults to use a digital ID?
Incredibly, we have only until today (Friday) to put in submissions on this major, world first, social media ban for under 16s. Feel the panic. It’s as if our PM is running out of time to ram through complex legislation before the Donald Trump inauguration? Perhaps he’s hoping Elon is distracted.
The Good News is The Australian Misinformation Bill appears to be dead. Congratulations! The Bad News is the Internet ID bill (posing as a ban on Under 16s using social media) has support from both major parties, even though it is wildly ambitious, vague, dangerous, and the first in the world. The government can’t answer questions on how this will be managed. Instead, the people who have screwed everything up, say “Trust us” we will work out the details later. (Thanks @Craig Kelly)
The laws, supposedly, will pass next week, but then there will be a 12 month “consultation” to work out what will be banned. Since when do we pass the laws and consult later?
Everyone knows this is just an excuse to make adults upload passports, drivers licenses, facial recognition or use some new form of government ID token in order to use X or any of the social media platforms.
The money line, from Reuters:
Australia plans to trial an age-verification system that may include biometrics or government identification to enforce a social media age cut-off, some of the toughest controls imposed by any country to date. [This is with UK consortium Age Check Certification Scheme, so presumably coming to the UK too. ] The proposals are the highest age limit set by any country, and would have no exemption for parental consent and no exemption for pre-existing accounts.
Other countries don’t require ID, they treat parents like they are smart enough to figure this out:
France last year proposed a ban on social media for those under 15 but users were able to avoid the ban with parental consent. The United States has for decades required technology companies to seek parental consent to access the data of children under 13.
As Theo says on X:
Funny I found out through SOCIAL MEDIA that I had less than 24 hours to make a submission.
The government would like to parent your children for you. The government say they are helping parents, but parents can already ban social media or smart phones, or get apps to help limit or monitor their children’s behaviour. This legislation treats Australian parents like they are children themselves. It will remove parent’s choices.
What about kids in the Australian outback who live far from friends? Too bad if they feel suicidal because their account and online friends are about to be nixed by the government. If only farmers were smart enough to manage their own kids, eh?
What does “Social Media” mean? Whatever the Government wants…
Somehow, thanks to the angels in Parliament, students will still be able to see government funded propaganda at school, the mainstream news, and Google Classroom, but they won’t be allowed to seek out other views on X, Instagram, TikTok, Linked In, Facebook or Youtube. [Apparently, kiddie versions without news feeds, like Youtube kids, and “messaging services” like WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger would be exempt, or maybe “SnapChat”– according to the ABC]. But that’s the point. Google is a political player, as is X, but one of them is banned, and one endorsed. The Conservatives are fools for falling for this.
The definition of “social media” is so broad any platform that allows user interactions (ie. comments) could potentially fall under this ban. (Does that mean blogs like this one?) The responsibility for ensuring all commenters are over 16 would fall on the platform. No one seems able to explain how that works in a global internet. What if Australians use VPN’s (will they ban them too) and what if say, American children genuinely want to read an Australian site, and ask questions? Fines are up to $50 million or jail time.
This could be particularly burdensome or onerous for small bloggers and sites to comply with. Not to mention that readers may not want to speak up if they know their comment is tracked, or their information may be hacked. That’ll put a dampner on things.
The Liberal Party (supposedly conservative) are supporting this legislation. Bizarrely.
It’s the start of your social credit score
In the name of saving children from bullying on Facebook, we’re going to risk giving them a totalitarian dystopia.
 Mandatory ID makes dissent so much more difficult, and that’s the point.
Would you like be a whistleblower or government critic? Just put your face on the camera please. It will be so much easier for the government to track and collate all your comments, and probably guess how you vote.
When hackers steal the data, employers, the CCP, insurance companies, and marketing teams will be happy to buy the details for the right price.
Not so many people will be able to retweet or “like” something risky, so great thoughts and wicked jokes will disappear like a drop of rain in a desert. Unliked, and unshared, and mostly unheard.
Read the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 [Provisions] here (or PDF here). Or just search X for all the views on the social media ban. (While you still can).
So much is unknown. Voice your concerns today!
The goal is always the same: They want control of the media.
The lamestream news already answers to government regulators, and multinational conglomerate investors. But since Elon Musk bought Twitter there is freedom on social media. It’s a disaster for crony capitalists and career socialists.
The Twitter files showed that the CIA was able to get social media giants to shadowban or block the voices they didn’t like. Forced internet ID is just another way to stop free-speech on the internet, especially on X for allowing The People to speak their minds.
Anthony Albanese’s excuse for doing this is so that parents who feel they need to ban their own children don’t have to stand up to teenage peer pressure, they can blame the government instead. We all care about our children, but there must be a better way than a blanket ban which forces every Australian to use ID online.
Instead we could be teaching young children what bullying looks like and how to deal with it. A skill they will need for the rest of their lives, especially against The Government.
Please put in a short submission. It would help if you could also email your local Liberal representative and senator to ask them how they can possibly justify this. There is still time to stop this. If you feel strongly, let Liberal Party members know you will go out of your way to help small independent parties win votes on this free speech issue. Perhaps you could even hand out minor party flyers or How To Vote cards?
Under-16s-ban
9.7 out of 10 based on 83 ratings
By Jo Nova
It’s just another day in an endless round of blockbuster stories that once would have occupied a news cycle and foreign affairs panels for days…
Robert Redfield, the former head of the Centres for Disease Control (CDC), now says COVID-19 was ‘intentionally engineered as a part of a biodefense program. More radically, it may well have been a US program. He thinks there is a real possibility Covid-19 originated in a lab in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
So the virus that may have killed 20 million people, cost trillions, changed history and wreaked havoc across the world, might have grown from a US experiment. This won’t be a shock to people following this topic on blogs and on X. But to have the former head of the CDC during the pandemic talking about it, takes these claims to a whole new level.
Isn’t it time we talked about bioweapon research?
Right now around the world, some 36,000 scientists are working on bioweapons, and those are the scientists we know about. One year ago, a warehouse in California was discovered by chance to be a clandestine biolab that housed frozen samples of things labelled Dengue, Malaria and Ebola.
As RFK Jnr explained it last year — Anthony Fauci was not only a “director of health”, he was also a director of bioweapons.
By Stephen M Lepore for the Daily Mail
 Appearing on the Third Opinion podcast, Redfield flat out stated that COVID-19 was ‘intentionally engineered as a part of a biodefense program.’ However, he calls the United States’ role in the development of the virus ‘substantial.’
He claims that the American government holds responsibility for funding research into the NIH, USAID and the Department of Defense. He then calls out researcher Dr. Ralph Baric from the University of North Carolina, whom he calls ‘the scientific mastermind’ behind all of this.
‘I think he probably helped create some of the original viral lines, but I can’t prove that. But he was very involved,’ he said.
When pressed on whether the virus was ‘actually developed here’ and that the Chinese may have been wrongfully accused of developing the virus, Redfield doubles down.
‘Well, I don’t know if they were framed, but I think there is a real possibility that the virus’s birthplace was Chapel Hill,’ Redfield said, naming the hometown of the University of North Carolina.
Still no one is held to account for the biggest industrial accident in history:
By Jess Thompson, Newsweek
“When you look at the accountability for China, their accountability is not in the lab work and in the creation of the virus. Their accountability is not following the international health regulations after they realized that they had a problem. And allowing people like me at CDC to come in and to help them within 48 hours like they were obligated to, based on the treaty. But the U.S. role was substantial,” he said.
“One is they funded the research both from NIH [National Institutes of Health], the State Department, USAID, and the Defense Department. All four of those agencies helped fund this research. Secondly, the scientific mastermind behind this research is a guy named Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, and he was very involved in this research. I think he probably helped create some of the original viral lines, but I can’t prove that. But he was very involved.”
Newsweek contacted Ralph Baric, the NIH, the State Department and USAID. The latter said they don’t fund “gain-of-function” research. (Though definitions of “gain of function” shrink and expand like elastic bands to fit.) Most officials who disagreed said there was “no evidence” it was man-made. Which is largely true because the CCP destroyed the samples and the digital data, in some cases, before they even admitted anyone was getting sick:
“In August, September [2019], the initial cases of COVID in Wuhan began. Clearly, by the middle of September, there was a significant problem. OK, because—and I can’t remember the exact date. I think it’s in the public domain now, it was classified, but I think it was Sept. 19—but they did three things,” Redfield said.
“They changed the leadership of the lab. So it was a dual-use lab. They changed it from civilian to military. So the military was now put in charge of the lab. They did something highly irregular, which is they deleted the research sequences of COVID viruses that they had done years before. So the whole database was deleted.”
If Covid was a US creation in part or full, or US funded programs were involved, this could explain why no one in the highest layers of medical power in the United States pushed for an investigation in Wuhan. And the UN was useless too.
Redfield, at least admitted he personally should have pushed harder for the CDC to be allowed into the lab at Wuhan.
The original interview was with a Dana Parish — 3rd Opinion podcast released on November 14. Available on X and on Spotify.
h/t Philc
9.3 out of 10 based on 77 ratings
9.9 out of 10 based on 13 ratings
By Jo Nova
Everything just changed. For the first time in Climate Bureaucracy, Nuclear power can save the world too.
Until today, only renewables had the Holy Sacred Power against Climate Change. But last night the UK and US signed a new agreement at COP29 to share “billions of pounds worth of nuclear research” in order to “decarbonize” the world.
They did this backflip in such a tearing rush, they didn’t even have time to phone the Prime Ministers they were offering this bonanza to. They accidentally listed all the countries they expected to sign up, only to find the Australian government is going to an election waving the anti-nuclear flag, while the opposition demons carry the pro-nuclear pennant. Oopsie indeed. The press release was reissued, but the Labor government in Australia are now trying to explain why nuclear power is great in submarines, but too expensive and slow for sites that don’t move and aren’t underwater. It’s entertaining.
Apparently, Australia has too much sunshine, and thus we’re stuck with solar power. We also have the largest uranium reserves in the world, but shh. This is like energy lessons on Sesame Street.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said:
Nuclear will play a vital role in our clean energy future
That is why we are working closely with our allies to unleash the potential of cutting-edge nuclear technology. Advanced nuclear technology will help decarbonise industry by providing low-carbon heat and power, supporting new jobs and investment here in the UK.
Nuclear power is Kryptonite to Renewables
Don’t miss how big this is. Only a year ago France scandalized the world when they dropped their renewables target and fought the EU to get nuclear power accepted as a “low emissions” generator. They had to threaten to scupper the EU’s new Renewable Energy Directive unless the EU included a role for nuclear power.
Renewables groupies hate nuclear power, because it’s everything they want to be but aren’t. Nukes are low emissions, reliable, proven, easy to add to a grid, and they don’t need a caravan of batteries, flywheels, hydro-dams or a 1,000 miles of high voltage lines. Obviously, if nuclear power can save the world from the Carbon Yeti, no one needs to build floating bird killers.
The implication is that renewables are being quietly thrown under a bus. The Blob is backing away slowly from 30 years of “free energy” propaganda. They have blinked, and switched to nuclear, the same obvious solution they could have picked from the start in Rio in 1992. Be prepared as they gaslight the world, hoping they will forget the trillions of dollars poured into the renewable energy port-a-loo.
The Trump factor is already killing sacred cows
The Blob is clearly tripping at full speed here — reacting to the shift in power with Trump’s win.
Ed Miliband may be trying to try to save COP29 from terminal irrelevancy. But the Blob surely knows that the grifter game is up for renewables — now that investors are abandoning them, industries are headed to China, and electricity prices have taken off like one of Elon’s rockets. That and Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle ignored their wind and solar pony showcases and rushed to get nuclear power to feed their pet AIs.
For all we know, the new nuclear plan might have been written the day they released it. How much effort would it have taken for Ed Miliband to mention it to Australia’s Energy Minister (Chris-“Blackout”-Bowen). He didn’t even need to phone him. They’re both at Baku.
Giving away Nuclear technology
The UK Government and the US will be giving away nuclear technology, to speed up deployment of civil nuclear power to “decarbonize industry”. The new agreement would start on March 1 2025, and is (was) expected to be signed by Canada, France, Japan, Republic of Korea, Republic of South Africa, China, Euratom [Europe], Switzerland and Australia. Thus it perfectly wedged the Australian government — which agreed to AUKUS, a nuclear sub sharing program, but is also 100% committed to a Glorious Renewable Future. The US and UK obviously assumed their AUKUS partner would leap at the chance. Instead the updated press release dropped the list of nations.
The UK press release:
The UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and US Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk have today (Monday 18 November) signed a new agreement while in Baku for climate talks that will help pool together billions of pounds worth of nuclear research and development – including the world’s leading academic institutions and nuclear innovators.
New technologies such as advanced modular reactors can help decarbonise heavy industry such as aviation fuel, hydrogen or advanced steel production, by providing low-carbon heat and power. They are also smaller and can be made in factories, making them quicker and cheaper to build.
This will support the commitment made last year at COP28 to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050, with 31 countries signed up including the US and UK.
The UK is reversing a legacy of no nuclear being delivered and moving forward with its advanced nuclear reactor programme and Great British Nuclear’s small modular reactor competition, as well as continuing development of the Sizewell C project. New nuclear will help to secure thousands of good, skilled jobs and support energy independence beyond 2030.
The Australian Energy Minister, clearly caught unprepared, said “No”
A spokesperson for Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who is at the COP meeting, said: “Australia is not signing this agreement as we do not have a nuclear energy industry.
“We recognise that some countries may choose to use nuclear energy, depending on national circumstances.
“Our international partners understand that Australia’s abundance of renewable energy resources makes nuclear power, including nuclear power through small modular reactors, an unviable option for inclusion in our energy mix for decarbonisation efforts.”
…and, we have too much sun.
By Dennis Shanahan, The Australian
When Mr Dutton asked Mr Marles in parliament whether Australia would sign up to the nuclear agreement with Australia’s allies, the Acting Prime Minister said: “I can confirm that the Australian government will not be signing that agreement. For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would represent pursuing the single most expensive electricity option on the planet.”
Mr Bowen also argued that Australia’s longer hours of sunshine compared with the UK meant that Australia had solar-power advantages and nuclear energy was not viable for Australia.
“Put simply, London has only 1633 hours of sunshine in an average year. By comparison, Australia’s least sunny capital city is Melbourne with 2362, while our sunniest capital city is Perth has 3229,” Mr Bowen’s statement said.
For baffled foreigners, the next election in Australia has to be held by May 2025, and looks like it will hinge on nuclear power, which is currently banned in Australia, (largely by accident — because of an incidental Green ten-minute amendment in 1998). Our slow moving Labor diehards were already glued to the renewables-train but the opposition is making nuclear energy a key part of their platform. Polling suggests Australians are not anti-nuclear, but they are anti-electricity-bill-bonfires. So voters seem to find the idea of change appealing.
Ed Miliband, of course, is still raving in a hollow rehearsed way about the unreliable transition, but it is a simple fact that the more nuclear power a grid has, the less wind and solar it wants. In the new world order of Trump — The Australian Labor Party may be the last man standing on unreliable renewables.
10 out of 10 based on 106 ratings
9.7 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
By Jo Nova
Finally, twenty years too late, Australian leaders are talking about the galactic cost of making a spare energy grid that might, maybe, hopefully one day reduce world temperatures by one thousandth of a degree. Sadly they are still not talking about why that’s a pointless quest, why CO2 feeds the poor, warmth is good, humans emissions are irrelevant, or how science has become a turgid swamp patrolled by dead sacred cows. But it’s a start!
We got the trifecta: Our car-crash energy bills, the revolution of common sense in the US, and the appearance of our own election on the horizon have set off the Air-raid sirens to wake a sleeping nation.
It’s only half a trillion dollars
The Minister for Energy says the cost of renewables by 2050 will be $122 billion (AUD). Not convinced, the Opposition commissioned a study that estimates it’s more like $650 billion. But what’s a half a trillion dollars when you have hope, faith, and a fantasy to make storms a bit nicer? It’s a horror show. The Labor Government wants every family of four to spend something like $100,000 on their wind and solar vision over the next 25 years. There goes the house deposit, the uni fees, the family holidays. There goes our lifestyle.
Australian energy is twice the price
Things are so bad here in Renewable Crash Test Dummy World, that the CEO of Glencore said Australian energy costs twice as much as in the US, Canada, China and India. Glencore, is the largest coal miner in Australia, the fifth largest miner in the world, and employs about 140,000 people. Gary Nagle went on to tell the Daily Telegraph that Australia has a bad attitude:
He argued that the negative attitude to coal in Australia was increasingly out of step with other parts of the world.
“Many stakeholders globally are now taking a more pragmatic view about coal,” Mr Nagle said.
It’s such a first world problem. Imagine being the world’s largest coal exporter nation every other year, and spending billions to undermine one of your two largest industries? How did we get here, standing on a plank, sawing the ship off?
Tricked by “free energy” scam
The electricity-fashion-queens chased a vision of fairy-energy so they could win cat-walk parades at the UN, but lose in every other race that matters. The wind and sun appear to be free, but cost us the Earth to collect, and the Universe to store.
All the politicians had to do was get scientists and engineers to debate in public and they would have realized that they can’t keep electricity in a shoe-box, or post it from the Simpson Desert to Sydney harbor. Instead, they employed the yes-men who agreed with the vision, and sacked, silenced or never funded the 1,000 engineers who could have told them it was stupid.
That, and they all watched the ABC:
Robert Gottleibsen, The Australian
Since Federation, Australian ministers on both sides of the parliament have made major mistakes and misleading statements. But nothing in our history matches the looming renewable energy conversion financial disaster.
The Bowen calculations are based on “net present value”, or NPV, which involves calculating the final cost and adjusting it back to the current dollars. But commercial infrastructure projections work on what will actually be outlaid. Frontier have now done those outlay calculations to 2050 for the governments and now the public.
And of course, by 2050 all the windmills and sacred glass panels will be due to expire and we will need to find a very big hole to bury them in, and start again with the fire-hose from the bank account spraying direct to China.
The only hope, as Gottleibsen says, is if the protests from farmers and country towns have glued up the plans enough that we can pull the pin before we sink any more into this pit.
It only makes sense if imaginary “carbon credits” had some value:
So, the state and federal governments devised a system which I would call “rigging the books”. But they would justify it by saying carbon savings had a value which must be counted in the project.
And so, a transmission network hypothetically costing $100m would be given a carbon credit, which would reduce its “cost” substantially and justify investment. Frontier calculates that some $80bn of the $650bn came from these carbon credits.
And this half a trillion doesn’t include half the country (the Western half and the Northern Territory). The price can only rise.
Despite the blockbuster costs, Frontier Economics have almost certainly underestimated the true cost of converting Australia into a third-world nation. The direct costs are bad, but the secondary costs are existential. Once the factories and mines are gone, who is left to defend the green-god ideology?
9.9 out of 10 based on 115 ratings
9.3 out of 10 based on 22 ratings
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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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