Meet other skeptics and celebrate!
With the ongoing battle for logic and reason, it’s easy to forget that saving Australia from an ETS, and slowing the train-wreck in Copenhagen were major successes. Even though the battle to save Peter Spencer is still very much on our minds, it’s time to celebrate.
It’s not often humanity collectively “misses a bullet…”
I’m happy to post contacts in different cities around the world to help connect people who live near each other. If you are willing to be a central point coordinator for your region and to post some contact details please use the thread below to organize events in your area. I’ll update this post with any events or contacts that are generated. Even if it’s just Friday afternoon drinks after work. There is strength in numbers.
See below for: Germany, France, and Australia
Behind the scenes there is a very healthy skeptical community in Perth Australia, and we are planning to meet in the next few weeks, purely for drinks and a shared meal. To express an interest and find out details you’ll need to email me: joanne AT joannenova.com.au. (We’d love to hear from you but please keep emails brief!)
Oops! The price of success
Web traffic rose to massive record for this site in December, and I’m not complaining, but I was not expecting the site costs for December to rise to $678! I thought electrons were cheaper than that. đ Because this site stores many images and large documents for downloading, like the Handbooks and the Timeline there are a vast number of gigabytes being stored and also transferred. According to my web manager for all his accounts: “the next highest account’s bandwidth for a month is generally a max of 10 G.” We hit 280G.
Any contributions to help cover these costs would be most gratefully accepted. Thanks to all the people who have generously helped already.
It’s time to rearrange the way I store and link to images and audio, and possibly to accept more paid offers to write! (For those who are interested – Coding Horror has sharp commentary and I’ll look at AmazonS3 or Photobucket).
Site Handy Hints
I’m working to make the site as user friendly as possible. In case you haven’t noticed it there’s a new Navigation section up at the top of the right hand column with an INDEX, ARCHIVES and links to sources. I’ll be adding a “New-Here?” post soon, as well as moving the Guide for Comments where people find answers about gravatars, comment buttons, html and policies etc.
UPDATE3:Â So far these people below have volunteered to be local contacts for people in their region. (I’ll be updating regularly).
Contacts for social skeptical gatherings
Australia
Sydney
Jim (0417) 285 884: every Thursday evening at Club Five Dock, 66 Great North Road, Five Dock from around 7pm.
Join Jim & Mike for dinner at Club Five Dock. Phone Jim in advance so he can reserve a table. He says: “I’m given to understand, good company, good tucker & the odd ale (or wine) to help stimulate conversation!”
Brisbane
Ruth Bonnett, canmor AT tpg.com.au, Â Â Â Â Ph (07) 3831 8430Â Â Â Â (0407) Â Â Â 580 028
Melbourne
Mike D climategate777 AT gmail.com
Perth
Anne-Kit Littler alittler55 ATÂ gmail.com
France
La Garde Freinet
Ed Hoskins,  edhoskins AT me.com
Pyrenées Orientales
Geoff Chambers, Perpignan,  gmchambers AT orange.fr
Germany –
Pierre Gosselin
Asternweg 1
49605 QuakenbrĂŒck, Germany
E-mail: pierre.gosselin AT t-online.de
http://www.linode.com/
Note the pricing: the smallest option at $20 per month (yankee money, gets cheaper every month) offers 200GB per month transfer (they seem to count data both ways). I’ve used them and the uptime is not quite 100% but very close. They also offer DNS hosting included in the package and a decent set of management tools.
I note that you are hosting in Australia, very patriotic, I’m proud of you, get ready to be hurt bad on price đ even google refuses to host in Australia and that has got to tell you something.
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Definitely check out S3
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Congratulations!
I’m an American living in Germany, and your site has become one of my favourites.
I stop by every day.
Now here’s something from the German daily DIE WELT about Australia:
It says Australia has just had the hottest decade ever. The chart shown is for 2009.
http://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/umwelt/article5735502/Heissestes-Jahrzehnt-der-Geschichte-in-Australien.html#xmsg_comment
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AGW is slowly dying of skepticaemia.
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We in Australia, I believe, have the highest telephony and Internet price structures outside of the Ukraine. Then again where in the world do you pay a monthly fee for a ‘tap’ (gas, electricity, water) in which one does not choose to use, nor want the said service but is forced through a monthly ‘surcharge’ to pay.
As it stands, at least here in the State of Victoria, you have no choice. A ‘collective’ mentality type of thing, with payola and bandits thrown in.
Oh Yes, Progressives and Carpet Baggers, – ‘we spend your hard earned money, because we want to tell you, what you should think’.
Remember, a lot of them were at Copenhagen, spending our hard earned money via our taxes.
‘We’ll spend, but never produce – others will do that for us.’.
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The “Buy me some Chocolate” gag (which I liked fyi) made me think that donations weren’t really a necessity on this site. Hmm… you may need to change that to: This site costs money to run and your donations can help keep it going. Or something like that.
I recently purchased the domain name http://www.bobcarter.info until 2012 to make it easier for people to access Dr Carters site – his old address is a squigley iinet one.
Anyhow, cool I will keep the need for donations in mind when my pay comes in next week. All the best JN.
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I’ve donated my $20 US and hope that others will step up and do the same.
(Obviously, this site is not being backed by Exxon-Mobile đ )
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Thanks Pierre. I’ve updated the post to include your details. I hear that it’s not a good idea to use your email addresses in their pure form on wordpress, so to save you from some spam I write it out…AT…
Pierre Gosselin
Asternweg 1
49605 QuakenbrĂŒck, Germany
E-mail: pierre.gosselin AT t-online.de
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You may have James Delingpole of the UK’s Daily Telegraph to thank for the extra traffic – I found you through a reference on his blog before Christmas and have read avidly ever since (well, all of a month now). I guess I’m not alone as JD’s reader numbers have shot up since Climategate. Anyway I’ve sent ÂŁ20 to help you keep up the good work.
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it has taken the Fin Times to add some facts to the story…and some good quotes…enjoy…
Financial Times: Australian hunger striker fights farming ban
The clearing ban, which covers 109m ha of private property across the country, has allowed the developed worldâs heaviest carbon emitter on a per capita basis to meet its climate change goals, despite a sharp rise in emissions from the countryâs energy and industrial sectors. It has provided Australia with 87.5m tonnes of carbon abatements…
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e19c7c64-fa1b-11de-beed-00144feab49a.html
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Thing is, when Australians like myself buy hosting in Texas for sites that are primarily visited by other Australians it increases the load on the international cables and makes the situation worse. However, I would still recommend that other Australians also host offshore because the price difference (especially for high traffic sites) is huge.
Just in comparison, the top of the line internode business web hosting in Australia is $50 per month for a whole 10GB of transfer (that’s twice the price for 1/20 of the data volume). There’s at least 10 major data centers in Sydney, at least 10 in Melbourne and quite a few in Perth so there is competition in the market. We also have a reasonably wide range of ISPs in this country and plenty of Engineers who can build such things.
If you go to the Macquarie Telecom business hosting page they say:
That’s not a misprint, $1k per month is just considered entry point for any business service in Australia. For the same money at linode I could have a cluster of big servers spread over multiple physical locations. I have no idea why the difference is so large but as each new industry comes along Australia prices herself out of the market, so here it is again.
Oh yeah, and we are spending some billions of government dollars on network infrastructure entirely oriented toward faster download speeds for consumers to sit at home and watch movies on the net. Upload speeds for hosting don’t even get a mention, traffic quotas don’t get consideration, I doubt there’s anyone in our government who understands the concept that for person A to be downloading, then server B must upload the same data. I doubt they understand that affordable hosting in this country would be a great boon to our local business and we could develop productive industry around that (possibly even offering services to overseas companies).
We keep falling back to mining, agriculture and tourism. When the family farmers are out of business and Monsanto owns all our arable land then no doubt agriculture will also be ruled out and all that money will go straight overseas.
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[…] No time to be skeptical about success, […]
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WordPress is quite reasonable in terms of cost and you can get a cheap ISP package to simply get them to redirect to wordpress. My current ISP however has said if I want to upgrade (want more features) itll cost me $50/m for only of a fraction of the services I can get O/S for $6 a month – its crazy.
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Celebrations? Let’s celebrate that we might be seeing some cracks in the holy thesis of Global Warming.
Hosting: I’ve heard some good things about RackSpace and I know some heavily used blogs use them. http://www.rackspace.com/index.php
I think their costs are a lot lower than what you’re paying.
You might also want to look into a couple of affiliate links to books on Amazon.com that you strongly recommend (if any.)
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Another hockey stick! Seems like that’s about all that Team AGW is good for … creating hockey sticks: either their own or on all the sites trying to explain their original hokey stuff. See here for example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/01/a-new-month-new-year-new-decade-new-record/
If Team AGW hadn’t created the first hockey stick, none of these hockey sticks would exist either, nor any skeptic sites too for that matter.
They’re just keeping more and more people busy (and I bet that would show another hockey stick)!
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I use Quadrahosting out of the USA, it costs about A$20 / month (less to pay 12 months up front).
Then I found http://www.enetica.com.au/ – where the prices seem very reasonable, the disk quotas a 10x more than I get at Quadra, and there are no data transfer limits! For less money!
I haven’t migrated over there yet, but I’m seriously considering it when my current plans expire.
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Oops. Forgot – hosting services like this – you install your own copy of wordpress and go. Its a piece of cake to set up.
Migrating an existing wordpress site (and the back end SQL database) to a new service is possible, though a somewhat painful business [this being the voice of experience!].
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Ruth Bonnett
Brisbane Australia
canmor at tpg dot com dot au
I believed Al Gore until someone gently nudged me to read material that had not been made available via the media.
I was at the rally in Canberra, proud to stand beside the farmers. The bullwhips were great!
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Oh, no! Not another GW sceptic denier flat earther blog stats hockey stick graph.
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Jo,
I wish I could get to Perth to help you all celebrate.
May 2010 be just as successful as 2009!!!!
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Yes Allen Ford:
you warmists have hogged the microphone for years and years, now it’s our turn and believe me we sing a much better song because it’s based on fact, not belief.
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the Finacial Times UK has picked up on Spencer’s story.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e19c7c64-fa1b-11de-beed-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
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Maybe get your PDFs out on torrent network?
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janama: “you warmists have hogged the microphone for years and years, now itâs our turn and believe me we sing a much better song because itâs based on fact, not belief. ”
I am not a warmist. It was a joke, Joyce!
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Dear Joanne,
Greetings from Brazil!
I’ve just donated US$20.00, a rather small contribution to your great job.
Please, whenever you can, take some time to check our website’s skeptic section:http://www.midiaamais.com.br/ambientalismo
Best wishes,
Henrique Dmyterko
M@M Columnist & Translations Editor
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For people in Sydney Australia
Contact Jim 0417 285 884, and meet on Thursday evenings at Club Five Dock, 66 Great North Road, Five Dock from around 7pm.
Join Jim & Mike for dinner at Club Five Dock. Phone Jim in advance so he can reserve a table. He says: âIâm given to understand, good company, good tucker & the odd ale (or wine) to help stimulate conversation!â
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oh – ok Allen đ
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Dear Joanne,
Sorry, but it seems I have to post our URL again: http://www.midiaamais.com.br
It’s all in Portuguese, so it may be useful to some of your readers. There one can find more than 30 columns regarding the AGW scam, the Portuguese version of the Skeptics Handbook (by fakeclimate.com), as well as tanslated versions of Melanie Phillips’ blogposts on this subject.
Thanks,
Henrique Dmyterko
Brazil
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Dear, your host’s plan AC-2000 allows 100 gig bandwidth for $88au per month
$88au x 3 for 300 gig = $264au
That’s a nice saving of $414au
PS: GST was my idea, but “never never GST” Johnny W Howard đ
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Good idea. Are there any other Jo Nova fans here in Pattaya, Thailand? As if we need an excuse to meet up for a beer, eh?
I like LB’s “skepticaemia” (at January 5th, 2010 at 10:47 pm).
There’ll be some chocolate dollars going into the pot from me.
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As with most disasters people feel alone. Jo’s site is making a great contribution to knowledge as well as democracy which I believe are synonomous. Rudd and others by stifling one have destroyed the other. It may take bullwhips, Thumbnail, but the web will be the real downfall of all despots over time.
I note Andrew Bolt went on hols for a month and what a month. He was tracking over a million hits but Jo has stolen a march.
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Hi Jo:
You do a great job.
Can I suggest a easy and cheap solution. You are already on wordpress so it is easy.
Just move to http://www.wordpress.com. It has less features but the cost is minimal. You pay $10 for connecting to your website address, and about $30 a year for hosting extra files and no cost for bandwidth usage.
The big guys from CNN and Giga OM network are on them.
Cheers
Suhit
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BTW, just to add, my site http://www.worldisgreen.com is on wordpress.com and has been for many years now.
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Speaking of your success (which is very much deserved), while you have not been specifically named, I’m sure you will be pleased to know that one of Pachauri’s puppets, Bob Ward, has evidently observed (in the U.K. Guardian, no less):
For all this (and more!) pls see:
Pachauri predicts and protests poverty & “powerful lobbies”
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The latest update of contacts.
Australia
Sydney
Jim (0417) 285 884: every Thursday evening at Club Five Dock, 66 Great North Road, Five Dock from around 7pm.
Join Jim & Mike for dinner at Club Five Dock. Phone Jim in advance so he can reserve a table. He says: âIâm given to understand, good company, good tucker & the odd ale (or wine) to help stimulate conversation!â
Brisbane
Ruth Bonnett canmor AT tpg.com.au Ph (07) 3831 8430 (0407) 580 028
France
Ed Hoskins La Garde Freinet edhoskins AT me.com
Germany â
Pierre Gosselin
Asternweg 1
49605 QuakenbrĂŒck, Germany
E-mail: pierre.gosselin AT t-online.de
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Don’t spend it all on chocolate, Jo. Have a beer on me as well.
Cheers!
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Jo, please allow me to help in the US. The email people can use is
mdex(at)prairietech.net
I will help coordinate meetings across the USA.
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I forgot to add (in the spirit of the (time to celebrate) theme
CHEERS!
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Heads up: As Climategate Becomes Pressgate, Questions for the Media at bigjournalism.com
P.S.: Any more details of a meeting in Perth?
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Bernd Felsche,
Interesting to note that they always hide behind the “10 year old emails” as meaning nothing. Yet the most poisonous ones are so recent as to still be smoking.
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Bernd, it will be either Monday 18th or Wednesday 19th January – venue to be announced, and date confirmed once we have a venue.
Let Joanne know your email address if she hasn’t already got it, and you will be kept up to date.
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Sorry, that should be Wednesday 20th, of course – it’s past my bedtime ….
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Sorry. All your efforts will be in vain, because man-made global warming is real. All the pal-reviewed literature says so!
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This is SO un-English, but I’ve posted a link at
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2010/01/spiking-copenhagen.html
and will do the same at the few French and Italian sceptic blogs I know. Don’t expect too much. We Brits don’t travel hundreds of miles to share a few beers with people we agree with. The whole point of moving abroad is to get away from each other. But please print my email. I’m in Perpignan, PyrenĂ©es Orientales.
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I am keen to meet up with skeptics in Dublin, Ireland. Any takers?
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Hi! T
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We were having a good laugh at the posts at work (from both sides of the “debate”) so keep it coming. I though we ( the under 30’s at work anyway) should make you aware that no matter what side is right those in the “skeptics” camp are being change managed. You will go through many stages of this but will most likely not make it to the end state of acceptance before you die. Chin up though, we have your children and will make sure they live in a carbon constrained economy. Also take comfort that they will not want to smoke cancer-sticks, they will tolerate non-white australians and refugees, they will not pray to Jesus to save them and they won’t believe in an intelligent designer of the universe. Please dont let this stop you from “going down” screaming, we’d have to start reading dilbert or something or *heaven forbid* work in your businesses. Love and kisses … đ
[Thanks — we’re saving this comment as a great example of delusional youth “at work”. Your arrogance is unbounded by wisdom. We;re sure you’ll grow out of it when you get old enough to have kids of your own… JN]
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Or, you’ll “re-educate” them, right? Yep, and this will work at least as well as last century’s attempt to remake humankind to fit into a theoretical utopia. (Their record is ~100,000,000 deaths, so that is something to “shoot” for.)
Of, course, it doesn’t matter to you what the facts are: (“no matter what side is right”). You’re so brilliant (in your own mind, anyway) that whatever the “facts” are you will be right. Aren’t the “facts” just whatever you want to believe, anyway?
But that was ancient history, and you don’t have time for anything as boring as history — you’re too busy making the glorious future.
We all hope you grow up before you have to live in the world you are trying to make.
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We (my Aussie husband and I) will be back in Perth the month of November and would be interested in getting together with whomever is interested.
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