Sleepwalking to extinction, or maybe communism?

From Sleepwalking to Extinction. Climate Madness is coming, and to save us Richard Smith says we need an eco-socialist civilization! Jo Nova thinks we need people who can add up numbers.

Capitalism and the destruction of life and earth

Super Typhoon Haiyan has sent a chill through the global nervous system. Thousands dead. Weather scientists in shock. Lives destroyed. The greatest typhoon to touch land in recorded history brings with it more than total destruction. It ups the level of urgency for a new economic paradigm … one that puts the planet first. Radical economist Richard Smith shows us a way out of the “climate madness” about to descend everywhere.

Haiyan was the worst typhoon, — apart from all the worse ones. (Like 1912 ,  18981882 etc etc and those were just the ones in the Philippines.)

So long as we live under this corporate capitalist system we have little choice but to go along in this destruction, to keep pouring on the gas instead of slamming on the brakes, and that the only alternative — impossible as this may seem right now — is to overthrow this global economic system and all of the governments of the 1% that prop it up and replace them with a global economic democracy, a radical bottom-up political democracy, an eco-socialist civilization.

What’s a radical bottom up political democracy if not the kind where every citizen can vote? Is that where cats dogs and chickens vote too? Or is it where everyone votes, but they can only pick a government Richard Smith wants?

In this parallel universe we are all deniers – even Obama

Hansen, McKibben, Obama — and most of us really — don’t want to face up to the economic implications of the need to put the brakes on growth and fossil fuel-based overconsumption. We all “need” to live in denial, and believe in delusions that carbon taxes or some tech fix will save us because we all know that capitalism has to grow or we’ll all be out of work. And the thought of replacing capitalism seems so impossible, especially given the powers arrayed against change. But what’s the alternative? In the not-so-distant future, this is all going to come to a screeching halt one way or another — either we seize hold of this out-of-control locomotive, or we ride this train right off the cliff to collapse.

At least he recognises the carbon taxes and fake free market is not the answer. Too bad he wants to throw out the real free-market too. I guess it’ll have to be state-run — what could possibly go wrong? Bring in the politburo!

The answer is always totalitarian

Emergency Contraction or Global Ecological Collapse?

If there’s no market mechanism to stop plundering the planet then, again, what alternative is there but to impose an emergency contraction on resource consumption?

(How about we wait until we get models that work, and scientists that predict things. Then we could try out some “bottom up democracy”?)

The good news is that Smith says that while we need to impose a martial law on resource consumption (like oil, coal, bricks, mining and metal) it doesn’t mean that we have to go without anything important.

This doesn’t mean we would have to de-industrialize and go back to riding horses and living in log cabins. But it does mean that we would have to abandon the “consumer economy” — shut down all kinds of unnecessary, wasteful and polluting industries from junkfood to cruise ships, disposable Pampers to disposable H&M clothes, disposable IKEA furniture, endless new model cars, phones, electronic games, the lot.

 Somehow your house will be warmed, your old car will keep running, your old phone will turn up (and work), and furniture will appear in your group-share apartment. You will learn to like true retro-rusty-chrome chairs salvaged from 1965.

And who needs Pampers? Richard Smith will come to your house to help wash the nappies, right?

H/t Tom Nelson

10 out of 10 based on 1 rating

141 comments to Sleepwalking to extinction, or maybe communism?

  • #
    Rereke Whakaaro

    I have observed the Communist system from up close. It works. It really does. It is fantastic. If you happen to be one of the 0.0001% of the population at the very top of the pyramid, that is.

    Start climbing quickly folks … you have a lot of other people to climb over, if you want to get to the top. And, you don’t want to be at the bottom of the heap, because of the way that crap responds to gravity.

    Richard Smith has already started his scramble towards the top. You don’t have much time …

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    Yonniestone

    If you want to see Mr Smith’s future vision of a radical bottom up democracy go see the latest “Hunger Games” movie, as Rereke says above it’s great if your one of the few elites.
    We’ve already witnessed our Democracy going bottom up and Socialism having a great time buggering it, yes Democracy will need a lot of therapy after this latest abuse.

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      Luther Bl't

      Smith’s narrative should be welcomed. It is very rare for eco-mentalists to describe the kind of future they really want – which leaves the rest of us supposing it is some over-arching political/ideological hegemony. 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World… take your pick. But it reads like nothing of the sort. For one thing, Smith appears clueless about the financial system; for another, clueless about manufacture and the range of activities that entails.

      Smith’s narrative, then, should be derided. Jo makes a start. It is quite clear that the highly literate, net-savvy, and arguably over-educated Smith is terrified by the Great Unwashed, its habits and customs, who he neither comprehends nor empathizes with – but merely hates because they are not like him.

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    Eddy Aruda

    Global Warming/Climate Change/Climate Disruption is now, and always will be, about two things: power and money. If the government can control the very air that you breath then what is beyond the government’s totalitarian grasp?

    In the US the EPA uses the “sue and settle” routine to usurp the power of the legislative branch and create any rule or policy they want. Mencken’s hobgoblin, global warming, is being used in an attempt to cow us all into submission. It is the equivalent of the one ring of Sauron that will be used to bring them all and in the darkness bind them!

    I have written it before and I will write it again, it always gets down to the money. Fortunately, citizens who live in western countries and are expected to bear the brunt of the costs to fund this power grab tend to react strongly when their pockets are picked and their bank accounts are robbed.

    In the end, it is the motivation for self preservation by the taxpayer that will end this scam. No noble or lofty motives or scientific discoveries will engender the fall of the greatest scam of all times. Instead, it will be the self interest of the individual, the cornerstone of capitalism, that will end this fraud.

    That is just my humble opinion.

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    • #
      Konrad

      Self interest will play a significant role in ending the AGW scam, but not just financial self interest. People care about their public reputation. For the hoax to survive it needs a continuous influx of new believers. As more people realise that the hoax is collapsing, fewer and fewer will want to be publicly associated with it.

      While the self interest of taxpayers is a force working to end the hoax, the self interest of the believers is working to keep it afloat. The politicians want their taxes, the subsidy farmers want their handouts and all the fellow travellers want their public reputations and careers intact. It is the public reputation thing that seems to be the greatest problem. Global warming has been in effect a global IQ test with results permanently recorded on the Internet. Many of the AGW fellow travellers are no longer interested in saving the planet, they are now just trying to save their own hides.

      The problem is every public figure of the Professional Left has chained their reputation to the hoax. Worse, this being the age of the Internet, the record of their shameful attack on science and democracy is permanent. Every activist, journalist or politician of the left faces the horror of going down with the hoax. All those that vilified sceptics have no hope of an exit strategy. You don’t get to claim “noble cause” when you have called people “holocaust deniers” to silence them. So they fight on, shrieking louder, trying to delay the inevitable just that little bit longer.

      The problem for the Professional Left is that they chose a scientific hypothesis as their stalking horse, and the answer is black or white. Either adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduces the atmospheres radiative cooling ability or it increases it. This is not a typical political issue where subjective interpretation can salvage public reputation and relevance. This is not a typical media issue where the lame stream media can simply play “issue fade and replace”, as this is the Internet age and the lame stream media are no longer the gate keepers of opinion.

      There is no hope of the AGW hoax surviving. It is now just their self interest regarding public reputation and relevance that keep the Professional Left fighting on. The bitterness of some like Richard Smith is telling. AGW was supposed to be the Professional Left’s the perfect “gotcha” against free market democracy. Instead the hoax will destroy them.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien

      Here in Australia in 1986 the Marxist Hawke government, (few believe it was Marxist, you know, but it was) in 1986 put its own brand of “social scientists” in charge of the real scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, the CSIRO. The national president of the ALP (which should never be dignified with the title of Australian Labor) was appointed chairman of the CSIRO.

      From that point on money was only the tool.

      Their primary objective was and is to destroy the value of money, no matter what the cost.

      Their initial proposal for an ETS sought to tax Agriculture’s very poorly researched recycled “emissions” on the same basis as fossil emissions. This would have quickly bankrupted Australia’s grazing industries, within two years. That in turn would have rendered the 60% of Australia’s land area used for grazing economically valueless, enabling the government to direct that land into new ownership of their choosing without compensating the current owners.

      Agriculture was the last sector of the Australian economy still dominated by small business. In the last 30 years 100,000 farmers, around 35%, have been forced out of business.

      The really worrying thing about this is that in the Australian federal parliament only one man of the 225 odd representatives could see this. But for him it would have passed quickly into law.

      He is the only small/medium business accountant in the parliament. The rest of the commerce degrees are money grubbers.

      As for “sue and settle”. We have that here too in a big way. There the flaw in the system is the outrageous fees paid to lawyers without holding them responsible for their errors/scams.

      Konrad. Even if the hoax doesn’t survive, it has already achieved a lot of its goals.

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    Pathway

    And those of you who have disarmed yourselves will have a hard time stopping the slaughter. Here in the good old US of A there are 100,000,000 people who own 300,000,000 guns with which we take target practice on a regular basis.

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    • #
      bullocky

      ‘In the US the EPA uses the “sue and settle” routine to usurp the power of the legislative branch and create any rule or policy they want.’ – Eddy Aruda

      and,

      ‘Here in the good old US of A there are 100,000,000 people who own 300,000,000 guns with which we take target practice on a regular basis.’ – Pathway

      It would seem that, in a system where these two features conspicuously co-exist, some genuinely skeptical thinking needs to be applied.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Yep, the good ol’ U S of A. – Protect your right to arm bears.

      Owning a gun makes you totally safe. Owning three of them makes you three times totally safer.

      Just don’t work for the Postal Department.

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      • #
        bullocky

        Yes, Rereke.
        Undoubtedly, Richard Smith would be much more comfortable in the EPA environment.

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      • #
        Mark D.

        Yes, and which one you put to use depends on what kind of party you are goin’ to.

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        Robert

        Owning a gun makes you totally safe.

        While it is unfortunate that there are those who actually believe that, many of us who own firearms hope and pray we never have to actually fire it at anything more than a paper target or something we plan on eating. For those like me it is more along the lines of if things collapse to the point where I need to protect myself from others who may be armed I prefer to be able to respond in kind. It also helps in that it does make it easier to take down something that may end up being dinner for the next few weeks than trying to throw rocks at it.

        In the end it really is true that it isn’t the gun that’s dangerous, it is the owner. Some are responsible, others are not.

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      Safetyguy66

      Our willingness in Australia to hand over our personal safety to 20 year olds in cheap blue uniforms with cheap blue training is disturbing to say the least. We are a sheep like culture with too much trust and not enough anger.

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        Col A

        I am glad to live in a society where we are not so afraid to walk the streets without getting shot by some random with an itch to pacify.
        I have been in countries where there are 2 security guards outside every 7/11 store – 20 year olds in cheap blue uniforms with cheap blue training holding pump action shotguns WITH ATTITUDE!! NO thanks!

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        David

        You mean the 20 year olds who are prepared to put their own safety on the line for yours?

        A better system than one with too many people with firearms and too much anger.

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  • #
    Greg Cavanagh

    All I see is the ranting’s of a mad man. I sure hope he doesn’t get into a position of authority.

    On another board I visit regularly (which will remain unnamed). It’s surprising just how many people believe socialism of some sort, is the answer to all of our social problems.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      It’s surprising just how many people believe socialism of some sort, is the answer to all of our social problems.

      That is because they haven’t really experienced what it is like. To them it is all soft and wooly fluffy bunnies stuff, where everybody has all they need, living in perfect harmony.

      The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is looking for ways of getting foreign currency. They are also building several amusement parks. Perhaps some enterprising soul in the capitalist west, could find a way of putting these two things together as a novel form of holiday for foreigners with a hankering after the real socialist life.

      Best to take your own food though. The locals only get a ration of half a cup of rice a day. On the plus side, it is organic whole grain rice.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      And for the removal of all doubt, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is what most of us would call North Korea. The “Democratic” part is a joke. The “Peoples” part is a bigger joke, because the whole place is run (very badly), by the Kim family, using the machiavellian technique of randomly removing (and disappearing) the odd functionary, from time to time. It keeps the rest of them on their toes.

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        Ross

        That is because they haven’t really experienced what it is like. To them it is all soft and wooly fluffy bunnies stuff, where everybody has all they need, living in perfect harmony.

        But RW those Greenpeace guys&gals now in St Petersburg are finding out what it could be like , thanks to abit of Putin “education”.
        I read they are complaining of cold cells and being locked up for 23hrs/day!! I think they seriously expect preferential treatment because they are “activists” –the real world shouldn’t apply to them.

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          Justin Jefferson

          LOL yeah the global warming isn’t so bad in a Russian prison cell. It’s not actually truly global LOL.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          I hope they like the taste of cold Borscht Soup.

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          Sceptical Sam

          I thought they’d all been released, except for the Tasmanian eco-socialist who has fallen in love with his cell; and is worried that Tony Abbott might phone Mr Putin and ask him to send him back to the unemployment State.

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            Sceptical Sam

            For the record – the Tasmanian hooligan got bail today. He’s the last one.

            Tasmanian greens are obviously the slowest of them all.

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        Greg Cavanagh

        Of the little I’ve read of NK. People don’t “disappear”. They are publicly executed, and family and friends of the victim are forced to watch.

        Anybody knowing anything of NK, would not in a blue fit go there for a holiday.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Yes [sigh], you are quite right. I toned it down because this is supposed to be a family friendly blog.

          Anybody knowing anything of NK, would not in a blue fit go there for a holiday.

          Less than a week ago, the US State Department reported that the NK Security Police had arrested an 85-year old American citizen as he was boarding a plane to fly out of Pyonyang, having spent about a week in the country on a tourist visa. It seems that the tourist was a US Korean War veteran, and that fact was picked up by the Police.

          This is where Richard Smith wants to take us, folks … keep climbing.

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          • #
            David

            G’day RW,

            A good friend of mine [now sadly gone to God] went on a Group Tour to North Korea in 1950. Said he thoroughly enjoyed it apart from the food. He was with 3RAR.

            : – )

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      • #
        Neville

        RW said:

        The “Democratic” part is a joke. The “Peoples” part is a bigger joke …

        Nicely said, Rereke. I thought I was about the only one who held the same view! For over 25 years now, I’ve (rather tongue-in-cheek) expounded “Neville’s Law of Politicised Country Names”, viz, “Any country that has, in any part of its official name, the words “people’s”, “democratic”, or “republic” … isn’t!”

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  • #

    According to CAGW theory, once global temperatures have risen above two or three degrees, we will pass various tipping points. The costs in terms for extreme weather, accelerating sea levels and random changes in climatic systems will be many times greater than anything that we should be experiencing with less than a degree of warming.
    Given that there have always been naturally-occurring random extreme weather events, the implication a single extreme event is not evidence of the coming catastrophe. It is only by establishing the faint signal in the natural variation through increasing frequency and magnitude through careful research. This idea I show graphically here.
    As for the overthrow of the capitalist system as a solution. With over 100 million dead from such revolutions in the last century, any slight application of the precautionary principle would cause any sane person to literally avoid it like the plague. Many will remember the Ethiopian famine of 1984. What many do not realize that the most of the hundreds deaths were caused by the collectivization of agriculture. What is even more horrific is that this famine does not even figure in the top ten of worst communist-inspired famines.

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    • #

      With respect with the issues of deciphering the costs of catastrophic warming from the current faint signals, Richard S.J. Tol poses an even greater problem. Through a review of the literature, he finds that warming is slightly net beneficial up to 2 degrees of warming, before going sharply net negative. So, if you follow the cost models of the World’s leading experts in their field, evidence of future climate catastrophe should be also from the current beneficial effects of warming. For instance, for every 1,000 additional deaths above trend due to more extreme weather, there should be more than 1,000 less deaths than in the past, due to, for example, milder winters in Britain and Northern Europe.

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  • #
    blackadderthe4th

    Haiyan was the worst typhoon, — apart from all the worse ones. (Like 1912 , 1898, 1882 etc etc and those were just the ones in the Philippines.)

    1822
    ‘highest velocity wind registered, 144.4 miles an hour’

    Sep 20, 1906
    Destructive Typhoon in the Philippines.Vessels wrecked.1000 lives lost in Hongkong

    ‘12 May 1913
    TYPHOON IN PHILIPPINES.FIFTY-EIGHT LIVES LOST.EXTENSIVE DAMAGE.’

    ‘3 Sep 1920
    TYPHOON IN PHILIPPINES.MUCH DAMAGE DONE.’

    27 June 1925
    TYPHOON IN PHILIPPINES. ELEVEN PEOPLE KILLED.

    I don’t think you’ve picked the best sources, Jo! because it mostly shows that typhoons are now stronger, well the recent one was!

    ‘The Science of Typhoon Haiyan…’

    ‘With winds of 310kph and the strongest typhoon ever measured! And leaves many to speculate about the role the changing climate played in the formation of these storms…they form under warm ocean water…Haiyan traveled over waters higher than average…importantly water below the surface 100m below was a whole 3 degrees warmer then average.. this is an important clue…it was a perfect storm.’

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdGtZ73famg

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      What instrumentation was used to measure Haiyan?

      Was it a modern electronic differential pressure gradient monitor, or was it a mechanical anemometer?

      The reason I ask, is that there have been multiple historical incidences in the South China Sea where typhoons were so strong that they broke the anemometer, so the speed needed to be guesstimated. Hence the very rough (and unscientific) press reports of body count, as a measure of severity, rather than the actual measured speed.

      So your assertion that, “… it mostly shows that typhoons are now stronger, well the recent one was!”, is not valid, because it is more likely to be caused by precision variance in the measuring technique than in any objective variation.

      As you say, Haiyan was, “… the strongest typhoon ever measured”, but that is possibly only true, because prior to Haiyan, we did not have the means to measure any storms that strong.

      Occams razor.

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      • #
        blackadderthe4th

        ‘Was it a modern electronic differential pressure gradient monitor, or was it a mechanical anemometer?’ no idea!

        ‘so the speed needed to be guesstimated’, yes well best proxies, other than body count, were no doubt used to give a figure for the speed! Anyhow that does not distract that Haiyan was the strongest recorded!

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          You really have no conception about logical thinking, do you?

          Can you not see that your statement is a logical fallacy? New technology made it possible to measure this particular typhoon, so it becomes extra specially scary for you, just because it could be measured, and for no other reason whatsoever.

          Other typhoons caused considerably more damage and greater loss of life, but they could not be measured because of the technology available at the time, so they don’t count in your warped view of the world.

          It is the magnitude of the number that you find frightening, not the results inflicted on the locals who had to suffer yet another storm of this magnitude, and you use that number, and therefore their suffering and grief, to score political points. That is the action of somebody who is seriously warped, in their world view. I have zero respect for you.

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        blackadderthe4th

        ‘Occams razor’. indeed! As it is well accepted that co2 is a GHG and man has increased the level from 280ppm to about 400ppm, in the past 50 years and the global temperatures have increased. Then by applying Occam’s Razor, the simplest answer is usually the correct one, that must mean co2 is causing the current global warming! And anything else just plays a bit part in the overall scheme of things and can be discounted!

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        • #

          BA We are bored of your mental inability to accept the plain basic truth that we have told you 50 times. Hansen 1984, Bony 2006, IPCC 2007, over and over they all agree that CO2 causes 1 degree of warming per doubling, and all the warming above that comes from assumptions about feedbacks of which there is no evidence. If you want to keep posting here you need to stop posting primary school arguments which only show you are in denial.

          Your occams razor argument is wrong in any case. The simplest argument is that the climate has always changed, was changing before our CO2 emmissions, and the rate has not increased. Therefore CO2 probably has little net effect.

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    • #
      MemoryVault

      importantly water below the surface 100m below was a whole 3 degrees warmer then average..

      So HOW did heat energy allegedly formed in the ATMOSPHERE, by accumulated man-made CO2, end up a 100 metres below the sea surface?

      Do you see the problem, Dribblebladder?

      All sorts of things can cause the oceans to warm, but atmospheric heat isn’t one of them.
      There can’t be a NET transfer of energy FROM the atmosphere, TO the oceans.
      The observed and measured NET flow of energy is FROM the oceans, TO the atmosphere.

      So even if there was NO human race, and NO man-made atmospheric CO2, whatever caused the oceans to be warmer (if this claim is, in fact, true), would STILL have made them warmer.
      And IF this warmer water WAS the cause of the typhoon (conjecture), then there would STILL have been a typhoon, of precisely the same proportions.

      .
      Humans, and CO2 from whatever source, have absolutely nothing to do with it.

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        blackadderthe4th

        ‘So HOW did heat energy allegedly formed in the ATMOSPHERE, by accumulated man-made CO2, end up a 100 metres below the sea surface?’

        Could it be something like this?

        ‘Warming is going on the human fingerprint is clear in the data, but there are other things that are also in the game, the top figure there which has the global temperature the one below is the El Nino influence. If you put a huge amount of hot water in the middle of the Pacific, the atmosphere can’t heat it up very easily. If you put a huge amount of cold water in the Pacific the atmosphere can heat it up easily and so whether the heat is going mostly into the atmosphere or the ocean for the short term is influenced by El Nino and La Nina and in the last decade much of the heat has been going into the ocean and less into the atmosphere. This is something that wobbles…ultimately the ocean and the atmosphere have to be coupled and it is simply how much warming is already been realised in the atmosphere…the long term picture yes heat is still accumulating in the earth’s system with high confidence, no there hasn’t been a stop in global warming…where did it go and there is finally the ability to make statements about heat going into the deep ocean, the Argo floats and other advances have come just in time…I think this is fair to say that this is just enough to see what is going on…a lot of heat has got into the ocean and it’s gotten pretty far down…that’s really deep!’ R Alley.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbQkFXYGmos

        And

        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/pacific-ocean-warming-15-times-faster-than-ever-before-8916297.html

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “water below the surface 100m below was a whole 3 degrees warmer then average”

      Average over how long.. Argo has only be operating since 2003.

      Please show the full data and specific measurement system that allows anyone to make that statement.

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    • #

      BA. your blindness to the facts is truly cult-like. Thank you so much for fearlessly coming here as a case study on display.

      I said “worse”:

      1912 – 15,000 lives lost
      1898 – 7,000 lives lost
      1882 – barometer 727. (Haiyan 895)

      1882 “Observatory says lowest barometer at 11.40 a. m., 727.60 ; highest velocity wind registered, 144.4 miles an hour. Unable to measure greatest velocity of typhoon as anemometer damaged.” cf. Haiyan wind speed:146mph. So 130 years of CO2 “pollution” may have raised wind speeds by 1.6mph, or then again…. maybe not.

      Your ability to follow those links and see what your brain wanted too, and to cherry pick, knows no bounds. But perhaps thousands dying doesn’t make it “worse” for you eh?

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        Safetyguy66

        Its amazing isn’t it.

        I always point out to anyone who want to spew the argument “its not about isolated events, its about long term trends” as eco-loons are want to do when they are not arguing the exact opposite (eg. Adamn Bandt Tweets) this little gem… Make sure you read the whole thing because the comments on cyclones etc and related local conditions are interesting too. I love how some science bodies accidently talk sense when they are not relating it to AGW.

        http://www.bom.gov.au/lam/climate/levelthree/c20thc/temp1.htm

        So as Jo says…. and the same in reference to this example.

        90 years more GHG and we have…. wait for it…. wait for it….

        The record of 1923/24 still stands.

        I can hear Jamie and Adam right now…. Myth Busted….

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        Andrew

        I’ll go right out on a limb and say that the 727 barometric reading was a malfunction.

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        blackadderthe4th

        FAO Jo.

        ‘I said “worse”’. yes but amongst the sources given where a lot that were insignificant!

        ‘Haiyan wind speed:146mph’, I think not, the speeds I’ve seen are 200 plus! ‘So 130 years of CO2 “pollution” may have raised wind speeds by 1.6mph,’ well I make it 60 plus!

        ‘But perhaps thousands dying doesn’t make it “worse” for you eh?’ well there are many factors to consider not just the body bag count! If the storm lands in a sparsely occupied area then the ‘damage’ will be less, so there will be less body bags but the area may be devastated!

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          When you discuss wind speed, mph is not equal to kph. And a gust is not the same as sustained wind speed.

          Windspeeds recorded by the US navy are over water and faster than ones over land, and they also now measure in 1 minute average intervals, whereas I hear the Philippines govt method is the usual 10 minute averaging. These types of wind speeds are not comparable.

          The U.S. Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said shortly before the typhoon made landfall that its maximum sustained winds were 314 kilometers per hour (195 mph), with gusts up to 379 kilometers per hour (235 mph). Those measurements are different than local weather data because the U.S. Navy center measures the average wind speed for 1 minute while local forecasters measure average for 10 minutes. ref

          Perhaps it had the strongest 1 minute sustained speeds, but how long have we been recording 1 minute wind speeds? Not long. Nancy in 1961 was stronger, but there are questions over the accuracy.
          This is another of the mindless alarmist scaremongering labels. Haiyan wasn’t the most deadly, it wasn’t the largest, the costliest, the lowest pressure, didn’t have the largest storm surge, nor was it the longest lasting Category 5.

          Thanks for establishing that dead people are not as important to you as dead “areas”. Case closed.

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      Heywood

      *Yawn*

      “With winds of 310kph and the strongest typhoon ever measured”

      Nope. Check your references again. Pay particular attention to the words ‘estimate’, ‘modelled’, ‘likely’ and ‘unofficially’.

      “Haiyan’s strongest winds occurred on the south shore of Samar Island and the city of Guiuan (population 47,000), where the super typhoon initially made landfall with 1-minute average winds estimated at 195 mph. This estimate came from the Joint Typhoon Warning Center, and was based on satellite measurements. We have no ground level or hurricane hunter measurements to verify this estimate. Typhoon and hurricane maximum wind speed estimates are only valid for over water exposure, and winds over land are typically reduced by about 15%, due to friction. This would put Haiyan’s winds at 165 mph over land areas on the south shore of Samar Island.

      165MPH = 265 km/h

      http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/article.html?entrynum=2577

      “Haiyan traveled over waters higher than average”

      Nope again. Try harder.

      http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/early-typhoon-haiyan-ssta-monthly.png

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      To my knowledge (I can be corrected) four storms have been measured below 880 mbar. All were Pacific typhoons, one was in 1958 and the others in the 1970s. (Of course, one of them was Tip.) Haiyan appears to be distinguished by wind speed, which may have been a record, but probably not. Hard to know, since a storm like Camille in 1969 was likely to bust the measuring gear once it got to 310 kph.

      Typhoon Nancy in 1961 still looks like having the highest measured windspeed, at 345 kph. Ida in 1958 was one of those four which measured below 880 mbar. Both of these hit Japan. The most damaging typhoon for Japan, however, was Vera 1959, a cat 5 at landfall. It failed to weaken as it went north because of…abnormally warm surface water!

      If the above three close Japanese events were to occur now (sadly, no reason why they should not) we can be in no doubt what the Klimatariat would do with it all.

      Anyway, let’s hope that the magicians who can manipulate climate by sending money down the European Insinkerator don’t dial in summer weather like that which afflicted the tropics and beyond between the late 1950s and 1970s. Not that Wilma, Andrew, Megi and Haiyan have been much better.

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        Mark D.

        Let me agree with you and others above that point out that we have only very recently accurately logged wind speeds for these NATURAL phenomenon. In fact the winds are calculated by (you guessed it) using models.

        Now what would they have done 100 years ago if we even ever heard about the ones with even higher wind speeds, that never made land, or made land in extremely remote areas.

        Today what do the propagandists say? Oh I know, they’d say “unprecedented in RECORDED history”.

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      handjive

      Nice list, blackadderthe4th.

      Further evidence that a carbon(sic) tax doesn’t work.

      25 years of world wide carbon taxes, culminating in the ‘perfect storm’ as you call it.

      Australia still has a carbon(sic) tax waiting to be repealed, yet we have this typhoon as you point out. How does this carbon(sic) tax work?

      Should we expect a calmer climate of say, 1822 from your list, when winds were only 144.4 mph?

      If only BA4 could point out a decline in world wide cyclones/typhoons/hurricanes because of 25 years of carbon(sic) taxes, the debate would be over.

      If only …

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        blackadderthe4th

        ’25 years of world wide carbon taxes’ since when have we had 25years of carbon taxes? I must admit this is a new one on me!

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      Maverick

      It was the 28th strongest in the Western North Pacific Ocean region.

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        Safetyguy66

        As Western NSW continues to suffer through a completely ordinary drought (its Western NSW for pitties sake, go have a look at it). Christine Milne warns of the dangers of a hotter, wetter world. I guess she forgot that Timmeh only recently said it would never rain again. Oh what a tangled web we weave children.

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        ROM

        Lots of hand wringing and unsupported speculation based on nothing more than unverified, unvalidated climate models which are being used as the supposed reasons why Typhoon Haiyan was so devastating.
        Nobody, most particularly the alarmists, seem to want to recall the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in the Bay of Bengal which swept into what was then East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

        Even here in Australia I can’t recall much appearing in the media of the times and that media then was somewhat less loose with the truth compared to the standards of the highly inventive and selective non fact reporting of today

        In 1970 East Pakistan’s [ Bangladesh ] population was just over 59 millions so a loss of half a million lives terrible as that death toll was, was also a significant percentage of the population in 1970.

        In 2011 Bangladesh’s population had reached over 173 million

        Following the Bohla Cyclone and the civil revolt and the supporting Indian invasion which destroyed the West Pakistan armed forces stationed in East Pakistan which led to Bangladesh severing it’s link with Pakistan in 1971, the Bangladeshi Government has built large elevated concrete cyclone shelters right along the low lying delta region of Bangladesh. [ example here and images ]
        These Cyclone shelters have saved an immense number of lives over the last 30 or 40 years as Cyclones regularly sweep out of the Bay of Bengal and make landfall in mostly the more northern areas of the Bay where Bangladesh is located on the largest river delta on earth.
        The Delta which extends into Indian territory is created from the combined waters of the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers which bring immense tonnages of silt down to the Delta, silt that is the result of the steady erosion by their source head waters in the Himalayan ranges on the high Himalayan Plateau.
        _______________
        Quoted from Wiki

        The 1970 Bhola cyclone was a devastating tropical cyclone that struck East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and India’s West Bengal on November 12, 1970. It remains the deadliest tropical cyclone ever recorded, and one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern times.[2]
        Up to 500,000 people lost their lives in the storm, primarily as a result of the storm surge that flooded much of the low-lying islands of the Ganges Delta.[1] This cyclone was the sixth cyclonic storm of the 1970 North Indian Ocean cyclone season, and also the season’s strongest, reaching a strength equivalent to a strong Category 3 hurricane.
        The cyclone formed over the central Bay of Bengal on November 8 and traveled north, intensifying as it did so. It reached its peak with winds of 185 km/h (115 mph) on November 11, and made landfall on the coast of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) the following afternoon.
        The storm surge devastated many of the offshore islands, wiping out villages and destroying crops throughout the region. In the most severely affected upazila, Tazumuddin, over 45% of the population of 167,000 was killed by the storm.

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    Richard (DICK to you and me) Smith obviously doesn’t realise that his utopia exists right now.

    IT’S CALLED NORTH KOREA

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    bobl

    This is about as communist as it gets, it didn’t work for the soviet union, what makes Richard think it’ll work for the world? Where do you go if the tyrannical government is a world one?

    The people are total nutcases.

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    sl149q

    The high cost (in deaths) from the “super” typhoon is poverty.

    That was in turn caused by a failure in governance.

    Some areas in that part of the world do spectacularly well (Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, etc) and some don’t.

    A command and control government is not common to the success stories.

    Create a way for capitalism to take hold and it will. And that will generate the money to protect people from natural disasters.

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    Safetyguy66

    Its amazing to me that the very things Hayek wrote about, in studying post second world war Europe’s descent into socialism and totalitarianism are lessons that most Western Governments not only refuse to learn from, they barely acknowledge their existence as threats to free society.\

    In many ways the transition to National Socialism in Germany through the 1930s, mirrored the paths countries like the USA and Australia are on right now (though we have been given a brief reprieve from the transition). Groups who operate on the absolute certainty that their interpretation of life is not only unassailabley(word?) correct, but that it is so beyond any questioning that it must be imposed on everyone and anyone who dissents, should be silenced quickly and violently.

    There is so little difference between the rhetoric of people like Christine Milne and Adolf Hitler that it is chilling, only the basic subject matter differs. He spoke about foreign workers polluting the gene pool and taking German jobs. For Christine its filthy humans polluting the planet and taking the resources that should rightly belong to polar bears and Leadbeater’s possums. What they agree on is, that opposition views should be crushed ruthlessly using the full extent of Government power to bring them to heel or wipe them out.

    “Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.”
    ― Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom 1943

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      Gbees

      What the Nazis were very good at was propaganda. Under Goebells they tricked the Jewish people into relocating to a better place which turned out to be the gas chambers, they conned the populace (for a while) into believing that nothing horrible was happening, then they convinced millions of Germans to go along with it. Such is the power of mass propaganda controlled by a totalitarian government and supported by sympathizers. People like Smith would have us believe that people like him know best. Just another closet totalitarian who should be exposed.

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      john robertson

      Those who deny history, refuse to teach it to their children, are doomed to repeat it.
      Eco-socialim? 1930s Germany here we go again.
      The question of Germany, how did a civilized, industrial modern democracy degenerate into the madness?
      Well I guess this time we will get to experience that madness in slow motion world wide.
      The UN needs eviscerated, that organization was created to allow more “jaw jaw” to avoid the madness of rampant nationalism,lunacy of imposing same solutions for everyone nonsense.
      Today the UN is the source of the same madness.
      Cure the UN now or suffer the “Peace in our time” cycles again.
      Any organization this corrupt, becomes the heart of a darkness, in the affairs of men.

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    bobl

    Margot, Blackadder the 4th… Does Richard solution suit you? Is this what you want?

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    Bones

    A friend from Ireland sent me the holiday photos of his trip to CUBA.From the eco description in this post cuba is what the new world order would look like

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    Mark D.

    And who needs Pampers? Richard Smith will come to your house to help wash the nappies, right?

    The likes of Richard Smith have been around before. They have no intent of helping anyone with nappies. You can bet they have a plan for that and it involves severe limits on childbirth.

    I urge people to follow the first link and then look at the “about us” page at PopularResistance.org . This is what we are up against…….

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      Greebo

      The likes of Richard Smith have been around before. They have no intent of helping anyone with nappies. You can bet they have a plan for that and it involves severe limits on childbirth.

      They have indeed. The term ‘Holdomor’ springs to mind. That sorts out overpopulation nicely.

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    James

    Always another Luddite just around the corner spreading hate, fear and ignorance because they can’t cope with a continually evolving world – well all I say is – those that don’t do any of the rowing are the only ones that have time to rock the boat.

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    Bite Back

    This is no longer in the realms of politics or science. We’re drugging ourselves with something that will carry us to oblivion as a civilization. To believe this stuff you have to be on something strong enough to stop ordinary everyday thinking ability. Nearly everyone on Earth can manage their life better than to go along with this. Yet when someone puts on the robe of expertise, thinking is immediately suspended. Are we an intelligent life form or an amoeba?

    If someone wants to suggest jackasses I might go along with that. But what is the matter with ordinary everyday thinking ability?

    Each expert competes with all the others to make the worst prediction of our future, the most severe proposal for a solution — and to make the most points with the in-group. If these fools have to actually live under the conditions they decree for the rest of us they’ll build themselves a loophole to get out of it faster than you can read this sentence.

    It’s time to fight, Australia. It’s time to fight, America. It’s time to fight, European Union. It’s time to fight, Africa. It’s time to fight, fight, fight… …everywhere to fight.

    Does no one understand that one severe storm does not make a trend? Does anyone have the thousands of years worth of storm history it takes to know that this one storm is the worst one in some period of time so as to permit making such a judgment?

    Give them a 1 finger salute and then fight them!

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    Robert

    My wife had the benefit of a communist education, and was lucky to get one because she was a child of a former bourgeois family whose assets were taken away. At a personal level it was not possible to discuss anything much with anyone because you would be “dobbed-in” by family members, neighbours, the general public.

    My father-in-law, an economist, commented to me that the system was so inefficient, essentially one had someone actually working and another 3 or 4 “minders” watching. That’s what communism was, great on paper, but in practice a bird of another feather; it’s a pity that the many lefties cannot experience what is really was like.

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      Bite Back

      Robert,

      it’s a pity that the many lefties cannot experience what is really was like.

      I think that if we stay on the road we’re on, many of them will have ample opportunity to know what it was like.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      I was once told a joke by a Russian:

      “Why do the KGB go around in threes?

      Well, one can read, and one can write, and the other is there to watch the intellectuals”.

      Apparently, the Russians have another joke, but they are keeping it in reserve.

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      Greg Cavanagh

      If the lefties did experience what is really was like under communism, they wouldn’t be lefties 🙂

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        Franny by Coal light

        It’s OK for other people. Take the money from the capitalists (or anyone who has it) and pass a little of it to the people, but just enough to keep them alive & dependent.

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      I had the “benefit” of spending 10 days in the GDR (German Democratic Republic) as an adult in 1987. That was more than sufficient education, thank you!

      Here’s a short list:
      * Lack of initiative
      * “Innovation” by political decree
      * Ineffective use of resources
      * Widespread, sanctioned environmental pollution
      * Delapidation and decay
      * Underemployment
      * Shortages of “luxury goods” like bananas, oranges, door handles, window glass, cement, etc.
      * One size fits all for all commodities
      * Oppression of individualism
      * Destruction of trust within the family unit
      * Freedom only to laud the State
      * Strict controls on personal movement
      * Bureaucrats arbritary actions have the force of law

      The good point:
      * Anything could be bought for hard currency; regardless of shortages.

      For me, the best bit was being able to leave the country. Citizens did not enjoy such privileges; except the Merkels and the like.

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        gbees

        Good God Bernd! sounds like labor under Rudd-Gillard-Rudd …

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        You aren’t a pilot are you Bernd?
        “* Bureaucrats arbitary actions have the force of law” describes CASA perfectly in Australia in 2013.

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          Mike,

          Unfortunately it doesn’t take communism/socialism to enable bureaucrats’ arbitrary actions having the force of law.

          All it takes is for people to accept it unquestioningly. It starts with the bureaucracies that are “doing the right thing for people”; e.g. “looking after the environment” and “protecting children”. Accepting “justifiable excesses” because things seem to turn out OK paves the way for establishing the “authority” as a fair judge.

          People become accustomed to such authority with the degree of arbitrariness increasing as a result of institutional and individual corruption. Being empowered to have the implied right to think for others is an intoxicant for many.

          It is well known that the ultimate destiny of any organization is the perpetuation and growth of the organization. That will eventually, and by that it could mean within a few years, begin to govern the arboitrary decisions of the organization and its officers.

          (Not a pilot. I don’t have the visual depth perception. It’d be IFR all the way for me.)

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    sophocles

    eco-socialism

    Ugh! It’s as much an abuse of the word `socialism’ as National Socialism was in the 1920s-1940s. It’s even more ugly as it proposes another political and social tyranny which, with the modern surveillance technology, would be far far more pervasive, and even more difficult to shake off. Orwell was wrong. He didn’t go far enough!

    If we want to get really serious about cleaning up, it would need most to recognise the most overlooked statistic ever from the UN from the 1980s when global population was just over 5billion:

    5% of the world’s population own, control and consume 92% of the world’s wealth.

    That means 95% of the world’s population got by on just 8% of the world’s wealth.

    So when people allege the world is `overpopulated’ they need to look not at the poor
    who have contributed almost all they have, but to the obscenely wealthy, the millionaires
    and billionaires. (A millionaire is a poor billionaire.) Part of being rich is to
    display one’s opulence, which is just sheer waste.

    Before any progress can be made, the tax system, which actively encourages ecocide,
    has to be changed.

    Henry George was right.

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      PeterS

      You are right, socialism comes in a variety of forms. There’s National Socialism (aka Nazism) as well as the left leaning ones. There are stark differences but they all lead to the same end; make the vast majority of the people as slaves in a dictatorship. It’s interesting to note that the National Socialism is on the rise. One example of many is the Golden Dawn Party in Greece. They even give the Nazi salute when they march in the streets. I would not be surprised to see the pendulum swing too far the other way as people get sick of the leftist socialists/communists in the West.

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      Bite Back

      5% of the world’s population own, control and consume 92% of the world’s wealth.

      star comment

      Shall we put that in a more enlightening form?

      I will anyway but courtesy demands asking.

      It means that the wealth owned by that 5% was supporting the other 92%.

      Does anyone think the wealthy bury their money in their backyard somewhere or keep it in cash in a vault? No, they invest it and make it work for them where it provides the working capital for the millions of businesses, small and large, that create the wealth that provides the jobs that the other 95% either have or desperately want.

      If you doubt this, just kill off those wealthy men and women, confiscate their wealth and see what happens. Their display of opulence, believe it or not, is an employment or business opportunity just a good as (and sometimes better than) any other.

      The UN is populated by idiots who don’t understand wealth. They don’t study it. They don’t track where it comes from or where it goes. They have an ideal they think will get them attention and they work to impose it on an ignorant world.

      I wouldn’t give you a dime for Bill Gates, not because he’s obscenely wealthy but because he thinks government intervention, government charity is the way to go. And he never misses an opportunity to say so. But it’s provably not the way to go. Fortunately most of his money is invested and working to uplift everyone else. He’s a fool by any measure of wisdom. But his money is invested, except what he foolishly thinks should be given as a handout to those who should never be given a handout. Ted turner of CNN fame is another one — and even worse than Gates. There are many more. But their money is largely in banks, stocks or spent, all of which are critical for the rest of us.

      If you want to protect this Earth of ours, start thinking of ways to provide incentives to those “obscenely” wealthy to do so while still prospering. We need them.

      And flip the UN off as as you do it. They are the problem, not the solution.

      The problem this world has with chronically, grindingly, struggling, marginally surviving poor, comes from failure to understand that wealth is not a limited commodity and failure to understand that taxes and regulation do not create wealth but destroy it. It comes from an abject failure to understand that the economically prosperous create jobs and hire others but the poor hire no one.

      And a postscript here: I don’t think conspicuous display of wealth is a particularly pretty thing. On the other hand, if you had Bill Gates’ money, where would you live? Would you build your dream house in the country as he and his wife did or would you rent a 4th floor walk-up apartment downtown? Think about it.

      I rest my case.

      Bite Back

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        Heywood

        Gold Star from me BB. Well said.

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        PeterS

        Well put BB. Unfortunately, even the Bill gates of the world will eventually be smothered out of existence by the corrupt systems we have in place, be they socialism, communism or capitalism. One system that beats all of them is true free enterprise, which is not the same thing as capitalism.

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        Safetyguy66

        Awesome mate, you need to be writing books.

        Your examples go to the heart of green logic. Logic that is fatally flawed at its core. That logic being high population and development ultimately = lower standards of living.

        http://www.worldatlas.com/aatlas/populations/ctydensityh.htm

        The complete opposite is more often true. The more people, the more industry, technology, taxes and development, the better the standard of living. Number 1 on the list perhaps makes the argument most strongly. But the correlation between low population density and poverty, starvation and death is stark and completely refutes any notion than more people means worse conditions.

        Green eugenics aimed at the 3rd world, is not only sickeningly treacherous of our species, its a fundamentally flawed premise in terms of the idealised outcomes they espouse. They cynically make arguments about this generation condemning the children of the future to a lower standard of living or even nonsense as shrill and superstitious as extinction, while gleefully participating in a policy outcome that condemns millions of people to poverty, starvation, disease and stalled development, by denying them assistance to develop their countries in the very same way western nations have enjoyed.

        http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3805219.htm

        So no delicious coal fired power for you, you poverty stricken brown people. Just stick to your dung fires and understand that we know what’s best.

        http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/

        After all, its that paternal state run by men in blue ties that dictate what the rest of us should do right ?

        http://tizona.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/julia-gillards-eat-your-peas-government/

        We have been fortunate to emerge from a dangerous period of rampant eco ideology, masquerading as left politics, with our nation largely intact and a new Government that while not without its problems, at least realises the world has bigger issues than the composition of air and Australia has much bigger problems than any that the train engineer, the granny or the friggin nutty professor can dream up in their pot fuelled, sandal wearing, tree hugging worst nightmares.

        Lets hope adult Government, sanguine reality and good old greed can keep us on track for long enough to get the economy back on track for long enough to generate some funds for the next bunch of panic stricken, pinko nitwits to squander for us.

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      Andrew McRae

      Ah yes, “The 1%”, that static unchanging privileged group of greedy people hoarding lots of money for their whole lives. It’s a shame for the theory that in fact that group doesn’t exist.
      Audio: Thomas Sowell – That Top 1%.
      Text: Thomas Sowell, The Temporary Rich, November 28, 2007.

      At the highest income levels, people are especially likely to be transient. Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service show that more than half the people who were in the top 1 percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005. Among the top one-hundredth of 1 percent, three-quarters were no longer there at the end of the decade.

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        Andrew McRae

        Note and correction to the above, “The 1%” were defined in terms of income earners, but if the basis is switched to assets and net wealth (as in sophocles’ quote) there are indeed a small number of people who retain a lot of wealth for most of their lives. The variety of circumstances which have to be just perfect to allow such enormous wealth accumulation are so rare, and the number of ultra rich are also so rare, and yet greed is so common amongst the general population, that it is very difficult to prove the wealthiest 1% got that way simply by greed. There’s just too many greedy (and capable) people who never become ultra rich. More likely the ultra rich got lucky and then worked to make the most of it.
        What are the collectivists going to do, regulate luck? Redistribute luck? Outlaw luck?
        They can’t so they do the next best thing: remove incentives to success.

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          Winston

          What are the collectivists going to do, regulate luck? Redistribute luck? Outlaw luck?

          No, just make bad luck compulsory.

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          Bite Back

          Andrew,

          Being someone whose intent is to poke hard where it may hurt, I don’t usually want to continue a conversation but I’ll at least say this — of course luck plays a part in what anyone accomplishes. Both good and bad luck are a part of everyone’s life. The successful are the ones who’re looking for their good luck and have prepared to take advantage of it when it comes. They’ve usually also worked hard to minimize the impact of their bad luck when it comes along. And if we want to help the bottom part of the economic ladder the best possible thing is not a handout but to teach them, mentor them and motivate them to be better competitors.

          Thomas Sowell is well worth reading. He’s a black man and held in contempt by many because he bucks the “conventional wisdom.” He’s especially disliked by many black leaders. Maybe contempt and disliked are terms too mild, I’ve heard Sowell reviled in the worst possible way. Yet those who understand the way the world really works economically still prosper and those who don’t, don’t.

          Thanks for pointing out the truth.

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            Truthseeker

            Bite Back,

            I went to Thomas Sowell’s own site and found this speach about morality versus sanctimony. The first few paragraphs sum up the alarmist movement perfectly.

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              AndyG55

              Not much of a link, TS ! 🙂

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              Bite Back

              Truthseeker,

              You didn’t capture the link (URL) correctly for some reason. I’d give it a look but haven’t the time to search for it at the moment. Please see if you can get the right link set up.

              Thanks

              BB

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      gbees

      Hey sophocles , if you hate capitalism so much how come you use our tools … your computer and software? Nothing of any worth has been created by communists …

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    Gee Aye

    Must be a slow news day.

    This is a genuine question – not a rhetorical one- but but why bother writing a post on this person? Are they important or influential?

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      Winston

      John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, who would heartily endorse this gentleman’s philosophy (except they would almost certainly go further), are not influential?

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        Gee Aye

        Maybe so but they are not him or many other random nobodies with the same opinion. Better to write about them I would have thought.

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    PeterS

    The debate on communism versus capitalism is a diversion, just as is the debate on left versus right. The truth is they are all a crock and in the long term it makes very little difference. No matter which form of political system we have, eventually a tiny percentage will be the leaders and the rest are slaves. History is proof of that. Short term of course there are big differences, and as Winston Churchill said, “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”. However, in the long term, both lead to the same point; a total collapse of the system only to be replaced by yet another empire, which in time will repeat the process. Cycles are a way of life.

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    Alice Thermopolis

    POPULATE AND PERISH?

    The additional 2,000 (+) million new people projected to be on the planet by 2050 might have a view on Smith’s “martial law on resource consumption”.

    Presumably the price of scarce resources – if they are truly scarce – will rise and limit consumption; without the need to create a totalitarian state?

    But there is at least one BIG elephant in the “sustainability” room that could spoil the party.

    In 1800, the global population probably was 1,000 million. By 2050, it will be around 9,700 million.

    In 1961, World Bank president, Eugene Black, warned that “unless population growth can be restrained, we may have to abandon for this generation our hopes of economic progress, especially in the crowded lands of Asia and the Middle East.”

    Today, however, the Bank – and the UN – never mention population growth (in the developing world).

    It is much more convenient – lucrative and politically correct – to promote DAGW/DACC and “climate change reparations” and EWE “loss-and-damage” – and developed-world-bashing – as in Warsaw last week.

    Ironically, India – one of the most vocal countries at UNFCCC COP19 – only had 250 million people in 1950. Its population today is almost five times that figure – 1,200 million – 18 per cent of the global total. It will surpass China in 2030 and become the most populous country.

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    Andrew McRae

    This touches on an idea I had a few years ago, which has clearly remained only an idea.
    If information pertinent to resource depletion, pollution, human rights, animal welfare, and any other kind of “issue” people cared about, were collected at each stage in the supply chain and available electronically for general public retrieval, this would in effect expand the number of product features upon which companies compete. This would enable what I’d call “Ethical purchasing” on a grand scale. It would allow people to put their money where their mouth is, the loudest voices could argue that particular resource effects should be valued, and people could push the entire supply chain towards sustainability without any totalitarianism involved.

    In his rush to a Marxist totalitarian solution Mr Smith has ignored one of his own statements. He said in separate statements (my emphasis):

    If there’s no market mechanism to stop plundering the planet then, again, what alternative is there but to impose an emergency contraction on resource consumption?
    ….
    But it does mean that we would have to abandon the “consumer economy”

    In the second statement he has forgotten the solution he alluded to in the first statement.

    To the extent people believe these various production externalities are adverse, a more informed consumer could internalise the externality by their refusal to buy a product with a high impact even if it is priced the same as other options. The amount by which that company would have to lower its price without altering the adverse impact in order to match sales volume of its competitors is then effectively the market cost (or tax) on that adverse behaviour.
    The more people who care about the long term consequences of particular production activities, the more that activity will pressured to improve.
    And if you don’t care about that issue then you can buy whatever you can afford.

    You only have to look at the way certain key products, such as Norwegian salmon, are electronically tracked all the way from where they are extracted from nature to the shop in which they are sold to see the technology to do all this “production impact accounting” already exists and is used voluntarily by particular industries as a competitive advantage.

    The main problem I identified with this solution is the issue of integrity and competitive advantage. For example, who would refrain from buying an iPhone if they knew about the exploitative worker conditions, suicide nets, and forced abortions at the Foxconn factory that assembles iPhones for Apple? Apple has no incentive at all to reveal the conditions in which iPhones are made, and Foxconn has no incentive to report the truth if they want to keep the Apple contract. Fundamentally, doing “wrong” (for certain definitions of wrong) is far too profitable.

    I tried to think of a non-government solution to the disclosure problem, and all I could think of is that the supplier with the cleanest record may have an incentive to go public first since the absence of their competitor’s information in the database makes their competitors look shady.
    Any other suggestions?

    The system may also help to reverse some of the offshoring of jobs that has been happening over the last 30 years, as some of low labour cost advantage is due to work conditions that people in Western countries wouldn’t find acceptable.

    Because it’s not new and there’s still some uncertainties in critical steps such as disclosure and honest aggregation I don’t think I could patent this business idea, or else I would have done so. It would make the world a better place and the data collection/aggregation/reporting provider in the middle can make money to the extent that both consumers and producers value being able to make better informed procurement decisions. I can imagine the marketing slogan…
    “It’s not just about the product you’re buying, but about the system you’re buying into.™”

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    MemoryVault

    a radical bottom-up political democracy, an eco-socialist civilization.

    Gaddafi tried that in Libya.
    As a reward, NATO and the Yanks bombed the country back to the stone age.

    So, good luck with that, Richard Smith.

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    pat

    the CAGW puppet-masters – spot any Communists?

    ECC to allow EU carbon permits as margin collateral
    LONDON, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Germany-based clearing house European Commodity Clearing (ECC) will allow EU emission permits to be used as collateral for margin payments from Dec. 2, it said, in a move that could boost liquidity on its partner exchange, EEX…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.3079372

    Hungary cleared to issue carbon permits to utilities
    LONDON, Nov 25 (Reuters) – Hungary can issue 7 million carbon permits to its electricity generators from Tuesday, becoming the first nation this year to get European Commission clearance to hand out the units, the Commission said Monday…
    http://www.pointcarbon.com/news/reutersnews/1.3081907

    World Bank Pres Kim and his wish-list for Warsaw – with an amusing NSA question from an AFP reporter in the Q&A at the end, where Kim’s Communications Advisor, John Donnelly, steps in with the “no comments”. Kim starts with all the “helping the poor” rhetoric, goes on to the fake CAGW claims, but eventually gets down to the nitty gritty:

    12 Nov: Transcript: World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim Media Roundtable
    World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim
    Washington, DC
    DR. KIM: I just finished a trip to the Sahel with the Secretary-General, which was our second trip…
    But I want to start off by just, first of all, expressing our deepest condolences to the people of the Philippines. We’ve been, of course, watching this very carefully…
    You know, we’ve had a tremendous amount of experience responding to disasters. For example, we were responsible for a good deal of the removal of the debris in Haiti…
    But I think it’s important for the world to reflect on what we’re seeing. Now, the critical issue is that you cannot connect any single event to climate change. That’s not the point. But if you look across the world, the Philippines, quite literally, lives in the eye of the storm. So many storms are passing through the Philippines. The directions of the storms coming at the Philippines are changing now…
    I was in a meeting with President Aquino, and we were talking about climate change. And he stood up, and he said, “Look, if anyone doubts the reality of climate change, please just come to the Philippines.” If you think of the number of storms that have hit over the past year, the severity of those storms, and then if you look back, and you think about–so, we had Sandy last year, then we had Phailin in India, another category 5, that hit landfall, and then, now, Haiyan, or Yolanda as they refer to it in the Philippines, the second major storm in a year. The point is to think back and say, “What are the trends in the world?” So, I just got back from the Sahel. And droughts that used to happen every five to ten years now are happening regularly, reliably, every two to three years. In the Horn of Africa, severe droughts that happened, before, once in every 20 years are now happening every five years…

    ***But an even more important point is that the world agrees a lot on the things that we need to do right now. Everyone agrees that at some point, if we can find a stable price on carbon, that that would be good for everybody. China right now is engaging in a very extensive carbon-trading scheme inside China. The experience of a price on carbon has not been the most positive experience, but still, I think leaders across the world know that moving toward some sort of stable price in carbon would be important. That’s the hardest one. That’s going to be the hardest one to get to.

    ***But then you go to the issue of sustainable energy. Everyone agrees that we have to move toward more renewable sources of energy. And nowhere is this more clear, and the possibilities greater in my view, than places like the Sahel, like in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, more investment in renewable energy, cleaner sources of energy, everyone agrees we can do that now…

    And so, what I hope the tragedy in the Philippines helps us to do is to move away from having, what I think, a silly argument about, not really the science, but about science as a whole. Ninety-five percent of climate scientists agree that anthropogenic climate change is real and that we’ve got to do something about it, or the impacts are going to be severe. So, basically, if you argue with those findings, you’re not really arguing against climate change, because there’s just no science to support you. You’re arguing against science. And I guess you can do that. And I guess you can argue that you don’t trust science. But I do. And I think it’s really important that we should respond to the evidence as we see it…
    http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2013/11/12/transcript-world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-media-roundtable

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    ROM

    To throw a curve ball as the a Americans would say, I am going to defend Richard Smith.
    That should get your attention.

    And the reason behind that comment is quite simple
    The fact that what Richard Smith has written about and the fact that his radical political ideology is being discussed here provides a view of a world which if never discussed publicly and openly beforehand could quite easily creep up on us and become a reality before we have ever realised it’s existence.

    And by then it would be far too late to react and take action as the full power of the ideologically motivated, deadly suppressive political apparatus which would be a part of the overt control needed by the enforcers of such a rabid ideology to maintain it’s power over the populace, would be inflicted to the ultimate degree on any who dared to question that ideology as has been demonstrated in so many similar situations so many time before through history.

    Richard Smith does us a great service by pre-empting and promoting and making us very aware of such vicious ideologies such as the one he promotes which due now to our awareness of this ideology we have the time and oppurtunity if we are smart enough to take it, to counter and destroy the foundations of the ideology that he in his self inflicted delusions, represents.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Good point, ROM.

      But I am still not convinced about his motivation.

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        ROM

        His motivation is what he says it is Rereke.
        The foundation of his ideology and beliefs like so many others, comes from an intellectually warped mentality that is so deluded it believes in and is prepared to see and promote massive suffering and death to correct the percieved sinfullness of mankind as supposedly exercised against the Earth goddess Gaia.

        Those such as Smith like so many apparently ordinary people who when the situation is arranged in a certain fashion, all their qualms and doubts and humanity are submerged into their ideological beliefs and they are turned by those few who lust after ultimate power and will do anything to achieve it without compucation of any sort, into some the worst mass killers of mankind the world has ever seen.

        Does anybody think that the nazi death camp guards, the empathy lacking guards of the Gulags.[ read Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” or the “Gulag Archipelago” ] the torturers through out history who would when their horrible days work was finished just go home to what seemed a perfectly normal home life, Pol Pot and his teen age killers and torturers and his Year Zero on a scale of killing rarely seen before.

        From such supposedly normal people like Smith have come some of the worst excesses of mankind all initiated, started, guided and implemented by pathological power seekers who bridle at nothing whether it is wealth or lives, millions of lives in their madness and insatiable lust for power, always ever more power over the lives of men.

        Smith like so many others down through history is merely one of the totally deluded ones who would line up for whatever the nastiest task that would be given to him and would carry it out to the letter in the deluded belief that he was cleansing the world of an evil influence.

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        gee Aye

        in other words, don’t feed the conspiracy trolls Rereke

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    pat

    Bloomberg’s Morales needs help from Landberg for a classic bit of DIVIDE & CONQUER. funny how the MSM unanimously declared Warsaw a success of sorts, let that sink in for a day or two, & now unanimously declare it a failure & get straight back to manipulating the process.

    ***the awful truth, China & India were abiding by the process. US, EU wanted to re-write Kyoto. fine. they should declare Kyoto is dead & start a new process, in that case.

    25 Nov: Bloomberg: Pollution Pact From China to India Shows Rift: Carbon & Climate
    by Reed Landberg & Alex Morales
    China and India’s success in weakening the latest global warming agreement created friction with other developing nations that are seeking to step up the fight against climate change.
    The two countries insisted on single-word changes for a deal at a United Nations conference involving 190 nations on Nov. 23. Instead of making “commitments” to roll back fossil fuel emissions, they signed up for “contributions,” a formulation that allows more flexibility in their action…
    Those last-minute revisions at a meeting that ran overtime by almost 30 hours underscored the reluctance of China and India to join in the sort of emissions cuts that the European Union is making. It puts the two largest developing nations at odds with their smaller brethren, especially island states and Bangladesh that are the most threatened by rising temperatures.
    “There’s all sorts of divisions emerging that weren’t there before,” Alden Meyer, who has been watching the talks for two decades at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in an interview. “If you’re a small island nation, you don’t care if it’s emissions from the U.S. or China causing your country to go under water. You want action.” …

    ***Kyoto’s limits applied only to industrial nations, leaving only voluntary measures for nations classified as developing, such as China and India…

    The U.S. and EU preferred “commitments” because it suggests a target all nations will stick to…
    “Would I have preferred commitments? Yes,” U.K. Climate Secretary Ed Davey said in an interview at the talks. “But contributions is not bad because it applies to all.” …
    “There is a growing chorus within the developing world for action from all major emitters,” said Jake Schmidt, who observed the talks for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “This voice is coming from countries in Latin America, Africa and the small island states. It will intensify.”…
    In the past, developing nations both large and small stood together at the UN talks, pressing the industrial world to move first on reducing pollution. Now, the scale of emissions coming from the biggest developing nations is alarming the smaller ones. They pushed at the talks for help from rich countries to contain damages from climate change…
    Differences like these caused tensions in Warsaw within the G77, a negotiating bloc of 130 developing nations, said Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
    “The G77 coordination meetings are becoming much more difficult,” Meyer said…
    “When you hear some of the things that were said during the course of the week that suggested, ‘We’re not making any commitments; commitments aren’t for developing countries;’ that’s not going to get us where we need to go,” U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told reporters in Warsaw. “These issues are going to be live, serious and difficult.” …
    For Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate commissioner, the lesson of Warsaw is that the issue of the division of responsibilities remains very much alive…
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-25/pollution-pact-from-china-to-india-shows-rift-carbon-climate.html

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    John Galt

    Atlas Shrugged Anyone?

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    Brett

    “who believed it possible to attain to some kind of, if not absolute, at any rate nearly absolute knowledge, and in terms of this to tidy the world up, to create some kind of rational order, in which tragedy, vice and stupidity, which have caused so much destruction in the past, can at last be avoided by the use of carefully acquired information and the application to it of universally intelligible reason.
    This is one kind of model – I offer it simply as an example. These models invariably begin by liberating people from error, from confusion, from some kind of unintelligible world which they seek to explain to themselves by means of a model; but they almost invariably end by enslaving those very same people, by failing to explain the whole of experience. They begin as liberators and end in some sort of despotism. ”
    – Isaiah Berlin

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      Greg Cavanagh

      True Brett. The tighter you squeeze, the more people resist. Which requires that you sqeeze tighter still.

      Also; the more you think for people, the less they think for themselves. You end up with a need to think more for them, because they refuse to think at all.

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        Brett

        I think another of his comments sums it up:

        “a unified answer in human affairs is likely to be ruinous, that if you really believe that there is one single solution to all human ills, and that you must impose this solution at no matter what cost, you are likely to become a violent and despotic tyrant in the name of your solution, because your desire to remove all obstacles to it will end by destroying the creatures for whose benefit you offer the solution.”

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    Dave

    Tim Flannery at it again:

    See his most recent interview video here at Climate Spectator

    In china things have been even more dramatic,
    In the old China which was 2 or 3 years ago,
    they were building 2 coal fired power plants a week.
    That is now ancient history in China,
    this year they are investing 53 billion dollars into renewable energy technologies
    in wind and solar in particular
    They have capped coal use

    China has actually stopped building new coal fired power plants in cities, the country side is open slather. They are using more gas, more nuclear and more coal. Why is everyone ignoring this giant and stating continually they are the world GREEN leaders?

    Tim Flannery has about $1.2 million in the bank from donations, it will be interesting to see how long this lasts, and how quickly Will & Timmy can spend it.

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    Dave

    New Zealand boots out Climate Refugee.

    “Islander loses climate change refugee bid”

    A KIRIBATI islander, seeking to become the world’s first climate change refugee, won’t get another chance to apply for refugee status in New Zealand.

    Ioane Teitiota, who has been living in New Zealand illegally since his work visa expired at the end of 2010, was seeking leave to appeal an immigration tribunal decision denying him refugee status.

    Richard Smith would probably make Ioane Teitiota Prime Minister, and rename New Zealand:

    “Kiribati South Compound”

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    Michael P

    I would like to bring up another point here,and I may be off-topic somewhat. If we Covert as BA and numerous other people seem to think is a good idea to “renewable” power,and the communist countries don’t,what’s to stop them invading us for our resources,as we have just put ourselves at a major disadvantage? Or is this a “hidden” agenda,to weaken ourselves to the point where we can’t resist?

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      MemoryVault

      .
      They don’t have to invade, Michael. Within ten years we’ll be in so much doo-doo, we’ll be begging the Chinese, Taiwanese and S Koreans to buy our coal and iron ore, for cents per ton. And we’ll relax foreign ownership laws to sweeten the deal.

      We’ve been here before – early 70’s for iron ore, and mid 90’s for coal and iron ore.

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        Michael P

        As I see it,economic domination is still a covert form of invasion. Shame to any dope that relaxes foreign ownership laws to make it easier and doesn’t see that there’s a big difference between investment and outright ownership. as I see it,they should be tightened to make it impossible not relaxed.

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        Tel

        A Chinese car costs about 20% less than a Korean car, which costs about 20% less than a Japanese car, which costs about 20% less than a German car. I’m presuming no one would buy an American, or French or Italian car (but we could if we really got into a pinch). At the end of the day, we could choose any of the above.

        Coal on the other hand is something that isn’t being made. What we have is what we have and that’s the end of it.

        Electricity is predominately made from coal or nuclear (both of which Australia has plenty). We are in a good spot all things considered.

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    Richard111

    The driving force behind all current global social upheaval is population, population, population.

    Where rats are bred for science it is known that numbers must be kept down or the rats start killing each other. It is NOT a food or shelter problem, it is a population problem. Humans have this tendency. Certain cadres are hoping to get control before TSHTF.

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    Dave

    I wonder if Richard Smith would allow me to travel to: Banff?

    “Potato pancakes in Irish pub – tasted like hash browns (potato grated). Served underneath medium rare sirloin steak pieces in caramelised onion, red capsicum, mushroom & gravy.”

    Wish I could afford it, but maybe Richard Smith’s 2nd in charge “The Teacher from Perth” would let me do this just once before I have to go the quarry and break rocks.

    But I would also really like to go to Maggie Island like I did as a kid:

    Great dessert called Lemon Posset at Barefoot restaurant on Magnetic Island (Horseshoe Bay) just off Townville.

    But then again, Richard Smith will only allow me one holiday worth 2 tonnes of CO2 every 70 years, so I’ll walk there and swim to the Island, and work on the rock quarry there until the end of my days. But, I’ve had a Gluten Free cheese cake, so I’ll be very happy.

    Goodbye Michael.

    I’ve got to serve caviar to Tim Flannery at the Sheraton Hotel this weekend.

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    Tim

    Oh, no. Not another one getting us prepared for the ‘Global Governance’ solution to save us from Armageddon.

    No thanks all the same, although I do appreciate your concern for my well-being, Richard.

    Democracy has proved very durable, despite its shortcomings.
    I’ll stay with that option if it’s all the same to you.

    P.S. GetUp might give you a column; why not try them?

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    Carbon500

    It’s not all gloom and doom!
    For interest, this is from the UK’s ‘Guardian’ today (Tuesday 26th November):
    Energy firm RWE npower axes £4bn UK windfarm amid political uncertainty:
    Britain’s green ambitions have been dealt a blow as a big six energy company has pulled the plug on one of the world’s largest offshore windfarms, with the political storm enveloping the industry threatening the multibillion-pound investments needed to meet emissions targets and head off a looming capacity crunch.

    Weeks after warning that the government was treating environmental subsidies as a “political football”, the German-owned RWE npower is pulling out of the £4bn Atlantic Array project in the Bristol Channel because the economics do not stack up.

    The move comes as figures show that energy firms reaped a 77% increase in profits per customer last year, due to bill increases that the big six say are partly due to government green levies.

    The shelving of the Atlantic Array is a setback for the government, which is banking on bigger windfarms in deeper waters to help provide low-carbon power. The RWE cancellation is the first axing of a Round 3 windfarm – schemes such as those in Dogger Bank, Hornsea and East Anglia, which are supposed to help the government meet a target of generating 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020. It will also raise further concerns about investors being frightened away by political rows and policy uncertainty.

    The Renewable Energy Association (REA), which lobbies for more low-carbon power, said government infighting over subsidies was causing deep uncertainty in the industry.

    Ahead of next week’s autumn statement, the chancellor is looking to transfer the £1.6bn cost of the energy companies obligation (Eco) and the smaller warm home discount to the taxpayer, removing the burden from household bills.

    “We need assurances from George Osborne in the autumn statement about where we stand,” said a spokesman for the REA. “Nick Clegg says one thing about the green levies, Michael Fallon [the energy minister] another.”

    Last week David Cameron was reported to have talked about the need to get rid of “green crap” from energy bills. Number 10 said it did not recognise the phrase but did not deny the sentiment. Peter Atherton, a leading energy analyst, warned last week that investment in power generation was “killed stone dead” until the next election by Ed Miliband’s call for a price freeze and government delays in introducing promised electricity market reform.

    The political and public environment for power companies is set to become more hostile following the publication of figures on Monday showing that the average profit per customer for the big six rose from £30 to £53 last year. The industry watchdog said the rise was due to higher bills and increased energy use during a harsh winter, not due to cost reduction.

    RWE indicated that the government might have to raise green subsidies – and thus increase bills or the burden on the taxpayer – after admitting that technical difficulties had pushed the price up so far that it could not be justified under the current subsidy regime.

    “This is not a decision we have taken lightly; however, given the technological challenges and market conditions, now is not the right time for RWE to continue to progress with this project,” said Paul Cowling, director of offshore wind at RWE Innogy.

    The Atlantic Array would have provided clean energy for almost 1m homes and provided thousands of jobs in the construction phase. Cowling insisted RWE remained committed to offshore wind and would be proceeding with a range of other projects off the coast of Britain.

    Richard Sandford, head of European projects offshore at RWE, also denied that the Atlantic Array was dropped in a bid to save money at the German-based company. “This really is project-specific and not at all down to other considerations. We are still proceeding with schemes like Galloper and Triton Knoll, off the east coast of the country.”

    But RWE has already pulled out of a £350m nuclear-power project, is selling its DEA North Sea oil business and last week disposed of part of its UK gas and electricity supply arm. Developers have been warning for some time that they would need more subsidies from the government if ministers were to realise low-carbon energy targets.

    The demise of the 240-turbine Atlantic Array will be welcomed by Geoffrey Cox, the local Conservative MP for Torridge and West Devon, who has been campaigning against the scheme. He and his supporters believe the project for 220-metre high turbines is unsightly. The plans to build it nine miles off the coast in the Bristol Channel were also rejected by North Devon council in September.

    But the pullout will also raise concerns about the investment landscape in Britain for energy companies such as RWE, which have been under ferocious attack by politicians, regulator and the public.

    The Crown Estate warned at the weekend that some Round 3 schemes might never see the light of day and insisted this was to be expected.

    Huub den Rooijen, the Crown Estate’s head of offshore wind, said on Mondaythere would be further “attrition” to come. “Paradoxically, this is a positive development because it provides greater clarity to key stakeholders such as supply chain and consenting bodies, and brings greater focus to the investment opportunities.”

    The Crown Estate, which has control over most of the seabed around the UK, has just given the go-ahead to Statoil to experiment with a floating windfarm off the coast of Scotland. The Hywind scheme is seen as important because it could help reduce costs offshore.

    Renewable energy companies have promised to try to reduce offshore wind costs by 30% through a raft of measures as government ministers are under pressure to reduce public subsidies.

    RWE has declined to put a cost on developing the Atlantic Array but said it was more expensive than the Gwynt y Môr project off Wales, which will cost £2bn and is about half the size.

    The Departtment of Energy and Climate Change said: The decision not to proceed with the development is a matter for RWE. It was made on purely technical grounds and reflects the many complex challenges of constructing offshore windfarms.

    “The UK still expects to deploy significant amounts of offshore wind by 2020 and we remain well placed to meet our 2020 renewable energy target.

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    PhilJourdan

    Generosity… that was my first mistake … It shows you, sooner or later, you must answer for every good deed.

    That is a quote from Calvera in the Magnificent 7. But it is very appropriate to this day for Richard Smith and his ilk. They want for nothing! They have all their needs taken care of with no effort! And they have no clue how those needs are met. So they vilify the system that provides their very needs! Why? Because they must have a villain. They feel guilty for being leeches on society.

    And so in order to salve their feelings of guilt, they will try to destroy that which man, through intelligence AND instinct, has created. Not knowing that in the process they are destroying their own way of life. But they do not care. They know they will not be around to enjoy it in any event.

    What is so terrible about Global Warming? When you get right down to it, it is not going to destroy the world. And life will not cease to exist even if the models WERE correct. So it is merely the vehicle they have to destroy the engine that brought man out of savagery.

    And they are doing a very good job of it. A “good” economy for the western nations is having an anemic 1.5% growth – less than the rate of inflation. In other words, the magic engine that made leeches possible is falling apart.

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    Hi Jo,
    Great post. Exposing, what i think is the main driver behind the climate change debate – ideology, sustainability, pop-control and dare I say it misanthropy. Oh and Marxism and all the other ‘isms!

    Reposted on my blog here. TQ. http://climatism.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/sleepwalking-to-extinction-or-maybe-communism/

    p.s check the “H/T Tom Nelson” – Not sure if meant to, but it links to this –

    Cheers and hope you’re well.
    Jamie

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  • #

    The first and probably only fact that is needed to put the brakes on all this global warming/climate change nonsense is this: based on ice core data the CO2 increases occur about after 800 years AFTER the temperature increases. CO2 isn’t the cause of the warming. CO2 is being released out of solution from the warming oceans into the atmosphere.
    Case closed!

    But if you need nore proof here it is:

    Temperatures

    For the last 600,000,000 years temperatures have hovered around 10C about 14% of the time, around 25C about 50% of the time, and somewhere in between 36% of the time. Right now we are at 14.4C, about 29% above the bottom of the historical range. (Ref: Dr. Christopher R. Scotese‘s PALEOMAP Project at http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm). We are no where near any temperature tipping point.

    The 0.4C rise in temperature since the Industrial Revolution pales in comparison to the 1.6C increase of the Medieval Warming Period, the 2.5C increase of the Roman WP, and the 3.2C increase of the Minoan WP using the IR as a baseline. The average temperature has been declining for the last 6,000 years of the present 10,500 year Interglacial Warmup. (Alley, R.B. 2000, The Younger Dryas cold interval as viewed from central Greenland, Quaternary Science Reviews, 19:213-226.) We are at the very end of the present Interglacial. After this comes about 90,000 years of snow, ice, advancing glaciers and probably the loss of life of billions of people. Enjoy the warmth while you can.

    CO2

    About 550,000,000 years ago CO2 was 7,000 ppm and has wobbled it‘s way down to where it is today, near it’s historic low (Berner, R.A. and Z. Kothavala, 2001. GEOCARB III: A Revised Model of Atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic Time, American Journal of Science, v.301, pp.182-204, February 2001.) Below 100 ppm photosynthesis ceases. We are very close to the tipping point of Earth turning into a lifeless snowball with too little CO2 for plants to reproduce. On the other hand, plants thrive in nurseries kept at CO2 concentrations of 1,000 ppm. Thanks to recent CO2 increases, vegetation has increased 11% in arid areas of the world.

    The famous Mauna Loa CO2 measurements began in 1958, coincidentally a historic low CO2 level of 315 ppm. In 1942 and again in 1822 CO2 was 440 ppm, 40 ppm higher than today. (Ernst-Georg Beck, 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis By Chemical Methods, Energy & Environment, Volume 18 No. 2, 2007, Fig. 2).

    To say we are nearing runaway, irreversible global warming due to recent paltry CO2 increases is ludicrous.

    Temperatures and Fossil Fuel Use

    For the last 150 years there has not always been a correlation between fossil fuel use and temperature. Between 1940 and 1970 while CO2 increased, fossil fuel use decreased. (Klyashtorin and Lyubushim, Energy & Environment, Vol 14, No 6, Fig 1). If all the known fossil fuel reserves were burned overnight, the resulting CO2 increase would be capable of producing a temperature increase of no more than 5C.

    Temps and Solar Irradiance

    There have been three global cooling and three global warming periods within the last 250 years, all marching to the tune of changing solar irradiance, not CO2 concentrations. (Douglas V. Hoyt and Kenneth H. Schatten, A Discussion of Plausible Solar Irradiance Variations, 1700-1992, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 98, No. All, Pages 18,895-18,906, November 1, 1993).

    Ice Core Temperatures

    Ice core temperatures have risen 0.4C since the Industrial Revolution (IR). This increase is blamed on mankind and his use of fossil fuels. However, compared to the IR baseline, temperatures were 1.6C higher during the Medieval Warming Period (WP) 900 years ago, 2.5C higher during the Roman WP 2200 years ago, and 3.2C higher during the Minoan WP 3300 years ago. (R.B. Alley, The Younger Dryas Cold Interval as Viewed From Central Greenland”, Journal of Quaternary Reviews, 19:213-226). Obviously, these older historic increases could not have been due to man.

    GGE

    Only 3.27% of all CO2 generated comes from man, the other 96.73% comes from nature. Only 0.001% of water vapor comes from man; the other 99.999% comes from nature. By a factor of 26 water vapor has more of a greenhouse gas effect (GGE) than does CO2. After adding the contributions of methane, nitrous oxide, and CFCs it turns out only 0.28% of the GGE comes from man, the other 99.72% comes from nature. If man ceased to exist, the reduction in the GGE would be hardly noticeable.

    No evidence for AGW

    There is not one piece of empirical evidence linking human activities to the climate – not one. The only arguments for global warming and climate change comes from anecdotes, computer projections, Hockey Sticks, and consensus. Anecdotes are short, obscure historical or biographical accounts. Anecdotes are not proof. Computer projections as they unfold over time have proved to be dismal failures, simply because the only input is green house gases. Computer projections are not proof. Hockey Sticks are the cobbling together of two unrelated proxy data sets to create a FrankenGraph. Hockey Sticks are not proof. Consensus is an opinion or position reached by a group as a whole. In 1600 the consensus said the Earth was the center of the Solar System. The consensus was wrong. Consensus usually forms after the pioneering work of a single individual. Consensus is not proof.

    Planetary Mechanics

    Planetary mechanics is the study of orbiting celestial bodies, changes to the solar system barycenter, of spin orbit coupling, and conservation of angular momentum. It is the very interaction of the motion of the planets, Sun and moon which dictate our climate and our weather. This isn’t theory. This is astrophysics.

    Jupiter, Venus and Earth are called the Tidal Planets, because they control the Sun’s tide and its 11 year sunspot cycle. There are many harmonics of this basic 11 year Schwab cycle. There is the 22 year Hale magnetic cycle. There is the 44 year Solar Conveyor Belt cycle. Every 88 years there is the Gleisberg cycle – an amplitude modulation of Schwab cycles. There is the 208 year Jose cycle. Then the 315 year Elatina Cycle. The 1,440 year Ice Debris Cycle. The 2,400 year Hallstadt Cycle.

    There are numerous other cycles built from combinations of solar, lunar and planetary cycles. Every 18 years there is the Lunar Tidal Cycle which corresponds to abundance cycles on Earth. Every 60 years there is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation cycle, the most powerful climate force on the planet.

    Then there is Uranus and Neptune (U-N) with their 178 year orbit beat cycle. The Sun also operates in 360 year cycles, a harmonic of the U-N cycle. Each 360 year cycle is composed of Regular Oscillations, followed by a Grand Solar Maximum, followed by a Grand Solar Minimum. This totally predictable 360 year cycle has resulted in the Oort, Sporer, Maunder, Dalton and other unnamed Minimums within the past two millennia.

    In 2009, we entered the next Grand Solar Minimum. This isn’t unfounded speculation. This is traceable, predictable planetary mechanics (Duhau and de Jager, The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity,
    Journal of Cosmology, 2010, Vol 8, 1983-1999). From this point forward be prepared for relentless colder temperatures which will reach bottom around 2040. Along the way there will be ever-increasing fuel shortages, crop failures, famines and loss of life. The next Little Ice Age is upon us. No amount of pithy CO2 increase is going to provide enough life-saving warmth. Prepare for decades of bone-chilling cold winters.

    Planetary mechanics is the elephant in the room of climate change. The planets control the climate of the Sun which, combined with the Moon, control the climate on the Earth. CO2 is only a flea on the elephant’s ass coming along for the ride.

    AGW is big business

    The myth of global warming continues, because of the trillions of dollars that would be lost and millions of people put out of work, if this charade were to be exposed. Scam artists thrive creating schemes like carbon trading to suck billions of dollars from electric rate payers. Politicians need it to save us from another imaginary hobgoblin and to justify tax increases to fund programs that garner votes. Many scientists and researchers are kept busy by grazing at the trough of free grant money. Corporations need it to sell the cures for which there is no disease. The alternative energy, Green Building and sustainability cottage industries came into existence because of it. The news media needs it to keep the frenzy going, the ratings up, and ad revenue coming in. The United Nations needs it to further its role as the leader in One World Governance. Environmentalists, anti-industrialists, and other Communists need it in order to cut the legs out from underneath the evil, Capitalist United States and level the playing field for the world‘s less fortunate nations. This is the hideous symbiosis of individuals, groups, agencies and governments that need the myth of manmade global warming kept alive for their very survival.

    Get the facts visit
    http://www.windpowerfraud.com
    http://www.aconvenientfabrication.com

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      Carbon500

      Let’s hope that certain trolls that visit this site stop using Wikipedia as their reference source and follow up some of yours, and then start thinking for themselves!

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    hunter

    I wonder if the author is deliberately lying when he makes the false assertion about the typhoon, or if he is simply ignorantly repeating someone else’s lie?

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    Look at my page: darkmoon.me = [Nope. How do you define racism ?] ED

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