Weekend Unthreaded

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185 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

  • #
    Yonniestone

    Last weekend I had an opportunity to speak with many of the MSM outlets that attended a public gathering, what struck me about the people was the mindset applied while undertaking their job.

    I was prepared and careful with my language and content so as to sick to the subject at hand but after a short time they would become impatient openly attempting to bait or redirect the questions to anything but the reason they were there in the first place.

    Eventually a quick thanks then turn to someone else was the result when you made a valid factual argument to their questions, the funniest was a young lady from JJJ who after attempting to categorise my life on what I wore and music I liked was taken aback when her employer was labelled Marxist then given clear examples of why, only to become visibly shaken at the very mention of Trump and Abbott, the clincher was the “some things you shouldn’t be allowed to say” line followed by a disgusted look before exit.

    But eventually they got what they wanted thanks to alcohol and two men that refused to evolve from adolescence, thanks MSM for eternally cementing my already low expectations of people that truly don’t care.

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    • #

      Poor JJJ, et al. They’re quaking in their boots since there was a hint of shedding the flab at the ABC last year. The popular appeal of thoughts injected by an ‘April Fools’ article has made many people think about what is necessary in a state-run, taxpayer-funded broadcaster.

      ABC funding would only be provided for:

      · 2 TV channels per viewing region
      · 1 regional and one national radio station per “band” in any area
      · an Internet presence limited to that supporting broadcast programmes
      · local content production with export marketing potential with cost recovery.

      No room for JJJ unless they share with ABC Classic. 😉

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        Thing is Bernd I used to occasionally listen to JJJ back when it started, I always kept an open mind on music/art with the idea of absorb what you like reject what you don’t, simple enough until the politics of the hosts and commentary gradually increased to the point of blatant left wing broadcasting of leftist propaganda, seriously I challenge anyone to endure five minutes of JJJ dialogue without encountering a pro left view or anti conservative slur, I won’t listen now due to this and personal health concerns.

        The worst part though is the conditioning of impressionable youth to such mindsets, the current school curriculum is bad enough without this tripe but hey these people seem to take such joy in self destruction it’s seen as a victory over whatever positives society has to offer.

        The young lady I mentioned spoke to a few mature women (including Mrs Yonnie) who asked if she realised what was in store for women and other minorities if the people she supported gained enough strength in numbers in this country and did it bother her, the response was breathtaking indifference as if events around the world would never impact here because of enlightenment from diversity and harmony.

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        • #
          KinkyKeith

          JJJJJJ

          Is enough to make anyone with a sensible concept of government sick.

          How could anyone born into a world bursting at the seams with the sort of strict regulation conformist thinking propagated by their abc, grow up strong enough to be capable of independent thought.

          They couldn’t.

          Their minds are pre programmed for use by political media consultants.

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          • #
            Yonniestone

            I recall an old saying like “If you weren’t a socialist at some stage growing up, you didn’t have a heart” this rings true for many adolescents finding their way in society wanting a fair go for everyone, it’s a good human trait, it’s when the realisation that history soundly debunks the happy ever after vibe to such politics that many awaken to the fact the current system is not perfect but a lot better than the alternatives.

            Those that stubbornly ignore the flaws that lead to deadly outcomes have something else going on that I won’t even attempt to explain, Perhaps Will Graham could explore such torture?

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              Peter C

              I always thought that the quote was from Winston Churchill. According to this site it was falsely attributed.
              http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotations/135-quotes-falsely-attributed

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            • #
              Analitik

              I guess I never had a heart 😉

              But then my “home” country was run by a Marxist dictatorship, wallowing in poverty and stagnant in development, and yet across a fence, a leased colony of the same people, running the epitome of the capitalist model, was one of the most vibrant and productive places on the planet.

              No, I could fully espouse the socialist mantra to the point where classmates mistook me for a communist but I never was one.

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            • #
              delcon2

              If you are not a Liberal by age 21, you have no soul. If you are not a conservative by age 40, you have no sense.

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            • #
              Mari C

              Yonnie – so many of the “socialist” people I know, the ones who still talk to me, at least, believe that we (they)are “too enlightened” to succumb to the past nasties that wrecked the socialist movements around the world. They mention small countries, ones that are the size or smaller of a US state, with a smaller population, and point out how great those places are doing. And when it is mentioned that the taxes are -very- high, the freedoms are often much fewer, they sputter and foam and remind that we (they) are “too enlightened” to remove freedoms, and then state our taxes won’t go up as high, there are more people to spread the bill around with.

              No point in refuting their mindset on how everything will remain just as it is, except better. Or arguing against the idea of sacrificing my freedom of movement, thought and speech. Or pointing out that I already help pay for others’ medical coverage (FICA tax isn’t put into an account for -me- to use), infrastructure (state and local taxes, with a wee bit of federal tossed back at the state, who dribbles a tiny drop back to the local, leaving a small damp spot for the citizens to roll in, maybe) such as sewers, streets, street lighting, salaries of people who make sure these things work plus police and fire/ems services. And so on, ad nauseum. They don’t hear a thing.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Good for you, Yoni. 🙂

      And too bad it will probably not make even a small dent in one thick skull that needs to be cracked open so the light can get in. 🙁

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  • #
    handjive

    Tougher tree laws not grounded in science: senior ecologist

    By James Nason, 18 December 2015
    The push for tougher tree-clearing laws in Queensland is not supported by evidence, according to one of the State’s most experienced and longest serving Government ecologists.

    http://www.beefcentral.com/news/tough-tree-laws-not-backed-by-evidence-senior-ecologist/

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    • #
      TdeF

      It is part of tree worship, a major part of some East European shamanic religions especially in Germany. Trees are considered to be holy and ancient and to be revered. Germans love to be able to see a tree, even in a large factory. They also worship earth, wind and fire, water and sky.

      Too bad we cannot eat trees but since the discovery that grass seeds could sustain us, the very recent discovery of agriculture which moved humans from meat and fruit dependent existence, there has been a need to replace trees with grass. This is especially true in Australia where without monkeys and fruit trees, there was no symbiosis with hominids, so you would starve as did so many who came here. Or you were killed by the locals who needed huge areas to hunt.

      So the thousand islands of Indonesia are stuffed with 250million people and huge Australia was largely uninhabited. However the new argument that gum trees are better at capturing CO2 than grasses and will save the planet is absurd. Romanticism at best. These two major carbon life forms each grab every joule of sunlight and water. Neither are lazy and they compete furiously. To take sides in this battle is ancient absurd, but the fact is we cannot eat gum trees. It is typical of the non science of the twittering youth to get their alleged science from the media who think farmers are evil, manufacturers spoil the planet and food comes from supermarkets, food which is largely grasses or made from grasses. Hardly a gum tree or acacia snack bar there.

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      • #
        Ted O'Brien.

        Frame that comment and hang it on everybody’s wall. I have rarely if ever seen it published that the reason why farmer removed trees was to grow grass in their place, for the reasons you give here.

        However, it is short sighted to lay the blame for this ignorance on the media. Both the media and the young people got their information and their lack of information from our education system. Rather than the media, it is the education system which should and must be the target of attack.

        Do take note also that most of the individuals promoting this ignorance are employed in our education system.

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        • #
          Another Ian

          Ted

          “I have rarely if ever seen it published that the reason why farmer removed trees was to grow grass in their place,”

          You’ll note from Bill’s article that the woody layer is increasing and thus most of the clearing is to keep ahead of the effect of that on grass production.

          In the Qld rangelands the tree layer has little effect on the ground layer production out to about 10% canopy cover. As the tree layer thickens there is an exponential decrease in productivity of the ground layer so that by about 30% canopy cover the ground layer productivity is around 25% of potential. And this flows into the availability of forage and cover for scribblywigets as well. It also restricts the use of fire as a management tool due to lack of fuel load – hence the substitution of diesel and steel dust.

          The vegetation management act in Qld uses trees as a surrogate for other items in the ecosystem. It thus enshrines discrimination against the denizons of the ground layer and does not abide by the precautionary principle beloved of ecofadists.

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      • #

        You can eat trees. Well at least the bark.

        Causes minor insanity: Known as Barking Mad.

        Boom! Tish.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Also the original source of aspirin. You chewed the bark of the willow tree to relieve headache, something known from the time of the Greek Hellenic empire.

          This however made your stomach bleed and it was a patent of Bayer in Germany in 1899 The invention involved changing the active chemical from alkali to acid, from sodium salicyclate to acetylsalicyclic acid which did not do the damage. WW1 was a great reason to suspend all these patents and in Australia they were auctioned, making two pharmacists from St. Kilda ultimately very rich as the Nicholas family, but not without great effort and hard work and commercial risk. Still, I always thought it was an Australian invention.

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        There has been many trees in mythology and religions, the use of a tree of life in Cameron’s Avatar was no coincidence, mind you such great environmentalists can be even greater Hypocrites.

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        • #
          tom0mason

          Yes, those who put credence in mythology often believe in particular trees have unworldly powers.

          All medalists of the 1936 Olympics (officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad) received an Oak sapling from Hitler. They’ve been described as the most bizarre prizes in the history of the Games. These oak saplings, potted and presented as a “gift of the German people” to each of the 130 gold-medal winners at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
          These “Olympic Oaks” – called “Hitler Trees” – were proudly accepted by champions and taken to their home countries and planted as living symbols of the Olympic spirit. A rare few still grow at sites as widespread as the Netherlands, NZ, Argentina and Jesse Owens` high school practice field in Cleveland.
          A few of those saplings grew to full trees.

          http://www.posterxpress.com/Jesse/other_articles.htm

          http://www.visionaryproject.org/woodruffjohn/
          There are others.
          Also the book —
          Nazi Oaks: The Green Sacrifice of the Judeo Christian Worldview in the Holocaust by Mr. R. Mark Musser
          Available on Amazon.

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        • #
          Peter C

          “Tree of Life”

          Isn’t that from the Bible – genesis
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_life_(biblical)

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          • #
            Yonniestone

            I’ll take your word for it 🙂

            That probably explains it’s presence in latter environmental movements religious or otherwise, I also recall a tree with an apple early on…..

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            Yes it was. In fact the tree of life was the *only* tree Adam and Eve were told not to touch, and did becasue the Devil lied to them, and so got kicked out of Eden…..

            16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” ( Gen 2:16-17 )

            The Devil has always been goo d at ciunterfeiting stuff – the pagan tree worship is a take on the Biblical tree of life in a way.

            Interstingly, in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, there was a very pagan in-ya-face “tree of life” that all the nations visited – this is a direct rip-off of the Biblical quote that all the nation sof the world will come to Gods house , onto his Holy mountain.

            “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it” ( Isaiah 2:2 )

            When I saw the olympic ceremony, it screamed rank paganism and witchcraft….but most people dont realise that the Elite are steeped in this stuff, and make Hitler ( who was a member of the occult Thule Society ) look like a boy scout….

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        • #
          Mari C

          I must admit that I like trees, and prefer to worship at their root and trunk than in a church of any kind. I especially love those trees that provide me fruit and nuts, but the scent of pine has its attractions, also cedar. And maple syrup is too yummy to ever allow that tree to go by-the-by. Yes, the tree huggers can be nutcases, but at least here in the USA we have plenty of land for agriculture and still keep large swathes of forest. In fact, all us USAns could move to one state, grow all our food in 2 others, and leave the rest of the country to go wild, if that’s what we wanted. Of course, the elite nobs would have to be elbow-to-elbow with the scum like me, low end of middle-class, and worse. And the greenies would lose their moral high-ground, at least until they decided cockroaches had the same rights to love, life and liberty as the people they’re feeding off of.

          I find that I prefer the company of trees to tree huggers.

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          • #
            AndyG55

            What are your feelings about US forests been cut down to send wood pellets to Drax power station in the UK ?

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          • #
            Peter C

            Thanks Mari,

            I visited the North east USA earlier this year and drove around Vermont, New York, Virginia and Ohio.

            It was fairly clear that any land (in that area) which is not kept under agriculture or is not mown regularly returns to forest in a very short time

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  • #

    The Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt blog recently underwent a radical change in format, making both very unpleasant to view and impossible to view on my mobile due to a demand to allow all manner of access. Please retain this blog in its current format. The young’uns that seem to insist that things that aren’t broken must be fixed in order to reflect a modern style, often get things very wrong.

    Tim Blair’s blog now looks like a Twitter stream and Andrew Bolt’s isn’t much better.

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    • #
      TdeF

      To be fair, while the new format stinks, no one is developing the old formats. There are also new forms of pop up advertising and blogs cost money and time and need to be funded.

      This whole black on white thing was something I fought for years, as it is primitive thinking. People are better not staring at bright white screens every day simply because ink was black and paper was white. It is actually regressive and they need to move away from the paper model.

      At least in my own creations, people still look at largely black screens with coloured lines which are far easier to see in a bright light environment and this against the objection of young people who think that a black background is ancient thinking, with no idea that they are the ones lacking imagination. Also as bloggists like Bolt and Blair come to terms with their blogs and how they present, I am sure it will improve. However the people who ride fixie bicycles because gears are evil, live on blocks of seeds like parrots, eat bread with embedded tooth breaking rocks and dress in completely black outfits on bicycles at night are the same ones who create the software tools we use. They are also the modern journalists who prepare the internet news, which is why the articles have the intellectual depth of a wading pool, a Pavlovian response to anything about Abbott or Trump and the instant political views of their Green masters.

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      • #
        Annie

        Actually TdeF, much as I normally agree with you, I find black print on a white background far easier to read than any other presentation. I have a bit of glaucoma and poor light and dark colours are difficult, as are the white on colour efforts of some magazines, with which I no longer bother…they are too tedious and illegible for me.

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        • #
          TdeF

          It can be easier. Especially with the right font and it is what we are trained to do, so it is comfortable and familiar. I certainly did not mean complex light script solid fonts on a varying colour photograph. They challenge everyone. You can achieve much smaller legible fonts with black on white too, but they too push the limits of reading. Maybe the human eye is sharper with black on white. Like spotting ants raiding your kitchen.

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          • #
            Annie

            Hmmm! Ants 🙁 Too many appeared last summer, black ants on white tiles and on black granite! Peppermint oil helped but didn’t stop the little brutes.

            Our walls are all white; we could certainly see our giant huntsman spiders, no problem. I became a bit cheesed off catching them in a large jar and piece of cardboard and then having to transport them out to the paddocks, hoping not to stumble over a snake in the dark while juggling spider container and torch!

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            • #
              ROM

              When my Wife and I were still farming out on the plains north of Horsham, we more often than not had a large Huntsman spider wandering around in the big old weatherboard farm house.

              Usually only one and often a large one at that as in close to the size across the legs, of a woman’s palm.

              They were all known as Oscar or if I figured “he” might be “she” which they usually are, the current resident huntsman was sometimes called “Octavia”.
              The title was just a somewhat corrupted use of the latin “Octo” for “eight “[ legs ] in this case.

              The resident “Oscar” could usually be found wandering around the house and could usually be found camped for the day somewhere in one of the rooms well placed out of harm’s way up on a wall somewhere.

              Night time, Oscar got around to doing his / her job of hunting down insects if the temperature was warm enough for them to get active.
              So we would usually find them the following  morning, camped high up on a wall in another room somewhere else in the house.

              If he / she did get caught in a vulnerable position re housework, my wife just rounded Oscar / Octavia up and shifted her to a safer location.

              Use of a insect spray always first needed a careful casing of the room to make sure that Oscar wasn’t around to cop a blast.

              They did a good job of keeping the mozzies and small insects under control as part and parcel of the rental for his / her few month’s domicile in the house.

              And in the 40 years we lived in that farm house, I can’t recall an Oscar ever doing any harm of any sort to man, woman, dog, cat or parrot in that house.

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              • #
                Roy Hogue

                ROM,

                All too few people misunderstand the job that spiders do for us. When I see them in the house I have to remove them (my wife doesn’t like them). But outdoors I leave them strictly alone.

                We have lights that run all night at the two doors opening on the street and it doesn’t take long for there to be a big collection of spider webs around them full of dead insects. I reckon that “body count” represents all the flying things that couldn’t get into the house when we go in and out at night.

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              • #
                Geoff Sherrington

                You did not see the one that crawled from my dashboard air vent and on to the steering wheel while I was on a busy part of the Pacific Highway in North Sydney, no pull over lanes.
                It was a feat to get it safely from the car into a protective building where it would be safe. Luckily, a building with front parking appeared and I tenderly unloaded it into the front room of a pre natal nursing lessons place & went off home.
                Geoff

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              • #
                Analitik

                You did better than the young lady in Sydney whose VW Golf ended up in the river last week

                http://www.9news.com.au/national/2016/09/04/13/38/car-rolls-into-river-after-spider-scares-teen-driver

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              • #
                Roy Hogue

                Hey folks,

                I’m beginning to be real glad I live in California where the only spider you need to be careful of is the black widow. They hide and the only places you find them are where you might stick your hand and not see them until too late. But black widows never just walk out into the open like some of you have described. They aren’t more than half an inch long either, not very formidable looking — actually quite pretty with their shiny black body and the bright red hourglass spot on the underside. They’re very poisonous, though rarely fatal.

                My parents home had the water heater in a closet that opened to the outside and when the wind blew the pilot light would invariably be blown out. I took on the job of relighting it at about 10 or 11 years old. It’s a simple job but there was invariably a black widow in there somewhere that I had to find and deal with before I could relight the thing. I’ve seen enough of them to last a lifetime.

                They get their name from the fact that the female eats the male immediately after mating. There’s no accounting for all the variations on the mating ritual but this is the strangest I’ve heard of.

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            • #
              Rereke Whakaaro

              … giant huntsman spiders, … snakes, … crocodiles, … ants with a bite that can kill, … and rabid Real Estate Agents.

              That is why Australia is called, “The lucky country”, I guess.

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              • #
                ROM

                Envy of those who live in an exciting environment won’t get you anywhere! 🙂

                Then there are the white pointers, both the ones in the ocean and the ones on the beach.
                Both can be a bit dangerous when close up but can be quite impressive provided they are viewed from a safe distance, they tell me.

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              • #
                Another Ian

                RW and ROM

                “Envy of those who live in an exciting environment won’t get you anywhere!”

                Why not?

                “New research suggests that resilience to adversity in our life may be linked to how often we face it. The number of blows a person has taken may affect their mental toughness more than any other factor.”

                http://www.laraequy.com/blog/personal-leadership/6-things-im-glad-i-learned-about-adversity/

                “Top Twenty most dangerous jobs.
                1 Logging workers
                2 Fishers and related fishing workers
                3 Aircraft pilots and flight engineers
                4 Roofers
                5 Refuse and recyclable material collectors
                6 Farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural managers
                7 Structural iron and steel workers
                8 Driver/sales workers and truck drivers
                9 Electrical power-line installers and repairers
                10 Taxi drivers and chauffeurs
                11 First-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction workers
                12 Construction laborers
                13 First-line supervisors of landscaping, lawn service, and groundskeeping workers
                14 Maintenance and repairs workers, general
                15 Police and sheriff’s patrol officers
                16 Grounds maintenance workers
                17 First-line supervisors of mechanics, installers, and repairers
                18 Painters, construction and maintenance
                19 Electricians
                20 Telecommunications line installers and repairers”

                http://time.com/4326676/dangerous-jobs-america/

                (Above via Gail Combs in comments at Chiefio)

                So I guess RW and ROM that you both get a pass, as I look to do.

                Maybe time to make politician’s lives more exciting – maybe making their pensions subject to Centrelink rules?

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        • #
          brill

          I have cataracts and am finding it increasingly difficult to read print on y screen. To me it is grey on white. I have often wondered if there is a way I can make all print darker (bold and black) no matter what website I’m on or what computer program I’m using. At least till it gets bad enough for an op.

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          • #
            Peter C

            There should be an App for that!

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            • #
              ROM

              Lens replacement coming up for you, brill.

              The eye surgeon did a superb job on one of my eyes but a mediocre job on the other.

              Takes an hour or so to get the eye prepared with drops and etc .
              And then about 20 minutes in the surgery with only about 3 minutes needed to make a 3 mm cut on the outside of the lens compartment, insert an ultrasonic vibrator to break up the old natural lens and to flush it right out which he didn’t quite do cleanly enough on my second eye leaving a very tiny amount of annoying protein to float around there forever apparently.
              Probably because he was in too much of a rush as he did 29 cataract lenses replacements that day in one of the local regional hospitals.
              And then insert the new artificial lens allowing it to unwrap inside of the lens compartment.
              Semi conscious all the way through with no pain.

              Uncovered the eye next morning and the change in vision was quite astounding for me and also for others I have talked to.
              Drops a few times a day initially and tapering off over about a month and thats it.

              As unlike the highly variable natural lenses the artificial plastic lenses Diopter is fixed, glasses are only needed to compensate for the range of vision depth that is outside of the chosen vision depth field of the artificial lenses. ie reading glasses for longer range vision lenses which is the most used option.

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              • #
                Annie

                It’s a brilliant op. I had mine done by the NHS in England and am eternally grateful for it. Both eyes done, six weeks apart, same sounding procedure as ROM’s.

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                TdeF

                My oldest son does this operation among many. He loves the story that the lens material was a discovery of ww2 when surgeon Sir Harold Ridley noted that the perspex embedded in the eyes of pilots did not suffer rejection like glass splinters. Perspex was a trademark of ICI. So the intraocular lens was born.

                Terrible though it was, WW2 changed our world for the better as with the mass manufacture of antibiotics for the D Day landings by US beer manufacturers who it seems had the technology to grow enough quantity of what is yeast.

                Beer making in turn was the primary driver of high accuracy for thermometers, as the temperature for beer brewing is critical. Until then, no one really cared. Isacc Newton suggest 100 degrees should be water hot enough that you could not keep your elbow in it.

                All of which leads to the electronic thermometers of the late 1980s and that in turn to the absurd scare that a quite inconsequential change in instrumentation and so barely detectable changes are going to destroy the planet? I always wondered how anyone could seriously believe this as the coast line moves incessantly, estuaries silt up, land goes up and down, polar bears have problems with swimming and finding food and the seas have risen quite steadily since the end of the recent ice age.

                So are we living in a very spoilt age of madness? Where the youth of every country used to march off to war every 25 years, are we now so self indulgent that we have to manufacture disaster with thermometers and averages? Do people really need fear and do the profiteers of doom take advantage of it? As always, I guess. The doomsayers, like Hanrahan Flannery.

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                definitely good for the world that the US beer manufacturers were distracted from making beer.

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                I also recommend such for cataracts. I had both eyes done by a very lovely lady surgeon at the local VA hospital. Do not need glasses for driving any longer. For the computer I use US$3 reading glasses, works fine.

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            Roy Hogue

            brill,

            I’ll add my voice to those saying cataracts are easily taken care of thee days. I was able to see well after lens replacement in no more than 2 or 3 days. They can now measure your eye with lasers and frankly, a bit of magic I don’t begin to understand and determine the correct lense to put in so that you see well as soon as any swelling goes down. Any remaining difference between what you have and 20/20 is then taken care of with glasses.

            As time passes you may need a change to the glasses but the whole thing was so easy that I regret putting it off as long as I did.

            The one problem is near vision because the lenses you’ll get have a fixed focus. A focus at infinity will do it nicely for anything beyond about 2 or 3 feet but for closer stuff I needed correction and the trouble is, no matter what I do a book is only in focus at one fixed “sweet spot” and I have to keep the book there or it quickly gets fuzzy.

            But I would do it all over again in a second. No more wondering whether I’m seeing well enough in the dark, no more reddish gray tint to everything. And best of all, it’s hardly a surgical procedure at all. In and out in just hours and the largest part of it is done.

            Go for it!

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        • #

          Most web “developers” simply don’t realize that people have different visual perception to their own. They don’t because they’re almost exclusively operating in a (dis)content management system that’s supposed to take care of all the fiddly details.

          W3C provides for users to use their own, customised style sheets to view web pages. A style sheets can substantially change the appearance of the same information. Colours, fonts, etc.

          It’d be nice for the clued-up web developers to provide prepared style sheet options for their varied audience; while maintaining the necessary presentation agreements with e.g. advertisers.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          These discussions are interesting, because the original computer monitors were green on black.

          This was no accident. DARPA (or some such US agency) spent a small fortune, with IBM, on conducting psychological and physiological research and development into text presentation on screens. Of course, IBM was also the ultimate beneficiary.

          It might pay for anybody interested, to investigate their system settings to see if that basic presentation is still an option. I am not sure what happens to graphics though.

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      • #

        I can’t view a black/dark screen with white lettering for longer than a few minutes, else I start getting a headache. I suspect that the older one gets, the more likely that’s going to be the case.

        But what really irks me about the new design is that you have to click on the links to read the article, even if it’s only a paragraph or so long. It reminds me of the typical click bait that pervades just about every newspaper on the internet. That’s what I (and I suspect many others) liked about the old style, you could read the articles and scroll down to the next and so forth. The only time that you had to click on the article was if you wanted to post a comment or read the comments. I was fine with that. It also appears that there’s a lot more aggressive collecting of personal data, even Facebook linking apparently.

        It remains to be seen, but judging by the hundreds of comments, readers aren’t at all happy with the new style for much the reasons I stated. There are so few conservative bloggers and news sites on the net and not one fully conservative news site in Australia as far as I’m concerned, and discouraging people by introducing things that people clearly don’t like is potentially going to lose readers. While the likes of news.com.au is clearly into making money, all this will do is diminish the conservative voice as people become discouraged.

        That’s why sites like this are far more enjoyable and make you willing to return. Sometime when you’re on a good thing, stick to it; change for the sake of change isn’t a good thing.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          You can’t measure what people read if you display static text, as in a newspaper.

          But if you make people click on a button, you can record a) when the first page was delivered, b) time to first article click, c) clicks to any subsequent links within the article, d) time to closure of the nested article, e) time of closure of the primary article, d) clicks on any advertising material, e) searches on other related topics, and so on and so forth.

          The next time you visit the site, you will find material that is slightly more aligned with your previous browsing “habits”, and so the psychological conditioning continues. You might also notice that the advertising becomes much better aligned with your supposed interests.

          It is much better to use your search engine to look for supplementary information, than follow a link. At least somebody else will be recording that transaction, and not the original site.

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            The next time you visit the site, you will find material that is slightly more aligned with your previous browsing “habits”, and so the psychological conditioning continues.

            Counter-enlightenment.

            Thinking doesn’t start until the thoughts are challenged.

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        However the people who ride fixie bicycles because gears are evil, live on blocks of seeds like parrots, eat bread with embedded tooth breaking rocks and dress in completely black outfits on bicycles at night are the same ones who create the software tools we use. They are also the modern journalists who prepare the internet news, which is why the articles have the intellectual depth of a wading pool, a Pavlovian response to anything about Abbott or Trump and the instant political views of their Green masters.

        Here’s a video by Gavin McInnes of TheRebel.media that provides a perspective of big-city/suburbia. It explains why the “hip” minority attitudes, tastes and perceptions dominate the media.

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        To be fair, while the new format stinks, no one is developing the old formats.

        news.com.au runs on WordPress VIP; it’s a fully supported, ongoing, platform. Someone has made a decision to revamp the template and thus buggered up what was a quite functional blog. The site could have been revamped and still retained the original style, but someone wanted to be different.

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      Ted O'Brien.

      They should improve quickly as trouble shooting sorts out the problems.

      One thing I particularly like about Jo’s format is the unlike button. I have rarely bothered to use it here, but often wished it was available on other blogs.

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    doubtingdave

    For a long time now I have been trying to understand the Global warming debate as a political ideology . because its certainly not about the science is it . its interesting that when you look at America during this current election/ that those that want to abolish 2nd amendment rights are of the left and believe in global governance , destroying borders and sovereignty for the sake of a new world order , we British were disarmed by the Romans , at that time British tribes were warrior tribes , it made sense to disarm tribes so they would not rebel , they turned their swords into ploughs . it helped create a feudal system that lasted a thousand years , so can you blame Americans for defending their right to bare arms

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      TdeF

      I also have sympathy with the US second amendment. Also as mentioned in the Treaty which created an independent America, there was the realization that without arms, a country is subject to the whim of anyone who has them. In the revolutionary war, America would have easily lost without the massive military help of the French on the land and at sea and while that was two hundred years ago, the founding fathers were brutally aware that the one with the gun wins. This was reinforced in the war of 1812 and also the battle of Tripoli where the British had left American shipping to the devastation of the Barbary pirates who were a scourge. So without a strong military controlled by a democratic government, no country is fundamentally safe unless the population is armed is their belief. Two world wars reinforced that belief with submarines shelling US cities. Without the US intervention, the English and Russians would be speaking German and we Australians would be speaking Japanese.

      However the idea that the ideological and practical struggle for control of nations is over is absurd. Global Warming is a subversive pseudo science intended to enslave democratic states economically and politically, science fiction meets political science. It only targets soft democracies. Anyone who thinks the UN was a happy confederation of democratic countries seeking the common good should have a look at the member states. We have had 70 years of peace only because the US is armed to the teeth. The UN is an exercise in optimism but is not itself responsible for the long peace any more than the League of Nations before it.

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        Mari C

        But but but

        The UN was created to promote PEACE!

        The UN surely wouldn’t want to dominate the world, would it?

        Heh. The UN has its fingers in every pie, every cup of coffee/glass of tea, and has become its own separate country – no lands, no native military, no goods or products, but yet a fiefdom. It issues orders, calls for action, demands payments, interferes with little squabbles and uses others for strong-arming the small into submission.

        Kinda like the school-yard bully, or the mafia as it existed in the US.

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    handjive

    Did Tony Abbott really repeal the carbon (sic) tax?

    MAY 29, 2014, and Clive Palmer and Malcolm Turnbull are busted in secret dinner meeting, along with head of treasury Dr Martin Parkinson.

    JUNE 25, 2014, and Coalition claims victory in Clive Palmer plan to support policy to repeal the carbon tax

    “It’s hard to imagine how the government could support Mr Palmer’s demands for an ETS, which they’ve repeatedly labelled a carbon tax with another name.

    Under Mr Palmer’s plan, an ETS would only become effective when Australia’s main trading partners like China, the US and Japan implement similar schemes.

    Mr Hunt said an ETS wasn’t coalition policy, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott would be sitting down with Mr Palmer on Thursday to discuss his proposals.”
    ~ ~ ~
    Abbott folded to Gore-Palmer’s demands, as Jonova noted here, May 24 2016: Secret deal: Australia already has an ETS – carbon tax – starts in 5 weeks
    ~ ~ ~
    Though Tony Abbott claims he repealed the carbon (sic) tax, he did so for two years, knowing he agreed to an ETS later, “which they’ve repeatedly labelled a carbon tax with another name.”

    That’s a dirty trick, Tony.

    Then Tony was gone, but don’t say we weren’t warned: Watch-Lord Monckton Called It: Australia’s Tony Abbott Ousted Ahead Of UN Climate Meeting

    Sept 2, 2016, and As Malcolm Turnbull falters, a Tony Abbott return looms as a possibility

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      TdeF

      Tony did many things to balance the demands of the electorate. For example he did not pursue the removal of 18C as he would never have pushed it through the senate. Why do something you know will fail? He tried not to be absolute. Direct action was clever, a simple way to reduce CO2 without much cost, improve the country and pay lip service to the demands of the Greens. It frustrated them totally. Tony also left doors open as you have to do to survive but do not read that as intent. There is no point being in opposition and if a very significant part of the Australian population want an ETS, it is unstoppable. As for populist Palmer, he would have brought in an ETS in a heartbeat, except he had a personal $6Million carbon tax bill and needed to remove the tax. Even so, it was a near thing as his party imploded.

      Tony Abbott is a pragmatic politician, not a rich dilletante banker. I cannot believe we have suffered two such people, Rudd and Turnbull. Incredibly rich people whose wealth and self belief are their major assets. I find it amazing that no one attacks either for being so rich. Shorten did once when he thought Turnbull had rolled Abbott but never since. The fact is, Turnbull is a gift to the Labor and Green parties, destroying the Liberals from within. Shorten does not have to say a thing. He is just waiting his turn.

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        TdeF

        If it was not for the Union controlled Victoria, the man who paid $1Billion not to build a tunnel to take 40,000 cars a day off the streets, the man who is putting railway lines in the air like the 1880s, we would now have Prime Minister Shorten. We would also have a Carbon Tax posing as a ‘trading scheme’. The difference is that in a Trading Scheme, our cash leaves the country forever to fund dictatorships.

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          Dennis

          And with former union senior executive Shorten, noting his evidence taken and other evidence of his behaviour as a union boss at the Trade Union Royal Commission into a lack of governance and widespread corruption within the union movement, the nation would be even worse off in terms of bad leadership and governance.

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            Ted O'Brien.

            Don’t forget that Shorten was appointed by Gillard to destroy all the skeletons in the Health Union’s cupboards.

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          Peter C

          There you go. Daniels Andrews might be bad for Victoria but the result for Australia could have been a lot worse without him.

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        Dennis

        It is forgotten that former Prime Minister John Howard was replaced after the 2007 federal election by Doctor Brendan Nelson who has since commented about his leadership being constantly challenged privately by Malcolm Turnbull who apparently would burst into Nelson’s office unannounced to complain about his decisions, pointing an angry finger close to his chest at times. Nelson said that in his opinion Turnbull is a narcissist. We now know that Turnbull did replace Nelson as Leader of the Liberal Party and quickly became an embarrassment, displayed a lack of judgement and leadership, and sided with Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd too often. By 2009 the Liberal MPs by a slim majority decided to replace Turnbull with Tony Abbott.

        With Tony Abbott leading the Coalition parties they effectively defeated the Gillard led Labor Government at the 2010 election forcing them into a minority alliance to form government again. And this despite the decisive Labor victory in 2007 led by Rudd. At the 2013 election the Abbott led Coalition defeated Rudd Labor in a record landslide victory for the Coalition. Despite Turnbull and supporters undermining the Coalition by relentlessly attacking Tony Abbott via compliant media, character assassination and other forms of ridicule, attacking the Cabinet Secretary too, from 2009 onwards. When Turnbull succeeded in 2015 to replace Abbott when Abbott spoke to media as he left office he warned journalists not to accept background briefings from people who would not permit their name to be published as the source. In other words anonymous leakers putting out political spin.

        In my opinion PM Turnbull is once again displaying his lack of leadership skills and lack of judgement. He is destroying the Liberals from within.

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          TdeF

          The subversive role of the other ambitious contender, Julie Bishop is easily overlooked. Always the bridesmaid, she was deputy to Nelson, deputy to Turnbull, deputy to Abbott and now deputy to Turnbull again. She undermined them all. At all times a cabinet with Julie in it leaked like a sieve down to the very words used. She undermined as well as Gillard, pushing her friends in the UN and donations to the Clintons and $400Million for Climate Change. Abbott was forced to send a minder with her to the IPCC conference in Lima. Her ambition for the job of leader has never diminished but now like Gillard and Rudd, she is perhaps looking overseas to the UN, buying her retirement place in New York like Helen Clarke. For that she needs a carbon tax or ETS. If Abbott gets back in, having Julie as Deputy is like having Lady Macbeth as partner.

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            Dennis

            She was furious when Treasurer Hockey and Prime Minister Abbott decided in the 2014/15 financial year Budget to cut foreign aid, noting that Prime Minister Gillard had earlier agreed when she appointed former PM Rudd to the position of Minister for Foreign Affairs that the foreign aid budget would be quadrupled over the next four budgets.

            And Bishop was very angry when PM Abbott told that any money offered to the UN IPCC at the Lima Conference must come out of the foreign aid budget, no new money would be provided.

            An excellent example, Gillard, Rudd & Bishop of how our politicians are so willing to squander our monies, and to borrow to squander more.

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              delcon2

              We probably won’t have to worry about Turdbull for much longer.I’m sure the “Stick Insect”will have extracted her “Knives”out of Abbotts back and is probably looking for a new place to put them.

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          ianl8888

          he [Abbott] warned journalists not to accept background briefings from people who would not permit their name to be published as the source …

          But that’s the point. Journos cannot run their unacknowledged agendas with factual articles, so “background briefings” held to protect sources allows the MSM to play the game as participants, not reporters.

          Suits the vanities of all the combatants. People believe them, too, no matter what denials of this one hears. I wonder what one may expect will change this ?

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            Dennis

            Read The Electronic Whorhouse written by Paul Sheehan, it is an excellent summary of how politics are played out via media.

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      Ted O'Brien.

      handjive. Clive Palmer’s policy changed after Al Gore called by in spectacular fashion.

      So it appeared that what Tony Abbott’s government was able to do was prescribed by Al Gore’s advice, whatever it was, to Clive Palmer.

      There should be a Royal Commission into Clive Palmer’s association with Al Gore. Al Gore’s interests surely made a huge profit out of Australia’s unexpected policy changes announced about that time. Subsequently, PUP prevented the Abbott and Turnbull governments from making the spending cuts necessary to prevent economic calamity, thereby maintaining Gillard’s and Gore’s policies of destruction.

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        Analitik

        Subsequently, PUPJackie Lambie prevented the Abbott and Turnbull governments from making the spending cuts necessary to prevent economic calamity

        fixed

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      Handjive,

      I do not know how much Abbott knew about the CapNTrade program. My understanding at the time was that Palmer wanted an ETS, but Abbott would not give him it, and the concession was to allow a review of an ETS by the CCA (which Tony wanted to axe as well). This was the grand shame. In these minor concessions Abbott left a slight gap which meant that Turnbull could come in “promising” to keep Abbotts deal and yet ignore almost everything Abbott was elected for.

      My gut hunch is that Abbott did not think the ETS was coming back, just that he had to give a clause to Palmer to allow it as a possibility, and only if the world agreed to act blah blah blah. But as Al Gore knew, the world would agree to voluntary nothingness at Paris.

      The truth in hindsight was that Abbott probably should have gone to a DD election within 6 months as soon as Labor etc refused to pass the axe the tax legislation which the people had voted for.

      Easy to say in hindsight. But in 2014 my understanding was that Abbott wanted to rule out foreign carbon credits entirely.

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      A comment on that page.

      MoovingOn says:
      September 2, 2016 at 2:03 pm Only in California are they stupid enough to think that cows passing gas is harmful to the environment. I guess it’s a good thing we killed off those millions of buffalo that used to roam the prairies then, they would have killed us all by now.

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        clipe

        Ofay Cat says:

        Cows eat grains that make them fart a lot … the gov wants us to not eat cow, but rather eat what cows eat instead.
        So it comes down to WHO GETS TO DO THE FARTING

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        TdeF

        Plus the millions of horses wiped out by the American Indians. By the time the conquistadors arrived, despite a history going back millions of years, there were no more horses in the Americas. Horses were delicious and defenceless, an unfortunate combination. Obviously buffalo (actually Bison) were much tougher in both senses.

        This is a problem with the Green fantasists. They think the status quo is ideal, that populations of animals are just constant, the weather is constant and all the animals live happily together in a dream time. The film Madagascar has a lion, zebra, hippopotamus, chimps and a giraffe and lemurs. Friends, not competitors and lunch and deadly enemies. In fact the hippopotamus is the deadliest animal in Africa even though it is a herbivore.

        In real life, populations go up and down with the weather, climate events, floods, fire, disease and with the balance between predators and prey which are anticyclic. It is this fantasy of Hollywood which has people thinking nature is wonderful, kind and forgiving. In fact in Victorian England, 30% of mothers died naturally in childbirth, which is why the stories of the wicked stepmothers and the fairy godmothers. Life was terrible and few children made it to 21, which is why there was such a party when they did.

        Think of the fruit trees. Clearly they displaced other vegetation with the remarkable advantage that their seeds were spread wide by animals who lived on the fruit. In so doing, the fruit tree wiped out the ferns, the palms and many of the nut trees. No one thinks of trees changing the landscape, changing the environment, changing the climate but they have. Vicious, nasty and murdering fruit trees have wiped out rival species in much of South East Asia. In the world of Hollywood, trees are benign and happy to share. No, the landscape keeps changing. The Greens want to stop evolution, perhaps even wind it back to the Middle Ages when life was short and brutal.

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          Yonniestone

          Ah yes a green utopia where trees happily provide everything and the Cerberus lays down with the Unicorn…..

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          Dave in the States

          Plus the millions of horses wiped out by the American Indians. By the time the conquistadors arrived, despite a history going back millions of years, there were no more horses in the Americas. Horses were delicious and defenceless, an unfortunate combination.

          This is very interesting, perhaps only to myself. Do you have more information on this?

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            Yonniestone

            I found an article on Hoesetalk.co.NZ from 2014 Are North America’s wild horses native?

            Abstract;
            However, the relatively new (27-year-old) field of molecular biology, using mitochondrial-DNA analysis, has recently found that the modern or caballine horse, E. caballus, is genetically equivalent to E. lambei, a horse, according to fossil records, that represented the most recent Equus species in North America prior to extinction. Not only is E. caballus genetically equivalent to E. lambei, but no evidence exists for the origin of E. caballus anywhere except North America.³

            Also a recent publication, America’s Wild Horses

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            TdeF

            No, Dave. I was reading that acheologists can trace horses in America back 9 million years. Similarly in Australia, we had giant wombat and other ‘megafauna’. All vanished suddenly 50,000 years ago which coincided perfectly with the arrival of man, his fire and his dog. I concluded without evidence that the same happened in the Americas with the arrival of Asians in the three major migrations over the Aleutian land bridge and this was before the invention of agriculture, so all the invaders were carnivores an the US plains were much like the Asian Steppes, good only for hunting. No monkeys, no primates apart from big cats and bears and wolves. Only man could and did eliminate whole species, long before we allegedly and irresponsibly made the planet 0.5C hotter in the 1980s by changing to electronic thermometers.

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              TdeF

              To be clearer, this wiping out of many species happened in Australia. I only concluded the same thing has happened to the horses in the Americas. There was no proof of this, just a huge coincidence. Millions of years and then suddenly, gone. It is a cold case but there is only one suspect.

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                Mari C

                Hell, we pretty much wiped out the bison (buffalo) in the 1800s. A bit of a nasty blow, that, because if farmed they are quite tasty – and the push behind the carnage was probably intended to prevent the natives from eating well enough to fight back.

                We aren’t always a nice species, not even to our own kind. We’ve actually come a long way, re the care of our lands and other species, and are getting there with the intra-species stuff. No need to global nannies to come run things, take away all our toys. Then we’ll be back to killing each other out of power-envy, or worse, boredom.

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      I’m late coming to this I know, but I would like to just toss in my couple of pennies on this.

      Many years back now, when I first started doing all this, back in 2008, when climate change was still global warming, I did my Series on Kyoto, and then thought that was it for me. As it turned out, it was just the start.

      There was this thing doing the rounds in September of 2008 about eating less meat to, umm, save the Planet. Obscure enough, but it had to do with this, and here I’ll use the term, cow farts, and the subsequent Methane emissions from those ruminant livestock animals, and how that Methane was a considerably greater greenhouse gas than CO2, so, if we ate less meat, then there would be less cows to provide that meat, hence less Methane emissions.

      So, using that as a basis, I went ahead and did a Post on it.

      Within a day or so, I received an email indicating that while the intent was okay, the facts I used were wrong. Fair enough. I tracked it down and I was indeed quite wrong. So I went in and added a Post Script to the Post. (That’s what you get for implicitly believing your Mum, who is never ever wrong, or so I thought right up until that minute on this subject.)

      Be aware that the most of those Methane emissions from cows, and from other ruminant livestock is not from their farts, but from their mouths, in the form of burps.

      Rather than explain it all again, I’ll just direct you to that Post of mine from September of 2008. Read the Post, and then, of more importance, read the Edit at the bottom of the Post.

      That Rumen in cattle can contain anything from 25 up to 75 Gallons of matter, so the Methane is not an inconsiderable amount.

      Link to Post – That Thing Cows Do

      It’s not the cow farts. It’s the cow burps.

      Tony.

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        Moderators,

        my comment 6.2 is in moderation, probably because I used the word to describe that, umm, process that cows do which emits methane.

        Tony.

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        Tony, see my post https://cementafriend.wordpress.com/2011/10/ which was first posted on Dr Jennifer Marohasy’s blog in july 2011 as noted in the first comment. No one has ever disputed the facts of the post. Also, note in the comments I caught Willis E out commenting about something he knows nothing and not even properly reading the abstract of an article he mentioned.
        The greenie push on methane is rubbish. The absorptivity of methane is at least one fifth of CO2 (which has an absorptivity at least one tenth of water vapor). Then the partial pressure of methane in the atmosphere is about 1.7/400 less than CO2. So the net possible effect of methane (CH4) is so close to zero that it will never be possible to measure it.

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        Ted O'Brien.

        Tony, for me the first bell rang in December 1986, when the Hawke government replaced the board of the quite marvellous CSIRO with a partisan board, with Neville Wran as chairman. The only conceivable purpose was to direct our science to suit the ALP’s politics.

        The first manifestation that I saw, maybe a couple of years later, was a full front page headline: “Cows Australia’s biggest source of greenhouse gases!” A CSIRO scientist named Galbally working in Tasmania had discovered this. I knew that this was a monstrous lie, and I don’t believe that any scientist ever said it. What was happening was that the CSIRO’s publicity machine had grabbed a bit of Mr Galbally’s work, extrapolated such of it as suited their purpose across Australia, and published this lie. So little research had been done that this lie stood for a long time, and was taught in our schools and universities. Eventually agriculture, including cows, was relegated well down the list.

        Why the lie? The people have been taught in their history lessons that ever since Cain and Abel, the landowners have persecuted the workers. Nobody taught them that in Australia their grandfathers and great grandfathers sorted that problem out a long time ago. So they leave school, look around for these villainous landowners, and say: “There they are, the farmers1” The whole AGW campaign is a program to abolish private ownership of land and private management of industry. Just as Karl Marx decreed. The original proposal for an ETS, which was to tax agriculture’s recycled emissions (cow farts) on the same basis as fossil emissions, would have quickly achieved that objective in extra-urban Australia. In our parliament only Barnaby Joyce could see it.

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        theRealUniverse

        There was this thing few years back when the AGW scare was starting to warm up in NZ where the then Govt tried to introduce a ‘Fart tax’ of dairy (of course to tax methane). Of course you can guess how well that was received by the dairy farmers (NZ cow cockies)! You are right its the burp not the fart that counts.

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      tom0mason

      Are they going to regulate termites and the millions of other insect critters that are all major methane emitters?

      A what about all the decomposing matter in the forests, farms, garbage dumps and landfill, in the soil, all freely emitting methane?

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      Mari C

      O.M.G. When will the big earthquake come and shake those lice losers off the west coast?

      I know, let us petition the government to make California its own country. All yahoos can move there in the months prior to sealing the borders, and we can let the Mexicans living there move out – maybe swap the population of Portland out for them, those folks are about as loony – the Mexicans at least have a sense of perspective, not to mention some really good food.

      Then the loons can regulate all they want and leave the rest of us alone.

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    A quick look at how Australia’s “Permanent drought” has progressed over the last six months.
    http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=drought&period=6month&area=nat

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      Dennis

      The City of Maitland not far from Newcastle NSW, on the Hunter River, is at present experiencing major flooding.

      The City was the location of the 1950s movie The Picture Man which used film footage of major flooding in that period before the levy banks now in place were constructed.

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          el gordo

          Its probably just a coincidence, but its been 60 years since the Maitland flood.

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            ROM


            Monthly PDO Index; 1900 to 2009.

            For here in our western Victoria farming lands, the fit in that PDO Index between the wet years and the dry and drought years is almost exact.

            The great dust storms that I can remember as a 5 and 6 year old in 1943- 44 drought.
            The devastating floods when the Murray came down and there were great sheets of water laying everywhere across western Victoria in 1956.

            The relatively wet years of the 1960’s but with the interlude of the 1967 drought.

            The 1973-74 years of the only wet “drought” I have ever seen here during my 78 years when we only got half of our cropping acreage sown with only modest yields due to flooding after we had double our average rainfall of 400 mms for the two years.
            [ 16 inches average; 28″ in 1993; 32″ in 1994. Water only a few centimetres to 30 centimetres deep was tracked flowing over some 26 kilometres across the Plains north of Horsham during the worst of the heavy rainfall flooding.
            Yep! This country is FLAT but not quite as Flat as the Darling Downs or the Hay Plains.]

            Then the sudden switch to a period of very dry years in the late 1970’s followed by a couple of wetter years with very good crop yields following the 1982 drought.
            A few good and reasonable rainfall years in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s

            Then the bad dry decades of the late 1990’s right through the 2000’s with almost no relief and the only two times that I have not had some sort of harvest here during my lifetime.
            Finally some decent rain and a very good crop in 2008-9 and 500 hectares of two tonnes Ha of Lentils @ $950/ tonne wiped out totally by 4 days of 40 to 42 degrees of heat just as our Lentils were flowering.

            A million dollars gone in four days.

            There is no insurance for such a heat created loss.

            It broke my son’s heart and his will to go on farming on top of all the other vicissitudes of that decade so he and my very switched on DIL decided to leave farming for good.
            They sold part of the property but retained a good part of the property as an investment.

            That PDO index is a very close fit to what I have experienced seasonally over my life time.

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            Dennis

            It was just a freak storm el gordo, the dams will never ever fill again, Tom Foolery told us.

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            Yonniestone

            Are you suggesting some type of weather cycle? pfffft wheres the consensus on that?

            /sarc. (just in case)

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            el gordo

            Forget organising a hedge fund, with our collective knowledge Weatherbet could make us all rich.

            The chance of a large flood in Maitland early next year is theoretically 140/1, but would shorten if La Nina intensifies.

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        It seems that some parts of South West QLD hav not received 400 percent of September average rain,Yet.
        http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=percent&period=cmonth&area=qd
        Some of these parts are the same places that have not received 1 years average rain for 2016, yet.
        http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/rain/index.jsp?colour=colour&time=latest&step=0&map=percent&period=cyear&area=qd
        I am stuck in by minor flood water near Crookwell N.S.W.(can get out on foot).

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      jorgekafkazar

      Obviously it’s a permanent drought of intelligence, sanity, good sense, and knowledge.

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    beowulf

    Dennis

    Reporting from Maitland NSW: there is no flood; the river is normal; we only had drizzle for 3 days followed by 2 days of westerly wind – no heavy rain whatsoever. There has been no recent heavy rain in the Barrington Tops catchments, nor the north western or south western catchments that feed the Hunter River. We missed most of the rain that they got out west.

    I don’t know who wrote that report you linked to, but I would firstly suggest they buy themselves a map – Maitland is nowhere near the Central West. Secondly they might try popping a lot less acid or whatever hallucinogen they are on.

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      ROM

      The British are getting back to doing what the British have always done as well as or better than most.

      Napoleon was supposed to have said it as an insult but the reality is that the British have used trade to survive and prosper in an often historically hostile to Britain, European environment.
      And they built a global Empire based on trade, an Empire on which at one time, the Sun never set.

      The phrase “England is a nation of shopkeepers” is attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte in reference to Britain’s preparedness for a war against France.
      However, it is believed to have first been used by Adam Smith in his “Wealth of Nations”.

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      AndyG55

      You watch Turnbull stuff this up, too !!

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    Robber

    Listened to a bit of Macca on ABC 774 radio this Sunday morning, and was most surprised to hear an interviewee (I didn’t catch his name) suggesting that carbon dioxide is actually good for the world and talking about past eras when higher CO2 enabled greater plant growth. He also supported Ian Plimer’s work and suggested that most geologists agree with him. Don’t know how such heresy got past the leftist thought police at the ABC.

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    Another Ian

    Robber

    I heard one of Macca’s comments this morning in passing and said to my son that Macca will want to watch himself or he’ll be drummed out of the movement.

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    pat

    3 Sept: ConservativeTreehouse: sundance: Confirmed: Rupert Murdoch Instructed Fox News To Take Down Donald Trump August 2015…
    In an extensive article within New York Magazine, mostly outlining the rather sordid details of Roger Ailes, readers may also note specific confirmation of something we outlined in August of last year (LINK) (2015). Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch instructed Fox News executives to take down Donald Trump…
    Additionally, within the cited New York Magazine article you’ll note that Lachlan Murdoch personally instructed Harper Collins Publications, another Murdoch business, to give Megyn Kelly a $6,000,000 advance on a $10 million book deal. In 2015 when we found out who Kelly’s publisher was, we presented that specific prediction – again, in the face of much antagonism. However, we were correct.
    Why is this confirmation important?
    If you go through the timeline, and look at the confirmation in the NY Mag, you’ll note the specific group within Fox News who formed the internal Pro-Murdoch/Anti-Trump Fox coalition. They are: Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace.
    Not coincidentally these key Fox hosts were the ones specifically directed to take down Trump –AND– the three anti-Trump amigos on the Fox Debate Panel…
    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2016/09/03/confirmed-rupert-murdoch-instructed-fox-news-to-take-down-donald-trump-august-2015/

    3 Sept: Breitbart: Charlie Spiering: LA Times Tracking Poll: Donald Trump Leading Hillary Clinton
    The latest L.A. Times political tracking poll shows Donald Trump now leading Hillary Clinton in the presidential race by three points…

    2 Sept: Breitbart: Ken Klukowski: Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Donald Trump Overtakes Hillary Clinton — Despite Altered Methodology

    3 Sept: Breitbart: Trump Surging in Iowa and Virginia
    A handful of swing states—experts always mention at least five, and no more than eleven—will determine the winner of the presidential race, mainly concentrated in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Southwest…

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    Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. says: August 29, 2016 at 12:41 PM

    “yes, I recently looked at Tyndall’s experimental setup, and it looks like it probably worked as advertised.Of course, in recent decades thousands of spectroscopic measurements have been made in the laboratory for different gas temperatures and at different IR wavelengths. This information is then used in radiative codes such as HITRAN.”

    Hitran The database has nothing to do with flux absorption, but only with the attenuation of amplitude/spatial modulation of EMR both by temporal absorption (no more than 3 milliseconds duration). and by Rayleigh or mie scattering for spatial modulation. The attenuator of one kilohertz amplitude modulation is due to so called thermal mass of the atmosphere. Any attenuation of the very much lower frequency DC flux is never represented anywhere in the HiTran database. Such illicit representation can only be described as deliberate scam for financial or political gain.
    Steve Fitzpatrick says: ugust 29, 2016 at 6:40 AM

    Wim Rost,
    “O2 and N2 both emit and absorb IR, but very, very, very little. Both are effectively “transparent” to IR wavelengths. CO2 absorbs and emits strongly at certain wavelengths, but the one (actually a narrow range of wavelengths) that matters most for Earth’s energy balance is between 14 and 15 microns. That wavelength coresponds to a specific energy state transition (a quantum transition) for the CO2 molecule.”

    What total bull shit! Airborne H2O molecules of 4% by mass of the atmosphere in all 5 phases continuously create EMR exit flux to space from 3 microns to 200 microns wavelength. Airborne CO2 molecules as only a gas of 0.06% by mass contribute nothing whatsoever to atmospheric exit flux. Surface exit flux is even lower than that of CO2.

    Earthlings will never know what determines surface temperature until the determination of control of atmospheric column water is understood. All of the rest of CAGW nonsense is a deliberate intentional scam for monetary or political profit!

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    JHC!! I was only previewing please delete! 🙂

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    pat

    3 Sept: Indian Express: As China, US ratify Paris climate deal, India says not possible this year
    This is the first time that India has explicitly said it would not be able to ratify the Paris Agreement by the end of this year.
    by P Vaidyanathan Iyer
    India has said it will not be able to commit to ratifying the Paris Agreement before the end of 2016, despite pressure from both the United States of America and China which decided to join the agreement on Saturday…
    Sherpas of the 20 countries meeting at Hangzhou for three days, beginning 6 pm on August 31, remained huddled till almost 2.30 am on Saturday to reach an agreement on a draft of the G20 communique that would be presented to the heads of governments of the 20 countries…
    “We have sought flexibility. Yes, we are committed to ratifying it, but cannot complete the domestic procedures by 2016-end,” Arvind Panagariya, sherpa to Prime Minister Narendra Modi told The Sunday Express. The final G20 communique may address India’s concerns…
    India was supported by Turkey which articulated a similar position on climate change. “One of the most contentious issues during the sherpa meetings was climate change. We have synergies built up with Turkey, South Asia and Indonesia. Our positions are common,” said Panagariya. “There is no deadline to my mind, but we will make submissions of progress,” he said…READ ON
    http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/paris-climate-deal-us-china-india-says-not-possible-by-2016-end-3012392/

    3 Sept: The Hindu: Atul Aneja: India may not ratify Paris deal by year-end
    China and the United States on Saturday ratified the Paris accord to cut climate warming emissions, but India is seeking greater “flexibility,” and does not want to commit to ratification by the year-end.
    The Paris climate deal was discussed in detail in the drafting of the communiqué that will be issued at the end of the G20 summit on Monday, said Arvind Panagariya, head of the Niti Ayog, and India’s Sherpa to the G20 summit.
    Most contentious issue’
    Dr. Panagariya told a group of Indian journalists that the climate change issue had become the most contentious issue during the drafting of the G20 communiqué.
    “There were many countries which said that their domestic procedure do not allow ratification by 2016-end,” he observed.
    He added: “We chose a language that allowed flexibility for some to ratify by 2016 and some others not to do so.” “So there was lot of discussion. There will be submissions of progress that will happen periodically.”…
    “We were not sure when we went for negotiations for a commitment. There are certain legal procedures that are in play. It is a matter of certain procedures.” …
    http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/india-may-not-ratify-paris-climate-deal-by-yearend/article9070256.ece

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    pat

    ***already extremely noticeable, according to Gillis/NYT opening paras, but NOAA scientist says that “once impacts become noticeable” blah blah…

    3 Sept: NYT Science: Justin Gillis: Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun
    Scientists’ warnings that the rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline are no longer theoretical
    NORFOLK, Va. — Huge vertical rulers are sprouting beside low spots in the streets here, so people can judge if the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads are too deep to drive through.
    Five hundred miles down the Atlantic Coast, the only road to Tybee Island, Ga., is disappearing beneath the sea several times a year, cutting the town off from the mainland.
    And another 500 miles on, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., increased tidal flooding is forcing the city to spend millions fixing battered roads and drains…
    ***“Once impacts become noticeable, they’re going to be upon you quickly,” said William V. Sweet, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md., who is among the leaders in research on coastal inundation. “It’s not a hundred years off — it’s now.”…
    “I’m a Republican, but I also realize, by any objective analysis, the sea level is rising,” said Jason Buelterman, the mayor of tiny Tybee Island, one of the first Georgia communities to adopt a detailed climate plan…
    “In the country, certainly in the Congress, it hasn’t really resonated — the billions and perhaps trillions of dollars that we would need to spend if we want to live on the coast like we’re living today,” said David W. Titley, a retired rear admiral who was the chief oceanographer of the Navy, and now heads a climate center at Pennsylvania State University…
    Many climate scientists, including Dr. Dutton, believe a rise of at least 15 or 20 feet has already become inevitable, over an unknown period…
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/science/flooding-of-coast-caused-by-global-warming-has-already-begun.html?emc=edit_ta_20160903&nlid=4034234&ref=cta&_r=2

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    • #
      ianl8888

      … the tidal floods that increasingly inundate their roads …

      What is the truth, one wonders, to the word “increasingly” here ?

      Increase from when, by how much, over what periods, etc etc …

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      • #
        Mari C

        People got used to the dry, hubris allowed them to build on basically sand or shifting, uncompacted soils, roadways are the first to go along coasts. Cliff-edge roads will eventually tilt and falls as the cliff face erodes; sand-soil substructure will compact then shift when wet; pretty winding roads along the coast, where the water is -just- there, they get undermined by water from the coast, and what most consider, the rain that flows under the road, through the subsoils. Water is not necessarily on the surface of something – quite a bit flows above the clay/rock through the looser, sandier, soil.

        Or so I have been told.

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    pat

    best friends yesterday (for the CAGW propaganda), but now the truth comes out?
    read all:

    4 Sept: AFR: WaPo: William Wan: China’s snub of Barack Obama bad news for successor
    The problems began as soon as President Barack Obama landed in China.
    There were no stairs waiting for him to emerge from his usual door at the front of Air Force One.
    On the tarmac, as Obama’s staffers scrambled to get lower-level stairs in place for him to disembark, White House press photographers travelling with him tried to get in their usual position to mark his arrival in a foreign country, only to find a member of the Chinese welcoming delegation screaming at them.
    He told the White House press corps that they needed to leave.
    A White House official tried to intervene, saying, essentially, this is our president and our plane and the media isn’t moving.
    The man yelled in response, “This is our country!”…
    On what is probably his last visit to China, for the Group of 20 summit, there were flare-ups and simmering tensions throughout – a fitting reflection of how the relationship between these two world powers has become frayed and fraught with frustration. Over the past seven years, strained ties with China have coloured and come to define Obama’s foreign policy in Asia…
    http://www.afr.com/news/world/chinas-snub-of-barack-obama-bad-news-for-successor-20160904-gr8al4

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  • #
    pat

    2 Sept: MarketWatch: Opinion: Is Elon Musk’s big merger about to blow up too?
    By Brett Arends
    Musk is trying to rescue his troubled domestic solar power company, SolarCity by merging it with his electric car maker, Tesla…
    Wall Street is calling it a bailout of SolarCity, and it doesn’t like it…
    SolarCity’s stock crashed another 9% on Thursday and is down by about a third since late July. Without access to Tesla’s funds, it is running low on cash. SolarCity just had to borrow another $124 million — and had to pay an astonishing 6.5% interest for the money, just for an 18-month loan. The main lenders were Chairman Elon Musk and two fellow executives.
    When a company has to pay its own chairman 6.5% interest for an 18-month loan, at a time when interest rates are at record lows, you know it’s in crisis…
    The prospects for electric cars and solar paneling at home looked a lot better when oil prices were through the roof than they do today, when oil is down to $43 a barrel and markets are worried about a glut…
    http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-elon-musks-big-merger-about-to-blow-up-too-2016-09-02

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  • #
    ROM

    President to President!

    Jerry Ford is so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.

    Lyndon B. Johnson

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  • #
    pat

    so there! lol.

    4 Sept: Reuters: U.N. chief tolls bell for climate change skeptics
    (Reporting by Engen Tham in Shanghai; Editing by Kim Coghill)
    U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday that climate change scepticism is over, the day after the United States joined China to ratify the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions…
    “The debate over climate phenomenon is over scientifically and environmentally,” said Ban, adding that the influence of climate change deniers or skeptics has waned.
    “It is affecting our day-to-day life,” Ban said, at a new conference ahead of a G20 summit in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou…
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-climatechange-un-idUSKCN11A04N?il=0

    Australian & news.com.au are attributing AAP:

    4 Sept: news.com.au: AAP: Climate change scepticism is over: UN
    “The debate over climate phenomenon is over, scientifically and environmentally,” said Ban, adding that the influence of climate change deniers or sceptics has waned.
    “It is affecting our day-to-day life,” Ban said, at a new conference ahead of a G20 summit in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou…
    http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/breaking-news/eu-joins-global-aviation-emissions-pact/news-story/31c635abeb90fa138eb36afc7d6869c0

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  • #
    el gordo

    ‘According to a Danish study, the average cow produces enough methane per year to do the same greenhouse damage as four tons of carbon dioxide.’

    Today I Found Out

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  • #
    crakar24

    Here is my rant:

    I work for the APS in the DOD, we have had an employment freeze placed upon us for over 3 years and for the second time during that period the razor gangs are circling again.

    On a completely different topic my wife needed a medical test (one of several recently) this test cost us 1000 dollars but within 24 hours 800 dollars was paid back into our account.

    My thinking here is if we cut out the money shuffling and I merely paid 200 dollars we could then sack a host of money shufflers leaving the DoD APS alone to do the important sh£%&&t.

    Rant over thanks for listening

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Are you suggesting the unholy alliance of bureaucracy and efficiency? herding cats into a flea pill factory would be easier to attempt.

      I hope everything is ok with your better half crakar24.

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  • #

    1979

    Gloomily, the scientists are be
    ginning to suspect that, as well as
    being starved of the fuel which is
    needed to keep warm, the world
    is getting colder.

    http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/110576774

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    • #

      The Canberra Times Sat 24 Jan 1970

      Murray Mitchell, head
      climatologist at the Govern-
      ment’s Environmental Sciences
      Services Administration, re-
      ported recently that the aver-
      age world temperature has
      fallen about one-third of a
      degree centigrade since 1950.
      At that rate, he says, it
      would take only 240 years to
      return the earth to an “ice
      age climate”.

      But experts agree that
      the general trend has been
      toward a cooler earth for the past
      6,000 years

      .
      http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/131683841

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    ROM

    Been poking around in the Retraction Watch site to see what the latest bit of the outright fr****dulent science and / or highly dubious non reproducible science and scientifically based claims that have had to be retracted by the authors or the science establishment or university or research department and organisation under whose auspices the paper’s were produced.

    The top headline was about one of the most stupid patents ever issued but a look through the rest of the links provided in that headline piece tossed this very interesting item that has potentially huge future connatations for the alarmist global warming and catastrophic climate change science industry in the years ahead.

    Quoted;
    Whistleblower sues Duke,[ University ] claims doctored data helped win $200 million in grants.

    On a Friday in March 2013, a researcher working in the lab of a prominent pulmonary scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, was arrested on charges of embezzlement.
    &
    last month, a U.S. district court unsealed a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a former colleague of Potts-Kant. It accuses the researcher, her former supervisor, and the university of including fraudulent data in applications and reports involving more than 60 grants worth some $200 million. If successful, the suit—brought under the federal False Claims Act (FCA)—could force Duke to return to the government up to three times the amount of any ill-gotten funds, and produce a multimillion-dollar payout to the whistleblower.

    The Duke case “should scare all [academic] institutions around the country,” says attorney Joel Androphy of Berg & Androphy in Houston, Texas, who specializes in false claims litigation. It appears to be one of the largest FCA suits ever to focus on research misconduct in academia, he says, and, if successful, could “open the floodgates” to other whistleblowing cases.

    False claims lawsuits, also known as qui tam suits, are a growing part of the U.S. legal landscape. Under an 1863 law, citizen whistleblowers can go to court on behalf of the government to try to recoup federal funds that were fraudulently obtained. Winners can earn big payoffs, getting up to 30% of any award, with the rest going to the government. Whistleblowers filed a record 754 FCA cases in 2013, and last year alone won nearly $600 million. The U.S. government, meanwhile, has recouped more than $3.5 billion annually from FCA cases in recent years.

    Relatively few of these cases have targeted research universities (see box, below); many allege fraud in health care or military programs. But that’s changing. The FCA “is increasingly being used to target alleged fraud in a diverse array of industries, including research and academia,” says attorney Suzanne Jaffe Bloom of Winston & Strawn LLP in New York City. Although recent court rulings suggest public universities may have some protection from qui tam suits because they are government entities, private institutions do not. Eleven private universities, including Duke, are among the top 25 recipients of federal funding for academic science over the past decade.

    More >>>

    There is so much so called climate science that is merely grant seeking window dressing without any viable ties to actual observed on ground science and which cannot be checked or replicated.
    Including every climate model which due to the “chaos theory” consequences cannot ever provide identical outcomes in successive runs when so many factors and more importantly so many “assumptions” are incorporated into a climate model.

    Billions of tax payers funds have been channelled into a whole host of research instiutes and universities in the USA for climate research purposes leading to an avalanche of totally useless, illogical and straight out fr*****ently based papers and claims so there is a monstrous pool of money there to be accessed by whistle blowers.
    Who can, as seen in the Science article, pick up to 30% of what the court’s deem shall be returned to the Government due to the sums being granted to researchers and their supporting institutions on the basis of false and fr*******ent science as proven by the falsity of the scientist’s records if they even exist and / or the inability to replicate and / or verify the claimed science outcomes.

    There might be a lot left in this climate science thing but it may in a very form and direction that nobody anywhere, particularly climate alarmist scientists and their academic support oganisations have anticipated.

    Perhaps I should retract that last sentence as we all know that the climate scientists and climate modellers claim to be able to predict the future or at least it’s climate for at least a century ahead, can’t they?

    Hmmm! NASA / NOAA admitting that they are constantly altering historical data to support the global warming / climate change credo and to get that historical data to fit the climate modellers requirements and expectations.
    Only 10% of the billions of dollars given to the NOAA over the last couple of decades, just for a bit of whistle blowing and even Bill Gates might blink just a little.

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  • #
    pat

    ***no doubt many here will add their voices to the urging!

    4 Sept: SMH: David Karoly and Clive Hamilton: why we can’t sign the latest Climate Change Authority report
    by David Karoly and Clive Hamilton
    For three years, good climate change policies in Australia have been eviscerated by those who would prefer to do nothing. This is happening at a time when the urgency to act has never been greater and the rest of the world is pursuing a bolder and more determined path.
    All of the evidence shows that most Australians want much stronger action from the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and hasten the transition to a clean energy economy…
    ***We could have just resigned – and we’ve been strongly urged to do so! But Australia’s climate future matters too much for us to just slip quietly back into our university offices.
    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/david-karoly-and-clive-hamilton-why-we-cant-sign-the-latest-climate-change-authority-report-20160904-gr8e54.html

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    • #
      Bulldust

      Yeah, so this is how it works:

      1) When it comes to climate science we must follow the “97% consensus” majority view.
      2) When it comes to the Climate Authority we must follow the 2 person minority view.

      OK … clear as mud …

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  • #
    Analitik

    The entertaining saga of Elon Musk is drawing to a close. 🙁

    Having shamelessly used political connections, mass media, social media, hi-tech hype, feelgood, greenwash arguments, creative financial presentations and general obfuscation to pump the stock price of Tesla Motors since buying in and drawing government funding and know how for his SpaceX launch company, Musk is now at a funding nexus. His highly leveraged holdings of continually loss making Tesla Motors and in his cousins’ equally failing solar leasing company, SolarCity has meant that the crashing stock price of SolarCity is risking margin calls on his positions, hence a hastily convened and highly questionable merger application by Tesla for SolarCity and personal puchases of $100 million SolarCity bonds by Musk and his cousins (since the serious bond market won’t touch them).

    Now his flagship dream corporation SpaceX, which has already invested $255 million in SolarCity bonds, has had a rocket explode during prelaunch testing and SolarCity and Tesla stock pricing continue to slide, despite the best efforts of Musk to hype recent “breakthrough developments” by both companies.

    In a last ditch effort, an email to Tesla employees has been sent by Musk, exhorting them to build more cars and cut more costs to eke out a profit for the July-September quarter so that Tesla can try to issue more shares in October to finance its operations, merger and its very existence.

    http://fortune.com/2016/08/23/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity-bonds/
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-02/musk-e-mail-urges-workers-to-cut-costs-in-bid-to-woo-investors
    http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/what-the-spacex-explosion-means-for-elon-musk-and-mark-zuckerberg

    A textbook case of crony capitalism in the same mould as that used for almost all “green” investment – just taken better, higher, longer, faster by a master huckster. This will make a fantastic movie once the house of cards implodes and the judgements for the ensuing court cases are served.

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  • #
    Carbon500

    It’s September 4th, 9 degrees Celsius this morning in my part of England, the coldest since records began.
    Confession time.
    They’re my records, based on my thermometer near my back door. They began last June.
    If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    Jo

    FYI

    “The CERES observational data says that for every additional degree of warming, the net cloud radiative effect becomes 1 W/m2 more negative, meaning a cooling effect. So despite the fact that the models claim that the cloud feedback parameter is positive (0.69 ± 0.10 W/m2 per degree C), ugly reality disagrees. According to the CERES data, the real number is not only negative, it is strongly negative ( – 1.0 ± 0.27 W/m2 per °C) and is strongly significant.”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/04/cloud-feedback-2/

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  • #
  • #
    James Murphy

    Just in case anyone needed any more evidence that various elements of ‘the left’ think that democracy is an over-rated luxury (unless you vote the way they want you to), then look no further than this “debate” with regards to plebiscites, featuring the nauseatingly smug and narcissistic Waleed Aly.

    Whatever the subject, and whatever the outcome, I welcome every single opportunity to participate in this form of direct democracy, and I am utterly mystified by those who complain that the government is out of touch and is unrepresentative, yet almost in the same breath, reject a chance to be ‘heard’ by the same government.

    I’m not wanting to start discussion about the subject matter of the potential plebiscite in Australia, merely looking on in frustration, disbelief, and horror at the blatant disregard and apparent hatred of anything resembling democratic processes by Australians.

    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/theminefield/when-are-plebiscites-legitimate/7805636

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    • #
      ianl8888

      … hatred of anything resembling democratic processes by Australians …

      That’s SOME Australians, from the narcissistic left.

      The issue currently exercising their febrile minds is the possible plebiscite on SSM. They are genuinely frightened they may lose – Brexit scared the stools out of them. When confronted with the long-standing Swiss system, these people literally run from the light. They are noisy enough to derail the proposed SSM plebiscite and I expect this to occur.

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  • #
    pat

    were Guardian journos too embarrassed to put their names to this one?

    4 Sept: Guardian: Storm Hermine’s damage fueled by global warming, scientists say
    by Guardian staff and agencies
    Michael Mann of the Pennsylvania State University noted that this century’s one-foot sea-level rise in New York City meant 25 more square miles flooded during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, causing billions more in damage.
    “We are already experiencing more and more flooding due to climate change in every storm,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a geosciences professor at Princeton University. “And it’s only the beginning.”…
    Overnight, the center of the storm moved further east and away from the coast ***than previously forecast, said Rick Knabb, director of the National Hurricane Center (NHC), in a webcast…
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/04/storm-hermine-damage-global-warming

    4 Sept: ABC7NY: Post Tropical Cyclone Hermine spins out of way of Tri-State Area; flooding still possible in coastal areas
    Meteorologist Jeff Smith says the track of the storm system pulled it a little farther east overnight, making the threat of coastal flooding more moderate ***than previously expected…
    http://abc7ny.com/weather/post-tropical-cyclone-hermine-spins-out-of-way-of-tri-state-area-/1492844/

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  • #
    pat

    3 Sept: Toronto Sun: Lorrie Goldstein: Ontario’s cap-and-trade train wreck
    One way Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government is trying to sell Ontario taxpayers on increasing their cost of living by $1.9 billion annually starting next year because of cap-and-trade, is to tout investments in public transit.
    The problem with this is three fold…

    Third, if all the Wynne government — $300 billion in debt — does is use new revenues from cap-and-trade to build transit projects it was already going to build anyway, then these will fail to meet the test of “additionality” when it comes to reducing emissions.
    Additionality means that to be effective, carbon pricing revenues must go toward projects that would not have happened without them.
    Otherwise they are “business as usual” projects which — we know from global experience — increases emissions rather than reduces them…

    A warning of what Ontario may be in for has already happened in California and Quebec, whose cap-and-trade market Ontario will join next year.
    There, the recent crash of the cap-and-trade market because of doubts about its viability, has choked off funding to California’s multi-billion-dollar high-speed rail project that was sold to Californians as an emission reducing initiative financed by cap-and-trade.
    That means California may have to raise taxes to fund a project its citizens are already paying for through higher retail prices due to cap-and-trade…
    http://www.torontosun.com/2016/09/03/ontarios-cap-and-trade-train-wrec

    what to do when the public don’t like CAGW policies?
    change the words, of course:

    3 Sept: The Coloradoan: Kevin Duggan: City wants to ease anxiety about Climate Action Plan
    When is a Climate Action Plan not necessarily about the hot-button topic of climate change? When it’s called something else.
    Fort Collins officials are working hard to “rebrand” the city’s ambitious Climate Action Plan and its goals for reducing the community’s greenhouse gas emissions by using different language to describe how it will be implemented and what it really means to the community.
    The working slogan is, “Road to 2020: Forging Our Efficient Future.”…
    “Whatever words we choose, we are going to make sure they really convey a sense of hope, a sense of optimism, a sense of pride, and a sense of inclusivity,” she (Council environmental program manager Lindsay Ex) said…

    ***Council members said they like the rebranding idea and its potential for relieving community anxiety about the Climate Action Plan…

    The idea of improving air quality in Fort Collins would resonate more with residents than trying to affect global climate change.
    The city shouldn’t make decisions based on setting an example for the rest of the world, said Councilmember Gino Campana. That would be a great outcome, he said, but not a goal.
    “That’s not what we’ve been elected to do and what we should be doing, rightly, with our city’s tax dollars,” he said.
    http://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2016/09/04/city-wants-ease-anxiety-climate-action-plan/89775388/

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    pat

    5 Sept: Australian: Rachel Baxendale: Climate change report inaccurate: Josh Frydenberg
    There are significant factual inaccuracies in a report by a group of climate change NGOs which finds that Australia is falling behind the rest of the world in combating global warming, according to Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg.
    Two Climate Change Authority board members, climate scientist David Karoly and economist Clive Hamilton, have today backed the Climate Transparency report, released ahead of the G20 conference, and declared that they will not back a report released by the CCA last week, accusing their CCA colleagues of giving “untrue and dangerous” advice which ignores the demands of science.
    Mr Frydenberg this morning denied that Australia was falling behind the rest of the world, saying the report had been put together by a “consortium of NGOs designed to promote climate policy including a carbon tax” and contained several factual inaccuracies.
    “First, it says that Australia has an ETS which we don’t, second it says that coal is a greater proportion of our overall energy mix than it is, and third it says that we are a laggard when it comes to public climate finance when we’ve been co-chairing the green climate fund and one of the top ten contributors in the world,” Mr Frydenberg told ABC radio…
    Mr Frydenberg said he accepted the findings of last week’s Climate Change Authority report, and not the views of “two dissenters”.
    “The Climate Change Authority, chaired by Wendy Craik, has made its own determination. We have not sought to direct it,” he said…
    Prof Hamilton said his report with Prof Karoly was based “very firmly on the science of climate change”…
    Asked whether as a former Greens candidate he was pushing his own political ideology, Prof Hamilton said everyone had a political viewpoint.
    “Anyone who says they’re neutral is deluding themselves,” he said.
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/climate-council-report-inaccurate-josh-frydenberg/news-story/2c87cf3995745504813fad3422a501b5

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      Analitik

      It’s looking like Josh Frydenberg might be talking the CAGW talk while walking in the other direction (or at least at right angles to it). Along with the complaints by the greenwash over the lack of affirmative action to support renewables at the recent (August 19) COAG meeting, hope lives.

      Just look at all the out clauses in the AEMO FUTURE POWER SYSTEM SECURITY PROGRAM report summary. They clearly see the issues in South Australia but are distancing themselves from any responsibility for the coming grid crash.
      https://www.aemo.com.au/Media-Centre/~/-/media/823E457AEA5E43BE83DDD56767126BF2.ashx

      South Australia’s increasing reliance on the Heywood Interconnector, which connects the region to the rest of the NEM. South Australia’s level of non-synchronous generation also means that its power system is more susceptible to rapid
      changes in frequency, and to larger frequency deviations following a separation event
      . This makes power system operations for South Australia very different to most of the international experience.

      To date, AEMO has not identified NEM-wide challenges or challenges that are apparent all the time.

      Reading the body of the report, Section 4, will show you the AEMO has analysed South Australia as the special (basket) case that it is with the critical reliance on an interconnector (Heywood) following the loss of synchronous intertia with the closure of its last coal plant (Northern). South Australia is also singled out for discussion in regards to MANAGING EXTREME POWER SYSTEM CONDITIONS (section 5) and plus comparison vs other states for PV and non-synchronous penetration in section 6.

      The TECHNICAL SOLUTIONS (section 8) evaluation of possible solution to strengthen the grids vs disruptive events clearly shows that aside from more traditional synchronous generators, there are no solutions.

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      bobl

      Anyone who says they’re neutral is deluding themselves

      Strangely Clive is right, I’m in the “Empirically verified science, and keep the government out of the public’s back pocket at all costs” party.

      If I thought the government needed more money I’d be supportive but while the government wastes billions on non existent and “irreparable” (because it’s not broken) climate and ignores the simple math that I have shown it (No Narcissism there, just that I know they have SEEN the simple pollie friendly 7th grader math because I showed it to them) I will not support ANY tax increases. There is money to be saved they must grab that off the rent-seekers first.

      I know the “Scientist” Will Steffan has seen the math too because I showed him too!

      Actually come to think of it Clive is dead wrong as usual because my “Ideology” left me with no-one to vote for last election – That would have to be the definition of non-partisan.

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    pat

    so many links, yet Guardian doesn’t link to the Climate Transparency report, supported by Karoly & Hamilton:

    1 Sept: Guardian: Michael Slezak: Australia worst among G20 when it comes to action on climate change, report finds
    Australia the only country to receive a rating of ‘very poor’ in a majority of categories in Climate Transparency scorecard
    By analysing the policies and actions of each of the 20 countries, which together produce 75% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, Climate Transparency produced a report, scorecard and series of country profiles detailing their findings, revealing Australia was not pulling its weight.
    On the scorecard, Australia was the only country to receive a rating of “very poor” in a majority of categories…
    Alvaro Umana, co-chair of Climate Transparency and a former Costa Rican environment minister, said: “The G20 has proven that it can be nimble and take action on economic issues, so we are looking to these countries to do the same for the climate.”…
    The report notes that if every country emulated Australia’s level of ambition, global warming would likely exceed 4C…
    Those findings are expected to be underlined in another report being released on Thursday by WWF France and WWF China arguing that a global energy transition is already under way and the G20 countries need to simply accelerate action towards that goal. WWF Australia will say the report serves as a wakeup call for Australian policy makers…
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/01/australia-worst-among-g20-when-it-comes-to-action-on-climate-change-report-finds?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    didn’t find any MSM linking to it, but here it is:

    PDF: 32 pages: Sept 2016: Climate Transparency Report: Brown to Green: Assessing the G20 transition to a low-carbon economy
    Authors and Acknowledgements
    This report was prepared by, Jan Burck (Germanwatch), Niklas Höhne (NewClimate Institute), Markus Hagemann
    (NewClimate Institute), Sofia Gonzales-Zuñiga (NewClimate Institute), Gerd Leipold (HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform), Franziska Marten (Germanwatch), Hannah Schindler (HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform), Sam Barnard (Overseas Development Institute) and Smita Nakhooda (Overseas Development Institute).
    We express our gratitude to the following contributors for their invaluable input and support: Juan Carlos Arredondo Brun (Iniciativa Climática de Mexico), Cindy Baxter, Rachel Chi Kiu Mok, Margherita Gagliardi, Frederic Hans (NewClimate Institute), Takeshi Kuramochi (NewClimate Institute), Marie-Jeanne Kurdziel (NewClimate Institute), Thomas Day (NewClimate Institute), Surabi Menon (ClimateWorks Foundation), Bert Metz (European Climate Foundation), Frauke Röser (NewClimate Institute), Sandhya Srinivasan, Ritika Tewari (NewClimate Institute), Sebastian Wegner (HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform), Lutz Weischer, Ingo Heinze and Eva Rink (Germanwatch), Antoine Warembourg (NewClimate Institute) and William Wills (CentroClima).
    This report was made possible through support of:
    Stiftung Mercator & ClimateWorks Foundation, GermanWatch, NewClimate Foundation, Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform, Climate Action Tracker, NewClimate Institute, Overseas Development Institute
    http://www.climate-transparency.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Brown-to-Green-Assessing-the-G20-transition-to-a-low-carbon-economy.pdf

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      bobl

      The report notes that if every country emulated Australia’s level of ambition, global warming would likely exceed 4C…

      Some people can’t handle some basic 5th grader math.

      Australia’s CO2 sink was more than 20 times it’s 0.5GT emissions at some 20 GT in 1990, since then CO2 went from 380PPM to 400 PPM and plant growth changed around +10%. This means our carbon sink increased by at least 2GT while out emissions were flat at 500 MT – The Nett is an increase carbon dioxide sink of at least 1.5 GT. Yes no hoper, less than fifth grader UN, Australia has offset all its emissions and could not grow nett emissions even if it wanted to. It is the most successful carbon sink on earth. Even the OCO Satellite says so. Now where’s my cheque?

      Seriously though, with all those accountants you would think guberments could do some simple math.

      4C, – don’t make me laugh, event at the IPCCs gross overestimate of sensitivity that would take more cola and oil burned than is currently believed available and around 1000 years.

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        bobl

        Oops Coal, not Cola, though Cola releases CO2 so maybe just a freudian slip (and exceuse the other speeling eroars – I’m having a baaaad morning)

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    pat

    nothing political to see here!

    2 Sept: WWF Australia: Global energy transition is underway and ready for G20 acceleration on action
    A new report from WWF highlights important signs that an unstoppable global energy transition is underway, and serves as a wakeup call for Australian policy makers…
    The report by WWF-France and WWF-China called 15 Signals: Evidence the Energy Transition is Underway…
    WWF-France CEO ***Pascal Canfin said evidence of the transformation was clear, but most leaders do not seem to be aware of it…
    WWF-Australia spokesperson ***Kellie Caught said the report serves as a wakeup call for Australia, clearly showing the world is moving away from fossil fuels and embracing clean renewable energy…
    “The Government could continue funding ARENA and achieve budget repair by phasing out fossil fuel subsidies…
    http://www.wwf.org.au/news_resources/?17680/Global-energy-transition-is-underway-and-ready-for-G20-acceleration-on-action

    ***Pascal Canfin head of the French section of WWF, since January 5, 2016. He was Minister for Development under the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Ayrault Cabinet (formed on 16 May 2012 by the presidential decree of President Francois Hollande. It is composed of members from the Socialist Party, the EELV and the Radical Party of the Left – Wikipedia) Canfin was previously a Member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2012. From July 2014 to December 2015, he was the Senior Advisor on Climate at World Resources Institute (WRI), ranked the most influential think tank in the world…Alongside his journalistic work, Pascal Canfin got politically involved with the Greens (France) in France. He was responsible for the party’s Economic, Social and Public Services Committee between 2005 and 2009. He has been a member of Europe Ecologie–The Greens since its creation in 2010. (Wikipedia)

    ***Kellie Caught, National Manager Climate Change, WWF Australia (2007-present);
    Senior Advisor, Australian Democrats March 2003 – February 2007;
    UNIFEM (The United Nations Development Fund for Women) 1999-2000 (LinkedIn)

    the WWF Report:

    PDF: 38 pages: Sept 2016: WWF: 15 Signals: Evidence the Energy Transition is Underway
    http://d2ouvy59p0dg6k.cloudfront.net/downloads/wwf_energy_signals_english_pdf.pdf

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    pat

    read all:

    4 Sept: Paul Homewood: “Steaming Hot Autumn”? – Only 10F Colder Than 1906!
    The lies just get more bare faced. From the Telegraph…ETC
    No doubt they will wriggle and squirm over their definition of “recent”, but Met Office records show that temperatures of 30C in September are extremely far from being uncommon.
    Indeed the highest September temperature recorded in the UK was 35.6C, all the way back in 1906.
    This heat was widespread, and lasted for five days. Even up in Scotland, temperatures of 89F, or 31.7C, were recorded…
    Someone is obviously feeding the Telegraph with this information, which is clearly designed to push the myth of global warming…
    Tomorrow, a complaint will be fired off to the Telegraph.
    https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/steaming-hot-autumn-only-10f-colder-than-1906/

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    el gordo

    Without mentioning beef cattle Professor Karoly said “Australia is the highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases of all countries in the world.

    “Therefore Australia should be doing more, because it is contributing more to climate change growth, to global warming around the world.”

    ABC

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      bobl

      Karoly is an Ideologue, and activist that can’t do math, the idea that Nett emissions are in any way up is dead-set fanciful. Australia is a Nett carbon SINK by a long way, He should be struck off Santa’s Christmas list for telling such lies.

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    Rod Stuart

    In case anyone believes that money can’t buy everything………….
    Apparently George Soros has discovered that lots and lotsa money can buy far more than Getup. It can buy the RCC!

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    Much more nonsence at Spencer’s site. You can see the cutoff here.
    http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/08/experiment-results-show-a-cool-object-can-make-a-warm-object-warmer-still/#comment-223836

    Toneb says: September 5, 2016 at 9:37AM

    wj(“Because the elevated CO2 molecule bending moment amplitude is thermally high from mechanical convection effects the 15 micron lower flux passes through just like Kirchhoff demanded.”)

    “Unscrambling (perhaps) A convectively lifted CO2 molecule has an elevated temp compared to other around it?” No I clearly stated:

    (“Because the elevated CO2 molecule bending moment amplitude is thermally high from mechanical convection effects the 15 micron lower flux passes through just like Kirchhoff demanded.”)

    All of the elevated molecules have the same local temperature via collision. Without convection the non-condensing thermal lapse rate is calculated at -(14-17) Celsius/km. greater negative slope that the -10 Celsius (dry) or -5 Celsius (condensing) lapse. This for every tropospheric altitude the temperature is above that of radiative equilibrium.

    “LWIR from the surface is not absorbed??”

    That is correct not absorbed!! Kirchhoff’s law states:

    For an arbitrary body emitting and absorbing thermal radiation in radiative equilibrium, the emission is equal to the absorption.

    In some cases, emissive power and absorptivity may be defined to depend on angle. But there is no change in sensible heat. If the mass is at a temperature above that for ‘radiative equilibrium the exit flux may be greater than the incident flux.

    Toneb says: September 5, 2016 at 9:41AM

    “Now that you have taken up the correct idea of vibratory modes of a GHG molecule being the agents of the GHE – what happened to your “PE effect” then? More reading required from you I fear.”

    Indeed by you read up on the “thorium, thulium, thallium, electron emission work function. All of these materials can and do spontaniously ’emit electrons’ at temperatures of 320 Kelvin. At 80 Kelvin; electron emission is observed for 8 micron 0.125ev irradiation. This is a true photoelectric effect, and generally requires total energy of approx .75ev or a six cycle wavepacket. What the hell do you call a “photon”.

    “Oh, and just how did Kirchoff “demand”?”

    See my above explanation! And please stop with your “More Holy than thou” BS. If you can identify any technical error, and I make many, please point such out from your own work not some absurd writings from someone who likely knows way less than you.

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    pat

    not a single person quoted in this piece brings up the ridiculous petition. it is pure BBC propaganda and takes up about half of the article!

    5 Sept: BBC: Brexit: Ignoring Leave vote would be outrage MPs told
    Ignoring the outcome of the EU referendum would lead to public outrage, MPs have been told as they debated the future of Brexit.
    Ex-Tory minister John Penrose said any attempt to bypass the Leave vote would be “corrosive” to public trust.
    But Labour MP David Lammy said the public had been “lied to” and a further vote on the Brexit deal was the only way out of the “constitutional crisis”.
    A public petition urging a new EU vote has attracted four million signatures…
    ‘Hijacked’
    MPs are obliged to consider any petition which receives more than 100,000 signatures for debate in Parliament.
    The EU petition urging a re-run of the vote has now attracted 4.14 million signatures – more than any other in the past five years – and was debated in Westminster Hall…
    Although the petition was launched in May, interest in it intensified in the 48 hours after the historic vote on 23 June – with 3.2 million people having signed it by 26 June.
    But the man who started the petition, Oliver Healey, has claimed that it has been “hijacked” by Remain supporters.
    Mr Healey, an English Democrat activist and Leave supporter, has disassociated himself from the petition saying he started it in the run-up to the vote because he was worried that the UK would opt to remain in the EU by a narrow margin on a low turnout…
    The House of Commons petitions committee subsequently launched an investigation amid claims some of the names on the online document were fraudulent.
    Monday’s debate will not alter the outcome of the referendum since the rules by which it was held were agreed by Parliament and cannot be changed retrospectively…
    http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-37271417

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    pat

    comment #39 is in moderation.

    no pressure from the public…just political grand-standing and BBC propaganda:

    5 Sept: BBC: Roger Harrabin: Pressure grows on UK to ratify Paris climate change deal
    Pressure is growing on the UK government to ratify the Paris climate change deal immediately.
    A spokesman for the prime minister told the BBC the UK would ratify “as soon as possible”, but did not suggest a date.
    But Labour, the Lib Dems, SNP and the Greens say the UK has lost its long-term leadership on climate after the US and China jointly ratified the deal at the weekend.
    They say there is no good reason for the UK to delay.
    Labour warns that unless ministers start the ratification process right away they will attack the government’s “failures” on climate policy in an opposition day Commons debate on Wednesday when a motion will call for immediate action.
    It is supported by the Lib Dems, SNP and the Greens…
    http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37272671

    the “Independent” already ran the same story, with no public pressure…just NGOs & other CAGW-interested parties quoted:

    3 Sept: UK Independent: Shehab Khan: Pressure grows on the UK as China and US jointly ratify Paris climate change agreement
    ‘There are no excuses left for the UK government to delay the ratification of the Paris deal, least of all Brexit’
    Robin Willoughby, Oxfam’s head of food and climate change, stressed that the UK must ratify the deal as soon as possible if it wanted to be seen as a global leader…
    Camilla Toulmin, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said: “There’s no reason now for the UK not to ratify the agreement as soon as possible.
    “Doing so would help cement our reputation for leadership on climate change and send a strong signal to countries globally that we’re looking to build stronger links with in a post-Brexit world that we’re working with them towards a common goal.”…
    Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist Dr Doug Parr said Britain had led the way on the issue in the past and must now do so again…
    The UK has also been urged to ratify the agreement by Pacific islanders who face losing their homes as sea levels rise…
    http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/china-ratifies-paris-global-warming-climate-change-agreement-pressure-uk-brexit-a7223691.html

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    pat

    and the MSM wonders why it is disappearing:

    4 Sept: UK Independent: Editorial: It is joyous to see the biggest threat to life on this planet, climate change, finally being taken seriously
    When the two powers that dump four in every ten tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere belatedly decide to get real, it is a happy day that many thought could never arrive
    There (Rio 1992), and at Kyoto, Copenhagen, Durban, Doha, Cancun and elsewhere, the rhetoric about our new Anthropocene era rarely matched any commitment to change behaviour. Cynics and climate change deniers were snide about the aviation fuel burnt to bring the diplomats and politicians together, mocked their lavish banquets and sneered at the multiple instances of hypocrisy, real or imagined.
    Progress was, in truth, often illusory at these windy events. Well, we know now that an invaluable prize will soon be secured – the survival of normal human life on the planet.
    For even if the direst estimates about climate change are wrong, and even if the science is flawed – as claimed by a vanishingly small section of expert opinion – reducing pollution and carbon dioxide emissions are no bad things in themselves. The world should long ago have proceeded on the precautionary principle…
    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/it-is-joyous-to-see-the-biggest-threat-to-life-on-this-planet-climate-change-finally-being-taken-a7224031.html

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    pat

    6 Sept: Breitbart: Julia Hahn: Conservative Legend Phyllis Schlafly Dies At 92
    Schlafly’s last great political battle, which she won, was pushing for the Republican presidential nomination of Donald J. Trump, whom she saw as America’s last hope. Schlafly, who described Trump as the “only hope to defeat the Kingmakers,” became one of his earliest and most influential endorsements. With Schlafly’s backing, Trump went on to win more votes than any Republican nominee in U.S. history.
    Appropriately, her final act of devotion to the country she loved was the publication of a new book, set for release this Tuesday, titled “The Conservative Case for Trump.” In it, Schlafly lays out what is at stake in this election if conservatives do not mobilize to propel Trump to the Oval Office…
    http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/05/conservative-legend-phyllis-schlafly-dies-92/

    6 Sept: Breitbart: Donald Trump: Phyllis Schlafly’s ‘Legacy Will Live on in the Movement’
    Trump issued the statement below following Schlafly’s death:
    “Phyllis Schlafly is a conservative icon who led millions to action, reshaped the conservative movement, and fearlessly battled globalism and the ‘kingmakers’ on behalf of America’s workers and families. I was honored to spend time with her during this campaign as she waged one more great battle for national sovereignty. I was able to speak with her by phone only a few weeks ago, and she sounded as resilient as ever. Our deepest prayers go out to her family and all her loved ones. She was a patriot, a champion for women, and a symbol of strength. She fought every day right to the end for America First. Her legacy will live on in the movement she led and the millions she inspired.”…
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/05/donald-trump-phyllis-schlaflys-legacy-will-live-on-in-the-movement/

    possibly her final published article!

    6 Sept: Townhall: Phyllis Schlafly: Trump in Mexico Recalls Reagan in Geneva
    (Editor’s note: Phyllis Schlafly passed away on September 5 at the age of 92. She will be missed)
    http://townhall.com/columnists/phyllisschlafly/2016/09/06/trump-in-mexico-recalls-reagan-in-geneva-n2214161

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    pat

    important Schlafly’s last great fight should be rememmbered:

    27 Apr: WorldNetDaily: Jerome Corsi: Phyllis Schlafly in court to retain control of Eagle Forum
    91-year-old ‘iron lady’ challenged by 6 board members
    Judge John B. Barberis Jr. in the Circuit Court of the Third Judicial Circuit, in Madison County, Illinois, is expected to announce a decision as early as Thursday regarding a petition for a temporary restraining order made by six Eagle Forum board members who oppose Schlafly’s leadership, including her daughter…
    The hearing took a political tone as attorneys from the Runnymede Law Group in St. Louis, Missouri, representing Schlafly, argued the six dissenting board members were attempting a coup in response to Schlafly’s endorsement of Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination.
    The board members, Schlafly’s lawyers charged, were attempting to divert the financial resources, membership contact list and national reputation of Eagle Forum to support Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign.
    In an explosive development buried within the legal briefs filed in the case, Schlafly’s attorneys charged the Cruz campaign had obtained unauthorized control of Eagle Forum membership and leaders lists to persuade members to vote for Cruz…

    Schlafly, age 91, notified of the hearing only on Monday, was in attendance while none of the six opposition board members were present.
    At the end of the hearing, Eagle Forum President Ed Martin, whom the six opposition board members seek to oust, commented that Schlafly’s stamina was holding up through what has developed into a trying ordeal.
    “The iron lady of Eagle Forum sat there in the courtroom from 1:30 p.m. until 5 o’clock, as a thunderstorm went through, the power went out briefly; and the elevator in the building didn’t work when the hearing ended,” Martin said. “Phyllis walked down the stairs with the rest of us. Meanwhile, none of the six opposition board members showed up; only their three high-powered lawyers.”…
    A new at-large director is widely expected to support Phyllis Schlafly, which would deprive the remaining five opposition directors of the simple majority used to pass resolutions at the controversial April 11 board meeting…
    http://www.wnd.com/2016/04/phyllis-schlafly-in-court-to-retain-control-of-eagle-forum/

    6 Sept: WorldNetDaily: Leo Hohmann: Conservative champion Phyllis Schlafly dies at 92
    ‘Taught and inspired so many to fight the good fight in defense of American values’
    Her longtime friend and former GOP presidential candidate and writer Patrick Buchanan’s recent op-ed praises her new book on Trump.
    At 92, Schlafly has a new book out published by Regnery, “The Conservative Case for Trump,” co-authored by Ed Martin of Eagle Forum and Brett Decker. It it, she argues that Trump is an authentic conservative around whom every conservative should rally…
    Schlafly’s organization has been split this presidential election — Schlafly supported Donald Trump, though many board members disagreed.
    ***She maintained her leadership of the organization.
    http://www.wnd.com/2016/09/conservative-champion-phyllis-schlafly-dies-at-92/

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    tom0mason

    From the ‘Yet again file’

    Sept 6, 2016.
    You may be interested in this program I’ve just heard on the BBC Worldservice http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0468lwc

    VERY alarming program about ‘fragile’ corals dying. Alarm, alarm and more propaganda.

    Over the past eight months almost a quarter of the Great Barrier Reef has died – according to some estimates – because of coral bleaching, which can happen when sea temperatures rise.

    No counter argument was offered. The fact that corals have been around for 2 million years or so seems to eluded these AGW advocates.

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