Weekend Unthreaded (with a dose of nature)

We walked through a great sunset today on the river not far from home. A few hundred thousand people were within fifteen minutes drive, but almost no one was there.

Swan River, photo, Perth, Nov 26th 2016, Jo Nova.

Amazing how cities can have patches of tranquility.

We could all go wandering more often:

Walking in nature changes our brains

Does experiencing nature actually change our brains in some way that affects our emotional health?

…City dwellers also have a higher risk for anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than people living outside urban centers, studies show.

These developments seem to be linked to some extent, according to a growing body of research. Various studies have found that urban dwellers with little access to green spaces have a higher incidence of psychological problems than people living near parks and that city dwellers who visit natural environments have lower levels of stress hormones immediately afterward than people who have not recently been outside.

See “Greenery (or Even Photos of Trees) Can Make Us Happier”.

PS: And yes, of course, windy, cold cloudy days, mosquitoes, flies and tetanus are all natural too…

 

 

8.6 out of 10 based on 58 ratings

295 comments to Weekend Unthreaded (with a dose of nature)

  • #

    Nature is kitten ‘shadow’ presenting the latest bird, mouse, or squirrel! Did I do good? Ill say! It is now permissible to pet upon us!! The deer watch carefully! The raccoons you see only with a trail camera, just like the Kurdish Peshmerga

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  • #
    Casey

    I never ceases to amaze me just how blind people are to the utter beauty around them; they’d rather watch some moron-level RealityTV [snipped] or play with the phones that are “smarter” than they are!

    But then – flip it over… if these people knew about it they would RUIN IT with screaming brat-kids and 10 000 KFC boxes and beer cans.

    Better to have these oasis secret…

    Welcome to OUR oasis from the “human stain”:

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    • #
      Casey

      Why didn’t my picture show?


      I havent figured out yet, but some people can get away with inline images using the code. If you try that, please also add the link as well under that (outside the html). And the mods or I will put the html back in for you. — Jo

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        You must have moved at the wrong time.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        You need to post a link to a url.

        Pictures do not show on this blog

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      • #
        TedM

        “Why didn’t my picture show?” Being saved for use in a centrefold?

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      • #

        Be Happy.
        Don’t Worry.

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        • #
          Casey

          You lot are all NUTS – and it’s brilliant… we need more silly buggers in the world (to paraphrase “Last of the Summer Wine”)

          Anyway – the picture wasn;t Earth shattering.. just an illustration of how less humanity equals more beautiful.

          While We are NOT responsible for climate changes, we are responsible for a lot of crap on this planet.

          https://i.imgbox.com/bZ6ARtmz.jpg

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          • #
            AndyG55

            Nice pic, Casey. Lots of human influence which doesn’t look too devastating.

            But I agree, humans have done a LOT to destroy the landscape

            http://www.peopleandtheplanet.com/image.php@id=2491

            https://az-eandt-live-media.azureedge.net/e/f/7/e/b/8/ef7eb8b15f95a1b372cd28432d84141f225acfd9.jpg

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            • #
              Casey

              Oh hell yes – those turbines are infecting out hills up here too.

              It goes: People find out – people try to stop them – no one in power cares about the “people” – suddenly we have another 12-20 turbine farm being built.

              It told me how it was going to be, years ago: Down south, around the Devon/Cornwall area of the country, a politician vetoes a wind farm in his constituency.
              But – his family owned land up here, Northumberland, and he pushed through a wind farm here… on his land area, overriding any complaints about it by using the “so you don’t want “green” then” dumb argument.

              He didn’t want the eyesores in his area… but somewhere he doesn’t go, probably doesn’t even know much about, is perfectly OK.

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              • #
                Annie

                A beautiful place, Northumberland. We discovered it too late to see much of it but I still have some good photos of wild weather along the coast south of Berwick.
                I also am deeply upset at the sight of all those hideous, useless bird mincers. There are so many now.
                That is a lovely pic you posted, though took a time to load!

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              • #
                Raven

                . . . “so you don’t want “green” then” dumb argument.

                Yes, it’s a convenient argument but what price amenity and community?

                My last house in Melbourne became subject to a heritage overlay by the local council. I objected a number of times but to no avail. Council justification was all about amenity, historical preservation and community considerations, so largely aesthetics.

                With that heritage overlay came restrictions, of course . . mostly in terms of changes that were permissible to the house exterior. The restrictions were unimportant while living there because I was restoring the house to original anyway.

                However, last year when it came time to sell, that heritage overlay raised it’s ugly head by eliminating a whole swath of potential buyers that wanted to develop the site.
                I guesstimate that cost me ~ $200K and of course there was no avenue to hit up the council for compensation of any sort.

                I wonder what council would have said if I wanted to erect a windmill in the back yard.

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  • #
    mike restin

    Amazing how cities can have patches of tranquility.

    We could all go wandering more often:

    I’m not sure Jo but, I think you just made the case for the maroons at uni crying for their safe space, maybe?

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    • #
      ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N

      What is it about the ocean that so darn much invites me to rejoin its ancient embrace? Society? Probably..

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  • #
    TdeF

    Not sure about that. Nature is not seen as a place of endless work for the modern city dweller. The stress levels and the working hours and commercial risk for farmers are still in the 19th century. A farmer would critically note the water level for the time of year, the clear sky, the lack of wind on the water, the drain running into the river and think about how to pay for that new pump.

    Farming in Australia is gambling and farmers often lose. High debts, high risk and so dependent on the weather and in a loop where you cannot just walk away and get another job. A high rate of suicide. Meanwhile city dwelling Greens make life far worse as they try to stop you building dams for the drought, GM crops which can survive, selling your sheep overseas or even running your diesel to pump water. No everyone’s view of a tranquil scene is different.

    You get the same thing in a home. For a man, his home is a place of refuge, of rest and tranquility, a place to enjoy away from the stresses of the world, a hard earned rest and quiet happy meals. A place of idyll, apart from taking out the bins and carrying the shopping. For many wives, it is a place of endless mundane work, cleaning, shopping, washing, things to do and that is often on top of a job or all the endless work that is a family. That is why we holiday away from home, to break the cycle. So two views of the same tranquil scene can be very different and I expect it is one reason farmers love the country, but sometimes you have to leave and come back to appreciate it.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      ” happy meals”

      I wouldn’t have taken you for a Macdonald’s tragic. ! 🙂

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      • #
        TdeF

        It’s all about the plastic toy. You used to get them in cereal boxes too. Sad how McDonalds have changed our language.

        Actually there are 200 McDonalds in Moscow now. Rome, Tokyo, Sebastopol(crimea), Kazan on the Volga. I have been to them all. A fascinating phenomenon. In Russia children were more amazed by the clean flush toilets. Who expects a Scottish restaurant in Russia?

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        • #
          ianl8888

          I was eating dinner in a tiny restaurant attached to a small hotel in Irkutsk (central Siberia). This man turned up, set himself up near the door with a saxophone and a small battery-operated boom box and started playing passable jazz.

          Who expects American saxophone jazz in central Siberia ?

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          • #
            TdeF

            Lake Baikal is amazing. A must see tourist destination. 22% of the world’s fresh water, another 21% in the Great Lakes and the balance in Antarctica. The Russians are very musical and Russian choir extraordinary. I hope Trump brings them in from the cold. They see themselves as European but for some reason everyone attacks them, the British, the French, the Turks, the Chinese, the Japanese. It is still going on. Maybe Trump can bring them into the fold instead of Clinton’s talk of nuclear war.

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            • #
              Mike Spilligan

              TdeF: I disagree with what you say about “everyone” attacking the Russians. We Brits – or those who look beyond the MSM and don’t view the BBC – know that we are closer to Russia culturally and socially than (say) even European nations below the “olive line”. Our MSM plug the anti-Russian line a lot – probably to “invent an enemy” – and our Min. of Defence loves that as they are always looking for excuses to buy more “kit”. My evidence for this is the mostly negative reaction to these articles by commenters – usually running at about 5 to 1 against; showing that many (most?) aren’t fooled – the “usual suspects” excepted.

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              • #
                TdeF

                Agreed. I meant historically, not today. I increasingly read of the need in England and even France to engage with the Russians.
                They are vilified in Aleppo as they were in Afghanistan when the US trained Odama Bin Kaden and gave them stinger missiles. How did that work out? Then Obama supported ISIS in Syria and the Brotherhood in Egypt. Then the 2000 tons of Sarin gas. You read nothing in the MSM about the real WMD.
                When will they listen to the Russians? What Obama and Clinton know about the Middle East would fit in a thimble.

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              • #
                TdeF

                I am also aware that the MSM do not represent England, any more than they represent the people in America or Australia.
                BREXIT and Trump prove that. The current praise for Castro is galling.

                However historically the Russians are skeptical, especially after Napoleon and with Crimea which is the emotional heart of Russia. I visited the huge glorifying Crimea memorial in London. If ever there was a stupid punitive war, that was it.

                Few people even know why so many British and French died for the Khanate of Crimea, working from the based of their allies, the Ottomans in Istanbul against the Christian Russians. Anyone over 60 in the Crimea was born in Russia and no one much speaks Ukranian. 2% of the land mass and an economic basket case, invasion was not necessary. It was a popular revolt. A democratic plebiscite showed 90% of Crimeans wanted to go home, but this was ignored because the MSM enemy is Russia. (The last 10% were Tartars, expelled by Stalin one terrible night and now slowly returning)

                Global Warming, Russia, open borders, windmills, climate scientology. Mostly I resent paying for the ABC/SBS monolith in Australia who make no pretence of balanced or even accurate news, despite their charter. To them Castro is a hero.

                We do not need biased government media. The private media are bad enough.

                I am waiting to see if our faux Prime Minister eulogises Castro. Trump is the sort of President the world needs, on a $1 salary and beholden to no one except the American people.

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          • #

            ianl8888,

            I was eating dinner in a tiny restaurant attached to a small hotel in Irkutsk (central Siberia). This man turned up, set himself up near the door with a saxophone and a small battery-operated boom box and started playing passable jazz.

            it’s funny really, when I read this I was immediately reminded of a great movie I saw back in the mid 80s, Moscow On The Hudson. It starred Robin Williams in a (semi) dramatic role. The thing was that everyone knew Robin Williams as a tremendous comedian, and you spent the movie waiting for the craziness to begin, and it never did. I still reckon that this was one of his best movies.

            He played a Russian saxophonist who defected whilst in the U.S. for a concert tour, only to find that life was not as easy as most Russians thought it might be.

            He settled in New York, and the title reflects that life might actually be the same no matter where you are, either in Moscow, or even Moscow on the Hudson. (NYC)

            Great movie from a truly talented actor.

            Tony.

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            • #
              Another Ian

              Tony

              Have you heard the Paul Kelly song “Every f-ing city looks the same”?

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            • #
              Bulldust

              Robin Williams had a surprising acting range, but tended towards tragedies such as Dead Poets Society. He makes a creepy sociopath as well (One Hour Photo) and played in sci-fi (The Final Cut) kids movies (Jumanji and many cartoon voices) and the unforgettable Good Will Hunting. Then there was the somewhat surreal Fisher King. He had a rare talent to make people laugh and cry … sometimes at the same time.

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              • #
                BruceC

                You forgot Mork and Mindy

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              • #
                Griffo

                Robin Williams when in Sydney once turned up unannounced at an open mike night at the Harold Park Hotel,a comedy venue ,no big noting,no fuss,just hung out with the crowd and made a lot of friends.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Yes it would appear that one wing of the bird is more powerful than the other sending the body into a left handed death spiral, balance is needed to correct its roll so the course can be set safely forward.

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    • #
      PlainJane

      “I expect it is one reason farmers love the country, but sometimes you have to leave and come back to appreciate it”
      Very true, I think one of the benefits of not coming from a farming background, and then coming into farming is that one appreciates the benefits and can think “well, I could be doing a bank reconciliation in an office somewhere for someone else instead of this” (not that one does not have to do bank reconciliations for the ATO when farming). I suspect you may have been farming to have that insight ?

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      • #
        TdeF

        No, not really, but it is something almost perverse in all human life. People become so immersed in their work they cannot see what is around them and have to leave and come back. Sometimes I think that is the real purpose of a holiday, to get an appreciation of your life and what is good in it simply by leaving. I remember walking into one of Melbourne’s first skyscrapers, the Rialto and marveling at the spectacular view. The people who worked there never looked out the huge windows and found the bright light very annoying. For Joanne, the tranquility of a stream in the bush was amazing and refreshing. It is all about contrast.

        Paradise in the tropics can be like that, a great break but not somewhere you could live. It is also why some people love Northern Europe, the black short cold days of frozen winter give way to the burst of spring and heat and sunshine and flowers and trees in bloom, an annual feast. I remember an Australian newsreader who dreamed of a resort in Fiji. Years later he was interviewed on Mt. Wellington in Hobart and asked why he left paradise. He said after three years of the sweat running down your back, it was no longer paradise.

        As the song goes, you never know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Perhaps we have become complacent like that with abundant, reliable electricity, the work and steady investment of two generations of Australians and now being really destroyed in a very few years by people who have no idea what it is like to live without adequate and reliable power. They actually blew up a power plant in Adelaide to make sure it could not be used again. That is beyond my comprehension.

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        • #
          PlainJane

          I am sure that you are correct and that most folk who are in favour of taking away what makes their world what it is, have no idea what they are asking for. I think it is very possible to destroy western civilisation as we know it. I think the [snip] are doing their best to achieve it. I think they think that we can get rid of electricity, and still a new cheaper better version of an iphone will just magically turn up every year, and that naturally cheap milk just turns up in a supermarket and does not have to be squeezed daily out of a cow. It is entirely possible to end up with a society that looks much like Afghanistan. Blowing up the power station was criminal waste.

          [Avoid The word I sipped and you won’t get moderated.] AZ

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        • #
          PlainJane

          I find I do need to get off the farm or my vision and emotions get cramped. A holiday elsewhere, or even just a working trip away, makes me feel better about home.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          And the love of nature is what irks me about some of the greenies who have it in for 4WDs. One of the joys of a 4WD is that you can get out into nature and appreciate better by going deeper into it. Your average toy SUV wont be able to do that, but say a ‘cruiser would be the go. By engaging more deeply with nature you actually sppreciate it more. And yes, a bull bar is absolutely necessary…..

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          • #
            KinkyKeith

            Is that sarcasm Steve?

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            • #
              OriginalSteve

              Actually, no…. 4WDing can be a lot of fun, its not for the faint hearted either.

              Agenda 21 would have everyone locked up in cities and removed from the countryside to fulfil the extreme greenies mentally flacid agenda, however I do think people can appreciate nature more by going deep into it by 4WD. Some people prefer to hike, or canoe etc, I think 4WD is a good balance – ease of access, but you can hike out and return.

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              • #

                I have criticized those JPL folk for doing what they must do! Sorry! They are my heroes! Like the last small squirrel at the very end, trying to get the last mulberry. Crack!, Instantaneous, face, teeth, 5 appendages scrambling for purchase, any purchase, with the painful scream; “AW SHIT”, no-matter survival, or not, a quite lasting ‘learning experience’!
                All the best! -will-

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          Annie

          Intersting about people ignoring the view from the Rialto Tower. On one of our flights back to the UK I was rather wakeful (I never sleep very well during a flight) so I was looking at the route. We were just flying over the Maldives and I went to look out (blinds were down despite daytime; very depressing, not good for people prone to SAD). The cabin crew were sitting around chatting and doing various quiet admin. jobs and I said ‘Gosh, look out at that! Isn’t it wonderful?!’ Not one of them had ever tried to see it before. Admittedly, they can be very busy and tired but it had just never occurred to them that a quick glimpse of outside might be a bit of magic.

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          • #
            TdeF

            I always ask for a window seat. To think we tiny humans could change the climate when we are so insignificant is the height of ignorance and arroagance. From the air, we are irrelevant. No, the great wall of China is not visible from space. It’s hard enough to follow when you are on the ground. Maybe if they painted it red?

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            • #
              TdeF

              From Concorde when you could see Ireland or Newfoundland from 60,000 feet and the sky above was black, the idea that mankind is changing the planet is absurd. We are irrelevant.

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  • #
    KinkyKeith

    There is a known effect relating to placement of gaze but because it is nearly two decades since I came across this, my recollection may be a bit hazy.

    It seems that the brain moves into different modes depending on whether the gaze is fixed on something local or in the distance.

    While out walking one morning I was talking to one of the group and hearing about his battle with depression because of his work. Over the next half hour he mentioned that he felt a bit better while walking and after discussing the gaze concept we came up with an idea that could explain it.

    Gaze attending to things that are near can often be on things that are threatening while gaze fixed at a distance is more likely to be associated with a more relaxed state because any threat is either too far away to be a worry or not visible.

    Walking outside and paying attention to things in the distance may be relaxing for a reason.

    Happy walking.

    🙂 KK

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      I think the gazing would have a meditative effect allowing the mind to process more frontal lobe activity while maintaining enough cerebellum control to keep you out of trouble, an unexpected advantage of my early years of distance running was this ability to ponder and problem solve ideas that that had or were yet to occur and in hindsight assisted me greatly during the sometimes problematic journey though youth.

      The cessation of such activity can drive the person to other forms of escape sometimes self destructive (substance abuse is common within any culture) or simply a change of direction in life.

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      • #
        KinkyKeith

        I used to run a lot too Yonnie, we have great bush and beaches here. Being on the lookout for snakes in summer while taking in The view always made sure I wasn’t thinking about the daily worry list.

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      • #

        Robert Louis Stevenson’s essay
        ‘The Walking Tour.’

        ‘He who is indeed of the brotherhood’ says Stevenson,’does not voyage in quest of the picturesque but of certain jolly humours –
        of the hope and spirit with which the march
        begins at morning, and the peace and
        spiritual repletion of the evening’s rest.’ …

        http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/walkingtouressay.htm

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  • #
    AndyG55

    Looks like the thread is already broken. This should come up as #9 after Graeme. Let’s see.

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  • #

    I’m ever glad that we moved out of Melbourne into a rural township of only around 2500 people (that includes the surrounding farms). I can just look out the window and see bushland, or step onto our veranda and say hello to Crimson Rosellas, King Parrots, Kookaburras, Wattle Birds and the rest. 🙂

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  • #
    Harry Passfield

    Has the ABC gone into mourning over Castro’s death just like BBC? Some of the political leaders’ comments they are broadcasting are despicable – (I paraphrase) ‘Castro may have impoverished his country (it was the fault of the USA) and killed many thousands, but he gave them a wonderful free health and education service’. (you know the kind of thing). Perhaps he should have set up state-run undertakers instead. – Oh? He did?

    BBC: shame on Britain.

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    • #
      TedM

      Not gone mad Harry, perhaps a bit madder. Anything that is the inverse of the logical, rational, humane or socially stabilising, will be praised by the ABC.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Yes. Commentators on Their ABC are beside themselves with grief over Castro’s death.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Yes. Commentators on Their ABC are beside themselves with grief over Castro’s death.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Obama’s statement:

      At this time of Fidel Castro’s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans – in Cuba and in the United States – with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.

      For nearly six decades, the relationship between the United States and Cuba was marked by discord and profound political disagreements. During my presidency, we have worked hard to put the past behind us, pursuing a future in which the relationship between our two countries is defined not by our differences but by the many things that we share as neighbors and friends – bonds of family, culture, commerce, and common humanity. This engagement includes the contributions of Cuban Americans, who have done so much for our country and who care deeply about their loved ones in Cuba.

      Today, we offer condolences to Fidel Castro’s family, and our thoughts and prayers are with the Cuban people. In the days ahead, they will recall the past and also look to the future. As they do, the Cuban people must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America.

      Trump’s Statement:

      Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades.”

      “Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights

      “Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades.”

      “Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights,

      While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve,” Trump said.

      “Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” Trump said. “I join the many Cuban Americans who supported me so greatly in the presidential campaign, including the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association that endorsed me, with the hope of one day soon seeing a free Cuba.”

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      • #
        David Maddison

        Says it all, doesn’t it?

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      • #
        Rod Stuart

        Trump speaks the Truth.
        One must admit that the old bummer, being the current POTUS and all, felt the need to be diplomatic about the SOB.
        The really disgusting statement was from that little pinko Trudeau in the Great White North.
        His doggie daddy idolised Mao, so one can only conclude that the apple does not fall far from the tree.
        Methinks the young pup is going to have some difficulty with a President Trump.
        President Reagan barred the old Trudeau entry to the USA, and if the young whipper snapper keeps it up he will get the same treatment.

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      Glen Michel

      I have a Cuban friend and have visited her twice and she has strong praise for Fidel- with qualifications.Most people seemed quite happy eating chicken and rice and drinking rum.Far better than Batista.Nah,I reckon he was not bad for a despot.

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        Manfred

        I guess it might be a relief for some to not be one of the victims of genocide, one of the 35,000 – 141,000 people slaughtered by the Castro commie regime? Fulgencio Batitsta appeared responsible for the murder of ‘100’s’.

        “Most people seem quite happy eating chicken and rice and drinking rum”

        You left out the driving relic cars with no emission controls. Be nice to learn her definition of ‘most people’.

        In Europe steps have been taken to indict Fidel Castro on genocide charges in various countries: Belgium & Spain
        The Issue of Genocide and Cuba

        Project Vice President Armando Lago, a Harvard-trained economist, has spent years studying the cost of the revolution and he estimates that almost 78,000 innocents may have died trying to flee the dictatorship. Another 5,300 are known to have lost their lives fighting communism in the Escambray Mountains (mostly peasant farmers and their children) and at the Bay of Pigs. An estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Fidel’s revolutionary adventures abroad, most notably his dispatch of 50,000 soldiers to Angola in the 1980s to help the Soviet-backed regime fight off the Unita insurgency. a range of responses on Quora: How many deaths was Fidel Castro responsible for?

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      Griffo

      If the Cuban medical system is so good,how come Castro went to Spain for treatment for stomach problems?

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  • #
    TedM

    If you haven’t looked at WUWT for a few days then it’s worth a visit to read a post on the solar climate link, in this case the Hallstatt cycle. Three days old. Willis is at his pompous best but is countered more that adequately by Javier.

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    David Maddison

    Talking about nature, did you know there is a deliberately planted forest of Californian Redwoods in Australia? It is near Warburton, VIC and planted in around 1930. It was an experimental plantation to see how well these trees would grow in Australia as a possible alternative timber source. Needless to say, environmental regulations wouldn’t allow you to clear native forest and plant something like this today. I made a video of it.

    https://youtu.be/k-JN7Gd4pMo

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      Ted O'Brien.

      Ken Duncan has at least one photo in his “Reflections” series.

      There are a number of Sequoias in Cook Park fronting the western end of Summer St (the main street/highway) in Orange, NSW. They and some other trees there are massive and well worth a half hour stop to look at them.

      I didn’t see when they were planted, but their size suggests to me pre 1900. Thanks for the date on the ones in Vic. They are high on my list of things to see.

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    TedM

    That submerged fence line is interesting Jo. Can’t have been too dry this year. Perish the thought that our recent dry years may have been part of a cycle. Mind you the fence would have been put in during late summer.

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  • #
    RAH

    How many folks here have put on a rucksack and taken off into the woods or mountains alone and just lived for a week alone? Not many. In fact I would bet not 1 in 10,000 from developed nations have even spent a night alone in a woods far from human contact. It does make one appreciate many things. And a week long trek without resupply will make one understand what really is important and how little you can get by with and not only survive but be quite content and comfortable.

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    • #

      …a week long trek without resupply…

      That’s one of our worst fears when we go bush, running out of beer and no way to resupply. 🙂

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      David Maddison

      RAH, I too am a keen bushwaker (hiker). I have always wondered about being eaten by bears, mountain lions etc. in the American woods. Is it a concern?

      Here in Australia we just have poisonous snakes, spiders etc. that can just kill you but not eat you. However, in the north that are crocodiles that eat you and also in coastal waters there are an unlimited number of things that will poison or eat you.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        But Australia is the friendly country, or so we are told. 🙂

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        • #
          PeterPetrum

          Only if you mix with the right people! Also if you belong to a minority group you will have no problems! Only joking! Get out of the inner cities and hit the bush and you will never want to leave.

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        RAH

        Depends on the area. For the most part black bears that inhabit pretty much all of the lower 48 and Alaska will leave you alone and when I’ve run into them it is always me seeing their rear as they high tail it away or one night when one came sniffing around our camp down by the Yellow river in Florida but thought better of coming in. Now that doesn’t go for a sow with a cub that you may startle which thank God I never have. So out east here the biggest concern from large a large mammal are human hunters though there are some cougars down Florida way I haven’t heard of anyone getting nailed by one. Now in the NW it’s a completely different story because part of that is Grizzly country and that’s a whole different ball game. Bottom line in the east I would feel comfortable unarmed baring some threat from humans but in Grizzly country I’m going to pack heavy artillery and cougars are more numerous and do attack humans though it’s rare.

        Of course we have our poisonous snakes also but nothing like the number of different species you folks have and most not nearly as deadly though they can be a real concern in some places.

        Personally, I haven’t been out alone for several years and the largest amount of time I did was in my younger days when in Germany and before I went in the Army in the SW US. And that reminds me. We do have some rather aggressive porcine that one does not want to fool with but nothing of the nasty size of the wild bores one could find in Europe. But again, in dealing with all of them it was always their tails I saw as they headed away from me except once at night on the side of a German mountain where I didn’t see the sucker at all but I sure heard him.

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        RAH

        For just plain peace and focus living outside in subzero (F) weather in snow covered mountains is hard to beat. The requirements for survival will focus ones mind. Even the simplest things take prior planning. But the absolute peace with the snow muffling every sound is quite striking. As a soldier I spent most of my 8 1/2 years on SF A teams on teams specializing in high alpine and extreme cold weather operations. 15 days without resupply moving on skis in subzero weather when ambient temps would approach -30 F and wind chills on one occasion got down to -90 F. Lost 15 lbs. in those 15 days and was a very good condition before that carrying less than 3% body fat. Though cold injuries and dehydration are constant hazards in such conditions the upside is that one doesn’t have to worry about nasty critters, bugs and the diseases found in tropical climes.

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        Raven

        Used to go on long hikes up at Tin Can Bay and often for six weeks at a time.
        I never felt unsafe . . but OK, it was with a few hundred other guys and we were armed to the teeth.
        Hardly saw anyone else but they were all dressed in camo so I guess that doesn’t really count. 😉

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      AndyG55

      When I was younger, several times.

      Spent a week in the Warrumbungles once walking and camping.

      Weddin mountains, and similar areas. Water can be the issue there.

      Week on a secluded beach on the south coast of NSW

      Lived in the country, Central West, for about 18 years.

      We don’t get the big animals that US has, but you sure have to be careful and know how to avoid the nasties that we do have.

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      MariC

      I have done so. And have done a 5 day trip with a group over a cold November holiday, in cold West Virginia mountains, and aside from returning with a chest cold, loved each and every freezing moment of it. Trek was cut short as the van carrying us died atop a mountain, so what was to be one full day’s hiking was spent in short explorations while the guide fetched a ranger, who fetched a tow, to take the van to a repair shop for defrosting (and a new battery) so when we walked out of the wilderness we had something to get us home.

      Most of my trips have not been solo, but have been out in the middle of the kind of nowhere that you are very careful about where you step and where you camp – several days hike to the nearest anything can be a major bummer when injured.

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    Peter C

    Radiation Fog and the Greenhouse Theory

    Radiation fog is formed by the cooling of land after sunset by thermal radiation in calm conditions with clear sky. The cool ground produces condensation in the nearby air by heat conduction. In perfect calm the fog layer can be less than a meter deep but turbulence can promote a thicker layer

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fog

    The overnight temperature inversion seems to me to be empirical evidence which is overlooked in the discussions about the Greenhouse Theory. Note that the ground cools by thermal radiation! If the cooling is sufficient and if there is enough water vapour present a layer of fog will form adjacent to the cold earth surface generally before dawn.

    So a question is; how come all that greenhouse gas (water vapour) does not act as a blanket and prevent the radiative heat loss? The heat seems to pass straight though the lower atmosphere.

    The early morning temperature inversion can be seen in the balloon flight data which the BOM publishes everyday.
    Go to the BOM home page and scroll down to find Aviation Weather services. You may have to click the indemnity box, then the page will open. On the left select aviation observations, then aerological diagrams, which opens a map showing the sites where the balloon flights are made. Click on a site to open the aerological diagram.

    Balloon are generally flown at 2300Z each day but the major aviation capitals have 2 flights/day. 2300Z is in Universal Co-ordinated Time (GMT). On the eastern seaboard that corresponds to 10am (AEST). BY 10am the inversion has usually been broken by solar heating. In Perth however it is only 8am (WA Time) and the inversion is still often present.

    Note the shape of the inversion which slopes sharply to the left. The lower atmosphere and the ground are not in thermal equilibrium. The ground cools by thermal radiation and drags down the temperature of the adjacent air.

    Radiation fog does not form on cloudy nights, but as I have said before, a cloud is not gas.

    This is empirical evidence, as demanded by Malcolm Roberts and it does not support the Greenhouse Theory.

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      Radical Rodent

      Similar to an experience I had in the Arabian Gulf, a few years ago, when, after a clear, cloudless, moonless and totally windless night, I slipped on ice, even though the air was warm enough that my usual attire for the area was sufficient for me not to feel cold. Why had the greenhouse gases not reflected the heat back to Earth?

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        RAH

        Yep, you can’t trust a thermometer sometimes when it comes to ice formation.

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            tom0mason

            Temperature is the ability to assess hot, warm, or cold to an arbitrary but vanishingly small probabilistic degrees of graduations.
            Especially useful when ‘warming’ is deemed to be ‘anthropogenic warming’ where temperature grades are to be emphasized, and adjustments made to normalize to the computerized faker scale.
            The IPCC (International Panhandling Circus Clowns) recommends the temperature units to be changed absolute Fahranius, or (for European users) Celsisheit. This has heated-up arguments of political biass that show no sign of cooling-off, with the some calling to use the legal super Benghazi defense aka “At this point, I mean, at this point what difference does it make” which previously had only been successfully deployed by Sorosian clones .

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              tom0mason November 28, 2016 at 7:46 pm

              ‘Temperature is the ability’

              Temperature is some sort of ability? What can you possibly mean by that?
              How many different, and unrelated forms of ‘temperature’ are there?
              Please also explain what meaning some global average temperature can have. Just what might be Roy Spencer’s ‘temperature anomaly’? Where?

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              KinkyKeith

              Good one, it even got a response from Hugh!
              🙂

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                I cannot understand the inability of folk to distinguish the value given to a thought\concept and the concept itself! Temperature is a measurement ‘concept’ associated with an amount of sensible heat contained within a fixed amount of some matter. The sensations of ‘warmth’ or ‘cool’ have nothing to do with any amount of sensible heat. Nor does temperature itself have any causative effect! The way such words are now used is deceptive to the maximum.

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        wert

        My car warns on ice formation at 276K. Roads become slippery usually at wet 273K or even 263K. But windshild may be frozen during a July night.

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      Peter C November 27, 2016 at 7:43 am

      “So a question is; how come all that greenhouse gas (water vapour) does not act as a blanket and prevent the radiative heat loss? The heat seems to pass straight though the lower atmosphere.”

      Blankets tend to reduce thermal conductivity and convection (gas mass motion) Your term “radiative heat loss’ are but weasel words introduced to intentionally confuse. Surface radiative exit flux is not “heat” and can progress through atmospheric WV (the gas) in the 8-14 micron band with little or no power transfer to that wv or atmosphere.

      “The early morning temperature inversion can be seen in the balloon flight data which the BOM publishes everyday.”

      Yes easy to observe easy to explain; but has nothing to do with any fantasy CO2 greenhouse effect as promoted by Climate Clowns! Your intent seems very much a continuation of intent to confuse! Just what problem do you have with fog spontaneously forming above a cold surface introducing WV condensation?

      “Radiation fog does not form on cloudy nights, but as I have said before, a cloud is not gas.”

      Indeed not a gas, a cloud ’tis a obvious H2O colloid, but still very much part of this Earth’s atmosphere.

      “This is empirical evidence, as demanded by Malcolm Roberts and it does not support the Greenhouse Theory.”

      Such are observation that neither support nor falsify any “GHG” effect of atmospheric CO2 levels above 180 ppmv affecting surface temperature in any way!!

      The major empirical evidence that is totally lacking, is the CC claim that Earth’s surface thermal EM exitance is proportional to surface T^4, or anywhere close to the amount proposed by Climate Clowns!
      All the best! -will-

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        Peter C

        Your intent seems very much a continuation of intent to confuse! Just what problem do you have with fog spontaneously forming above a cold surface introducing WV condensation?

        I have no problem with fog forming above the ground. It is a natural phenomenon. Neither do I object to the explanation of this phenomenon given by meteorolgists.

        I do not intend to confuse any one.

        My object was to examine this natural phenomenon against the prediction of the Greenhouse Theory. My view is that greenhouse theory does not explain the early morning temperature inversion nor radiation fog.

        You say;

        “Such are observation that neither support nor falsify any “GHG” effect of atmospheric CO2 levels above 180 ppmv affecting surface temperature in any way!!”

        Perhaps you could explain that a bit more. Why does it not falsify the Greenhouse theory?

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          Peter C November 27, 2016 at 6:52 pm

          “My view is that greenhouse theory does not explain the early morning temperature inversion nor radiation fog.”

          Does any theory ever predict/explain everything?

          (You say; “Such are observation that neither support nor falsify any “GHG” effect of atmospheric CO2 levels above 180 ppmv affecting surface temperature in any way!!”)

          “Perhaps you could explain that a bit more. Why does it not falsify the Greenhouse theory?”

          To falsify a theorem, one must first have a falsifiable theorem! The Climate Clowns have no such thing! All that exists is hand waving religious fantasy! No ‘science’ exists there.

          Can you even state whatever you think some “Greenhouse theory” might be, in someway that might be falsifiable? What part is falsifiable?

          For clues to foolishness: The CAGW folk state:

          1), All bodies spontaneously radiate thermal EM flux, proportional to that bodies T^4, independent of any opposing ‘radiance’! Such flux has never been discovered, observed, nor measured.

          2), The atmosphere, being a body, spontaneously radiates thermal EM flux, proportional to that bodies T^4, independent of any opposing ‘radiance’. Including flux in the direction of the higher radiance Earth’s surface! Such flux has never been discovered, observed, nor measured.

          3), That fake returning ‘flux’ from the atmosphere elevates the Earth’s average surface temperature some 33° C above what that surface temperature ‘should be’. No one has ever been capable of determining the probable temperature of a planatary body, with atmosphere, at any atmospheric pressure above 20 kPa.

          4), CO2 being gas that can absorb EM flux at 14.5 micron wavelength, does so absorb Earth’s surface exitance, to such an extent, that increasing atmospheric CO2 ‘must’ increase both atmospheric and surface temperature, to some measurable and predictable level! Such fantasy is regularly observed in Gavin Schmidt’s Playstation-64 computer model. Such has never been observed on or near this physical Earth!

          All the best! -will-

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            ROM

            One and one only of one of the strangest cloud / fog formations I ever saw in my 60 years of living on the wide open plains of the wheat lands of western Victoria. [ Aus. ]

            Calm clear morning, no cloud, cool but definitely not cold, around about 8am I poked my head outside to see what was happening .
            Looked across a small cultivated paddock near the house of about 47 acres and just did not believe my eyes.

            Small clouds around room size up to small house size were forming about one metre above the ground with quite clear air under and around each of those dozens of small clouds covering that entire paddock.

            Yours truly sprinted down to the paddock which was only a 100 metres or so distant from the house and spent an incredible hour or so, marvelling at Nature and those clouds whilst walking around and in and through those small dense room and house sized clouds which were quite stationary.
            Plus fair bit of crawling and stooping under those small clouds in the metre high quite clear air gap between the cloud base and the ground.

            The gap between the clouds was only a few metres. Each cloud mass was strongly defined as a separate small” cumulous in miniature” cloud.

            Each cloud was quite distinct and seperate from any adjoining clouds. Not at all fog-like in that there were no tendrils and wisps of fog as is usually seen in low level bands of fog between the individual clouds .

            Each of those small house sized clouds was a typical dense cloud mass in that you could only see a few metres at best whilst inside of the cloud, something I was familiar with from my gliding experiences.

            The whole phenomena lasted less than an hour before the clouds began to grow in size and then dissipate and disperse, fading into just another calm clear morning of a standard late autumn day here in western Victoria.
            I have never seen or heard of such a clear, very defined and very obvious relatively large scale, very, very low level cumulous type cloud phenomena occurring anywhere else in my 78 years.

            I was blessed just to be there and to have seen and experienced first hand such a truly spectacular, remarkable and entirely natural event.

            Thats the type of once in a life time occurrence that really drives home the enormous variations that Nature can create and why one can be so appreciative and revel in Nature in all her guises and infinite variety.

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              Peter C

              ROM,

              You have doubtless thought about this. Why was there a clear gap of about 1m between the ground and the base of the cloud?

              Bad luck that you did not have a thermometer on a pole to take a sounding near the ground!

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                ROM

                Peter C
                We experience and look at the temperature differences that create inversions at altitude and we all knew that similar conditions to those that create inversions at altitude can and did frequently exist at low levels where it created stratified layers of different temperature and humidity right down to ground level, sometimes in bands only a part of a metre thick and deep.
                Low level air stratification can in the right conditions lead to highly stratified fog bands
                It was just an integral part of my gliding and a part of trying to understand the atmospheric dynamics over some 50 years and close to 3000 hours of gliding and some 600 hours of power flying

                With our very flat terrain, [ A WA visitor described it as if you knocked your beer over it wouldn’t stop running for 40 kilometres the country is so flat ] although it still can’t match the “Hay Plains” in the Riverina for flatness, fogs were common around here in the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and into the eighties.

                Often at night when driving home from one of my meetings somewhere I would come cross large patches of highly stratified fog which was a metre or so above the ground and which sometimes was only in a foot or so thick band that could cover hundreds of hectares in area.
                When at eye level I could literally put my head down low on the windscreen and clearly see the road lit by the headlights and into the distance under the fog band.
                Or if I sat up as high as I could in the car, I could see clearly over and above the fog band with the disadvantage that the headlights were lighting the road under the fog band and I could not clearly see the road.

                When I did a bit of frost research some years ago to see what temperature differences existed across one of my paddocks because we had suffered Frost damage to our crops in previous years in parts of that paddock, I acquired four Tinytag Temperature Loggers from our local crop research organisation and placed them across the paddock in question.
                A rise of a couple of metres ran through the centre of the paddock.
                The loggers in the low elevation areas either side of the rise recorded some 3 to 4 degrees lower in temperature shortly after sunrise, the coldest period of the night, at about 150mms above the ground than did the Logger on top of the rise.

                As the temperature fell during the night and into the early morning, until just after sunrise when it is coldest, the cold, dense air flowed down the slopes on both sides of that rise and settled in the lowest part of the paddock on both sides of the rise. The mass of very cold dense air remained there in that low terrain until lit and warmed over a couple of hours by direct rays of the sun a half an hour or more later than when the top of the rise warmed up.

                Which showed very clearly why the farmers of the district were getting heavily frosted and therefore very low yields from crops in low lying areas of their paddocks.
                Something they had known for generations but it was good to get direct confirmation in actual temperature measurements of this yield destroying, frosting of crops in some low laying parts of properties.

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              KinkyKeith

              Amazing.

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            Peter C

            Thanks Will,

            To falsify a theorem, one must first have a falsifiable theorem!

            I agree with you that it is near impossible to get the CAGW folk to make falsifiable predictions from their greenhouse theory, unless one is prepared to wait 100 years plus. When shorter term predictions have been made they have all failed.

            The Greenhouse Theory however is well described and from that I have derived that the theory of atmospheric heat trapping (warm blanket) predicts an isothermal temperature trace in the lowest portion of the atmosphere as the Earth cools at night on a calm clear night.

            It was the intent of my argument to say that an isothermal trace in not observed under these conditions. The ground is colder than the adjacent air. It seems as if thermal radiation pours out though the atmospheric window (8-14Nm) with no heat trapping at all.
            https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/gw-spectrum-summary1.jpg

            My analogy is a real green house with a hole cut in the roof through which all the trapped warm air can escape. Greenhouse theory fails, unless someone can propose a counter argument.

            I agree with your other points.

            ROM,

            Thanks for your story about a rare atmospheric phenomenon. It is indeed the great diversity of Nature that makes the natural experiment so hard to analyse and interpret.

            I think however that the evidence is now building up.

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              Peter C November 28, 2016 at 2:04 pm ·

              “Thanks Will,

              (To falsify a theorem, one must first have a falsifiable theorem!)

              “I agree with you that it is near impossible to get the CAGW folk to make falsifiable predictions from their greenhouse theory, unless one is prepared to wait 100 years plus.”

              They cannot even demonstrate one physical observation of any of their fantasy religious claims!

              “The Greenhouse Theory however is well described and from that I have derived that the theory of atmospheric heat trapping (warm blanket) predicts an isothermal temperature trace in the lowest portion of the atmosphere as the Earth cools at night on a calm clear night.”

              This is but your acceptance of brainwashing from the CAGW Clowns. Go back to the guys that can actually weld two pieces of steel together. No need for Climate Clowns that promote use of JB weld!
              All the best! -will-

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              Rick Will

              Peter C re:

              “The Greenhouse Theory however is well described

              Can you give me a particular reference that describes this nonsense well –

              Also how can you deduce anything meaningful from nonsense other than the authors are incompetent.

              This is extracted from the IPCC “Radiative Forcing of Climate”:
              “The strength of the greenhouse eflect can be gauged by the difference between the effective emitting temperature of the Earth as seen from space (about 255K) and the globally-averaged surlace temperature (about 285K) The principal components of the greenhouse effect are the atmospheric gases (Section 2 2 2), clouds and aerosols also absorb and emit thermal infrared radiation but they also incicasc the planetary albedo, and it is believed that their net effect is to cool the surface”

              The 255K is based on a mythical black body somewhere above the Earth’s surface. The 255K figure is contrived by only allowing 80% of the TOA solar flux making it to the surface. They then introduce the false idea that the surface would be cooler than the 285K average if there were no radiative gases present. There is a disconnect between the clouds and radiative gases in their argument. Although they do acknowledge the net effect of radiative gases and aerosols in the form of clouds provide cooling – but that is only a “belief” not a verifiable fact in their words. The argument is logically flawed – they acknowledge the net effect of radiative gasses is to cool but initially lead you to conclude that the surface is 30C warmer than it would be without radiative gasses – completely illogical.

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                AndyG55

                “The 255K is based on a mythical black body somewhere above the Earth’s surface.”

                If you take that point to about the midpoint of the tropospheric depth, the difference is pretty darn close to 33ºC. Surface – tropopause is approx 70ºC

                http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Atmosphere/images/troposphere_temperature_graph_sm.gif

                This difference is entirely due to the gravito-thermal effect, leaving absolutely zero room for any CO2 warming.

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                Rick Will November 28, 2016 at 3:47 pm ·

                (Peter C re: “The Greenhouse Theory however is well described”)

                “Can you give me a particular reference that describes this nonsense well Also how can you deduce anything meaningful from nonsense other than the authors are incompetent.”

                Rick,
                The authors are not just ‘incompetent’! They are all paid for stooges that demand to remain absolutely ignorant as defense against any claim to ‘knowledge’ of any discussion that may lead to ‘conspiracy’ charges! How much does their salary cost the taxpayer?
                More later.
                All the best! -will-

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                AndyG55 November 28, 2016 at 4:37 pm

                (“The 255K is based on a mythical black body somewhere above the Earth’s surface.”)

                “If you take that point to about the midpoint of the tropospheric depth, the difference is pretty darn close to 33ºC. Surface – tropopause is approx 70ºC”

                Andy,
                This seems to be well coordinated BS from some people, intent on personal or political gain! Please, if you can, give me any indication that such is NOT contrived. -will-

                [Editorial discretion applied to the final paragraph, in terms of the wording used.] Fly

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                Peter C

                Since you ask:”Can you give me a particular reference that describes this nonsense well –

                NASA The Green House Effect

                The heating effect exerted by the atmosphere upon the earth by virtue of the fact that the atmosphere (mainly, its water vapor) absorbs and remits infrared radiation. In detail: the shorter wavelengths of insolation are transmitted rather freely through the atmosphere to be absorbed at the earth’s surface. The earth then reemits this as long-wave (infrared) terrestrial radiation, a portion of which is absorbed by the atmosphere and again emitted (see atmospheric radiation). Some of this is emitted downward back to the earth’s surface (counter-radiation).

                http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/g.html

                There are plenty of others which are substantially the same.

                I am not saying that I agree with it. I do not agree with it. I do not call it the Green House Effect. I call it the Green House Theory.

                However if (according to the Theory)there is a back and forward exchange of radiation between the earth and the lower atmosphere, and since the net flow of radiation overnight is outward it seems to me that the Theory predicts that the temperature of the lower atmosphere before dawn should be slightly cooler than the surface.

                In fact the reverse occurs and therefore I say that the Green house theory is falsified!

                I hope that I have made my argument clear.

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                Rick Will

                Peter C
                This statement you offered from NASA:
                “The earth then reemits this as long-wave (infrared) terrestrial radiation, a portion of which is absorbed by the atmosphere and again emitted (see atmospheric radiation). Some of this is emitted downward back to the earth’s surface (counter-radiation). ”
                Is easy to invalidate. Compare the surface temperature of ocean surface water with a bitumen road under clear skies at similar latitudes. Both are close to black body emitters. The ocean surface is much cooler – why?. The reason being is that the majority of heat leaving the surface of the ocean is through latent heat of evaporation. When you perspire your body is cooling through the same mechanism. The water comes back as rain or dew through radiative cooling of the atmosphere. Given the oceans cover 71% of the globe and absorb and store the vast majority of energy available to the climate system, this is by no means trivial to any analysis of the climate. (The proximity of bitumen roads to weather stations is also significant in the assessment of global warming.)

                Then the nonsense of downward heat flux going from a cold atmosphere to a hotter surface below. That cannot happen. It is contrived nonsense that defies provable facts.

                This is rubbish writing for gullible to digest.

                I have not seen any linkage where the GH Theory is said to cause temperature inversion directly above the land or sea surface – i have seen evidence of persistent inversion over Antactica but that is unusual circumstances and is a curiosity of the climate system rather than something of note. From a climate perspective the oceans matter so you need to apply your understanding of the IPCC or NASA GH THeory over deep oceans as that answer could matter if you have the physics correct. Land has little heat capacity so temperature changes day-to-day. If there is a temperature inversion directly above land then the atmosphere can heat the land but inversions are short lived and usually associated with daily heating cycle. The ocean surface temperature has near zero variation in temperature throughout the day. Any climate theory must be applicable to the surface of deep oceans if it is significant to Earth’s climate. Changes over land is simply weather and not particularly indicative of the energy in the system. Some could argue that a tornado is high energy but it is trivial compared with a cyclone or hurricane.

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                Peter C

                Thanks Rick for your interest.

                We seem to be in furious agreement.

                You did say:
                “This statement you offered from NASA:
                “…. ”
                Is easy to invalidate. Compare the surface temperature of ocean surface water with a bitumen road under clear skies at similar latitudes. Both are close to black body emitters. The ocean surface is much cooler – why?.

                Under the particular circumstances that I have been focusing on, ie the early morning near dawn in clear calm conditions, that may not be true. The land can be a lot colder.

                I am trying to isolate the radiative component of the natural experiment. Evaporation and conduction having been neutralised under these conditions

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                Rick Will

                Peter C I agree that at night a bitumen road can be cooler than the ocean – land is opaque and has poor conductivity as well as low thermal mass. Hence its response to incoming and outgoing energy is immediate. The abundance of land over the globe is concentrated in higher latitudes meaning heat input to land via direct radiation is small compared to solar input to the oceans. What happens over land is important for weather but not for Earth’s climate. Land has negligible heat capacity when compared with oceans. Land is even less important than the atmosphere with regard to stored energy.

                Water in deep oceans is the driver of Earth’s climate. To verify any hypothesis regarding climate you need to focus on what happens above and below the surface of the oceans particularly in the lower latitudes because that region receives the majority of the incoming solar heat. It is the heat engine of the global climate system. Temperature of the top 700m of the oceans in the tropical region is a good indication of the energy available to our climate system. Temperature over land is weather or random noise with regard to climate.

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                Rick Will November 28, 2016 at 6:33 pm

                “Peter C This statement you offered from NASA:
                “The earth then reemits this as long-wave (infrared) terrestrial radiation, a portion of which is absorbed by the atmosphere and again emitted (see atmospheric radiation). Some of this is emitted downward back to the earth’s surface (counter-radiation). ” Is easy to invalidate.”

                Rick, could you please state how to invalidate “some fantasy claim” that spontaneous thermal EM radiative flux ‘can be’, thus ‘is’, emitted in a direction of higher radiance at that frequency? I have been trying now for forty years.
                Always the CAGW Clowns maintain that the S-B is really two independent opposing EM flux in superposition. Resulting in some net power transfer that does not violate their version of 2LTD. Pointing out that such circular nonsense is but an attempt to create a perpetuum mobile of the second kind, but generates a vicious smirk from them!!
                All the best! -will-

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                AndyG55

                Will,

                I used that “blackbody half-way in the troposphere argument” on a rabid warmista once… just for fun… 🙂

                And boy was it fun watching him trying to squirm around trying to talk his way around it. 🙂

                The real funny thing is that he could see I was playing with him, using his anti-science to destroy the CO2 warming theory.

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                AndyG55

                Eventually he went, “oh but, the Precautionary Principle”

                Then you know they have lost the argument. 🙂

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                Rick Will

                Will Jan
                You have done a fair job of invalidating the NASA statement – no need for me to comment further on that. You should have learnt after 40 years that trying to disprove the fundamental laws of thermodynamics is not particularly productive.

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              Rick Will November 28, 2016 at 6:33 pm

              (Peter C “This statement you offered from NASA:

              The earth then reemits this as long-wave (infrared) terrestrial radiation, a portion of which is absorbed by the atmosphere and again emitted (see atmospheric radiation). Some of this is emitted downward back to the earth’s surface (counter-radiation).

              “Is easy to invalidate. Compare the surface temperature of ocean surface water with a bitumen road under clear skies at similar latitudes. Both are close to black body emitters.”

              Rick,
              Please be a bit careful. Although most oxidized surfaces have high ‘normal emissivity’, (low reflectance perpendicular to that surface) many of these ‘natural surfaces are measured to have over 50% BRDF, “Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function”, at most wavelengths above 0.3 microns and angles above 55° from normal; nowhere close to any black-body surface. The Climate Clowns again merely blow fantasy from their own terlit!

              AndyG55 November 29, 2016 at 2:51 pm

              “Will, I used that “blackbody half-way in the troposphere argument” on a rabid warmista once… just for fun… 🙂 ”

              Interesting! There is no Planck formula for the flux that may emit from a physical volume (say a gas atmosphere)! Planck’s formula seems to hold, as best measurement can do, for the maximum spectral radiance, (field strength), of even an unlimited volume with some mass at a single temperature.

              Rick Will November 29, 2016 at 3:43 pm

              ” Will Jan, You have done a fair job of invalidating the NASA statement – no need for me to comment further on that. You should have learnt after 40 years that trying to disprove the fundamental laws of thermodynamics is not particularly productive. ”

              Thank you Rick!
              I was hoping for some ‘falsification blivit’ that I had overlooked! I remain attached to the 2LTD version of Rudolph Clausius “Stuff don spontaneously go uphill!”. If you have contemplated an image of ‘Rudy’ you can feel it in your bones that one does not wish to truck with such!
              All the best! -will-

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        Rick Will

        The major empirical evidence that is totally lacking, is the CC claim that Earth’s surface thermal EM exitance is proportional to surface T^4, or anywhere close to the amount proposed by Climate Clowns!
        All the best! -will-

        You are giving them more credit than they deserve. The theory is based on a mythical black body somewhere above the Earth’s surface – not even a surface.

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      tom0mason

      Points to ponder

      The Earth rotates on its axis with a period of about 24 hours. From first principles this can not be explained as the ‘consusus’ science and mathematics do not fit! Our Moon’s orbit is approximately 27 days. This too can not be explained as the ‘consusus’ science and mathematics do not fit!
      Ho-hum, how little we know.

      The Earth, like all planets, does not have a circular orbit but they say it is an ellipse. But on further inspection this too in not correct. For the Earth (and all the planets) do not complete a closed ellipse but on moving the ends of the ellipse does not close — they do not meet or complete. See https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Moon_apsidal_precession.png/220px-Moon_apsidal_precession.png for how the Moon describes this same motion about the earth.
      In other words our Earth’s true orbit is like petals on a flower about the spinning Sun.
      However note the Sun near its equator rotates once every 25 days. The Sun’s rotation rate decreases with increasing latitude, so that its rotation rate is slowest near its poles. At its poles the Sun rotates once every 36 days!

      So the question is how long does it take for the Earth to arrive back from its petal like orbit before it is back at exactly the same aspect, facing the same side of the sun that it started with? And is the rhythms of the Earth-Sun (and all the other planets) impinging on the Earth giving the natural cycles we observe here.
      Could the mysterious force X be buried in this conundrum?

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    Manfred

    Do we really need this kind of facile research to tell us something we already know? (here, here, here, for example).
    A walk in a quiet green vista, breathing the oxygen enriched air compared with the dusty, noisy, relatively polluted highway infested with multiple rapid movements … can this really be better for us? The diminished sensory input of one environment versus the demanding sensory input of the other? Oh come now.

    And with a trifling n=30 (after 8 are excluded from the study) of young able bodied men and women in their mid-twenties divided into two groups … this kind of low powered ‘scientific’ puff piece of uncontrolled nonsense and associational bias serves one purpose, to provide the Urban Engineers with flimsy justification for,

    “…the ways in which nature experience benefits human cognitive function and mood, we can move toward a more complete incorporation of these benefits into the paradigm of ecosystem services.”

    It’s hardly inclusive. The aged, the less mobile, the disabled, children aren’t included. Yes, it shows a reduction in ‘morbid rumination’ and altered cerebral blood flow commensurate with this, but no less useful than sticking people in a dynamic MRI scan and stabbing them with a nail, then watching the various sensory, pain, alarm and emotional centres light-up with enhanced blood flow precisely as anticipated. Animal studies with dogs show a similar ubiquitous brain response based around comparative morphology.

    So, what of the euphemistically termed ‘Ecosystem services‘ ??? Is that your scheduled, permitted single hour’s walk in the prison yard?

    As the UN designs, conceives, recommends and implements greater numbers into the Urban Environment to allegedly reduce the environmental footprint of humanity that perceived scourge on Gaia, and to far better control the masses, you’re more than welcome to your sterile synthetic green spaces, seemingly necessary to create a ‘sustainable city’, to control human ‘consumption’ and above all, to minimise climate change (article 10. UN QUITO DECLARATION ON SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND HUMAN SETTLEMENTS FOR ALL, New Urban Agenda, Habitat III).

    You can bet the ‘green spaces’ for the UN elite will be most appropriate.
    Now is a very good time to defund a larger portion of the UN’s budget and return the residual carcass to core business, peacekeeping, stopping wars and genocides. They need to relearn to focus on these important things, something demonstrably forgotten with Fidel Castro? But then, Nature has thankfully taken care of him.

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    • #
      Manfred

      Just posted at 7:55AM. Marooned in moderation.

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    • #
      Manfred

      Just posted at 7:55AM, #13. Marooned in moderation.

      10

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      tom0mason

      Excellent!

      Defund the UN, however that requires so place for these bureaucrat morons to go. I nominate St. Kilda , with Rockall as the overspill relief island.

      40

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      tom0mason

      Manfred
      "Do we really need this kind of facile research to tell us something we already know?"
      They are suffering with typomania.

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      • #
        Manfred

        tom0mason, you linked to:
        typomania (ˌtaɪpəʊˈmeɪnɪə)
        n
        an obsession with typologyan obsession with being published (huh?)

        (an obsession with the expectation of publication)

        How about,
        ‘The simultaneous addiction to funding and a need to be perceived as useful’?

        20

    • #

      Manfred November 27, 2016 at 7:55 am

      “this kind of low powered ‘scientific’ puff piece of uncontrolled nonsense and associational bias serves one purpose, to provide the Urban Engineers with flimsy justification for,”

      There is no such thing as ‘urban engineers’, only the latest ‘fraudsters’!

      UN QUITO DECLARATION ON SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND HUMAN SETTLEMENTS FOR ALL, New Urban Agenda, Habitat III).

      You can bet the ‘green spaces’ for the UN elite will be most appropriate.
      Now is a very good time to defund a larger portion of the UN’s budget and return the residual carcass to core business, peacekeeping, stopping wars and genocides.

      Defund? Defund? NO Using existing RICO LAWS!! Deport all NYC UN agents To where ever the locals will slaughter them! Have the NYC government then rapidly transform all current UN local properties\occupancies to the “Greater NYC Wastewater Treatment Facility”, complete with all the flags!!
      All the best! -will-

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  • #
    David Maddison

    It’s sometimes nice to combine nature and technology. I once went on a bushwalk (= “hike” in North America) organised by someone else and did not study it much in advance but soon realised we were walking through the area of a very old hydro power scheme. It is the historic Rubicon Hydroelectric Scheme in Victoria and was built in the early 1930’s and is quite small at around 13MW from four different power stations. I did a video slide show at https://youtu.be/JzFHeBHSEGw

    This had among the most advanced control systems in the world at the time with remote fault monitoring etc.. It is still in use today.

    I later decided to write an article on this hydro scheme which appears in Silicon Chip magazine Feb 2013. Rubicon is now owned by AGL but when I wrote the story they could not identify a single person in the company that knew anything about the scheme and I had to do all my research from other sources. I suspect that the only value of this hydro scheme to the company is for the purpose of collecting renewable energy credits.

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    • #
      Another Ian

      #14!

      Some gap filling going on here. Ought to have been about #26

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    • #
      Bruce j

      A little more urbanised but not greatly different from when I kayaked from Garratt Rd bridge to Guildford in the early ’60’s. A park or two where none existed and it looks a bit cleaner (less junk on the banks and no abandoned boats).

      20

  • #
    ianl8888

    Donald Trump may himself be trumped yet.

    There is a recount now for Wisconsin (10 EC Votes).

    The failed Greens candidate, who has crowd-funded the application, is also wanting a recount in Pennsylvania (20 EC votes) and Michigan (16 EC votes). The deadline for filing applications for recount is December 15.

    The existing EC count is Trump 306, Clinton 232.

    If all three States are reversed in EC votes, Clinton wins 278 – 260. Any 1 or 2 out of 3 reverses here still leave Trump with the higher EC count.

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    • #
      PeterS

      What about those states that were won by Hilary with even smaller margins? How come they are not contested by the Greens. Oh the hypocrisy. If they manage to reverse the election and make Clinton the win there will very likely be a civil war given those other states are not being contested. Such is the nature of the left. They rather risk self-destruction than to admit defeat.

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    • #
      James

      If you look at the crowdfunding small print for Stein, there is a stipulation that the money does not have to be spent on a recount.

      She has a lot of campaign debt to repay!

      50

      • #
        PeterS

        In other words they could be committing [snipped]. Not surprising really. I hope they are investigated. I also hope all this information is made public enough to convince even more people the left are nothing but a bunch of charlatans (and worse) and must be rejected outright.

        [Hi PeterS – we can’t make allegations like that, but your comment that you hope they are investigated still gets your message accross. – Mod]

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    • #
      Deplorable Lord Jim

      Apart from all the other problems with Stein;s recount, Trump won PA by 70,000 votes.
      Will have to be one hell of a ‘recount’ to flip that.

      30

      • #
        PeterS

        That just adds even more weight to my conclusions above.

        20

        • #
          Deplorable Lord Jim

          Might be an attempt to delay the certification of those votes, meaning that Trump would not have them for the electoral college.

          20

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        Ross

        The real issue is that if the state law is followed correctly in each case Stein should not be allowed a recount. Each state has very specific conditions which from I’ve read Stein has not and probably could not meet.

        Also in Michigan they have already had a certified recount ( it is part of the States standard procedure). The results of the recount came out on Friday –Trump’s election night lead was reduced from approx 13,000 to 10,000.

        In Pennsyvlvania a candidate cannot actually file for a recount under State law. Instead they would haveto challenge a county board regardings its vote computations and a state appeals judge would have to rule that a state wide recount was necessary.

        In Wisconsin : Gail Coombes posted the following on Tony Heller’s site

        “Stein wants a recount in order to determine if there is an irregularity.

        This is contrary to Wisconsin law.

        Wis. Stat. § 9.01(1)(a)2.b

        [Each verified petition under subd. 1. shall state all of the following:] That the petitioner is informed and believes that a mistake or fraud has been committed in a specified ward or municipality in the counting and return of the votes cast for the office or upon the question or that another specified defect, irregularity, or illegality occurred in the conduct of the election.

        http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/9/01/1/a/2/b

        Stein has presented no factual basis for a recount. Essentially it is a nuisance suit and should be tossed.”

        So all in all Stein does not seem to be getting good legal advice.

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        • #
          Another Ian

          Ross

          See #17.2

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        • #
          Gail Combs

          It gets to be even more fun. Stein’s excuse for a recount is some ‘experts’ are ‘concerned’ about computerized voting irregularities. These are just the opinions of some college professors BTW. One of the three states uses paper ballots.

          You can go to this site and click on a state to see what type of equipment each state uses.
          https://www.verifiedvoting.org/verifier/

          Wisconsin (10) = Mixed Paper Ballot and DREs with VVPAT (Voter-verified paper audit trail)
          Wisconsin Supreme Court Recount Results, County by County are ALREADY complete. Stein is asking for a third count with no real evidence of problems.

          Pennsylvania (20) = Mixed Paper Ballot and DREs with and without VVPAT. Stein needs evidence of problems to get a recount and without a paper trail a recount is just hand waving.

          Michigan (16) = ONLY PAPER BALLOT OOPs
          Using a vague concern about problems with computerized voting is not going to work on a state that uses paper ballets.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      It sounds like ‘the hanging chad‘ dilemma all over again.

      20

      • #
        Mike

        http://alexanderhiggins.com/soros-bot-funding-stein-recount-campaign-steady-rate-160k-per-hour/
        from the site “An investigative journalist reports donations to Jill Stein’s recount campaign are being made programmatically at a steady rate of $160,000 per hour

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        • #
          PeterS

          Good find. Confirms my suspicion as to what is going on but I can’t air it again as I’ll get moderated.

          30

          • #
            Mike

            Unfortunately, nearly all media is unreliable or needs to be consumed with the maxim, ‘buyer beware’ (Caveat emptor) somewhere on the label. For example, there should be some standard which clearly states somewhere on the packaging indicating that the product may contain traces of nuts for those who suffer allergies and the like. 🙂

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            • #
              Mike

              It would be great if someone could fund taking a sample of say 10,000 votes in every state using raw voting data to compare the actual voting percentages with the sample voting percentages and to check out of the 10000 votes how many were illegal or fake votes.

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  • #
    pat

    what a surprise!

    27 Nov: Bloomberg: Clinton Joining Recount Gets Sore Loser Jibe From Team Trump
    by Steven T. Dennis & Kevin Cirilli
    If Green Party candidate Jill Stein initiates recounts in those states as she intends, the Clinton campaign “will participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides,” lawyer Marc Elias said Saturday in a post on the blogging website Medium.com. He added that he doesn’t expect the action to overturn Donald Trump’s election as president.
    The move prompted a rejoinder from Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, now a senior adviser to the president-elect.
    “What a pack of sore losers,” Conway said in a statement to Bloomberg. “After asking Mr. Trump and his team a million times on the trail, ‘Will HE accept the election results?’ it turns out Team Hillary and their new BFF Jill Stein can’t accept reality.”
    “Rather than adhere to the tradition of graciously conceding and wishing the winner well, they’ve opted to waste millions of dollars and dismiss the democratic process. The people have spoken. Time to listen up. #YesYourPresident,” Conway said…
    The Democrat’s campaign didn’t plan to initiate the recounts on its own because it hasn’t found “any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology,” Elias wrote…
    The 2016 election cycle “was unique in the degree of foreign interference witnessed throughout the campaign,” Elias said, noting that the U.S. government had concluded Russian state actors behind hacks of the Democrat National Committee and the personal e-mails of some Clinton campaign officials…
    He (Trump) won the Electoral College by 306 to Clinton’s 232.
    http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-26/clinton-campaign-will-participate-in-stein-s-state-recounts

    26 Nov: WND: Leo Hohmann: Electoral voters ‘deluged’ with death threats in multiple States
    Hillary backers: ‘Hateful bigot, I hope you die … I will put a bullet in your brain’
    http://www.wnd.com/2016/11/electoral-college-voters-deluged-with-death-threats/

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    • #
      Gail Combs

      “…Elias said, noting that the U.S. government had concluded Russian state actors behind hacks of the Democrat National Committee and the personal e-mails of some Clinton campaign officials…”

      Actually not. The US government had ZERO evidence and said so. The Russian state actors meme came from a private group hired by the DNC.

      The Democrat National Committee (DNC) hack was probably Seth Rich who was then murdered. The key is Julian Assange of WikiLeaks posted a reward for information leading to capture of Seth’s murderer.

      Then a representative of the US intelligence community, Steve Pieczenik, came forward stating the U.S. Intelligence community provided the information to Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

      “Pieczenik served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger and also served under presidential administrations as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush’s White House.” (sorry, banned words will not allow me to give the link)

      This is not as far fetched as it sounds. Not only did Clinton have very sensitive intelligence information on an unsecure server, she also left hard copies of sensitive material laying around in hotel rooms and cabs in foreign countries like Russia and China.
      http://freebeacon.com/national-security/clinton-left-classified-documents-china-hotel-room-lawmaker-charges/

      Also she was agitating for increased tension with Russia. Unfortunately The Kremlin Really Believes That Hillary Wants to Start a War With Russia — Foreign Policy

      Hillary really alarmed the Russians by her actions when she visited and they think she is very unstable.

      The oath sworn is to the Constitution and not a loyalty oath to an individual so again, given all that is coming out about the Clintons. this leak by the US intelligence community is not as far fetched as it sounds.

      Oaths for Civilians, Military and National Guard all contain wording to the affect.

      “…I will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…”

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      • #
        Oliver K. Manuel

        Thanks, Gail, for exposing publicly the sad state of democracy in the United States. The same is true worldwide now.

        That is the direct consequence of successful actions to unite nations and national academies of sciences on 24 OCT 1945 to save the world from possible nuclear annihilation by denying public access to the single most dangerous consequence of Einstein’s 1905 discovery:

        Atomic mass (m) is stored energy (E) [E = mc^2] and NEUTRON REPULSION is the nuclear secret that makes cores of galaxies, stars, and heavy atoms (like Uranium) explode or emit neutrons that decay into hydrogen.

        AGW, SSM, BBC & SNM (Anthropologic Global Warming, the Standard Solar Model, Big Bang Cosmology and the Standard Nuclear Model) were designed to hide natural consequences of neutron repulsion so the public would not notice the illogical, sloping base-line that Weizsacker used to hide neutron repulsion.

        How can Trump’s handlers access this factual information?

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      • #
        Oliver K. Manuel

        Thanks, Gail, for exposing publicly the sad state of democracy in the United States. The same is true worldwide now.

        That is the direct consequence of successful efforts to unite nations and national academies of sciences on 24 OCT 1945 to save the world from possible nuclear annihilation by denying public access to the single most dangerous truth in Einstein’s (1905) and Chadwick’s (1932) discoveries:

        1. Atomic rest mass (m) is stored nuclear energy (E) [E = mc^2],

        2. Neutrons and hydrogen atoms are compacted and expanded electrons-proton (e-,p+) pairs,

        3. The mass (nuclear energy) of the neutron is 0.08% greater than that of the hydrogen atom,

        THEREFORE DEFINE NUCLEAR ENERGY TO BE EQUAL IN NEUTRONS AND HYDROGEN ATOMS

        to hide NEUTRON REPULSION, the energy that makes cores of galaxies, stars, and heavy atoms (like Uranium) explode or emit neutrons that decay into the hydrogen atoms that will fill interstellar space as the universe expands
        .
        AGW, SSM, BBC & SNM (Anthropologic Global Warming, the Standard Solar Model, Big Bang Cosmology and the Standard Nuclear Model) are all designed to hide the illogical, sloping base-line Weizsacker used to hide differences between the rest masses (nuclear energies) in neutrons and hydrogen atoms.

        Can Trump’s handlers grasp this historical error in nuclear energy?

        10

  • #
    pat

    read all, tho Norton/Greenwald completely miss/ignor the anti-Trump bias in the story, & are more concerned about some prog left/libertarian media sites being on the list (which I think was merely an attempt to suggest nonpartisanship):

    27 Nov: The Intercept: Washington Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group
    by Ben Norton & Glenn Greenwald
    The article by reporter Craig Timberg – headlined “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say” – cites a report by a new, anonymous website calling itself “PropOrNot,” which claims that millions of Americans have been deceived this year in a massive Russian “misinformation campaign.”…
    This Post report was one of the most widely circulated political news articles on social media over the last 48 hours, with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of U.S. journalists and pundits with large platforms hailing it as an earth-shattering exposé. It was the most-read piece on the entire Post website after it was published on Friday…
    Yet the article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics. It was not surprising to learn that, as BuzzFeed’s Sheera Frenkel noted, “a lot of reporters passed on this story.” Its huge flaws are self-evident. But the Post gleefully ran with it and then promoted it aggressively, led by its Executive Editor Marty Baron…
    As Fortune’s Matthew Ingram wrote in criticizing the Post article, PropOrNot’s Twitter account “has only existed since August of this year. And an article announcing the launch of the group on its website is dated last month.” WHOIS information for the domain name is not available, as the website uses private registration…
    The Intercept also sent inquiries to the Post’s Craig Timberg asking these questions, and asking whether he thinks it is fair to label left-wing news sites like Truthout “Russian propaganda outlets.” Timberg replied: “I’m sorry, I can’t comment about stories I’ve written for the Post.”…READ ALL
    https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/

    following co-authored with Elizabeth Dwoskin. Andrea Peterson contributed to the report:

    10 Nov: WaPo: Could better Internet security have prevented Trump’s shocking win?
    Regret and fear in Silicon Valley as Trump takes power.
    Could better Internet security have prevented Trump’s shocking win?
    The election of Republican Donald Trump has stunned Silicon Valley, sparking renewed fears about how the federal government’s powerful surveillance machinery could undermine personal privacy — especially in the hands of a man with a history of threatening retaliation against those who challenge him.
    But as some prepare to take new high-tech defensive measures against government intrusion, there also is a note of regret: The campaign of Trump’s rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, suffered several disruptions when poorly protected emails fell into the hands of Russian hackers, WikiLeaks and, finally, the FBI. Better digital security, including measures long advocated by some experts, might have prevented Clinton’s defeat, they say…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/11/10/could-better-internet-security-have-prevented-trumps-shocking-win/#comments

    btw Andrea Peterson has co-authored more than one article with Timberg:

    LinkedIn: Andrea Peterson, Tech Reporter at the Washington Post
    Previous: ThinkProgress, Center for American Progress, Women’s Campaign Forum
    Education: University of Kansas 2007-2010

    DiscoverTheNetworks: Think Progress
    Address: American Progress Action Fund, Washington DC…
    •Project of the American Progress Action Fund, a “sister advocacy organization” of the Center for American Progress (CAP) run by former Clinton adviser John Podesta…

    surely The Intercept should have been able to suggest some possible propornot connections, if they simply looked at attributions on Timberg’s previous work.

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    • #
      pat

      reddit has been biased toward Clinton, apart from RedditThe_Donald, which has plenty to complain about re Reditt Admin/mods etc. at TheDonald, many people firmly believe David Brock’s CorrectTheRecord was responsible for much of the interference on the main politics & other general subreddits.

      anyway, propornot has some history worth noting, tho the redditers seem to have shown little interest:

      nobody responded to this one:

      16 Nov: Reddit: We at PropOrNot are systematically tracking Russian online and “fake news” propaganda. Holler if you want to help.
      (there doesn’t seem to be anything here)
      https://www.reddit.com/r/shills/comments/5dhgtu/we_at_propornot_are_systematically_tracking/?

      RedditConspiracy: 3 days ago: Does anyone else find this and the website itself somewhat disturbing?
      14 replies:
      reply wheeldog: OH sh*t. You propornot guys are really on the ball. You got a bot? Seriously, your game is more on point than CTR’s! Kudos! EDIT: telling me not to be a sheeple by telling me to push back with all the other sheeple that propornot has already hoodwinked…ETC…
      wheeldog: I will have fun, don’t you worry. You guys are the worst, propaganda masquerading as anti-propaganda. You should be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t know who’s funding you but I aim to find out…
      RJ_Ramrod: Son if that’s the best you got then I really hope you’re not one of Brock’s paid CTR (CorrectTheRecord) shills, because I would genuinely feel kind of bad for them to actually be spending money on this sh*t…
      https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5eimkl/does_anyone_else_find_this_and_the_website_itself/

      reply on another propornot thread: PropOrNot has existed for a month, is anonymous, and hasn’t disclosed its “research” methods. It becoming more and more apparent that the never ending “fake news” articles are nothing more than a push to censor dissenting views…

      btw Reddit pulled the main #Pizzagate subreddit this week, which has been noted by some MSM.
      it was pulled just as MSM, especially NYT, started doing damage control on the story, while omitting to mention any of the strange Podesta email references, or other confirmed oddities surrounding what was and continues on voat/4chan etc to be a work in progress.

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Trump just gets better. Here he is working in one of his hotels as one of the “deplorable” working people so hated by the Leftist elites.

    https://www.facebook.com/144114439387004/videos/182605978871183/

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  • #
    DonJA

    Yonniestone, I saw two peanuts walking and enjoying the forest. One was a salted!

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  • #
    David Maddison

    The Banach – Tarski Paradox.

    https://youtu.be/s86-Z-CbaHA

    From Wikipedia:

    QUOTE: A stronger form of the theorem implies that given any two “reasonable” solid objects (such as a small ball and a huge ball), either one can be reassembled into the other. This is often stated informally as “a pea can be chopped up and reassembled into the Sun” and called the “pea and the Sun paradox”.

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    • #

      These Marching Folk seem to have missed out on the simple rearward rifle-but motion to that BEAK, where most chicken-squacking is generated. After about 600 seconds, miraculous silence is automagically generated!
      All the best! -will-

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    David Maddison

    The Zipf Mystery.

    https://youtu.be/fCn8zs912OE

    Interesting comments about language use.

    20

    • #
      Kratoklastes

      Videos like that one annoy the hell out of me because in trying to make concepts ‘accessible’ they water them down to something that is stupid on its face: people will leave that video carrying nonsense in their heads – and that’s always a bad thing.

      Take the following:

      There are exponentially more different long words than short words. For instance, the English alphabet can be used to make 26 one letter words, but 26 squared 2 letter words.

      What’s wrong with that? You ask.

      Well, there are not 26 English one-letter words – there are precisely TWO (three, if you include the archaic ‘O’ used in some vocative phrases).

      Same with digraphs (sets of two characters): there are 262 that can be constructed, but only a fraction of them are meaningful English words.

      There are 113 digraphs that are considered part of the English language, but quite a few of them are abbreviations (e.g., ‘ch’ for chain) or nonsense (mi, fa, ti in ‘do-re-mi’… and ‘la’ is suspect, but useful for importing Italian and French).

      I’ve never actually looked at the etymology of all 113 to pare it down to the ‘normal’ vocab, but the point is that the number of words that convey meaning (which is the linguistically important thing) is likely to be about 10% of the 676 two-letter combinations. I can’t think of a two-consonant pair that would be a valid non-abbreviation word (unless one of the consonants is ‘y’); I can’t think of a two-vowel pair that would be a valid non-abbreviation word either.

      Point is: it would have been really easy for the video guy to illustrate the point with actual references to the language, and then to point out that the larger the number of letters, the greater the number of valid combinations will exist.

      [Well explained – Mod]

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        Kratoklastes

        Yikes at ‘there are 262 that can be constructed‘ – the terminal ‘2’ was wrapped in tags (i.e., I was trying to write 26-squared), but those were ignored by the renderer (naughty renderer). 26-squared is 676, which is mentioned further down.

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          tom0mason

          If you are on a PC and Windows then investigate the use of the right-hand Alt key.
          Often it is marked AltGr from here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltGr_key you will see all the other characters you can now show and print.

          Note your squared symbol is Alt and 2 being pressed².

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          • #
            wert

            Alt Gr + 2 = @ here. It appears ² is not mapped at all, but sup 2 /sup looks the same.

            30

            • #
              wert

              Or does it? Testing

              30

            • #
              tom0mason

              Wert
              It depends on what font-set is running on your system, which default country and fontset is loaded, what browser, and if on Windows what version, what update, what NSA number they’ve assigned to you…

              Different font styles may load different graphic (glyph) symbol sets. I’m not a regular Windows user but I know that with the default font type installed in Win95, and Xp it used to work. Maybe M$ has moved the goal-posts again.
              I doubt if M$ latest version of the Internet Explorer can do such things as render simple glyphs it is has always been just disaster-ware (a crippled program by designed, leaking your private information, and crashing your system.)

              I’m currently using a pretty standard Linux font set and I can get —
              @łe¶ŧ←↓→øþæßðđŋħł«»¢“”nµ·¹²³€½¾{[]}\±™⅞⅝⅜¼£⅛¡©Æ§ÐªŊĦŁΩŁE®Ŧ¥↑ıº

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              tom0mason

              Apparently M$ as usual have broken the ‘standard’ all the world was using (again) and made another mucking fess just doing elementary keyboard layouts.
              The hive minds at M$ have decided that you will not require this functionality any more. But ‘some’ versions of Windoze does allow it but only with a standard US keyboard and font set.

              See here for more M$ sniveling http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_devices/windows-10-tp-altgr-key-has-lost-functionality/1ec2892f-c2dc-4e2e-884b-1228c27d50d5

              M$ — why bother?

              [Tom, In answer to your question about why this got moderated: I can see no reason. Jo’s filter is sensitive. I could guess but that’s not very useful. It’s now approved.] AZ

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              • #
                tom0mason

                I got caught again

                Your comment is awaiting moderation.

                10

              • #
                tom0mason

                Thanks AZ, it’s a mystery — a mystery only Redmond and NSA truly understand.
                (Cue The Outer Limit theme music) Mulder and Scully get called into the office just as….

                😉

                10

            • #
              tom0mason

              M$ has busted the decades long ‘standard’ in Win 10 for no other reason but they can.

              Time for a different OS then.
              Apple?
              Google?
              Linux?
              BSD
              ReactOS (Windows compatible OS)

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          • #
            AndyG55

            There is a little accessory called “character map”, you can get all sorts of stuff. eg

            ® ¥ º ² Ƹ Ȳ ǣ Ϣ Ϧ Я Ӝ Ѿ Ѭ ‱

            40

        • #
          Andrew McRae

          If Jo’s comment character filter matched the comment editor buttons you’d be able to use the <sup>2</sup> that you tried initially. As you have found out, there is a bug in this web site.

          For most common symbols there is usually an HTML Entity name you can type which can be easier to remember than the Unicode numbers or ANSI numbers. Here’s a list.
          https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_XML_and_HTML_character_entity_references&printable=yes

          You can see some examples in the comment HTML buttons on Jo’s pages, such as “plusm” for +/- .
          The squared is an exception to usual naming as it is confusingly called “sup2” for “superscript 2”. Ordinarily you can use it, but on Jo’s web site 26&sup2; ⇒ 26&sup2; so even that doesn’t work.

          When all else fails you have to use the numbers from the table. On Ubuntu Linux systems you can type Ctrl + Shift + U to begin entering a Unicode character by its hexadecimal number…. yes it’s sad I know that, and sadder I remember that squared is code 00B2. You can also enter it in HTML by typing &#x00b2; ⇒ ²

          If you remember the hex codes for a couple of the more common symbols it is quicker than opening Character Map to copy and paste.

          [Get out of hand and then Jo will put all those characters into the filter. Right?] ED

          00

  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    The ABC just had a love in with the hasbeen neverwas singer John Butler , like all good greenies he was having a shot at the fracking industry and gave examples of environmental disasters caused by fracking .
    He said rivers were on fire caused by fracking , but I’m sure the river he was referring to has been a natural methane seep in a few spots since first being discovered sometime in the late 1800s .
    And was lit by a greenie recently to show the methane leaks but as in all good stories he forgot to mention the seeps had always been there .

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  • #
    el gordo

    Its probably just a coincidence, but Di Natale is the same star sign as Trump.

    ‘The party’s new approach will focus on the war on drugs being a health problem and ‘not a law and order one’.

    ‘We have to have an open, honest conversation about this and stop pretending we’re winning this war – we’re losing and losing fast,’ Senator Di Natale told the Age.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3973944/Greens-leader-Richard-Di-Natale-announces-radical-push-decriminalise-recreational-drugs.html#ixzz4RA5K7KaO
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

    30

    • #
      el gordo

      Their new policy platform says: ‘The legal framework for drugs and other substances used for non-medical purposes should be informed by evidence of the extent and nature of the harm likely to be caused.’

      Alcohol should be on the table, the harm it causes are legend.

      30

    • #
      Glen Michel

      I agree with the greens on this.Law enforcement and marginalising have failed.Libertarian issues at stake here.

      30

      • #
        el gordo

        The Greens have decided to play hard ball, return to their political roots and remain relevant after AGW theory hits the fan.

        20

      • #
        el gordo

        ‘The Australian Medical Association has distanced itself from a new relaxed drugs approach being pushed by the Greens, saying it underestimates the harm illicit drugs do to the community.’

        SMH

        Alcohol costs Australians $15 billion a year and one in five of us are bordering on alcoholism. A flood of new immigrants from the ME, India and China should gradually shift our culture towards sobriety, but in the meantime I advise the Medical Association president to consume a tall glass of cold water and consider his future.

        20

      • #
        el gordo

        Its good to see the old people finally coming on board.

        ‘In this time, the 65+ age bracket has seen the largest proportional increase in favour of legalisation, rising from 16.9% to 25.5% (a 50% growth rate). However, this is still well behind young Australians aged 18-24 (35.7%), the age group with the most support for making smoking marijuana legal.’

        Pew Morgan 2015

        10

  • #
    Rick Will

    Peta Credlin has some interesting comment on climate change in the daily press;
    http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/peta-credlin-government-needs-to-remember-its-the-narrative-stupid/news-story/f3f6fdd18ec283df3be833581bcd4f6d

    “Take energy policy. The problem is only going to get worse and worse until someone has the guts to take it on. For a government looking for an agenda, here’s one tailor-made for a country worried about jobs. Right now, wind power costs $100 a megawatt hour, gas power costs $80 and coal power just $50. So what are we doing? Through the renewable ­energy target (or RET), we’re forcing everyone to use more and more unreliable, expensive power.”

    It is interesting how the Trump win has emboldened closet skeptics or energy pragmatists and they are becoming more vocal.

    140

    • #
      el gordo

      Its true Will, Trump has started a conversation and only our side has the answers. That’s assuming temperatures fall sharply over this Northern Hemisphere winter.

      I foresee journalists, scientists and politicians surrendering in dribs and drabs.

      20

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Thanks Rick,
      Her article was also published in NSW in the Sunday Telegraph, which I read in hard copy.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

      10

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Even as I type this a court challenge to Trump’s victory is brewing and that should tell us how desperate the left’s progressive movement is to secure the unbreakable stranglehold they thought they had already secured by running Hillary Clinton for president.

      I hope Trump can weather the storm that’s about to hit him. If it gets to the Supreme Court an honest decision is by no means a certainty. Nor is it certain that the Democrat’s cheating can be proven, at least not in time to save the Trump victory from the jaws of defeat.

      Don’t you just love politics?

      Sorry, that’s a rhetorical question. I know you don’t.

      40

      • #
        el gordo

        Roy it would be foolhardy to overturn the democratic vote, a popular uprising must surely follow.

        20

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Gordo,

          In spite of the fact that the popular vote doesn’t determine who is elected, many believe it should. But I don’t think they would hold the same opinion if the popular vote would give Republicans the victory. The electoral college is what actually determines the outcome and both sides know this. And both sides worked very hard to not only win all the states if they could, they worked to win the right set of states that would give them the victory. Republicans nearly turned the entire “lower 48” red. So this whole thing is just a very sore loser being a sorehead. But she will be vicious and tenacious about it.

          If the recount is honest I think Trump’s win will stand. If not, then it’s anyone’s guess.

          And in the end, Republicans gained strength to govern by retaining both the House and the Senate. I think a President Clinton would be much neutered by the folks holding all the cards up the hill in the Capitol Building.

          God forbid there should be violence. We have too much already and no end in sight.

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          • #
            Mark D.

            Roy, have you missed the tactic? They seemingly are gaming the recount so that it cannot be completed. If the recount in any state cannot be completed in haste, the electors from that state may not be able to be counted AT ALL.

            Progressive conniving……Nay Evil Conniving!

            10

            • #
              Roy Hogue

              I don’t know how successful that could be. It would be a dangerous gambit don’t you think? Republicans will be there with an eye on everything and certainly participating in the recount and would holler foul at any delaying tactic.

              But I don’t put anything past the Clintons and their enablers. She is, as I said, vicious and tenacious.

              You point out that the Constitution could use some shoring up on the matter of contested elections. But I’d be leary of trying for a Constitutional Convention because that lets every state into the arena to propose whatever they want, some of which might also pass. And as California should have learned long ago but didn’t, modifying your constitution is a dangerous game because you can easily make mistakes that are then very hard to undo.

              10

  • #
    Ruairi

    To One Who Has Been Long In City Pent
    By John Keats

    To one who has been long in city pent,
    ‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair
    And open face of heaven,-to breathe a prayer
    Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
    Who is more happy, when with heart’s content,
    Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
    Of wavy grass and reads a debonair
    And gentle tale of love and languishment?
    Returning home at evening, with an ear
    Catching the notes of Philomel,-an eye
    Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,
    He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
    E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear,
    That falls through the clear ether silently.

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    • #

      Some do have far reaching word gifts beyond yours Ruairi !
      But your here\now rather than somewhere\when cannot be matched!
      Thank you!

      50

    • #
      Roy Hogue

      That is talent, my friend, pure talent. And you have caught in words exactly how I feel on this particular day.

      I wonder why we must fight with the world we live in when we could so easily be at peace with it. And that peace is only a change of attitude away — probably a million miles for some and no problem at all for the rest of us.

      The real fight for us is with our own nature, not the world’s.

      20

    • #

      “I Wondered Lonely As a Clod”
      –(Mad Magazine, 1958)

      I wandered lonely as a clod,
      Just picking up old rags and bottles,
      When onward on my way I plod,
      I saw a host of axolotls;
      Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
      A sight to make a man’s blood freeze.
      Some had handles, some were plain;
      They came in blue, red pink, and green.
      A few were orange in the main;
      The damnedest sight I’ve ever seen.
      The females gave a sprightly glance;
      The male ones all wore knee-length pants.

      Now oft, when on the couch I lie,
      The doctor asks me what I see.
      They flash upon my inward eye
      And make me laugh in fiendish glee.
      I find my solace then in bottles,
      And I forget them axolotls.

      …It was a reactionary time, for youth (and the “gang of idiots” at Mad Magazine) in the ’50s.

      [Avoid the word idiots and you won’t get moderated. I’ll approve this one though.] AZ

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      • #

        [Avoid the word idiots and you won’t get moderated. I’ll approve this one though.] AZ

        AZ, I’ve noted sometimes you do grin! Please keep up your excellent accompaniment to Joanne’s effort!
        Try Baby bagels := idiots! tis but observation not judgment,on character!

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  • #
    clipe

    Although the nature of the whaleship record makes it difficult to ascertain changes in sea-ice conditions over the course of the fishery, we would expect that record to capture the occurrence of any year marked by a significant lack of ice. Scoresby (1820) noted that the abnormally extensive retreat of sea ice in 1817 had a significant impact on the success of the North Atlantic whale fishery. However, the logbook record of the B-C-B fishery gives no indication that any sea-ice retreat similar to that of 2007 occurred between
    1850 and 1909.

    http://arctic.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/download/4146/4120

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    • #
      clipe

      Fogot to

      blockquote

      the above.

      10

    • #
      ianl8888

      The old whaling records for the Antarctic are careful, voluminous and valuable for the wax and wane of glaciers, ice calving (and so icebergs) and wild life movements. These records are still available and are trustworthy because the lives of the sailors depended on their accuracy.

      And these records are now unquoted and publicly unacknowledged (although I think surreptitiously read) by the AGW activists.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      You may also wish to get hold of an old document called —
      ‘Icebergs in Southern Ocean’ by C.J.Burrows.
      This documents culls information from sources like H.H.Lamb, A.G.Findlay, R.W. Burling, and so many more, spanning dates from the 1770 to 1970s.
      It was DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-7939.1976.tb01164.x

      Unfortunately the only copy I have has all the pages as an image not as text, so no cut and paste.
      From this document there are reports in there of icebergs reaching New Zealand and also getting within sight of South Africa, 1772-1775 (Towson), 1832-34, 1840 and 1844(Lamb).
      “Then began a period when icebergs were a serious danger to shipping on the ocean tracks to Australia and New Zealand round Cape Horn and Cape of Good Hope, with sightings of ice from 450 to 900 km nearer the equator than expected. The conditions were particularly severe in 1854 and 1855 and the episode lasted until about 1860.” (typos & E&OE)

      20

  • #
    Kratoklastes

    It’s all placebo effect (being indoctrinated to believe that ‘nayt-cha’ is purdy), plus situational differences (e.g., not being at, or commuting to, work).

    There is a maxim that should be used as a scope whenever a piece of ‘psych’ (-ological or -iatric) research is promulgated:

    This is almost certainly non-reproducible nonsense with zero or near-zero actual content, because psych (-ology and/or iatry) research is almost-always hand-waving p-hacking garbage performed by [people] with an agenda.

    Scientology got one thing right in its gallimaufry of tosh.

    (NB: my view of the two ‘psych’ “disciplines” aligns precisely with my view of climate “science” – they are fields that are almost designed to be attractors for people who want control over others)

    [amended by Mod]

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  • #
    PeterPetrum

    We lived for over 40 years ion the Northern Beaches of Sydney, a beautiful area with magnificent beaches and beautiful waterways in easy reach. But over those years constant building of “shop top housing” in what used to be the relatively quiet village of Avalon, the intensive build up of traffic making any journey to Sydney a horror was eating away at us. Six years ago we moved to the Blue Mountains, to one of the loveliest little villages up here. Now I can cycle for as little 15 minutes and be in the middle of the most tranquil but magnificent scenery, with either distant views of escarpment and endless forest, or surrounded by temperate rainforest with mountain streams bubbling down the steep sides of the gorges.

    Yes Jo, it has the most delicious effect and is extending my life each day I enjoy it.

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    • #

      Herman Melville on ocean reveries, our human attraction to water, ocean, rivers, ponds…

      ‘Circumnavigate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon …What do you see? – Posted like
      silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed
      in ocean reveries. Some leaning against piles,
      some seated upon the pier-heads, some looking
      over the bulwarks of ships from China; some
      high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to
      get a still better seaward peep. But these
      are all landsmen; of week days pent up in
      lath and plaster – tied to counters, nailed
      to benches, clinched to desks. How then is
      this? Are the green fields gone? What do
      they here?

      ‘But look! here come more crowds, pacing
      straight for the water, and seemingly bound
      for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content
      them but the extremist limit of the land;
      loitering under the shady lee of yonder
      warehouses will not suffice. No. They must
      get just as nigh the water as they possibly
      can without falling. And there they stand –
      miles of them – leagues. Inlanders all,
      they come from lanes and alleys, streets,
      avenues – north, east, south and west.Yet
      here they all unite. Tell me, does the
      magnetic virtue of the needles of the
      compasses of all those ships attract
      them thither?’ (Moby Dick.)

      20

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    And speaking of nature, we have had a lovey, cold and rainy Saturday. And it’s looking like there’s more on the way.

    It may be too soon to celebrate but I think the rain is back.

    The world is so clean and pristine after a good rain. There’s nothing quite like it. Nature could be my back yard this particular Saturday with the wet grass glistening in the light from the patio.

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    • #
      ROM

      Try farming!

      And then you will find out that Nature can be and is beautiful, warm, can be exceedingly bountiful, ruthless, cruel, uncompromising, unforgiving, completely unpredictable and tottally dispassionate but never deliberately malevolent.

      The Nature everybody refers to here is the Nature that is now associated and inescapably linked with “Life on Earth” since Life arose on this Planet all those three and half billion years ago.

      The real “Nature” is that wondrous and utterly inconceivable “Nature” of the Cosmos, a “Nature” that in stunning complexity and collosal scale is far beyond our human hive mind’s comprehension and will likely remain so for the aeons into what ever future our species might have.

      20

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        I’ve never done any farming. But from what my cousin who did run a farm said about it I’m glad I never tried it. His description was of one struggle after another.

        This morning there’s evidence of considerably more rain overnight and a chilly wind is blowing now, about 54° F (12° C) and that’s almost as rough as nature gets around here. We can get overnight frost and winds that can sometimes do damage by blowing loose shingle off a roof or turning over the trash cans. Thunderstorms are unusual but they can treat us to some spectacular light and sound effects.

        I agree about nature not being malevolent. In fact it’s more like ambivalent about our presence. If nature could say anything it would be something like,

        Hi there, Mr. Human. I see you but I go on with whatever my plans are and you just come along for the ride.

        Oh! And how are those plans of yours to save the world from me going these days? Any progress?

        I thought not.

        And today I’m going to enjoy being indoors looking out at the rain while everything gets watered and washed off and all the leaves and the grass shine like they were just waxed and buffed like your car at the car wash. The Whole world looks different in the rain and after the storm is over, nothing’s quite like it.

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        • #
          Oliver K. Manuel

          I liked your story about nature: If nature (God)!could say anything it would be something like,

          Hi there, Mr. Human. I see you but I go on with whatever my plans are and you just come along for the ride.

          Oh! And how are those plans of yours to save the world from me going these days? Any progress?

          I thought not.

          I may write short note today showing the technique used by frightened world leaders after WWII to hide the power of nature (God) that Einstein had so brazenly told to the public in 1905:

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          • #
            Oliver K. Manuel

            Here is an outline of the logical error that isolated humanity from reality after WWII:

            In 1905 Einstein reported that atomic rest mass (m) is nuclear energy (E): E = mc^2
            In 1922 Aston confirmed that atomic rest mass (m) is nuclear energy (E): E = mc^2
            In 1932 Chadwick discovered the neutron, a compacted electron-proton (e-,p+) pair
            In 1935 Weizsacker claimed equal nuclear energy for neutron and hydrogen atom, but
            The mass (nuclear energy) of the neutron is 0.08% greater than that of the hydrogen atom.

            After WWII, textbooks replaced Aston’s measurements with Weizsacker’s illogical model.

            20

  • #
    pat

    26 Nov: GatewayPundit: Kristinn Taylor: Revealed: Hillary Clinton Schemed Since Day After Election to Steal Presidency From Donald Trump
    Clinton campaign lawyer Marc E. Elias gave the scheme away in an article published Saturday morning at Medium announcing Clinton would join the recount effort in Wisconsin by Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and that Clinton would join Stein should she also file for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
    Elias wrote that starting the day after the election the Clinton campaign worked to find ways to reverse Trump’s election…
    “First, since the day after the election we have had lawyers and data scientists and analysts combing over the results to spot anomalies that would suggest a hacked result. These have included analysts both from within the campaign and outside, with backgrounds in politics, technology and academia.
    “Second, we have had numerous meetings and calls with various outside experts to hear their concerns and to discuss and review their data and findings. As a part of this, we have also shared out data and findings with them. Most of those discussions have remained private, while at least one has unfortunately been the subject of leaks.”…
    http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/revealed-hillary-clinton-schemed-since-day-election-steal-presidency-donald-trump/

    26 Nov: Inquisitr: Tara West: Recount 2016: Jill Stein Cannot File Direct Request For Recount In Pa, Must Take it Court
    Stein’s fundraising efforts immediately sparked the interest of Clinton supporters as it played on the hope that Hillary still had a chance at the presidency…
    However, Stein did not make the recount process clear for her donors. Her outline makes it sound as though a candidate can simply file for a recount if they raise enough funds for the filing fee.
    While the filing fee and request is all that is needed in Wisconsin, her second state “funded” is much more complicated. Pennsylvania does not allow candidates to file a direct request for a recount, according to the Pennsylvania Election Code. Instead, the filing fee is simply the amount needed to appeal the results…
    Per Pennsylvania regulations, there is only one way remaining for Jill Stein to get a recount in Pennsylvania and it is a complicated process. BillyPenn reports that Stein would have to file for a court appeal and present a “prima facie case” showing that voter fraud took place. While prima facie has a lower burden of proof threshold than “beyond reasonable doubt,” it is still significant. Stein would have to prove in court that fraud was “probable.” This is going to be very difficult given that even the computer specialists recommending the recount say there is no proof of hacking or fraud…
    http://www.inquisitr.com/3747002/2016-recount-jill-stein-cannot-file-direct-request-for-recount-in-pennsylvania-must-take-it-to-court/

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    • #
      Mark D.

      Interesting Pat.

      Hillary has to be very careful though because she may inadvertently expose Lefty secrets of vote manipulation.

      50

      • #
        ianl8888

        Yes. I had wondered about “discovery” here by Trump lawyers.

        In our quite long experience now, lefties avoid discovery as if it were leprositic.

        40

    • #
      pat

      now that it has been revealed Clinton has been plotting to contest the election since 9 Nov., it makes sense why we saw the mass coverage by MSM of those feel-good “random” encounters between Clinton & strangers while Clinton was out “hiking”??, grocery shopping??, as if she does either. MSM simply keeping her in the public eye, it would seem:

      MSM loved this:

      Hillary Clinton takes selfies with fans while Thanksgiving shopping …
      Daily Mail-24 Nov. 2016
      Meanwhile, Brittany Valente shared a picture with the former Secretary of State after bumping into her with her husband and grandson Aiden.

      25 Nov: GatewayPundit: Jim Hoft: That’s Weird… Woman Hillary “Bumped into” while “Grocery Shopping” Has Met Hillary Before
      Hillary Clinton was spotted out shopping again… This time she was ‘shopping for groceries.’
      It was totally random…
      PIC OF BRITTANY VALENTE, WHO WORKS FOR PR COMPANY IN NY, WITH CLINTON PRE THE RANDOM ENCOUNTER
      Nothing is what it seems with the Clintons.
      http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/thats-weird-woman-hillary-bumped-grocery-shopping-met-hillary/

      TWITTER: US Weekly: Hillary Clinton Stops For a Selfie While Shopping For Her Thanksgiving Meal
      REPLY: PIC: Poppy Fields: A. Hillary does NOT do her own grocery shopping. B. That woman, Brittany Valente, works for a PR firm & has met Hillary before.

      reminder: we had the staged, feel-good incident outside Chelsea Clinton’s apt on 9/11, when the little girl rushed up to get a selfie with Clinton, except a single CBS-affiliated TV station in NY revealed the little girl was the daughter of one of Chelsea’s neighbours, & surely not a random stranger. no other MSM cared to follow up on that story which went worldwide.

      13 Sept: InsideEdition/CBS: 6-Year-Old Photographed with Hillary Clinton as She Left Chelsea’s Apartment Says It Was ‘Exciting’
      Six-year-old Irene Reismann lives next door to Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, in Manhattan…
      The girl said it was “so exciting” to snap a photo with the former secretary of state, who had come to the apartment to relax after ***appearing wobbly*** while leaving the New York City 9/11 memorial ceremony Sunday…
      http://www.insideedition.com/headlines/18619-6-year-old-who-snapped-a-photo-with-hillary-clinton-as-she-left-chelseas-apartment

      all this MSM Fake News certainly appears to be wobbly.

      20

      • #
        pat

        another element of Fake News that the Fake News MSM have pushed hard since the election, as if they were trying to delegitimise Trump, in the knowledge the Clinton machine would be launching a challenge.

        there have been more allegations exposed as hoaxes since the following was compiled:

        24 Nov: DailyHeadlines: Steven H Ahle: 15 Trump Supporter Hate Crime Hoaxes
        What’s the difference between hate crimes committed by Trump supporters and Hillary supporters? Hillary supporter hate crimes aren’t hoaxes. Here are 15 times Hillary supporters tried to pin hate crimes on Donald Trump supporters from Breitbart News…
        http://dailyheadlines.net/2016/11/15-trump-supporter-hate-crime-hoaxes/

        one of the only alleged attacks by Trump supporters that hasn’t been debunked so far is this one:

        18 Nov: Columbus Dispatch Editorial: Keep hate crimes in perspective
        The OSU attack, however, points out the need to withhold judgment until we know the facts. This is the case with a reported assault on a Capital University ***student, a white woman who says she was accosted by two young, white men on a Bexley street in the early hours of Nov. 10. She said the two were wearing clothing indicating their support for Trump and one punched her in the face, saying, “ Don’t you worry, honey, President Trump says this is OK.”
        Before drawing conclusions, the public should wait for police to conclude their investigation.
        http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2016/11/18/keep-hate-crimes-in-perspective.html

        ***the student, Brittany Daughenbaugh, claimed she couldn’t sleep, so went out searching for Pokemon at 2.30am, encountered 2 men dressed in Trump/Pence clothing, got smacked across the face, was knocked out, came to, went back to dorm and went to sleep. woke up remembering nothing, except the bit about 2 men in Trump/Pence clothing, posted her allegedly bruised face on Facebook, police got involved, & nothing has been heard since.

        it is possibly the most incredible of all the alleged incidents, yet MSM covered it and all the other alleged Trump supporter attacks which proved to be hoaxes as fact 24/7, while ignoring attacks on Trump supporters captured on film. in fact, you would be shouted down if you dared to bring up those often documented incidents.

        26 Nov: AP: Steve Peoples: Trump slams recount push as ‘a scam,’ says election is over
        The New York billionaire, who charged the election was “rigged” on a daily basis before his victory, called the developing recount effort “a scam” in a statement released by his transition team…
        At the same time, Trump was scrambling to address unfilled administration jobs, having barely scratched the surface of creating the massive team needed to run the government before his Jan. 20 inauguration…
        Trump, who has virtually no experience in foreign affairs…blah blah
        Clinton leads the national popular vote by close to 2 million votes, but Trump won 290 electoral votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan ???still too close to call…
        http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMP?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-11-26-16-59-12
        COMMENTS freerepublic:
        If conservatives did any crap like this they MSM would go crazy…
        Yet another Associated Press hit piece. Trump is moving right along filling administration jobs. If the Democrats were at the same point, AP would say their candidate was being thoughtful and thorough in appointing to vacancies…
        That article is a constant stream of lies and half truths designed to denigrate Trump in every way possible.
        And the media wonders why we despise them?…

        David Axelrod, Chief Strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, former Senior Advisor to President Obama:

        TWEET David Axelrod: 17 Nov: We hadn’t made any major appointments at this point in 2008. I don’t remember being criticized for it.
        replies:
        thank you for some honesty…
        When even David Axelrod is calling you out for blatant bias, you in the MSM have a problem…
        I can’t remember you guys being criticized for anything…
        https://twitter.com/davidaxelrod/status/799294630235963392

        and Citigroup had already decided most of the Obama appointments before election day! go figure.

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    David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

    G’day all
    Briefly, for those for whom this is new, Melbourne, Victoria last week experienced a severe episode of “Thunderstorm Asthma”, during which approximately 2000 people were treated, several are still in intensive care, and four deaths have been attributed to it.
    Such episodes apparently are rare, but have been previously recorded in Melbourne which seems to be (the? most) susceptible to it here in Oz.
    My reason for posting it here is that it the first news item I’ve seen to offer something an individual can do to (hopefully) avoid becoming a victim. As I’m not a doctor I cannot vouch for its relevance to you, but ask that if there is someone qualified in this area, would they confirm, deny or extend the advice please?
    A few years back I experienced a bad bout of hay fever which may have been triggered by a similar weather event, so I have an ongoing interest.
    These two paragraphs summarise it for me:

    “There are many actions we can take to minimise the risk of weather-related asthma attacks. The main idea is to keep out of the way of allergens. So, stay indoors during rain and wind periods, especially the first 30-60 minutes when the allergens are most prevalent.
    Taking your asthma medication (as prescribed by your GP) during a thunderstorm even if you are not feeling unwell may prevent or reduce the severity of the asthma.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-26/we-couldve-seen-thunderstorm-asthma-coming-and-ways-to-prepare/8058682

    Cheers,
    Dave B

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      PeterS

      Would it help to wear a mask of some type when venturing outdoors during the worst periods?

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        David-of-Cooyal in Oz

        I don’t know the answer to that, but the reports are saying that the particles of pollen in this event were vey fine. so maybe not.
        cheers,
        D

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    Nominations are now open for Climate Prat of the Year 2016. Vote here –

    https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/the-pratties-2016-the-race-is-on/

    Pointman

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    Graeme No.3

    Is it me or is Australia suffering from a shortage of competent politicians? I don’t mean those who can tie their own shoe laces, although that seems one answer for the popularity of slip on footwear often seen when they leave Canberra, but those who can think about a problem, seek the facts and make a decision.
    After all SA has J the Dill and his offsider Silly Koot who blacked out the State and look like getting rid of all industry with a series of coming blackouts. Victoria is being wrecked by Dopey Dave who thinks wind turbines provide steady, reliable power, something beyond his abilities. NSW has Mike Baird who has managed to lose a safe seat held for 69 years with 2 stupid decisions and seems prepared to keep making more. Colin Barnett is on the nose in WA with the highest unemployment in the nation. Qld. has Anastasia Palaszczuk – it also has crocodiles, box jellyfish but they are minor terrors. I forget who the Premier is in Tasmania, but as they didn’t actually go dark I don’t suppose it matters.
    And then in Canberra we have Bill Shorten and Malcolm Turnbull. Surely proof that we are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

    What have we done in Australia to deserve this? The 7 biblical plagues of Egypt seem small beer compared with what we have to put up with. It can’t be that we get the politicians we voted for, because we haven’t been given any sort of choice for some years. Do you really think that Di Natale or Xenophon are the answer to anything but an extremely silly question? Or Clive, Katter or that redhead anything other than proof that queenslanders are different (or at least have a bizarre sense of humour)?

    Still, not to worry, this rant won’t get past the mods. If only our politicians also had to pass a test – my suggestion for the current lot involves a slippery pole over a shark tank.

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    • #
      ROM

      Graeme No 3 @ # 36
      .

      Been thinking over that one myself.

      Now that you have completed the comment template I’m sure it can be adapted to the USA, Argentina, Brazil where they are putting the elected President up on criminal charges, each of the 26 EU nations left, the UK, the entire EU elitist hierarchy, most of Asia , all of the Moslem world nations or what ever currently passes for a country with borders that overlap by a few hundred kilometres with the next door Moslem country, the Three Fat Kims of North Korea, a term now banned in China as it was a huge source of mirth to the Chinese tiwitterati, Xi in China has got his problems trying to keep things under control, South Korea has full scale riots over their President and government on at the moment and etc.

      Everywhere, the lower castes of the current reigning planetary life form are truly revolting at the present.

      And the elites wonder why and are becoming paranoid as power begins to slip from their grasp and they see an increasingly uncertain future ahead for themselves and their off spring who they were going to pass the reins of power onto.
      But now none of that is as certain as it was only year or so ago.
      In fact it is all coming seriously undone for the elites of most of civilisation’s societies today.

      My theory for what it is worth is that the mass communication social media that now extends world wide has bypassed the communications controlling elites that have operated to control propaganda and the controlled dissemination of news and allowable facts since a century or so after the Gutenberg’s invention of the moveable type printing press 600 or so years ago.

      We are now seeing a very similar social impact from this social, almost universal instantaneous communications as was seen when the printing press became widespread very rapidly from its invention in 1440 spreading to over two hundred cities within two decades.

      The social impact and the consequent social upheavals and restructuring of society, the consequent wars and revolts all of which eventually begat the Industrial revolution was a time of immense turmoil in Europe as the citizenry could at last bypass the elites of the time who controlled the only means of replicating the written word as well as educational and propaganda materials through the copying by hand of any tracts, books and written works.

      This is being repeated now but at the speed of light, not how fast a man could wind down a screw on a press and then ride a horse or walk on foot carrying the physical printed word to the nor hamlet, village and town and city.

      In short I don’t think that the politicians are any worse than they ever have been, although I also think there are excellent grounds for believing this might be so.
      The politicians and bureaucrats and elites are simply unable to control the propaganda and news source any more as all that information now almost completely by passes the old media empires and the elitist political structures so intimately associated with controlling the flow of information.
      This along with the sheer impossibility of handling the volumes of paper that would match the colossal amounts of information now available in a split second from the internet and electronically transmitted social media, has almost completely negated and neutered the elites hold and control of the information flow in society and across our entire civilisation.

      Simply, the political, media, bureaucratic and academic elites have finally lost control of society and the citizenry due to the electronic communications revolution and the interchange of ideas, the debating and arguing of new ideas and concepts, the promotion of ideologies both good and bad, the revealing and unravelling of the most closely held information and secrets and the sudden long hidden social unease by so many in our society who felt that their feelings and cultural inclinations were being ever more deeply suppressed.
      All of these now being suddenly made respectable by the rise of a maverick non politician into a position of enormous power where the former all controlling elites could be faced down and countered and neutered along with the acceptance of the social mass communication systems and the information they can carry and project almost instantaneously has allowed an immense upsurge of pent up and increasingly non controllable political and social pressures to emerge which has the probability of dramatically changing much of our social structure in the western world in the not very distant future .

      How I have no idea but like the curates egg , it will be good in parts and bad in other parts.
      That is how humanity has operated and progressed into what we are now as a Race over the last couple of millions of years .

      From which such changes will filter on down through the rest of the world’s nations.

      We do live in very interesting times indeed.

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        ianl8888

        Yes, but in between the printing press and the internet, radio and television fronted up. Each in its’ own way threatened control of the information (and disinformation) flow.

        The impact of uncontrolled radio broadcasts was seen in dissemination of propaganda during the world wars and, in a less threatening vein, the Orson Wells broadcast of a fake alien invasion, although that did cause some damage. Many other examples obviously occurred. Govts learnt to censor these threats to a degree, but the “shock jocks” of today still have a large degree of control.

        TV is even more potent. The combination of covertly edited visuals and even more covertly edited choice of content is overwhelming to most of the populace – or at least, it was until the 2016 US election showed that large segments of the population were finally tired of being lied to constantly. Nonetheless, TV advertising remains as potent as ever in the persuasion stakes. Shallowness wins the day.

        This pertains to Graeme3’s despair over the quality of politicians we are served. The few that front up for election with the “good of the nation” as a real motive do not last all that long. Those of the majority, covertly giving reign to and satisfying their own vanity, have observed that “shallow wins the day” and absorbed this.

        The various revolts of the middle classes now occurring are in response to being pushed around by an obvious bonfire of the vanities, which is itself oblivious to the damage it causes, to the point where there is no trust left anywhere, in any direction. As an aside, this last point irritates me most – “climate science” elevated manufactured consensus over scientific method, so destroying the true value of the Renaissance. This deliberate destruction of trust in a hard-won bulwark of civilisation is absolutely unforgiveable.

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          ROM

          The absolute corruption of science as is seen and is being experienced in “Climate alarmist science” is a symptom, not a cause of the Progressive’s malevolent malaise that has been allowed to creep into our society and is now extending throughout our western civilisation.

          If there was no “Climate alarmist science” to use as vehicle to try and forcibly change our western society and our culture to conform with the Progressive’s agenda of a small dominant clique ruling over a vast mass of faceless humanity where individualism is to be harshly eliminated by every means possible in case it challenged the ruling clique, then another vehicle would have been found by the Progressives to try and enforce their agenda.

          The entire underpinning of Humanity’s advancement, of our social progress, of the stability of our society and our institutions, all of which are fundamental to the maintenance of our human society and the advancement in living standards, in the respect for law and order when administered fairly and without fear or favour is the Family.

          The “Family”is the the one single human institution, the one single fundamental basis of our species and race that has endured for the entire history of the evolution of our species.

          The “Family”, that very basic grouping of a Mother, a Father and their offspring which until very recently revolved around a small tight knit grouping of Family members and in the past, usually an extended Family encompassing and enclosing two or three generations, is the fundamental social institution that has delivered stability and protection of every type and at every level for the Family members, provided standards of respect and behaviour to be maintained by the members of the Family, both young and old to one another.
          It gave hope and the prospects for a better future for each generation down through the history of our race.

          And today it is that very same single greatest underpinning and entire basis of our entire human existence and of our civilisation and of our success as a species and race, the closely knit Human Family and its very long established structure that is being constantly attacked and undermined at every turn by the radical Progressives that have subsumed power in so many of our democratic institutions.

          Think a little on the often subtle means and forces that the ruling clique / governments/ unaccountable bureaucratic institutions and even more unaccountable , unelected, constantly interfering and family disrupting and often immoral and close to evil NGO’s and their controllers as well as the immorality and of so many of the so called activists organisations and individuals who try to force their own personal often radical ideologies onto the public from the morality and ethically free Progressive clique are forcing their ways into the structure of the Family today in our society’s Family structures in the name of protecting some supposed aspect of the Family or forcing some supposed inequality to be righted which displaces an old long established Family structures.

          Plus many other Progressive ideologically based memes all of which further dismantle and destroying humanity’s most basic social structure, the Family thereby corrupting and destroying a very long standing social institution that has served humanity as well as our civilisation and all civilisations of the pasts so well for so many millenniums past.

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          • #
            Graeme No.3

            ROM:
            There is much in what you say about the supply of UNCONTROLLED information. With the invention of printing there was a big increase in literacy, which had been more or less controlled by the Church, as about the only way to become educated beyond the basics was to try to become a clerk in holey orders. Of course the Church at that time was wracked with dissention and faction – Lollardy, Husites, remnants of the Cathars and the split at Avignon. Numbers in the monasteries were declining drastically as the monks retreated into reciting the liturgy leaving the support work to hired labourers and serfs ( see Henry the Eight and the closure of the monasteries with the few numbers involved). So a weakened Church was unable to control thought, despite trying very hard to do so. The Royal Authorities were strongly against ordinary people being able to read heretical thoughts, as were the new religious rulers such as Calvin and Cromwell. It took a few hundred years, mostly by concentrating on the owners and users of printing presses. Walpole in England regularly ordered printing presses wrecked when they printed something disagreeable, but he went in the end. Today there are too many sources of dissent and control is hard, but the first instinct of the elite has been to try and control the internet, especially in left wing repressive regimes. Lately there have been signs that “narrow passes” such as Google etc. are being directed towards stifling unwelcolm messages, but that will merely result in them being bypassed.
            My thoughts were more along the lines of the narrowing of the selection base for politicians. Today they are largely university educated(?) and almost exclusively in Arts, Economics and Law. The narrowness is particularly noticeable in the Labor party, where the original choice of intelligent ‘sons of toil’ has been abandoned and preselection is reserved for the offspring of ex-politicians and members of the middle class, largely those employed in the bureaucracy. Their children pass from school to University where the ability to think is disdained and a slavish adherence to doctrine rewarded. After a stint as an official at the union headquarters or as an ministerial advisor the young Malcolm or Bill or Julia passes via a crack at a safe opposition seat to elevation in a safe seat to “always at their party’s call and never thinking for themself at all”. Ben Chiffley, Arthur Caldwell would not be preselected these days, instead it is “send in the clones”. Nor should the Liberal Party be excluded from criticism for the same offence. But that lack of diversity has been accompanied by a belief in their own importance and ability. We have now a Parliament of well trained, obedient mumpties so it is no wonder that they think that they can control the climate with ridiculous legislation, which becomes more complex and repressive as they try to cover up their failure.
            No wonder the public have lost faith in them. What will the future bring? I wish I knew but I am pretty sure that the revolution is coming and I can only hope that the violence is controlled. That’s enough for this weekend, I should have gone walking in the bush.

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    Dean

    I go paddling almost every day.

    Love the exercise almost as much as just being out there. On a calm day I can almost get into a trance watching the bow waves – until I then almost fall out…..

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    theRealUniverse

    Cities can be pretty drab and full of weird art, architecture, to (try to) make up for it. Some do better than others, maybe the ones with many centuries of years of history. Does ‘Central Perk’ in NYC rate?

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    theRealUniverse

    My kid has to complete his yr7 science thing on ‘klimate chzange’ this week. Just bemused on what (unscientific) graphs (on sea levels, tempos etc.) there are around on what might be regarded as (psuedo) scientific sites…Im holding my breath!

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    David Maddison

    In the People’s Republic of Victoria I expect we’ll get regular power outages when Hazelwood Power Station is shut down and then probably immediately demolished rather than mothballed. We will rely mainly on unreliable windmills…

    I am wondering how long the following services will last during a state-wide grid failure.

    Cell phones.
    Land lines (mainly for Internet).
    Water supply.
    Sewerage, before pumps stop working and things get nasty.
    Gas supply.
    Anything else?

    Does anyone know?

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    • #
      beowulf

      No electronic monetary transactions.
      No shops open.
      No refrigeration.
      No accessible food stocks.
      No operational service stations/fuel supplies.
      Anarchy.

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      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      No trains.
      No traffic lights.
      No air in high rise buildings.
      Plenty of flat batteries.

      Cheers,
      Dave B

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      Bruce J

      Just remember all the problems in Victoria when we lost the gas supply from Longford in September,1998 and multiply the effect by 10 orders of magnitude! And we would be without gas or any fuel without power for the pumps.

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    • #
      Analitik

      OK, I’m on repeat mode here like a Telstra call waiting ad but let me reiterate about Hazelwood’s shutdown.

      Whatever happens to Victoria, South Australia will cop it earlier and worse

      They are further away from the gas sources, Latrobe Valley, The Snowy Scheme, BassLink and the NSW generators. For Victorians, a small gennie is good insurance against your fridge spoiling. For South Australians, things are MUCH more dire.

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    tom0mason

    The People’s Republic of Victoria officials will probably announce timely advice for what you need to do, on TV and radio during the power outages. :mrgreen:

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      GD

      I’m reassured by that. So much so that I’ve begun sourcing lights that are usually only advertised on ‘survival’ sites. My neighbour has a generator for caravan trips. I’ll be looking at those too. Allowing the Hazelwood power station to shut down without guaranteed power for Victoria is irresponsible and reprehensible.

      Daniel Andrews is a fool for believing the green scam, a dangerous fool. I’m not looking forward to next winter. Hazelwood power station provides 25% of Victoria’s power as well as bolstering other states. It won’t take much to topple the power supply in Victoria and subsequently, South Australia when Hazelwood closes.

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  • #

    I design and build houses and always look to have window places, filtered light through trellis, and vines before, or having a view to a piece of nature.

    Some poeple like to build their house in a pleasant pieces of nature, thereby destroying it with ugly modern shapes. And then they add big window screens. This makes the landscape view to a photo tapestry which gets boring.

    Better are lots small window panes and a design, where the view is steadily changing if you move inside the house. If you cannot see the whole picture, you discover always new aspecte of the outside.

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    tom0mason

    Maybe it’s about time for a remake of this —

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63u8T3abETo

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    James Murphy

    I’m familiar with various statistical techniques (Kriging being the most oft-applied in my world) to interpolate between sample points. Various discussions on here about the arctic, and antarctic (though could equally be applied to many other datasets and locations) made me wonder just how far apart 2 points have to be before an interpolation method is considered null and void.

    In theory, a limit could be calculated (I think), but that would assume that the overall conditions between data points are not changing much, and we know full well that for surface temperature data (for example), it would be extremely foolish to apply such a basic interpolation between, say, Penrith, and Bathurst, given the fact that there’s a mountain range between them.

    So, how could one sensibly approach interpolation between extremely widely distributed data points – without resorting to the BOM technique of adding random coefficients (fudge factors) to achieve a desired result? At what limit would it just be stupid to even try?

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    • #
      ianl8888

      A question most likely asked at this level of detail by a geologist.

      The various iterations of JORC successively attempt to resolve this issue. It seems likely you have access to Vulcan, or other common modelling packages – try experimenting with known data sets to give some substance to sensible answers. In my view, interpolation at increasing distances between data points becomes extrapolation and useful only for deciding where to locate collection of the next data points.

      This very question is the reason that Hunt (then Minister in charge of this stuff) persuaded Cabinet to kill the inquiry into BOM methods.

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      el gordo

      Penrith is on Emu Plains at sea level, while Bathurst is considerably higher on a tableland. Generally its around ten degrees cooler up country.

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    pattoh

    Just a very local personal aside for the peddlers of “The Hottest Evah!”-

    I make a living walking around the scrub & have been a resident working in Central NSW for 20 years.

    Pretty much around the time the Quandong trees drop their final fruit, normally the end of October, the large reptiles are out & about looking to break the fast.

    i.e. the large monitors & the odd larger snake.

    I believe these bigger cold blooded life forms need the heat in the ground to bring them out.

    I have not seen one yet this year.

    It is definitely not the food chain below. We have had the best steady season in the 20 years I have been here.

    Further, smaller cold blooded beasts are having the best season I have noted ( Shingle Backs, Beardos etc – their food supply is abundant)

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    farmerbraun

    It is still too damned cold in Godzone, just three weeks from the summer solstice.

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    el gordo

    Nationals support 457 visas for the meat works.

    “The overwhelming numbers of Australians want to work, and they work very hard,” Joyce said.

    “I’m not a social worker being paid to determine why someone thinks that sitting around getting fat and playing video games is a better outcome than having a job.

    “And I’m not going to close down the local abattoir by trying to discover a solution or a reason. That’s why I believe in decentralisation – it is an active process of expanding the opportunity and social texture of regional cities and towns. Because people attract people.”

    Barnaby Joyce / Guardian

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    David Maddison

    It’s almost the end of November and also the end of the year.

    How long before this month is declared the hottest eeevvvuuuhhh? And all this despite the fact that in Melbourne it has been freezing and I am still using heating and an electric blanket.

    How long before 2016 is declared the hottest year eeevvvuuuhhh?

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    Bob Malloy

    Message to Jo and or moderators, I believe you have a suspect link on your page. Yesterday while checking out some of your links I clicked on the Black’s WhiteWash link and immediately had my computer freeze and a page come up telling me there was a problem and I needed to follow a link to fix it. Believing the page was bogus and an attempt to infect my computer with a virus or ransom ware I used task manager to close the page and ran two separate virus and malware scans to clean my machine.

    This morning to confirm my suspicion using a different computer with a higher level of protection I clicked on the same link and was blocked by my anti spyware which automatically removed two viruses.

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    pat

    this AP headline has been changed except for small regional outlets to the more bland “Wisconsin officials to set timeline for recount”. can’t see the story at all in the Big MSM, except for Fox, where Priebus was interviewed:

    27 Nov: WKYT: Trump’s Chief of Staff says Clinton, Trump teams ‘cut a deal’
    WASHINGTON (AP) – Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff suggests Hillary Clinton is backing away from a deal worked out between the two presidential campaigns on how the loser would concede to the winner.
    Reince Priebus tells “Fox News Sunday” that Clinton’s team “cut a deal” with Trump’s team specifying that once The Associated Press called the race in favor of one candidate, the other would call within 15 minutes to concede.
    Priebus says that’s just what happened election night.
    But now he’s questioning whether Clinton campaign lawyer Marc Elias is backing down from that deal by announcing Clinton will participate in a recount in Wisconsin and may do the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The push is being led by the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
    AP’s director of media relations, Lauren Easton, says AP “calls races when it is clear that one candidate has prevailed over the other. We have no knowledge of what the candidates do with that information until there is a public claim of victory or a concession.”…
    http://www.wkyt.com/content/news/Trumps-Chief-of-Staff-says-Clinton-Trump-teams-cut-a-deal-403257316.html

    27 Nov: American Thinker: Richard Baehr: The Democrats’ real strategy in launching recounts
    The recount in Wisconsin, and the coming ones in Michigan and Pennsylvania will not change the outcomes in any of the states. No recount ever changes thousands of votes. I do not think that is the purpose.
    The recounts, if done by hand, which can be demanded, may take longer than the last day for completing the official counts in a state and directing Electoral voters. If all 3 states miss the deadline, Trump is at 260, Hillary at 232. No one hits 270.
    Then this goes to Congress, where the House voting 1 vote per state elects Trump, and Senate selects Pence. This would be first time this happened since 1824, but in that case, John Quincy Adams won in the House, though he had fewer electoral college votes than Andrew Jackson.
    If this goes to the US House and Senate, and the result is the same as result from the Electoral College without the recounts, why do it?
    ***The answer is to make Trump seem even more illegitimate, that he did not win the popular vote (he lost by over 2.1 million), he did not win the Electoral College (did not reach 270), and was elected by being inserted into the presidency by members of his own party in Congress.
    http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/11/the_democrats_real_strategy_in_launching_recounts.html

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    • #
      ianl8888

      The recounts, if done by hand, which can be demanded, may take longer than the last day for completing the official counts in a state and directing Electoral voters. If all 3 states miss the deadline, Trump is at 260, Hillary at 232. No one hits 270

      Yes, but as usual, aquiring hard, factual, complete information is always the biggest issue. In this situation, almost no-one has any interest in supplying this.

      I have also read that unlike Wisconsin, both Pennsylvania and Michigan require a Court Order to enable a recount. In other words, in both those States Stein et al have to front a Court with prima facie evidence that a recount is needed; Wisconsin reputedly just needs a set number of requesting signatures and the requisite filing fee. If such a Court application for either/both Penn and Michigan is filed too late in this convoluted declaration process, the requests for recounts are nulled – and Trump maintains the magical 270 even without Wisconsin.

      Is all of that true ? In this foetid atmosphere of fake “news”, how on earth can anyone know ? Or be confident that whatever procedures are supposed to be followed will be followed ?

      Homo sapiens is a truly astonishing beast to behold.

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  • #
    John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia

    “There is none so blind as he who will not see
    We must not close our minds, we must let our thought be free
    For every hour that passes by, you know the world gets a little bit older
    It’s time to realize that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”
    Everything is Beautiful,
    Ray Stevens.

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    pat

    25 Nov: TheAmbitJournalBlog: Steve Allen: Experts Who Called For Recount In Three States Includes Voting Rights-Attorney That Happened To Help George Soros Launch The National Voting Rights Institute In 1994
    http://ambitjournal.com/2016/11/25/experts-called-recount-three-states-includes-voting-rights-attorney-happened-help-george-soros-launch-national-voting-rights-institute-1994/

    25 Nov: LA Times: Evan Halper: Trump seems ready to fight the world on climate change. But he’s likely to meet resistance
    Donald Trump is branded with all manner of unflattering labels, but one that hasn’t seemed to much bother him is “climate pariah.” The president-elect is unabashed in his disdain for America’s global warming policy…
    Yet few things on Trump’s confrontational agenda put him more quickly on a collision course with the rest of the world, much of his own country and even some in his own party than his stated desire to abandon the fight against global warming. The looming assault on environmental regulation will test the resilience of California’s leadership role in the world, which is defined in large part by aggressive action on climate change that became a blueprint for the Obama administration.
    “Donald Trump will be about the only head of state who does not believe in climate science or the responsibility of his government to act,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, which signed up more members in the week after Trump won the election than during the rest of 2016 combined. “This makes the Bush-Cheney administration look like it came from an environmental training camp.”
    But Trump may be picking a tougher fight than he knows…READ ON
    http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-climate-20161127-story.html

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    pat

    3 Oct: WND: Sean Harshey: Communism re-branded as globalism
    Exclusive: Sean Harshey says 1st ‘America First’ president in 28 years could be reality
    In the West, however, there was never enough poor and too many middle class for this appeal to gain any real traction. The work-around for Marxists has been to simply reduce the middle class.
    Globalism is their vehicle to accomplish this.
    Although seemingly inconsistent, Marxists have joined forces with the fabulously wealthy as the only route to sufficiently reduce the enormous middle class and increase the lower class, for whom the standard communist pitch will work.
    Traditionally, communists killed or banished intellectuals and the rich (called “economic saboteurs” by the Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia). Instead of being purged, in the new communism the rich are courted, intellectuals embraced and celebrities sought out for their influence and endorsement. The promise of increased wealth and a position among the elite is sold to the rich and those in positions of leadership in academia, politics, finance and business as a way of stroking their egos, not unlike the sales job used on the underclass
    Marxism has been rebranded as globalism, but its attributes are unmistakable: the never realized claim to want to elevate the poor. A plea for a simple culture through tortured social engineering from a centrally planned economy and society…
    The British have successfully fired the first major shot with their refusal to follow the demands of our globalist masters and voted to leave the European Union. Americans have an opportunity to follow that up in November by electing a president who – for the first time in 28 years – holds the interests of America first.
    http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/communism-rebranded-as-globalism//

    23 Nov: TheFederalist: David Marcus: Why People Lost Their Minds When A Brooklyn Store Played ‘Sweet Home Alabama’
    Upscale progressives have gotten used to tuning out the voice of the Trump voter. But there’s an America out there that they can no longer ignore.
    http://thefederalist.com/2016/11/23/brooklyn-grocery-store-played-sweet-home-alabama-everyone-lost-minds/#.WDs9kGVn5X4.twitter

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    clipe

    On screen keyboard…right alt+shift+c = code

    test

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      Oliver K. Manuel

      Thanks, Dennis, for that link. Clearly Viv Forbes understands the difference between science and false government propaganda disguised as 97% consensus science!”

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    pat

    now that it’s about Trump, no more dry reporting. AP starts the ***negative editorialising in the opening line!

    28 Nov: AP: Trump assails recount push, claims millions voted illegally
    by Steve Peoples and Calvin Woodward, Associated Press
    (Associated Press writer Anne Flaherty also contributed to this report)
    President-elect Donald Trump claimed ***without evidence Sunday that “millions” voted illegally in the national election, ***scoffing at Hillary Clinton’s nearly 2 million edge in the popular vote and returning to his campaign mantra of a rigged race even as he prepares to enter the White House in less than two months.
    Trump and his lieutenants assailed an effort — now joined by Clinton — to recount votes in up to three battleground states, calling the push fraudulent, the work of “crybabies” and, in Trump’s estimation, “sad.”
    The president-elect himself launched a Twitter offensive that spanned more than 12 hours on Sunday, casting a shadow over the legitimacy of an election that he actually won.
    “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he tweeted in the afternoon before alleging in an evening tweet “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.” Trump’s transition team did not respond to questions seeking evidence of the unfounded claims.
    There’s been no indication of widespread vote manipulation, illegal voting or hacking that materially affected the outcome one way or the other. It’s that very lack of evidence that suggests Trump is likely to prevail in recounts…
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-calls-recount-scam-effort-moves-forward-072101133–election.html

    27 Nov: Lifezette: Hillary’s Popular Vote Holdouts on Collision Course with History
    Electoral College designed by Founders to protect vulnerable Americans from the tyranny of elites
    by Laura Ingraham
    After complaining for months that our electoral process takes too long, now some commentators apparently want it to take even longer. Lawrence Lessig has written an article for The Washington Post saying that members of the Electoral College should ignore what they were actually elected to do, and should take it upon themselves to give the presidency to Hillary Clinton.
    His argument is that since Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, she is the “people’s choice.” …
    1.) No one, including Hillary Clinton, was trying to win the popular vote. If the candidates had been trying to win the popular vote, almost everything about this election would have been different…
    2.) Now let’s look at that popular vote more closely. As of today, according to The New York Times, Hillary Clinton has 62,391,335 votes from all states. She has 1,969,920 votes from the five counties that make up New York City, and 1,893,770 votes from Los Angeles County, California. Donald Trump has 61,125,956 votes from all states, including 461,174 votes from the five counties that make up New York City, and 620,285 votes from L.A. County. In other words, Hillary beat Trump 3,863,690 to 1,081,459 in New York and L.A.; he beat her by 60,044,497 to 58,527,645 in the rest of the country. So Hillary’s margin in the popular vote rests entirely on her margin in two large cities — neither of which was contested by the Trump campaign…READ ALL
    https://www.lifezette.com/polizette/hillarys-popular-vote-holdouts-collision-course-history/

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      Dennis

      As in Australian elections the targets are in marginal electorates where a small percentage swing either way means losing or winning.

      And the number of seats or electorates won is the key to success.

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    BruceC

    I have an old HHD I’m thinking of using as a backup drive, is there anyone here that can recommend the free program BleachBit as a reliable HHD wiping program?

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    el gordo

    North Pacific Cools

    http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/anomalyp_6m.gif

    Cool water trapped in the Bight is becoming a permanent fixture.

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    Analitik

    Wow, I must have been asleep when the senate enquiry for Retirement of coal fired power stations was announced

    Key point (c) IMO

    policy mechanisms to encourage the retirement of coal-fired power stations from the National Electricity Market, having regard to:
    i) the ‘Paris Agreement’ to keep global warming below 2 degrees celsius, and ideally below 1.5 degrees celsius,
    ii) the state and expected life span of Australia’s coal-fired power plants,
    iii) the increasing amount of electricity generated by renewable energy and likely future electricity demand,
    iv) maintenance of electricity supply, affordability and security, and
    v) any other relevant matters;

    http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Coal_fired_power_stations

    Unfortuately, submissions closed on the 10th of November – I hope some others here were more abreast of this enquiry

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    Analitik

    Something that a few of us have discussed in previous posts. Former US Congressman, Ron Paul calls for the end of the US Federal Reserve

    Federal Reserve-generated increases in money supply cause economic inequality. This is because, when the Fed acts to increase the money supply, well-to-do investors and other crony capitalists are the first recipients of the new money. These economic elites enjoy an increase in purchasing power before the Fed’s inflationary policies lead to mass price increases.

    Yep. This would be Trump’s biggest coup if he could pull it off but I doubt it.

    http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2016/november/27/to-really-make-america-great-again-end-the-fed/

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      Analitik

      I should have also quoted the part that truly echoes my own stance

      When the crash occurs the best thing for Congress and the Fed to do is allow the recession to run its course. Recessions are the economy’s way of cleaning out the Fed-created distortions. Of course, Congress and the Fed refuse to do that. Instead, they begin the whole business cycle over again with another round of money creation, increased stimulus spending, and corporate bailouts.

      Now for my OP to get released from moderation….

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    Hi Jo Nova – I didn’t know where to put this or how to contact you directly, but there is petition going around for anyone who wants to defend our freedom of speech. The petition has already been tabled with 15,000 Australian votes, but they want to get the numbers higher (I understand Labor is attempting to raise 20,000 to oppose it).

    Please consider letting your readers know.

    The link is here: http://www.corybernardi.com/18c_petition?recruiter_id=90446

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      Moderators – maybe I should call your attention to my post above? Of course this petition may already be known about (but I had not heard of it until half an hour ago).

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      AndyG55

      On one of the help pages there is this.

      “If your comment disappears, email support AT joannenova.com.au, and ask the brilliant helpful volunteer moderators fish your comment out of the spam filter.”

      Try using that email, and ask the mods to pass your message along.

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    Bartender UK

    Australia Is Insane: Their Thunderstorms Also Cause Asthma Attacks

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MoqCuRrX1M

    Is it because of a sudden gush of pollen changes in air pressure? Or perhaps something else.

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