Chinese set up a giant strawman carbon market twice size of EU

What would China do if it wanted competitors to keep shackling themselves to an industry-crippling religious weather-fetish?

  1. mock their economy-killing stupidity openly til they realized it, or
  2. nod vigorously and set up a big inflatable strawman idol in the streets of Shanghai? It protects no fields but looks convincing to Greenpeace and good enough for Goldman Sachs…

Notice the size of the carbon markets: The EU’s trading scheme is the largest in the world and “covers” 1.8 gigatons of carbon emissions.  China’s power sector (just power) produces 3 gigatons of emissions. The plan is to carefully strap a very mild carbon market on the Chinese power sector starting in 2020 and expand it later to other industries which would then include some 5 gigatons of emissions.

Sounds like a marvelous advert for people trying to sell carbon trading schemes:

Clean-energy advocates trumpeted the creation of the planet’s largest carbon market, which will be nearly twice the size of the European Union’s.

The headline in TechnologyReview, James Temple:

China is creating a huge carbon market—but not a particularly aggressive one

Not aggressive is the phrase  — join these dots:

  • … the government’s goal for now is to reduce the rate of increase in emissions rather than to achieve absolute reductions…
  •  …. this approach will encourage plant operators to improve the efficiency of plants, [but] it “weakens or eliminates the incentives … to shift from coal to gas or renewables,” according to the Nature Climate Change paper.

So this is the kind of giant carbon market where emissions will still increase and there will be no incentive to stop using coal. Note the main outcome — factories will get more efficient — which is a nice side benefit which happens in every maturing economy anyhow.

The Chinese know exactly what they are doing.

…early signs indicate that China is taking an extremely cautious approach, driven by fears of undermining economic growth.

If only we could be so lucky.

It’s not that China is slow, dragging its feet or uncaring:

The ultimate success or failure of China’s program will be crucial because the nation emits more than a quarter of the world’s carbon dioxide, and levels are rising at their fastest rate in years, according to one recent analysis.

Though there is this small disconnect:

Hitting worldwide climate goals will be nearly impossible unless China begins making sharp cuts soon.

Which clearly China has no intention of doing.

Much is riding on this program — ( much money, many bureaucrats, lotsa junkets.)

Moreover, the nation’s effort could influence how other countries pursue similar market-based approaches to cutting carbon pollution. “Internationally, much is riding on this program,” Stanford economist Lawrence Goulder and a co-author wrote in a paper earlier this year. “Failure could impede the adoption of emissions trading programs in many parts of the world.”

It’s not like the global climate is at stake…. we just need to protect those endangered emissions trading programs.

9.3 out of 10 based on 71 ratings

141 comments to Chinese set up a giant strawman carbon market twice size of EU

  • #
    Pauly

    I wonder how many years it will take before the IPCC admits its “solutions” to climate change are not even making a dent on CO2 emissions? Unfortunately, despite 30 years of research and 97% engagement of all the scientists in the world, they haven’t come up with a Plan B. If they worked for me, I’d say they should all find another job.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      …despite 30 years of research and 97% engagement of all the scientists in the world…

      Maybe if there was 98% engagement of all the scientists they could figure it out. It’s always that one silly little tiny thing that ruins the soup. They just aren’t trying hard enough.

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      • #
        Lionell Griffith

        If the so called scientists actually had done the work we paid them to do, they would have found there was no there, there and be out of a job. Justice requires they pay back ALL of the public funds they spent for their misbegotten purpose out of their personal resources without benefit of bankruptcy. Unfortunately, justice is in very short supply today.

        I suppose the best we can count on is that they will lose their parasitical positions, have to get a real job, and actually have to earn their keep.

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        • #
          clivehoskin

          Anyone who ever believed this”Rubbish”couldn’t get a job in the REAL world.I sure as hell wouldn’t employ them.This CO2 BS,wasn’t believable in the late 60’s when they were calling it”Global Cooling”and in spite of them changing the name,several times,it is STILL”Rubbish”

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          • #
            Kinky Keith

            Hi Clive,

            Was CO2 an issue back in the late sixties or was the focus on the end of the interglacial period?

            20

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          If the so called scientists actually had done the work we paid them to do…

          Unfortunately they did what they were paid to do. They got paid to find a problem and so they did. Who, if being paid to find out how bad CO2 is would turn in a report that says there’s no problem when to boss, the money source, wants to find a problem?

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          • #
            Lionell Griffith

            I beg to differ. They did not find a problem, they created many. To find means that what ever is found must actually exist to be found. Building a bogus theory and then manufacturing “data” to support the theory and claiming a false to fact “consensus” is not a find by any stretch of the imagination.

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            • #
              Roy Hogue

              Lionell my friend, need I remind you that what they did has the net effect of finding the problem they were asked to find. How they got there is irrelevant compared to the finding that supported what they were supposed to find. They made it a fact whether it was or not, whether it was supported by anything, even a slim little shred of evidence or not. How they did it doesn’t matter because from their position of presumed authority it became fact.

              The world swallowed it because too few are educated in straight thinking, honest skepticism and the need to ask, “Where is your evidence? You must show it to me before I will follow you.” And then there’s the problem that too few would know what constitutes evidence in this particular case or for that matter, any other case.

              I was on a Jury once and I saw the misunderstanding of evidence on parade for 4 days of deliberation over something tat was easily decided if you could understand what evidence really is.

              That is the world we live in.

              40

              • #
                Lionell Griffith

                As I said, they did not FIND the problem, they only pretended that they did and attempted to back it up with manufactured “data” and an endless miasma of word salads. Let’s pretend might be useful as an entertaining diversion but it is not something upon which to base a full, successful, and happy life.

                I suggest it is an important error of thought to treat something as a fact if it is not actually a fact. Attempting to live in a universe that does not exist will fail by any measure that you can name except failure. No matter how many agree that it will not and cannot fail.

                All who attempt to live in such an alternate universe will pay the price. Unfortunately, there are many who do not but will also pay the price. Like it or not, the price is coming due and payable. It will be paid in full. The consequences will not be pretty.

                See the rise and fall of any previous civilization for instructive examples.

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              • #
                Roy Hogue

                Unfortunately the pretense became the fact. It matters not one little bit that it was a pretense when it gets swallowed hook line and sinker by a gullible public, and worse, gullible elected and appointed officials.

                What’s the difference when the outcome is the same as if there had been a real problem? None.

                10

            • #
              Lionell Griffith

              The pretend problem was not a real problem no matter how many hooks, lines, and sinkers were swallowed. The presumption that it was real produced a faulty analysis of the solution. The solution applied was a pretend solution that caused far more problems than was going to be caused by the actual climate change (aka weather) in progress.

              Trillions were spent on the pretend solution that has had no impact upon the pretend problem (human addition of CO2 to the environment). There has been an incalculably large amount of lost opportunity and lost productivity associated with the totally unnecessary and ineffective construction of devices used to capture the “free” energy of the sun and wind.

              The real problem was energy poverty that leads to low productivity that results in economic poverty and environmental degradation. The real solution to the real problem is increased production of truly cheap and abundant energy along with the political and economic freedom necessary for the citizens to be both innovative and productive. However, that would solve the real problems and eliminate the jobs of all the political hacks who are living high at our expense. They are not about to allow that to happen.

              We don’t need them for any purpose. They need us for everything they spend and consume. It is way past time for us to tell them NO you cannot take any more in a way they cannot evade.

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              • #
                Roy Hogue

                Lionell,

                I think that when faced with a can of worms you argue all the details of the individual worms. That’s OK. You understand all those individual worms and could probably give me their names and their histories. You probably could give me their family trees. But when it’s the effect of that heavy can coming down on you like a hammer that counts then all those details are irrelevant. You will not care about the details of the worms whether correctly argued or not. All you will care about is the net effect of that falling can. And it is big and heavy and will hurt. In fact it has hit and it does hurt. And the need is to understand the can and how to get rid of it. And in the end it’s a political disease as I’ve said for years now. And if we’re to get rid of that disease we just need to get rid of the politicians and those who support those politicians because they can get rich off of climate change fear and policy making. It’s a matter of lining up the bad actors against the wall and getting them out of politics and out of business.

                The science argument was won long ago.

                Honestly Lionell, they were paid to find a problem and they found it. How they got there is only interesting to the coroner after the fact.

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              • #
                Roy Hogue

                And I still consider you to be a friend and someone with, if I may say it, a formidable intellect.

                00

    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      They will never admit failure. They will never admit they were wrong. They will never admit their consensus is nonsense.

      There is no plan B because their plan A is their “I am not wrong” policy in action.

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      • #
        glen Michel

        I think it is a matter of time.All their prognostications have come to zilch. Let them be their alarmist selves. What we have to do is guard our imperfect polity from the insidiousness of pan- national bodies,such as the U.N. We have complied too much as it is with their control over the rights of the individual.I can only hope that this period of idiocy that we’re going through is just a small speck in the line of time.

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          In the meantime governments all over the world are making decisions based on zilch. And what they are doing will visit hardship on perhaps billions before it’s all over. Some of that hardship will prove fatal, which I suspect is the intention of some of those who drive this zilch.

          My curse to the lot of them but that won’t change a thing.

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    • #

      I just wanted to put this up front.

      I was trying to find a chart showing the rise of Australian electricity prices from 1970-2018 and Googled ‘Australian electricity prices from 1970-2018’. I got precisely nothing related to this whatsoever (house prices?). I then used Bing and got exactly what I wanted.

      I then Googled ‘Australian retail electricity prices from 1970-2018’ with a similar result, nothing whatsoever related to electricity prices. Bing once again delivered the correct results.

      Is Google deliberately hiding what’s going on?

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      • #
        Latus Dextro

        Bemused, no surprise. Google’s biased search algorithm is well extablished (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences summarizes the results of five randomized, controlled experiments with 4,556 participants in two countries, Epstein and Robertson (2015)).

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      • #
        Jeff

        I have googled terms like “electricity price history australia” and mainly got reports blaming the majority of the increase on poles and wires.
        Many seem to try to downplay the wholesale component.

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      • #
        rollo

        I did the same search bemused and found the opposite. The 4th item on a google search came up with the required graph.
        Google finds different things on different days doing the same search and often retrieves different answers on different computers.

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      • #
        RickWill

        The States were the monopoly suppliers up to the early 1990s. If you want to go that far back probably best to do it for a selected State. This report covers the indexed price since 1981:
        https://www.aemo.com.au/-/media/Files/Electricity/NEM/Planning_and_Forecasting/NEFR/2016/Retail-electricity-price-history-and-projections.pdf
        The projections are based on a good dose of pixy dust through the magic of ambient energy. These projections would be valid if everyone in Australia was prepared to adjust their schedule to suit the supply of wind and solar energy. Your fridge/freezer would be three times the price as it would need to be able to stay cold without power for 3 days. You would need a huge, perfectly insulated hot water storage system because you may not have power for that for two week. All windows would be triple insulated but able to control heat input and output as required to keep a stable temperature without using any power. AW ya; there would be no heavy industry. But who wants any heavy industry in Australia. They are just dirty. Leave the dirty stuff to the Chinese; they are good at making things.

        I can recall prices for industrial users as low as 2c/kWh in the late 80s. I would need to look at CPI to work out what that would be today.

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        • #

          Thanks. I noticed that none of the charts went back beyond 1990. Obviously no one gave much thought about electricity prices, given they were the lowest in the world.

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      • #
        N Q Redneck

        Try duck duck go. I switched 6 months ago from google and love it. https://duckduckgo.com

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      • #
        Phantor 48

        I’ve recently taken to using Duck Duck Go as my internet search engine. I have been quite happy with it — It seems to give less biased results than the Big-G.

        00

    • #
      Geoff

      Scientists that are paid by the government to look into stuff will NEVER find solutions that reduce the flow of money to themselves. This is the first Law of Government Science.

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    • #
      Sean

      I don’t think the IPCC was ever about stopping climate change, it was about demonizing energy use as a premise for taxation whose proceeds would then be funneled through the UN. Look at what American governments at all levels (state, local and federal) have done with vices like gambling, smoking, drinking and drug use that used to be illegal. They are all now or soon to be major revenue sources to support government obligations. Taxing a necessity is only tolerated at a low level or to support its use. Taxing a vice is often done at 5-10x the rate of more ordinary purchases and is the real end game of this charade.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Yes, and the Red Chinese will be happy to let the stupid westerners throw money at them for a non existent climate problem, in addition to the money we throw at them to make all our consumer products, and holding a lot of our debt.

        Is there a pattern here?

        30

    • #

      CSIRO has come up with Plan B: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-19/csiro-calls-for-citizen-scientists-to-forecast-energy-usage/9869116.

      Let’s ignore the bleeding obvious and do more investigation.

      30

      • #
        TdeF

        For Christmas I would like
        Our real Prime Minister back. The one who actually made a difference. The one who thought Donald Trump was a breath of fresh air and the Global Warming scare was fake.
        The repeal of the RET, and all prices would drop x3. No one would be worse off. $6 Billion a year in theft would stop overnight.
        Hazelwood reopened.
        Liddell returned to the public for the price which was paid. $0.
        The disbanding of the endless Clean Energy Regulators, Human Rights Commission, Snowy II, National Energy Guarantee and all the thousands of people now administering our electricity at every level.
        Payments to Clinton, the UN and all the other carpetbaggers.
        A new deal in the senate where they could only knock down a law of the representative parliament on conflict with State interests, not party interests. Otherwise Australia has become ungovernable.

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    • #
      TdeF

      The targeted survey was of 10,000 people. Then by careful filtering 97 out of 100 out of the original 10,000 supported man made Global Warming. The original figures yield 0.97%. That does not get you world headlines and funding.

      60

    • #
      Dave in the States

      The solutions don’t work for three fundamental reasons. First, people’s economic activities can not be controlled that tightly. Not even in communist countries. Secondly, they are solutions to a non problem. Co2 is not the thermostat control knob of the climate. Thirdly, co2 concentration is going to do what ever it is going to do. We have no control over it.

      But the original motives of Maurice Strong and others were really about political power and money, not about saving the planet. The Chinese, likewise are gaming the system.

      60

    • #
      Dennisa

      If only CO2 did what they claim for it, I could worry.

      00

  • #
    Yonniestone

    China pulled off a Potemkin village styled economic ruse and as before the Minister was in bed with the Queen, they were both in on it and it was all about money power and PR.

    90

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    And yet no matter what any of them may do, the climate won’t change because of it. The only thing that will change is who has the money.

    If I wanted to ruin someone I’d invent carbon credits and get my sucker to invest in hot air. A phony market, which is what this seems to be, would be even better. How could I lose?

    When you’re a government you do as you please and the rest of us pay the price. 🙁

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  • #
    John F. Hultquist

    Is the USA the only major country where emissions are going down?
    And not just from power production.
    From the Wall Street Journal:
    “U.S. Auto Makers Are Putting Smaller Engines Into Big Trucks So They Guzzle Less Gas
    Car makers believe they have to future-proof the fuel economy of their trucks to prepare for whatever regulatory environment might come next.”

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    • #
      John F. Hultquist

      For the tech savvy:
      pickuptrucks

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    • #
      Dave in the States

      However, it still requires X amount of energy to perform Y amount of work. For example, the Ford F150 basically has two engine options. Both run gasoline, at least in the US. There is the turbo charged V6. And the 5.0 liter “coyote” V8. The Coyote V8 is an absolute master piece of mechanical engineering. The turbo charged smaller engine can get better mileage if you have the discipline to keep your foot out of it. If you need to the extra power to do the job it will also deliver extra power as turbo boost kicks in, but it will use more gasoline than the V8 would doing the same job. Anybody that has used pickup trucks for towing and hauling instead of just driving around empty has experienced this. If you only occasionally work the truck then the v6 is a good option, but if you work the truck more often the v8 is the better choice. Both will get about 25 mpg just running down the highway at 80 mph.

      If pickup trucks are part of causing US co2 emissions to go down, then it is the turbo diesels that are doing it. In larger 3/4 ton and up segments turbo diesels rule the market. Gasoline engines can’t compete with a turbo diesel for that kind of work. In your follow up post it was noted that standard Ford Super Duty with gasoline power got about 11mpg, and the hybrid got about 15. Well turbo diesels already get about 20 mpg in that kind of test. The hybrid is dead in the water. Its an interesting project but it will not replace the turbo diesel in the market place.

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      • #
        John F. Hultquist

        Dave,
        I agree, mostly.
        First, the linked story was about a small scale outfit buying Ford trucks and then building onto that.
        Ford is working on something, that likely is meant to sell to those that don’t need a working truck.
        A few years ago I told my car guy that I wanted a used truck. He showed those the dealer was getting for a special sale.
        They had about 7, fancy, short box types. I told him I wanted a real truck. My last heavy load consisted of 12 RR ties.
        I think Ford and others want to sell to the suburbs — take your truck for groceries and camping.
        Not much work for a truck there. Thus, the hybrid — better mileage — will be a selling point.

        20

  • #
    RobK

    China did well to engage Maurice Strong as an international lobbyist to wage a socio-economic the war on the West. They’ve been winning big-time for decades. They are smart traders using every trick in the book; what ever it takes. When the West wakes up, it will be too late.

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    • #
      Richard Ilfeld

      There are many asian mice circling the Chinese elephant. Each can likely be the low-cost/high quality producer in
      one or more niche markets…some of them big niches. Most of them don’t want to be vassals to China, and, collectively,
      they probably don’t have to be.

      I don’t pretend to be a China expert, but I know their influence in the outside world has ebbed and flowed, and that some of the characteristics of their society can produce both positive and negative results. I’d bet on a market society over a managed one any day in a long race, perhaps not in a sprint.

      The “wisdom” of their current trade positions is as easily explained as a nation with a slim and fragile economy and a healthy dose of xenophobia acting acting pragmatically, while a rich nation living in a past where the poor nations need our market to survive, acting out our fantasies that trade is charity and feeling good about be globalist, is being rather stupid.

      When we can’t afford it, we’ll stop. Maybe we’ll get tired of the xenophobia, and we’ll stop. Maybe some crass act will force us to look at reality, and we’ll stop. Maybe someone will come to Walmart with a better deal, and we’ll switch customers.

      China can’t force the US to be a customer. We can reabsorb our Chinese held debt with ease. China can probably force some third world countries to honor their deals, at the cost of the world seeing clearly the Chinese form of imperialism. China may not have a smooth transition when Mr. XI exits.

      The west has been late, before and often…but it is amazing what free peoples can do when they are finally roused to action and pointed in one direction.

      If the US stopped buying from China, completely, and stopped selling to China, completely, MOL as existed under early Mao, how would the two economies perform. There would be a lot of money as US companies found new vendors or built out domestic capacity. This would happen with stunning speed, based on consumer priorities. What does China make, or supply, that no one else can?

      And how would China respond…as what would be the result of that repression?

      China is awake, and may be able to save China, but also maybe not. The nap of the west is not the key in miy book.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Its fine for the US to put tariffs on imported goods, because Donald promised to bring jobs back home, and China is hitting back to save face.

        Looking a decade ahead, the US has become more isolated yet self sufficient, while Beijing continues to invest in third world countries, developing a broad middle class for their goods and services. Both countries are winners and grinners.

        Meanwhile after another decade of no global warming the science is finally settled and carbon markets around the world collapse. Worthless as bitcoin.

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      • #
        ROM

        .

        Richard Ilfield @ # 5.1

        Your line of thought on China and the future is very close to my own line of thinking re China.

        With modern communications and the hitherto never before ability for people and individuals to shift rapidly around the world and across cultures which were relatively isolated for centuries past until the very late 20th century, imperialism from any source , western, asian, Chinese, USSR look alikes, ideology and religion based [ No names !! ] is basically finished or only very short term before the backlash sets in from those put under the yoke.

        Dictatorships which China has now re-entered usually go very stale after roughly a decade as the same tired old people or their replacements with similar ideologies and beliefs plus tired, rarely changed policies plus ever increasing survellience as the locals become restive with little or no advances in living standards and ever more restrictions on freedoms as the Big Boss begins to feel he and his dynastry is increasingly threatened, all of this begins to have serious effects on the economies, the international considerations , the attitudes of other nations plus their own populace, the trading interactions and economic interactions,
        All slow down or become stagnant after a decade or so of the same dictator sitting at the pinnacle of power in a nation.

        And that is precisely where China and Xi who has set himself up as China’s newest dictator are heading as long as Xi remains in power and intends to remain in power.

        Under Mao Zedong, the Chinese economy didn’t begin to improve very much at all.
        It only really got going after the turmoil of the Great Proletarian Revolution was settled and Deng Xiaoping made his famous statement ,” It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.”

        Meaning that it didn’t matter if it was socialism or capitalism thatn China operated under so long as it produced results economically and socially.

        Reinforced by the trend to a collective form of governing as compared to Mao’s dictatorship and personality cult.

        If Xi is still in power in another decade I believe that China will by then be nearly on the skids again or will be engaged in a low level but still a full scale war as Xi and his cohort attempt to deflect attention from their own failures and their dead hand on Chinese society and its economy..

        A favourite tactic of dictators has always been to begin what they believe will be a small scale conflict to take the spotllight off of themselves and their failures and fire up nationalism amongst their populace..

        Both of which Chinese leaders and emperors have a long history of resorting to when the going got tough for them personally.

        As Confucious says ; Before you start a war, make sure you know how it is going to finish.

        A lesson that few if any dictators and the Xi’s of this world have ever learned or heeded.

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      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Richard

        I heard quite some time ago that some of the manufacturing of “Chinese” goods was being done in Vietnam and being labeled Made in China.

        Cost effective?

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    • #
      TdeF

      The intent of China, collective and individual, is just to get rich. Nothing wrong with that. It has been the intent of America since WW2. Breaking up the British, Russian,French and Turkish empires was the original priority. The old colonialists are still angry that Russia has Sebastopol back. Again.

      So China does not want to destroy the world economy. The windmill fantasy is dying. Solar cells are not selling, except for a late rush in tiny Australia. The world is running on coal and gas and oil and the shortages predicted in the 1970s have not eventuated. Shale gas, fracking and more have vastly increased supply. Besides, the Green fantasy of the UN is weakening Western domination of the economies of the world and opening the doors for Chinese economic expansion.

      The axis of power is moving to Asia generally. Japan, China, India, SE Asia. However, with most of the world’s population, is that a bad thing? As George Bush pointed out in 2002, the axis of evil was North Korea, Iraq and Iran. You could add Libya. If there ever was a force in politics underestimated, it is consumerism. People just want a better life. If the Chinese are pushing for economic expansion, it is no less than the economic domination enjoyed by Spain, Portugal, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland and Italy for so much of the last 500 years, now joined by America for the last hundred.

      What is amazing to everyone is the pointlessness and utter futility of the push to control world Carbon Dioxide levels. The arrogance of the attempt to control the physical chemistry of a very soluble gas by the United Nations is beyond comprehension. Beyond belief.

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      • #
        el gordo

        China has been an international trading state for 4000 years and they want to pick up where they left off before the Americans and Europeans subjugated them.

        The other thing worth mentioning is that they are gradually abandoning Marx on private property.

        ‘China’s Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council released general guidelines on shoring up property rights which promise to “raise people’s sense of wealth security, boost social confidence, foster positive expectations and raise the impetus for entrepreneurship and innovation by various economic entities.”

        Forbes 2016

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        • #
          ROM

          Started on the eskimo’s and inuits the other night , reading up on their social cutstoms and where their women fitted in to their culture and finished up on the Silk Road and where Women fitted into that which was apparently a pretty open and easy for women cultural situation due to the quite heavy trade use of the Silk Road for a thousand years or more between what was then the various European Kingdoms and the Chinese civilisation which split regularly into a number of kingdoms and was then re-amalgamated regularly into a couple of kingdoms in the Northern and southern China of today right down through history.

          In western China today there are still a ethnic group who regularly have children with blue eyes as well as ruins in the region that have all the hallmarks of Roman military construction.
          Towards the end of the Roman Empire a Roman Legion on the far eastern fringes of the Eastern Roman Empire was reputedly destoyed in battle and the Legion just literally disappeared.
          There were in fact a few Lost Legions down through Roman History`
          In this case legend has it that the remnants of the Legion were enslaved and then marched via the Silk Road across to Western China where they were settled and married local women .
          Hence the occasional blue eyes of this ethnic Chinese group.

          So the Chinese were trading with Europe via the Silk Road and its large cities ,most of which are now lost and their fate unknown, long before the Venetian, Marco Polo’s travelled to China with his Uncles who had already made the trading trip to China and had returned to Venice where young Marco joined them on the next trading trip which led to him spending 20 years in China as the aging Emperors assistant before returning to Venice.

          And for a piece of tottally useless information for those of European descent.
          Blue eyes are now believed to have come from just ONE mutation somewhere in Northern Europe some thousands of years back.

          And the white skin!
          Well we were all black skinned when Homo sapiens walked out of North Africa a hundred odd thousand years ago.
          The white skin is merely an adaption to enable enough Vitamin D to be created in the body and skin in the much lower solar radiation of the northern latitudes.

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          • #
            TdeF

            The white skin is also more necessary for survival in the snow for protection against predators and enemies. Consider the white Polar bear has black skin and is only a Brown bear adapated to its environment. Same species. Similarly the arctic fox, the arctic owl, the sable. You cannot be seen.

            In fact the real reason polar bears starve in summer is that all the ice melts and they can be seen. There is plenty of food, but no element of surprise. Starving polar bears sit on the brown dirt and wait for the ice because their specific adaption only works in winter. Summer in the arctic can reach 20C. St. Petersburg in summer is often 30C at 60 degrees North. Murmansk, population 190,000 and at 69 North is currently at 17C. No snow. Obviously Climate Change.

            At the same time black skin is necessary to prevent burning in the equatorial sun. Also perfect for hunting at night. A friend of mine, an ultra white doctor of Irish descent went into a pharmacist in Nairobi to buy some sun block. They had never heard of it.

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            • #
              TdeF

              Polar bears and grizzly bears can interbreed. Such a bear is a pizzly or a grolar. So when people worry about the extinction of the species, they are only concerned with the white fur, not the species. It is almost bear racism.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Its worth noting that North Korea holds HUGE ammounts of rare earth elements – the stuff needed for making computers and high tech.

        Could this be the reason for the ( brief ) pax-Korea?

        I’d suggest China can plunder NK at will for such things and Kim whatsisname will be told to just shut up and do it……

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          Richard Ilfeld

          So does California. Perhaps the US can plunder it at will, as well.

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          el gordo

          Beijing didn’t know what to do with North Korea and they are grateful that Donald cured this festering sore.

          Its not just the raw materials they are after, this is going to be an infrastructure bonanza and South Korea doesn’t have to pay a cent. Not to mention a very cheap labour force.

          Kim is embracing the new world order, so Donald can now bring home the troops.

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        Latus Dextro

        The arrogance of the attempt to control the physical chemistry of a very soluble gas by the United Nations is beyond comprehension. Beyond belief.

        True. The globalist ideology that displaced the original charter permeates all of the arms of the UN (WHO, IPCC, UNEP, ECOSOC) that you may notice act in complete concert regarding the execution of the 2030 Transformational Agenda, which it seems much of the World is inadvertently buying into at local and regional and bureaucratic levels without any critical check on whether it is a destination people actually desire. If the wider populous really knew the truth they surely wouldn’t be interested. So, as the UN noose tightens the game is revealed. Climatism has served its purpose. It matters not a jot whether the science stacks up or not, or how many times they’re caught fudging data or spouting alarmist editorials. The tertiary institutions are ideologically corrupted, the MSM is ideologically corrupted, the damned data has been fiddled and adjusted into near irrelevance. Climate change is a UN defined term that is inescapable whether hell freezes over or we fry. It is the language and its spawning ideology that needs to be expunged. Alinsky stated, ‘control the language, you control the people’. The UN have a lexicon all of their own, common words and phrases that in the vernacular are trite, meaningless, cliched, and easily conflated, but which have be redefined to become lethal ideological constructs — climate change, civil, inclusive, diverse, are typical examples.

        On a national level however, there seems hope. Things may not be going quite so well for the globalists with the open border policies designed to expunge nationalism and cultural identity. The trouble is that the Europe suffers from non-population replacement (as you may know, a value of >2.1 children per couple is required), the average in Europe is 1.6, which means it’s literally all over. What this really means is that the welfare state cannot support itself in the face of a collapsing, non-reproducing population. The importation of migrants and refugees en masse is supposed to address this population problem. The ensuing and obvious cultural problem is self-evident …[Snip Sigh. 18C. Email coming – jo]

        Times are certainly changing. It is self-evident that Oceania could be an astonishingly stable, prosperous and free region, entirely able to flourish from its own resources both intellectual and natural if it was free of the ideological infection presently affecting the West. It is excruciating to witness the present reality and know that never in human history has so much been pherked up by so many for so little.

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          Latus Dextro

          Your comment is awaiting moderation.
          June 19, 2018 at 1:45 pm · Reply

          Times are certainly changing.
          It is self-evident that Oceania could be an astonishingly stable, prosperous and free region, entirely able to flourish from its own resources both intellectual and natural were it free of the ideological infection presently affecting the West.
          It is truly excruciating to witness the present reality and know that never in human history has so much been pherked up by so many for so little.

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            Greg Cavanagh

            Very true.
            Oceania is a geographic region comprising Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia and Australasia. Spanning the eastern and western hemispheres, Oceania covers an area of 8,525,989 square kilometres and has a population of 40 million. Wiki.

            Australia has massive resources for food and mineral. We could easily become a powerhouse in our own right if we put in place agreements with the other islands similar to what we have with New Zealand.

            If only our government supported our people and our industry, we could be awesome.

            Once upon a time we were leaders in science, optics was one I remember. But Australia has always punched above it’s weight in science and sport. Now we are going down head first into the concrete.

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    Could this three gigatonnes of emissions have anything to do with China making all my stuff? And now, to atone for those naughty emissions, they have developed the modern equivalent of a profit-based prayer wheel, to start spinning slowly and soothingly in the near future?

    Because it comes down to this: China makes my stuff. Guess what happens if someone else makes my stuff? They emit. Send Australian coal and Australian bauxite to Taiwan or Cambodia and start making aluminium. Guess what happens?

    Why do German bicycle companies make parts in China but have the bikes assembled in Taiwan then fiddled with a bit in Germany? It’s to hide from the EU tariff-slappers the fact that the bikes are Chinese. Even German stuff is Chinese stuff.

    You make, you emit. It’s not China, silly. It’s the making.

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    Mark M

    Leading from behind …

    Germany will fail 2020 climate goals, now eyes 2030 target

    https://apnews.com/74399f351e2e438ea2c584328087942a

    We’re doomed!

    We Only Have 3 Years Left to Prevent a Climate Disaster, Scientists Warn

    The group, led by former United Nations climate chief and Paris Agreement architect Christiana Figueres, warns in a piece published in the journal Nature that the planet could face unsafe — and irreversible – levels of temperature increases if greenhouse gas emissions do not begin to fall by 2020.

    http://time.com/4839039/climate-change-christiana-figueres-g20/

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      Another Ian

      “Germany will fail 2020 climate goals, now eyes 2030 target”

      Don’t panic! Just expect headlines like

      “Germany will fail 2030 climate goals, now eyes 2040 target”

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      clivehoskin

      Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity, but to destroy capitalism. “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said
      “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”

      IPCC official, Ottmar Edenhofer”One must say clearly that we redistribute, de facto, the world’s
      wealth by climate policy. … one has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. Instead, climate change policy is about how we redistribute, de facto, the world’s wealth…” “This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy, anymore.”These two pretty well sums up what the”Elites”have in store for us in the not too distant future.

      Exactly what are OUR governments doing?Following their orders from said”Elites”

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        Kinky Keith

        Look at all the “right thinking, green associated” people that our current Australian President has placed in positions of power in government instrumentalities like electricity rationing, places of education: that infamous Queensland university and in general positions of power. The offcasts from the USA green machine have been given sanctuary here with the sole requirement that they do as they are told by the member for golden sacks.

        And I am working 6 days a year extra as a slave to pay a surcharge on this new green electricity. The electricity surcharge may be legal, in the sense that there may be a cover provided by Parliament.
        The question I want answered is this: can Parliament legitimately place a hidden surcharge in a basic or essential service like electricity on the ridiculous premise that human origin CO2 is going to cause a global meltdown?

        There is something Seriously Wrong here that needs to be confronted by the slaves.

        KK

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    Latus Dextro

    Have the Chinese just twigged how to play SJW?
    Aren’t they’re a trifle late to that party. It’s sliding out fashion.

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    Graham Richards

    The Chinese will be most successful at the carbon scam, after all they are the masters on communist ideology & communist industry killing policies.

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      el gordo

      Steady on Graham, that was the bad old days.

      ‘It will be regrettable if US companies and workers fail to benefit from China’s economic liberalisation moves due to Washington’s refusal to cast off its adventurism.

      ‘Facing substantial damage from US unilateralism and protectionism, the world’s major economies, such as China and Europe, should join hands to fight back in order to teach the US the lesson that it must pay a dear price if it stubbornly sticks to its own way regardless of the interests of other countries.’

      The Straits Times (Beijing propaganda wing)

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    There is no need for the various UN bodies to conclude that control of emissions will not be successful. Any reasonably intelligent person can verify this for themselves. There are five sources that are needed.

    1. The full Paris Agreement. Just search on UNFCCC english_paris_agreement.pdf
    2. UNFCCC INDC Submissions
    3. Historical emissions data. EDGAR Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions from 1970 to 2012 (EDGARv4.3.2 dataset) is one source I have used. The World Resources Institute and CDIAC are other sources, that give a slightly different but consistent picture.
    4. Rio Declaration 1992. Taking note of the countries not included in Annex I or Annex II. That is the “developing” countries specifically excluded from any obligation to reduce their emissions. Hint, developing countries include China, India, 50+ African countries, Pakistan, Brazil, Bangladesh. unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf
    5. UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2017, particularly ES.1/Figure 3-1 emissions gap chart. This is reproduced at https://manicbeancounter.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/unep-egr-2017-fig-3-1.jpg

    In the premable, the Paris Agreement states.

    In pursuit of the objective of the Convention, and being guided by its principles, including the principle of equity and common but differentiated
    responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national circumstances,

    Translation – Give any reason for not cutting emissions – which are mostly legitimate (conflict, political instability, need to develop, recession etc) and you will be excused.

    Section 4.4 excludes the developing countries, as defined in the Rio Declaration.

    Developed country Parties should continue taking the lead by undertaking economy-wide absolute emission reduction targets. Developing country Parties should continue enhancing their mitigation efforts, and are encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets in the light of different national circumstances.

    That is, developing countries can continue increasing their emissions, until they think national circumstances merit reducing their emissions.
    If one accepts the need to reduce emissions (I don’t) and in fairness (I do), then this seems a reasonable clause. However, the EDGAR data shows that between 1990 and 2012, “developing” countries accounted for all the increase in GHG emissions, and by 2012 were responsible for nearly two-thirds of global emissions. (look on my blog and search China Global Warming Hoax from 13-Jan-17, or validate from the EDGAR data for yourselves.
    The emission gap cannot be closed (about a 30% decline in global emissions by 2030 for the 2C warming level not to be breached) without the developing countries not decreasing their emissions. But if one reads the INDC submissions of the most populous developing countries (China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria) it is clear that their emissions will be higher in 2030 than they are today. Like the Chinese Carbon Market, the Paris Agreement is all show, and no substance.
    The one thing missing from the Paris Agreement is the biggest losers from a successful policy to reduce global emissions by over 80% in little more than a generation. That is the countries where the production of fossil fuels contribute a large part of their national incomes. Does anyone seriously think that Russia, Turkmenistan, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries would consent to reducing their coal, oil and gas outputs to near zero in a generation from now? In trying to shut down Western fossil fuel businesses, in the name of saving the planet, do the climate activists make any attempt to shut down Gazprom, China Coal, India coal, or the various National Oil Corporations in the Middle East?
    Of course developing countries and fossil fuel producing countries will play along diplomatically, as the Paris Agreement only has a marginal impact on their long-term futures. They play the political games at little cost to their futures, and keep away from climate alarmists destroying the futures of those in developed countries.

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      PeterS

      At what point does a country like China ceases being “developing country”? It is the world’s second largest economy by nominal GDP and the world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity. I think I know the answer. In their eyes they will never cease being a developing country; even if they manage to rule the world and beyond.

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    soldier

    Jo
    In your second paragraph you refer to “1.8 gigatons of carbon emissions” in relation to China.

    Please do not fall for the warmist’s pea and thimble trick of calling it carbon when it is really carbon dioxide we are talking about. The warmists try to do this all the time talking about carbon as a black, dirty sooty stuff to con the uninformed public.

    We all should say “1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions” and be consistent in any future references.

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      Bobl

      Yes, 3GT of CO2 represents just 0.8GT of carbon the balance of 2.2GT being oxygen. We should start calling it oxygen pollution.

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    PeterS

    China is doing what we already knew. They are building hundreds of new coal fired power stations in China and outside of China in predominantly non-Western and non-EU nations. China is thumbing their noses at any suggestion there needs to be a reduction in CO2 emissions ever! So whoever is claiming they have suddenly become serious about climate change is either completely blind, in collusion with the Chinese to spread their propaganda, or are of the left who are misdirecting and giving false information to keep convincing the West and EU they need to continue the fight with CO2 emissions. Of course one might consider the Chinese as being very clever in all this. They could be helping in any which way they can to convince us we need to cut our CO2 emissions to weaken our economies so that China’s economy can keep growing and eventually take over the world. Isn’t that what communism is all about? Up until now it has been working. Fortunately though some Western nations have woken up and are fighting back, in particular the US and UK. However Australia has not woken up. Time will tell if we do or we just end up becoming another province of China. The choice is up to the voters. Do we continue on the current path of renewables and forgo our reliance on coal or do we alter direction and stop this nonsense?

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      Dennis

      That is not the view from the harbour side verandah at Point Piper, Sydney.

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        PeterS

        Yes I know. That view is outside of reality and is very much a destructive cultist view. It reminds me of Nero and the Great Fire of Rome. In fact there are so many similarities to the mindset of Nero and those of the left today. It’s really scary.

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          OriginalSteve

          At least Americans have guaranteed access to firearms…..in our Australian Socialist uptopia with Nero-like leaders, we have no such protections. Everyone should be concerned that fact firearms have been systematically demonized and the populace brainwashed against such a thing seems to be engineered. I had a mate tell me the other day in the 1970s he could walk down the main street of his town in victoria with his shotgun over his shoulder and a clutch of rabbits he’d bagged along with his friend. If the same thing happened today I wouldn’t be all bothered but youd have a whole population in counselling for years.

          I even one episode on a popular australian hospital-related tv drama not long after Port Arthur, where one of the head nurses while ducking for cover against a gun man in the hospital screams out “its a semi automatic”….good on her for being able to identify the cyclical rate of a firearm, my guess is most people wouldn’t have a clue….good thing the tv show was happy to educate the impressionable viewers. It stuck in my head as a blatant and very clumsy social engineering attempt.

          I also wondered why a lot of schools have 6′ fences around them? Apparently its there for “vandalism protection”, but I also wonder that vandalism has been an issue for very along time. SO perhaps they are holding facilities – in every town, right under everyone’s noses.

          I think we are getting to the pointy end of things – Australia is basically been “ring fenced” by the globalists and turned into an open air prison and test lab.

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          • #

            How many years did the rabbit guy get for killing his friend?

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            el gordo

            ‘At least Americans have guaranteed access to firearms….’

            That was an accident of history, came with the American war of independence and they fully expected Britain to reinvade. It was sort of mandatory to be armed to the teeth.

            These days I think guns should only be in the hands of the authorities and gangsters, not the general public.

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              Greg Cavanagh

              I agree you don’t need a rifle in a town or city.

              I grew up in the country and we often went fox hunting at night. I won a bet with my step-father and he got me a 22 when I was around 16. I used to go into K-mart and buy my ammo, long before I was 18. They’d look at me funny then turn around an get the bullets I wanted.

              I inherited my dad’s 303. Apparently when you leave the army, you take your 303 with you. So I got that as well. The barrel had a rust spot in it, so I never put a bullet through it. I didn’t hand any of my gun in during the buyback, as I fully expected this stupid law to be revoked as soon as the government got thrown out. But a change over government changed nothing. I’ve since cut them up and binned them.

              Country people still need them, and have access to them. I’m in reluctant agreement with the current laws.

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                Gee Aye

                so you got no money in the buy back for a gun that had a rust spot that you ended up scrapping? And if the law had been revoked you would not have used the gun and would have scrapped it regardless.

                Well at least you never accepted any money from the money giving government.

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                Greg Cavanagh

                No Gee Aye, it was my dad’s army rifle. That had value to me as a keep-sake, even in a non-usable state. No idea what the hand in price might have been, probably not much.

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            ROM

            As a kid still well and truly at school I went through many a packet of 22’s trying to shoot rabbits before the myxo came in and there were rabbit warrens everywhere .

            Generally the rabbis were fairly safe!

            My young brothers caught a rabbit in one of the big warrens, tied some explosive that they had quite legally for blowing tree stumps in a plastic bag around the rabbit, lit the fuse to the detonator and sent him off down the hole.
            Trouble is of course is that rabbits are quite territorial when it comes to whose hole belongs to which lot of rabbits even in a warren.

            Bunny figured he wasn’t going to be welcome down that hole so took off for his own hole which just happened to be the other side of the parked ute where he made tracks for and under.
            Fortunately he made it down his hole before he made eternity.

            Needless to say, the Old Man wasn’t told about this episode as he probaly would have taken a dim view on the possibility of the farm ute being blown to hell by a explosive back packing bunny.
            He wasn’t told about quite a lot of others as well as well lthough I suspect he knew more than he let on.

            Tutrtles in the dams were another real problem as they fouled the water so much that the livestock refused to drink it.
            So a regular dam clean out of turtles using a plastic container half full of explosive per dam was a part of the routine.

            One brother got to impress the other brother one day by doubling the explosive content of the plastic bottle and blew most of the water out of the small dam, drenching his brother in stinking turtle soup.

            Both of them or all of us would probably finish up in the clink if we tried that today.

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              Gee Aye

              you are in your 80s but as a kid in the 30s or the 40s at the latest, prior to myxomatosis, and you had access to plastic bottles (expensive and rare until the 50s) and plastic bags (experimental until commercial uses in ’60s)? in the 50s you were young adults not kids.

              And what about the Ute? What was that and did you really call it?

              I’m intrigued. I’m also intrigued by some other posters in this forum… it is almost always the hokey anecdotes that they stuff up.

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                ROM

                Not yet in my eighties but will be in a couple of weeks.

                I started with the 22 rifle on the rabbits when I was about 12 years old.

                My brothers are quite a bit younger than I am so were using plastic bottles and etc to blow stumps ona new property and tortoises for kicks in the mid 1960’s

                And you DON”T know what a bloody farm UTE is ?

                You ignorance in this case is only outweighed by your inability to research anything yourself especially when it is an Australian icon we are talking about.

                The first Ute / Utility in the world was created at the Ford works in Geelong in 1933 when a farmer’s wife asked for a car that could take them to church on sunday and could take the pigs to the market on Monday.

                So a ten second search on the internet and we have this ;

                Ford Australia; We drive the original ute Ute

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                well OK… so maybe you got the myxo dates wrong but

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                ROM

                You don’t seem to understand how Nature works in her own way GA and that way is very different to the assumptions that the city dwellers and social science academics might have about Nature.

                Myxo was tried in Australia to control the rabbit plagues right back in the 1930’s.
                The introduction of myxo on a number of occasions all failed due to the dry areas and seasons where it was trialled and therefore the lack of the mosquito vector that transmits the myxo from rabbit to rabbit and over longer distances than just contact.

                Myxo worked in patches and lumps over the years and over the inlands of Australia after it was finally and successfully introduced depending on where the rains fell and the breeding grounds and conditions that suited or failed to suit the mosquito vectors breeding requirements as well as the breeding requirements for rabbits that either reduced or exacerbated the rabbit numbers on a local often down to isolated warren scale.

                So it was quite usual to have the odd quite active usually isolated warrens of healthy rabbits in all sorts of locations right through until the introduction of the Calci Virus in 1995.

                Those warrens usually only held a fraction of the numbers of rabbits that were around prior to the successful introduction of the Myxo virus in May 1950.
                But they were there and occupied by rabbits in the drier and mosquito less regions right through until the mid 1990’s.

                My shooting as a kid was around a few warrens that were around one and half to 2 or 3 kilometres apart on the wide open , lower rainfall, grain growing plains of western Victoria.

                As for getting my dates wrong on the introduction of myxo and your assumptions based on my age when I began shooting, the failure is yours entirely in that you obviously don’t know how Nature works in the real world and how the Myxo virus spread or did not spread until later amongst the rabbit population.

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    pat

    jo excerpts:

    “Hitting worldwide climate goals will be nearly impossible unless China begins making sharp cuts soon.”

    funny how building a single coal-fired power plant in Australia would destroy the planet, YET building, 1,600 of them worldwide MIGHT only hit the Paris climate goals!

    the Coalition’s NEG is on the table this week:

    19 Jun: news.com.au: AAP: Fed govt faces energy plan opposition
    The federal government is confronting opposition from Labor and its own MPs over its National Energy Guarantee
    Coalition backbencher Tony Abbott has dismissed it as a “carbon tax in disguise” and will only support it if a new coal-fired power station is built, The Australian reports.
    And other coalition MPs are concerned the NEG will lead to higher household costs by imposing 10-years of legislated emission cuts on the electricity sector.

    The Labor opposition has branded the NEG as “ineffectual”.

    “The NEG will be ineffectual in supporting investment in new renewable energy, placing reliability, ***affordability and our ability to meet climate change obligations at risk, Labor energy spokesman Mark Butler told The Australian on Tuesday…
    https://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/fed-govt-faces-energy-plan-opposition/news-story/3aed18f2f8c309c3a4d89bf0e34ea3ff

    behind paywall:

    18 Jun: AFR: Ben Potter: Plummeting wind and solar costs will ease NEG burden, says expert
    Plummeting renewable energy costs will ease the burden of complying with the National Energy Guarantee’s carbon emissions reduction obligations, the chairman of a major energy users’ group says.

    Brian Morris, head of energy and sustainability at Schneider Electric, an energy consultancy, said that by the time the emissions guarantee comes into force in 2021 there will be a lot more wind and solar energy in the National Electricity Market because costs continue to fall…
    https://www.afr.com/news/plummeting-wind-and-solar-costs-will-ease-neg-burden-says-expert-20180617-h11i4s

    question one word of the prophesies of the CAGW mob and you get labelled a “climate denier” yet, with the help of the MSM, the CAGW mob can claim “renewables” will reduce the price of electricity and get away with it, no problem.

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    pat

    if we want to know how bad the NEG is, just note the support it gets in this pretentious piece by Fairfax editors:

    18 Jun: TheAge Editorial: Frydenberg energy plan merits support
    To this day, a statement by the first chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), has resounded throughout the world: ‘‘Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best.’’ This notion is also expressed in the more recent axioms that politics is the art of compromise, and indeed is more about art than science. Viewed through this powerful prism, Australia’s energy policy has until recent months reflected limited artistry and an insufficient regard for science.

    In recent days, an update from the Coalition government on the National Energy Guarantee, a policy to establish a carbon emissions reduction guarantee in the electricity market alongside a reliability guarantee, has reignited internecine strife, with supporters of coal-generated power pushing, in effect, for a delay in the inevitable and economically and environmentally responsible transition to a low-carbon economy. Such ideological intransigence has generated a decade of policy failure; the biggest impediment to the transition has been the lack of certainty. The lack of a clear and consistent policy has shackled the necessary investment in renewable energy…
    The National Energy Guarantee is a painstaking attempt to find sensible compromise…

    Mr Frydenberg has managed to forge bipartisan support for the policy, but is now facing mischievous opposition from within his own ranks. It is curious, because the evidence is that renewable energy sources are becoming the cheapest ecologically sustainable way to generate the electricity upon which households and businesses rely. Some climate scientists – of which an overwhelming majority warn that global warming is caused primarily by emissions of carbon dioxide – are becoming increasingly optimistic that the pace of technological change will facilitate the transition to renewable energy faster and cheaper than most people might think. Research published by Stanford University has argued that renewable energy could generate the entire world’s power needs within the next 30 years…
    The science makes the transition eminently attainable…
    https://www.theage.com.au/national/frydenberg-energy-plan-merits-support-20180618-p4zm7h.html

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    The Chinese are nobodies fool. They know the dullards that they are dealing with. There have erected a Potemkin Carbon Trading Market and decorated it assiduously, and as they expected, the dullards are applauding vigorously.
    The Chinese will continue to build hundreds of coal-fired power stations and sell junk wind-turbines and solar collectors to the rest of the world, again to vigorous applause from Greenies and Warmistas.
    Unlike us, the Chginese have 4,000 years of training and tradition in business and trading, they now start ob Carbon Dioxide Trading and the EU and Australia will pay for it all.

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      PeterS

      It amazes me to see anyone taking the view that China is ever going to be a nice boy and follow the West’s mantra on climate change, in particular by the left of say the LNP as well as the ALP and Greens. The evidence speaks for itself. China will not sign the Paris Accord. China is building coal fired power stations like cookies for decades to come. So no matter what the left of the West say those two facts alone must be taken into consideration. Once they are the conclusion is clear and obvious. China considers there is absolutely and categorically no threat to the climate due to man-made CO2. End of story. As for the LNP, ALP and Greens, they have a completely different view. The irony then is here we are trading with China, send our coal over there and we some actually believe we can convince China to follow our direction. If that’s not a definite sign of a severe mental disorder requiring immediate attention and hospitalisation then nothing is.

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        el gordo

        ‘China considers there is absolutely and categorically no threat to the climate due to man-made CO2. End of story.’

        Tru dat, they went along with the UNIPCC because it was politically correct and it gave them the opportunity make money.

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        el gordo

        ‘Tony Abbott has claimed he was misled by bureaucrats before he signed Australia up to the Paris international climate agreement in 2015 during another sortie by government conservatives against the national energy guarantee.

        ‘Opponents of the government’s energy policy used the opportunity of the regular Coalition party room to resume their attacks on the policy that goes to a critical meeting of state and territory energy ministers in early August.’

        Guardian

        ———-

        ** Andrew Gee is part of the ginger group, which means I now have someone to vote for.

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    pat

    Doug Ford’s massive win in Ontario on an anti carbon tax/anti cap and trade platform has been met with almost universal condemnation by the MSM. there are even some who think Ford should rescue his main opponents from “party” oblivion!

    18 Jun: Macleans: Why Doug Ford’s Ontario PC government should grant the (leftwing) Liberals party status
    Opinion: By winning only seven seats, the Ontario Liberals failed to qualify for official party status—but there’s a case for Doug Ford lending them a hand
    by Angela Wright
    Without money for staff to research government policies, “independent” MPPs’ staffers have to read entire bills (which can be upwards of 200 pages), figure out their potential impact, and determine how to vote…
    https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/why-doug-fords-ontario-pc-government-should-grant-the-liberals-party-status/

    one of the rare reporters who gets it:

    12 Jun: ReginaLeaderPost: Ignore the green lobby, Doug Ford. Ontarians voted for affordable energy this time
    Peter Shawn Taylor: The incoming premier promises to scrap the misguided Green Energy Plan, shake up Hydro leadership and deliver a 12% rate reduction
    (Peter Shawn Taylor is a journalist, policy research analyst and a contributing writer for Canadians for Affordable Energy)
    When the economy is performing well, incumbent governments are supposed to benefit from a contented electorate. That’s not what happened in Ontario…
    But when voters looked at the economy this time, they plainly could not get past one aspect of it that was actually in horrible shape: Energy affordability.

    Despite a fairly favourable economic situation in Kathleen Wynne’s favour, it was her party’s epic mismanagement of the electricity file in particular that dominated her opponents’ platforms and captured voters’ minds. Meanwhile her cap-and-trade system of carbon dioxide taxes was slowly making most other forms of energy needlessly more expensive as well. In a mid-campaign poll by Ipsos, over 60 per cent of Ontario voters said hydro prices would have an impact on their vote in the provincial election, with the PCs as the top choice for fixing the problem. Every other government in Canada should take note of Wynne’s fate…

    Liberal clownery on electricity prices almost defies description. Between 2008 and 2016, Ontario’s residential electricity costs grew by more than 70 per cent, doubling the average rate increase in the rest of the country over this time. Large industrial users also suffered, with costs in some cities spiking more than 50 per cent between 2010 and 2016. According to the provincial auditor-general, the Liberals’ fixation with subsidizing uneconomic renewable energy sources such as solar and wind meant Ontarians paid about $37 billion more than they should have for their electricity.

    Then came the Liberal government’s decision to implement a costly cap-and-trade system of carbon taxes in conjunction with California and Quebec — forcing every Ontario resident to pay more for gas, heating fuel and other necessities of life. Next year, these carbon taxes will add nearly $300 to the average Ontario family’s expenses. Yet, this tax grab is expected to have no impact on provincial carbon emissions in the short term…

    Under leader Doug Ford, the Progressive Conservatives successfully campaigned to undo all of Wynne’s failed energy policies. The incoming premier promises to scrap the Liberals’ costly and misguided Green Energy Plan, tear up improvident contracts, shake up the leadership at the provincial hydro company and deliver a 12-per-cent rate reduction to Ontario families. He has also taken a bold stand in vowing to end Ontario’s participation in the cap-and-trade scheme and to fight any move by Ottawa to impose a carbon tax unilaterally on the province on constitutional grounds. Plus there is to be an immediate 10-cent-per-litre cut in the provincial gas tax.

    In taking a stand against Canada-wide carbon taxation, Ford has performed two important services. He has put to bed the political falsehood — peddled by the media, green lobbyists and political consultants — that politicians can only win office by supporting carbon pricing…

    For political leaders elsewhere in Canada, the takeaway from Wynne’s loss and Ford’s win lies in recognizing the significance of affordable energy, and carbon taxes in particular, as election-deciding, dynasty-ending, pocket-book issues for voters. Politicians who mess around with energy prices can expect to get a jolt at election time.
    http://leaderpost.com/opinion/ignore-the-green-lobby-doug-ford-ontarians-voted-for-affordable-energy-this-time/wcm/962d009a-de39-4b83-aeb9-891162fec801

    and another:

    12 Jun: Toronto Sun: Lorrie Goldstein: Liberals leave a shocking mess
    Today, let’s examine the biggest financial train wreck the Liberals have left us to address — the skyrocketing cost of electricity due to the idiotic way they blundered into green energy…
    http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-liberals-leave-a-shocking-mess

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    pat

    comment in moderation re Doug Ford’s massive win in Ontario on an anti carbon tax/anti cap and trade platform.

    18 Jun: TorontoSun Editorial: The carbon tax cover up continues
    On Thursday evening, the Conservatives used the legislative tools at their disposal to keep MPs around late into the night to vote on a motion that would see the Liberals release a needlessly secret report that gives up the carbon tax goods…
    Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre recently filed an access to information request to receive the document. But when he got it, the pertinent information was blacked out. The data was redacted…

    You’d think if they’re such proponents of the carbon tax, then they’d be all gung ho to talk about it and all of its details. The truth though is that carbon tax fans never want to discuss the costs. Because they know how high they are and they know this will turn the people off of them.
    This is scandalous. The people have a right to know.

    What’s even more scandalous is that MPs would collectively vote to block the release of the document once again. While 71 MPs voted in favour of the motion, 184 voted to block it…
    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau campaigned on more open government, yet he isn’t even willing to release an internal government report to the people on an important public policy issue we’re all talking about…READ ON
    http://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-the-carbon-tax-cover-up-continues-2

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  • #
    ROM

    Not particularly relevant here but as the Chinese are all on for picking a fight over sections of the border between india and China, the relative availability of military manpower indicates that India has close to double the numbers available for military service compared to China.
    Which makes for some interesting possibilities in the future.

    Ref; Global Firepower.

    Comparison Results of World Military Strengths

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    pat

    LOL.

    18 Jun: AP: James Hansen wishes he wasn’t so right about global warming
    by SETH BORENSTEIN
    The hotter world that Hansen envisioned in 1988 has pretty much come true so far, more or less. Three decades later, most climate scientists interviewed rave about the accuracy of Hansen’s predictions given the technology of the time.
    Hansen won’t say, “I told you so.”…

    “I don’t want to be right in that sense,” Hansen told The Associated Press, in an interview is his New York penthouse apartment. That’s because being right means the world is warming at an unprecedented pace and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are melting.
    Hansen said what he really wishes happened is “that the warning be heeded and actions be taken.”
    They weren’t. Hansen, now 77, regrets not being “able to make this story clear enough for the public.”…

    Hansen projected that by 2017, the globe’s five-year average temperature would be about 1.85 degrees (1.03 degree Celsius) higher than the 1950 to 1980 NASA-calculated average. NASA’s five-year average global temperature ending in 2017 was 1.48 degrees above the 30-year average. (He did not take into account that the sun would be cooling a tad, which would reduce warming nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit, said the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Jeff Severinghaus.)…

    Berkeley Earth’s Zeke Hausfather gives Hansen’s predictions a 7 or 8 for accuracy, out of 10; he said Hansen calculated that the climate would respond a bit more to carbon dioxide than scientists now think…

    University of Alabama Huntsville’s John Christy, a favorite of those who downplay climate change, disagreed. Using mathematical formulas to examine Hansen’s projections, he concluded: “Hansen’s predictions were wrong as demonstrated by hypothesis testing.”…

    Hansen had testified before Congress on climate change at a fall 1987 hearing that didn’t get much attention — likely because it was a cool day, he figured.
    So the next hearing was scheduled for the next summer, and the weather added heat to Hansen’s words. At 2 p.m., the temperature hit a record high 98 degrees and felt like 102.
    It was then and there that Hansen went out on a limb and proclaimed that global warming was already here. Until then most scientists merely warned of future warming.

    He left NASA in 2013, devoting more time to what he calls his “anti-government job” of advocacy.
    Hansen, still at Columbia University, has been arrested five times for environmental protests…
    “If scientists are not allowed to talk about the policy implications of the science, who is going to do that? People with financial interests?” Hansen asked…
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/james-hansen-wishes-wasnt-global-warming-071938714.html

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    pat

    still believe this is the most telling excerpt from jo’s MIT Technology Review link:

    – Under the plan announced in December, China will spend a year building a national reporting system and another conducting “simulated” trading and analysis, pushing actual implementation to at least 2020. –

    14 Jun: China Daily: National carbon emissions trade platform taking shape
    By Hou Liqiang
    China will speed up the drafting and implementation of rules and regulations on carbon emissions trading, a senior official said on Wednesday after the country celebrated its sixth Low Carbon Day, an annual event launched in 2013 by the State Council to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

    Speaking at a seminar on carbon emissions trading in Beijing, Li Gao, director of climate change at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said documents already published will be amended if State Council institutional reforms require such action…

    “Carbon emissions trading will be launched nationwide, first in the power generation sector and gradually extended to other industries,” Li said…
    Li said no more pilot regions will be added, and his department will discuss with the seven pilot regions on how best to proceed toward a unified nationwide carbon market platform…

    According to its Paris Agreement pledges, China will have to reduce carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60 to 65 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels…
    ***By the end of 2017, China had cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 46 percent from 2005 levels, Xie was quoted by Xinhua News Agency as saying.
    http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201806/14/WS5b21f0d8a31001b825722228.html

    ***if you say so.

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      pat

      12 Jun: Grantham Institute: The energy conundrum: Bringing carbon under control and reversing rising emissions
      Neil Hirst, Senior Policy Fellow at the Grantham Institute and author of The Energy Conundrum, Climate Change, Global Prosperity, and the Tough Decisions We Have to Make, considers the outlook for global energy and how to bring rising carbon emissions under control.

      Twenty-five years ago, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) treaty was set up to tackle the causes of global warming and prepare for its effects.
      Since then, greenhouse gas emissions from energy generation have increased by more than 50% – and are still rising. In 2040, the International Energy Agency predicts that emissions could be double the levels required by the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit warming to 2°C or 1.5°C.
      Just looking at these figures, it would be easy to be pessimistic about the outlook for tackling climate change.
      However, three powerful, positive trends can help us bring carbon emissions under control…

      1. There has been a spectacular drop in the cost of renewables ETC…
      2. There has been significant improvement in energy efficiency ETC…
      3. The rise of air pollution in cities has catapulted local pollution onto the political agenda of governments around the world – and most of the solutions to air pollution go hand-in-hand with reducing carbon emissions. For instance, to tackle urban air pollution, China is switching from coal to gas, promoting electric cars, and investing in urban public transport – steps that will also reduce greenhouse emissions…

      Countries such as China and India, with huge populations, are achieving rapid improvements in living standards – accompanied by rising demand for energy, so far largely fueled by coal. Developing nations need to find ways to continue to progress while switching to low-carbon energy sources, such as wind and solar…

      Four vital steps that rich nations should take to save the planet
      1. Put a price on greenhouse gas emissions through taxation or cap and trade schemes. This will put pressure on energy suppliers to cut their emissions. Similarly, credits may be allowed for carbon savings made overseas. The United Kingdom and European Union are going down this track through the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme and the UK’s minimum carbon price, but, they must increase the cost of carbon in order to be effective.
      ***The Chinese carbon trading scheme is an excellent new development.

      2. Create a genuinely global organisation for international cooperation on energy policy and technology ETC
      3. Clarify the financial support that wealthy countries are offering to the developing world ETC
      4. Invest in the next generation of low-carbon technologies – particularly energy storage and smart grids ETC
      https://granthaminstitute.com/2018/06/12/the-energy-conundrum-bringing-carbon-under-control-and-reversing-rising-emissions/

      Imperial College Bio: Neil Hirst is the Senior Policy Fellow for Energy and Mitigation at the Grantham Institute, Imperial College London. He is currently working with China’s Energy research Institute of the NDRC on a joint project on China and International Energy Governance. He is the lead author of the recent Grantham Institute/Chatham House Discussion Paper “The Reform of Global Energy Governance”.

      From 2005 to 2009 Neil was a Director of the International Energy Agency. Initially, as Director for Technology, he pioneered the IEA’s flagship technology publication, Energy Technology Perspectives. Subsequently, as Director for Global Dialogue, he forged closer relations and joint programmes with IEA partner countries, especially China, India, and Russia…

      In 1997 Neil was the Chairman of the G8 Nuclear Safety Working Group and in 1985-8 he was the Energy Counsellor at the British Embassy in Washington. He has worked on energy finance on secondment to Goldman Sachs. He holds a First Class Degree in Politics Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University and an MBA from Cornell USA.

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    pat

    18 Jun: ClimateChangeNews: EU climate efforts not living up to Paris promises, says NGO
    Report ranking national efforts finds many European nations are working against efforts to increase ambition to act on climate change
    By Caitlin Tilley
    Many EU countries are veering off the course of action they committed to under the Paris Agreement, according to a new report.
    Published by NGO Climate Action Network (Can) Europe, the report ranks countries on a combination of factors, including their likelihood of reaching their EU 2020 targets and their relative ambition in setting additional targets beyond what was established at the Paris Agreement.
    It also looked at countries efforts to promote or stymie EU policies that would cut carbon.

    Wendel Trio, director of Can Europe, lamented a widespread lack of determination: “While all EU countries signed up to the Paris Agreement, most are failing to work towards delivering on its objectives. Countries urgently need to improve their ranking by speaking out and acting in favour of more ambitious climate and energy policies and targets domestically and at EU-level.”
    The Can Europe report was released in time for a flurry of climate talks involving European nations.

    Climate ministers from around the world met at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue on Monday in Berlin, and China’s climate envoy will meet ministers from Canada and the EU in Brussels later this week.
    A large gap remains between the temperature limits set by the Paris Agreement and the carbon emissions pledges promised by all countries under the deal…

    ***CHART Where do EU countries stand on fighting climate change
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/06/18/eu-climate-efforts-not-living-paris-promises-says-ngo/

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    Kinky Keith

    While currently in New Zealand I watched TV. for the first time in a couple of years.

    Watching the news was hard work, especially CNNN&N&N.

    One interesting program was found that kept me glued for the whole. A history program about the Magna Carta. Things I had never been aware of before. It seems that the original MC was instituted because of the unhappiness of the Barons who were fed up with the Kings constant money grabbing.

    Only much later after Way Tyler’s revolt did things become easier for the serfs.

    We currently are in need of a similarly motivated people’s revolt against taxation by subterfuge.

    The Magna Carta guides us to see that all is not well in the way we are being ripped off.

    False science does not justify disguised taxation.

    False leaders promoting false science are Not Leaders.

    KK

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    • #
      PeterS

      We are a fair away from that. The serfs of today are not in much pain yet; in fact most are very happy and comfortable with all their modern toys. Trump is also helping to stave off things for now but winter is coming.

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      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Peter,

        It doesn’t really matter to me whether I am being “skinned” by the Tax man or my Electricity supplier: either or both are taking me for taxes that have no legal or moral basis.

        When our governments use misdirection and subterfuge to enable large amounts of money to be redirected to bolster the renewables industry there is a serious issue of governance. This money is not being WASTED as so many describe it, rather it is being very very carefully guided to a new home.

        As an Australian I resent the fact that the United Nations can create a scheme, used by the local government, that forces me to devote six days salary every year, concealed in Electricity Price Rigging to providing a “gratuity” to some unknown recipient. This is Slavery, pure and simple.

        Magna Carta history reminds us that constant vigilance and action is the only way we can remain free.

        KK

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      Dennis

      I thought the Magna Carter was a Mitsubishi people mover.

      lol

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      Annie

      One of the copies of the Magna Carta is in Salisbury Cathedral; the tomb of King John is in the Quire of Worcester Cathedral.
      Do you think most of our politicians know or care about the Magna Carta these days?

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      • #
        Kinky Keith

        They would if they realized how much of their working lives were partitioned off for special “sequestration” and vote buying by our current betters.

        KK

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    • #

      Agree KK. The Magna Carta a significant document establishing
      the claim that the king is ruled by law as is everybody else
      in society. Listen up Malcolm. Society is ruled by non-arbitrary
      law and not by men. I did a serf blog post on trial and error
      conservatism and how it’s not fuddy-duddy non-adaptable.
      https://beththeserf.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/36th-edition-serf-under_ground-journal/

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      • #
        Annie

        Thanks for that link Beththeserf…I enjoyed reading that.

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      • #
        Peter C

        Thanks Beth,

        Your article is a Tour de force of Conservative Philosophy. So many authors that I have not studied.

        I liked this, in relation to the Scientific Revolution: ” Common to all investigators is the empirical approach.”

        So sorry I will not be at the Abbott/Ridd event.

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        • #

          Appreciate yr feedback Peter. Appreciate yr thoughtful comments
          @JoNova. Sorry you will miss the Abbott /Ridd event-We pro’ly
          pass each other in the street,in East Ivanhoe, lol.

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            Kinky Keith

            Thanks Beth.

            Some interesting background there and a good section on the Magna Carta as the basic guideline in the development of our present system.
            An important thing that was driven home in watching the TV program was the level of confrontation and “insistence” that was applied to the King, first by the Barons and much later in the Wat Tyler led revolt to the King and local rulers.

            All of this created an understanding of the principles being fought for and enabled the continued development of freedom and independence for individual citizens.

            This background tells us that periodically we may need to rise up and put our leaders in their place.

            Unfortunately this is not easy to do at the ballot box when our dear President has a media that so confuses people that they don’t know whether they are coming or going.

            This thinking puts the ABC in the spotlight.
            It is Government owned and Government controlled and the voting public needs to think about this and remember Wat Tyler.

            KK

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            • #

              Yes,KK,our ABC it is not. Free speech!

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              • #
                ROM

                The implementation of the “Rule of Law” as originated with the Magna Carta in 1215 and the first legislation protecting “Free speech” by the British Parliament in 1689 are separated by some 470 years.

                ———————-

                399BC -Socrates speaks to jury at his trial: ‘If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind… I should say to you, “Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you.”‘
                .

                1215-Magna Carta, wrung from the unwilling King John by his rebellious barons, is signed. It will later be regarded as the cornerstone of liberty in England.
                .

                1516 -The Education of a Christian Prince by Erasmus. ‘In a free state, tongues too should be free.’
                .

                1633- Galileo Galilei hauled before the Inquisition after claiming the sun does not revolve around the earth.
                .

                1644- ‘Areopagitica’, a pamphlet by the poet John Milton, argues against restrictions of freedom of the press. ‘He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.’
                .

                1689 -Bill of Rights grants ‘freedom of speech in Parliament’ after James II is overthrown and William and Mary installed as co-rulers.
                .

                1770 -Voltaire writes in a letter: ‘Monsieur l’abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.’
                .

                1789 -‘The Declaration of the Rights of Man’, a fundamental document of the French Revolution, provides for freedom of speech .
                .

                1791 -The First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights guarantees four freedoms: of religion, speech, the press and the right to assemble.

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    David Maddison

    The Chinese know we are entering a period of global cooling as per natural climate cycles which for them has traditionally been associated with war, famine and civilisational collapse.

    Hence their investing in farmland and ports in countries all over the world. They will control that farmland and have a means to ship the food home.

    The graph at the following link overlays natural climate change and Chinese historical events.

    http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01b8d0f76684970c-pi

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    • #
      PeterS

      As the climate cools we will for sure see massive food shortages and as a direct result millions starving to death. How does that compare to the supposedly catastrophic global warming threat the left keep harping on about? It’s chalk and cheese if you think about it, not only in terms of severity but also timing. A food crisis is far more important. It’s like comparing a common cold to deadly cancer even if we assumed for one moment that the threat of global warming was real, which of course it isn’t. Yet we are not preparing ourselves for the coming food crisis. Goes to show how misguided the public are although there is already plenty of evidence on the internet to show the threat of a global food crisis is real yet the threat of a catastrophic global warming crisis is not real but at best a theory that has been disproved many time sin many ways and at worst a scam of historical proportions.

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        Greg Cavanagh

        I think it’s a little unfair to blame the public for not understanding. Most of them are not very bright. And those who are, are trying to make a living within the limits of the law and taxes being imposed upon us.

        We have a government to rule over the people for this very reason. The government are supposed to defend the country, keep the peace, set monetary policy, international diplomacy etc.

        It is the government and their advisors who have failed the people most terribly.

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        PeterS

        If most of the voters are that bright how come we voted for Rudd twice and Gillard once? It was clear as day how bad they were yet most of the public were so easily fooled. It has to be due to bad judgement and lack of critical thinking skills. I am not suggesting the government is completely let off the hook. Far from it. They should know better because they are supposed to be more intelligent and have access to far more information. After all if we can’t trust them who can we trust? No, they are to blame but the people share much of the blame because recently we keep supporting the same old parties, LNP, ALP and Greens in spite of what we know today as distinct from say 10 years ago. It’s about time we put at least some support in the likes of the ACP who would be a welcome break on the madness that has infected Canberra in both houses of parliament. If the public do not alter their voting patters next time around then it supports my case even stronger the public as well as the politicians are to blame.

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      el gordo

      The amazing precipitation spike at the end of the 19th century is worth following up, to see if it happened elsewhere and why.

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  • #
    el gordo

    ‘Yet we are not preparing ourselves for the coming food crisis.’

    China is preparing and the West is asleep.

    There won’t be a food crisis because we are in the 21st century.

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      Dennis

      The Coalition had a plan to extend the Ord River Irrigation Area, Kununurra WA, across the top end of Australia and using the “wild rivers” to dam and harvest wet season rainfall.

      The CSIRO has identified potential irrigation farmland the area of western Europe.

      Food crisis?

      It looks like “sustainability” has ended the dream?

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      • #
        David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

        G’day Dennis,
        I thought it was the magpie geese that ate all the rice…
        Cheers,
        Dave B

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘It looks like “sustainability” has ended the dream?’

        Bureaucracy has a habit of doing that, do you have a link?

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  • #
    el gordo

    ‘Late selling on Thursday prompted European carbon prices to close below €15 for the first time in two weeks, despite a bullish auction result.’

    Carbon Pulse

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    el gordo

    ‘The delay of China’s national emissions trading scheme is threatening to choke the nation’s fledgling carbon market industry as a majority of companies have put a freeze on new hires and some staffers have been forced to take a pay cut to keep their jobs, according to a new survey.’

    Carbon Pulse

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    pat

    lol.

    18 Jun: CarbonBrief: Jocelyn Timperley: Clean energy investment ‘must be 50% higher’ to limit warming to 1.5C
    An extra $460bn per year needs to be invested on the low-carbon economy globally over the next 12 years to limit global warming to 1.5C, a new paper says.
    This is 50% higher than the additional investment needed to meet a 2C limit, the paper says. It is the first to assess the difference in investments and monetary flows between the two temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, the lead author tells Carbon Brief.

    The paper also finds a far faster increase in low-carbon energy and energy efficiency investment would be needed to limit warming to 1.5C. Meanwhile, coal investment would not change substantially between a 1.5C and 2C scenario, the lead author says, since a dramatic downscaling of coal investments is already required to meet the 2C goal…

    The new paper, published today in Nature Energy (LINK), aims to quantify the scale of financial flows that may be required to meet the overarching temperature goals of the Paris deal. It assesses how much would be needed for four scenarios…
    The study combines the results from six different integrated assessment models (IAMs) to make its findings more robust…

    Prof Sam Fankhauser, director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, says the key point from the new study is the need to use existing capital flows differently, rather than mobilising additional capital…
    EXCERPT FROM THE ONE COMMENT:
    GeoffBeacon: What measure of temperature was used: HadCRUT4, GISS, Cowtan & Way? It’s not in the paper…ETC
    https://www.carbonbrief.org/clean-energy-investment-must-be-50-per-cent-high-limit-warming-one-point-five

    wrong link in article to the paper, which is behind a paywall. however, here it is:

    18 Jun: CarbonBrief: Jocelyn Timperley: Clean energy investment ‘must be 50% higher’ to limit warming to 1.5C
    An extra $460bn per year needs to be invested on the low-carbon economy globally over the next 12 years to limit global warming to 1.5C, a new paper says.
    This is 50% higher than the additional investment needed to meet a 2C limit, the paper says. It is the first to assess the difference in investments and monetary flows between the two temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, the lead author tells Carbon Brief.

    The paper also finds a far faster increase in low-carbon energy and energy efficiency investment would be needed to limit warming to 1.5C. Meanwhile, coal investment would not change substantially between a 1.5C and 2C scenario, the lead author says, since a dramatic downscaling of coal investments is already required to meet the 2C goal…

    The new paper, published today in Nature Energy (LINK), aims to quantify the scale of financial flows that may be required to meet the overarching temperature goals of the Paris deal. It assesses how much would be needed for four scenarios…
    The study combines the results from six different integrated assessment models (IAMs) to make its findings more robust…

    Prof Sam Fankhauser, director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, says the key point from the new study is the need to use existing capital flows differently, rather than mobilising additional capital…
    EXCERPT FROM THE ONE COMMENT:
    GeoffBeacon: What measure of temperature was used: HadCRUT4, GISS, Cowtan & Way? It’s not in the paper…ETC
    https://www.carbonbrief.org/clean-energy-investment-must-be-50-per-cent-high-limit-warming-one-point-five

    (SCROLL DOWN FOR LENGTHY)
    Author information – Affiliations
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-018-0179-z

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    pat

    ***”but there can only be one world leader” says anonymous!

    19 Jun: Guardian: ‘Huge mistake’: Britain throwing away lead in tidal energy, say developers
    Nation is a leader in capturing tidal and wave energy, but companies are starting to leave due to lack of government support
    by Damian Carrington
    Britain is throwing away its opportunity to rule the global wave and tidal energy sector due to lack of government support, a series of leading developers have told the Guardian…
    Ocean energy is needed alongside other renewables to provide the huge amount of clean electricity that will be required to phase out fossil fuel use and fight climate change, proponents argue…

    “I think the UK is making a huge mistake with this,” said Dr Martin Edlund, CEO of Minesto, which has invested £25m to install subsea kites that harvest energy from the currents off Wales. “The UK is a world leader in this emerging industry and it is just giving it away.”…

    ***“It seems daft,” said one Scottish official: “The UK seems to have given up. France says it wants to be a world leader, Canada says it wants to be a world leader, but there can only be one world leader.’…

    “You have tidal and wave energy in Scotland and Wales, but Westminster [which controls subsidies] is not interested,” said Edlund…
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/19/huge-mistake-britain-throwing-away-lead-in-tidal-energy-say-developers

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    Ceetee

    Many years ago my very wise oupa (granddad) made the prediction that the chinese would rule the world simply because they were patient. They play the long game and
    they don’t answer to their own. Old men plotting to rule the world in the comfort of marxist hegemony sold to the world as if it were some kind of miraculous capitalist miracle. Thats their new trick and the completely dumb arse traitors of the left who are trying to sell this BS to us need to be reigned in. Our stupid New Zealand pollies either bought into this or were willing and traitorous accomplices. Former UN big wig Helen Clark actually signed a free trade agreement with China which basically meant a former garment manufacturer here can’t afford a pair of track pants that he or she once made locally but now has to buy as a state beneficiary. We are all deemed ignorant if we do not accept the free trade meme regardless of merit and equal measure as stipulated by the SOCIALIST architects of mandated outcome. Ask yourselves what ‘fair’ trade means. It certainly doesn’t mean fair. It means mandated. It means pre proscribed in a subjective socialist way. The reason the entire world is witnessing massive waves of illegal migration is because capitalism is king. They want it. They want the standard of living. What we should be doing is demanding that they fight to change their societies. We should hold them to account. There is nothing more racist and bigoted than those who give a free pass to those regarded as less able.

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    pat

    no url as these are only on Press Reader at the moment:

    19 Jun: Scottish Daily Mail: SNP’s green dream set to cost £13bn
    … and families and businesses will have to pay out to help fund bill
    By Michael Blackley Scottish Political Editor
    The SNP has estimated that its green crusade will cost £13billion – and will have to be paid for by families, businesses and public bodies.

    Ministers last month announced a pledge to cut emissions by 90 per cent by 2050, compared to a previous target of 80 per cent.
    But detailed financial projections lodged alongside the legislation have revealed the eye-watering potential cost over the next three decades.
    The move to cut emissions is likely to be reliant on phasing out conventional cars and stepping up the expansion of green energy, including onshore wind.
    The Scottish Government admits the costs will need to be shared between public bodies, individuals and businesses…

    Scottish Tory environment spokesman Donald Cameron: ‘But the sum of £13billion – even when spread over this timescale – should give us all pause for thought.
    ‘The SNP’s green crusade has to be properly costed and must not be allowed to cripple either the economy nor the finances of hardworking individuals and businesses.’…

    13 Jun: Scottish Daily Mail: Bus and taxi fares ‘to soar’ under SNP’s green crusade
    By Michael Blackley Scottish Political Editor
    The Nationalists’ green crusade will hit ordinary people in the pocket, ministers have been warned.
    Legislation unveiled this week, and which in particular targets older diesel cars, will see all but the latest diesel models being banned from city centres within two years.

    But the Scottish Government has admitted industry bosses warned that imposing ‘low emission zones’ (LeZ) in the four biggest cities will lead to higher costs, which will be passed on to customers.
    Taxi and bus fares could soar, while shops could face higher distribution charges, which would be passed on to shoppers in higher prices.

    The LeZs will be introduced in Glasgow, edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee by 2020, and could be extended to dozens of other areas by 2023.
    Motoring groups estimate 75 per cent of diesel cars could be banned, while petrol cars registered before January 2006 would also be banned…

    Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Jamie Greene said: ‘This confirms that any rushed measures to punish diesel vehicles will hit many Scots in the pocket.
    ‘The evidence to the consultation showed that any increase in costs will inevitably be passed on to taxi and bus passengers.’
    Motoring groups have estimated that 738,000, or 75 per cent, of diesel cars in Scotland will not be able to enter the LeZs, as well as 244,000, or 17 per cent, of petrol cars…

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    pat

    if it’s true that Voice of America equals CIA, then the Deep State is still in control:

    18 Jun: Voice of America: Reuters: Climate Change a ‘Man-made Problem with a Feminist Solution’ says Robinson
    Women must be at the heart of climate action if the world is to limit the deadly impact of disasters such as floods, former Irish president and U.N. rights commissioner Mary Robinson said on Monday.
    Robinson, also a former U.N. climate envoy, said women were most adversely affected by disasters and yet are rarely “put front and center” of efforts to protect the most vulnerable.

    “Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution,” she said at a meeting of climate experts at London’s Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Entrepreneurship…

    “Women all over the world are … on the front lines of the fall-out from climate change and therefore on the forefront of climate action,” said Natalie Samarasinghe, executive director of Britain’s United Nations Association…

    Related articles:
    Scientists: Antarctica Ice Loss Is Accelerating
    Heat-Trapping Carbon Dioxide Levels in Air Hit Another High
    Climate Change May Boost Cost of Eating Your Greens

    More Health News
    Warned 30 Years Ago, Global Warming ‘Is in Our Living Room’
    https://www.voanews.com/a/climate-change-a-man-made-problem-with-a-feminist-solution-says-robinson/4444348.html

    following is by SETH BORENSTEIN and NICKY FORSTER (attribution found elsewhere. WaPo, Herald Sun & others have this too):

    18 Jun: Voice of America: AP: Warned 30 Years Ago, Global Warming ‘Is in Our Living Room’
    SALIDA, COLORADO —
    We were warned.
    On June 23, 1988, a sultry day in Washington, James Hansen told Congress and the world that global warming wasn’t approaching — it had already arrived. The testimony of the top NASA scientist, said Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, was “the opening salvo of the age of climate change.”

    Thirty years later, it’s clear that Hansen and other doomsayers were right. But the change has been so sweeping that it is easy to lose sight of effects large and small — some obvious, others less conspicuous.
    Earth is noticeably hotter, the weather stormier and more extreme. Polar regions have lost billions of tons of ice; sea levels have been raised by trillions of gallons of water. Far more wildfires rage.
    Over 30 years — the time period climate scientists often use in their studies in order to minimize natural weather variations — the world’s annual temperature has warmed nearly 1 degree…

    “The biggest change over the last 30 years, which is most of my life, is that we’re no longer thinking just about the future,” said Kathie Dello, a climate scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. “Climate change is here, it’s now and it’s hitting us hard from all sides.”…

    According to an Associated Press statistical analysis of 30 years of weather, ice, fire, ocean, biological and other data, every single one of the 344 climate divisions in the Lower 48 states — NOAA groupings of counties with similar weather — has warmed significantly, as has each of 188 cities examined…

    The AP interviewed more than 50 scientists who confirmed the depth and spread of warming…
    But when you look at the globe as a whole, especially since 1970, nearly all the warming is man-made, said Zeke Hausfather of the independent science group Berkeley Earth…
    “It would take centuries to a millennium to accomplish that kind of change with natural causes. This, in that context, is a dizzying pace,” said Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at Georgia Tech in Atlanta…

    With more than 70 percent of the Earth covered by oceans, a 3-inch increase means about 6,500 cubic miles (27,150 cubic km) of extra water. That’s enough to cover the entire United States with water about 9 feet deep.
    It’s a fitting metaphor for climate change, say scientists: We’re in deep, and getting deeper.
    “Thirty years ago, we may have seen this coming as a train in the distance,” NOAA’s Arndt said. “The train is in our living room now.”
    https://www.voanews.com/a/global-warming-warning-thirty-years-ago-now-in-our-living-room/4444768.html

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    pat

    Seth Borenstein’s third piece in 24 hours – you would never guess there are climate meetings in Berlin and Brussels this week, would you?

    this piece proves, once again, the CAGW mob can be as outrageous as they like, with zero chance they’ll be fact-checked in the MSM:

    19 Jun: ABC America: Looking for signs of global warming? It’s all around you
    by Seth Borenstein, Associated Press
    David Inouye is an accidental climate scientist.
    More than 40 years ago, the University of Maryland biologist started studying when wildflowers, birds, bees and butterflies first appeared each spring on this mountain.
    These days, plants and animals are arriving at Rocky Mountain Biological Lab a week or two earlier than they were 30 years ago. The robins that used to arrive in early April now show up in mid-March. Marmots end their winter slumber ever earlier.

    “If the climate weren’t changing, we wouldn’t see these kind of changes happen,” Inouye said while standing on a bed of wildflowers that are popping up on the first day of May as marmots snoop around nearby.
    It’s been 30 years since much of the world learned that global warming had arrived. On June 23, 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified before Congress, explaining that heat-trapping gases spewed by the burning of fossil fuels were pushing temperatures higher.
    But it turns out climate isn’t the only thing that’s changing: Nature itself is, too. That’s the picture painted by interviews with more than 50 scientists and an Associated Press analysis of data on plants, animals, pollen, ice, sea level and more.

    You don’t need a thermometer or a rain gauge to notice climate change, and you don’t need to be a scientist to see it.
    Evidence is in the blueberry bushes in Henry David Thoreau’s Walden Pond, the dwindling population of polar bears of the Arctic and the dying corals worldwide. Scientists have documented 28,800 cases of plants and animals “responding consistently to temperature changes,” a 2008 study in the journal Nature said.
    “Nature is extremely sensitive to temperature and nature is reacting to the warmer temperatures,” said Boston University biologist Richard Primack. “The dramatic change is happening right in front of us.”…

    Coral reefs are sensitive to warmer water, and there isn’t a reef on this planet that has gone unscathed by global warming, said Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s coral reef watch.
    “If you look at coral reefs around the world, they’ve suffered a great deal of damage,” Eakin said. “Many of them are shadows of what they’ve been before 1998.”…

    Melting ice has made polar bears the poster animal of climate change. Studies show that their survival rates, reproduction rates and body weight are going down in most parts of the Arctic, said Steven Amstrup, formerly U.S. Geological Survey’s top polar bear researcher and now chief scientist at Polar Bear International. In parts of Alaska, Amstrup found a 40 percent population drop since the mid-1990s…

    Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech, has heard non-scientists accusing the government or researchers of manipulating temperature data to show warming. There’s no cooking the books, she said; nature is broadcasting a clear signal about climate change.
    “If you don’t trust the thermometers, throw them out,” Hayhoe said. “All we have to do is look at what’s happening in nature.”
    https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/signs-global-warming-55994777

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      pat

      at bottom of Borenstein’s article at ABC America:

      AP data journalist Nicky Forster contributed to this story from New York.
      The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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    pat

    truly shocking that Daily Mail publishes this without any scepticism:

    19 Jun: Daily Mail: People who don’t believe climate change is real are more likely to hold racist beliefs, study finds
    •A study published in Environmental Politics found that people who don’t believe in climate change are more likely to be of older age, white and Republican
    •Study also found a link between racial resentment and climate change denial
    •Correlation became significant after Barack Obama’s election in 2008
    By Mollie Cahillane
    After Barack Obama became President in 2008, white Americans became less likely to see climate change as a serious problem, according to a new study…

    the writer’s fitness to even write about the above is dubious if you check the rest of her LinkedIn page:

    LinkedIn: Mollie Cahillane
    Reporter: DailyMail.com; July 2017 – Present (1 year)Greater New York City Area
    Education: Northwestern University, Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Journalism, European History, Gender and Sexuality Studies
    2013 – 2017
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/molliecahillane

    however, THIS IS MUCH WORSE:

    18 Jun: Sierra Club: Climate Deniers Are More Likely to Be Racist. Why?
    A new study has a theory
    By Heather Smith
    People who don’t believe that climate change is real are more likely to be old, more likely to be Republican, and more likely to be white. They are also more likely to have racist beliefs, according to a recent study (LINK) published in the journal Environmental Politics. This correlation is a relatively recent phenomenon—one that occurred in the wake of Barack Obama’s election in 2008…
    https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/climate-deniers-are-more-likely-be-racist-obama-trump-climate-change

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      pat

      19 Jun: DePauw Uni: Research by Prof. Salil Benegal Finds Link Between Views on Climate Change & Race
      The professor’s research was originally published in Environmental Politics and is featured in an article by the ***Sierra Club’s national magazine.

      Dr. Benegal, assistant professor of political science at DePauw, states, “I’m not trying to make a claim in the study that race is the single most important or necessarily a massive component of all environmental attitudes. But it’s a significant thing that we should be looking out for.”…

      The graph below, provided by the professor, models the predicted probability that a white Republican respondent (in the ANES survey) agrees with/endorses climate science at different levels of “racial resentment” (using the racial resentment attitude scale within the ANES)…

      Another recent research project co-authored by Benegal, which received significant media attention in April, found that “Republicans and independent voters were most likely to be persuaded of climate science when given correct information by a Republican politician. That especially influenced their opinions on whether climate change is serious — by as much as 15 percent more than if they were told the correct information was from a scientist.”
      Last month, the DePauw professor co-authored an op-ed in the Washington Post. Learn more here (LINK)

      Salil D. Benegal holds an M.A. in economics and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Connecticut. His research primarily examines public opinion on science, technology, and environmental politics, and the psychology behind these attitudes.
      https://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/33747/

      4 May: DePauw Uni: Prof. Salil Benegal Co-Authors Washington Post Op-Ed
      “Public opinion on climate change has been divided by party for many years; (Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott) Pruitt’s efforts could accelerate that division,” write Salil Benegal and Lyle Scruggs in today’s Washington Post.

      In the Post op-ed, the authors assert that “the Pruitt-led EPA has supported efforts to publicly question climate science, to undermine its use in regulating air pollution and other environmental contaminants, and to discourage legitimate scientific research. At one point, his EPA suggested a ‘Red Team/Blue Team’-style debate on climate science, which would publicly attack the scientific consensus on the causes and course of climate change.”…
      https://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/33662/

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        pat

        Nexus Media had it first…disgusting…read it all:

        24 May: Nexus Media: Racial Resentment May Be Fueling Climate Denial
        New research finds a link between racial prejudice and climate change denial
        By Jeremy Deaton
        What began as a way of trolling Prius drivers became a signature protest against America’s first black president — rolling coal. Drivers spend hundreds or thousands of dollars retrofitting their trucks so they can blanket cyclists, motorists and pedestrians with thick, black clouds of exhaust. “I run into a lot of people that really don’t like Obama at all,” one seller of coal-rolling equipment told Slate. “If he’s into the environment, if he’s into this or that, we’re not. I hear a lot of that.” In some instances, the practice has taken on an explicitly racial tone, as drivers publish videos of themselves rolling coal on Black Lives Matters protestors.

        Why would anyone spend so much money to do something so hostile and self-defeating? New research offers some insight.
        After Barack Obama took office, white Americans were less likely to see climate change as a serious problem, according to a recent paper published in the journal Environmental Politics. The study further finds evidence of a link between racial resentment and climate change denial. This is not to suggest that all climate deniers are racists, merely that racial resentment may, in part, be driving climate denial…

        Benegal’s study links these two fields of research by asking if, and to what extent, racial resentment has fueled climate change denial. He began by examining the views of black and white Americans on climate change before and during Obama’s presidency, comparing Pew surveys taken between 2006 and 2008 with surveys taken between (********CLIMATEGATE*******) 2009 and 2014.
        https://nexusmedianews.com/racial-resentment-could-be-fueling-climate-denial-65d32fbeaa8e

        everything you need to know about the anti-Trump, anti-Pruitt Nexus writer, Deaton:

        Twitter: Jeremy Deaton
        https://twitter.com/deaton_jeremy

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      Annie

      Absolutely unbelievable….the tangled web of l1es becomes larger and larger and very insulting to those of us who try to use our brains instead of sitting around like stuffed-dummies, believing everything they are told by those with vested interests in money, power and control through fear and indoctrination.

      One sentence rant/.

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