No laws needed Scott Morrison — tell the coward companies not to give in to namecalling bullies

 We need more free speech, not less

Extinction Rebellion protest

Is National Australia Bank scared of this? @ExtinctionR

The witchdoctor activists have been demanding bankers and insurance firms boycott new coal mines. One by one these corporate giants have jumped to obey, like towers of saluting jelly. Australia’s PM, Scott Morrison,  has “threatened a radical crackdown” as if there is some way, and some worth, in forcing free people to choose a sensible option. But this is not the way. What the nation needs is not more laws to stifle speech but someone with the balls to speak freely. Persuade the nation instead! Half the country quivers in fear of being called a climate denier by a teenage girl. Tell them to grow up and get over it.

The activists are just namecalling bullies — too chicken to engage in polite conversation because their case falls apart like a crystal mousetrap — looks good, but destroys itself on deployment. If they had overwhelming evidence they just need to explain it — not beat people over the head with it. Australians are good people, right?

They’re only a threat if we take them seriously

Whatever we do, don’t take them seriously. Instead of locking them up, we need to mock them up. Giggle at gullible babies who think coal mines control the climate. Smile at superstitious voodoo. Pat the so called fans-of-science on the back, and ask them how long the glue will last.

Most of all we need a leader with the courage to laud those who don’t cave in and who know what free speech means.

The ABC has been turning the bullies into heroes and the whistleblowers into political-lepers. Someone needs to stand up to the ABC.

Miners drive the nations engine. XR is the glue on the road. Treat them accordingly — possibly with a garden hose, not federal legislation.

Scott Morrison threatens crackdown on protesters who would ‘deny liberty’

Paul Karp, The Guardian

PM signals action on secondary boycotts of resources companies and says progressives want to tell Australians ‘what you can say, what you can think’

 Morrison told Australian corporations to listen to the “quiet shareholders” and not environmental protesters, who he suggested could shift targets from coal companies to all carbon-intensive industries including power generation, gas projects, abattoirs and airlines.

In a speech proposing limits on free speech advocating boycotts against polluting companies, Morrison said progressives wanted to tell Australians “what you can say, what you can think and tax you more for the privilege of all of those instructions”.

And so they do. But apparently so does Morrison.

Making laws “just for them” and trying to stop them speaking is not just wrong, but like pouring fuel on a fire. It will inflate their egos, power their sense of purpose and, in a way, give them just what they want. Mindless attention without any hard questions. Better to let them talk about science. The more they say they sillier they look.

9.7 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

109 comments to No laws needed Scott Morrison — tell the coward companies not to give in to namecalling bullies

  • #

    Strongly agree! Arrest them if they block traffic but by all means let them gibber. They make alarmism look as foolish as it is.

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    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      Agreed,people are free to think what they like, but not to do as they like.
      GeoffW

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        Jacques Lemiere

        sure and this being the core value of our societies.. this movment is equivalent byt nature to a civil war, rebellion or revolution..they want tyranny. as long thay are the tyran.

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  • #
    Annie

    Great article Jo…it’s given me a good smile before bedtime. 🙂 It’s some of your wonderful phraseology that I love.
    However, it is a serious matter and these people need to be ridiculed rather than all of us have yet more curbs on free speech.

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    • #
      John Westman

      You make a good point Annie about ridicule.
      I too want the loonies to carry on as they do. They provide wonderful entertainment as stupidity is a terrific source of humour. I find better humour with them than with many of the so called comedy shows on the tube.
      Particularly, I would like to see those who glue themselves to the roadways or chain themselves to fences left in situ for at least 24 hours. It would need at least one or two cycles of bodily functions for the clowns to learn a lesson. Just imagine a protestor surrendering, with his soiled clothing-imagine the smell? He/she would be a wonderful source of merriment for months to come

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      • #
        Greg in NZ

        in situ

        such a wonderful Latin turn of phrase;

        insert an ‘h’ after the ‘s’ – and before the ‘i’ – and their business is self-explanatory…

        if only they’d clean up after themselves.

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  • #
    TdeF

    Just repeal the one law funding all this, the appalling Renewable Energy(Electricity) Act 2000. It is past laws which are killing us and you cannot bandaid the problem by making the consequences illegal. Or building Snowy II. Or subsidizing batteries for solar systems which are ridiculous and more ripoff.

    Renewable energy is a crock, as if that is not obvious world wide after 20 years of ripoff. Just stop it. And watch electricity prices halve overnight. The Federal Government should get out of energy, internet, windmills and stick to defence and immigration and fix its really silly diesel defence submarines when we no longer even make diesel and these things are too slow, worse than what we have. Perhaps start a solar/wind submarine industry, with a hundred billion dollar subsidy?

    The core problem is the Federal government. It started under Howard and the Deep State in Canberra is behind it, as in Canberra and Brussels. Centralized power, telephones, money. We had the world’s best and cheapest and most reliable power before all this started. We are worse off. Repeal the RET.

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    • #

      There’s more than one lot of funding here. Without a billion to the ABC and a billion to CSIRO and nearly a billion in ARC funding — people with fancy titles and megaphones would not be able to support namecalling, superstition, consensus-anti-science nonsense and pretend that modeled worlds were prophecies.

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      • #
        TdeF

        The models are a farce. There is no reason to believe we can model any climate and there are thousands of climates?

        What caused the Ice Ages? What caused the Little Ice Age? We have no idea. The idea that we can model an enormous, incredibly complex, multilayered, multi environment, highly coupled chaotic series of systems is absurd. To even begin to believe a model is working would take proof and so far there is none.

        No. Models are a fantasy even with supercomputers. We do not understand the planet and if we did, it would be like modelling the trajectory of socks in a washing machine.

        I would rather Prof Weiss’ fourier analysis without prejudice or presumption. That eliminates CO2 completely and explains everything. Prof Murry Selby eliminated CO2 as well. So it is all science fiction. And we all know why.

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        • #
          TdeF

          And where is the comprehensive model for the oceans? At 340x the weight of the thin air and 4x the specific heat, the oceans store 1200x the heat of the air. Covering 3/4 of the planet, 3/4 of the light energy goes into the ocean surface, not the land and it does not get as hot, so the infra red radiation is much less. Which means no Greenhouse gas effect from CO2 for 3/4 of the sun’s energy. The ocean has currents in 3D as well, surface turbulence, collisions with landscape and patterns like the Gulf Stream and the Humboldt current which dramatically change the climates in many countries.

          So until there is a good model for the oceans, there is little point modelling the air. Most climate models are about the air. Most weather is about water and totally dependent on evaporation, clouds, currents, all water. It is hard to imagine that these inevitably simplistic models are anything more than a wild guess with little or no predictive accuracy. To quote them as the scientific truth is at a minimum hopelessly optimistic and in reality absurd.

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        • #
          Slithers

          Hi TdeF,
          I have just submitted a Theory about the start of the Ice Age(s) how they progressed, the feedback mechanisms and why they ended, to PSI. The CO2 carbon cycle disturbances are also explained therein

          I hope it gets published soon.

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      • #
        Don A

        Did you see this anti science nonsense from FitzSimon on the ABC? https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/nightlife/the-andrew-olle-lecture:-peter-fitzsimons/11666734 Almost made me throw up!!

        00

    • #
      Peter C

      TdeF,

      I think you are right on the money here.

      The RET is a Core problem in our political response to the Climate catastrophists.

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        We need to act: that is, the public needs to act, and demand of their elected representatives some long overdue action on the RET.

        Any “trial” of the RET must by now have run its course and be assessed.

        The CO2 “emergency” used to justify the “Tax that isn’t a tax” must now be seen for what it is, a ridiculous nonsense at best, and government authorised misappropriation via the RET as illegal; the worst.

        Politicians on both sides have an agenda based on the RET that has nothing to do with the environment, nothing to do with a ” better world” and everything to do with the financial situation of their “friends” and backers and ultimately themselves.

        The interests of the most important group must now be brought forward and the RET axed.

        We, the voters and taxpayers, are “The most important group” and we must demand our rights.

        Contacting our own representatives seems logical but our individual MPs can just dissipate that effort very easily.

        We need a very public action.

        Perhaps a form letter sent to a media representative for assessment and public display where politicians can be embarrassed and put on the spot.

        e.g. Dear Mr. Bolt, “we the undersigned demand a public, judicial and political justification for the RET which has been used to damage progress in Australia. Is it legal, is it scientifically sound, can it be justified?”

        One letter.
        One point of focus, a trusted media outlet.
        One giant embarrassment for politicians and troughers.

        Australians by signing a form letter and posting it to a single point may eventually get action from our government.

        KK

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  • #
    Kalm Keith

    It’s good that our PM spoke about this but there must already be laws about not harassing and not damaging businesses who are just doing an honest days work.

    Where was Scomo when “activists” without brains or morals attacked and abused and frightened and threatened innocent farmers Without any Justification?

    KK

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    • #
      Peter C

      Indeed KK,

      There are enough laws already. We do not need more laws!

      What we need is some political will to use the laws we have to protect:
      1. free speech,
      2. Non interference with people going about their lawful business,
      3. Enforcement of damages against protesters who disrupt lawful commerce.

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      • #
        Bite Back

        3. Enforcement of damages against protesters who disrupt lawful commerce.

        And what when the enforcers do not do their job as is often the case? They threaten violence indirectly if not directly, there are more than enough who’re intimidated and the thugs end up getting their way. They effectively use your laws and your respect or fear of the law, whichever it is, against you.

        The same thing happens in the USA and anywhere someone uses this tactic to intimidate. This is the way we lose our freedom and our nations to plain old every day thugs. Is your freedom not worth fighting for, worth dying for? It’s not easy to contemplate is it? But who will stand up for you when the law fails to stand up for you if not you?

        I’ll be accused of all sorts of things for saying this but it’s the truth nevertheless. There is a 4th point in your list; 4. Acton. Where does the buck stop?

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        • #
          Kalm Keith

          That’s where we’re at!

          An example of our situation is in the recent action by a federal government department to harass and intimidate Tony Abbott.

          This is confirmation that our institutions are being used by people acting outside of their lawful boundaries and that those people act independently of Our Elected Representatives.

          We need to act and pick up the buck.

          KK

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  • #

    “…like towers of saluting jelly.” Might have to pinch that line.

    Note the strategy. The attack on coal has been mostly an attack on the domestic usage of coal, which is much less than our exports. Even then, it hasn’t been about reducing net usage (we can’t) but about increasing the cost of it while stifling improvements.

    It’s like being told you are naughty for driving a car and as punishment you will drive an aging 1970s Ford Galaxy blowing smoke.

    Australia’s critical coal industry needs constantly to be modernised and improved from pit to power point. The posh people will not allow that to happen, even as they continue to depend on coal like an exploited servant who does all the heavy lifting but is kept out the back in a dog box.

    So the agenda has nothing to do with carbon or climate…and everything to do with increasing the power of the kakistocracy, the Rule of the Worst. Those who bring demographic shock, unending war and unpayable debt on invented money have other hobbies as well. Big Green is one such. It’s not the “green” they like. It’s the waste and plunder and white elephants.

    Jo is right. The Worst would like nothing better than some feeble laws directed against climate botherers’ boycotts. That sort of thing sets such a delicious precedent!

    Like the Romanians of the 1980s, we have little left but mockery. Big “Business”, perpetually “on board” with creepy globster agendas, will fight…but mainly for its share of the green sweeteners and trough money unavailable to small business.

    Mockery is what we’ve got. So let’s mock hard.

    What’s needed is unrestrained mockery on all sides…with us winning yet again.

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    • #
      Serp

      Regarding ““…like towers of saluting jelly.” Might have to pinch that line.”

      Granted but for me the “crystal mousetrap” takes the prize.

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    XR are what you get when parents weren’t firm enough with demanding, tantrum throwing , poorly behaved 5 year olds…..

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    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Steve,

      This is a community thing.

      It’s a deliberate government thing.

      It’s such a good thing that even the Pope has got on board.

      The media likes this “thing”, so many facets of wokeness to talk about.

      And has been pointed out here, all driven by the Renewable energy act. Gummint. Govn Mint. MalEx444.

      Poor parents.

      KK

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    • #
      Slithers

      It was too late when they were Five and still acting that way.

      10

  • #
    el gordo

    Morrison lacks the bottle to admit, on the evidence available, that CO2 does not cause global warming. Obviously because he is frightened of Aunty and Guardian etc.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Exactly, PM Morrison is just another version of Turnball, He’ll throw out scraps of conservatism or patriotism to give the impression of ‘I’m doing my best with a bad situation, but I’m really like you’ and then do the opposite in actual action.

      It’s those actions that dictate the course of our lives not a cliche red herring tossed around and never followed up by the MSM, this change of leadership was a clever move by the puppet masters that simply equates to a more pleasant death of the potential greatness of a nation that once punched far beyond its weight.

      That potential was realised by hard work hoisted with the heritage of other great democracies and all they embodied, the very antithesis of this is what we see our elected officials pushing us towards on a daily basis with full realisation of the finality of the goal.

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    • #
      glen Michel

      He has to play to all sides. Unfortunately the “scare” has most people believing in CC and renewables as the cure. What the PM thinks privately- who knows. Gifting a billion to the Green sector isn’t what we want or the right thing, but there you have it. Advice: he who defends everything, defends nothing.

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  • #
    Drapetomania

    Just repeal the one law funding all this, the appalling Renewable Energy(Electricity) Act 2000.

    As sensible as your suggestion is, You cannot do that.
    It has to get past the senate who block anything that the majority of Australians want.
    The majority of politicians are as clueless to the $CAGW$ scam as members of the Greens.
    I watched Albanese on tv telling the drones that making clean energy will create thousands of jobs.
    The fact that the whole suggestion is a lie escapes the “elite”.
    Lets just relax..we can always eat human flesh when “climate change” becomes “worse”
    Had to come from that land of bat %$#$#@ crazy..Sweden..

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      And lets not forget the snuff movies made about sceptics by these people – one group of skeptics shown being splattered into chunks of flesh are *children* – these people are seriously disturbed….

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE3g0i2rz4w

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    • #
      TdeF

      Then appeal the law to the High Court. It is fundamentally illegal. Since Magna Carta no government is supposed to force the enrichment of third parties, the king ordering you pay his friends. The RET is not a tax, it is mandated payments to wind and solar people for nothing at all and funded by raiding your electricity bills. The government fines, enforces, supervises but takes no part in this forced trading of ‘certificates’ which do not exist. These massive payments are on top of any payment for electricity, so they are just gifts.

      Britain copied this deceiftul law. No one has challenged it. Governments can tax and fine but they cannot do this. It is the world’s biggest carbon tax without mentioning carbon and as the money does not go into General Revenue, it is not even a tax. It is theft.

      What is needed is a GoFundMe to challenge the RET in the High Court of Australia as government enforced theft.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Consider Hepburn Wind. We the public paid for those two windmills. Now they reap the world’s highest energy prices, cannot turn a profit with no real costs and get an $800,000 cash grant merely for producing, not selling wind electrons. To add insult to injury, the depreciate our windmills and pay no tax. For what? The RET is making wind millionaires all over the world and the public is no better off and owns nothing while we still are forced to pay a massive cash premium for wind and solar electrons.

        No wonder AGL want to shut their power stations. The free money is in wind. If only the government would increase the % and double the cost of wind and solar again, as Labor promises.

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      • #
        Kalm Keith

        🙂 🙂

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  • #
    Earl

    Just noticed over at GWPF that the Govt of the Maldives is hoping to open 5 new airports within a year. My quick witted wife said, “ Must be for rapid evacuation when the sea rises”

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Maybe if they land all the planes on just one airport, it will counterbalance the “sinking” of the other airports…a bit like geological version of whack-a-mole…..

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    • #

      They have space for more airports? On top of ten domestic and four international they already have? Well, maybe if they sacrifice a golf course or two…

      Amazing how the Maldives went from Aqualung Alley to Billionaire’s Row in just a few years and how the world’s lowest country suddenly decided that atoll life isn’t so dodgy after all. Maybe it’s fewer heavy coins and more high denomination notes that makes the difference to sea levels.

      Mind you, if you’ve been visiting Coogee Beach for the last seventy years of your life and still can’t find any sea level rise, it may just be lurking. Sea level rise is like that masked avenger, climate change, who swooped on Lake Cathie the other day, leaving unmistakable fingerprints.

      Sea level rise can strike any time, any place. Right now it’s picking on Jakarta and Dhaka. It’s leaving those richo Maldives alone bribed with Danegeld?) for now. But soon it will come for you.

      Underwater, no-one can hear you denying.

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      • #
        StephenP

        Was Çoogee Beach the one where Australian activists removed a tree that had been photographed a long time ago and showed no sea level rise when compared with recent photographs?

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        • #
          Greg in NZ

          I’m a little east of Coogee (and looking forward to those warm NWers arriving, albeit too briefly)

          and over this side of the Tassie there’s been no kaka-strophic rising of sea level for at least 100 years with photographic evidence to prove it too: the spot where my parents met, danced, and etc. – Ye Olde Pirate Shippe night club on Milford Beach in the 1950s – is exactly the same (sea level-wise) even though the pirate ship / dance hall and the movie theatre and performing dolphins and swimming pool and old footbridge are long gone…

          https://www.milford.org.nz/site/webpages/general/history-of-milford

          Oh for the Roaring Twenties again: electric tramways, steam tramways, “a fleet of super-comfortable seven-seater Hudson motorcars”, a movie theatre-turned dance floor where “a false ceiling was lowered and hundreds of lights and lanterns appeared, producing an effect like fairyland… advertised as ‘Takapuna’s colossal joy dispenser'” – 1927!

          My parents were the next generation, the last to enjoy the hey-day of that brave new world. My brother, sister and I were the next, and we learned to drown swim at this beach: I still occasionally surf the reef at the far end (see middle picture) and the sea level is exactly the same.

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        • #
          John Westman

          The tree that you are referring to, may have been the one in the Maldives, as it showed no increase in sea level.

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          • #
            Graeme#4

            Yes, the tree was in the Maldives. It was uprooted by an Australian sea-level team of students after Morner prepared an interview for Maldive TV that was stopped from going to air by the Maldive govt. Discussed in an interview with Nils-Acel Morner in 2007 by 21st Century Science and Technology. The AGW crowd have worked hard to discredit Morner after that interview.

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    • #
      Travis T. Jones

      Here is a credible source of the danger facing the Maldives – please don’t stare at it for too long, especially if you suffer doom n gloom sea level rise neurosis.

      Maldives – Innahura live cam
      View from Innahura Resort from the Maldives

      https://www.skylinewebcams.com/en/webcam/maldives/lhaviyani-atoll/naifaru/maldives-innahura.html

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-02/california-fires-spark-outrage-against-power-company/11656816

    “California’s new normal? Raging fires, mass power outages and fleeing from the flames
    …………………
    “That’s despite the company Pacific Gas And Electric (PG&E) cutting power to try to offset the risk.

    “PG&E is already in deep financial strife after being found responsible and sued for the Camp Fire which burnt further north last year, and was California’s most deadly blaze ever.

    “In my opinion, it’s the worst scenario because it precluded us from having any high-pressure water to fight the fire,” Eric says.

    “Along the roads leading to the ranch, power workers in cherry pickers cut branches from trees and repair fallen wires.

    “In several places, branches can be seen touching undamaged powerlines.

    “Cutting power to try to prevent fires has been controversial, with up to 2.5 million people affected in northern California — some for a week or more.
    ……………..

    “California grapples with its ‘new normal’

    “Californian authorities refer to a “new normal” when it comes to the devastating fires that have affected the state now for several years in a row.

    “”While wildfires are a natural part of California’s landscape, the fire season in California and across the west [coast] is starting earlier and ending later each year,” the Calfire website says.

    “”Climate change is considered a key driver of this trend. Warmer spring and summer temperatures, reduced snowpack, and earlier spring snowmelt create longer and more intense dry seasons.”

    “The state’s former Governor Jerry Brown, who is now a climate activist, warned Californians this week that “this is only a taste of the horror and the terror that will occur in decades.”

    “”This is the world we live in. And it will get more dangerous,” he told Politico.

    “Ranch owner Eric La Franchi is a believer in climate change, but he doesn’t necessarily agree that’s what took his ranch.

    “”I think there is something to climate change in the way we have affected the environment,” he says, but suggests that in this case, high winds and dry conditions collided in a case of bad timing.

    “”I think the conditions lined up in the last two big fires in this area and it was really unfortunate events.”

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  • #
    Penguinite

    More Laws? No thanks we have an over sufficiency already. Take a read of https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/shades-of-stasiland-in-attorneygenerals-office/news-story/d744396439cba6ca1862fac02eedef3b 1984 truly is here.

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    • #
      Annie

      This is a brilliant but very disturbing article by Janet A. Thankyou for linking it as I haven’t yet got around to reading The Australian today. Too much to absorb from the UK Daily Telegraph and there’s never enough time to read all that I’d like to.

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      • #
        Peter C

        I agree Annie,

        I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), in August. So I suppose I am also on the New Government endorsed hit list!

        This is McCarthyism in reverse. Some how it must be stopped

        30

  • #
    Fin

    TdeF and others have pointed out the real disgrace in this whole sorry scenario, the most expensive electricity in the world as a result of subsidised and pointless renewables, the subsequent wrecking of industry and the domestic misery of electricity bills. Another billion on band-aids from Morrison to the likes of the Singapore based runt is beyond the pale. And what of Angus Taylor, another disappointment, all show and no spine.

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  • #
    Lance

    City Journal has a recent article, relevant to discussions:

    Climate Stalinism:

    https://www.city-journal.org/radical-green-movement

    “Today’s radical green movement demands submission to an elite governing class—and its views are entering the mainstream”

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  • #
    mem

    https://apnews.com/933b49681b0d47d3a005d356f35251ab

    Michael Moore’s new film tackles renewables and it turns out that he discovers that they are a huge con and that they are ripping off the public for no effect on climate!

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  • #
    ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N

    Australia’s anti-free speech legislation can go jump, especially 18C when we have the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The fools think they can ignore it and control what we say. We have every right to voice opinions and dissent, otherwise grabbermint is a tyranny.

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  • #
    David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

    But Jo,
    We already have absolute freedom of speech in this country. We can have our views published in SMH or appear on ABC TV at any time. All we have to do is meet their content guide, although I admit that that guide, being unpublished, is sometimes hard to meet, even though it is used by both organisations.
    Or we can rely on a consensus of economists for our scientic views, saving us the trouble of trying…

    http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/please-don-t-think-about-climate-change-and-the-economy-it-may-upset-you-20191031-p536ba.html?btis

    Cheers
    Dave B

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  • #
    Ruairi

    Face-painting and dressed in a cloak,
    Is for warmists a sign they are woke,
    That we’re all going to die,
    Because end times are nigh,
    Scaring bankers and gullible folk.

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  • #
    Geoff Sherrington

    Once I was employed in the resources sector, to minimise adversity caused by government acts and regs and by antagonistic others like Greenpeace. In 1987 my employer agreed that we should challenge the United Nations and the then Labor government for attempting to deny our normal moves to explore for more uranium in the Top End. We ended up with the full bench of the High Court mumbling that they declined further involvement because in essence, it had become too complicated.
    I mention these events to show how, back then, we were prepared to spend millions to preserve our rights to conduct our business, within normal, accepted legal and social constraints. We followed the law, antagonists broke it. Including the UN.
    Thee days, I am absolutely disgusted by the spineless acceptance of defeat by our resources industry via NGO bummers whose ability and credibility is too low to be considered a threat.
    Get some grasp of reality, you current-day resources managers. Defend your rights and stand up in pride of past achievements. Like ours, back then, when men were men and wrists were strong.
    Geoff S

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Talking to a relative, they reckon the worm is turning regards the silent majoroty no longer tolerating being dictated to by green lunatics and PC snowflakes….

      I woukd agree, which is why the mad power push right now by the left….

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  • #
    Hasbeen

    OK, now he has talked the talk, however lets see the walk.

    When we see new coal fired power houses, built & funded by our taxes in at least Queensland & NSW, I might start to believe him, & even think about voting for him.

    Until then talk is cheap, & not too convincing.

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    • #
      Dennis

      Who sold the power stations and transmission lines? State governments sold or otherwise took them off line.

      Were they not state government owned and controlled public assets?

      Ok, the Commonweealth Government signed the Kyoto and then the Paris agreements following conferences in the cities the treaties are named after, and in the Renewable Energy Target example that was one of many proposals aimed at meeting the firstly greenhouse gas emissions targets and now the carbon emissions (because they dare not refer to carbon dioxide and want gullible citizens to think dirty black stuff). The original RET was from memory 3 per cent and once-off trial basis, and after that let the market decide if wind and solar would be viable. And later the RET was raised around the time of carbon tax and renewable energy surcharge, both 10 per cent on electricity bills, plus 10 per cent GST.

      United Nations Treaties and Agreements are always subject to agreements between the Commonwealth and the States, and RET was taken up and moved forward at state level.

      The Commonwealth cannot force the states to cooperate. Consider the original Snowy Mountains Scheme, hydro power stations and irrigation water supply. A Commonwealth project that took ten years to gain state cooperation so that the project could get underway.

      Of course we would all like more government cooperation in our best interests individually and for our nation.

      “When we see new coal fired power houses, built & funded by our taxes in at least Queensland & NSW, I might start to believe him ….”

      Without the support and cooperation of those state governments the PM is snookered.

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  • #
    David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

    Another “but” Jo,
    I accuse XR of bullying, subversion and, while exercising unfettered freedom of their own ideas, denying that same freedom to others who seek to debate their ideas with them. And I object to that organised bullying, which is also practised, too effectively by warmists and universities, as well as ABC talk shows.
    Subversion because they flout normal conventions and the law, by deliberately organising to thwart normal processes, eg by by organising multiple simultaneous demonstrations in different places to split the availability of police resources.
    To claim “freedom of speech” under these circumstances is at least the hight of hypocrisy if it isn’t criminal sabotage. And I think the secondary boycott laws should be used against them.
    I support Prime Minister Morrison’s in this case.
    Cheers
    Dave B

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      When XR forcibly denies people the chance to go about their business, that should be a legal breach — but that’s not what Morrison is talking about. He is saying people should not have the free choice to boycott companies they don’t like. So will he force NAB / Westpac / AIG etc to loan to coal companies and make a profit?

      When they force wedding cake makers to make cakes for marriages that go against their own religious beliefs, how is that different?

      Shouldn’t anyone have the choice to turn down business opportunities because of their beliefs?

      These laws he threatens are anti-free-speech as well as a PR disaster. I agree with the Greens here, and that’s profoundly frustrating. How can we accuse them of being totalitarians who want to stop skeptics speaking if we support laws that do the same to the people we disagree with?

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        Bobl

        Public Companies IE Banks don’t have beliefs, just the people that run them, public companies should not have the right to deny services on that basis, private companies and ABN style businesses yes, but not public companies. If the borrower qualifies they should be funded on a non discriminate actuarial basis.

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      gee aye

      what she said

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    Ian Hill

    What the nation needs is not more laws to stifle speech but someone with balls to speak freely.

    Needs to be rephrased as “someone with THE balls …” which is what you really mean Jo!


    OK. I see your point. Fixed. Thanks. – Jo

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Missing possessive apostrophe alert:

      Miners drive the nations engine

      (the engine belongs to the nation – yous fellas, you possess it, you used to own it).

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    David Maddison

    ScoMo doesn’t have a clue.

    He’s an enormous disappointment.

    I am yet to be convinced he isn’t a Turnbull puppet.

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      Sceptical Sam

      He’s a marketing man. He’s done the segmentation analysis.

      He’s found a segment that he can swing his way with a few tough words. That segment is called “The Head Crackers”. They’re the weak silent types that infest the Liberal Party – the equivalent of Labor’s “faceless men”.

      He’s also found another segment that he thinks he can swing his way by putting another $ Billion into the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. That segment is called “The Conservative Free-loader”. They’re not greens, they just like the smell, feel and taste of green, because that’s the one that has the image of Dame Nellie Melba on the obverse.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_one_hundred-dollar_note#/media/File:Australian_$100_polymer_front.jpg

      This “Conservative Free-loader” segment generates an added benefit as well. They’ll slip some cash the way of Morrison’s re-election fund, and his Liberal Party sell-out comrades. Mind you, it’ll be in something a little more classy than an Aldi bag.

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      Serp

      I agree absolutely David Maddison. Turnbull stopped us getting Dutton and ScoMo remains beholden to him –let’s not forget the disastrous diplomatic deployment of Turnbull in Indonesia as if he was still running the country.

      We may continue being grateful Labor didn’t get across the line and that the hapless unelectable incoherent stooge Albanese has the party’s reins and, courtesy of Rudd’s vindictive legacy, cannot be made to relinquish them thus guaranteeing at least another term in opposition.

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    pat

    1min30sec:
    ABC’s Crealy: …and there was dismay that the meeting failed to reach any agreement regarding climate change.

    Claire Christian, executive director, Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition: the science is really settled. the EU and Australia have been working on this for a number of years…

    AUDIO: 3min28sec: 2 Nov: ABC AM: Talks on Southern Ocean Antarctic sanctuary fail
    By Louise Crealy on AM
    Some of the world’s most powerful nations have failed to reach an agreement on a plan that would have granted new protections for a vast section (1m sq kms) of the Southern Ocean off Antarctica.
    Australia and the European Union were among those who tried – but failed – to win backing from Russia and China.
    Featured:
    Claire Christian, executive director, Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition.
    Dr David Agnew, Executive Secretary, Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources
    Tim Stephens, professor of international law, University of Sydney law school.
    https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/talks-on-southern-ocean-antarctic-sanctuary-fail/11661764

    2 Nov: ABC: Failure to agree on new Antarctic protection calls group’s ‘credibility into question’
    By Jessica Hayes
    Delegates from 26 country members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) failed to reach a consensus on the proposal at a meeting in Hobart this week.
    It was hoped declaring a million square kilometres of the region as a marine protected zone would protect its biodiversity, and help manage the impacts of climate change.

    All CCAMLR members have to back a proposal at the conference for a motion to pass, and the aim this year was to win over China and Russia, who had voted against it in the past.
    China and Russia again failed to back the proposal.
    The Australian Marine Conservation Society expressed disappointment…

    The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition is now calling for urgent action from global leaders to protect the waters surrounding the frozen continent.
    Executive director Claire Christian said some countries arrived at the meeting with no mandate to take action.
    “We urgently need global leadership,” she said.

    “The science is settled. It is only political will preventing the creation of new marine protections in the world’s last great wilderness.”

    Ms Christian said despite the efforts of many members, the CCAMLR appeared to be going backwards.
    “It is not acceptable that fisheries in the Southern Ocean move forward every year, while progress is stalled on establishing marine protected areas,” she said…
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-02/failure-to-agree-on-new-antarctic-protected-area-again/11666014

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      pat

      ABC could have disclosed more about Claire Christian’s ASOC:

      Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC): Board of Directors
      (includes members from Smithsonian, WWF, Sierra Club etc)
      https://www.asoc.org/about/board

      Wikipedia: Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition
      The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) is a global coalition of environmental non-governmental organizations with more than 150 members in 40 countries worldwide…
      The Secretariat of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), which includes 150 organizations in 40 countries, is based in Washington, D.C. The ASOC Council includes member groups that have paid dues or provided significant in-kind services to the ASOC campaign team…
      ASOC was founded in 1978 by James Barnes, an environmental lawyer, and 25 other members from Friends of the Earth, World Wildlife Fund, and other environmental organizations…
      In 1991, ASOC was granted observer status in the Antarctic Treaty System, and began attending annual meetings. ASOC has expanded its portfolio to include issues such as tourism, shipping, and climate change.

      1 Nov: ScoopNZ: Press release: ASOC issues urgent call to protect Antarctic waters
      Hobart, Tasmania—The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition is calling for urgent action from global leaders to protect Antarctic waters. This week, Members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) were unable to reach consensus on marine protections in the Southern Ocean at their annual meeting in Hobart.

      “We urgently need global leadership to reflect the importance of protecting the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica. The science is settled. It is only political will preventing the creation of new marine protections in the world’s last great wilderness,” said Claire Christian, executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition.

      CCAMLR was the first opportunity for action and political leadership following the release of the U.N.’s IPCC Special Report, which warns of the damaging impact climate change is having on the world’s oceans and polar regions. Despite this, some countries arrived at the meeting with no mandate to take action on the findings of this report by urgently supporting the designation of MPAs.

      “With a growing loss of biodiversity and threats from climate change, it’s disheartening that CCAMLR has failed to protect East Antarctic waters for the eighth consecutive year. Over this time, we have seen multiple breeding failures for Adélie penguin colonies, habitat loss throughout the region, a concentrated krill fishing effort, and the warmest Southern Ocean temperatures ever recorded. Scientists have been clear that MPAs are needed to make a warming and acidifying ocean more resilient.” said Andrea Kavanagh, director of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Antarctic and Southern Ocean work…

      “Despite the efforts of many Members, CCAMLR appears to be going backwards. It is not acceptable that fisheries in the Southern Ocean move forward every year while progress is stalled on establishing marine protected areas. Millions of people want to see the Southern Ocean protected and CCAMLR’s inability to do this calls its credibility into question.” said Frida Bengtsson of Greenpeace’s Protect the Oceans campaign.

      Globally, biodiversity loss is accelerating to a rate tens or hundreds of times faster than in the past. MPAs are the most effective way to protect ocean ecosystems. They increase the diversity and abundance of species, while mitigating the impacts of climate change.
      “The largest and last wilderness on the planet needs our help. Creating sanctuaries will benefit both people and nature. We are calling on all governments to honor commitments to protect nature – there’s still time to make a difference.” said Chris Johnson, WWF’s Antarctic programme lead.
      http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1911/S00009/asoc-issues-urgent-call-to-protect-antarctic-waters.htm

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      pat

      1 Nov: BusinessInsider: Press release: Pew Expresses Disappointment Over Another Year of Inaction on Antarctic Marine Protections
      A United Nations special report released in September found that the Antarctic region is experiencing profound and rapid change, including warming ocean temperatures and acidification. To mitigate these impacts, the U.N. recommended that global leaders focus on increasing the number of marine protected areas in order to make ecosystems more resilient.

      CCAMLR members, who had a unique opportunity at the Commission’s 38th annual meeting to be the first international body to act on the U.N.’s report, could have protected more than 3.2 million square kilometers of Southern Ocean waters by designating the three MPA proposals. Without these additional marine protections, critical foraging and breeding grounds for emperor and Adélie penguins, toothfish, crabeater seals, and many other species will remain threatened. The designations would also have significantly advanced a goal set by the International Union for Conservation of Nature to protect 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030…

      “Unfortunately, government leaders failed to heed the U.N.’s immediate call to action on climate change and made no contribution toward protecting the Southern Ocean’s critical ecosystem and its vital function as a carbon sink, nor the goal of safeguarding 30 percent of the world’s oceans by 2030.”
      https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/pew-expresses-disappointment-over-another-year-of-inaction-on-antarctic-marine-protections-1028651390

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    pat

    OriginalSteve – comment #10 – posted some excerpts from ABC’s:

    California’s new normal? Raging fires, mass power outages and fleeing from the flames

    ABC has been breathlessly reporting the fires as being across the north and south of California, as if much of the State is burning, and all the time suggesting a connection with global warming:

    2 Nov: ABC: ‘Only a taste of the horror’: Millions of Californians plunged into darkness as fires rage
    By Washington bureau chief Zoe Daniel in Santa Rosa, California with John Mees and Ryan Chatterjee
    Eric’s approach to the fire was based on almost 60 years of life in the area where fires are not uncommon after hot, dry summers which are followed by gusty seasonal winds…

    what ABC has not been reporting:

    1 Nov: NorthwestHerald: Dying winds bring relief after weeks of California wildfires
    By BRIAN MELLEY and TERENCE CHEA; Associated Press writers Stefanie Dazio, Christopher Weber and John Antczak in Los Angeles, Juliet Williams in San Francisco contributed to this report.
    The state experienced a wet winter with a large snowpack and temperatures and wind speeds didn’t spike simultaneously over the summer, which has led a less destructive fire season overall.
    Acreage burned this year is down nearly 90% from last year and 80% below the five-year average over the same period, according to figures compiled through Sunday by the Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
    https://www.nwherald.com/2019/10/31/dying-winds-bring-relief-after-weeks-of-california-wildfires/av8ajyu/

    30 Oct: ABC America: SoCal fire danger: Homeowners, schools preparing for powerful winds, potential wildfires
    By Rob McMillan and Jessica De Nova
    While temperatures will be ***cool, winds could hit 50 to 70 mph in parts of Los Angeles and Ventura counties early Wednesday, with gusts in the mountains up to 80 mph…

    31 Oct: OmahaWorldHerald: Days of terrifying darkness, ***cold and hunger amid PG&E’s sweeping power blackouts
    By Anita Chabria, Los Angeles Times
    CLEARLAKE, Calif. — For four nights, Eliana Rubin cared for her newborn son, James, by candlelight…
    Even more than the dark, she worried about the ***near-freezing temperatures inside her home in this remote part of Northern California.
    “The thing is the cold,” she said Tuesday. “I am, like, folding him under the blankets.”…

    In Lake County, which shares a border with Napa County but lacks its wealth, that has meant fear, ***cold, hunger and often anger — directed at both the utility and state leaders…
    Gas tanks were siphoned, generators “are like diamonds,” said one resident…

    Unsure whether Pacific Gas & Electric would keep a promise to restore power by evening, county executive Carol Huchingson said Wednesday afternoon she was considering opening emergency shelters for medically fragile residents who have been pushed “completely around the bend.”…

    Carter froze two cases of water before losing power to keep her freezer cold, but it started to melt on the fourth day, which meant lost groceries…
    https://www.omaha.com/news/national/days-of-terrifying-darkness-cold-and-hunger-amid-pg-e/article_2bf8fd0b-94a0-52e4-9b9a-087e98dc0541.html

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      yarpos

      God this “new normal” card gets played so often these days

      Some dill from the BOM did it in the last drought, in Ca they trotted it out in their last drought (now ended).

      If bushfires are their new normal, they have made that reality for themselves by their own actions and inactions. The future has a bizarre habit of being what you make it.

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    Zigmaster

    You are 100% right. Giving in to them just emboldens them and rather than rewarding you at the ballot box or in the case of companies at the AGM it just makes them more and more feral. The government is just as bad as corporations. When Morrison realised he needed to spend money to stabilise the grid and provide the money to ensure it doesn’t collapse the whole system rather than promote this funding as necessary because they needed to do it to rectify the damage caused by this crazy influx of renewables he promoted it as somehow enhancing his green credentials by giving that money through the Green Climate Fund. He should’ve just said we are putting in the money from the federal government because the states have made the grid so unstable and expensive. He’ll get no votes from Greenies and lose votes from his base.
    He could’ve used the opportunity to highlight the huge negative issues that renewables are causing and make future policies that would genuinely help like removal of subsidies and support for nuclear, coal and gas. His cowardice is not just to do with his response to bullying from the ABC and other leftie activists but to some of his own party still there despite the Turnbull purge.
    When Turnbull gave him support you know it’s a disastrous policy.
    It’s all very well to criticise leading corporate executives for their timidity towards activists but the government especially a Liberal one should lead by example. It’s hard not to see Morrison’s behaviour as hypocritical .

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    pat

    ABC’s Zoe Daniel is based in DC, just been in California for the fires and, just before that, Alaska. nice carbon footprint, Zoe, paid for by Australian taxpayers, millions of whom are not fairly represented at or by ABC:

    22 Oct: ABC: Donald Trump’s plan to drill for oil in the Arctic wilderness is dividing Indigenous Alaskans
    Foreign Correspondent By Zoe Daniel in Alaska
    Dressed in a wolf-head hat and a coat lined with squirrel pelts, Marie Rexford is fermenting whale meat in the small village of Kaktovik on the north-eastern shores of Alaska.
    The meat sustains the Indigenous Inupiat community through the winter months…

    The sea ice that once came all the way up to the shore of their village on the edge of the Beaufort Sea — even in the summer — is now hundreds of kilometres away. It’s bringing hungry bears in closer.
    “There’s no way to get their seal right now,” Marie says. “They got no ice to hunt seal.”
    There are an estimated 26,000 polar bears left in the wild and scientists say they could be extinct in Alaska by 2050…

    The Inupiat are the traditional owners of the land where the drilling is planned and they’ve voted to support the proposal…
    The Inupiat remain furious they weren’t included in the process that led to the protection of the Arctic Refuge lands. They say it ultimately restricted their access to some of their hunting grounds.
    This time around, if oil is found and drilling goes ahead, the Inupiat stand to gain a windfall in tax revenues to fund much-needed infrastructure, such as roads and sewerage. It’s for these economic reasons the Inupiat support the drilling…

    Travelling with us is retired biologist and conservationist Fran Mauer, who spent much of his career working in the Arctic Refuge for the US Fish and Wildlife Service…
    “We’ve been fortunate that it’s been preserved for the American people for nearly 60 years now. And we hope it will be this way 500 years from now,” he says, ***his voice full of emotion…

    ***Polls have shown that up to 70 per cent of Americans are against drilling in the ANWR.
    “They know that the American people ultimately do not want this and they’re trying to push it through while they have the votes and the power in the White House to do it,” says Fran Mauer.
    “It’s a crime. The American people are being robbed.”…

    In Arctic Village, just outside the refuge boundary, 75-year-old Gwich’in elder Sarah James is busy cutting and smoking caribou meat as winter looms. The Porcupine caribou have been central to the subsistence lives led by the Gwich’in for millennia…

    For them, the coastal plain of the ANWR is “the sacred place where life begins”. It’s where the caribou give birth to their young.
    “Human is an enemy for them. So, there’s no footprint up there, no enemy. We want to keep it that way,” Sarah says.
    Sarah is a long-time community advocate against any development in the refuge. She’s worried that oil drilling will disrupt the caribou migration…
    The Gwich’in are determined to preserve their culture and traditions for future generations…
    Over the years, Sarah has represented her community in Washington DC and appeared before the United Nations in New York speaking out against recurring oil drilling proposals…
    After fighting the same battle over and over for decades, Sarah James remains resolute.
    “We are going to win because this is the right thing to do. Everybody knows that.”
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-22/trumps-plan-to-drill-in-alaska-winning-over-some-indigenous/11612340

    let’s unpack a little of the above.
    ABC is clearly with the Democrats’ choice, the Gwich’in:

    28 Mar: KTVA: ‘They’re not the people’: Young blasts Gwich’in ANWR drilling opponents
    Janis Harper and Rhonda McBride contributed information to this story.
    On Tuesday, subcommittee chair Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Calif., convened a hearing at which members first heard from a group of Gwich’in drilling opponents invited by Democrats, then a group including Inupiat backers of drilling invited by Republicans…
    “I want to believe the people,” Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) said. “Not the Gwich’in, because they’re not the people; they’re 400 miles away. I’m talking of the Inuits that live there. That’s their land, it’s always been their land. You totally ignore them.”
    Young alluded to his own Gwich’in ties through his late wife before continuing his critique.
    “That’s my tribe,” Young said. “My wife was Gwich’in; my daughter’s a Gwich’in. We have a few Gwich’in that make a living out of this by promoting something that’s wrong, by saying we want to take away from their brothers — that’s wrong.”
    After accusing drilling opponents of having “divided two tribes” Young turned to his fellow committee members, imploring them to focus on Inupiat testimony regarding ANWR.
    “Listen to the people that live there; if not, you’re not representatives at all,” Young said. “This is all that I ask you to do: listen to them, hear what they say, not someone who’s living in Fairbanks, not someone that’s not killed a caribou in 10 years and probably doesn’t have a [hunting] license.”…
    https://www.ktva.com/story/40215667/theyre-not-the-people-young-blasts-gwichin-over-anwr

    ABC team traveling with Fran Mauer:

    7 Aug: BiologicalDiversity.org: Press release: Lawsuit Challenges New Trump Administration Land Swap to Bulldoze Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge
    Contacts – includes: ***Fran Mauer, Alaska chapter — Wilderness Watch…

    31 Jan 2018: SeattleTimes: Environmental groups sue to block road through Alaska refuge
    By DAN JOLING, AP
    Nine environmental groups sued the U.S. government Wednesday to block a land trade that could lead to construction of a road through a national wildlife refuge in Alaska that is habitat for migrating waterfowl…
    “Secretary Zinke has violated his most sacred responsibility to the American people,” ***Fran Mauer, a retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildlife biologist and Alaska representative of Wilderness Watch, said in the announcement of the lawsuit filed in Anchorage.

    ABC says up to 70% of Americans are against the drilling, and has Mauer agreeing:

    11 Feb: AnchorageDailyNews: Alaskans support opening the ANWR coastal plain
    (Authors: Rebecca Logan is president and CEO of the Alaska Support Industry Alliance. Kara Moriarty is president and CEO of the Alaska Oil and Gas Association. Marleanna Hall is executive director of Resource Development Council for Alaska, Inc)
    Polls have consistently shown Alaskans overwhelmingly support responsible oil and gas development on the coastal plain. The diverse interests authoring this column support such development because harvesting our world-class energy resources in this area would help secure Alaska’s future and revitalize our great state.

    Unfortunately, the recent Fairbanks meeting did not demonstrate our memberships’ shared belief that responsible oil and gas development can occur on the coastal plain. At the meeting, activists quickly interrupted the formal presentation, took over the meeting, shouted at officials, and waved banners. It had a mob rule feel with an activist group taking control of the microphone and podium. The conduct of the activists was disrespectful, and portrayed Fairbanks in a poor manner. They ignored the meeting rules, setting a bad precedent in their efforts to disrupt the process. Their actions demonstrate they will use virtually any tactic to obstruct and derail open and fair debate.
    https://www.adn.com/opinions/2019/02/12/alaskans-support-opening-the-anwr-coastal-plain/

    what poll might ABC be referring to?

    3 Dec 2018: NYT: The Race for Alaskan Oil: 6 Key Takeaways
    While Alaskans generally favor drilling in the state, a poll last year by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities showed that 70 percent of registered voters nationwide opposed it in the reserve…

    70% figure now 67% in their more recent, but just as unbelievable, poll:

    26 Sept: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication: Americans oppose drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
    By Matthew Ballew, Anthony Leiserowitz, Seth Rosenthal, John Kotcher and Edward Maibach
    In April 2019, we asked American registered voters whether they support or oppose drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We found that two out of three voters (67%) oppose oil drilling in the ANWR. The number of voters who are strongly opposed to drilling in the ANWR outnumber those who strongly support the policy by nearly four to one. Further, majorities of Democrats (81%) and Independents (64%), and half of Republicans (50%) oppose drilling in the ANWR. Only 17% of Republicans “strongly support” the policy…

    Survey Methodology
    The data included in this report are based on the April 2019 Climate Change in the American Mind survey — a nationally-representative analysis of public opinion on climate change in the United States conducted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. Using the Ipsos (formerly GfK) KnowledgePanel®, a representative online panel of U.S. adults (18+), surveys were conducted March 29 to April 8, 2019 (N = 1,291; including 1,097 registered voters). All questionnaires were self-administered by respondents in a web-based environment…
    https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/americans-oppose-drilling-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-2019/

    16 May: Yale: Politics & Global Warming, April 2019
    By Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach, Seth Rosenthal, John Kotcher, Matthew Ballew, Matthew Goldberg, Abel Gustafson and Parrish Bergquist
    DOWNLOAD THE REPORT
    https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/publications/politics-global-warming-april-2019/

    from Reading notes:
    Democrats – 46%; Independents – 8%; Republicans – 42%.

    The Green New Deal: A broad policy initiative aimed at reducing global warming, the Green New Deal, is supported by a majority of registered voters (69%), including 93% of Democrats, 64% of Independents, and 44% of Republicans.

    67% of registered voters support requiring fossil fuel companies pay a carbon tax.

    69% of registered voters support setting strict CO2 emission limits on existing coal-fired power plants.

    84% of registered voters support providing tax rebates to people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels.

    74% of registered voters support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

    and, if you believe any of that…you must be a CAGW alarmist.

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    pat

    1 Nov: ClimateChangeNews: Madrid to host Cop25 climate talks in December after Chile withdraws
    The talks will take place in Spain’s capital, the UN confirmed, after Chile pulled out amid social unrest
    By Karl Mathiesen and Chloé Farand
    The Polish Cop24 president Michal Kurtyka announced the news on Twitter on Friday. Chile’s environment minister Carolina Schmidt, who will remain Cop25 president despite the change of venue, said UN Climate Change had confirmed the news…
    Spain’s socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez made the offer to his Chilean counterpart Sebastian Piñera, who gratefully accepted on Thursday…

    Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who sailed across the Atlantic to attend Cop25 in Chile, said she will “need some help” to make the crossing back towards Europe over the next few weeks…READ ALL
    https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/11/01/madrid-host-cop25-un-climate-talks/

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  • #
    robert rosicka

    No link sorry but the latest Zanetti cartoon of Scomo and Albo as Teedle Dee and Tweedle Dum sort of sums up Scomo.

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  • #
    pat

    read all:

    31 Oct: ClimateChangeNews: UN biodiversity chief quits. Documents show she had been accused of misconduct
    Cristiana Pasça Palmer resigned before key summit, she faced allegations of discrimination against African staff and intervention in the renewal of her contract
    By Karl Mathiesen
    She said she intended to leave the body on 30 November. On Monday, Andersen wrote to staff that Tanzanian environmental jurist Elizabeth Mrema would be taking over the position on an acting basis from 1 November. Pasça Palmer will go on leave from Friday.
    https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/10/31/un-biodiversity-chief-quit-key-summit-accused-misconduct/

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  • #
    pat

    not a protest group – just a part of the CAGW mob:

    1 Nov: UK Telegraph: MPs bow to Extinction Rebellion demand, as they send out invitations to climate change citizens’ assembly
    By Helena Horton
    MPs have bowed to a demand by activist group Extinction Rebellion as they send out 30,000 invitations to a citizens’ assembly on climate change.
    Six major parliament committees have set up a people’s forum to find out how the electorate wants MPs to save the environment

    The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, Environmental Audit Committee, Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, Science and Technology Committee, Transport Committee; and Treasury Committee will look at how the UK will reach its net zero emissions climate target, and what can be done by members of the public to help reduce carbon emissions.
    The citizens’ assembly has been launched before the dissolution of Parliament, to ensure that the assembly’s report is available to the new Parliament as it begins its work.

    Of the 30,000 who receive invitations, 110 of those who reply saying they are available to take part will be selected to travel to Birmingham and sit on the Assembly. This will be a representative sample of people from all walks of life.
    The addresses have been chosen at random to receive invitations to participate in Climate Assembly UK which will run over four weekends between late January to the middle of March next year…

    Rachel Reeves MP, Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee: “The Climate Assembly UK will advise Parliament on how people want us to meet the net zero target, and suggest policies that the Government can implement to secure success.”…

    Parliament has already accepted another of the group’s demands, by voting to declare a climate emergency.
    The third demand is that “the Government must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025.”…
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/01/mps-bow-extinction-rebellion-demand-send-invitations-climate/

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    pat

    1 Nov: UK Telegraph: Extinction Rebellion protester cleared of criminal damage after arguing her home was under threat from climate change
    By Mike Wright
    An Extinction Rebellion protester has been cleared of criminal damage for spray-painting a council building after successfully arguing she was acting to defend her property.
    Angela Ditchfield was arrested after defacing the headquarters of Cambridgeshire County Council during a protest last December painting two XR symbols onto the building.

    However, Friday the 41-year-old was found not guilty at Cambridge Magistrates’ Court as the bench said she was acting “on the spur of moment to protect land and homes”.
    Ms Ditchfield, from King’s Hedges Cambridge, argued she had a legal excuse to commit the vandalism as she believed there was an immediate threat to her property from climate disaster, a defence that can be used in minor cases of criminal damage.
    The defence is usually envisaged for scenarios where someone breaks a window or door to get into a burning building…

    Delivering their verdict, magistrates said: “We find that you have a very strong and honestly held belief that we are facing a climate emergency.
    “That you acted on the spur of moment to protect land and homes under threat from climate change, believing that immediate protection was necessary, and the action could be said to have been taken to protect property, and that you believed action chosen was reasonable in all circumstances.”
    As the ruling was made in magistrates court it cannot set a legal precedent, but could be used by other members of the protest group as a defence against criminal damage…

    Last week, Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said the protests had cost the police £37 million, led to other investigations being stalled and some policing “not done at all.”…

    Following the verdict, Ms Ditchfield, who has previously stood as a Green Party candidate for Cambridgeshire County Council, said she considered climate change to be “criminal damage to the whole web of life”.
    She added: “I’m happy to have had the chance to expose in court some of our local councils’ roles in that – from threats to build homes on my local park St Albans, to investments in fossil fuels and not making public transport affordable.
    “I’ve tried all the democratic means and they weren’t achieving enough alone. We need more people using civil disobedience to force all levels of government to take the need for climate justice seriously.”
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/01/extinction-rebellion-protester-cleared-criminal-damage-arguing/

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    Robdel

    After ScoMo gave away 1 billion to renewables, I no longer have any faith in him.

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    pat

    sounds reasonable, especially for DW, but Hasselbach only argues from a leftwing perspective and, at the end, suggests the right-wing things (presumably incl questioning anything about CAGW) – are unpopular:

    1 Nov: Deutsche Welle: Opinion: Freedom of speech in Germany — be mainstream or be quiet
    German society is growing increasingly intolerant of dissenting opinions. It is succumbing to dangerous uniform thinking, which undermines democracy, says DW’s Christoph Hasselbach
    French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire is believed to have once said that “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Those who recently interrupted lectures by the founder of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), Bernd Lucke, at Hamburg University should take heed. The phrase goes to the very heart of democracy, namely the principle of free speech. And in today’s Germany, this principle is in more danger than some may think…

    Free speech in jeopardy at German universities
    Bernd Lucke’s case is particularly extreme. After all, protesters don’t take issue with the content conveyed by his lectures in economics, which had to be postponed twice and can only take place under police protection. What they object to is the mere fact that Lucke helped found the AfD — despite the fact that he left the party in 2015, precisely because he found it had shifted too far to the right…
    What is Germany coming to when we cannot even practice free speech at university?…

    Anyone even vaguely critical of migrants being rescued at sea is instantly branded an inhumane monster.
    Despite the fact that everyone knows migrant ships are deliberately made sea-unworthy to necessitate rescue missions. And that this is part of a bigger, well organized trafficking operation from Africa to Europe…

    We are censoring ourselves
    There are similar unwritten, but omnipresent restrictions when it comes to talking about climate change. Anyone who so much as hints at the social dimension of radically changing our lifestyles to combat climate change is treated as a rogue who negates the crisis.
    And any public figure who dares to openly admit to being a carnivore, indulging in long-distance air travel or driving an SUV immediately loses all respect. It is truly paradox. Radical climate activists like Roger Hallam of the Extinction Rebellion movement and the captain of rescue vessel Sea-Watch 3, Carola Rackete, have publicly questioned the merit of representative democracy – and were not shunned…

    If people are too scared to voice dissenting opinions, society becomes lethargic – and robs itself of one of the most important democratic rights we know: The freedom to express unpopular opinions.
    https://www.dw.com/en/opinion-freedom-of-speech-in-germany-be-mainstream-or-be-quiet/a-51086715

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    pat

    1 Nov: ScientificAmerican: Doctors Should Protest Climate Inaction, Top Medical Journal Says
    Health professionals have joined climate protests and organizations have divested from fossil fuels
    by Maya Earls, E&E News
    The editor-in-chief of one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical journals has said doctors and medical professionals should engage in nonviolent protests to address climate change.

    Richard Horton of The Lancet said in a video uploaded by Rubber Republic last week that engaging in these social protests is part of the duty of a doctor. He said that the U.K.-based General Medical Council should be fully supportive of health professionals who engage in climate protests based on its own guidelines on the duties of a doctor.
    “The climate crisis is one of the most, I would say the most, existential crisis facing our communities in the world today,” Horton said…

    Other health organizations including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine and the Royal College of Physicians have committed to divesting from fossil fuels.
    Health professionals have also joined the front lines of protests. In September, 30 doctors protested at the U.K. Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in London. Some of the protesters glued themselves to the building. Doctors for Extinction Rebellion, a climate-focused activist group, says four of its members were arrested.

    More than 200 health professionals marched through London on Oct. 13 to protest government inaction on climate change, according to Doctors for Extinction Rebellion. The group says profound backing from medical professionals goes a long way to increasing support for the cause.
    “This in turn will give the government a strong mandate to act as we feel it must, and empower those MPs who do take this seriously to take centre stage,” the group said on its website…

    Horton wrote in an article posted to The Lancet on Oct. 5 that the United Kingdoms’s scientific community is doing too little to engage the public and politicians in the fight for climate justice. He wrote that unlike the science community, the health community is injecting moral force into the political debate about climate action.
    Margaret Hamburg, chair of the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, echoed his statement in a letter to scientists that same week, according to the medical journal…
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/doctors-should-protest-climate-inaction-top-medical-journal-says/

    1 Nov: Brussels Times: The climate crisis calls for civil disobedience, Belgium’s Princess Esmeralda says
    by Gabriela Galindo
    It is time to use civil disobedience as a central tool in the fight for climate justice and to push politicians into action, a member of the Belgian Royal Family said.
    In a radio interview, Belgium’s Princess Esmeralda said civil disobedience was a powerful tool to make the public conscious about political inaction in the face of the current climate and environmental crises.
    “I think the urgency of the current climate crisis requires it completely, and it is a way to raise awareness, to have more results — since there have not been many at the political level,” the princess told RTBF.

    Princess Esmeralda, the youngest child of King Leopold III and his spouse Lilian, Princess of Réthy, was speaking to the Francophone broadcaster from London, where she recently got arrested for taking part in a protest led by climate activist group Extinction Rebellion.
    The 63-year-old princess, who works as a journalist and documentary filmmaker, was one of several arrested at the sitting on Trafalgar Square on Thursday 10 November and was released on Friday morning…

    The princess acknowledged that the movement for environmental justice gathered mostly white and middle to upper-class activists, and said minorities were more likely to fear the consequences of being arrested or a harsher reaction from police…
    https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/76744/arrest-belgian-princess-civil-disobedience-princess-esmeralda-london-civil-disobedience-extinction-rebellion-activism-king-philippe/

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    pat

    1 Nov: Vice: How Being Middle Class Affects Your Time in Prison
    After a Extinction Rebellion co-founder said he had a great time in jail, critics argued it’s only because of his class – but how much truth is there in that?
    by Nick Chester
    On Monday, Extinction Rebellion co-founder Roger Hallam put his foot in it. Completing a six-week stint on remand after being charged with flying a drone near Heathrow Airport, the 53-year-old told supporters that his time behind bars had been “pretty much as good as it gets”.
    Famously, prison isn’t always so kind to its residents, and critics pointed out that Hallam likely had an easier time inside because of his race and class…

    David disagrees with the notion that prisoners from backgrounds like his have it easier, telling me middle class convicts are frequently met with scorn. “Being middle class in prison doesn’t help at all,” he says. “Well, not if you show any expression of a class distinction. It only generates resentment, with people thinking, ‘You don’t have the credibility to be here; you broke the law on a whim, not out of honest working class need.'”…

    Given that two out of the three ex cons say being middle class actually makes time inside more difficult, with one believing it doesn’t make much difference, why did Hallam appear to have such an easy ride?
    According to former prison guard Neil Samworth, it’s more likely to do with the length of his time inside, the fact he was on remand and the strength of his support network.
    “It doesn’t matter what class he is; he’s not suffered none of the hardships of prison,” he tells me. “A normal person from anywhere in society can do six weeks in prison stood on their head. If you’re only doing that amount of time, you might well end up on the induction wing for most of your time, which is usually quite easy. He’s not going to make any dangerous relationships in that time, he’s not cut off from the outside world, which can make things harder, and he’s got a lot of supporters to write to him. He’s on remand too, which means he’s allowed more visits, so of course it’s going to be easy.”
    https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/43k88p/prison-uk-middle-class-roger-hallam

    1 Nov: Vice: The Companies That Invest in the Earth’s Destruction Must Be Held Accountable
    Protests against BlackRock and a Senate hearing on dark money are part of a growing push to hold the big funders of the climate crisis responsible.
    by Greta Moran
    (BlackRock) The global investment management corporation, responsible for managing $7 trillion worth of assets, is a massive backer of climate destruction, investing billions in new coal plant construction and the deforestation of the Amazon. Earlier this month, an investigation by the Guardian found that BlackRock has $87.3 billion worth of shares in oil, coal, and gas companies.

    BlackRock’s headquarters, a nondescript skyscraper in Manhattan, is usually easy to miss. But —on Tuesday, around 200 activists gathered outside the entrance to protest the company’s major role in financing climate destruction.
    The action was held on the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, the storm that devastated New York City in 2012.
    “We wanted to remind everyone, on the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy, that BlackRock is one of the biggest financiers of these climate-fueled disasters,” Nicole Karsch, an activist at the rally with the Sunrise Movement in New York City, said in an interview…

    Towards the end of the protest, 10 activists, from New York Communities for Change (NYCC), Sunrise Movement, and Extinction Rebellion, blocked the entrance to BlackRock’s headquarters, risking arrest. Across the entrance, the activists displayed a 20 foot banner that depicted two worlds—one in grayscale of flooding and an oil refinery, and another in full color of trees and windmills—and read “BlackRock: Which side are you on?” .
    Some of the groups that protested are part of a larger global campaign called BlackRock’s Big Problem, which also helped organize other actions on Tuesday in Boston and Toronto, building on an escalating series of actions around the world to pressure the company to divest from the climate catastrophe…

    In a recent New Yorker article, longtime environmental activist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben made clear that the global strategy of divestment, which has largely been focused on getting colleges to stop investing in companies that contribute to climate change needs to expand to corporate asset managers and other investors.
    Divestment needs to expand to banks, insurance companies, and asset management companies. “Without them, the fossil-fuel companies would almost literally run out of gas, but BlackRock and Chubb could survive without their business,” he wrote.

    Yet we still don’t have nearly a full picture of the climate crisis’s funding streams, particularly from anonymous sources. This was a focus of a Senate Democrats’ Special Committee on the Climate Crisis hearing Tuesday on “Dark Money and Barriers to Climate Action,” which examined the role of unknown sources of political funding backing the climate crisis.

    In her testimony, Namoi Oreskes, a Harvard professor and American historian of science, explained that while ExxonMobil is on trial for deceiving investors about the climate crisis, it’s still unclear how Exxon’s vast disinformation campaign—one facet of a much larger climate denial information apparatus—is funded.
    “I would like to see Congress subpoena the CEOs of leading fossil fuel corporations and their allies, and question them under oath, as Congress did for tobacco,” Oreskes told the Senate Democrats.

    The influence of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade associations in blocking climate action, including the Clean Power Plan, was another key topic of discussion in the hearing. Ben Cushing, a campaigner with the Sierra Club who attended the hearing to observe, found this information particularly “nefarious because the [U.S] Chamber of Commerce purports to represent all of corporate America.”
    In his role at the Sierra Club, Cushing is involved in the BlackRock’s Big Problem campaign. He sees both the BlackRock protests and the hearing as answering similar needs. “We need to follow the money,” said Cushing, in an interview. “We need to address the role of both the financial industry and dark money groups in propping up the status quo.”
    https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/a358b4/the-companies-that-invest-in-the-earths-destruction-must-be-held-accountable

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    pat

    don’t get it, but maybe some of you will!

    2 Nov: SMH: Peter Hartcher: Sunny side up: Australia can seize a climate of opportunity
    The most important thing to happen in Australian politics this week, and probably in any week since the election, is that Anthony Albanese transformed Labor’s framing of climate and energy. And, as we know from the last dozen years of hard-won experience, you can’t win an election without winning the politics of climate and energy…
    https://www.smh.com.au/national/sunny-side-up-australia-can-seize-a-climate-of-opportunity-20191031-p536cr.html

    WaPo puts “environmental inaction” as the #1 cause, then covers Lebanon, Iraq, Hong Kong, Chile, Spain (Catalonia) – with no hint that was the cause.
    then it’s coverage of the so-called “climate protests” under the heading “Worldwide: 150+ countries”, before finishing off with Russia and Pakistan:

    1 Nov: WaPo: The numbers that help explain why protests are rocking countries around the world
    By Rick Noack
    (Rick Noack currently covers international news from The Washington Post’s Berlin bureau. Previously, he worked for The Post from Washington as an Arthur F. Burns Fellow and from Britain, Australia and New Zealand)
    On the surface, some protests have appeared to be spontaneous outbursts of anger over seemingly minor concerns. But almost all of this year’s major protests have deep roots and are the result of years of mounting frustration over ***environmental inaction, economic troubles, mismanagement, corruption or governmental repression…

    Worldwide: 150+ countries
    The protests began without big fanfare, and at least initially, they almost went unnoticed. In Belgium, 30,000 high school and university students walked out of their classes. In Germany, Switzerland and Australia, others joined the rallies, which soon spread around the world.
    Inspired by Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who skipped classes to launch a one-woman protest in front of the Swedish parliament, predominantly younger protesters demanded more action against climate change.
    Thunberg and others have argued that youth action is needed, because they are the ones who will be most affected by the impact of climate change. With energy-related CO2 emissions still on the rise, there are few indications that world leaders genuinely share their sense of urgency, they argue…
    By September, parallel protests took place in thousands of locations in more than 150 countries.
    The demonstrations have put pressure on governments to take climate demands more seriously. The German government, for instance, hectically passed new measures to decrease emissions amid the widespread protests this fall.
    But many activists argue that more decisive measures are needed. In some cases, frustration with government inaction has emboldened more controversial groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, which have disrupted traffic in a number of capitals, including London and Berlin over prolonged periods of time…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/11/01/numbers-that-help-explain-why-protests-are-rocking-countries-around-world/

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    Travis T. Jones

    Thank you, fossil fuels …

    Good news for older Americans: 70 is the new 60 (but not for everyone)

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/medical-science-60-really-is-the-new-50-2019-10-29

    “Better living conditions, easier work, and better health care are all helping shave years off our effective ages, researchers have said.

    The progress is steady and consistent, they have found.

    Health-wise, older people are 10 years younger than their grandparents.

    “A 70-year-old born in 1960 is predicted to be about as healthy as a 60-year-old born in 1910,” the authors wrote.”

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    Peter Fitzroy

    ABCD

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      AndyG55

      WOW, PF is starting to learn his alphabet !!!

      It is capable of learning.. maybe !!

      Start with basic arithmetic next, little child.

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      AndyG55

      Certainly NO EVIDENCE that CO2 has anything to do with the slight but beneficial warming in the last 150 years, is there PF

      Heck, you can’t even tell us of one single thing that can be scientifically linked to the highly beneficial rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last 40 years..

      except increased plant growth, of course

      You have NOTHING.

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      tom0mason

      And you, Peter Fitzroy are an advocate of ABTS (anything but the sun).

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    Deano

    If you work for any organisation bigger than about 100 people, there’s a good chance you will have seen their ‘Statement of Core Values’ or something similarly termed. It was probably devised by a management consultancy and will have stuff about mutual respect, excellence, dedication etc. You will also have probably been required to take part in some sort of course on anti-bullying, anti sexual harassment and inclusion.

    It’s time we started using these supposed workplace rights to fight back. If nothing else, it might expose these implementations for being a crock of crap – used only to bully conservatives into silence.

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    pat

    even mild criticism of XR is couched in more PR for them:

    1 Nov: PR Week: Flop of the month: Extinction Rebellion risks alienating public
    Extinction Rebellion’s goodwill will soon evaporate if it continues poorly-targeted and uncoordinated attacks that annoy the very people they need on their side.
    by John Harrington
    There’s much to admire about Extinction Rebellion (XR) – the anti-climate-change campaigners certainly know how to generate publicity – but recent actions of some in its name may have done more harm than good…

    Indeed, a YouGov survey showed that most people supported the commuters who dragged a protester off a carriage at Canning Town, and the campaign group apologised for the “regrettable” scenes.

    The fact that it happened in a predominantly working-class area did nothing to improve perceptions of ER as being a mostly white, middle-class indulgence…

    XR can’t afford these backward steps in tackling the most urgent issue of the day.
    https://www.prweek.com/article/1664440/flop-month-extinction-rebellion-risks-alienating-public

    1 Nov: RawlinsReview: Extinction Rebellion protester climbs Big Ben as police call on him to come down (VIDEOS, PHOTOS)
    An Extinction Rebellion activist has sparked a security alert near the UK Houses of Parliament by partially climbing up Big Ben to protest inaction on climate change, as police and construction workers looked on.
    The climber, who appears to be dressed as Boris Johnson, but with a cape, unfurled two banners for the protest movement partway up the tower as police called for him to come down safely.

    Footage shows the man, whom Extinction Rebellion identified as 43-year-old tree surgeon Ben Atkinson, walking and sitting precariously on top of safety netting…
    https://rawlinsreview.com/extinction-rebellion-protester-climbs-big-ben-as-police-call-on-him-to-come-down-videos-photos/

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    pat

    no need for numbers:

    1 Nov: Press&Journal: Highland Extinction Rebellion protesters challenge council to act faster
    by Susy Macauley
    Around 20 protestors from the Highland Extinction Rebellion group picketed Highland Council HQ yesterday morning before a full council meeting.
    Kate MacLachlan, a mental health officer, said the group wanted to put pressure on Highland Council to act faster, having declared a climate emergency in May and formed a climate change panel.
    She said: “We’ve seen very little action so far…

    Councillor Trish Robertson chairs the climate change panel: “We’ve done loads with electric vehicles and we’re looking at encouraging the trials for the hydrogen train to come up north because the line north is never going to be electrified.
    “We’ve got wind, hydro and solar power and now we need to be looking at green transport.”…
    https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/inverness/1878949/highland-extinction-rebellion-protesters-challenge-council-to-act-faster/

    1 Nov: ITV: More climate protests planned for Cambridge this weekend
    They have been organised by Extinction Rebellion, who have gained notoriety for large-scale movements across the country.
    This Saturday will see one protest take place near the Guildhall, called ‘Blood of the Youth’…
    Later in the day, protestors will take to the River Cam in a movement called ‘Red Rebels on the River – Water Scarcity Action’…

    A statement from the force said: “We are aware of a planned protest due to be held in Cambridge on Saturday.
    “A proportionate policing plan is in place, balancing the right to a peaceful protest while ensuring disruption to the wider community is kept to a minimum.”
    https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2019-11-01/more-climate-protests-planned-for-cambridge-this-weekend/

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    pat

    1 Nov: YorkshirePost: Extinction Rebellion protest at York council meeting
    by Emma Ryan
    ***Andreas Heinemeyer, ecologist and Senior Researcher at the University of York, was set to address the council at the meeting to voice concerns over the threat to Askham Bog’s environmental diversity.
    https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/latest-news/extinction-rebellion-protest-at-york-council-meeting-1-10079464

    full of XR stuff, anti-Brexit:

    ***Twitter: Andreas Heinemeyer, Ecologist: terrestrial plant-soil C dynamics & GHGs, measurements & modelling
    TWEET: 30 Oct: So, why not finally consider voting Green? Or simply more of the same? Climate crisis affects how majority will vote in UK election – poll…ETC
    https://twitter.com/AndreasHeinem?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

    Stockholm Environment Institute: Andreas Heinemeyer, senior research associate
    Andreas Heinemeyer is a Senior Research Associate at SEI in York…
    Career
    Andreas is currently PI and leading a long-term Defra project (BD5104) on peatland management and ecosystem services in the UK.
    Andreas joined SEI York in 2002 as a post doctoral researcher within the Centre for Terrestrial Carbon Dynamics (CTCD). In 2008 he joined the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), a follow up of the CTCD and is now leading a Defra consortium on management strategies in UK upland peatland.

    Andreas holds a PhD in Biology on carbon dynamics in the mycorrhizal symbioses from the University of York and works as a part time lecturer at the Centre for Life Long Learning at the University of York and is a frequent speaker at outreach events on the science of climate change.
    Andreas gives regular lectures at the Department of Environment and Geography on the linkages between the carbon cycle and climate change…
    https://www.sei.org/people/andreas-heinemeyer/

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    pat

    1 Nov: MountainWatch: A Snowy October In The Rockies With Well Above Average Snow Falls
    It has been a good month for early season snow falls in the Rocky Mountains with resorts in Colorado, Utah and Alberta, Canada reporting snow totals up to 1.2metres thanks to regular storms over the past few weeks.
    The month finished with a bang with solid snow falls and cold temps combining to produce quality mid-winter powder over the past few days…
    In Canada there have been significant snowfalls in Alberta with record falls earlier in the month and Lake Louise is due to open tomorrow, a week early…
    https://www.mountainwatch.com/Snow-news/a-snowy-october-in-the-rockies-with-well-above-average-snow-falls/

    2 Nov: UK Express: UK snow forecast: Big freeze to grip Britain as snow strikes in less than a week
    THE UK is bracing for snow blanket parts of the country in just under a week as bitterly-cold air sweeps across Britain at the start of November.
    by Darren Hunt
    Snow is forecast to hit northern parts of the country in just under a week according to the latest weather charts, with BBC forecasters warning of “colder” air moving in. Bone-chilling Arctic air is also expected to sink southwards, forcing Brits to dig out their winter coats, as thermometers tumble at the start of November…
    https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/1198923/UK-snow-forecast-weather-Met-Office-BBC-Weather-snow-chart-latest-map-this-week-November

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    Morphy

    Trouble is… they don’t “just talk”, they block streets and glue themselves to cars and bus/trains, etc.

    THAT sort of ‘terrorist-actisvism’ must be stopped, and stopped hard!

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    She won’t be owlright, mate. As long as Ozzies are forced to vote at gunpoint in a collectivist gauntlet RTFM voting parody of democracy with NO libertarian party, you’re doomed. In the US we have a Bill of Rights and the econazis keep coming within our 4 million votes’ of taking over the country. Fortunately, straight elections allow LP spoiler votes to flake off the Comstock race suicide conservatives and Ban Electricity econazis, kind of like Fabian agorist wolves changing the outcomes for a herd of reindeer. The result is following a Fisher-Pry substitution curve at the steep end of its increase. Our 4 million votes in 2016 changed to 16 million in 2018, and we are pro-energy, pro choice (like British, Irish and Canadians voters), and not into any variant of socialism. Y’all can judge by observing how this plays out, and maybe plan accordingly. But collectivized gauntlet elections are a smelly albatross, mind you.

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    Penguinite

    Perhaps not more Laws but we need to stop or at least contain Law fare! Initiating litigation that is not necessarily designed to win just frustrate!

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      Kalm Keith

      Misuse of the legal system as a means of attack needs to be “disincentivised”.

      Lawyers may claim that they have a responsibility to act without fear normal favour on all client requests but I believe that using the law for obvious activist purposes may be an abuse of the legal system.

      Fight back.

      KK

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    Whalehunt Fun

    Disagree, gaol sentences throwing them in with the molesters and violent people would stop the antisocial behaviour and provide entertainment as well.I so enjoyed the wailing and snivelling of the greenpeace people that climbed onto Mr Putins oil rig in the arctic ocean.

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    Serge Wright

    The issue of this new type of PC driven industrial blackmail is now becoming out of control and action is definitely needed. Sky news and 2GB are good examples where major sponsors are bullied by green activists who encourage community wide boycotts of their products unless they remove their commercial associations. The aim here is to send these non-conforming media outlets broke and therefore remove the spread of their anti-propaganda that threatens the green extremist’s own goals of creating a socialst totalitarian state. Tough laws are needed and judges need to ensure tough sentences are handed down.

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      Kalm Keith

      “Tough laws are needed and judges need to ensure tough sentences are handed down”

      That’s difficult when so many judges have been appointed “because” of their political bent.

      KK

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