Climate skeptics are terrorists now (the “terror”is talking about coal)

We can tell skeptics are winning by the scale of the panic

Labor made a “big” concession this week and it has triggered the Anti-carbon Tribe. Anthony Albanese dared to concede that coal might have a future but only with impossible fantasy carbon capture limits. In his horror at this, Bernard Keane of Crikey.com puts forward his best scientific argument — essentially that 50% of Australians who don’t hate coal like he does, are ignorant denialist terrorists who vote for pork barrelling representatives who are willing to “blow up their own government”.

As usual, he is projecting his own destructive politics onto those who disagree. He aims to silence debate through personal denigration, to win an argument through character assassination, and to continue being (in his terms) a debate-denialist who pretends that tens of thousands of skeptical engineer’s and geologist’s and meteorologist’s opinions should be mocked and ignored. He’s also a voter-denialist suggesting that the representatives of half of Australia could not possibly represent a genuine point of view. They work as agents of  “Murdoch”.

Bernard Keane promotes the science of tribal namecalling

Bernard Keane, Crikey.com

Labor offers to deal with terrorists in climate wars

The worst possible outcome would be … offering to negotiate:

In offering bipartisanship on energy, Labor is offering to do a deal with the ‘terrorists’ who have thwarted all forms of climate action for years.

Cherry-pick a few hot years, ignore 4.5 billion, and namecall:

After the second hottest year on record globally, the hottest year on record in Australia, our second hottest summer ever after 2018-19, an unprecedentedly catastrophic summer of bushfires and record-breaking Arctic and Antarctic temperatures, Labor has opted to, in effect, surrender on climate to the denialists of the Coalition.

It’s not that Australians voted for people who disagree with Bernard, it’s just a big conspiracy:

By abandoning any interest in a National Energy Guarantee, Anthony Albanese will position Labor as weaker on climate action than Malcolm Turnbull, who at least sought to include both energy security and emissions reduction within his energy policy framework before another right-wing/Murdoch putsch forced him out.

When Labor sends carbon credits to Big Bankers, and giant multinational conglomerates for expensive ineffective methods of carbon reduction, that’s “accepting the science”. When Tony Abbott designs a scheme to pay any business that can reduce carbon cheaply, that’s “pork barrelling”.

In the Coalition’s hands, direct funding ends up being treated as a pork barrel, handed to key supporter groups like farmers, or to its donors.

Like most religious believers, Keane only cares about carbon reduction when it suits his politics. Carbon Capture is useless, but so are carbon emission taxes. Direct funding of carbon reduction reduces carbon at $14 a ton — 300 times more effective per dollar than the Carbon Tax.

For Keane, the point of “carbon taxes” is to send funds to fellow lefty dependents, not to change carbon emissions.

We know how far left Turnbull was because of how much the extreme far left still admire him:

As Malcolm Turnbull correctly put it, these people operate like terrorists, intent on blowing up their own government, with the support of News Corp, if anyone tries to address climate change. You can’t do any sort of deal with them. That merely rewards terrorists.

The people trying to “blow up the government” were the panic merchants who overthrew a 90 seat landslide winner because the ABC told them he was unelectable.

9.8 out of 10 based on 83 ratings

192 comments to Climate skeptics are terrorists now (the “terror”is talking about coal)

  • #
    PeterS

    Typical up-side-down world. The real terrorists are the climate change alarmists. Enough said.

    510

    • #
      el gordo

      ‘Labor has opted to, in effect, surrender on climate to the denialists of the Coalition.’

      Keane is out of touch with political reality post Covid. Albo said that he wasn’t against coal fired carbon capture, he probably assumed it could be turned into fertiliser.

      I want a coal fired power station in Dubbo.

      260

      • #
        Annie

        I want a new HELE one at Hazelwood…

        400

        • #
          Ted O’Brien.

          At Hazelwood? Does HELE work with brown coal?

          61

          • #
            Annie

            Dunno, but if woodchip pellets can be shipped from the USA to feed Drax in Yorkshire, which sits on plentiful coal, then maybe good coal can be shipped from NSW to Hazelwood?!

            200

            • #
              AndyG55

              NSW is the state with the deficit of coal fired power stations. Regularly getting power from Queensland

              First of 2 or 3 new HELE coal fired power stations should be in NSW somewhere.

              180

            • #
              Kalm Keith

              Too much logic there Annie.

              60

          • #
            Graeme No.3

            The Germans claim to be able to run a powerstation of lignite (brown coal) with emissions of 800kg CO2 per MWh. Compare that with the old Hazelwood at 1360-1390kg. per MWh.
            Building a lower emission station in Victoria would then enable the others to progressively reduce their emissions of CO2 by 31 to 35%.

            80

        • #
          sophocles

          The type of coal used doesn’t matter.

          HELE plants are anti-life. HELE means High Efficiency Low Emissions
          So called Carbon Capture is the Low Emissions.

          CO2 is the Gas of Life – all life, including ours, depends on it. 20,000 years ago — the coldest part of the last glaciation — atmospheric CO2 fell to below 190 ppmv or c. 180 ppmv. That’s a little too close to extinguishing all Life on Planet Earth for comfort: at or below 150ppmv, plants die.

          If the plants die, all animal life dies. All.

          We survived that glaciation, thankfully.

          I don’t mind the HE (High Efficiency) but I’m against the LE — so-called Carbon Capture. We can clean the exhausts of most of the other pollution but leave the CO2 alone. Anyone who advocates Carbon Capture doesn’t know what they’re doing and is anti-life —like Extinction Rebellion*, Our food (= crops = plants) need CO2. Most of them, if not all, evolved when CO2 was about 900ppmv – 1200ppmv (late Cretaceous). Anything much less than that level, means they’re effectively starving. Ergo: 415ppmv is way better for them than anything remotely approaching 150 ppmv. It’s still hungry times for them but not quite as badly as it has been.

          Emit More Carbon. The world needs it now – LIFE needs it now.
          (Buy a big SUV or three and fly everywhere today)
          For electicity: go nuclear. LFTR is clean, safe and forever.

          * If Extinction Rebellion wants to go extinct, we could let them. But I draw the line before/at actively helping them with that aim.

          181

          • #

            sophocles,

            the LE part of HELE does not mean carbon capture and sequestration, and in fact, it has nothing at all to do with CCS.

            HELE means the plant is high efficiency (the HE part of the acronym) and that higher efficiency means that the power plant operates more efficiently (and this is the furnace/boiler part of the process, and means it burns at a much higher temperature, and the water is turned to a higher temp, higher pressure steam more efficiently) so the plant itself as a whole burns less coal to deliver more generated power, and that burning less coal means lower emissions. (the LE part of the acronym)

            Not one single large scale coal fired power plant on the Planet operates CCS.

            Tony.

            340

            • #
              Jonesy

              Spot on, Tony. The supercritical part will confuse.. The entire cycle operates at a temp and pressure above the critical point. Old technology but not many here in Australia.

              As my lecturer used to tell me, coal is way too cheap here to build such a station. In Victoria brown coal is dirt cheap hence no need for efficiency…the same inefficiency used to shut them down. Ironic!

              200

              • #
                Bill In Oz

                I remember reading back in the 1980’s that brown coal was about 40-50% moisture and that this was why it was inefficient compared to black coal.

                92

              • #
                AndyG55

                Correct, Bill !

                They actually use some of the waste heat to dry the brown coal before firing it.

                100

              • #
                Melbourne Resident

                For your information Hazelwood was aware of the inefficiency of having to evaporate all that moisture whilst burning the coal and tried sun drying the coal for a while after digging it up – but the double handling was less efficient than simply burning it direct. I audited Hazelwood before it was sold off and found that it was really on the edge for emissions – sox and nox – we didnt worry about CO2 then.

                50

              • #
                Rob Kennedy

                I remember reading somewhere that Sir John Monash at the end of the First World War became very interested in Germany’s brown coal fired power stations and as “booty of war” took back to Australia the technology to make brown coal work efficiently in furnaces to produce steam. He became head of the State Electricity Commission in 1920. ‘According to his biographer Geoffrey Serle: “[i]n the 1920s Monash was broadly accepted, not just in Victoria, as the greatest living Australian”‘ Wikipedia.
                Where are men like this today?

                80

            • #
              sophocles

              Thank you Tony. I stand corrected.

              This is what I saw:
              Deploying high efficiency, low emission (HELE) coal-fired power plants is a key first step along a pathway to near-zero emissions from coal with carbon capture, use and storage
              https://www.worldcoal.org/reducing-co2-emissions/high-efficiency-low-emission-coal

              I did a fitz — read but did not wait to fully comprehend.

              100

              • #
                sophocles

                But Carbon Capture and Storage is NOT off the agenda: some Norwegian “carbophobes” — as tallbloke so aptly calls them — do have plans: quite deep plans although in Tallbloke’s opinion “doomed to failure.”

                If Prince Charles influences the WEF (the Davos crowd aka the World Economic Forum) carbo-phobia could find some adequate traction/finance despite tallbloke’s negativity.

                The elites are sufficiently dumb to do it … and HRH is known for being somewhat wacky.

                20

              • #
                bobl

                There are ways to do CCS profitably, You can scrub maybe 80% of the CO2 out of the 30% lower CO2 exhaust of a HELE plant by dissolving it in water, the CO2 laden water can then feed a greenhouse network to grow food, or the CO2 can be released under corn or sugar cane fields where the plants turn the CO2 into food. Jo, note the article on how well Corn fields draw down CO2, combine that with the scrubbing process and abracadabra. CCS.

                The dangerous (to life) idea of burying concentrated CO2 is a lefty pipe dream, but sequestration in plants is a harmless, profitable idea that no-one except a lefty could dispute, and leftys will only dispute it because they hate the idea that someone might make a profit.

                So HELE gives you 30% and corn sequestration gives you maybe 70% of the balance (50%) for a total of 80% reduction. And the output is clean FOOD/Fodder. There is no chance that any renewables can beat that on a lifecycle basis.

                While I don’t subscribe to the catastophic warming claptrap, I’m all for pairing power stations with farms to deliver CO2 enhanced growing at a bargain price.

                20

            • #
              Kalm Keith

              Thanks Tony.

              That needed fixing.

              30

      • #
        Senex

        He produces his own verbal fertiliser

        80

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s t*******t.

    Crikey you’ve got some nutters over there! Please don’t send ’em here – we’ve got enough already.

    150

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Funnily enough, sometimes it seems after all the madness has died down, in a hypothetical outcome, i see a zombie apocalypse type landscape, with sceptics victorious, but heavily armed….styr, slr, armalite..take your pick.

      While no one wants conflict, I suspect we may be in a state where society may collapse for a while if you let yhe lefties have thier heads, and it may get ugly…..

      I think the unhinged lefties and the CHAZ debacle in the US shows a strong communist insurgency active in the USA. It may happen here too, climate may just be the starting point.

      The elite use conflict as a way of re engineering society, “from chaos, order”…

      111

  • #
    Roger

    “Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman Zion Lights quits green movement to become lobbyist for nuclear power saying: ‘I changed my mind'”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8459785/Extinction-Rebellion-spokeswoman-quits-green-movement-lobbyist-nuclear-power.html

    190

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      Zion admitted she was wrong. She said:
      “Surrounded by anti-nuclear activists, I had allowed fear of radiation,
      nuclear waste and weapons of mass destruction
      to creep into my subconscious. I realised I had been duped into anti-science sentiment all this time.”
      Intelligent people do change their minds sometimes when they become better informed.

      It’s a process which should be welcomed.
      Doing so ensures that this whole scary nuclear power scam is exploded.
      James Lovelock the noted ‘environmentalist’, who discovered the Ozone hole,’
      Has for decades championed nuclear power as essential for modern civilisation.

      345

      • #
        John in Oz

        Intelligent people become informed before they make up their mind.

        It’s a bit rich of her to suggest that she is intelligent after being the mindless drone spouting anti-science bulldust.

        100

        • #
          Bill In Oz

          John that is what should happen ideally.But almost all of us have grown up surrounded by some sort of worldview which may be informed by facts or informed by misinformation. For example I as a boy was indoctrinated by the Roman Catholic church. And grew up in a community of complete believers. But as gradually discovered the facts I about that church’s history I changed my views. Clearly by her own admission, this has happened to her.

          PS In my experience, it is the unintelligent who do not change their views. They are completely confident in their own ignorance.

          64

          • #
            Rob Kennedy

            Intelligence is overrated. Kerry Packer once said of someone “he is the most intelligent F***wit I have ever met.”

            20

            • #
              Orson

              Intelligence is over-rated in the same sense that cultural values of life and flourishing matter most. Otherwise, death doesn’t care about you or your values!

              20

        • #
          sophocles

          At least Zion Lights is honest. That does her credibility a lot of good.

          I hope her new proselytizing for nuclear is for modern nuclear such as LFTR rather than the dangerous (and incredibly expensive) HPWR (High Pressure Water-cooled) Reactors. Fortunately, nobody seems to be building the reactors of the 1950s and 1960s designs today. Maybe we owe that to Fukishima…

          40

          • #
            sophocles

            That’s one convert, several gazillion to go … 😀

            50

            • #
              bobl

              This isn’t unusual, as the kiddies age they come to understand the responsibilities of parenthood and their wordviews change. What is the saying – paraphrasing.
              In your twenties you’d have to be heartless to not be a socialist, in your fifties you’d have to be brainless to be a socialist.

              Socialism is all about “Feelings of righteousness” Capitalism is about the “Facts of Righteousness”.

              40

        • #
          Graham Richards

          Maybe she saw some photographs of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. Both flattened by A bombs. According to anti nuclear lobbies those 2 cities are no go zones for 250,000 years.
          All it takes is a ( very) little research to get to the truth.

          00

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      We know someone on this blog who had a similar moment of truth.

      91

      • #
        Bill In Oz

        [snip]

        36

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Jo.

        22

      • #
        bobl

        Yes, me.
        Back when Kevin the menace was looking to get into the PM office and was proposing to extract 11 billion PA from our back pockets. I was a devoted CO2 reduction proponent, saving the planet and all that. Even though I was an Engineer, I had ashamedly never bothered to check the math. Because big Kev was proposing to raid my back pocket though I decided to check the math on CO2. I did what Engineers call boundary test studies.

        For those that don’t do engineering, a boundary test is generally a worst case study, you take the worst case of each parameter and apply them together. If your bridge survives then you know its going to work.

        So a simple boundary test for CO2 warming is to take all the observed warming since the little ice age – assume its all due to CO2 (Worst case) and calculate the climate sensitivity.

        When I worked through this I got the number 1.4 (Degrees per doubling) when the alarmists (Flannery et al) were claiming “Up to 6 degrees”. The IPCC were however only claiming half was CO2 induced so using the IPCC value of 50% I got 0.7C per doubling. So worst case of 1.4, probable case of 0.7 didn’t sound like the apocalypse I was being sold and my journey to the light side was complete.

        Since then I’ve applied some simple engineering math time after time to the claims of alarmists and almost all of their claims violate the first law, Energy cannot be Created or Destroyed, Just transformed from one form to another. Climate science math keeps creating energy from nothing, they ignore energy that is transformed from one form to another

        For example even the most basic climate science belief – the idea that outgoing longwave light must EQUAL incoming shortwave light is a fanciful nightmare, they have defined the earths radiative systems “NORMAL” unforced SITUATION as a perpetual motion machine.

        Outgoing Longwave light MUST be LESS that incoming Shortwave Light which is of course exactly as it is, we are told by 0.6W per square meter (wpsm) out of 340 wpsm or 0.17% making climate 99.83% conservative (or 99.83% efficient)

        The idea that the Outgoing light is 99.83% of Incoming light (IE that the system is 99.83% efficient) is frankly verging on the impossible as far as I’m concerned. The Losses HAVE TO BE more than 0.17% (and they are). But Climate Science blunders on, believing the impossible idea that “climate” should be EVEN MORE than 99.83% efficient.

        This means Climate Science is wrong, I know it’s wrong because the underlying assumptions are wrong. Climate can’t be 100% conservative, IR out going light can NEVER be equal to Incoming shortwave and 99.83% efficiency is equally impossible.

        You can’t unknow stuff, once you undertake to do the math it becomes clear that what the climateers say is in fact physically impossible, the trip to scepticism is one way.

        So give this woman her credit, like me she finally did the math.

        30

  • #
    Crakar24

    I smell a rat

    30

  • #
    Bill In Oz

    Bernard Keane is a [snip] And Crikey.com.au is extreme left radical fringe [snip]
    So far left that I have not read of their rubbish for years.

    But when I did look on their website I found this interesting article :

    “The government won’t go green after COVID-19 — and the public won’t care”
    By Belinda Noble..
    It’s a cry of fear and panic as she realises that their global warming fake scare campaign
    Has been over run and blitzed by the Covid 19 Pandemic in the minds of almost all Australians
    Yes, that’s right Belinda !

    You’ve lost the game and the match.

    Best stay home and isolated so you don’t get infected and cry in your pillow.
    https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/06/23/climate-change-action-after-coronavirus-pandemic/

    126

    • #
      sophocles

      We can hope, Bill, we can hope.

      The lockdowns around the world exposed the Climate Change racket as the racket it is.

      51

  • #
    Komrade Kuma

    Bernard Keane is the epitome of the cadre of humanities graduates whose notion of critical thinking is to not just criticize bu vilify anuone who disagrees whith whatever he sighns up to. He has no objective, evidentiary basis to be a climate change obsolutist but, hey, its the idoeological truth and must be advanced until death he doth depart us.

    According to Wikipedia:-

    “He is also the author of several books dealing with politics and related issues, including Surveillance (2015),[2] War On The Internet,[3][4] and A Short History Of Stupid (with Helen Razer).[5]

    Prior to his work with Crikey, Keane studied history at the University of Sydney, and then worked as a public servant and a speechwriter in transport and communications.”

    Now ain’t that the perfect CV for someone to vilify scientists and engineers about the sciemtific theory and facts regarding so called ‘climate change’. / SARC

    I don’t think so.

    He is certainly a good communicator and good on him but I guess its all a bit like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in that while he may be able to perfectly communicate his understanding of ‘climate change’ (‘velocity’) the converse reality is that he has not got a frigging clue about what it all means or what the applicable science or reliable data is (‘position’).

    240

    • #
      Mal

      A short history of stupid, an autobiography I assume??

      50

      • #
        Komrade Kuma

        Who? Him or me? 🙂

        (Just getting in before Nick Stokes does)

        20

        • #
          Komrade Kuma

          “A Short History of Stupid” (with Helen Razer).

          Hmmm is that a tautology, self dprecation or parody?

          It would sure take some critical thinking to sort that out.

          20

      • #
        sophocles

        Wonderful!

        Brilliant in fact …
        And he sees no … umm … personal parody at all?

        No, of course not! It’s always “other people” innit? 😀

        20

  • #
    Graeme No.3

    They are panicking. There is little public interest in Climate Change© as many of their predictions have failed to come true e.g. Hansen’s predictions (32 years ago) that world temperatures would rise 3-7℃ by the 2020’s, and sea level rise would swamp The Maldives and parts of Manhattan e.g. Wall Street by 2018. Have you heard of Wall Street underwater (as distinct from water on the brain)?
    World temperatures haven’t risen much at all (they have to talk in hundredths of a degree when estimates of the temperature of the Earth range from 14.0 to 15.5℃ (12℃ when the Coming Ice Age was the cause célèbre)**. The 2 things they have succeeded in is convincing the general public that hot days in summer are caused by CO2, and that any climate disaster MUST be due to Climate Change©, which in rare cases might be correct but not always due to implied warming.

    **And following on from Zoë Phin’s idea, the world hasn’t got more than 7℃ (or possibly 9℃) colder in the various Ice Ages or if you like not below 268K; that being the worse case makes me wonder how climatologists can claim 292K minus 269K = 33K.

    331

    • #

      Agreed Graeme. They are afraid all the money has left the room….

      272

      • #
        sophocles

        They are afraid all the money has left the room….

        That’s an opportunity for the Sceptical side! We’d be silly to let it pass.

        72

    • #
      Travis T. Jones

      Here’s a dud prediction:

      24 Jun 1988, – The Miami News at Newspapers.com
      “At the same time, heat would cause inland waters to evaporate more rapidly, thus lowering the level of bodies of water such as the Great Lakes.”

      https://realclimatescience.com/2018/04/thirty-years-of-the-james-hansen-clown-show/

      2020: Great Lakes waters in May set record highs, highest water in 102 years possible by July

      https://www.mlive.com/weather/2020/06/great-lakes-waters-in-may-set-record-highs-highest-water-in-102-years-possible-by-july.html

      120

      • #
        Greg in NZ

        NIWA (National Institute of Weather & Atmosphere) have been shrieking and wailing the past few years about the ‘new normal drought’ we are supposedly in – then the rains came: winter weather will do that.

        This is the same outfit which has been predicting the end of snow and ice for the Southern Alps, except they’ve been very quiet the last 2 years as glaciers have been accumulating and advancing, not that you’d know by their press release headlines – hidden deep in the small print is the reluctant giveaway that Nature is not conforming to their theoretical models: weather will do that… or maybe it’s the sun.

        130

        • #
          Greg in NZ

          For reasons of accuracy, NIWA’s acronym stands for National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, or to be more precise –

          Numpties Incorrect Wild Accusations.

          100

          • #
            sophocles

            Ah, you’ve come to know them
            … quite well, I see!

            They’ve lost their Solar Remote Control so they have a lot of relearning/catching up to do.

            For all the Aussies on the blog: NIWA is NZ’s version of your BOM … I shouldn’t need to say anymore other than may all the gods help us.

            I’ve got a surplus copy of Davidson’s The Weatherman’s Guide to the Sun 2nd Ed (I’m reading my new 3rd ed at the moment) so maybe I should send the 2nd ed to them? They do need all the help they can get … 😀

            I like your Accusation of NIWA’s prone-ness to error. Maybe it’s more like Numpties Incorrect Wild Absurdities — there doesn’t seem to be enough research, which they are supposed to do.

            80

            • #
              sophocles

              prone-ness, in the interests of gooder English, should be propensity

              That’s two brain-farts today. Doing well …

              40

              • #
                PeterPetrum

                Prone-ness is quite nice though!

                10

              • #
                sophocles

                Yes. They’re “flat out documenting the climate” … at least they should be as it’s my taxes (and Greg’s) they’re incinerating … although they (NIWA) are not quite as extravagantly bad in their group-think as your BoM.

                00

              • #
                Greg in NZ

                The new PPE: Propensity (for) Proneness (a la) Extraordinaire?

                Admittedly I’ve met NIWA staff out in the field (along the coast) who are decent folk enthusiastic about life; however (!) it’s the likes of Ben Noll & Chris Brandelino, climate fundamentalist preachers imported from the USA hell-bent on ‘enlightening’ we mere Hobbitses re the impending (ie. mythological) Climocalypse, that gets my goat.

                They may be media savvy and know all the correct political jargon “moving forward”, yet their lack of first-hand local knowledge gleaned from decades out in the elements is all too obvious. Cold hot calm windy dry downpour dusty blizzard is what we call ‘Tuesday’. 🙂

                00

      • #
        Analitik

        Someone should try to explain current locust plagues in Africa/Asia and South America in the context of perennial drought (they only metamorphosize from the normal grasshopper form when there are especially wet conditions during breeding)

        20

        • #
          Environment Skeptic

          Agreed.
          If the meandering jet stream keeps its recent habit of undulating wildly, we could see a lot more of the wet events/conditions you mention Analitik.

          10

  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    Carbon capture is a pipe dream, dreamed up by green academics and desk scientists.
    Anyone with the slightest knowledge/experience in engineering would know the difficulties of such a process. Carbon capture just isn’t going to work without huge aditional costs to the price of electricity making it’s production as such unfeasible. And that’s just what the greens want.
    GeoffW

    310

    • #
      el gordo

      Instead of pumping the CO2 into old mine shafts, would it be possible to convert it into a product to be sold?

      60

      • #
        Dave

        Maybe a CO2 for plant food
        Just release it in the atmosphere!

        290

      • #
        John H of Pelican Waters

        A Welshman once told me of a project to incorporate carbon dioxide from burning coal in plasterboard. It turned out that the product (for whatever reason) was too radioactive to put into people’s homes.

        62

        • #

          Interesting. Got any links to go with that John?

          71

          • #
            James Murphy

            Not sure about the CO2, but radioactive elements tend to be concentrated into the fly ash. it’s definitively not Chernobyl, but it is measurable. The same applies to oil and gas processing equipment, it needs to be inspected for NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material) before people work on it (ahh, safety training…).

            When I worked in Bass Strait, they would start a new well by pulling a lot of the old casing and tubing out first. There was a gentleman who used to appear when we were doing this, and his job was to inspect each ‘joint’ of casing, and record their radioactivity levels. Needless to say, the chances were very high that one would die from old age before dying from anything related to these levels of radioactivity (assuming some common sense with personal hygiene, and having no predilection to lick slightly radioactive things.)

            120

          • #
            Furiously curious

            I vaguely remember an article a year or two ago, about truck tankers, transporting something in the fracking areas in the mid west US, being very radio-active. They were being tested at some depot. I think it was an anti fracking article?

            11

      • #
        glen Michel

        I use the stuff to gas my beer. Also good for making “dry ice”. Great thing this CO2 and I just love it when I have a few young greenie types around and I spray it into the air. Really freaks them out.

        240

        • #
          AndyG55

          “Also good for making “dry ice””

          Not just “good”, but totally essential.

          In fact, the only possible way of making dry ice is to use CO2 😉

          130

          • #
            glen Michel

            Just like the coooll sublimation effect. Good when you turf a lump into water. Most kids are astounded.

            60

        • #
          sophocles

          Glen Michel said:

          love it when I have a few young greenie types around and I spray it into the air

          Do they go all shades of red and purple from trying to hold their breath and not inhale any of it?

          That would be really worth seeing 😀

          40

      • #
        TedM

        Like dry ice?

        30

      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        Is it possible to compress it and make diamonds?
        Or is that another process altogether?

        10

      • #
        sophocles

        `Plant Food’ would be a `product.` “ Available in any quantity for any size of greenhouse. Prices available on line, just add shipping … (Reduced quantities for fields etc)

        .

        00

    • #
      Mal

      We already have carbon dioxide capture
      It’s called Plants, including algae
      From what I’ve seen, they have been doing a marvellous job over last 30 years

      350

      • #
        TdeF

        We breathe oxygen. Where are we going to get more oxygen without carbon dioxide?

        And if we have more carbon dioxide, aren’t we going to get more plants, more food and more oxygen? All things we really need.

        Who made the decision that more carbon dioxide was bad for the planet? If we bury it we will starve and suffocate in a desert. Why?

        Now that’s as logical as anything else I have read. Has anyone actually thought this through?

        Has no one heard of equilibrium?

        151

        • #
          TdeF

          And since 1900 we have 6 billion more people on the planet, an increase of 600% even if most do not own a car or have electricity. Surely that is a problem? Which scientist decided an increase in total carbon dioxide of 0.013% in a century was the biggest and most urgent problem facing humanity?

          It makes a Monty Python parody seem logical.

          As John Cleese said of Stan who wanted to be Loretta, “It’s symbolic of his struggle against reality”.

          In this new unreal world of transgender rights, black rights, black transgender rights, global warming aka climate change and the WHO declaration that Wuhan flu was not infectious, the facts are lost. And science has gone missing.

          181

          • #
            sophocles

            it makes a Monty Python parody seen logical scientific

            60

          • #
            OriginalSteve

            The 5G frequency of around 60GHz can split the 02 molecule , I wonder if we could do similar with CO2?

            Just sayin’…..

            Then we have carbon and O2….all good…

            10

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Excellent Geoff.

      That “desk scientists” subtly helps push us in the right direction.

      Next we need to state that it’s totally unnecessary, futile, circular, and is simply another control mechanism to help focus our attention away from all the skimming.

      KK

      40

    • #
      sophocles

      Mal, of course Carbon Capture is a fantasy. As fast as it was captured (assuming it can be done quickly as in compressing air then chilling it: first out is water, 2nd out is CO2 as dry ice) more would be emitted from the oceans.

      The oceans hold c. 52 times amount in the atmosphere to capture and sequestration would be a fool’s nightmare and dangerous. Lake Nyos in Camaroon took out 4 villages with a CO2 burp. Suffocation in your sleep isn’t nice …

      30

  • #
    AndyG55

    This comes under the heading of….

    Oh dear, how sad, nevermind“…

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/26/11000-renewable-energy-jobs-at-risk-in-australia/

    Pity these jobs, created by subsidies and mandates on renewables, were never going to last once the funding and supply bias disappeared.

    That’s life on the trough, for you.

    190

  • #
    Kalm Keith

    A great post, we need more of this sort of public statement to get the voters thinking.

    The Trumbull quote, more than adequately displays the contempt that the speaker has for his audience.

    “these people operate like terrorists, intent on blowing up their own government, with the support of News Corp, if anyone tries to address climate change”.

    Anyone who could stand and say that simply for the anger and conflict it would generate is not electable.

    KK

    60

    • #
      glen Michel

      Well this Trumball fellow is an odious spiv and probably the most self-absorbed twit that this country has ever had in public office. There are other contenders but as one wit once said he was the smartest unit in the room bar one.

      90

  • #
    a happy little debunker

    See… see how ‘of the centre’ Labor can pretend to be politically – when their lefty support systems in the media is busy attacking them.

    Especially when the chances that Labor will agree with Albo to changing their policy at the National conference is absolutely nil.

    This is all just a smoke screen…

    40

  • #
    Environment Skeptic

    I continue to be skeptical about the environment penguins find themselves in today 🙂

    51

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      I saw four porpoises yesterday.

      Two whales further out.

      No penguins: too hot.

      71

      • #
        TdeF

        Five dolphins in Port Phillip Bay. Lovely. Two days ago. Oblivious to Wu Flu and Global Warming. Chasing fish. No ABC, CSIRO, BOM to tell them about the end of the world.

        The winter solstice has passed. We would know that if the aborigi*es had built anything as amazingly sophisticated as stonehenge. All we have is some rock graffiti and various sacred rubbish dumps called middens. Still they advise us on the weather on their BOM.

        A cold winter in Melbourne but we are told that our freezing summer was the second hottest in history? Reality and the BOM have long parted company.

        252

        • #
          Environment Skeptic

          Ayers rock is a lot more skeptical than Stonehenge. No comparison 🙂

          Way too much global warning. Warning people has gone way too global.

          Hopefully there will be some hot weather this summer. Looking forward to the grapes ripening properly. This year it rained and was tepid when it should have been dry and hot for normal grape ripening weather to happen in Gippsland Au.

          81

        • #
          AndyG55

          “Five dolphins in Port Phillip Bay.”

          Did the police try to nab them, fine them ?

          Or were the dolphins at a protest ?

          121

        • #
          el gordo

          The rock graffiti is a lot earlier than Stonehenge and in my opinion just as precious.

          While we are on the subject of weather, there are big floods in China, but instead I’ll jump to climate in India.

          ‘Sikkim is an Indian state that sits on the Himalayan mountain ranges. Climate alarmists have often argued that the Himalayan region is highly susceptible to dangerous warming. Data the report offers from Sikkim challenge that.

          ‘While climate reconstructions for late summer temperatures in Sikkim show slightly over 1° C of warming from 1850 to 2008, they also show a “slight cooling trend [about 0.2° C] since 1705,” pronounced cooling (nearly 2°C) after the late 1960s, and the highest temperatures around 1825.’ (WUWT)

          61

          • #
            TdeF

            Is the graffiti precious only because it is old?

            The 600 French neolithic cave paintings of 20,000 years ago were fantastic, realistic, dynamic, informative, amazing. And that is just one cave.

            Stonehenge was also a feat of massive group organization, astrological observations, heavy engineering, boats and rafts, mining, excavation, metal tools and had a useful purpose as an accurate clock. And it spoke of a enlightened class made possible by the discovery and exploitation of agriculture. As were the pyramids of the Giza plain.

            And the incredible paintings and engravings of the Cosquer caves near Marseille, now 120 metres under water due to Climate Change caused obviously by old neolithic petrol engines. We only have the monochrome basic art of nomadic hunter gatherers with wooden weapons with no metal and no cloth or twine or needles or shoes. Or natural enemies. Australia was the one continent where man was the apex predator. I have never read this anywhere, but it must have been very boring.

            102

            • #
              Furiously curious

              Have you come across Gobekli Tepe in Turkey? Not astronomical, but close to the scale of Stonehenge, and 6-7000 years older. Built by nomads, with no enlightened class or domesticated agriculture! A theory is that civilisation came from ritual. I cant find my fav doco on it, but this is a start. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMuc0d_f9ug

              Also the Bradshaw or Gwoin Gwoin art in the Kimberley is very very old. No one knows how to fit it into the time lines. Possibly pre ice age. Very sophisticated and beautiful.

              Girls on the Avenue. 10000 – 30000 BC.
              https://www.flickr.com/photos/85824847@N00/48221749641/in/photostream/

              60 000yrs = 25 million nights sitting around campfires, beating sticks. Existence got bored.

              50

              • #
                TdeF

                Excellent. Thanks. See my fuller response at #23. I find if I follow a link when typing, the comment is put at the end.

                21

              • #
                TdeF

                And when I was holidaying the beautiful Freycinet Park on the East Coast of Tasmania on Great Oyster Bay, there was a black layer in the exposed sandy cliff. That layer was from thousands of years of oyster shells left by ab*rigines.

                In fact the early settlers mined this black layer to make lime based mortar for their buildings.

                It’s one thing to like oysters, but to live on a diet of oysters and wallabies for thousands of years would be just unbelievably depressing. What’s for dinner tonight? Just eat your oysters and wallaby. Bored? It redefines bored. Nothing but nature. Nothing. And nowhere to go, nothing to read and no cricket bat.

                92

              • #
                el gordo

                At the start of the Holocene the first signs of civilisation began to stir in Gobekli Tepe.

                https://www.livescience.com/25855-stone-age-beer-brewery-discovered.html

                30

              • #
                Dennis

                TdeF that was why an enterprising wife suggested that her family try lizard for a change.

                Her husband said “Go Anna”.

                51

              • #
                sophocles

                Fiercely Curious made a curious statement @ 12.1.1.3.1:

                Not astronomical, but close to the scale of Stonehenge, and 6-7000 years older. Built by nomads,

                Goebekli Tepe is purely astronomical! It documents the cause(s) of the Younger Dryas.
                The famous Pillar 43 shows the sun rising at the edge of the wing of the Vulture constellation with Scorpio (the Scorpion) rising beneath. (I’ll leave the rest of the translation as an exercise for the student(s) 😀 ) Find Martin Sweatman’s interpretation and read it. Graham Hancock’s interpretations in his books, (Magicians of the Gods etc) are mentioned. (Remember: Hancock is an Author, and makes no claims to be a Scientist so he can get it wrong.)

                The animals carved on GTs pillars are most likely depictions of constellations which are decidedly astronomical.

                Civilisation was not invented: it was rebooted (or re-invented) after almost total destruction. Nomads? well, yes, if New York was drowned, the outflow of the surviving people would, of necessity, be nomads.

                Dr Martin Sweatman has made some great observations about Gobekli Tepe:
                Search on: “martin sweatman gobekli tepe” on your favourite search engine. That way, you’ll be going directly to the source of some of GT’s research.
                ( http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/msweatma/GobekliTepe_new.html )

                There’s some lively debate/controversy with rebuttals and rebuttals of rebuttals making lively reading. But this is how Science works and it’s all very interesting reading.

                But make no mistake: Gobekli Tepe is Astronomical.

                10

            • #
              el gordo

              Its a prime example of the oldest living culture on the planet, going back at least 40,000 years. The European and Saharan rock artists came a lot later, but obviously by then the styles had improved markedly.

              Kimberly art is esoteric.

              10

            • #
              sophocles

              did you mean Astronomical observations?

              20

          • #
            Annie

            Do you think the graffiti artists could have worked out how to build Stonehenge, moving the vast rocks and aligning them the way they did?

            60

            • #
              TdeF

              I doubt many people today could work it out. It’s not as if people in cities can even see the stars. Or know how to move heavy things without machinery. 5,000 years ago you could not go down to the Wiltshire Bunnings and buy a few shovels and a wheelbarrow, a hammer and a chisel. They did not even have paper. Presumably there was also no rush on toilet paper during a pandemic.

              111

              • #
              • #
                sophocles

                There are all those spherical stone balls in Giza the engineering illiterati (egyptologists etc) call hammer stones.

                Unrecognised ball bearings. (Plenty of them on Rapa Nui, too.)

                Made those big stones easy to move … you could build a pyramid in 20 years that way.
                20 decades if you had to drag them. Yet, interestingly, no-one derived a wheel from them. Potter’s wheels, yes, reciprocating saws for cutting stone, yes, hollow stone drills for boring out granite boxes with water and abrasive dust, but carriage wheels? Nope. A cultural blind spot, maybe.

                Mike Parker Pearson and some of his students tried it on Salisbury Plain at Stonehenge with amazing results. It took only a few students to tow a sarsen-sized stone. There’s a video of it on U-Tube (or there was …). Some one has suggested the spherical `bearing’ stones were hammer stones originally and were put aside for bearing use when they had worn spherical and were the same size as the others.

                Whatever they were, our ancestors weren’t stupid … yet highly educated archaeologists can be awfully dumb …

                (The sarsen stones are the big upright ones.)

                90

              • #

                There’s a video of it on U-Tube (or there was …)

                Yeah, I hear it got fact checked, and removed as being fake news.

                Tony.

                30

              • #
                sophocles

                What? There’s movie footage of the students actually doing it!
                What has “fact-checking” got to do with an experiment to see if something is possible? There’s something really Numpty going on there!

                I’ll have to check bitchute.

                Google is going too far!

                20

              • #
                Environment Skeptic

                Richard Heath is a bit of an expert on it and other megalithic structures exactly like Stonehenge and many others.

                From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lePoLmXqx14
                MegalithomaniaUK
                86.8K subscribers
                Richard’s presentation shows how astronomy and land surveying became possible to late stone age society through the simple manipulation of numbers held as lengths. The idea of a previous super-civilisation, predating the megalithic, becomes unnecessary if evidence from the Megalithic can be re-interpreted – as able to achieve an accurate geocentric astronomy and model of the earth, without requiring modern arithmetic or equipment.”

                10

              • #
                Analitik

                Unrecognised ball bearings

                C’mon guys, it’s all ball bearings these days.

                20

  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    The stridency of the conversation is beginning to bug me.
    I’ve always thought I was a pretty reasonable person, with a normal level of self control.
    Heck, I even felt guilty if I yelled at my dogs.
    I’ve been active politically, but for the most part have been able to convince myself that my political
    opponents were good citizens like me with differences of opinion within a framework we both believed in, and
    that we lived in a system that allowed us to resolve our differences, accommodating a large diversity of individual behavior
    and underlaid by mutual good will.

    If my neighbor and I put up signs for different candidates, we could talk about the tough election coming up over a beer, while
    we cooperated on neighbor things, and traded mangos for avacodos.

    Today, if I see an opposition yard sign go up, it is a harbinger of evil. On a bad day, I think about the evil and stupid things the opposition is
    trying to force upon the country, and the means some of the folks the support are using to make their point. I think about the lack of respect for life and property;
    the fundamental dishonesty of the public positions, and wonder if I want my grandkids to go play with his grandkids.

    And I’m disgusted with myself, but then I read the papers, or watch the news. And I’m conflicted again. Is it me, or is it him.

    There is , for the sake of argument, a ‘green new deal’ sign in his yard. He may be the same person he was last year. He may still grow pretty good avacados.
    And he’s telling me he’s going to vote for the complete destruction of our economy. And two minutes convinced me reason would make no inroads in his thinking.

    What the hell.

    251

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      That about sums it up.

      The world has changed in the last sixty years and it seems to relate to the acceptance of evil and the development of a new way of thinking that’s very disturbing.

      151

    • #
      Reed Coray

      It’s him–but maybe his shortcoming is “virtue signalling”–not a desire to destroy the country.

      01

  • #
    Jojodogfacedboy

    When you ask for facts or how they came to their opinionated conclusions, you get attacked and labelled as a climate heretic and denier.
    Just the facts please and not the mumbo jumbo of word play.

    101

  • #
    Jojodogfacedboy

    The other thing they never talk about is why some countries such as China, get a total exemption from all these laws and regulations imposed on the rest of us making it very difficult to make a living.
    It is illegal to make certain products in your own country and we have to import the products from other countries has that are exempt.

    151

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      Good summary of the core contradictions.

      It defies logic, common sense, and the basic human right to be free while acting in our own best interests.

      KK

      51

  • #
    Yonniestone

    He uses the word putsch without thought to the men who historically tried to implement such a coup in 1923, these same men shared many of draconian thoughts Keane voices.

    40

  • #
    Robber

    From BP’s annual energy report: China is now contributing 29% of global CO2 emissions, USA 14.5%, EU 10%, India 7%, Japan, the former Soviet Union, (CIS), Canada and Australia 12%, South Korea, Iran, South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Indonesia and Taiwan 12%, rest of world 14%.
    Most of the 40% growth in emissions since 2000 has come from China and developing countries.
    Perhaps Bernard Keane and Crikey and Extinction Rebellion would like to say something about China?

    120

    • #
      TdeF

      It’s never been about Carbon Dioxide. Everything is an attack on democracy. Democracy started with the British and they spread it around the world, turning endless dictatorships into democracies as in India, Africa, Canada, America, Japan, most of Europe. The French spread dictatorships as did the newly minted German Democratic Republic and Russia and now China.

      So everything is about pulling down Western democracies. And never a bad word about China, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, Iran. And by unelected bureaucrats who push for bigger dictatorships, the UN, the EU and now China. And the crippling of economies with Global Warming and Black Lives Matter and destroying history courses and pulling down all the monuments to progress are planned, world wide, amazingly presented as progressive and anti fascist. Stalin was progressive and anti fascist too. And religion is next, as we saw with Cardinal Pell.

      The greatest promoters of this are the press. Fake news, fake science and fake ethics. Everything done in the name of Black Lives Matter is bad for black people and worse, perpetuates the idea that if you fail as a group despite a hundred and fifty years of freedom, it is someone else’s fault and they should pay. BLM’s real aim is not integration but to keep black communities destitute and dangerous, feeding them false hope and harvesting their votes. What racist society elects a Black President?

      So when do we get our reparations as Irish, Scottish, Italians, Vietnamese, Chinese, Poles and the rest? Australia is made of refugees, like America. Most of the population arrived in the US after the civil war and most of those lived in the North and Midwest. For some reason the people now living in Australia, America and the UK are supposed to pay for ending world slavery, creating democracies and pushing racial equality and massively improving the lives of everyone with the industrial revolution?

      No, its all about k*lling democracy and bringing in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Nothing more. Coal is the problem. And Australians must pay.

      142

      • #
        TdeF

        And we are paying massively through our electricity bills. 90% the same coal based power but now the world’s highest electricity prices. Why? What do we have to show for it?

        162

      • #
        el gordo

        Slavery was the energy of its time, but fossil fuel brought an end to that. The history of slavery is fascinating, suggest you go back a few thousand years and then come forward to the present. Stopping along the way for whatever takes your fancy, Ireland and Wales were vulnerable.

        ‘ … bringing in the dictatorship of the proletariat.’

        That was last century, it doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. No, what we are looking at is evolutionary fascism.

        31

        • #
          • #
            el gordo

            China has four classes and a mixed economy, its communist in name only.

            21

            • #
              TdeF

              Where do you get this? Or as Pauline Hanson would say, please explain?
              I have been doing business in China for over 20 years but have never heard this about four classes, so I would love to know more. Yes, their communism is different, more capitalist communism but the mixed economy idea is new too.

              30

        • #
          Environment Skeptic

          I suspect that a broader definition of slavery is by way of the word ‘usury’. In this case, oil and other hydrocarbons did little to change or prevent the categories of slavery/usury/debt slavery broadly.

          10

          • #
            Environment Skeptic

            With repsect to a part of your comment

            Slavery was the energy of its time, but fossil fuel brought an end to that.

            10

            • #
              Environment Skeptic

              The sequentially earlier comment is lost in the system somewhere, so the comment at 9:53 pm is out of context. Apologies.

              00

      • #
        sophocles

        its all about k*lling democracy and bringing in the dictatorship of the proletariat.

        The proletariat? No way! The proletariat is the game, the prey, the hunted. Capitalism `has to go.’ (Christiana Figuares – the Costa Rican wench) Democracy has to go to be able to kill that. In a way, Democracy is co-lateral damage but that’s okay – it won’t be noticed because “ everyone will have enough” *cough* *cough* “ no-one will be left behind” *ahem*.

        Such honeyed words.

        Translated:
        “Welcome. Come into my parlour.” said the spider to the fly. “You’ll be safe here.”

        Any sensible fly would know it was at the top of the menu and buzz off fast but because spiders not only survive’ they flourish, showing how very few flies are wise.

        20

        • #
          TdeF

          Agreed. That is only literal Marxism, what people are told, not what actually happens in what always become an absolute dictatorship. The proletariat are cannon fodder.

          10

      • #
        bobl

        Close Tdef but no banana. They don’t care about democracy at all. This is just the age old green giant Jealousy, the predominately young (having not yet earned their fortunes) “Have Nots” whinging about the older and wiser “Haves” and dreaming up ways to take from the haves for themselves. Socialism of course being the means to the end of making everyone equally destitute.

        Of course as the young “Have Nots” become older “Haves”, the tunes will change in a never ending procession of jealousy down the ages. The difficulty comes for societies when they start to listen to the “have nots” and start down the path of income equalisation. At this point there is no incentive for a “Have Not” to become a have and societies regress and fail due to lack of incentive.

        It doesn’t however have anything to do with the form of government other than using government to raid the pockets of the Haves.

        01

  • #
    PeterW

    A deliberate misrepresentation of reality is not “a difference of opinion” . It is a lie.

    It is not told in your best interest. It is self-serving deceit.

    It is deeply disrespectful, and should be regarded appropriately. The liar is assuming that you are ignorant, gullible and will not react like a reasonable adult to the truth.

    No…. there are not “different truths”. There is one reality. We may have limited views and understandings of it, but honest adults allow for that and seek to improve understanding by the exchange of information. Liars never improve understanding.Treat them as they deserve.

    90

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      And Bernard Keane from Crikey.com is one such l!@r.
      There are a horde of them abroad to misinform us.

      15

    • #
      Kalm Keith

      🙂 🙂

      00

    • #
      el gordo

      Yesterday a fencer accidentally scratched my car with his trailer, there were numerous witnesses (including myself), but he emphatically said it had nothing to do with him.

      There is no moral to the story, but its fair to say that serial liars are mentally disturbed.

      30

      • #
        Bill In Oz

        I assume you took photos EG ?
        Put them on your local community Facebook group.
        Then locals will know what’s happened.

        23

        • #
          el gordo

          No, I’ll just cover the cost and move on, but back on topic and political sleight of hand.

          ‘Then there was some signalling on carbon capture and storage. Labor would cop taxpayer support for CCS as long as projects weren’t funded through the renewable energy agencies, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

          ‘This wasn’t a shift of position. It was a shift of emphasis. In government, Labor threw many millions at CCS development.’ Murphy/Guardian

          20

          • #
            sophocles

            Or you could sign-write the damage: name the fencer on the car as having done the damage and when.

            Make sure your witnesses don’t get away.

            10

          • #
            bobl

            If you have insurance then just name the perpetrator to the insurance company and let them do the rest.

            00

      • #
        Rob Kennedy

        “There is no moral to the story, but its fair to say that serial liars are mentally disturbed.” The moral to this story is that today we have very few moral people. Accountability, basic honesty, has been educated out of us. The most important thing is that you never let adversities like this affect you. That way the problem stays with the offender, you yourself are not affected by the “slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune.” Easy to say, but if we do not cast off all these injustices the enemy wins. Of course,in certain situations of life and death or hurt to loved ones that we have a responsibility to protect we may have to “man up” and become protectors using any means to do the job.

        10

  • #
    Lance

    ECLIPSES NOW MAY CAUSE POWER OUTAGES!

    Taiwanese power company “Taipower” reported a drop of 95% on solar power generation during an annular eclipse:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWp6pKKpFw

    50

  • #
    Environment Skeptic

    In my non expert opinion, we are seeing warning on a global scale, also known as global warning. A pandemic of warnings about anything and everything, and justifiably people young and old are terrified through the constant and ever increasing warning, causing them to shut down in a permanent psychological state of terror.. It is certainly not a healthy state of affairs..

    51

    • #
      Environment Skeptic

      If this global warning phenomena continues to increase, even the most polarized will melt down, and there will be an increase of people who can see causing see levels to rise.

      60

  • #
    Another Ian

    This list ought to be particularly terrorising then?

    “RE in Australia was never going to happen. The reasons why”

    https://catallaxyfiles.com/2020/06/27/re-in-australia-was-never-going-to-happen-the-reasons-why/

    And this for other chasers of the woke generation

    “Nike Reports Profit Loss of $790 Million in Q4 and a Year-Over-Year Sales Decline of 38% (46% in U.S.)…”

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/06/26/nike-reports-profit-loss-of-790-million-in-q4-and-a-year-over-year-sales-decline-of-38-46-in-u-s/

    00

  • #
    Robber

    What do they want? More renewables?
    Like last night at 6pm in the AEMO grid, solar 0.0%, wind 1.1%.
    And in the poster child State of SA, solar 0.0%, wind (0.2)% – yes negative, big battery 0.1%, imports 17.7%, the balance gas.
    While in Vic, solar 0.0%, wind 0.1%, hydro 17.8% (just as well we are out of the big drought), battery 0.6%, imports 2.4%, coal 64.9%, gas 14.3%.

    50

  • #
    TdeF

    No, excellent stuff. My niece is an archaeologist who has excavated in the fertile crescent and now in the Pilbara. This site is pre pottery, pre agriculture, which makes it incredible. Not a settlement at all. But the working of stone, architecture, carving, etching and so much more are 5,000 years before Stonehenge or the pyramids, which shows that you can have religion without agriculture. This was however the dawn of agriculture and in the fertile crescent, so you have to think only agriculture could create this class of builder.

    And girls on the avenue is the best I have seen, beyond grafitti class. Hand stencils in ochre don’t compare. However I wonder if they were the aboriginal people, especially in the Kimberlies where there is reason to suspect exterminated Indonesian cultures, especially when the higher class drawings show boats. Hunter gatherers do not take kindly to settlers.

    52

  • #
    Dennis

    Labor Greens admit that heavy transport using diesel fuel remains a problem to solve, after consulting renewables engineers, they are the new breed of specialists in woke designs that become cheaper over time as what they produce becomes more expensive for consumers.

    The result is to return to sailing ships but with a fleet of electric outboard submersible motors mounted on a frame off the stern and solar panels fixed on a frame above and on the upper decks, many battery banks taking up half the below deck areas, and for cargo and passengers a green energy surcharge to pay for the reduced payload operating costs.

    All rail transport to be electrified with dedicated wind and solar farms, battery back up and a signal system to stop movement of rolling stock when energy supply is not available.

    Road transport vehicles will of course be EV only and cargo-passenger surcharges will apply to pay for the reduced payloads and downtime recharging.

    The government will of course provide all the finance.

    50

    • #
      TdeF

      What road transport? We will not need it when we stop exporting coal, iron ore, sheep, cattle, wheat, sugar. Then we cannot afford windmills. All fixed.

      In Victoria we are not allowed even look for gas, by law. Or climb rocks. Or agist cattle in the high plains to keep the grasses down. And they are shooting the wild horses from helicopters to save the frogs.

      It’s absurd that our coal exports and electricity taxes are paying for imported windmills and batteries and electric cars. And what good have all those exported billions achieved? Nothing. We now have the world’s most expensive, flakey, unreliable and inadequate power supply after having the world’s cheapest, most reliable and more than adequate ones. All coal. The few coal power stations remaining are still carrying all the load at times and if the hidden RET tax on coal, gas and diesel was not in place, wind and solar would never be bought. Six billion a year in hidden taxes on coal. Payin rates for suburban solar panels? Why?

      When you add Rudd’s beer coaster NBN and Gillard’s Pink batts and school halls to Turnbull’s windmills and batteries and Snowy II and Labor’s antiqued diesel submarines, the world’s slowest and not yet started, you come up with $300Billion of waste, all paid in cash by exports of coal and iron ore. Why? Where do we benefit?

      We are certainly the lucky country to afford such outrageous waste but with leaders like this, not the smart country. Total mugs on a world scale. Everyone else has nuclear energy, nuclear submarines and many are on 5G. We would be a third world country by now if not for coal and iron ore. And no one can afford to manufacture or smelt without massive hidden subsidies. In destitute Russia the entire Trans Siberian railway is electric, up to eight lines in parallel.

      Painting statues, BLM, Global Warming, no borders, illegal mass migration, anti religion, all brought to you by the virtue signalling media, socialist journalists, multi national businesses and the UN/EU bureaucrats who have Australia where they want us. An open cut mine with no borders and forced to import our own gas from Singapore.

      71

    • #
      Another Ian

      Are they consulting Heath Robinson or Rube Goldberg?

      10

  • #
    Dennis

    As time passes the re-writing of political history commences and astute informed observers scratch their heads and wonder if they missed something back in time.

    Well National Energy Guarantee was not what we were meant to believe it was, and an appraisal called it National Poverty Guarantee, as you can discover at this link;

    https://web.archive.org/web/20180805061319/http://stopturnbull.com/national-poverty-guarantee-2017-2018/

    10

  • #
    TdeF

    None of it makes any sense unless you take a conspiracy view, an attack on Western democracies. Climate Change, BLM, no borders, Wuhan Flu. All assaults on the West. They were painting statues of Lord Nelson, Captain James Cook and statues in America last year. The one they want destroyed in Washington, the emancipation statue was built with the contributions of free slaves in memory of Abraham Lincoln, who was shot because he freed the slaves. Even the endlessly suffering Gandhi is a figure to attack and he was m*rdered. Nelson died at Trafalgar in his incredible victory over the forces of Napoleon. When were these people not heroes and people to admire. Even Winston Churchill is declared a racist as as James Delingpole said, you should look at the man he beat.

    So in a way, in the next American election and beyond, it is increasingly clear that all these are fake crises. BLM is not supported by black people. Only a tiny fraction of the fancifully labelled protestors are black. The Anti fascists are the black shirts of Mussolini. The rest are opportunists, vandals, anarchists. Is it any different with disastrous Global Warming, which isn’t happening. Was there any prediction which came true in thirty years?

    And traitorous Christopher Pyne and his Black Hand criticizes the circus which brought down a ‘sitting prime minister’, Malcolm Turnbull who was in his stolen job by one seat and doesn’t mention the most successful candidate in recent memory, Tony Abbott. The real laugh is that Pyne and his friends including Julie Bishop all resigned, expecting a disaster and the Coalition romped home. I hope the same in the US where Donald Trump has done great things, despite being obstructed every step of the way by Pelosi, Schumer, endless impeachments, the FBI and CIA, Obama, Rice, Ambassadors, 9th circuit judges, a runaway Supreme court and treacherous Generals who want to wage endless wars. The extremely personal abuse of Donald Trump and his family have endured is beyond anything in any country in my lifetime. Often by leading media commentators. Nancy Pelosi says the Republicans are responsible for the m*rder of George Floyd. How does that work? All the police forces in the major cities are run by Democrats, but facts never bothered the left or the media. Defund the police? In New York alone m*rder is up 358%! And Democrats want to replace them with mental health counsellors.

    Once again we await the vote of the people in November. Much hinges on Donald Trump’s relection. You have to wonder if Joe Biden can remember his lines long to qualify as the first 80 year old President in American history. He would join Pelosi who is already 80. And both say that even suggesting the Wuhan Flu is from China is Xenophobic.

    Anhanom Tedros still remains the appalling President of WHO and bemoans political interfernce in his administration of the biggest world health crisis since 1918. And with a virus he assured the world in January was not infectious person to person.

    101

  • #
    el gordo

    Is Energy Australia wholly owned by the Chinese government? Rumour has it that the parent company is CLP (China Light and Power) and they operate out of the Caribbean.

    30

  • #
    TdeF

    I would like also to mention that with Transgender rights, Gay rights, the Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Rights matter and the many alleged protests we have endured here in Australia and seen overseas, i’ll bet they are all the same people.

    It’s one thing to feel strongly about something and quite another to turn up at every march ready to do damage. People were stacking and handing out bricks in the US and one lawyer was handing out Molotov cocktails for others to throw. That not protesting. BYO Molotov cocktails? Throwing bricks at the police?

    At one television street interview in Melbourne a protester in Federation square was asked why he was there and his view of the subject. He freely admitted he had no idea what it was about, but he was happy to be part of it. So a new freeway, stopping a new freeway, save the field mice, save the monument, destroy the monument, build more windmills. Who cares, as long as you can assault people and damage property and have fun and get away with it? And the police do nothing.

    As the late Robin Williams commented about himself, he would go to the opening of an envelope. The so called AntiFa group seem to be the same brownshirt thugs run by Roehm in Germany and Mussolini’s blackshirts in Italy, an apparent licence to harm and riot and destroy while the police stand back. And progressive governments give them a green light and stop the police. Given that no one is actually suffering any hardship, and few of them are actually black or alleged victims, why are these wild riots and widespread vandalism allowed in the middle of a pandemic?

    I see Donald Trump will hit them with ten years in jail for damage to a public monument. That might cool things down. You will need a good lawyer. And the people who torched shops and diners and vandalized stores will be tracked down, as they should be. That’s not protest, that willful criminal damage.

    71

  • #
    TdeF

    And really on topic, I am appalled at the idea of ‘carbon capture’. No one has actually proven that CO2 stays in the air for long. In fact C14 proves it does not, with a proven and measurable half life of 6 years to exchange with CO2 in the ocean. It is a very rapid exchange, as you would expect for fish to breathe. So the very idea that humans can alter the amount of CO2 in the air is based on an unproven and frankly ridiculous and convenient conjecture. The IPCC says both 80 years and thousands of years. They have to say this or they could all go home.

    Where is any proof special man made CO2 stays in the air? Why can’t CO2 levels go up and down anyway? You can see it go up and down in the Mauna Loa graph and very quickly from summer to winter, so it is possible to move quickly. That alone tells you CO2 is not ‘trapped’.

    So how was the original level in 1900 decided anyway, pre motor cars and aircraft and trucks? Was it someone’s fault? If there was no CO2 in the air, there would be no life on the planet, so there has always been CO2 in the air. And at a guess there was a lot more in the time of the dinosaurs because we are still enjoying the vast reserves of coal and oil and gas and shale laid down then.

    And what have we achieved world wide in 30 years of CO2 reduction targets and why is no one bothering to check?

    I have no idea how many giant windmills are now in the world, but three years ago it was 350,000. How much effect has that had on the carbon dioxide graph? Zero. And all those new coal power stations in China and India, how much effect have they had on the graph? Zero. And all those attempts to reduce CO2, how much effect have they had? Zero.

    It is the first time the world has declared war on a common chemical essential for all life, spent tens of trillions of dollars trying to change the level and does not even bother to measure or report what benefit has followed from all that massive expense? Why? Because no change is expected. It is all fantasy and the promoters of man made CO2 and CO2 capture know it.

    If we took all of the CO2 out of the air, more would come out of solution and there is 50x as much in solution as in the air. Whether CO2 causes warming, what is certain is that the level is natural. And another million windmills would make no difference. And a billion solar panels have not.

    81

    • #
      bobl

      Tdef,
      This time spot on. The Mauna Loa graphs usually go down by about half as much as they go up in the opposite season meaning that 50% of the “Excess CO2” IS REABSORBED EACH YEAR. That’s a half life of just ONE YEAR.

      00

  • #
    TdeF

    Why isn’t anyone asking the Prime Minister or Mr Albanese what we have achieved in terms of world CO2 reduction for all the expense so far, say $50Bn and for the world’s highest electricity bills. We are fighting a mighty battle to reduce CO2 emissions. What has been our payback? Please explain what we get for our money, without the usual waffle of international obligations.

    What do we Australians get for our money given that we have stuck to our international agreements? A pat on the back? What exactly? After all, that money is flowing overseas like a river and we have a right to know what good it is doing and when we can expect results? Some facts please? A nice parliamentary report on what we can expect to see in real CO2 reduction and what the world has achieved so far.

    And can anyone tell how much CO2 is ‘natural’ and how much is ‘fossil fuel’? I can. Fossil fuel CO2 has no C14.

    80

  • #
    William

    I do wonder if all of those sad little journalists at Fairfax/Nine, ABC, Crikey and the slave funded Guardian, are really raging against their utter impotence when they decry the purported influence of “the Murdoch”.

    61

    • #
      Choroin

      As Nietzsche described, it’s simply a display of Ressentiment from people who have no more room, personally, to ‘fail up’ without tearing down someone else’s creation (pillars of civilization).

      Ressentiment: A psychological state resulting from suppressed feelings of envy and hatred which cannot be satisfied.

      Problem with Nietzsche is he basically predicted these rage mobs would ultimately be filled with religious people who could not tolerate the ‘God is dead’ era, yet he had it ass backwards; instead it’s mobs of rabid leftwing communista’s and anarchists who for the most part are only opposed ideologically by conservative mostly religious minded individuals with such a high tolerance they won’t meet violence with violence because they know this is exactly what the rage mob desires.

      So what do the mob do when they can’t evoke a response from a human target/opposition? They go for the stone/brass representation of the old order, to attempt to break something approximating a human target, and trigger some righteous indignation from the right wing. The other human target which inevitably turns up to quell their rage are the poor police officers who for the most part are sent to the scene with their own hands metaphorically cable-tied by political appointees more interested in the potential votes that these zombies can cast on ballot day.

      All these mobs are achieving is an awakening of fence-sitters to the hidden truth:
      All the slippery slope arguments the right wing have been proclaiming for decades weren’t fallacies, but prophecies fulfilled, and being fulfilled.

      40

  • #
    visions

    have always thought Keane is an intellectual lightweight just like Crickey

    10

  • #
    Choroin

    All this time, I thought Crikey was the Australia re-brand of The Onion 🙂

    Who reads this tripe? What rational person could take any of this ludicrous hype serious enough to keep a straight face?

    Finding a rational journalist or pundit these days is like spotting a moderately conservative member of a University faculty (cult).

    30

  • #
    Speedy

    Oh dear. It sounds like someone hasn’t been taking his medications lately, doesn’t it Bernard?

    20

  • #
    DonS

    Hi Jo

    Thanks for exposing yourself to the toxic waste that comes from these mad left sewers. Personally I think banging my head into a brick wall would cause less brain damage than reading anything put out by pseudo media organisations like these.

    I’m all for diversity of opinion and even expose myself to ABC news regularly but I have to draw the line somewhere. Someone needs to keep an eye on what these kooks are thinking but I’m glad it’s not me. If they weren’t so earnestly serious in their “beliefs” they could get work writing plays for the theater of the absurd.

    Thanks again Jo.

    31

    • #

      I can’t figure out what they are all going to say when the real truth comes out about all this with respect to the topic here, coal fired power, and also renewables.

      There just won’t be anywhere to hide.

      I mean, the ABC so prides itself on getting to the truth of the matter, well, so they tell us ad infinitum.

      When this all comes out, I don’t know how some of them will be able to live with being so wrong, and here, it’s a reflection on them because, as journalists and reporters, ….. they are supposed to check everything, and not just believe it out of hand.

      This is a case of when you’re in trouble, stop digging. Well they have just gone out and hired a backhoe to go deeper.

      Surely they don’t expect the public to just brush it all off and forget it all.

      I mean, this renewables boondoggle has cost quite literally many many Billions, all for something that does not work, and replacements for those aged coal fired plants has now got to the stage where it is almost critical.

      Tony.

      40

      • #
        Robber

        Tony – “as journalists and reporters, they are supposed to check everything”
        Wrong. They get their rewards by getting a story published, the bigger the headline the better.
        And that means entertaining comes before informing.
        Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.
        Why do you think news reports are full of shootings, car accidents, riots, protests, pandemics, climate emergency, etc?
        A perfectly running electricity grid is not a story.
        Blackouts are a story.
        A windless weekend is not a story because the reliable generators were there to keep the lights on.
        I have tried to portray the consequences of a 50% “renewables” grid, let alone the zero emissions by 2050 goal, but it doesn’t fit the green agenda, so it is brushed aside with trite comments like “renewables are cheaper”, “storage is coming”.
        And then you have people like AGL Energy boss Brett Redman and AEC CEO Sarah McNamara saying they support the 2050 target. Is AGL going to remove Gas from its name? AGL Loy Yang and AGL Macquarie are fueled by coal, reliably delivering over 6,000 MW, while AGL Torrens 1000 MW uses gas. Yet AGL has committed to exiting its coal-fired generation beginning in 2022 and ending in 2048.

        20

        • #
          Bill In Oz

          My local weekly newspaper The Adelaide Hills Courier published on page one, 2 weeks ago, that homes in the Hills would be uninsurable in 2100.
          ( Yes that’s in 80 years !)
          Why ? Because of the bushfire risk “due to climate change’.
          I went and handed that issue back at their office and told the staff I would not be buying it in future.

          The perturbed office girl asked if I would like to speak to the editor.I said yes and then spent 20 minutes wasting my time talking to the bearded greenist editor. He refused to acknowledge the total absurdity of trying to predict whether homes would be insurable in 80 years time.
          This is the same person who when I informed him last year about the local Mt Barker BOM weather station being shonky, refused to publish the story. He rang the BOM and was told “everything was OK” Incompetence and unprofessional journalist behaviour personified.

          10

  • #
    AndyG55

    “Well they have just gone out and hired a backhoe to go deeper”

    And that have a drill-rig on order !

    21