Weekend Unthreaded

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294 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

  • #

    Has the chinese cyber hackng died away in Australia?

    Have there been any more tariffs out on Aussie goods and are the existing ones having any effects.?

    Ate the numerous Chinese tourists and students expected to return, if not will there bean impact on the economy.

    I try to buy a bottle of Oz wine once a week in support but there is little other practical help to be offered in the lights of this agression by this 30 stone Chinese playground bully.

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    • #
      James Poulos

      China… they wouldn’t say… I thought it was New Zealand.

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      Graeme#4

      Current Australian wine exports to China are worth $1bn. So far these haven’t been impacted.

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    • #
      yarpos

      Cyber attack – dont know, the general popualtion wasnt aware anyway

      More tariffs – havent heard of extras, must be but it will take time to work through

      Chinese tourists/students to return – I hope not personally, they seem to be a negative force where they proliferate. In the short term I expect the CCP will discourage.

      Wine – enjoy

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  • #
    dinn, rob

    Who is Huang Yan Ling, researcher at virology institute Wuhan probably to 2018 or so? Find out. Never mind the CCP line.
    https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/06/truth-is-at-times-most-delicate-thread.html

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  • #
    Jojodogfacedboy

    Question?
    Will parents be going to jail should your child spit on another?
    We are responsible for our children’s actions…
    So how will this play out?

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    • #
      Jojodogfacedboy

      I would suspect a fine as the politicians are broke and fining everything they can think of and this Pandemic add more areas that they can collect more should we make a mistake and brake another imposed law.

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      • #
        Jojodogfacedboy

        Now, not wearing as mask is a $5,000 fine in some Canadian communities along with other restrictions that are fines as well.
        Can you imagine going for groceries and coming back with 40 or 50 thousand dollars in fines in one day?
        Truly getting crazy what our politicians are imposing on us.

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        • #
          Fred Streeter

          Can you imagine going for groceries and coming back with 40 or 50 thousand dollars in fines in one day?

          Can I imagine any intelligent person not wearing a mask when they know they could cop a $5,000 fine? No!

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          • #
            Jojodogfacedboy

            Not everybody listens to the media or politicians anymore.
            Many of the imposed laws are illegal such as locking down workers. The labor laws says you can get your full benefits by constructive dismissal as layoffs are illegal in Canada

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            • #
              Fred Streeter

              Not everybody listens to the media or politicians anymore.

              I did say intelligent people.

              Even if their orders and punishments are imposed outside of the strict letter of the law, it is more sensible to obey it while opposing it through the due process of law.

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            • #

              Plus, you are exaggerating and have done in almost every post you’ve submitted. I know this is hard to believe but police will talk with people, inform them of the law and send them home to sort themselves out. $5000 is going to be flagrant and repeated breaches and lesser fines will follow after the first warning. If I’m wrong I’ll ditch my LLB.

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    • #
      yarpos

      depends on the age of criminal responsibility in your location (or even if that concept exists in your location)

      in Australia a child does not have criminal responsibility until age 10 (varies by State I think)

      prior to 10 they are just a stupid kid doing stupid things and nobody is liable. After that parents are liable, until 18

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  • #
    RicDre

    Extinction Rebellion Communication Head Quits After Researching Nuclear Power

    Zion Lights, who featured in WUWT last October when BBC Andrew Neil shredded her defence of Extinction Rebellion on national TV, has quit Extinction Rebellion and defected to the pro-nuclear Environmental Progress group. I’m really impressed at Zion’s courage. It takes a lot of guts to admit you made a mistake, after working hard for the wrong team.

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/27/extinction-rebellion-communication-head-quits-after-researching-nuclear-power/

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    • #
      Broadie

      Yay!
      Zion Lights will be able to refocus the group on the use of plastic bin liners at their meetings, non meat substitutes for the hors d’oeuvres and to help address the groups composition with plenty of focus on the demands of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ and LGTBIQALPHABET extremists.

      The ‘March through the Institutions’ by the looney left was not just Universities, Schools, Police, Defense Forces, Judiciary, Councils, Media, Political Parties; etc, it included the Scouts, RSPCA, Science Journals, Industry groups, Unions, Chamber of Commerce; etc.
      Our local useful idiots are currently joining the CWA and clashing with the ladies who would rather do something for needy in the community than take a stand against plastic shopping bags. The first thing the memebot does on achieving a Committee position is to seek an honorarium, than a paid position, then staff, then a more appropriate office, … then a government bail-out as the whole organization is dissolves into chaos.

      Remember when ever you see someone with a stethoscope over their shoulder representing the medical profession and banging on about climate change, you probably aren’t looking at a professional who cares about people, the primary ingredient for a good Doctor. These are Gramsci’s Memebots or ‘Useful Idiots’.
      Then again we could be a little more positive as Trump is with people like Bolton and give them a go. Trump knows you need to listen to opposing views to make the best decision. He surrounds himself with conflicting points of view. Let us hope Zion is as she sounds ‘Born Again’, having found the Light before the lights go out.

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    • #
      James Murphy

      Too little, too late. this Zion Lights person has caused more damage than they will ever hope to fix. This apparent change of heart will only cause their eradication from history like other dissenters, heretics, and deniers.

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    • #
      PeterS

      If anyone believes we should get serious about reducing emissions then the quickest way and only practical and cost effective way of doing it is to go nuclear. Given such people forbid such a solution it means they are seriously mentally challenged or are fakes. Either way the push for emissions reductions by both major parties is one big con.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Ummm …. $4 billion for a nuclear power plant, $2 billion for a coal fired Hele, at the moment the nuclear option isn’t in the running. Renewable zones, fully financed by a HK shelf company, should cost the taxpayers nothing beyond the initial tender process.

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        • #
          PeterS

          I’m referring to those people who demand we reduce our emissions as much as possible as quickly as possible in order to avert a mythical catastrophe. I agree the nuclear option is more expansive than coal but it’s still a lot cheaper than renewables if we are supposed to accept the CAGW story as true, which most of us don’t. The renewables option solves nothing and presents all sort of problems, both financial and environmental. In fact it’s the worst solution for any Greenie who dares to be honest about environmental matters. Of course none are honest so they continue to act as hypocrites.

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          • #
            el gordo

            I accept your general argument, but this is still up for debate.

            ‘I agree the nuclear option is more expansive than coal but it’s still a lot cheaper than renewables …’

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            • #
              PeterS

              What is there to debate about? The cost of supplying power purely from renewables to the same degree of availability and reliability as say coal or nuclear would be way too high. I sense you are against nuclear. That’s fine if you have a valid argument but you don’t ever supply one and you keep pretending it’s the most expensive option to supply reliable and highly available power compare to say renewables taking into account battery storage and the massive amounts of wind and solar farms required to recharge them for extended periods.

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              • #
                el gordo

                I’m only against nuclear because of the start up cost, the electorate wouldn’t be happy, but on long term operational costs I don’t know. They would also have to bring the yellow cake into the plant from SA, which may require a new rail link or perhaps Inland Rail would ease that financial burden.

                There must be plenty of information out there on the running costs of renewables, coal and nuclear, so I’ll look a little further.

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            I duspect eventually it might get a bit unpleasant….tge left will truly show itself for what it truly is…

            Now how does it go again..?

            Mag in, pull slude all the way back, hit bolt assist, flick the switch 90 degrees….

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            • #
              OriginalSteve

              Fat fingers…sorry…

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              • #
                PeterS

                I understand your frustration only too well. Sometimes I feel like throwing my laptop at the wall because it has such small keys fro my fat fingers (literally). I will invest in a good keyboard once I get a proper desk.

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          • #
            bobl

            It depends, you get a lot of energy out of nuclear fuel and you can sell off some of the waste for nuclear medicine, atomic clocks and other purposes. I suspect the whole of life cost for a Nuclear plant is around the same as Coal given the small amount of chemical energy in the coal fuel. Construction cost is not the end of the story.

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        • #
          sophocles

          4 billion?

          What sort of nuclear plant are you thinking of?

          Diamond plated?

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  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    Who will voice the green aliens?

    The Simpsons stops using white actors to voice non-white characters

    https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jun/27/the-simpsons-stops-using-white-actors-to-voice-non-white-characters

    Best of Kang and Kodos
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR0iy5RIfuY

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    • #
      James Murphy

      For a very long time, I had no idea what any of the Simpsons actors looked like (except Yeardley Smith via Herman’s Head), and I didn’t care. I still don’t. It used to be very funny, clever, even, and it still has its rare moments, but it must be hard to stay funny after so many decades, even without the misguided and futile push to be inoffensive to anyone.

      No more aliens on TV or in movies! If they survive the BLM purge, police procedurals will take a hit when the writers decide that only real criminals and real police can be used. They already cancelled ‘reality’ police shows…

      The puppet/costume characters on Sesame Street should be replaced by their real counterparts as well, surely? There must be a giant, yellow, talking bird somewhere, right?

      The more I see of this, the more I think that the people who like this ‘adherence to reality’ have absolutely no imagination, along with narcissism, a desire to control everyone, and an overwhelming sense of superiority.

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    • #
      GD

      The Simpsons stops using white actors to voice non-white characters

      Taken to its final conclusion, the acting profession will cease to exist. Only people of the same race will play a character of that race; only people of the same profession will play characters of that profession.

      Can you imagine how thrilling lawyer movies like ‘The Firm’ and ‘A Time To Kill’ would be with boring lawyers playing the parts?

      John Grisham would lose all his future royalties.

      Imagine all those movies featuring drunken, drugged out musicians being played by, well, ‘drunken, drugged out musicians’?

      ‘A Star Is Born’ comes to mind.

      These clowns need to be called out now and stopped!

      There is no method to their madness, there is no manner of common sense in the their insanity, there is only destruction and anarchy.

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    • #
      PeterS

      What about cartoon movies for children where they use animals that talk? In the real world animals can’t talk so will they ban them too? Probably not given the world is turning more and more hypocritical.

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    • #
      TdeF

      That’s actual racism.

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    • #
      Chad

      If they go the full “ voice to match the character color” ,.. who will voice Homer Simpson ?

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      • #
        Yonniestone

        Xi Jinping……cough cough………

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      • #
        Bulldust

        And a real clown for Krusty, so that would have to be Trudeau?

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      • #
        Damo

        Most of the Simpson’s characters with have to played by jaundiced people. So those with severe liver disease or pancreatic cancer. There would be quite a high turnover of voices with such diseases having quite high mortality.

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      • #
        James Murphy

        Not to mention the different number of fingers, and distinct lack of a 3rd dimension.

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    • #
      bobl

      Green Aliens from Rigel VII of course!

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  • #

    The latest post in my campaign to win over the uncommitted and the unthinking about climate alarmism.
    Sensible or silly? You be the judge. http://www.dinosaurdiary.com.au

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  • #
    David Wojick

    How much CO2 do we eat daily?

    Everything we eat is derived almost entirely from CO2 and water. There are also essential trace elements and vitamins but their mass is negligible. Protein is about 16% nitrogen. I am told that the dry mass of wood is about 97% from CO2. That is the C and the O with just the H coming from water. After all, hydrocarbon is just carbohydrate spelled inside out. Watching a child grow is watching processed CO2 being reprocessed.

    So the question is, in a typical diet, what fraction and weight is processed CO2?

    These numbers might get people to think about the blessing of CO2.

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    • #
      GD

      Can I quote you, David? That is a superb comment!

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      • #
        David Wojick

        I would be honored if you did.

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      • #
        bobl

        Not exactly CarboHydrate would translate to HydroCarbonAte IE a hydrocarbon is missing the oxygen. Now this is rather important as Carbohydrates can supply their own oxygen when they burn while hydrocarbons need an external oxygen source. Flour, a Hydrocarbonate (Carbohydrate) is the best fuel for thermal power plants after Coal.

        The greenies seem to love burning food.

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    • #
      Broadie

      How true!
      Just ran out and grabbed some gum tree for the kids breakfast upon your advice David. Might serve up the wood with some poached plastic also made of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen.

      That’s a thought! Why don’t we promote the use of plastics to soak up the CO2 in the atmosphere?

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      • #
        David Wojick

        Have you tried braised coal with a gasoline sauce? Or maybe kerosene depending on taste and the coal. Not to my taste but alarmists are different. Eat what you hate, right?

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        • #
          Broadie

          Sounds tasty David!
          As Jo has pointed out before, I sometimes come at a topic in an eclectic fashion. In this case I have been rightly punished and not just by ‘Bilious’s’ red thumb. My intention was to support your argument and made the mistake of using ‘plastic’ which is now obviously considered a swear word.
          I used plastic in the sense I was taught, as a wonderful and beautifully engineered product that saves the environment and this was one more use.

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    • #
      Pauly

      Interesting approach! Taken one step further, and you could determine which diets aid the reduction of the most CO2. My guess would be those diets that consume more elements further up the food chain.

      Wouldn’t it be hilarious if vegan/vegetarian diets rated very ow on this measure?

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    • #
      Pauly

      [Duplicate]

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    • #
      PeterS

      Certain global warming alarmists would agree with your premise and would use the same argument to support one of the their main goals; to reduce the population of the world.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Carbohydrate is simply hydrated carbon. The formula is (CH2O)n where n is any number between 3 and 8.
      It is also the source of all oxygen on the planet.

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      • #
        TdeF

        In the human body by numbers 98% of the body is three element, Carbon and two gases C 12% H 62% O 24% which is CH(H2O)x2

        We breathe Oxygen at 22% and output it at 14%. CO2 rises from .04% to up to 14% on exhaling. And unlike cars, people and life never stops breathing out CO2.

        Somehow the Greens have convinced the world that CO2 is pollution. Then we are made from it, generate it, live by internal combustion and hate ourselves for it. You see in the Green Bible, the humans are the problem. Get rid of all life on earth and the Earth will be saved. For whom?

        And the Black Lives Matter apologists are reintroducing racism. Racism in television, movies, statues, stage shows, even voice over. Soon we can only have black Jazz, black sportsmen and you are not allowed to tell any jokes about Blacks, Jews, Irishmen, Scotsmen, short people, tall people, stupid people, ugly people, silly people. Women will be driven out of sport by Trans men. And all those statues, images, stained glass, white religious music will have to go.

        So much for Handel’s Requiem. It will just have to go as the new Puritans of Hollywood and big business insist.

        And carbohydrates will be banned. The work of the carbon Devil, who is neither black nor brown and hell is driven by windmills, not coal, fire and brimstone. And the devil does not have horns or a tail and a pitchfork. That is demonization.

        Where does it stop?

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        • #
          Annie

          The new Puritans? I have lately wondered how it is that grey seems to be so popular a colour for housing; (not one that appeals to me although some of it is very nicely done). Give me white, eucalyptus green and wood (but not the yellow, pink or orange tones of wood).
          Is this fashion for grey bound up with a new Puritanism in the outlook of many? That doesn’t explain the lurid clours of toys and cleaning materials though!
          On music; while ironing yesterday I helped the dreary task along with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and ‘Waldstein’ Sonata.
          In church we hum 3 hymns! Or, as my husband said, they were NZ hymns…

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          • #
            Peter C

            In church we hum 3 hymns!

            Pop on the mask.

            Then you can sign the hymns with full voice without spreading any droplets.

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            • #
              Annie

              I would PeterC, not sure about the others! It seems very bizarre to hum but, as my husband says, at least we can think the proper words while humming, not the PC ones in the latest iteration of the hymn book!
              A friend in Melbourne used to take the mick out of the title of that hymn book, saying in a precious voice ‘Together in Song’; he had me howling with laughter at that. 😉

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          • #
            TdeF

            The previous Puritans destroyed Christmas and the carols were lost. All the songs we sing are modern inventions. The Puritans destroyed a culture. It was a terrible time. And the damage done by the revolutionaries in France was massive. Luckily they left the beautiful marble tombstones in St. Denis but dug up all the kings and queens of France since Charles Martel and dropped them in quicklime. Notre Dame was abandoned. Cows roamed in it in the time of Victor Hugo, who led a campaign to resurrect the church. It is hard to imagine the destruction in the anti Christian movement of the French revolution. Churches were robbed. People climbed the facades of houses and defaced any images.

            I would have thought that was impossible today, but our overpaid, underworked progressive leftists councils and governments are handing the keys to the self labelled protesters. I would have called them anarchists and vandals. And this is so obviously orchestrated internationally. They have just been waiting for an excuse. The last thing they are about is Black Lives. Most of these anarchists are white. Supported by the media who support Mickey Mouse but may ban Daisy Duck as white and the wrong species.

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            • #
              Kalm Keith

              Brilliant outline and the last paragraph is right on.

              Anybody who thinks that we live in functioning democracies in the West is deluded.

              The tearing apart of European society over the last twenty years and the adoption of the same techniques of control by Australian, NZ and US “governments” has left us all in a futureless predicament.

              Why bother working or trying when your efforts will only be harvested and shared by the Elite Organisers.

              The official reaction to this CV19 Pandemic has me perplexed and worried: is destruction of our functioning community necessary?

              KK

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              • #
                OriginalSteve

                I was talking to work colleagues about how to get rid of Covid…the only logical thing right now ( staying away from any nasty RNA vacc ines ) is doing a controlled “burn” through the community so everyone gets and it’s done.

                One friend said he had replied in the UK who had it, they got tested, it had cold like symptoms and gone….

                Problem is, Covid is now an excuse to play “lockdown”.

                If you notice, it’s the commie states that have the cases coz it suits them to economically strangle the middle class but ensuring the Covid circus continues

                Covid is more an economic weapon.

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              • #
                OriginalSteve

                “….one friend said he had relatives in the UK….”

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              • #

                Commie states? In Australia only one Labor state has it. One Liberal. In the US the republican states overtook democrat cases a while ago with the fewest republican cases in the moderate states like MA.

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              • #
                OriginalSteve

                Leaf, Victoriastan fits the bill….

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              • #

                So you are claiming that only “commie states” have the cases based on the fact that you are ignoring all the others that have cases that are not “commie”

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        • #
          bobl

          On the other hand termites are the largest emitter by far, well exceeding human emissions per unit area infested. If Humans were to go, the resulting termite expansion would probably increase CO2 emissions.

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    • #
      Bulldust

      I have always argued that fat people are doing us a favour by sequestering CO2.

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      • #
        David Wojick

        Yes and since we bury our dead it is carbon capture and storage. CCS works!

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        • #
          bobl

          Not to mention that the composting process can increase soil fertility adding to growth around the cemetery further increasing sequestration.

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    • #
      NuThink

      https://www.thoughtco.com/chemical-composition-of-the-human-body-603995

      Element Percent by Mass
      Oxygen….. 65
      Carbon….. 18
      Hydrogen… 10
      Nitrogen…. 3
      Calcium….. 1.5
      Phosphorus.. 1.2
      Potassium… 0.2
      Sulfur…… 0.2
      Chlorine…. 0.2
      Sodium…… 0.1
      Magnesium… 0.05
      Iron, Cobalt, Copper, Zinc, Iodine….. trace
      Selenium, Fluorine…………………minute amounts

      And also how much CO2 is exhaled.
      https://www.reference.com/science/much-co2-human-exhale-3f8cfdd9076c129

      How Much CO2 Does a Human Exhale? Loren Kerns/CC-BY-2.0 An average human exhales around 2.3 pounds of CO2 in a day. That rate increases by up to a factor of eight during heavy physical exertion and falls somewhat during periods of relaxation, such as during sleep.

      So for a vague reference that makes about 7,000,000 tonnes more or less as some people in some countries do a lot more physical work. Gyms must have high concentrations of CO2.

      Sydney Harbour holds about 500 GigaLitres of water.
      If there are 7,000,000,000 people at approx 80kg each (Airline Figures including luggage) so all the people on earth weigh just a little more than 1 Sydharb.

      New York Central Park is ~3.41 square kms, if a wall were placed around it to a height of 165 metres, it would hold water equal to the weight of all the people on earth. That is approx 55 storey building or approx half the height of the empire state building.

      Or even less (about half of my simple calculation above) according to this website.

      https://www.livescience.com/36470-human-population-weight.html#:~:text=If%20the%20entire%20human%20population,242%20million%20normal%2Dweight%20people.
      If the entire human population stepped on a scale, the weight would be 316 million tons (286,216,785 tonnes), or 632 billion pounds, a new study finds. So 84 metres high or 28 storeys. Empire State is just over a hundred storeys.

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      • #
        David Wojick

        The H and some O come from water so the C fraction should be higher in our food. Cells are tough bags of mostly water i think.

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        • #
          David Wojick

          But then there is water in the food.

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          • #
            TdeF

            We and most things are mainly water. We weigh little when dried out, maybe 20-25 kg. That’s all the hydrocarbons. And we burn like wood.

            Whoever decided CO2 and hydrocarbons were evil? It is us. Even Green chlorophyll is a long chain hydrocabon.

            Evil oil, gas and coal is just old rotted plant matter, not industrial pollution. The entire cycle of life on earth is the recycling of CO2 and the capture of solar energy in carbohydrate.

            Like Black Lives Matter, man made Climate Change is all made up science, fully supported by socialists, communists and anarchists and big business. And there are fewer bigger businesses than Hollywood. While the inner cities burn, the actors and politicians live in walled compounds with armed guards. But they are special people, aren’t they?

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        tom0mason

        Yep NuThink,

        As a mate of mine used to often say when surveying the crush of people in shopping malls, or sports events —
        “Look at ’em! All these bladders of water and fat. Great farting bladders of water and fat, and not much else!”
        🙂
        He also like to say that en masse most people idly amble around barely thinking, and for many they’re not fully conscious.

        It’s a shame he never lived long enough to see the full impact of the cell phone, facebook, or twitter.

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  • #
    GD

    Is anyone familiar with the Epoch Times? They have a weekly newspaper with a digital version and also an Australian edition.

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  • #
    Broadie

    The second wave of virus testing is hitting the State of Washington hard.

    https://depts.washington.edu/labmed/covid19/

    For some reason the virology laboratory has nearly tripled the amount of tests for the COVID-19. Could be there is a flu outbreak? The funny part is many States stopped reporting flu in February.

    In other news the positivity rate still sits at around %3. This is below the average for the positivity rate (%5.3) which compares positive plus inconclusive for COVID-19 as a proportion of those presenting with Flu like illness for testing.

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  • #

    It’s under 2 C in Melbourne, foggy and wind around 5 knots at Fawkner Beacon. I’m shortly getting ready to go sailing, but I expect there will be not enough breeze to get the fleet moving much. Not good for the wind farms, either: 89 MW from wind in Victoria now, compared to 4,677 MW from brown coal.

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      TedM

      It was worse yesterday David. Vic wind power dropped to 1MW at around 1400EST.

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      Annie

      It’s 0C and foggy here. No sun, no wind in Nth Central Vic!

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        TdeF

        I have been recommended to this Norwegian site for my bike riding. Much better than the BOM for getting the right time to ride. Right now it is 2C but with brilliant sunshine, it will warm 2C per hour.

        Of course if CO2 was really a constant blanket, this would not happen. Desert climates, frozen nights and warm days would be a thing of the past. For some reason we are told to believe that blankets make cold colder and hot hotter, extremes. That is one of the most outrageous bits of misdirection in the whole Climate Change story. It’s not how blankets work.

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          Annie

          We went to church in Marysville this morning; it was frosty and sunny there. When we left to come home the temperature was 7C and the sunny conditions beautiful. It was increasingly foggy as we approached home and we found a lot of fog at home with the temperature still only 3C! 🙁

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          • #
            Bill In Oz

            Cloud and fogs prevent cooling at night time but they also prevent warming during the daytime.
            Here in the Adelaide Hills there is no cloud and it’s a lovely sunny day with 15degrees.
            Also no wind so all our SA wind towers are standing forlorn and useless. But never mind we have a gas power plant and all the stable frequency power generated in Victoria from useful brown coal which is stabilising the stuff generated by al our roof top solar panels

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              TdeF

              Clouds and fog are a blanket. Water is a greenhouse gas. Warmer nights, cooler days. If CO2 was a blanket, that would be the effect but it is clear enough that there is no such blanket on a clear night in the country. The rate of change of temperature as the sun comes up and goes down tells you there is no CO2 blanket.

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                AndyG55

                H2O is only there in the atmosphere because it has done its surface cooling job. !

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                TdeF

                That’s a point. However perhaps the more significant point is that it too is a gas in equilibrium with the oceans/water which covers 3/4 of the planet. There is always a vapour pressure related to surface temperature. As with all the gases. Only gravity stops these gases from escaping forever as they have to reach terminal velocity which is impossible at our upper atmosphere temperatures, except for monatomic light weight helium. I always wondered why we wasted Helium as few countries had it and then it occurred to me that helium is generated all the time by radioactive decay. Without this there would be no helium on earth.

                So we have an atmosphere in equilibrium with the oceans and much more CO2 in the water than in the air, 50x as much. The IPCC says nothing about this and would have us believe they the ocean and the air do not exchange gases quickly and the CO2 is somehow trapped in the deep for thousands of years. Without any evidence. How convenient.

                What is odd is that you would think someone could prove the CO2 in the air is man made. No one has, it’s all done by coincidence, conjecture, correlation is causation, non science. And this is despite the indisputable evidence that CO2 levels are not man made. The IPCC and their friends handle this by refusing to talk about it or referring to their voluminous reports, which also say nothing. Man made CO2 levels is a completely made up fake fact.

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      Graeme No.3

      Thanks to all for those generation figures. I have used them in a comment in The Australian and waiting to see if it is accepted.

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  • #
    Yonniestone

    My employer informs me our payment summary (group certificate) for 2020 will now be issued by Services Australia through a MyGov account linked to the ATO, briefly looking at the legislative process to implement this all previous laws were removed in 2019 with the stroke of a pen.

    If I have no legal way to obtain a hard copy of my summary from my employer then government central planning process is going just fine, any citizen that approves of government streamlining where their rights are concerned obviously hasn’t heard of the separation of powers.

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    • #
      Graeme#4

      Have fun trying to link the ATO to your MyGov account Yonnie. I found that this was impossible online, and when I managed to talk to humans in both the ATO, MyGov and Centrelink, they suggested that I first had to delete my Centrelink account. Nobody could explain to me what was the actual IT problem. In the end that’s what I had to do – delete the working Centrelink account, link the new ATO account, then setup a new Centrelink account. A very messy approach! All this to obtain an annual payment summary.

      80

      • #
        Yonniestone

        Thanks for the vote of confidence G4 🙂

        I can see this being a PITA from the start but even if it works ok where’s the taxpayers rights to manage their own information?, as we all know here so well those that wish for absolute power want no responsibility for their actions, I’m taking this further up stream.

        40

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Yeah heres the thing….as I was saying to my daughter today, the whole electronic govt boondoggle works fine when it works…

          But ask South Coast residents during the fires who had to have Iridium sat phones parachuted in coz the land lines and cell service was melted….

          Ergo, trying to get rid of cash or taking control away from people only suits the govt…

          30

        • #
          Graeme#4

          The MyGov and Centrelink websites are I believe prime examples of some of the worst websites in Australia, with many input errors and very poor navigation linkages.

          20

    • #
      Serp

      It’s all of a piece with the movement away from cash which is currently stalled in committee in Australia’s parliament. All tokens/documents are to be electronic and, were Bill Gates’s gang to get its way, the hoi polloi would be rfid microchipped as is done with livestock.

      80

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Yeah they can whistle dixey on that one..

        A mini emp device will dud an rfid nicely…

        30

  • #
    TedM

    Wind power on the east coast dropped to insignificant levels again yesterday. I’ll leave the details to Tony from Oz who is much more knowledgeable on this topic, but just to say that at 1330 EST the SA wind power juggernaut was producing about 1% of it’s demand and Vic no better.

    I simply cannot understand why any Govt. would spend $***b installing an environmentally unfriendly power source that only works part of the time.

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    • #
      BoyfromTottenham

      TedM – I guess because these pollies have been influenced by an unelected organisation to believe an unscientific idea ahead of any commonsense they might possess.
      In short, they are acting as ‘useful idiots’ for a puppet-master, just like those in the 1960s and 70s who unwittingly joined USSR-backed Communist front organisations like the World Peace Council, the World Federation of Trade Unions, the International Union of Students, the International Institute for Peace, the Women’s International Democratic Federation, etc. etc. and attended ‘Peace’ and nuclear disarmament rallies all over the West.
      One has to be aged over 70 to have experienced first-hand the effectiveness of the propaganda disseminated by these Front organisations. Nowadays anyone who attends a university gets spoon-fed with Cultural Marxism, which since the self-evident total economic failure of the USSR has replaced traditional Marxism. Same stuff, different bucket.

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      Chad

      I dont really know how exactly the E Coast ,..SA in particular,..got through yesterday evening without some “Demand Management” from AEMO.
      Between 6pm and 7 pm the was zero wind in SA .. obviously no solar… and an even ing peak of 2+ GW which was supplied by gas and Vic imports,
      But even Vic and NSW were running everything they could,..coal , gas, Hydro, etc to scrape enough together for the peak.

      50

      • #
        Bill In Oz

        Maybe using the Diesel generators at the old GM plant North of Adelaide ?
        It was certainly cold here last night and this morning.

        25

  • #
    Another Ian

    “CMIP6 Climate Models Producing 50% More Surface Warming than Observations since 1979”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/27/cmip6-climate-models-producing-50-more-surface-warming-than-observations-since-1979/

    50

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Avoid exposure to Climate Models and you won’t be affected.

      50

      • #
        RickWill

        No one in Australia can avoid exposure to climate models. They are the fundamental driver of electricity price, which filters through the entire economy.

        It is a strange world we live in when bunkum can have such a significant impact on the cost of living.

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  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    Can it be any clearer?

    Everything the UN does is for global governance.

    Lima Agreement, Rio Declaration, Kyoto Protocol, Paris Agrremebt all designed to destroy capitalist western nations.

    U.N. Chief Guterres Calls for One Supreme Body of ‘Global Governance’

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/26/u-n-chief-guterres-calls-for-one-supreme-body-of-global-governance/

    Al Gore, UN Secretary-General, others now demanding ‘Great Reset’ of global capitalism

    https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/al-gore-un-secretary-general-great-reset-global-capitalism

    For example, Sharan Burrow, the general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), said, “We want an end to the profit-at-all-costs mentality, because if we don’t build an economic future within a sustainable framework in which we are respectful of our planetary boundaries, and the need to change our energy and technology systems, then we will not have a living planet for human beings.”

    (for os folk, Sharan Burrow was a trade union leader in Australia. If ever there was someone more useless to fit in a green scam useless job for the UN, Sharan is the person for that job.)

    “The Great Reset is a welcome recognition that this human tragedy must be a wake-up call,” said U.N. Secretary-General Guterres.
    “We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face.”

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Lest we forget, the UN is basically an occult driven organization…

      Its a private organization, on land donated by the Rockefellers, with zero accountability, with mates like Bill G who wants to chip people like cattle….

      What coukd possibly go wrong?

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  • #
    Another Ian

    Something about checking citations

    “Accusation Implodes in MN Global Warming Lawsuit”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/27/accusation-implodes-in-mn-global-warming-lawsuit/

    40

    • #

      Thanks for linking to my WUWT guest post. The nutshell explanation is that the Minnesota Attorney General’s lawsuit claims fossil fuel disinformation campaigns exist, and offers two sets of supposedly ‘leaked memos’ to prove this. The problem is, the memo sets were both rejected to each organization they were proposed to, thus none of their suggestions / guidelines were ever implemented by industry people, and therefore cannot serve as evidence that disinformation campaigns exist at all. The effort to impugn the integrity of skeptic climate scientists thus also implodes, which means the mainstream media has no excuse for dismissing the climate assessments out-of-hand from those skeptics. This isn’t the only lawsuit that tries to float those worthless memo sets as “evidence” …. the dozen others are all enslaved to the same worthless evidence: http://gelbspanfiles.com/?cat=135

      00

  • #
    Another Ian

    “Take Your Statins”

    https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/06/27/take-your-statins/

    “Dr. John Campbell on Chinese Wuhan Covid virus treatments. Short form: Statins reduce risk of dying in hospital by 42%, dexamethasone by 35%.”

    But read on

    20

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      Maybe that’s what they are good for.
      As a short term medication to ‘cure’ Covid 19 disease.
      Certainly not good for the heart & arteries.
      We need all the cholesterol we’ve got as we get older.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    High quality reporting – check the fine details

    “http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/06/27/your-moral-and-intellectual-superiors-201/#comments”

    10

  • #
    • #
      Travis T. Jones

      1/4 China Flood Dam Pressure Intensifies | three gorges dam | collapse | millions people affected

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=8jdaEtFN-mg&feature=emb_logo

      Comments from ‘engineers’ say photos don’t look good.

      Current water levels 2m above acceptable dam flood limits.

      30

      • #
        Bill In Oz

        There is a major flood event happening in China.
        I wonder why ? What has happened to the weather there or to the climate. Could it be an ‘unprecedented’ flood event due to Gore bull warming ? Why aren’t the Extinction Emergency gang demonstrating against it ?

        As for the photos as E M Smith remarks on Chiefio, they look to be ‘doctored’.

        23

    • #
      RickWill

      That will put an end to any CV19 back tracking investigation! I figure it is one way to avoid global scrutiny.

      20

    • #

      From my research back in 2008 into The Three Gorges Dam Hydro, and I wrote a four part Series on the subject, there was this:(my bolding here)

      ….. However, one of those ‘super’ floods occurred in 1954. This disaster flooded over 75,000 square miles, and more than 30,000 lives were lost. Huge cities were flooded , and one, Wuhan, a city of 8 million people was completely covered and remained that way for three months. More than 18.8 million people were forced to move. This dam won’t stop a flood a those proportions, but it will dramatically minimise the after effects when taken in conjunction with the better way disasters are managed in modern times.

      The main thrust of all those dams upstream, three on the Yangtze, and (around) 15 further dams on six tributaries was for flood mitigation of floods just like this one. There will still be major floods, but now they can be better managed.

      Wuhan is at the junction of two major rivers, and was always knows as the city of lakes, and has always been flooded in a major way for all of time.

      The fact that they now have so many dams is to ….. ‘mitigate’ those major floods, and mitigate does not mean prevent.

      This might just be the first big test.

      Tony.

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      • #
        Bill In Oz

        She’ll be apples Tony.
        The climate scaries tell us that Gore Bull warming will melt the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and dry out the Yang Tse river in China.
        So Wuhan will never flood ever again. And the Three Gorges dams will all be empty.
        🙂

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      • #
        Red Edward

        And what if a major “hot zone” virus research center gets flooded?

        What could possibly go wrong???

        40

      • #
        BoyfromTottenham

        Tony, I hope that the folk managing the 3 Gorges dam haven’t made the same mistake as those managing the Wivenhoe dam near Brisbane AU in 2010-11. They held off lowering the dam when nearly full when heavy rainfall was predicted in its catchment, perhaps concerned that said heavy rain was unlikely due to ‘global warming’ propaganda. In the case of the Wivenhoe dam ‘nearly full’ meant that both the 50% ‘water storage’ capacity and the 50% ‘flood mitigation’ capacity were both full when seasonal heavy rains (from a deep slow-moving East Coast Low pressure system, as in the larger 1974 flood) caused the dam level to rise rapidly over a couple of days to the point where the dam could be damaged. The dam operators waited too late, and had to fully open the emergency floodgates, causing a major flood across parts of Brisbane and upstream Ipswich cities. I watched this disaster unfold online, and it was entirely preventable if the dam managers had used common sense and lowered the dam level in anticipation of the summer storms that are common in SE Queensland. Unfortunately the state government firmly believed the mantra that ‘dams will no longer fill due to global warming’, and the flood was the result.

        50

        • #

          BoyfromTottenham,

          I’m not sure if you have seen this, and I have linked to this a few times here at Joanne’s site, and I’ll do it again here.

          As all that with Wivenhoe unfolded, I wrote about it at my home site, updating it each day in (almost) real time.

          This is a long Post, by its very nature (at 5550 words and a number of images of dam capacities) but I’m glad I did it, for a lasting reference.

          And, with respect to reference, there have been two times where it has been used as a reference, and both by High Schools, one of them private. My guess is that the ‘situation’ was set as a project for the Senior students. There was a major increase in daily views at my home site for around two weeks each time, and it received many hundreds of views each time, and now totals out at many thousands of views since I have done it, and its two lead up Posts, both linked to at the linked Post, and both those lead up Posts are worth reading as well.

          Wivenhoe Dam Levels – The Critical Days

          Tony.

          50

    • #
      James Murphy

      A ‘belt and road funded dam in Uzbekistan collapsed last month, killing at least 6 people, and causing tens of thousands to evacuate. The Sardoba reservoir was only 3 years old.

      Good luck with that Chinese infrastructure in Victoria, Chairman Dan. I hope you’ve got some good insurance, or a hell of a lot of gaffer tape.

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  • #
    Travis T. Jones

    Motions in the sun reveal inner workings of sunspot cycle

    “the plasma goes around in one gigantic loop in each hemisphere.
    Remarkably, the time taken for the plasma to complete the loop is approximately 22 years—and this provides the physical explanation for the sun’s eleven-year cycle”

    https://phys.org/news/2020-06-motions-sun-reveal-sunspot.html

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    • #
      James Murphy

      The sun has a magnetic pole reversal every 11-ish years, correlating with the solar maximum. I wonder how that ties in with what you linked. It’s a mysterious beast, that orange thing in the sky.

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    • #
      Lucky

      Regular readers here may recall the work of David Evans on climate cycles. His ‘notch theory’ analysis showed there was a 22 year cycle, double the sun spot cycle of 11 years.

      50

  • #
    el gordo

    Megs over at wuwt reckons EA is owned by Beijing, should we be afraid?

    Wikipedia lists other assets that Energy Australia hold in Australia, see below.

    • Mount Piper Power Station, NSW
    • Tallawarra Power Station, NSW
    • Wallerawang Power Station, NSW (decommissioned)
    • Pine Dale Mine, NSW
    • Yallourn Power Station, Victoria
    • Cathedral Rocks Wind Farm, South Australia
    • Hallett Power Station, South Australia
    • Waterloo Wind Farm, South Australia

    40

    • #
      Graeme#4

      Alibta Energy, who owns Loy Yang B and has a generation portfolio of 1957 MW, is owned by Hong Kong -based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises (CTFE). Their portfolio includes many of WA’s gas power stations that supply the mining industries, the Goldfields gas pipeline and 700,000 gas subscribers. They also owned the Playford and Northern Power stations, now closed and demolished, in SA.

      100

      • #
        el gordo

        Alinta is part of the Beijing package.

        Hong Kong -based Chow Tai Fook Enterprises (CTFE) has been around for a century, so after the Brits cleared out the SOEs would have snapped it up.

        30

  • #
    el gordo

    ‘Victoria grapples with multiple clusters of Covid-19 across 10 suburbs, experts have warned against blaming culturally diverse communities for spreading or believing misinformation, following comments by the state’s chief health officer that appeared to hold conspiracy theories partially responsible for the spike.

    “There are people who use social media from their country of origin or amongst their network of friends as their primary source of information,” Prof Brett Sutton said on Wednesday. “A lot of it tells them that it’s all rubbish messaging from the government.” Guardian

    40

    • #
      robert rosicka

      Interesting to hear that some of the Guards at the hotel Quarantine sites were having (ahem) relations with some of the overseas travellers .
      Add this to the fact that returning travelers were not all being tested for the virus (30% refused) no wonder Victoriastan is a laughing stock of the nation .

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      • #
        JanEarth

        Robert R

        Laughing at others misfortune is somewhat psychotic. Far too much of that going on these days. This virus is actually killing people and putting the brakes on our national economy… so I see nothing to laugh at.

        No one really understands the amount of pain coming our way…if they did laughing would be replaced by pulling one’s hair out and running for the hills… metaphorically speaking. It’s going to get tough folks so being nice to each other may help mitigate some of the pain and suffering. Try it just once Robert you might be pleasantly surprised.

        Cheers

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          robert rosicka

          Jan what part of the Andrews govt handling of this virus is not a joke , the virus is no joke but the Vic government certainly is !

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          • #
            Annie

            Real panic spreading going on too. There are only 5 people in hospital with 1 in ICU in Victoria. The number of ‘cases’ reflects test numbers giving a positive, not hospitalisations. Let’s have some balance here.
            That is not to say that I am not ropeable about the behaviour of Dictator Dan and his cohort. Why were test refusers allowed to leave quarantine? Ridiculous. They should have been made to stay there, at their own expense, for another two weeks.

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        • #
          Bill In Oz

          It is surely curious & ironic that the most politically correct, leftie, progressive greenist government in Australia has demonstrated conclusively that it cannot manage, let alone control this Covid 19 virus.

          It puts privacy above public health and allows incoming travellers in quarantine the right to not getting tested. And relaxes the social distancing rules just in time for folks to celebrate the end of their religious month long fast…And of course there are now clusters of infections within the suburbs where this religious group lives.

          Thanks Danny boy ! We are all waiting for your next trick to help spread this disease.

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        • #
          el gordo

          Chairman Dan needs a dose of realpolitik.

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    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      75 new cases in Vic, posted about an hour ago:
      https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-29/victorian-coronavirus-second-peak-melbourne-hotspots/12402126
      Cheers
      Dave B

      20

  • #
    PeterS

    Today’s Outsiders reveals the truth about the culture wars we are experiencing in the West. Yet even Trump is holding back and saying very little. I suppose our leaders are hoping it will eventually die down. It will temporarily due to its short term cyclical nature but the overall trend is up and the each subsequent cycle high will be worse. Unless something is done to break the trend, eventually the US and perhaps even in other Western countries there will be a civil war.

    50

    • #
      Annie

      I am finding some curious parallels with the present time in a book I am re-reading. It is ‘The White Witch’ by Elizabeth Goudge, set at the time of the first Civil War in 1642.
      She is one of my favourite English writers and I have been enjoying her books during this strange time, especially her descriptions of the English countryside which I cannot visit right now. The older I get the more I realise my English roots. That in no way implies any disparagement of my adopted country btw!

      50

      • #
        PeterW

        First?

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

        Sorry, you tweaked my history nerve.

        00

        • #
          Annie

          Yes…ok! I was talking about the First English Civil War 1642….Charles the First, Prince Rupert, Cromwell and all that. I’m not a history buff; my interest was put off by a teacher I disliked and who I found exceedingly boring. Having said that, there is certainly a necessity to be aware of history and I try, within my limits of interest, to learn more about it.

          00

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      We are in a historical war and revolution cycle at the same time, so it doesnt surpise me.

      In terms of civil war, I suspect the bulk of the silent majority on the US would be armed and conservstive versus a small but nasty marxist core.

      I suspect any civil war will be quick and the right wing will win and give the marxists a deserved thinning of their rabid herd…

      Of course if the marxists back off, then good and bloodshed will be saved. Now if the military take a left wing side, the left will still lose. Good will prevail over the rabid unhinged stupid left.

      10

      • #
        Bill In Oz

        US Vice President Pence was in Texas yesterday. He told all Texans wear a mask and practise social distancing. In fact he threw Trump under the proverbial bus. I suggest that the Republican party have realised that they will get a hiding in November with hapless Biden winning over a Trump who is completely on the nose with the electorate because of his Covid 19 policies.

        Pence is now trying the save the furniture because the house is on fire.

        NB : I’m not barracking for either of them; Trump or Biden nor a partisan of either of them. Just a foreigner watching from afar a huge tragedy playing out and gazing into my cloudy crystal ball.
        🙁

        02

  • #
    Ironbark

    [Duplicate post]AD

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  • #
    Graeme No.3

    I am trying to fight my way through the Milankovitch cycles. There is the precession variously said to be of 19, 21, 22, 24, or 26 thousand year timing, supposedly reaching its maximum warming effect about 8,900 years ago. There is the axial tilt mostly said to be a 41,000 year cycle. And there is the orbital eccentricity cycle variously described as 90, 95, 100, 110 or 125 thousand years long.
    It brings to mind the comment long ago by the mathematician Johnny Van Neumann on graphs – “with 4 degrees of freedom I can draw an elephant, and with 5 degrees I can make him waggle his trunk”.

    The orbital eccentricity is the only one which increases the amount of heat reaching the Earth is said to be shrinking so surely the amount of heat reaching the Earth must increase and partly cause the interglacial we are in. But the last interglacial was 130-117 thousand years ago, and the current one started 21,000 years ago (interrupted by the Lower Dryas) so it would seem likely EXCEPT that the current cycle is stated to be half way through (hence the claim that the next Ice Age won’t happen for 50,000 years).
    Yes, the cycles are supposed to superimpose and reinforce their effect but it seems that currently we are in neutral.

    Further the other 2 cycles affect the northern hemisphere above 65 degrees, warming/melting the ice with a feedback effect, yet the warming into the Interglacial occurs simultaneously in the southern hemisphere which should be deprived of extra heating. Did it get supplemental warming to avoid claims of discrimination?

    Oh, and some climatologists are claiming a fourth cycle of 400 or 405 thousand years, somewhat near the 455,000 year cycle ‘unearthed’ by geologists recently running from the middle Triassic (220 million y.a.) to the present.

    Anybody want to help dispel the confusion?

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    • #
      el gordo

      According to wiki: ‘Researchers used data on Earth’s orbit to find the historical warm interglacial period that looks most like the current one and from this have predicted that the next ice age would usually begin within 1,500 years.’

      Not sure about that, the Holocene looks like its past its used by date. The cosmic bombardment which caused the Younger Dryas differentiate us from previous interglacials, we are on a more gradual decline to glacial conditions.

      10

    • #
      el gordo

      This baffles me, but I’ll make a guesstimate that the formation of the isthmus between north and south America had a hand in it.

      ‘Global climate patterns have undergone a remarkable shift in the past 600,000 to 1.2 million years. Before the transition, glacial cycles, consisting of cold ice ages and milder interludes, typically lasted about 40,000 years—but those weaker cycles gave way to longer-lasting icy eras with cycles lasting roughly 100,000 years.’ Eos

      20

      • #
        Graeme No.3

        It has been noted that the switch from 20,000+ cycles to 41,000 year ones occurred about the time of a magnetic pole reversal. The same explanation for the switch to 100,000 years cycles. I haven’t checked dates, but we are about due to another reversal; will we revert to 20,000+?

        It should be noted that these cycles show up in the Vostok ice core records and before that as O18 isotope ratios. Geologists don’t always agree with the ice core times see Devil’s Hole, Nevada.

        As for the start of the next ice age I have seen 45, 65, 120, 180, 220, 400-450, 550, 800, 1200, 1500, 2500, 5000, 15000, 25000 and 50000 years estimates. I don’t think they can all be right.

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        • #
          el gordo

          Its anyone’s guess, but we should see the signs in plenty of time. Going on what happened at the end of the Eemian, desertification becomes universal.

          On the question of Reversal, the pace of the magnetic north pole travelling to Siberia might be a clue, its relatively fast at the moment. I’ll take a closer look at both theories.

          30

        • #
          el gordo

          The Reversal hypothesis wins.

          ‘The Central American Seaway was closed by the elevation of the Central American Isthmus which is proposed to have occurred three and a half to five million years ago.’ wiki

          10

          • #
            Graeme No.3

            And the reversal theory comes a distant third place.
            The switch to approx. 100,000 year cycles occurred about 1 million years ago but the nearest reversal was 1.06 m.y.a. (and the very brief one before that 1.19 m.y.a.). There was a switch to the opposite polarity from 0.90 to 0.78 m.y.a. and it has remained as is since then.

            The switch to the 41,000 year cycle did occur near the start of the Matuyama (2.59 m.y.a.) but this Chron had 3 minor reversals and 2 major reversals [Olduvai 2.0 to 1.78, and the Jaramillo 1.08 to 0.9 then back into the current polarity at 0.78 m.y.a.) Don’t see much connection.

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            • #
              el gordo

              ‘Some 2.6 million years ago, Earth entered a time known as the Pleistocene, which saw the planet swing in and out of deep periods of glaciation at regular 40,000-year intervals. About 1 million years ago, during what’s called the Mid-Pleistocene transition, these ice age cycles went from occurring every 40,000 years to 100,000 years. (The most recent ice age ended 11,000 years ago.) Scientists have long known that tiny changes in Earth’s orbit, called Milankovitch cycles, drive the planet in and out of these ice ages. But nothing changed in orbital patterns 1 million years ago that would have driven the “flip.”

              AAAS Science

              20

              • #
                Jojodogfacedboy

                If you look at the “Great Lakes” in North America, their is a distinct pattern of an asteroid splitting and stiking our planet. This could quite easily have flipped our planet a multitude of times as it re-stabilized.
                Our planet is carried in a pocket of orbital gases from the Sun which friction our planet into an orb shape as it also rotates our orb.

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              • #
                Graeme No.3

                el gordo:

                I am not disputing that Milankovitch cycles occur but why
                1. they don’t appear to have been of significance except in the last few million years. Why not?
                2. why the timings don’t line up with the actual events.
                3. why, if their effect is concentrated on the 65 latitude in the northern hemisphere, does the southern hemisphere warm up simultaneously.

                In particular, I am told that the orbital precession (26 thousand wobble) peaked 8,900 y.a. so it couldn’t have played a part in the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age, esp. if the (100,000?) year orbital cycle wasn’t in sync.as claimed. Nor is the axial tilt changing fast enough to cause a meltdown around 21,000 years ago and still have a warming effect 10,000 years later..

                40

              • #
                el gordo

                So we are flying blind and at the mercy of the gods.

                Milankovitch is the paradigm, but I’ll certainly following it up and look for answers.

                20

              • #
                Bill In Oz

                Graeme & EG, It’s a pity that we do not have any actual records for the sun going back any significant period of time. We usually make the assumption that the sun is stable in it’s output of light/energy & that what the Earth get’s is thus sort of stable over time.
                Is this assumption based on real evidence ?

                22

              • #
                el gordo

                ‘If you look at the “Great Lakes” in North America …’

                The consensus is that the lakes came from glaciation, but there are others who think differently.

                https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279986021_234_Massive_elliptical_comet_impact_craters_on_Earth

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                Bill In Oz

                EG Why are there no such features on the Australian continent ? They are all in the Northern hemisphere with hardly any in the Southern hemisphere.

                13

              • #
                Graeme No.3

                Bill In Oz:

                The nearest thing is the 9,600 year data using Be10 (Beryllium 10).

                10

              • #
                AndyG55

                Bill, You mean as shown on this graph.

                https://i.postimg.cc/9z3X4LYv/Solar-Activity-Proxies.png

                Very obvious solar energy increase over the latter half of last century.

                No wonder the planet warmed a bit !

                All that energy into the oceans, to be released at El Nino events.

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              • #
                el gordo

                ‘Why are there no such features on the Australian continent ?’

                There are 27 impact craters in Australia and I’m assuming there is more land mass in the Northern Hemisphere. Its been rumoured that a large rock crashed off the NSW coast, causing a tsunami of enormous proportions.

                Andy I’m losing faith in the solar hypothesis. In 1780, well before the Dalton, extreme weather had already begun and I don’t know why. Is there a lag in the system?

                10

              • #
                el gordo

                Bill here is an intro to the Tasman Sea impact by an asteroid or comet.

                https://www.theage.com.au/national/meteorite-theory-makes-waves-20031219-gdwyps.html

                From memory his hypothesis has been severely critiqued.

                10

              • #
                el gordo

                Solar cycle 3 was short yet robust.

                10

            • #
              Bill In Oz

              Andy & Graeme, that’s interesting.But I don’t know anything about Berylium 10 (?) and how it can be a proxy for the Sun’s solar energy output over the past 6-7 hundred years.

              Are there any other links for this issue.

              Also Andy that chart finishes at 1900. i wonder what the chart would show for the past 120 years

              02

              • #
                Bill In Oz

                Sorry past twenty years !
                ( Not 120 years..as the chart goes to the year 2000 )

                02

              • #
              • #
                Bill In Oz

                Thanks E G & Graeme for those replies. The Age article is interesting as I lived for a while in Bairnsdale in East Gippsland. I dug a big garden there as well and found about a foot down in the soil a layer of smooth water washed pebbles over the whole area. The location was about 200 meters from the Mitchell river and above 30 meters vertical above the normal river height. I thought then that a tsunami had created it but friends at the time poo pooo’ed the idea.

                However EG it was your Great Lakes comment that I was referring to. If those elongated great lakes depressions were formed by comet or meteorite strikes, I was wondering why we don’t see the same type of impact depressions in Australia. Yes there are plenty of meteor craters with clear round shapes even if weather worn by the millennia of erosion. BUt are there any ‘tear dropped’ shaped one.

                10

              • #
                el gordo

                ‘ … above 30 meters vertical above the normal river height. I thought then that a tsunami had created it but friends at the time poo pooo’ed the idea.’

                Thanks for that, its worth a closer look.

                Any tear dropped shape that may have happened in Australia would surely have been eroded by now. Might find them in Antarctica undisturbed over millennia.

                10

    • #
      RickWill

      The eccentricity is reducing. All that means is that the insolation is closer to constant over a year. When eccentricity is at a maximum there is a very large difference between the maximum and minimum insolation over a yearly cycle.

      When the eccentricity is reducing, there is more land ice that does not melt in the northern hemisphere. Although the eccentricity is presentsly reducing, it is already at a low level so annual variation in insolation is about 80W/sq.m. That may not be enough to cause glaciation.

      40

    • #
      Rowjay

      Forget Milankovitch cycles – get your teeth into Climastrology.

      Our esteemed Rhodes W Fairbridge and (ex) NASA’s James Shirley in this paper explore how planetary cycles within our own solar system may somehow affect the sun. Written in 1987 in a typically understated manner, one of their statements was:

      While we are aware of the risks involved in making predictions on the basis of limited data, we must note that both criteria for the occurrence of a prolonged minimum of solar activity are met beginning in 1990.

      Some recent comments on sun activity indicate that it is indeed low – yet to see what it all means though.

      30

  • #
    Graeme No.3

    Also, for those with a few minutes
    Hale and Pace – Guide Cat
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lie7VYtf33Q\

    40

  • #
    • #
      TdeF

      A good review but again, all too obvious. The Green machine thunders on, powered by trillions of dollars. Facts have never been right. Cheap wind, free solar, adequate reliable Green power and Green jobs and a Green economy. All lies. They always were.

      41

  • #

    I don’t care what anyone says. When you construct something and you spend soooo much money, well, I sort of expect it to work.

    Friday evening at 6PM, you know, that usual time when Australia is consuming its greatest amount of electrical power every single day, well, wind power decided to ‘have a break’.

    At that same time, (as is even the case right now at Midday on Sunday) there was a whopping great High pressure weather system hovering directly over that area where all those wind plants are situated, so very little, in fact, no wind at all.

    Now, while the overall total Nameplate for wind power in Australia is 7728MW, the largest concentration of those wind plants is in the South East of South Australia and the Central West of Victoria. The State of Victoria has 23 of those wind plants with a total Nameplate of 2774MW. South Australia has 22 wind plants with a total Nameplate of 2142MW. So, all up there are 45 wind plants in that area with a total Nameplate of 4916MW, and that equates to (around) 2700 of those individual wind towers with the Nacelle on top of the tall pole and the three bladed propellers out the front of each one of them. That’s 71% of ALL of Australia’s wind generation.

    So, here we have 45 wind plants, around 2700 individual towers and a total Nameplate of 4916MW, and the total power being generated at peak power time on Friday for delivery to the grid and the consumers in both of those States where all those wind plants are was ….. ZERO.

    Macarthur wind plant, one of those stationary wind plants in Victoria has a Nameplate of 420MW and that plant cost around $1.2 Billion, so using that cost as a guide, here we have around $14 BILLION worth of wind plants, and they are producing zero power. Can you really imagine what the public would say if they spent that much money on something and it did not work, ….. oh, that’s if they were ever told about that in the first place, eh!

    Victoria has two large scale coal fired power plants, Loy Yang (A and B) and Yallourn W. In all, there are ten individual Units at those plants, and the total Nameplate is 4690MW, so if something similar was to happen to coal fired power, what is shown here with wind generation is worse than turning off ALL the coal fired power in Victoria. Victoria would be totally blacked out, the second most populous State in Australia, and here we have 4916MW of wind generation delivering nothing at all.

    Incidentally, there are a number of occasions when those ten coal fired units hum along, all of them on line, and delivering their TOTAL Nameplate in a straight line across the page for days on end, as ancient as they all are right now, still delivering at their maximum. Well as I said, the Nameplate for ALL wind power in Australia is 7728MW. It has NEVER delivered that total. The highest it has ever been was 5100MW and that was back before the Nameplate was increased two times from 6960MW, and since reaching that new Nameplate of 7728, the best it has been is around 4700MW, 60% of Nameplate, and that was for ONE five minute point in time.

    Please don’t tell me that this is what we have to look forward to in the future.

    Tony.

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    • #
      Ironbark

      I’m fairly certain it’s going to get a lot worse Tony.

      You cant fix stupid.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “the total Nameplate is 4690MW”

      According to AEMO, Victorian coal currently providing 4704MW.

      That’s just over 100% of nameplate

      …. from a set of old clunkers 😉

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    • #

      I just can’t figure out why none of this EVER gets talked about in the media.

      Victoria has 23 wind plants with a Nameplate of 2774MW.

      For the last four hours, the output from all of that is ….. ZERO.

      My perception is that something like that would be a huge news story, and any media printing it would be guaranteed a huge readership.

      Just what is going on here.

      Tony.

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      • #
        Annie

        You could take a pretty good guess! 🙁

        70

      • #
        robert rosicka

        Tony the only time there’s news from the subsidy industry is on that one or two days every year when they claim renewables powered most of the state .

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      • #
        Robber

        I spoke to one pollie who has tried to get the message out – but says the media ignores anything that doesn’t fit the story line.

        130

      • #
        AndyG55

        Wind is going much better in SA at the moment, managing 77MW (5% of supply)

        QLD, 2%

        NSW, 2%

        Tas, 3%

        as Tony says, Victoria ZERO%

        Are we glad they spent SO MUCH of OUR money on these basically USELESS and environment-destroying contraptions.

        70

      • #
        yarpos

        because the lights stay on, what is there to talk about?

        60

      • #
        TedM

        I think that the most of the media has just swallowed the AGW, renewable (alleged renewable) energy falsehoods.

        21

    • #
      PADRE

      I am currently, at the end of a cold and foggy day trying to compose a comment in response to a paper from our local MP who is trying to work up a push for a ‘Community Energy Co-Design Submission’. My mission is to try to stop it! The whole plan is to base the ‘Community Energy Supply’ on ‘Renewables’ (of which there is no such thing apart from wood and some hydro) and batteries, with clever means of FCAS management. I am in despair about the stupidity of the suggestions! Help!

      20

  • #
    OrignalSteve

    Interesting…..and ouch….

    http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/282529

    “Former Israeli Health Ministry Director-General and one-time Labor MK Yoram Lass has declared the coronavirus pandemic “dead,” writing that the virus has been essentially eliminated by antibodies developed by people infected during the first wave.

    “Lass went on to criticize the Health Ministry’s use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) DNA tests, which he said have led to a large number of false positives, as they do not distinguish between active cases of the coronavirus and residual RNA traces of infections that have already passed.

    50

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Crash….and…burn…..

    They could recycle the app as fertilizer….

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/dishonest-covidsafe-app-has-not-detected-a-case-despite-6-million-downloads-20200627-p556s7.html

    “As the number of infections soars in Victoria, Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick said the government was being dishonest about the effectiveness of the app, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison touted as “sunscreen” against major outbreaks and as the key to lifting restrictions.

    Senator Patrick, who has an engineering background and was a project manager involved in rapid-prototyping and testing, said the government was refusing to concede the app “wasn’t working properly, if at all”.

    “”I think the Prime Minister and the government were dishonest with the Australian public and I think that that’s very sad,” said the senator, a supporter of the app concept who himself was diagnosed with COVID-19.

    50

    • #
    • #
      Dennis

      It is often not considered that an elected government and appointed by members prime minister/premier and cabinet rely on advice from permanently employed government department executives and often consultants.

      As public company board directors and chair person also act on advice.

      30

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      The ap seems pretty useless.But then there is this to consider:
      “On the app’s launch day, 6696 Australians had coronavirus. Since then, a further 926 cases have been identified, many returned travellers. Of the 926, only 40 of those have had the COVIDSafe app and have allowed health officials to look at their close contact data.”
      In other words people are refusing to allow Dpt of Health staff to look at their close contacts on their mobiles. I guess they have legal ‘advice’ that they do not have the right to access it without permission.
      Ummm ?

      26

      • #
        yarpos

        Government IT and their beloved contractors. Trying to do something relatively sophisticated to a short deadline. Working with a large user base where they have no control of the devices. Trying to convince citizens all would be well after assorted Census, Health, Centrelink , ATO disasters. The chance of success was pretty much always effectively zero.

        I switched off when they claimed to be doing distance measuring with commercial bluetooth in random consumer devices.

        50

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    And…hmm…all those DNA samples taken in Covid tests…what happens to them?

    And look who is involved….is big business effectively controlling a cure? And your data?

    You have to be kidding…..appears to be wolves guarding the flock….this is like a corporate take over of your personal info. Now imagine if everyone has to be tested.

    https://www.smh.com.au/national/global-data-sharing-alliance-key-to-finding-covid-19-cures-fast-20200626-p556h2.html

    “Scientists across the globe can share their data on a new digital platform, pooling their knowledge, discoveries and skills to fast track vital treatments for COVID-19.

    “The International Data Research Alliance and Data Analysis Workbench aims to entice researchers to share their findings, data-sets, or metadata securely to uncover treatments that could save thousands of lives and curb the suffering caused by coronavirus.
    The workbench aims to break down the silos hampering efforts to find COVID-19 treatments fast.

    “The alliance co-founders and major donors include Australia’s Minderoo Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Mastercard and Wellcome. The international consortium hopes the workbench will break down research silos that stymie progress and open access to emerging data to accelerate the development of therapies for COVID-19.

    “”The only way we’re going to relegate COVID-19 to the dustbin of history is through open data sharing and collaboration,” Minderoo Foundation chairman Andrew Forrest said.

    50

  • #
    Ironbark

    Any thoughts on this wuhan virus news?

    Strange SARS-CoV-2 behaviour

    It appears the Virus uses 2 mechanisms to replicate and infect

    20

  • #
    Ironbark

    SARS-COV-2 also replicates by prompting the infected host cell to rapidly produce “tenticles” (filopodia) that reach out to infect other cells.

    The speed at which these Filopodia are produced and also their branching nature make this a highly unusual behaviour.

    30

    • #
      Bill In Oz

      Is this another result of Gain in Function research by the Chinese lab at Wuhan ? Certainly seems spooky.
      Perhaps another reason why the CCP acted so harshly when they decided to stop in’t spread in Wuhan and more recently in Beijing.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    “The Simpsons just jumped the shark. Go woke, go broke.”

    https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2020/06/the-simpsons-just-jumped-the-shark-go-woke-go-broke.html

    Stopping using white voices for non-white characters.

    Another thing Spike Milligan would have been in strife for. But just imagine the retorts.

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  • #
    Orson

    HCQ+ Works! Good news on Covid19 treatments

    A large study out of Marseille, France of about 3,700 subjects testing positive for CV19 finds that a ten day course of HCQ+AZ for at least four days is effective, with only 0.9% dying, and none die suddenly. Now, this is for early treatment.

    Go to link and start at 28 minutes for details
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MAoJnu7-sw

    Chris Martinsen, PhD, above, also reports on two monoclonal antibodies studies showing their strong level of effectiveness, even for later ICU treatment.

    For example, where the rate of death in ICUs is about 50%, with Anakinra treatment, the death rate drops to only 10%.

    Thus, we see major positive news on the virus crisis, especially with cheap and widely available HCQ. One wonders if adding Zinc improves on these outcomes?

    Now, we need good news on the vaccines front, and then the world economy might be saved.

    However, as Dr Martinsen notes earlier in his video report, total global infection rates of the virus are heading up again, as populous nations like India and Brazil report ever rising rates of infection. With lockdown efforts ending in India, it could be a long, tough summer in important regions of the world.

    80

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      now watch the elite attack the study to try and discredit it….

      50

    • #
      RickWill

      Australia has had 7686 CV19 cases to date. Of those, 104 have died and there is currently 1 in critical care. That means Australia has had a death rate of 1.3%. Actual death rate isn doubt somewhat lower given that there will certainly be undetected cases that are now recovered.

      To me a death rate of 0.9% would not be much different to what Australia has achieved. If everyone on the globe eventually becomes infected with CV19 then a death rate of 0.9% in a global population of 7bn would be a big number – like 63M. Basically it doubles the global death toll if it occurs over a year.

      21

      • #
        Orson

        You’re thinking of a death rate of 0.9% per year. Not for a month.

        The global numbers are going to mushroom to several hundred millions before a vaccine comes into play. Covid19=will be a serious short term burden to every developing nation in the world – unless Indonesia’s apparent success can be replicated!

        But Australia, NZ, and the usual East Asian nations, face he problem of screening out virus threat! It’s a new problem, a new challenge.

        20

        • #

          You’re thinking of a death rate of 0.9% per year.

          could you please clarify? If the monthly death rate of covid is 1.3% of cases then over a year, at the same rate/month, the rate is 1.3% (denominator and numerator are both multiplied by 12). So 0.9% pa is the correct comparison.

          00

    • #
      farmerbraun

      I don’t know that the world economy could be “saved”.

      The world economy has been “transformed” irreversibly, as was the stated intention.
      In ten years time we will have an idea of what the completely “transformed” economy looks like.
      All that we know for sure is that it will be nothing like the one that is crumbling.

      21

  • #
    Furiously curious

    The ABC are doing a big whine about funding cuts; pure hypocrisy. It was perfectly fine to attack Alan Jones’ funding, by going after his advertisers, because the left don’t like his politics. Media Watch was crowing that Jones didn’t retire, he was driven out by the boycotts. ‘What’s ‘is face’, on his $200 000 salary, for his 15 minutes per week show, was ecstatic. But if it’s fine to attack the funding of someone you don’t agree with, and drive them off the air, how can you be upset that people, who don’t agree with your politics, want to cut your funding.
    The Libs are being so half hearted about it, and quibbling around a few dollars. For God’s sake, stand up and say, we pay your salaries, and our voters don’t like your opinions, and they are putting pressure on us, so we will cut your funding.. I bet ‘Media Watch’ wont take a pay cut.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      If you let the Left have thier head, you wind up with Cuba or Venezuela….

      70

      • #
        Richard Ilfeld

        Each country is likely to fail in its own unique way when the left takes over.
        Canada, Australia, and the US are highly federalized which holds out possibilities unlikely in a unitized government like Cuba.
        The interplay between our executive, legislative, and courts is different. Our minorities, and their net reaction to being used as leverage
        is different, The actual compliance of all the munchkins in small positions to the dictates of the leftist leaders may not conform in the same way, given our traditions.
        In fact, the most singular leftist flaw may be a failed ideology that adapts tactically but always fails in the same way strategically.

        In countries with a large middle class, you have to maintain the big lie while actually screwing the middle class supporting you. The old “vote for me cause I’m woke even though
        your life will be worse” pitch. Maybe our educational and civic institutions have failed badly enough for the big lie to be sustainable…I think we may be about to find out.

        70

        • #
          Jojodogfacedboy

          Governments worldwide paid big bucks to promote ” global warming ” into every nature show in order to get government grants and tax write offs.
          Seen some nature show promoting extinction of species that would be impossible to distinguish in the Canadian wilderness and yet they were able to do this with a tiny budget and lack of people and technology. Of course, they need much more funding for further study.

          21

    • #
      TdeF

      As has been reported, there are no funding cuts to the ABC.

      What they are arguing is that they are not getting automatic CPI increases and have worked this into a story of an effective budget cut.

      So they only way they can pay management more is to get rid of 250 people. And it is covered up by arguing that this is the govenment’s fault for not giving them more cash.

      Sell the ABC. No one needs them. Or the CSIRO or the BOM. These are just money pits. And our local Port Phillip council who get through $100Million a year by paying an average salary of $140,000 a year to fewer than 1,000 people. And cutting services. How else can the people of this city pay such high performing administrators?

      And Vice Chancellors of the endless universities are on over $1.5Million a year, $30,000 a week because they are such good administrators? Who decides all this? Of course they need high paying foreign students? Soon they will be begging for more cash, fortunes more.

      Of course the ABC needs more cash. And it’s their ABC, not ours.

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      • #
        GD

        $30,000 a week because they are such good administrators?

        $30,000 a week for any bureaucrat is positively obscene.

        70

      • #
        Kalm Keith

        Those examples of salary munificence are extraordinary; the 100 plus club.

        Here in NovoCastria we have two examples in our local government of “career” activists who have risen from family connections up through the control mechanism to hear our local government.

        The “boy” was last heard to be on $400,000 plus, a few years back.

        This isn’t democracy, it isn’t right.

        KK

        30

        • #

          You only need to refer back to when one media outlet released just how much Leigh Sales was being paid, and remember the absolute uproar that caused, not that she was getting so much money, but that someone had the temerity to tell the public how much she was getting. You can bet money that she’s getting a lot more now.

          Obscene amounts of money in pay for work are most definitely not the sole province of the private sector.

          Tony.

          70

      • #
        yarpos

        A zero base budgetting exercise at the ABC would be interesting.

        I would pay to watch the melt down meetings.

        10

  • #
    Dave in the States

    Noticed that all recent readers comments on wuwt have been disappeared.

    10

  • #
    Orson

    “SELL THE ABC” oughta be a bumper sticker campaign, a single issue quest, generating free money for the tax payer!

    61

    • #
      Jojodogfacedboy

      You know how the government is…
      They would get a buyer and have a contract for a 50 year subsidies to pay for.

      Stop the government from giving grants to it and let it go bankrupt.

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  • #
    GD

    Internet provider belong.com.au is running a despicable ad on mainstream TV. Unfortunately, I can’t find a link for the ad.

    The video opens with grand views of Sydney, with lots of blue sky. Next, ominous-looking dark grey clouds appear in the sky.

    These aren’t your usual dark clouds before a thunderstorm, these are rectangular, boxy dark grey clouds hovering over an unsuspecting Sydney.

    Apparently, this is ‘carbon pollution’. It all looks menacing and horrible and then the dark grey boxy clouds of this evil carbon multiply.

    It’s almost terrifying.

    In terms of advertising (brainwashing), it’s a clever ad.

    It also shows what skeptics are up against. The general population will most probably believe what this ad is suggesting.

    90

    • #

      Do they mention that as an Internet provider they are creating more co2 than transport.

      60

      • #
        GD

        In the ad they reckon they’re investing in green wind and solar power, so that makes them carbon neutral.

        Of course, it’s all virtue signaling and no substance.

        70

        • #
          AndyG55

          “they’re investing in green wind and solar power”

          So, none of their customers had any internet for the last 3-4 days.. correct? 😉

          30

          • #
            Annie

            I wonder what is keeping our lights on here? It’s been foggy all day, with not a breath of wind. 🙁 It’s even worse than yesterday when we did see the sun for an hour or so with a brief lifting of the fog.

            20

    • #
      PeterS

      More fodder for the masses. What’s sad is the lack of a counter response from our governments and major companies. As the old saying goes, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. We are witnessing this truth unfolding. Then again how many “good men” are left these days? Not as many as before I would say.

      20

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  • #
    Slithers

    Did they not see this coming?
    https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jun/29/australian-regional-media-to-gain-funding-after-catastrophic-ad-revenue-fall
    Fat cats in State Capitals still get inflated income as regional offices of publications with HISTORY of serving the region get shut down and Regional Ad revenue falls of a cliff!
    Now WE ARE TO FUND THE FAT CAT INCOME!

    41

    • #
      el gordo

      Regional media is on the skids, this maybe bad for democracy.

      10

      • #
        PeterS

        What’s really bad for democracy is the lack of brain power used by the voters. The system itself is not ideal but would work well enough if only voters turned their brains on when voting. The problem of course is most people are too lazy to do their own research and instead vote on false hopes and promises.

        30

        • #
          BoyfromTottenham

          PeterS – IMO the dumbed-down and Left-leaning education system in Australia is to blame for the decline in sensible voting. Schools haven’t taught objective fact-based thinking for decades, and Bob Hawke’s decision to keep kids in high school until year 12 and then ‘go to university’ has seen a huge drop in apprentices and a huge increase in university students, many of which have been indoctrinated in post-modernism, which is just ‘Cultural Marxism’ renamed so as not to scare the conservatives. Try reading some of the nonsense that is taught in a range of soft sciences and Arts faculties at universities these days – you will be gobsmacked.

          52

          • #
            el gordo

            All that you say is true, but the pandemic has turned the world on its head, so no more free lunches for useless academics. Arts and letters might be eased out, which is also a risk to democracy.

            21

          • #
            Graeme No.3

            The Advertiser (SAs local rag) had a reporter claiming that 6,000 redundancies out of 21,000 was a 20% cut.

            comments on school teaching standards deleted

            40

          • #
            PeterS

            No doubt the education system has a lot to answer for but who allowed them to decline so far for so long? Governments of course. Who votes them in and keeps voting them back? The voters of course. The buck starts and stops with the voters. Governments only are allowed to do what the voters are prepared to put up with for so long. After a time the voters ought to become rather annoyed with them and eventually the minor ones start to thrive. At least that’s what one would think would happen in a nation that uses their brain power. I don’t see that happening so far. So if we continue to decline the way we have been thus far then the voters must be happy with it, clueless, dumb or don’t give a damn.

            10

        • #
          el gordo

          ‘ … if only voters turned their brains on when voting.’

          We have covered this ground many times, Australia is merging into a one party state and the only way to reinvigorate Oz political culture is through a balanced media. Which allows people to make up their own minds.

          ACM executive chairman Antony Catalano is grateful to the government for stepping in to save them. I’m hopeful that ACM will soon change its attitude on some issues, like climate and energy.

          ‘We are committed to producing the best quality news and information for regional Australians and we thank Minister Fletcher for the support he has provided to help us continue the important role we play in our communities

          ‘The grant allocation to ACM reflects the commitment we have made to protecting our mastheads right around the country,’ Mr Catalano said.

          00

          • #
            PeterS

            Yes we have covered it a few times but you keep ignoring the elephant in the room. We are a democracy and as such the people have the power to change things drastically at the ballot box. Unlike some countries we don’t have a totalitarian regime nor do we have rigged elections. If we the people are not prepared to use our democratic right to force a message through the ballot box then we might end up being like those other countries.

            20

            • #
              el gordo

              “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” George Orwell

              20

              • #
                PeterS

                Yes, we indeed need to be on our guard as we can’t trust everything we read. Some would have us believe two plus two equals five as in the novel.

                20

              • #
                el gordo

                Yep, truth can only exist if we defend it, we definitely can’t allow the big lie to be normalised.

                A debate is needed on whether we should build a renewable zone in NSW or a Hele at Dubbo. Catalano could introduce that discussion in a balanced way, he owes the taxpayers for saving ACM.

                10

            • #
              Chad

              PeterS
              June 29, 2020 at 12:51 pm ·
              ……. Unlike some countries we don’t have a totalitarian regime nor do we have rigged elections.

              Hmmm? Depending on how scrupulous you are..
              Many would argue that “Preference Transfers” are at the least a misuse of votes.
              Then there are deeper issues such as “Candidate “Selection”, “Branch Stacking” , factional influences, etc
              ..all leaving a slightly unpleasant taste in a democratic mouth

              00

          • #
            yarpos

            Median IQ remains at 100 (optimistically)

            Even if some of the voters do turn on their brains when voting, that doesnt equate to a sensible outcome based on the facts of day. Personally not a great fan of compulsory voting.

            20

            • #
              PeterS

              Still it ought be enough to force a hung parliament and allow one or more smaller parties to influence the policies of the government formed, assuming that the voters select the right small parties. Not likely to happen in a hurry though for the reasons I stated. So get used to the same old for a long time until things become so bad people start taking some notice.

              10

      • #
        farmerbraun

        The NZ P.M. bought her own media outlet for $50million of taxpayer money. Ardern went “hard and early” on that one.
        What’s not to like?

        30

  • #
    Springdam

    According to Financial Times there are approx. 1.6 M unemployed on Job seeker and estimated 6M on Jobkeeper. Perhaps like many of us on this blog we have worked honestly our whole working life, but now the former have volunteered there personal details, spouse, girl / boy friends details, bank account and other demoralising details to obtain their payments through no fault of their own. Many now have their own personalized CRN. ( Customer Reference No.) The government couldn’t have done a better job of linking peoples onto the data system. Perhaps the “Australia Card” is not a priority anymore. Now if they link face recognition to exiting data. GOTCHA.

    72

  • #
    Slithers

    So the poor media industry gets a GRANT to save the regional media companies that they took over and then dismantled!
    Pork Barrel does not describe this by our Government!

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    Another Ian

    “Good news: ‘Hundreds, if not thousands’ of universities will soon be ‘walking dead.’ ”

    From the link

    ” “An NYU professor of marketing says the coronavirus will result in many schools closing in coming years. Students aren’t getting their money’s worth, and the pandemic has exposed that, he says.” ”

    Via http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/06/28/whats-the-opposite-of-diversity-36/

    Maybe worth bringing to the attention of James Cook Uni?

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    Furiously curious

    Mallam is really getting into it. A definite shift over the last few months.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vErTfwtZ5yc

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    Another Ian

    “The progress of the COVID-19 epidemic in Sweden: an analysis”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/06/28/the-progress-of-the-covid-19-epidemic-in-sweden-an-analysis/

    Nick Stokes doesn’t like it – “just sayin”

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      TdeF

      A misreading of medical history meant Sweden tried to achieve herd immunity with the original killer virus! Herd immunity will come in time, to a widespread benign version much as our flu season is a repeat of the original Spanish H1N1 flu. Not the second wave of Spanish flu which killed all ages, both sexes and within 24 hours.

      However the pandemic will teach us a great deal, especially a medical community to whom pandemics were a thing of the distant past and how to deal with an infected community and how you cannot just reach for an innoculation.

      Now I would love to see real virus testing at points of entry or proof of vaccinations. As it used to be before we thought pandemics would never happen again. Let alone be man made weapons of war, aided and abetted by the UN and even the EU. And the Democrats in the US who hope to use the disruption to bring down Donald Trump and seize control. They want it to be worse, not better. It’s all about power.

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      MrGrimNasty

      I’d rather be in Sweden that N/Z for the next few years.

      Yet again, as I have repeatedly pointed out, the WUWT article confirms that the majority of deaths were in care homes and dense immigrant housing [Stockholm and Gothenburg(Västra Götaland County)] and the softer policy is entirely vindicated and successful and would be repeated with improved communication to immigrant communities and precautions in care homes.

      Meanwhile some people still imagine that we are dealing with the yŭsăn corporation and not something akin to an ordinary bad flu.

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        TdeF

        And you imagine that it is akin to an ordinary bad flu? Utter rubbish. That is so wrong. It is no longer a matter of opinion. We have facts.

        Other very similar Scandinavian countries abandoned their example and saved thousands of lives and do not want the Swedes to visit. They are no longer the lucky country.

        Deaths in Denmark 604. Deaths in Norway 249. Deaths in Sweden 5,280. And the sum of Denmark and Norway populations match Sweden.

        5,000 people who would still be alive in Sweden.

        Does it matter where they died or how old they were or who they were or what their families thought? Or whether they were old people or immigrants so they don’t count?
        And how many others have been damaged for the rest of their lives with their lungs, heart, kidneys, intestines damaged irreparably. Especially the shattered lungs. And what did they go through? A bad flu. No.

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          Lucky

          The points made are correct yet the message is misleading- Sweden has admitted badly mistreated its elderly people, data on the other two nations mentioned is not easily available especially the size of the migrant population. Sweden made a major error in admitting so many un-assimilating migrants (supposedly refugees) who hold the civic culture of their hosts in contempt. What little detailed data is allowed out shows the migrant population to be hard hit by the virus, easy to accept as their ‘culture’ does not respect advice, only force.

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          Bill In Oz

          Thanks TdeF for rejoing the fight to show how ruubishy this ‘opinion’ is.
          While enjoying the safety of New Zealand where hardly anyone has died.
          He rubbishes it’s strategy which has probably saved his own life.
          And praises Sweden where old farts like us have died by the thousand.

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    WXcycles

    I want to point out that the current media and political hype about a “second-wave” is absent within the global dataset that we have. Yes, numbers are rising exponentially, because they always were, that never actually stopped. There’s been a constant exponential increase in the numbers. But the global level acceleration curve indicators are not actually accelerating any faster, presently, they’re in fact almost constant — or roughly so.

    Acceleration curve indicators graph:
    https://i.ibb.co/LvQGkNG/1-EXPONENTIAL-CURVE-VALUES-FOR-COVID-19-Feb-3rd-2020-to-Jun-29th-2020.png

    There’s no second-wave present within the global level data. The rise in cases seen is just the continuous acceleration that has always been present, it’s always accelerating, but at a slow rate. It’s been almost a constant rate of slow acceleration since late April. What has changed is that the hotter and poorer developing world, which as I showed in March, has been accelerating faster all along, but from a base that was 10 time lower. Well they have now caught up to western levels of infection and they are remaining at a similar acceleration. So they are now contributing more new active cases to the global totals than before.

    So superficially, it looks like a ‘second-wave’has begun, but actually it hasn’t happened as yet. There will be a detectable significant re-acceleration to come, of course, but it still has not occurred, almost at all.

    The point I’m making here is there’s nothing dynamically like that occurring in the data. Maybe in some States of the USA and Brazil there’s further acceleration occurring, due to policies and behaviors that promote a wave of manslaughter still to come, but elsewhere things are NET unchanged, or else still slightly decelerating off the national acceleration peaks seen in early to mid April. It’s predominantly in the USA and US media where a second-phase of their first-wave, (a fake “second-wave” meme) seems to be beginning to ramp up once again.

    Having said that, a very interesting pattern has emerged in the global data, with respect to the main indicator’s of exponential acceleration since the last week of May. You’ll be familiar with this first graph, which covers most of the COVID-19 disease globally but the second below is a subset from it, from May 25th, to present. It’s in that period that a clear change is actually visible in the global active cases acceleration:

    Subset of acceleration curve indicators:
    https://i.ibb.co/nBdZkQT/2-EXPONENTIAL-CURVE-VALUES-FOR-COVID-19-May-25th-2020-to-Jun-29th-2020.png

    However, the Total Cases, and the Total Deaths are still very slightly SLOWING their acceleration rates, as seen in that graph. It’s only the active cases trend which is further accelerating during most of the past 5 weeks.

    What this means is that although there’s no global acceleration in cases, there is an acceleration of the load being experienced by the hospitals. It looks like a new strain is emerging which keeps people in hospital for longer, but overall a slightly larger fraction of those are recovering after a longer fight. Hence the active cases are rising, as the recovery lag is getting longer. So for many hospitals this will still feel like during the past month things have begun to get worse because they have, people are remaining sicker for longer, but the death rate is not rising, and the total cases admitted will mostly not be accelerating.

    And that’s the nature of this “second wave” media and political institutional meme in a nutshell — there isn’t one.

    Heaven help us when there is, because we haven’t seen almost anything as yet. As I pointed out recently only ~0.67% of humanity has been infected so far, so this disease’s infected total will have to become about 120 times larger than now before we converge on a herd-immunity level of global infections and sufficient immune resistance emerging.

    Maybe in another 6 months we can ballpark predict when we’ll get to that, but it’ll be a long time.

    At the beginning of June I projected using the acceleration on that day that we would reach about 10.5 million cases by the 1st of July, and as it stands now there will be around 10.56 million cases tomorrow – July 1st. So that was a very accurate projection. It also proves that there has been approx zero further daily global acceleration into a ‘second wave’ during the course of June.

    So that’s all been a media and political myth and false-meme on the global level. Locally though, in the US and Brazil, and maybe in India it can be called a real acceleration due to local conditions (mostly due gutless mincing politicians and ignorant selfish citizens who could benefit the society greatly with their public flogging).

    The current projection points to ~17 million cases globally by the 1st of August (presuming there is no further rate of acceleration added, this is done using Sunday data, so should be low). June produced about 1 million new cases per week but July should produce about 1.5 million cases per week on average.

    So this is just from the constant low-rate of acceleration that’s been present, from late April, which is doing this, there is no acceleration, we have in fact dramatically slowed COVID-19 down via isolation. So let’s be clear about this fact. Those who are claiming isolation and quarantines don’t even work are completely full of the brown stuff, because graph link #1 above shows that is did work and was in fact extremely effective, and continues to be so. We’ve turned it from raging acceleration, of a deadly and highly disruptive global pandemic, into a manageable and comparative pussycat, which although it remains a serious global problem to come, right now it remains largely suppressed, and is being held down by social distancing. It is not doing its worst, or even anything close to it.

    Globally it’s now spreading at about 1/10th of the maximum rates it was to in late March, before the relative social isolation began.

    Except for in a handful of countries where willful libertarian anti-heroes and innumerate ideological dimwits can’t face the reality of the numbers, and want to do the dumb things which will surely accelerate COVID-19, where they live, and blow their own economic feet off.

    It’s exciting! Viva-La-Revolucion! Old people’s lives don’t matter!

    Graph link #1 above shows globally that we’re still in a position to end the progression of this disease. But shameless greed, idiot ideologies, rank denial of observation, and willful mass-stupidity are preventing a win here. It looks like all the kooks will need a deeper lesson in what not to do. And this disease infection will become almost 40% larger during the coming month, and this is with zero NET acceleration present — as can be seen in this graph #3:

    https://i.ibb.co/YRw13p5/3-Total-Cases-COVID-19-Linear-March-5th-2020-to-Jun-29th-2020.png

    Even with the global spread suppressed to just 3.7% daily growth today, this is still going to infect ~5 billion people over time. ~4 billion will be asymptomatic, and ~1 billion will get sick. At present ~12% of all active cases are observed to die, and you can see that clearly within this graph #4 link:

    https://i.ibb.co/sVqtXfd/4-COVID-19-Percent-of-Active-Cases-that-Died-Global-March-5th-2020-to-Jun-29th-2020.png

    That 12% of 1 billion symptomatic people equates to ~120 million dead, still to come. And who knows how many others with their health messed up for life? In the interim, the pathological denial of this situation will continue, by the idiotocracy, until after late January 2021.

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      Bill In Oz

      Welcome back WXC. I have missed your frank and detailed analysis of the facts with this pandemic infectious disease.
      Those who claim isolation and quarantines don’t even work are indeed completely full of the very smelly brown stuff

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      Peter C

      It’s exciting! Viva-La-Revolucion! Old people’s lives don’t matter!

      According to Worldometer the number of serious cases ( in the whole world) is now 1% of the total infected. 99% are mild and presumably recover at home.

      Here in Australia the number of Active Cases as increased to over 600 but there is only 1 case (so far) which is serious. All the rest are mild. The next 10 days will show if the virus is still a real issue in Australia. If the number of serious cases do not increase we might as well stop all control measures.

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        WXcycles

        If the number of serious cases do not increase we might as well stop all control measures.

        What, and just ignore that a 12% proportion of known new active cases are dying, globally, every day? That is Worldometer data too, look at it:

        https://i.ibb.co/sVqtXfd/4-COVID-19-Percent-of-Active-Cases-that-Died-Global-March-5th-2020-to-Jun-29th-2020.png

        That is comparing the daily deaths to the daily new active cases, and day by day on that graph a proportion of about 12% of the new active cases is dying. That’s what occurs when the hospitals are full up and can’t treat the cases effectively any longer.

        They do then die, easily and rapidly. That’s why we have to keep the numbers low (close to zero) and treatment as high quality as it can be, for as long as possible.

        We also don’t have any reason to eliminate the control measures, our economy has come back to life, I was out and about Friday and we had quite heavy traffic delays the shopping areas were full of customers, construction all over the place, industrial/engineering areas all busy too. I see no reason to do more than we are given the risk and how quickly the numbers can regrow.

        If you’re observing these same data, and comparing our situation to it, then concluding it’s then OK for us to remove all control measures, this is frankly a crazy conclusion, PeterC. The numbers show this is actually a deadly virus, and the reason that Worldometer data is not much much worse, is because everyone has in fact slowed it down dramatically and 5.7 million known cases have recovered through control measures providing the opportunity for better treatment to occur, as seen in my first link’s graph above. When you take the control measures away you get what was occurring during March and Early April.

        And medical workers have sacrificed themselves globally, their families have lost them, just to make that happen. Without those control measures since mid to late March, we’d have people dying in their many millions now, and many of the medical staff dead along with them. The control measures gave them the opportunity to get much better at treating the cases, controlling the spread, and lowering the death rate as this occurred.

        But if you overwhelm the hospitals from here, with a wave of new cases, they will still run out of capacity to treat people, and it will be like nothing was ever achieved. Then people will die in much larger numbers, up to 19% of active cases have died in France due to hospitals with no capacity to treat more cases. That’s 1/5th of the know cases, and the know cases are about 1/5th of the total infection. In other words, about 4% of the total cases have died in France, when the numbers grew too large to medically cope with them.

        France still has an 18.15% died rate today (total known cases, verses total known deaths for the entire infection to date).

        That’s what ineffective control measures produced, even while they were trying to isolate it and slow it down. Your suggested removal of all control measures is absolutely not the way to go.

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    el gordo

    CO2 also bubbles up from the sea floor.

    https://phys.org/news/2020-01-deep-scientists-co2-hotspot.html

    How widespread is this phenomenon?

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    tom0mason

    Yet another (IMO) useful site for a good perspective about this Wuhu virus …
    https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/covid-19-coronavirus-infographic-datapack/

    It converts a lot of information into useful and easily read graphics.

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