West Australia – Unskeptical conservatives wiped out in election – No Trump, No Brexit vote

Don’t mention the climate — unskeptical conservatives give away some of their best weapons

The local Liberals (conservatives) got smashed on the weekend in the Western Australian election. Polls predicted it, but instead of a Trump-surprise, Colin Barnett’s team got a nasty shock instead — wiped out. There was no “hidden vote” waiting there because the local Liberals are just another brand of The Establishment. There is nothing politically brave about them.

In WA climate was a non-issue, yet pandering to the religion still cost conservatives. One of the main election messages was about the privatisation of “Western Power” (Electricity supplier). This strange spectacle unfolded where McGowan, the leader who’d suggested the ridiculous 50% renewables target was thumping Barnett’s campaign with messages of fear about rising electricity prices after the privatization. Barnett didn’t hit back — No one seemed to notice the incongruity of Mr Renewables accusing someone else of making electricity expensive.

There are many reasons the WA Libs crashed (read some here). But the “climate” policy hole gets forgotten. Colin Barnett was unarmed, unskeptically accepting the unaudited foreign committee reports. In 2014, when semi-skeptical-Abbott was PM, the premier of a state that lives off mining and energy wasn’t […]

Fake News: Whipping up a media frenzy over bizarre “records” before they occur

Australia’s “leading climate scientists” can’t predict the climate but they are very good PR operatives. Here in Perth we’ve had a cool year — for the last twelve months it’s been nearly a whole degree cooler than the average for the last 20 years. But last weekend in Perth, news stories told us we’d had an “autumn stinker” and wait for it, we might get Perth’s second hottest first eight days of March. Call that a HFEDOM record and write in the Guinness Book of records. It’s a permutation “record” almost as important as the longest distance run by a man holding a table in his teeth. Except it’s not even a record, it’s a news story about a record that “might happen”, but didn’t.

Let’s name Neil Bennett (BOM) and Will Steffen (ANU) as the Propaganda-in-Chiefs dumping meaningless climate-trivia on the people in order to generate FEAR and screw more money from the public.

Straight from the New Climate PRAVDA Manual:

Invent contrived trivial permutations in order to use the word “record” Don’t bother waiting for real data, use forecasts If record includes the word “cool”, “cooler”, or “cold”, send to trash. When wrong, crickets.

Click to enlarge, […]

WA Election — Conservatives who believe in “climate alarm” were wiped out

8.3 out of 10 based on 40 ratings

Climate Institute runs out of money

The The Climate Institute is a private think tank set up in 2005. It got about $2m a year back in the heyday of climate panic. Today Planet Earth is still about to collapse, but it’s not important enough for the team to keep working without a salary. Amazing what someone, who really believes in what they do, can achieve with 1% of what they had.

No more propaganda surveys from them then:

Climate Institute announces closure, citing lack of funding to continue

After a decade of climate advocacy work, climate change research organisation the Climate Institute has announced it will be closing in late June.

The non-profit’s survival has until now been dependent on donations, and it has cited a lack of funding as the reason for its closure.

Best known for its Climate of the Nation reports, the organisation also helped, among other things, expand the renewable energy target in 2008.

The Climate Institute could be relied upon to pay for trite motherhood style surveys to score meaningless headlines about how 110% of Australian believe we have a climate.

My past posts:

Climate Institute Poll finds we are all […]

Fifty Shades of Loadshedding — “Welcome darkness my good friend”

Love it! (Sing ’til you cry).

Welcome darkness my good friend

it’s good to meet you once again

Because the power grids are stressing,

that’s the reason for load shedding…

— Shrish Viyas Hargoon h/t Lance.

….

9.2 out of 10 based on 89 ratings

Go NCSE “March for Science” — Rage for Cliches!

The whole NCSE march on April 22nd is devoted to a strawman:

The National Center for Science Education was one of the first organizations to endorse the march, and we are encouraging our members to take part. Why? Because we believe that the marches will be a powerful and positive reminder that there is something that virtually everyone agrees on: the value and importance of science.

There is no public debate saying science is not important. It simply does not exist. So why march? According to Ann Reid, biologist, science is important for farming, water quality, and beer-making. No kidding. Load up the strawmen.

Rage On: March for the trite!

“Science is for Everyone” (except scientists who disagree with government propaganda):

And that’s where the March for Science fits in. On April 22, 2017, people all over the world will be gathering together to celebrate science, and to declare that science belongs to everyone. NCSE will be there.

Obviously the real subtext are controversial topics (why else does anyone march?) Guess which branch of establishment science is the one hardest hit by the Trump presidency:

At the National Center for Science Education, we know […]

VW eco-scam, official corruption, is killing diesel

News is out that diesel cars which don’t comply with pollution standards will be banned from some roads in Germany on “high pollution” days. Depending on how often those bad news for diesel industry and owners. How useless is a car that you can’t drive when you need it? Stuttgart is being called the “Beijing” of Germany for air pollution. Residents are suing the Mayor for “bodily harm”. The same thing happened in Oslo — governments told people to buy diesel to reduce carbon pollution, but they are now banning diesel cars on some roads on some days too.

This may apply to as many as 90% of diesels on German roads. Sales of diesels fell by 10% last month. The pain level in this depends on how often those high-pollution days are. See the current Stuttgart air-quality monitoring — it’s OK today, but if I read this air pollution road map from 2008 correctly, it suggests some roads are over the safe limit 60, 80, even 180 days a year. In 2014 fine particulate matter exceeded safe limits on 64 days a year.

Corruption always has a price but in this case the owners of diesels are paying for […]

Windy Clean Green Pollution

Looks like the halo is fading. Today-Tonight is a current affairs show in Australia. Today a few more Australians discovered that free energy is not just expensive but creates its own kind of pollution.

This hardly a surprise for anyone who can spell cost-benefit, but it’s healthy to see the prime-time media in Australia doing something other than singing the Clean-Green advertising jingle.

h/t Scott of the Pacific

8.8 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

Sorry I am a bit distracted with other things this week. Light postings.

8 out of 10 based on 30 ratings

DiCaprio, Bono, and Al Gore: flying eyebrow artists for the planet

Advertising your virtues sometimes conflicts with advertising your social status.

Paul Joseph Watson never minces his words. …

The surprising thing is that these guys get away with it. Not laughed out of town for their grandstanding piety at awards nights.

h/t Scott of the Pacific

9.2 out of 10 based on 96 ratings

Climate Change will suck the flavour from your daily bread

Climate Change threatens to make bread less tasty

Over at The Conversation the panic is rising. Life is not going to be the same. Get ready for the bland future — if we stop all plant breeding tomorrow, and don’t change our fertilizers at all, it possible, by 2050, in dry years, wheat may have a 6% decrease in protein.

It’s that serious.

Everyone likes the high protein kind of wheat, and it’s worth more. Glenn Fitzgerald, at The Conversation argues that Australian wheat is going to be lower in protein, and downgraded, making us less competitive and our farmers poorer. (Cynics among us note that authors at The Conversation only seem to care about farmers when climate change might hurt them, not when climate-change-action actually sends them broke, makes them homeless or puts them in jail. Y’know — whatever.)

As for Australia’s export earnings, I say, forgive me, but I thought the CO2 elevation was a global thing — so unless we are competing with aliens and intergalactic wheat, color me unconcerned. All the wheat producers on Earth will be dealing with the same issue.

How to make a good thing sound bad

The bottom line in biology […]

Trump takes away EPA “right” to control every puddle in USA: WOTUS executive order

Smile. One more noxious, power-grabbing bit of legislation: fixed.

Farmers and land-owners lost control of the puddles and ditches on their land under the guise of environmental protection.

Remarks by President Trump at Signing of Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Executive Order

The EPA’s so-called “Waters of the United States” rule is one of the worst examples of federal regulation, and it has truly run amok, and is one of the rules most strongly opposed by farmers, ranchers and agricultural workers all across our land. It’s prohibiting them from being allowed to do what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s been a disaster.

The Clean Water Act says that the EPA can regulate “navigable waters” — meaning waters that truly affect interstate commerce. But a few years ago, the EPA decided that “navigable waters” can mean nearly every puddle or every ditch on a farmer’s land, or anyplace else that they decide — right? It was a massive power grab. The EPA’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands, and regulations and permits started treating our wonderful small farmers and small businesses as if they were a major industrial polluter. […]