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Four Corners has become TwoCorners — it represents both sides of politics — Green And Left
Brissenden has done no research, interviewed no critics, and asked no hard questions. When it comes to serving the Australian people, protecting them, and holding our government to account, he’s AWOL — promoting his own pet interests instead, hiding the scandals and critics. What do we pay him for?
The iconic show on the ABC won’t interview skeptics that walked on the moon or won Nobel and NASA prizes, but if a cherry farmer feels the climate is changing, send in the film squad!
After years of telling skeptics that you don’t ask a plumber to do heart surgery, the ABC “Weather Alert! last Monday was 90% plumbers.
The formerly iconic FourCorners “public affairs” show crafted a 43 minute advertisement for the Renewables Industry and Carbon Trading Bankers and the Green Blob. And we taxpayers paid for it all. As usual, most of their facts were correct, but only because they barely had any. The facts apparently are that at least four farmers across Australia have the feeling that their climate has changed and are “doing something”. Yeah. Plus a whole bunch of […]
This absolutely definitely is not about profits or money.
Giant Spanish bank announces €100 billion plan to fight climate change
BBVA, the second largest bank in Spain, has launched a major new financing initiative to support sustainable development and combat climate change in the coming years.
Only gas and oil companies are “vested interests” seeking to profiteer from our demise. Banks are charities:
BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González said, “At BBVA, we want to play a key role in mobilizing resources to halt climate change and promote sustainable development. It is an ambitious, long-term goal in line with our purpose of ‘bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.’”
Apparently, the bank’s role is to change Earth’s climate, and “bring the age of opportunity to everyone”.
Do their shareholders know, I wonder?
Can anyone see an elephant?
Warning — Meaningless acronym coming — SBTI:
BBVA has also become the first Spanish bank to commit to the Science Based Targets Initiative. The campaign helps major corporates work out how they have to cut emissions to prevent the impacts of climate change.
The group’s new strategy is called Pledge 2025…
If you wanted […]
The implications are staggering, half the population fail at blink tests, and can’t see newspaper headlines about “climate change”. If only we could make them see by using rhetorical and psychological trickery to get past their faulty filters, the world would be saved. Please send us another grant!
The research you’ve been waiting for:
Why some conservatives are blind to climate change
Naturally, this self-serving, circular, and poorly researched piece is brought to you by The Conversation. Where else?
The big insight looks like pattern seeking and confirmation bias to me:
When we modified the test to measure people’s attention to climate change, we found people who are concerned about climate change are better at seeing climate-related words, such as carbon, right after the first target than those who are less concerned.
When we analyzed the data, we found a pattern: Conservatives who were less concerned about climate change were less likely to see climate-related words than liberals who were worried about the issue.
In short, conservatives showed climate change blindness.
Or in another hypothesis, conservatives had better filters for pointless news stories with a prediction success rate lower than random chance. From experience, […]
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8 out of 10 based on 21 ratings
Paul Homewood has either caught a Met Office prof rewriting history (the politest way I can put it) or Homewood has caught him issuing deliberately incorrect forecasts. Which is it — deception about the past, or deception about the future? Apparently he thought no one would check his past statements? (And as far as journalists go, he’s almost spot on.)
The Best from the East hit Europe and the UK on Feb 28th. Yesterday Professor Adam Scaife was bragging about his forecasting prowess a month before:
Published: 10:36, 4 March 2018
Ministers were warned about the Beast from the East a month ago by a Met Office forecaster who stockpiled provisions in preparation for the weather bomb.
Professor Adam Schaife, head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office, alerted the Cabinet Office to the incoming weather bomb four weeks ago.
He told them that they should expect Britain to be battered by a deep freeze.
In preparation for the polar vortex he stocked up on essentials.
‘I got extra oil, food and logs in, knowing this was coming,’ he said last week.
But Paul Homewood checked the […]
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6.9 out of 10 based on 22 ratings
At least nine dead in the North East of the US after a savage storm dubbed “Riley”. Nearly 2 million people are without power. Airlines canceled more than 3,000 flights.
Waves hitting the shore in Scituate, Massachusetts. Photo from @BrynnCNN
Friday afternoon’s high tide in Boston was the third-highest observed tide on record, according to the National Weather Service.
March Brings the Most Variety of Extreme Weather in the U.S.
Jon Erdman argues that March in the US is notorious for storms due to jet streams and a mix of warmer humid air paired with cold winter air. His impressive list of previous March extreme weather is a good antidote to the “Climate Change” claims coming in 3, 2, 1 ….
The deadliest March snowstorm was the infamous Blizzard of 1888, which dumped 40 to 60 inches of snow in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, wind-whipped into drifts which topped some homes. Four hundred were killed in the storm and its cold aftermath.
Here are a sampling of other notable March snowstorms:
Late March 1987: Three-day blizzard produced gusts to 78 mph at Dodge City, Kansas and Altus, Oklahoma. Pampa, Texas, picked up 20 […]
“…a central cell of the Climate-denial Machine”
In the climate debate, few men are more central, more loathed and feared than Marc Morano. In the flesh, few men are more warm, witty and polished — an absolute gentleman and a delight to be around. He’s so effective he’s been rated one of the top 17 “planet killers”, and according to the Daily Kos, “Evil Personified”. Thank goodness he’s on our side.
Not surprisingly, with so much going for him, he was the villain of the Merchants of Doubt documentary. Newsweek called him “King of the Skeptics” and Esquire Magazine devoted six thousand words to trying to unpack and investigate his key role in climate politics.
For a few years Morano worked for Senator Inhofe, who at the time was virtually the only Republican standing up to the media, academia and the UN on climate change. When Leonardo DiCaprio and National Geographic released their top ten list of climate deniers, Inhofe was number one, and Morano, number two.
Finally the man behind all this and Climate Depot — who is probably the closest to politics without being a politician — has written The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.
Like […]
The Washington Post reports on the Russian Troll Farm in St Petersburg known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA):
Russian trolls used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inflame U.S. political debate over energy policy and climate change…
The committee’s report found that between 2015 and 2017, more than 9,000 posts and tweets dealt with U.S. energy policy produced by 4,334 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts controlled by the Internet Research Agency.
Twitter told the committee that more than 4 percent of tweets produced by the Russians dealt with energy and climate issues.
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Keep your eye on the numbers — 96% of their effort was not about energy and climate, and presumably we’re talking about 400 posts and tweets? Drop in the ocean…
But for those who havent read about the Russian Troll Farm known at the IRA — it’s worth catching up. I found this account from an insider, last October, interesting:
Max says that IRA staff were tasked with monitoring tens of thousands of comments on major U.S. media outlets, in order to grasp the general trends of American Internet users. Once employees got a sense of […]
The Guardian is covering the current Red Alert version of the Great British Snap Freeze
UK weather: Met office issues new red warning as wind and snow cause chaos – live
Having prepared so well for shorter winters, the National Grid in the UK warns that they may be running out of gas.
Hundreds are trapped on the M80 in cars and trucks between Glasgow and Stirling. Seventeen hours and counting…
But what about those UK vines and cacti?
Tony Heller reminds us that 10-15 years ago scientists were predicting that Drought may be the new norm, and that Climate Change may turn UK Mediterranean. Plant experts were telling Brits that passionfruit and cacti will “thrive in warmer climates”. They even painted what it will look like:
Future British Garden
Look out for those “milder, wetter UK winters“:
A 2C rise – which some climate scientists say is inevitable by the end of the century – would see the South East of England experiencing conditions similar to south west France, while a 4C rise would expose gardens to conditions seen in south-west Portugal, the Trust said.
Herbaceous borders and water-loving English […]
In South Australia, when the lights went out, Olympic Dam took two entire weeks to get operational again. Spare a thought for those in Puerto Rico. Right now, five months later, and one in 6 still don’t have electricity. That’s five full months of blackout — surviving off candles, car batteries, small diesels and whatever anyone can get. Some people will be waiting til May. Though that’s “95%” connected, so still no joy or lights, for one in 20 people. How do you put a roof back on your house when you can’t even power up your drill? (See The Atlantics photo montage from January 27th to get some idea of what life is like, months after the storm).
Puerto Rico has 3.6 million people, was poor and corrupt, with failing infrastructure and huge debts before Hurricane Maria hit on Sept 20th. The government has a budget of $10b per year, but owes more than $70b. The hurricane wiped out 80% of the infrastructure, completely trashing some of the solar and wind “farms”, and bringing down transmission lines.
The remains of one solar plant:
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See the complete destruction here:
Brett Adair with Live Storms Media
One wind […]
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8.9 out of 10 based on 17 ratings
The Beast From The East is coming
Siberian winds are blowing across Europe, just as the IPCC didn’t predict.
In Rome, it’s snowing for the first time in six years, the Air Force is ‘helicoptering over the city, looking for isolated people. Naples got the heaviest snow in 50 years. Schools are closed and people are skiing down the streets.
The UK is expecting heavy snow and a wind chill of minus 15C. The snow has already caused more than 200 trains to be cancelled. Roads and hundreds of schools are closed.
If we could only install enough windmills we could stop this.
Still, it could be worse. “During the Great Frost of 1683–84, the worst frost recorded in England the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London”. — Wikipedia
Thames Frost Fair 1683-84, Painting by Thomas Wyke scan from FT magazine.
@ITVLorraine Tweets: #BeastFromTheEast #uksnow
@PunctureSafe-NE Tweets:
2 feet of snow expected
#BeastFromTheEast #uksnow
In Europe we’re awaiting the Beast, A Siberian blast from the East, Where the warmists foretold, No snow and no cold, But more often where […]
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6.8 out of 10 based on 24 ratings
Yet again, we have to ask: does the Bureau of Meteorology care about Australia’s long term climate trend? Are they even trying?
Bourke could be one of the top ten most influential temperature sites in the world, mostly by virtue of being miles from anywhere, and used to homogenize a large slab of the land mass of Australia. Bill Johnston documents how changes to the site create most of the temperature trend.
The Bureau of Meteorology’s fancy magical and secret homogenization protocol does not detect changes that obviously affect the temperature (like the clearing in the photo below). But sometimes the BoM make “corrections” because of site changes that don’t appear to have mattered. Is it conveniently selective or just inept?
The BoM don’t even document major site changes a lot of the time. Even iconic sites that affect huge areas are badly managed. Someone got the tractor and plough and cleared the vegetation. As usual, a citizen scientist, a volunteer, documents it (along with a suite of other site changes).
In the last ten years land was cleared around the thermometer. This denuded area has a lower humidity, and higher volatility of temperatures. The data from this thermometer […]
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8.8 out of 10 based on 25 ratings
Image of offshore wind farms. Baltic Sea Wikimedia | Mariusz Paździora
We are trying to collect dilute erratic energy, spread over hundreds of square kilometers in windy, salty, and wet conditions with machines that spin at 330km/hour. What could possibly go wrong?
From: “Offshore wind fiasco” at GWPF — The original story in Danish.
Ørsted must repair up to 2,000 wind turbine blades because the leading edge of the blades have become worn down after just a few years at sea.
The wind turbine owner will not disclose the bill, but says that the financial significance is “small”.
The cost of repair is so small they need to keep it a secret.
But it can’t be cheap. For the most repairs, the blades need to be brought down, shipped and fixed on land. Repairing them at sea is a rare feat.
This must be the infamous leading edge erosion.
The Offwhore Wind Industry website discussed this type of damage in 2015:
Large rotors lead to large yields, but also to lots of annoyance – at least as far as the coating is concerned. After only a few years, the protective layer that […]
California councils sue Exxon but Exxon fights back: Will that be Fake Fear or Fake Bonds? ‘Cross Examination Is Going To Be Brutal’: NYU Law Prof Says Climate Change Litigation Is A Loser
Some Californian councils launched climate litigation against Exxon because they will be wiped out by floods. But at the same time the same councils issued bonds and forgot to mention that the local area was going to be washed away.
Since 1990 or so, the bonds are worth in the order of $8 billion according to a petition from Exxon. The Competitive Enterprize Institute is calling on the SEC to investigate regarding potential fraud.
The councils have painted themselves in to a terminally awkward corner: Are they money grubbers using false propheses to scare up some money, or are they deceptive bond dealers?
For example, San Mateo County claimed in its complaint to be “particularly vulnerable to sea level rise” with a 93 percent the county will experience a “devastating” flood before 2050.
“If sea levels were to raise that high, it most certainly would be catastrophic,” Epstein said.
However, bond offerings in the last few years by those counties and […]
We toss the term Groupthink around a lot, but Christopher Booker gets serious about exactly what it is and what it means. He analyzes the “Climate Change” debate through the lens of the original scientific study of Groupthink as published by Irving Janis, a professor of psychology at Yale back in the 1970s. It’s uncanny…
Obviously we need to understand it so we can preventlimit it. But Groupthink is also ripe fodder for driving Eco-worriers up the wall as we list the ways — to a T — that they are The Textbook Example. There’s a useful strategy that flows from this. The core tenet is that because believers hold a shaky, fragile idea, they must be aggressively hostile to protect it. So put the boot on the other foot. Let’s ask Believers how they don’t fit the Groupthink mould. Do they welcome debate — go on, prove it.
Richard Lindzen’s introduction:
[Booker] asks how do otherwise intelligent people come to believe such arrant nonsense despite its implausibility, internal contradictions, contradictory data, evident corruption and ludicrous policy implications…
The phenomenon of groupthink helps explain why ordinary working people are less vulnerable to this defect. After all, […]
Electricity prices declined for forty years. Obviously that had to stop.
Here’s is the last 65 years of Australian electricity prices — indexed and adjusted for inflation. During the coal boom, Australian electricity prices declined decade after decade. As renewables and national energy bureaucracies grew, so did the price of electricity. Must be a coincidence…
Today all the hard-won masterful efficiency gains of the fifties, sixties and seventies have effectively been reversed in full.
Indexed Real Consumer Electricity Prices, Australia, 1955-2017.
For most of the 20th Century the Australian grid was hotch potch of separate state grids and mini grids. (South Australia was only connected in 1990). In 1998 the NEM (National Energy Market) began, a feat that finally made bad management possible on a large scale. Though after decades of efficiency gains, Australians would have to wait years to see new higher “world leading” prices. For the first years of the NEM prices stayed around $30/MWh.
But sooner or later a national system is a sitting duck for one small mind to come along and truly muck things up.
Please spread this graph far and wide.
Thanks to a Dr Michael Crawford who did the original, […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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