Thursday Open Thread

7.9 out of 10 based on 18 ratings

164 comments to Thursday Open Thread

  • #
    OldOzzie

    Solar’s Lofty Ambitions Are Consuming Ever-Larger Expanses of Land Down Below
    Mammoth Solar

    By John Murawski, RealClearInvestigations – December 7, 2022

    But this pastoral tableau will be swept up in the green revolution when construction begins here on the nation’s largest solar power facility east of the Mississippi River. The planned 800-megawatt Randolph Solar Project in Charlotte County will replace a commercial lumber farm of loblolly pines with 1.6 million photovoltaic panels covering an area equivalent to seven square miles.

    And the rapid buildout exposes a moral paradox for the climate change movement: Although done in the name of fighting global warming, some amount of deforestation will be the inevitable result of clearing land for ground-mounted solar panels. Environmental groups say they hope to steer solar farms to “disturbed land” (modified adversely, typically by human activity) and rooftops, but those options are often expensive and impractical.

    “We’re going to change the character and characteristic of rural Virginia if this goes unchecked,” warned Martha Moore, senior vice president of governmental relations at the Virginia Farm Bureau. “My main concern is the long-term viability of the agriculture and forestry industry in the state of Virginia.”

    Moore pointedly avoids using the euphemism solar “farm” when referring to a solar energy facility. She is concerned that replacing agriculture with sprawling solar projects will not only take out valuable land from production but also undercut local farming by reducing business for local sawmills, livestock markets, and farmers’ cooperatives.

    This year the American Farmland Trust said that expanding solar power could gobble up as much as 3,900 square miles nationwide, and predicted that many Eastern states could lose between 1.5% and 6% of their undeveloped land to solar facilities – mostly on farmland that’s flat, cleared, and near to existing transmission infrastructure. A Princeton University study this year forecast that achieving a net-zero-emissions economy by 2050 could directly impact a cumulative land area the size of Virginia, with forested lands the most directly impacted by solar deployment in Eastern states.

    The environmental groups that have launched waves of lawsuits and press releases to fight oil and gas pipelines, natural gas fracking activity, and power plant ozone violations have largely been absent on this issue.

    200

    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      Thanks Ozzie,
      7 square miles of loblolly pines to be replaced by 1.6 million solar panels (presumably made in China) And we all thought trees were good for our environment. To an environmentalist this does not bear thinking about. So painfully, so sad and so destructive.
      Oh what foolish things people do . .

      240

    • #

      Oh frabjous day, a wonderful new solar power plant.

      800MW Nameplate too, and man that’s a huge power plant. (/sarc)

      The cost, well, between $800 million and $1.6 Billion.

      All for a power plant delivering the equivalent of around 200MW at the absolute best, a f@rt in a cyclone!

      And they keep telling us renewable power is so cheap.

      Tony.

      370

    • #

      Virginia has a law mandating no fossil power by 2045. There are 800 square miles of solar proposed so far. We are trying to repeal that law.

      191

  • #
    Tides of Mudgee

    Oh dear, hadn’t thought of this. Another major problem with renewables. ToM

    file:///Users/jamjar/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail%20Downloads/6180DBD8-AC5B-4364-9C98-EB3D90AC15AA/image.png

    11

  • #
    OldOzzie

    Victoria: A shambolic state of strata chaos

    An Excellent site to wander through – https://www.flatchat.com.au/vic-strata-chaos/

    30

  • #
    GreatAuntJanet

    I don’t really care about the royal family, and almost never read articles about them. But had to laugh at this very funny episode about Meg/Harr by Paul Joseph Watson.
    Idiots https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj3fROxnu8A

    70

  • #
    OldOzzie

    JFK Assassination Investigator Has Jarring New Claim About Oswald’s CIA Involvement

    A prominent Kennedy assassination investigator says the CIA has never disclosed documents proving that Lee Harvey Oswald was involved with the CIA in 1963.

    The CIA holds documents that show presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in an intelligence operation before the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a prominent Kennedy assassination reporter alleged Tuesday.

    “We’re talking about smoking-gun proof of a CIA operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald,” reporter Jefferson Morley said.

    Morley claimed the CIA operation involving Oswald took place in the summer of 1963, three months before the assassination. The allegation from Morley, who has written extensively about the CIA in the 1960s, could shake up the history of the Kennedy assassination if it proves to be true.

    Kennedy investigators have long sought to investigate the extent of Oswald’s involvement with intelligence agencies, and whether that could reveal more about whether Oswald was the only person involved in Kennedy’s death. Despite decades of investigations from Congress and independent inspectors, the CIA has never disclosed any involvement with Oswald.

    “This is an extraordinarily serious claim, and it has profound implications for the official story,” Morley said.

    Morley claimed that Oswald, a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning to the United States as a supporter of Cuban communist leader Fidel Castro, was involved in a pre-assassination CIA operation meant to discredit American supporters of Castro. Morley’s allegations focused on files created by now-deceased CIA agent George Joannides, who was involved with anti-Castro exile groups. Morley said 44 documents in Joannides’s file are still being held by the CIA and could shed new light on the purported operation.

    “No one outside of the CIA was any wiser,” Morley said of the effort, which he said involved work to promote Oswald as an unhinged pro-Castro figure.

    The claim from Morley, a former Washington Post reporter, came at a press conference for Kennedy assassination investigators that includes a sitting federal judge.

    The press conference comes before a deadline next week imposed by President Joe Biden for the CIA and FBI to release all documents related to the assassination. It’s not clear yet whether the agencies will request an extension of that deadline.

    Judge John R. Tunheim, a federal judge in Minnesota, said it was time for the CIA to release its remaining documents. Tunheim previously served on the Assassination Records Review Board, which handled the release of assassination-related files.

    “It’s time to release all of the files,” Tunheim said.

    100

  • #
    OldOzzie

    WED, DEC 7, 2022 | BY JOHN SCHROEDER

    “Unintended Consequences” or “What Experts Don’t Know Can Hurt You”

    Expertise is a funny thing. In a world with as much knowledge as this world contains, expertise in any given area generally means there are other areas one does not spend much time learning about.

    Expertise is as much about focus as it is about knowledge. But in order to focus on something very specific, of necessity other things get ignored. This is one of the reasons I decided against pursuing a PhD in my academic field of Chemistry. In order to obtain such a degree my focus would have had to become very narrow – to the point of stifling curiosity in other areas.

    Consider this abstract of an academic paper – Car Seats as Contraception (HT: Instapundit)

    Since 1977, U.S. states have passed laws steadily raising the age for which a child must ride in a car safety seat. These laws significantly raise the cost of having a third child, as many regular-sized cars cannot fit three child seats in the back. Using census data and state-year variation in laws, we estimate that when women have two children of ages requiring mandated car seats, they have a lower annual probability of giving birth by 0.73 percentage points. Consistent with a causal channel, this effect is limited to third child births, is concentrated in households with access to a car, and is larger when a male is present (when both front seats are likely to be occupied). We estimate that these laws prevented only 57 car crash fatalities of children nationwide in 2017. Simultaneously, they led to a permanent reduction of approximately 8,000 births in the same year, and 145,000 fewer births since 1980, with 90% of this decline being since 2000.

    The paper is by some economists – so a different field than the engineers and regulators that design and mandate child safety/restraint seats.

    Talk about your unintended consequences! Now, if you have ever looked into the work to design child safety seats, it is amazing engineering, really amazing, but it is all about crash test dummies, impact angles, force misdirection and so on. Nowhere in all of that is any consideration whatsoever of the sociological/behavioral consequences of implementing that truly amazing and expert engineering in the real world.

    Then there is this: – The Brains of Teenagers Look Disturbingly Different After Lockdown

    The stress of living through pandemic lockdowns has accelerated aging in the brains of teenagers. The effects are similar to those previously observed as a result of violence, neglect, and family dysfunction.

    Even if you’ve left adolescence far behind, you might remember that it can be a tumultuous time in terms of thoughts and feelings, and there’s a lot of reorganizing that goes on in the brain – even without a global pandemic and the associated lockdowns.

    A recent study by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco, concluded the pandemic had ‘sped up’ some of this reorganizing, thinning of the cortex and increasing the size of the hippocampus and the amygdala sections of the brain.

    In this case we are dealing with another piece of evidence in an already massive pile of evidence that the lockdowns were an ignorant idea – focused exclusively on stopping the spread of a virus without consideration of any other thing, mental health, economic health, education, or even other disease categories. For whatever reason we relied on the epidemiologists exclusively and simply paid no attention to any other expert in any other field. Therefore, calling the lockdowns “ignorant” is a very precise description for they were completely ignorant of any consideration aside from the spread of the virus.

    Now here is what we need to consider – we have battles going on here – economists versus safety engineers, epidemiologists versus mental health professionals. Everyone involved is an expert – furthermore they are all very good experts using their expertise in profound and smart ways.

    They are all doing “the science” they are trained to do very, very well. And yet they would lead us in very different directions in response to the same circumstances.

    Science answers little questions, not big ones. Science can tell us about the climate, but it cannot tell us the best climate policy because policy is about so much more than just climate – it’s about economics and birthrates and…and…and….

    There is no substitute for human prudential, and well informed, judgement. There is not, nor can there ever be, enough data to make decisions on the big stuff for us.

    Experts are not always the answer.

    100

    • #
      another ian

      O O

      The word you need is

      ultracrepidarian

      https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ultracrepidarian

      30

    • #
      RickWill

      Science can tell us about the climate,

      No threat of that happening in the foreseeable future. I am yet to see any “climate science” that is not based on imagined outcomes.

      Climate models do not depend on known phsysics (real science) they are parameterised junk all based on imagined processes. Clouds are created through real physical processes not the result of parameters. Some of the parameterisation is not reflective of any physical processes. Parameters can get heat into deep oceans from the surface in decades but try that in the real world and you realise it is physically impossible.

      111

    • #
      KP

      “expertise in any given area generally means there are other areas one does not spend much time learning about. ” Until you know everything about nothing.. a common problem in academia.

      10

  • #
    OldOzzie

    The Undergraduate Essay Is About to Die

    Nobody is prepared for how AI will transform academia.

    Suppose you are a professor of pedagogy, and you assign an essay on learning styles. A student hands in an essay with the following opening paragraph:

    The construct of “learning styles” is problematic because it fails to account for the processes through which learning styles are shaped. Some students might develop a particular learning style because they have had particular experiences. Others might develop a particular learning style by trying to accommodate to a learning environment that was not well suited to their learning needs. Ultimately, we need to understand the interactions among learning styles and environmental and personal factors, and how these shape how we learn and the kinds of learning we experience.

    Pass or fail? A- or B+? And how would your grade change if you knew a human student hadn’t written it at all? Because Mike Sharples, a professor in the U.K., used GPT-3, a large language model from OpenAI that automatically generates text from a prompt, to write it.

    (The whole essay, which Sharples considered graduate-level, is available, complete with references, here.) Personally, I lean toward a B+. The passage reads like filler, but so do most student essays.

    Sharples’s intent was to urge educators to “rethink teaching and assessment” in light of the technology, which he said “could become a gift for student cheats, or a powerful teaching assistant, or a tool for creativity.” Essay generation is neither theoretical nor futuristic at this point.

    80

    • #

      How about exams where all the students sit in a room and write essays?

      160

      • #
        John Hultquist

        Does printing count as writing?
        In the U. S., students do not learn cursive writing. I think they do have to learn how to “sign” their own name.
        Beginning about 20 years ago, encouraging learning became ever so much more difficult because of simple cell phones. It must be a major challenge now, but not for me.😊

        70

      • #
        OldOzzie

        Do they still exist in this day and age?

        00

      • #
        Graeme#4

        When developing technical exam questions, I used to avoid the need for essay responses, as I noticed that the examiner’s marking was subjective. Switched to short yes/no, requests for clear statements that could be objective. Made marking a lot easier. Have now carried this over into developing online Q&A examinations.

        20

      • #
        Gee Aye

        Jo, this seriously is part of the discussion now.

        02

        • #
          Lance

          No, it isn’t. It is obfuscation of reality.

          Students ought personally create their answers under supervised conditions. Otherwise, there is no proof of origin.

          Unless the entire education system is a hoax and the students actually know nothing. And the degrees mean nothing, and the reality is a bunch of incompetent pretenders unleashed upon the world with expectations they cannot meet.

          Many graduating students are incompetent. Making it easier to be incompetent isn’t a solution in reality.

          40

          • #
            Gee Aye

            Yes it is.

            Are you accusing me of lying? Or maybe I’m imagining the discussions I’ve had and meetings I’ve attended.

            01

            • #
              b.nice

              “Are you accusing me of lying?”

              Just chronically mal-informed. !

              00

            • #
              b.nice

              ” I’m imagining the discussions “

              With your fellow comrades at a woker-left gathering ??? .. immaterial.

              “and meetings I’ve attended.”

              Socialist far-left meetings of non-thinking idea logs… are irrelevant.

              00

  • #
    Ross

    There would appear to be a couple of resident rhymers on this blog. Here’s a ripper I picked up from social media ( Kristen Meg, Twitter)

    We’ve now heard from Fauci
    His statement deposed
    Into hundreds of pages
    All freshly exposed

    He evaded and dodged
    As we all had expected
    And denied any part
    In the lab that infected

    Despite prior statements
    And awareness of all
    He answered most questions
    with “I don’t recall”

    190

  • #
    John Connor II

    Thursday entertainment – the twelve days of xmas, Covid edition

    https://youtu.be/KAw78MpeL5c

    120

  • #
    John Connor II

    Now Met Office warns temperatures could plunge to minus DOUBLE digits as UK braces for ‘hard December’ with thousands left unable to cook or heat homes for FIVE days and plan is triggered to shelter

    The UK has been warned to brace for a bleak month ahead as the Met Office warns of an approaching cold snap which could see temperatures in the double digits below freezing, while thousands in Sheffield remained without gas for a fifth day on Wednesday.

    The Met Office today said a brutal blast of Arctic air from Norway could whip through the country for at least a week. Dubbed the ‘Troll of Trondheim’, it could arrive as early as tonight and will see snow showers and ice form across large parts of Britain – with temperatures expected to fall to around -10C by the weekend.

    In London, mayor Sadiq Khan agreed to implement emergency planning which includes sheltering homeless people in the capital against the severe weather.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11513543/Now-Met-Office-warns-temperatures-plunge-minus-DOUBLE-digits-UK-braces-hard-month.html

    Meanwhile WEF puppet Sunak promises 125 anti-aircraft guns and 1,000 missiles to Time’s scumbag of the year Zelensky, part of his circa $3B war package.
    Now, what could have been done with that $3B instead of pushing ww3?

    171

    • #
      RickWill

      Snow removal is a growing business across the northern hemisphere. The northerners are at the very early stage of witnessing something that no human civilisation has recorded.

      Iif China is still shipping coal and iron ore from Australia in 5000 years they will need to relocate the ports well before that. So southerners will not be immune from the impact of climate change but there willl be more habitable land area in the SH and less in the NH unless you are happy to exit under a block of ice.

      70

  • #
    Gee Aye

    I’m happy with tenth. The start of the new decade.

    011

  • #
    John Connor II

    The US military came up with the mRNA vaccines a decade ago, not Pfizer or Moderna

    Dr Peter McCullough short clip on DARPA and ADEPT:
    https://twitter.com/i/status/1600534881678802946

    The FDA’s Comirnaty regulatory action document:
    http://www.fda.gov/media/151733/
    Look at the redaction codes on page 4 – “b(4)”

    Declassified redaction codes explained:
    https://www.archives.gov/declassification/iscap/redaction-codes.html
    3.3 (b) (4) Reveal information that would impair the application of state-of-the-art technology within a U.S. weapon system

    https://thewatchtowers.org/so-the-army-came-up-with-the-idea-of-messenger-rna-vaccines-not-pfizer-or-moderna-no-warp-speed-process/

    Vaccines are a state-of-the-art weapon system? 😎

    60

  • #
    Geoff Sherrington

    Just starting to hear of a possible coup plan or attempt in Germany, possible military involvement.
    If I was a top German military person, I suspect that I would have been planning for a couple of years already. How hard it must be to sit quiet and watch your homeland change from bubbling and optimistic to facing civilian deaths from energy shortages imposed by politicians with ideologies.
    But then here in Oz ……
    Geoff S

    140

    • #
      John Hultquist

      Twenty-five people were arrested Wednesday in Germany for a suspected far-right terrorist plot to overthrow the government.
      The Reichsbürger, or Citizens of the Reich, movement is a “radical and violent” ideology that refuses to recognize Germany’s current government. More arrests may follow.

      In Peru, the teacher is gone, and the lady is in.

      20

  • #
    John Connor II

    Nigeria bans ATM cash withdrawals over $225/week

    Nigeria has reduced the amount of cash individuals and businesses can withdraw as it attempts to push its “cash-less Nigeria” policy and increase the use of the eNaira, Nigeria’s Central Bank Digital Currency

    This is how they will do it. They will limit access to alternatives.

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1600399719439777793

    I guess those Nigerian princes will be busy online…

    110

  • #
    John Connor II

    Bubble-Wrapped Americans:
    How the U.S. Became Obsessed with Physical and Emotional Safety

    It’s a common refrain: We have bubble-wrapped the world. Americans in particular are obsessed with “safety.” The simplest way to get any law passed in America, be it a zoning law or a sweeping reform of the intelligence community, is to invoke a simple sentence: “A kid might get hurt.”

    Almost no one is opposed to reasonable efforts at making the world a safer place. But the operating word here is “reasonable.” Banning lawn darts, for example, rather than just telling people that they can be dangerous when used by unsupervised children, is a perfect example of a craving for safety gone too far.

    Beyond the realm of legislation, this has begun to infect our very culture. Think of things like “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces.” These are part of broader cultural trends in search of a kind of “emotional safety” – a purported right to never be disturbed or offended by anything. This is by no means confined to the sphere of academia, but is also in our popular culture, both in “extremely online” and more mainstream variants.

    Why are Americans so obsessed with safety? What is the endgame of those who would bubble wrap the world, both physically and emotionally? Perhaps most importantly, what can we do to turn back the tide and reclaim our culture of self-reliance, mental toughness, and giving one another the benefit of the doubt so that we don’t “bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security,” as President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about?

    There is an interesting phenomenon involved in coddling: Australian psychologist Nick Haskam first coined the term “concept creep.” Basically, this means that terms are often elastic and expand past the point of meaning. Take, for example, the concept of “trauma.” This used to have a very limited meaning. However, “trauma” quickly became expanded to mean even slight physical or emotional harm or discomfort. Thus the increasing belief among the far left that words can be “violence” – not “violent,” mind you, but actual, literal violence.

    https://ammo.com/articles/bubble-wrapped-americans-how-us-became-obsessed-with-physical-emotional-safety/

    “Concept creep” – like it! 😁

    90

    • #
      cadger

      The idea for letting kids develop some basic climbing competency has grown in popularity in Germany. An influential 2004 study had found that “children who had improved their motor skills in playgrounds at an early age were less likely to suffer accidents as they got older,” according to The Guardian. Moreover:

      With young people spending an increasing amount of time in their own home, the umbrella association of statutory accident insurers in Germany last year called for more playgrounds that teach children to develop “risk competence”

      https://reason.com/2021/11/01/germany-playgrounds-risk-insurance-fall/

      90

      • #
        Hanrahan

        Oddly, I was thinking about something similar recently. My Grandfather owned a boat building business with a saw and surfacing plane driven by an electric motor and open belts.

        As school kids, we would help run timbers through the machines. No one told us not to put our arms in the belt or our hands in the blades, that was a given. And no one did.

        We also painted the new boats with red-lead sometimes, so I’ve got an excuse, have you?

        110

    • #
      KP

      “what can we do to turn back the tide and reclaim our culture of self-reliance, mental toughness..”
      Go help Ukraine, or Russia, depending on your politics. I imagine no-one there has a care about Western Left problems, there’s nothing like war to focus your mind.

      See how far the fire spreads through Europe and you will see the limp-wristed whiners of all sexes vanish.

      20

  • #
    el+gordo

    North Atlantic Oscillation has gone negative, usually a sign that the beast from the east will show up very soon.

    70

  • #
    John Connor II

    PHARMACEUTICAL CRISIS: In Biden’s America, there are now 124 medications in short supply

    The latest information from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shows that at the current time, there are 124 different pharmaceutical drug medications in short supply.

    Basic drugs like Tylenol, serious drugs for treating cancer, and everything in between are becoming increasingly scarce, the government says. And there is “no cure in sight to these mounting shortages,” to quote one news outlet.

    Since the beginning of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) “pandemic,” there have been shortages of everything from toilet paper to car parts to furniture to baby formula. The supply chains have been broken for nearly three years now, in other words – and the situation is worsening, not getting better.

    “Medications used to treat cancer are running low,” reported KING in Seattle. “The rise in RSV with children, along with a return of the flu have parents struggling to find Amoxicillin, Tamiflu and Albuterol.”

    “Anesthetics like Lidocaine are scarce. Ativan used to control seizures and anxiety is hard to come by. Even everyday, over-the-counter (OTC) treatments such as Tylenol are increasingly tough to find.”

    According to Steve Fijalka, the chief pharmacy officer at University of Washington Medicine, says he worries the United States does not have an adequate drug manufacturing sector – most drugs for America are made in India or China, in case you were not aware.

    “Sometimes it’s raw materials,” Fijalka says about the reasons behind these shortages. “Sometimes it’s a business decision. Some of these medications just aren’t worth it for certain companies to make anymore.”

    “There are manufacturing issues. We don’t have that many manufacturing plants in the U.S.”

    http://www.stationgossip.com/2022/12/pharmaceutical-crisis-in-bidens-america.html

    One person in China gets the Wuhan flu and everything stops…

    50

  • #
    RickWill

    Here is one out of left field in a so-claimed warming world. The requirement for show removal equipment is a growing industry. As the snow trends upwards over the coming years there will be rising demand for snow removal. Snow fall records will be a feature of climate reporting for 9000 years and snow removal budgets will skyrocket driven by rising demand demand and energy costs.

    This is an industry sector that I have no knowledge of other than that the demand will grow and snow removal budgets must necessarily expand until it gets beyond acceptable cost to remove the snow.

    Each tonne of snow that falls requires the release of the same amount of heat as burning 100kg of coal. Not the most intuitive of facts. But increasing snowfall results in warmer surface temperature because heat is released higher in the air column than the surface so the radiating temperature is lower than the surface. The rapidly warming northern oceans is already resulting in more snowfall. Only a few places like Greenland and Iceland have expanding permanent snow cover but the larger land masses will eventually follow. The NH snow maximum annual extent has an increasing trend of 56,000km each year.

    Now the modellers will put this down to just another evil of CO2 but why isn’t the same cause as occurred 4 times in the past 500kyrs as the NH started to warm up due to increasing sunlight:
    https://1drv.ms/u/s!Aq1iAj8Yo7jNhHaq7d4_9RdzY6NJ?e=9UCKTw

    Another thought here is that Elon could get into the woker end of plough manufacturing and come up with battery powered snow ploughs. I expect New York City would be an obvious market. The only question is; does it takes more energy to remove the snow from the solar panels and ice from turbine blades than is recoverable from them over the winter months. The “renewable” world may not mesh well with the “warming” world. So the battery powered snow removal gear may need to come with its own diesel generator back at the garage.

    141

  • #
    Ronin

    Bureau Of Muppets have failed again, big electrical storm rolled through Brisbane early this morning and not a word from them.

    50

  • #
    David Maddison

    Electric bike battery fire.

    Saving the planet one battery fire at a time.

    https://m.facebook.com/groups/715437322418730/permalink/1181439029151888/

    70

    • #
      Dennis

      I have carried in my 4WD a Lithium ion battery that can be used to start a vehicle that has a discharged start battery or other recharge purposes, phone, computer, etc.

      It is now about 5 years old and I keep it charged and check the level of charge every six months approximately.

      Yesterday I was approached by a person who could not start her car who asked if I had jump start leads and I do, but I first went to get the small charger unit and noticed the outer case was swollen at one end of the unit. It’s still fully charged but I am now wary of condition.

      90

      • #
        DOC

        I’ve noticed my 5yo iPhone is getting quite hot at times with charging. Works well but I sense it is requiring more charging than a year ago. Woe! Las and alack! To dump or not to dump? That is the question.

        80

        • #
          Chad

          You can get your iphone battery replaced on almost any street corner for $50 !
          Or , the local Apple store will do the same for $150 !

          00

      • #
        MrGrimNasty

        Time to get rid.
        Google swollen lithium battery for advice.

        70

      • #
        Chad

        Dennis, if it is swollen it suggests that it containes the high power lipo pouch cells which are the most fire prone of all the lithium chemistries.
        Swelling is usually the result of either over discharging, overcharging, or storing at full charge for long periods.
        No safe cure once swollen , so i suggest you fully discharge it slowly by running a 12 v light bulb on it fro a few hours, then dumping it at a battery return site.
        And do not keep it in your house , car, or garage … shove it in the barbeque for storage.

        10

  • #
    R.B.

    Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️
    @InezFeltscher
    -media demonized this man & made him the face of “white rage,” Covington style
    -political DA prosecutes his minor scuffle as BIG DEAL
    -*FBI* cites this man as a case of possible *domestic terrorism*
    – months later,
    @lukerosiak
    bothers to actually ask the guy “why are you so mad?

    The man got angry when they tried to pretend a transgender rapist at their school didn’t exist. The boy had raped his 15 yo daughter. Only because they called the police to drag him away was the rape investigated and the boy convicted of forceful sodomy and fellatio.

    Damn redneck.

    50

  • #
    another ian

    Things about cheese

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juDbb5LNIlY

    I notice that bloke with surname Coon doesn’t get a mention in industrial cheeses – but I guess it is U-tube

    20

  • #
    • #
      Graeme#4

      So at least one senator, Senator Rennick, is asking the hard questions, and getting the run-around from the public bureaucrats. Good on him for asking.

      100

  • #
    another ian

    An interesting approach to Dr Fauci’s “I don’t remember” here –

    “Learn How to Get Involved”

    https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/-learn-how-to-get-involved-?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

    Though

    “COVID 19 Was Created in Wuhan Lab and Funded by the United States AND Fauci Does Remember”

    https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2022/12/07/covid-19-was-created-in-wuhan-lab-and-funded-by-the-united-states-and-fauci-does-remember/

    30

    • #
      another ian

      To get to the item at the first site I have to subscribe and I’m having email problems atm.

      The gist is that a series of “I don’t remember” answers can be lead to a justifying of a cognitive evaluation

      20

  • #

    Oh dear, and here’s me thinking these people knew a little something about power generation, or at least had people to tell them when they were making fools of themselves anyway.

    This is at the ABC, oh, where else?

    Renewables providers to be paid to ensure stable electricity supply

    That first line just says it all, eh! (my bolding here)

    Federal and state-level governments have unanimously signed on to develop an energy “capacity mechanism”, a scheme that will pay renewable energy providers to be available to increase electricity supply at a moment’s notice.

    I, umm, guess that they won’t be getting paid all that much.

    I sit here reading that article and the hair on the back of my neck prickles up.

    If this 1di0t was standing on top of the Harbour Bridge, surveying his Kingdom, and waving at his adoring crowd below, he wouldn’t hear them yelling ….. “Jump!”

    Love that look on his face ….. “Jeez, I hope I’ve got this right.”

    You haven’t Mr Bowen, you haven’t.

    We’re in a shirtload of trouble.

    Tony.

    290

    • #
      b.nice

      They mention “Dispatchable renewable providers”

      Hydro ?

      50

      • #
        David Maddison

        Hydro is the only dispatchable one and that also happens to be a legitimate power source, except where politicians made the engineering decisions like the power and money consuming Snowy Hydro 2 Big Wet Battery.

        80

    • #
      robert rosicka

      Late in the afternoon just before sunset on stinking hot summer day with no wind and everyone cranks up the aircon a call goes out to the wind and solar farms , “ quick turn up the sun and the wind” !

      60

    • #
      Ross

      That’s a subsidy for battery installations. That clown thinks batteries can act as backup.

      70

  • #
    Saighdear

    Wirecard: Anyone get their fingers burnt with wirecard ? Never heard of them, funny that: to think of the scale of the alleged fraud. https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=wirecard&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tpsf=openc Trial now starting in Germany “underground” .. Hmm That FX bitcurrency thingy recently, the US Big Bangks prior to all that, … becoming a regular Wool Harvest ? Farmers have the wrong kind of woolly livestock. Ethics don’t come in to it AT ALL. Just fleece the Critters.
    Something in the UK news at lunchtime got me thinking: the COMMON DENOMINATOR ( is that term used nowadays in school? ) in all this Energy problems, NHS & Railway, Education, Coal & Steel Industries ( aye, the Cumbrian re-development), the Scottish Ferryboat Saga, and so on. Simple really those plonkers in the Seats of power. Power without Brains. and a supporting MSM. together we can now call them the GGB ( Gang Grene Blob). and were we to try to shed this Mob, Well, look what happened in Germany yesterday. America, Brasil, the list can continues to grow.

    50

  • #
    Richard+Ilfeld

    It may be that the worst problem i life, across a very many domains, is that it’s easy to add rules, stuff, and people, but darned hard to reduce levels of any of the three when called for; and the phenomena are an order of magnitude more obvious in the public sector that in the planet.

    It’s hard to think of a problem today where “less government’ would not likely improve things.

    120

    • #
      David Maddison

      Back around the 1980’s during the Presidency and Prime Ministership of Reagan and Thatcher, there was indeed an effort to deregulate and reduce government expenditure in their respective countries and such influence even extended to Australia and other Western nations.

      Then, after their terms, politicians again couldn’t resist buying votes with more “free stuff” at the expense of other taxpayers and future generations and bigger government in general.

      Deregulation and reducing the scope of government in Western countries wasn’t tried again until President Trump and we know how that ended for him.

      90

      • #
        Steve of Cornubia

        Thatcher was succeeded by John Major, a rather grey, ineffectual man. However, I do recall being impressed by an initiative he promoted – I think he called it ‘The Citizens’ Charter – through which all public services would have to treat their ‘customers’ in the same fashion as private enterprise, a ‘customer first’ focus. It was also intended that citizens would have the same recourse to compensation when they received poor service, as they typically do when buying something from the shop down the road. Given the appalling service most people received at the time (and it’s possibly worse today), this was a startling promise and one I fully supported.

        Sadly, he didn’t push hard enough and the public service mandarins pretty much buried the idea in a ‘Yes Minister’ fashion.

        I would vote for any government who sincerely promised to do this today, though of course they would have less chance of delivering on that promise than did Major.

        90

  • #
    David Maddison

    https://www.climatedepot.com/2022/12/04/mit-climate-scientist-dr-richard-lindzen-condemns-climate-change-fears-as-a-quasi-religious-movement-predicated-on-an-absurd-scientific-narrative/

    MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen rejects ‘climate change’ as ‘a quasi-religious movement predicated on an absurd ‘scientific’ narrative’

    SEE LINK FOR REST AND FREE DOWNLOAD OF PAPER

    70

  • #
    another ian

    Re covid and “vaccines”

    “This is a nasty paper”

    “They actually found five possible caused deaths, but one had a potential alternative explanation in the form of a separate and distinct infection that might have been involved.

    None of these were Covid related; that was excluded as none had a recorded infection prior to being jabbed and all were negative at the time of their death.

    20% of these “unexpectedly” deaths were linked directly to the Covid vaccinations. That is an utterly huge percentage that wildly outclasses anything else.

    The total intake was 35 corpses, of which 10 were excluded due to pre-existing illness that was clearly a causative factor in their demise. Note that unlike the claims made that this is primarily a hit taken by young men the median age was 58 years and there was no statistical differentiation between men and women either. All died outside medical supervision; they did not seek medical care before their collapse, so they had no warning.

    Worse, none had any pre-existing heart condition that was able to be determined (both on autopsy and, I presume, from examining any available prior medical records.)

    As if that’s not bad enough the hospital had no record of similar events occurring prior to the vaccine rollouts going back 20 years.”

    More at

    https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=247581

    90

  • #
    David Maddison

    Excellent video about the tragedy of wind turbines.

    Note the link for future reference or download a copy because Goolag/YouTube appears to be shadow banning it and making it hard to find.

    https://youtu.be/zr3z_7iQ35s

    40

  • #
    OldOzzie

    feels like 13.4C here in Sydney at 0740 when is Global Warming Coming Please?

    Oops gone back to feels like 13.3C at 0750

    https://www.weatherzone.com.au/nsw/sydney/sydney

    60

    • #

      The heater kicked in this morning – at the same time the ABC is going on ad-nauseum about heat wave conditions affecting .001% of Australia’s population. Nothing like balanced reporting. I bet northern Australia was not prepared for hot conditions during summer and had to be reminded.

      100

      • #
        robert rosicka

        Someone on the Kimberly Facebook page said thank god it’s finally over the 40’s , the tourists have gone and the big Barra are finally on the chew .

        90

    • #
      David Maddison

      Currently the present temperature in Melbournistan is 14C with a “feels like” temperature of 12C.

      80

    • #
      MrGrimNasty

      Frost persisted all day in the shade here on the sunny south coast of England, air temp peaked at +3C briefly.

      50

    • #
      Gee Aye

      Was 0.5C away from a record cold December morning in Canberra – a record that is only 10 years old. Global cooling is here!

      52

  • #
  • #
    OldOzzie

    Australia is in deep trouble with this Bunch of Incompetent Canberra Bureaucrats with Zero Knowledge of Costs of Renewables

    The Department of Climate Change admit they can’t cost renewable targets – Senate Estimates 28.11.22 – 11 mins 06 Secs

    Senator Gerard Rennick as always looking after Australians

    11,011 views 8 Dec 2022

    Boy oh boy is our energy grid going be in trouble with this lot in charge.

    If only bureaucratic spin could be converted into electricity we would become the energy powerhouse of the world.

    Key points from this line of questioning are:

    1) Energy department doesn’t have costings on storage.

    2) Nine times more renewable energy that what exists today is needed to meet 2030 targets.

    3) The minister can’t understand why I would want costings.

    4) It’s impossible to say what costings will be because of counterfactuals. When asked what a counterfactual is the bureaucrat couldn’t answer.

    5) 447 gigawatts of storage is required but there is scant detail on what sort of storage that will be. A household battery can store around 10 – 15 kilowatts so that works out at about 44 million batteries – this will reduce as more gas and hydro is used. But even if only 25% of that figure was stored in batteries that’s still a lot of batteries.

    From the Comments

    – AMAZING how such simple questions of costs seems the most least talked topic and the most important to the tax payer. Well done senator 🎯 on target

    – It blows my mind how patient Senator Rennick is dealing with these fools, everytime they have opaque or no answers but he keep cool calm and collected, I could not.

    – With folks like these in charge of the future of the grid it seems that expensive, catastrophic failure is inevitable.

    – Must be nice to have a highly paid job to just sit and theorise about a goal, plan and target literally at other people’s expense. Amazing that they come unprepared with the costings. So thank you Senator Rennick for pushing them to face realities.

    – Thank you Senator, I’m always amazed how many of these highly paid “witnesses” cannot answer the questions posed, and often try and deflect/twist the real question into an answer they want to give.

    Australia seems to suffer from a “cover your a@s” attitude when questions are asked with the likely reply “I’ll take that on notice” when they really want to avoid any and all responsibility on the subject.

    The money we squander on these highly paid individuals who cannot answer most questions is beyond acceptable to all Australians. Again, thank you for the frustrating efforts you make on behalf of REAL Australians and not the clowns you regularly have to interact with.

    – Senator Rennick, GREETINGS from far West Texas.

    You, sir, are a rarity in today’s political class, anywhere, in any country.

    Your common sense questions run circles around those people proposing all the ridiculous “green” policies being pushed in so many countries. Your common sense questions prove they haven’t a clue about what they’re talking about and deep down inside they, themselves, know it will not work.

    And whilst you’re calmly asking your questions, they get quite uncomfortable as you expose their subterfuge.

    GOOD ON YOU, Senator Rennick!!

    CHEERS!

    120

    • #
      OldOzzie

      Australia is Governed by a Bunch of Incompetent (Both Sides) Politicians & Bureaucrats

      Coal and gas cut out of capacity mechanism

      Mark Ludlow – Queensland bureau chief

      Federal and state energy ministers have specifically ruled out coal and gas from being a part of the capacity mechanism that will be introduced next year to ensure there is enough supply in the grid.

      At an energy ministers’ meeting in Brisbane on Thursday, Federal Energy Minister Chris Bowen hailed the agreement as a breakthrough after the energy ministers controversially took the delivery of the capacity mechanism off the Energy Security Board in August.

      Queensland Energy Minister Mick de Brenni – whose state is one of the biggest coal producers in Australia – declared “coal keeper is dead”, a reference to the former Morrison government’s proposal to pay coal-fired power stations to stay in the grid for longer.

      ​“After a decade of LNP denial and delay, today I’m very pleased to announce that coal keeper is dead. [Former energy minister] Angus Taylor and [former prime minister] Scott Morrison’s coal keeper is dead,” he said.

      “What we decided to do is accelerate sensible market reforms and invest in new energy insurance on the grid, it is not funding for new renewable energy. This is about prices because only when the market is dominated by clean, renewable energy will we see wholesale energy prices come down permanently.”

      Mr Bowen said the Commonwealth would run auctions for dispatchable generation from next year to ensure there was enough renewable energy in each state or territory.

      The bids for the capacity mechanism – or Capacity Investment Scheme – will be underwritten and guaranteed by the federal government.

      “That is the risk that the Commonwealth is undertaking on behalf of the country to ensure that we provide that stability and certainty for renewable energy,” Mr Bowen said after the meeting.

      “This is important because this will unleash at least $10 billion into investment in renewable energy across Australia, at least six gigawatts of generation.”

      ‘Huge challenges’

      As foreshadowed in The Australian Financial Review, Victoria cemented the right to slam the door on coal and gas as a source of secure energy supply when wind and solar are offline under the deal hashed out by federal, state and territory energy ministers.

      Mr Bowen said coal and gas had been specifically excluded from the scheme as Australia moves to have 83 per cent renewable generation by 2030.

      NSW Energy Minister Matt Kean acknowledged there were “huge challenges” in the energy transition as coal-fired power is excluded from the grid, but the capacity mechanism would help ensure the “lights stay on during the transition”.

      ​“We are very pleased that the Commonwealth government has agreed to ensure that the NSW capacity mechanism that we have in place will be supported by the Commonwealth,” he said.

      Victorian Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio, who had been instrumental in excluding fossil fuels from the new scheme, said the capacity mechanism would ensure “no more coal generation” and help the state reach 100 per cent renewable energy.

      ​“Victoria has always had a strong view when it comes to the creation of a capacity mechanism. That is it was to have no fossil fuels incentivised for a future that has to be carbon emissions-free,” she said.

      “Today, I am really pleased we have all agreed on a capacity mechanism that will do just that.”

      But energy experts, such as Grattan Institute’s energy program director Tony Wood, have warned of the risks of relying on solar, wind and storage to provide dispatchable generation to replace synchronous generation like coal and gas.

      “We are not in a position to rely on wind and solar yet and battery storage is questionable to start with,” Mr Wood told ABC TV.

      “Around the world, most capacity mechanisms like this tend to have things like as a backup only, things like gas or diesel generation which is just as necessary as backup. We excluded those. So how will it actually deliver reliable dispatcher will capacity as we ramp up supply of renewables. I think it is a big challenge.”

      Opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien said the Albanese government had “killed the capacity mechanism” which was supposed to make the grid more stable.

      “As the ESB originally envisaged, the delivery of affordable and reliable energy in Australia’s energy market will require a balance of technologies as we transition towards a net zero energy system,” Mr O’Brien said.

      “Instead, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has rejected the advice of the experts and ripped coal and gas out from the generator technologies available under the capacity mechanism.

      “Ironically, this decision also sets up renewables to fail because it accelerates their roll out while throwing out existing capacity and leaves the entire system vulnerable for when Labor’s plan fails, and it will fail.”

      The in-principle model on the design of a so-called capacity mechanism is understood to mean that other states can establish their own incentives to ensure energy producers provide reliable power, including to fossil fuel generators.

      However, the deal is set to deliver a major victory to renewables investors because it removes another support for fossil fuel-fired power even as anxiety grows about Australia’s decarbonisation trajectory.

      The proposed capacity mechanism will pay providers to have their capacity available during certain periods to ensure there are no power shortfalls in the grid.

      20

      • #
        OldOzzie

        Australia – A Land of Droughts & Flooding Rains

        Meanwhile Snowy Hydro could be a bit late and a lot more Expensive

        Snowy 2.0 cost increases ‘inevitable’ after Clough collapse

        The collapse of the century-old Perth-based engineering group has raised fears that the cost of building big projects such as Snowy 2.0 and the Waitsia LNG project in Western Australia for Japan’s Mitsui and Australia’s Beach Energy will soar.

        The 2000-megawatt Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, which involves building about 40 kilometres of tunnels through the Kosciuszko National Park, has already been beset by delays and cost blow-outs and is running a year late. It is also suffering from management turnover with former Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad abruptly resigning from his job in August.

        Switzerland To Ban EV Owing To Energy Crisis?

        Switzerland is reportedly making plans to prohibit electric vehicles (EV) from the roads. The national government announces the ban as a remedy to combat the energy crisis. If the nation faces an energy crisis in the winter a ban would be imposed on non-essential journeys in electric cars.

        By doing so, Switzerland could become the first ever nation to deal with the energy crisis with a ban on electric vehicles. The officials would allow the EVs on roads for journeys that come under the category of being absolutely necessary. An uncompromising speed limit for vehicles on the highways is also under consideration.

        Over 60 % of domestic electricity in Switzerland is generated from its hydroelectric power stations. This includes the river crossing dams and the generators that are operating from between the lakes.

        The winter months results in the decreased functioning of the hydroelectric power stations thus causing a major portion of the Switzerlandian power to be received by importing from nations such as France and Germany. This supply is expected to be limited this year.

        The hydroelectric power station largely depends on the amount of rain received and melted snow bodies. This is minimal during winter and autumn and is at its maximum during summer and spring.

        Switzerland didn’t have a storage of power due to one of the driest summers ever which caused the presence of only shallow water in the rivers and lakes.

        30

        • #
          RickWill

          There ya go. Encourage the woke to buy battery vehicles than ban their use. Who needs mandated lockdowns when there are enough woke souls to take the bait.

          20

      • #
        Ted1.

        ” for when Labor’s plan fails, and it will fail.”

        The current situation represents failure. It has failed already!

        00

  • #
    Greg in NZ

    Gave up watching TV years ago… however, for a good laugh, I click on BoM’s site and have a hearty chuckle:

    FOUR DAYS’ SNOW on the way for Mt Baw Baw, Vicscamistan’s lowest (?) and most-southerly ski field, next week from Mon 12 Dec through Thur 15th. TAS & NSW in for a little ‘climate fallout powder’ as well, but with an Antarctic southerly, Baw Baw seems to be in the crosshairs.

    My climate activist green niece in Melbourne could, if she caught a bus or rode a bike, enjoy her very first ‘white birthday’ in the snow on Monday the 12th of December… sent her a birthday card yesterday (screenshot by text) of BoM’s Baw Baw 4-day Coldwave* or is that a Snow-wave*?

    100

  • #
    Dennis

    Quote:

    “Other experts disagree with the idea that renewables could reach 100 percent for most countries. Benjamin Heard, from the University of Adelaide, with colleagues published a paper reviewing the feasibility of 100 percent renewable electricity systems.

    He argues that there is a heavy reliance on hydro and biomass sources – while most countries don’t have access to these, so would be reliant on sources like solar, wind, and storage. In those circumstances, it’s highly unlikely for renewables to power 100 percent of the electricity supply he says.”

    50

  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    Apparently there are around 30 types of Corona virus including the common cold and SARS Cov-19. Does the spike protein in these vary? Are some more dangerous than others? We know that spike protein injected via the jabs is causing health problems for the vascular system. How is this spike protein produced?

    30

    • #
      Gee Aye

      Apparently there are around 30 types of Corona virus including the common cold and SARS Cov-19.

      there is a hellova lot more than 30. Maybe your 30 is clinically identified ones?

      Does the spike protein in these vary?

      Considerably

      Are some more dangerous than others?

      Considerably

      We know that spike protein injected via the jabs is causing health problems for the vascular system. How is this spike protein produced?

      via the translation of specific mRNA. The same as how any protein is made.

      Heard of google?

      07

  • #
    another ian

    Preferences! Preferences!

    “That’s Unfortunate – NBC Reported White House Had to Choose Between Brittany Griner or Paul Whelan, Biden Chose Griner – Then NBC Changed Report

    December 8, 2022 | Sundance | 78 Comments”

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/12/08/thats-unfortunate-nbc-reported-white-house-had-to-choose-between-brittany-griner-or-paul-whelan-biden-chose-griner-then-nbc-changed-report/

    20

    • #
      Leo G

      “the Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Griner or Whelan — or none.”

      Smart play by the Russians- they must have known the Biden administration’s sense of normative moral relativism would judge the swap of a gay medical cannabis offender for a “Merchant of Death” as the better outcome in terms of identity politics.

      10

  • #
    crakar24

    Trying to understand Air Bus Albo’s new power plan,

    The current price for a MT of coal is US$427 which is about AU$627

    Air Bus says he wants to cap the price of coal at AU$125 to $160 a tonne.

    Does this mean there is approx. a $500 shortfall? or am I incorrect in my assumptions?

    TIA

    60

    • #
      Gee Aye

      National cabinet is meeting on this right now and states are asking for different deals. Hopefully the details released will answer how this works exactly.

      12

    • #

      As usual, Albo’s coal price cap plan has no detail.
      I would assume that he is referring to black coal used for domestic power generation – about 10%-20% of our total production – but I may be wrong. If it includes brown coal, then those producers will be free to raise their prices to the cap!

      Anyhow, shame on the black coal power stations that did not negotiate long term supply contracts. I suppose that with the constant harassment from the climate change quarter creating an uncertain future, they would have been reluctant to do so and have been forced to pay spot prices – another unintended consequence.

      Critical infrastructure management at its worse – and another couple of election cycles before this mob are outed. The other unintended consequence is that all of the experienced infrastructure and power engineers will have retired and there will be no-one left who knows how to fix it.

      So the good news from Albo this morning – give more money to the unreliables! What a sham.

      70

      • #
        Dennis

        “So the good news from Albo this morning – give more money to the unreliables! What a sham.”

        Climate200 investment in candidates masquerading as Independents paying off it appears, pale greenmail.

        20

    • #
      Chad

      I cannot see how any change to coal. (Or gas) prices can significantly change the retail price of electricity.
      Actual energy cost is a minor proportion of the final kWh charge and even that energy cost is dictated by the wholesale market “auction” system….that itself is determined by the availability of generation at any specific time,..and contract rates agreed between whoesale and retail service suppliers.
      This whole Bowen/ Albo proposal is a sham to distract and passify the media etc

      50

      • #
        Memoryvault

        This whole Bowen/ Albo proposal is a sham to distract and passify the media etc

        A hundred upticks if I could give them, Chad.
        Any grubbymint control/mediation of energy prices will simply be financed by slugging the public elsewhere to finance it.

        40

      • #
        RickWill

        I cannot see how any change to coal. (Or gas) prices can significantly change the retail price of electricity.

        The Federal and State ministers have demonstrated a lack of understanding of howe the market works. They probably have this outdated notion that generators are scheduled in merit order. That is no longer the case. Every generator games the market system to maximise their profits. As dispatchable power gets squeezed out, those remaining are able to push price up during evening peaks to maximise price.

        The coal and gas generators also own wind and solar so know they will have high or low output. They will set dispatchable power price at a level that produces the highest profit based on how they expect the market to be served.

        Most days the price goes negative when the rooftops sing so coal bid a block near the floor price to ensure they stay scheduled. That causes grid W&S to voluntarily curtail. So coal’s main competitor is rooftops through the middle of the day. Rooftops do zip in the morning and evening peaks and coal prices big blocks just under gas price to enure they get full capacity when the price is high. The generators spend big money on profit maximising software.

        Labor have the electricity system they stumbled into with guidance from Rudd and Gillard. It is a wonderful thing. The most part is that a series of LNP governments failed to correct the mess. And the mess was started by LNP.

        All this zero marginal cost generation and it is causing wholesale energy price to go up and the transmission and FCAS costs to skyrocket. I doubt there is a politician or their academic advisers that grasp any of this.

        10

  • #
    • #
      RickWill

      The central banks have demonstrated that they will do whatever is needed to avoid financial markets shutting down.

      A much mopre serious risk this coming January is power blackoutsacross Europe, That will result in chaos and deaths.

      If they manage to avoid blackouts, the bill shock at the end of winter will be almost as bad. Certainly a financial nightmare. France gets today’s top prize with electricity costing EUR438/MWh. That equates to an eye-watering AUD685/MWh. And the cold weather is just kicking in. France is behind schedule in bringing reactors back on line so it does not bode well. You know when the President orders authorities to stop scare mongering that bad things are about to happen.

      30

  • #
    another ian

    Not sure if this has been posted before

    https://youtu.be/TR8ghQS8jW0

    70

  • #
    wal1957

    Paul Joseph Watson with an update on Jo’s recent story about Oxford City in England – climate lockdown proposal.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDGkDnzdXic

    Should we laugh or cry?
    Maybe it’s time for the peasants to revolt?

    30

    • #
      RickWill

      It is a storm in a teacup. The fix is already there. Brits choice of car is quite wide as long as it is battery electric. There are a number of brands and a range of colours and options; even different size batteries.

      So the few able to afford the battery car will never be able to charge it. My son’s wife has a car as part of her salary package. She had the choice of any battery electric on the market. They rent a townhouse that does not have a suitable charging socket for the car so they have to use publicly available charging stations. That has now turned into a full day out at a shopping centre that has a few chargers. The typical wait is a couple of hours and then about 1 hour to charge – tough life for a battery to be charged that fast. So they have to entretain the boys during the process and inevitably buy lunch. I bet the lunch was not considered in the economics of owning a battery car.

      As one might appreciate, the car does not get much use. It is basically an emergency vehicle in case one of the boys is ill and needs outside care or the weather is so bad that it is not conducive to walking to the day care/school.

      50

      • #
        Steve of Cornubia

        The next stage of the plan is to ban actual ownership of cars – of any kind including EVs. We will only be allowed to rent/lease/subscribe. This of course means that we will not be free to use them when and how we wish, because the terms of rental will stipulate usage and other limits. These could include range, times of use and/or no-go areas. It could even include remote shutdown when your allotted range is reached, or whenever there is a political protest happening that the government doesn’t want you to attend.

        Control. It’s all about control and ensuring that the world’s resources are primarily placed at the disposal of the elites.

        10

    • #
      Chad

      Rowan Dean (sky) allerting us to the similar Andrews “20 miniute City” plan for Melbourne !
      It is basicly the same plan as Oxford, to divide the city into zones to limit car movements.
      Obviously a global think tank product ?

      10

  • #
    David Maddison

    https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/excess-deaths-in-2022-incredibly-high-at-13-per-cent/news-story/2a33dfeeb7476765da4e237c59f59bf7

    Excess deaths in 2022 ‘incredibly high’ at 13 per cent

    The Australian government should be urgently investigating the “incredibly high” 13 per cent excess death rate in 2022, the country’s peak actuarial body says.

    Frank Chung

    December 8, 2022

    SEE LINK FOR REST

    THE WEB PAGE WON’T LET ME COPY AND PASTE FROM IT

    50

    • #
      Adellad

      The ABC and similar liars elsewhere are onto it. It’s Covid you see and if not WuFlu itself, it’s because of delayed surgery/detection or other medical issues related only to Covid. Except the jabs, do not mention the jabs. It’s not enough to call this “disgusting” or other distasteful adjectives. This is sinister, more than anything I thought I’d see.

      60

    • #
      John Connor II

      THE WEB PAGE WON’T LET ME COPY AND PASTE FROM IT

      Don’t ya just hate that.
      There is a trick though.😉

      10

  • #
    David Maddison

    Please write to your “representatives” and say you are concerned for their welfare and that they should have more covid “vaccine” jabs. They should be aiming for ten which is how many they originally planned to give every man, woman and child in Australia.

    For politicians and senior public serpents involved in forcing compulsory covid vaccination they must keep taking the jab. For them, the more the better.

    40

    • #
      David Maddison

      In fact not only should politicians and senior public serpents have more covid “vaccine” jabs, they should not eat meat and dine only on insects they are trying to force on the rest of us.

      40

  • #
    OldOzzie

    Wokey Women – Cassie of Sydney

    Being Christmas, this is the time of year I get to attend work lunches at fancy Sydney restaurants. Yesterday, I attended another such lunch, it was my third in a week, about twenty of us went to a particularly good CBD restaurant. I don’t enjoy these lunches. Why? Well, I like to keep my social and work lives separate, because I don’t have much in common with my work colleagues. This doesn’t mean I don’t like them, it’s just that I know I think differently to them, particularly about politics and culture, and I’ve reached a stage in my life where I only want to spend my precious social time with like-minded people. I don’t find this socially limiting, fortunately most of my family and friends share my opinions. But such work functions can be interesting, because I get to sit, observe, and listen to woke progressive babble and bile, and it gives me an opportunity to counter spurious arguments and nonsense with one or two verbal missiles which invariably leave people’s jaws dropping and drooping, I’ve noticed how some suddenly develop rapid onset bell’s palsy. Yesterday, arriving at the restaurant, I noticed how the table was segregated, with the females sitting at one end and the men sitting at the other. I thought, oh dear, this does not bode well. These young women are all highly educated, have degrees, and come from privileged homes in Sydney’s affluent suburbs. The lunch began okay, but about forty minutes in the subject of politics came up and then the alarm bells started ringing. I sat up and steeled myself for what was to come and believe me, it didn’t disappoint. The table became drenched in woke talk and woke cliches about Trump, the Liberal Party, and the right in general. The lunch was a horror show and I left disturbed, rattled, and frightened. Of what you may ask? Frightened of the future, because these young woke women are the future, they vote, and it’s scary.

    Cassie,

    just to cheer you up, look what has made rt.com

    40

    • #
      Memoryvault

      I would take anything said by Cassie with a pinch of salt, Old Ozzie.

      Like Rosie, aka Notafan, Lizzie, and a few others, Cassie is quite happy to completely swap allegiance on any subject, in order to remain part of the “in” crowd at Dovers.

      Just ask Ellie, if she is still alive, which I’m beginning to doubt.

      10

  • #
    William Astley

    This paper published in the Journal of Ethical Medicine is already the highest downloaded paper in that journal’s history.

    “COVID-19 vaccine boosters for young adults: a risk benefit assessment and ethical analysis of mandate policies at universities”

    https://jme.bmj.com/content/medethics/early/2022/12/05/jme-2022-108449.full.pdf

    A group of US left wing universities, are irrationally/cluelessly, based on what is known in peer reviewed papers now, mandating; the untested bivalent booster for their students. This paper lays out the legal and ethical case, including an estimate of injuries Vs benefits of that action.

    There are now more than a 1000 published peer reviewed papers which provide evidence that the Wuhan-1 covid spike which the RNA covid vaccines, including the new bivalent covid vaccines produces….. Remains in the body for up to a month, is produced in every organ in the body, including the brain. The Wuhan-1 vaccine generated spike was been shown to cause inflammation, DNA damage, miscarriages, infertility, heart damage, nerve damage, a strange blood disorder, damages to the immune system which protects against cancer, and so on. The Chinese are not using the RNA vaccines. It is only the Western countries who are hurting our citizens. The Western countries are hurting their citizens and trying to hide the evidence of the harm done.
    Omicron is 30 times less likely to cause death or hospitalization than the Wuhan-1 first release covid. Covid, Omicron is not deadly. The evil is, a drug that produces the Wuhan-1 spike, in every organ in the body.

    40

  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    STJOHNOFGRAFTON replies to Gee Ay’s #36.1 “Heard of google”? My reply: Yep. I used it to look up smart-aleck. Merriam-Webster says: “an obnoxiously conceited and self-assertive person with pretensions to smartness or cleverness.”

    20